by John Brooke
‘He may have been in a lot of turmoil. This suit may have been the only thing to calm it.’
‘Oh shut up! I know what calmed it…Bastard!’ To Raphaele. ‘I really don’t want him.’
‘And I really can’t help you,’ he replied. A sad smile, a slow shake of his handsome head. Most people whose fate brought them to this chilly place were lulled into providing the requisite information — which included the name of an undertaker to be contacted.
Lise Bettelman began going through the pockets of the high-priced suit, automatic and perfunctory, the way a woman does before she dumps a load of washing into the machine on Saturday morning. Of course IJ had been there first and they were empty. There was a large envelope on the table. She turned it over — sunglasses, reading glasses, a silver comb and a key chain spilled onto the table. Lise began examining each item with the same stark glance, like some scientist assessing — before dropping each item in the basket by Raphaele’s desk. Aliette stepped forward with the recovered wallet. Lise grimly removed the bills, pocketing them. She began pulling credit cards. A cursory glance, then she let each one fall from her fingers. Opening her man’s identity card, she tore it in eight pieces and tossed them over her shoulder like so many grains of salt.
The social worker tried a scornful, mothering tone. ‘Stop it, Lise. You’re only making more trouble for yourself. And your children!’
She was ignored. Gazing at the straight-on photo affixed to Martin’s driver permit, Lise Bettelman pronounced, ‘Martin Jean-Marie Adolphus Bettelman cheated his wife and children.’ She dropped the licence into the waste basket. ‘For sex. Can you believe it? Sex with men.’
The social worker was getting worried. ‘You mustn’t do that. You’ll need those things!’
Lise sulked. ‘I signed for it. All of it,’ dropping the wallet, still thick with credit cards, into the basket, ‘and I don’t want it! You understand? For my children…For my children’s sake, I do not want this man in their lives. No stone, no dates. No part of him! Martin Bettelman’s effects are garbage. His fucking credit cards too!’ Now moving on to Martin’s key chain.
Ginette Gromm tried again. ‘You’re his wife. You were married by a priest, we talked about this. You have to take him home. Take responsibility. It’s your duty.’
‘Not any more…not any more…’ Lise muttered, flipping each key on the chain, studying it, ripping it from the ring, letting it fall with a clink on the floor. ‘Plus jamais, plus jamais…’
‘Home, Lise. It’s the only proper way to end this. You’ll never feel right.’
Lise Bettelman’s eyes grew wide, slightly crazy, as she stopped at a key. Staring at it. Then at the social worker. She took this one key from the ring. She let the rest of the keys drop in a clatter on the floor. The flustered social worker stooped to retrieve them…and the stuff in the waste basket. Madame Bettelman held this one key out to Raphaele Petrucci.
He shrugged — made no move accept it. No longer his problem. Sorry.
It was not a plea, it was a gesture: a tiny key was a wife’s rhetorical prop as she told her audience of three, ‘The home is where the heart is. Yes? His heart was not with us. No way! The one he gave his love to can take him home. Scum!’ With a sob, she slammed the key down on the table, swept the pile of lovely clothes off of it, then kicked them where they lay on the floor — several violent kicks, as if somehow her Martin was still somewhere inside them.
Then Lise Bettelman ran weeping from the morgue.
Cursing, social worker Ginette Gromm left the mess on the floor and hustled after her.
The inspector briefly considered giving chase. If he was still out there, crime reporter Serge Phaneuf was sure to waylay the poor woman, offer her a ride, get everything he needed to start an international war between the French and the Swiss. But Aliette lingered in the morgue, very interested in this last key. The rejected credit cards might come in handy too.
She gathered them back into the envelope and took it back upstairs.
***
The courthouse, around the corner from the Hôtel de Ville, is called the Palais de Justice. Many around the Republic are brand new these days, as if designed for space age justice. Ours — much of it painstakingly reconstructed after a messy war — retains the vaulted Second Empire look and conservative feel to match the pervading local mindset. Aren’t we all conservative at heart forever? The suite of offices housing public prosecutors and staff at the sunny end of the third floor is known as le Parquet. Claude had arrived by himself. Aliette knew he was avoiding her in daylight, the way she was needing to create some essential space at night.The commissaire and his inspector sat drinking coffee with Procureur Michel Souviron, quietly ignoring each other till Chief Magistrate Gérard Richand finally bustled in from his own suite at the far end of the hall.
‘So,’ Michel said by way of getting down to business, ‘homosexuals killing each other in a park over art that probably belongs to the Swiss. Obviously we need a solid footing in Basel and this could be a problem.’ The Swiss did not need the nuisance of a murder in France. They would, in their polite way, slam the door. All present knew he meant Commander Boehler.
‘Almost impossible,’ Claude confirmed.
Gérard refuted that. ‘Not at all. We go in the back way.’
Resisting the obvious crass rejoinder, the urbane and always politically astute Proc smiled evenly at the ever-earnest magistrate. ‘Meaning?’
‘Stolen cultural goods,’ Gérard replied. Though they might have to prove that before proving the murder of Bettelman. ‘Painting first, murder second. I’ll set up a temporary unit.’
Claude scratched his chin, eternally skeptical where it came to Gérard Richand’s bright ideas. ‘Even if we do, there’s still no link between the murder and that painting.’
Aliette responded smartly to the commissaire’s doubt. ‘Sure there is.’
He was forced to face her and ask, ‘Yes?’
‘His head. And the picture frame.’ Forensics and their pathologist had both confirmed this.
Claude pursed his lips. Sucking a lemon. He could not argue.
Pedantic Gérard began to quote the rules. With respect to customs offences involving narcotic drugs, arms and stolen cultural goods, customs officers carry out judicial investigations within special ad hoc units where they work jointly with judicial police officers. Such temporary investigative units are set up, at their discretion, by the public prosecutor or by the examining magistrate, who have also authority to appoint the special agent in charge of the unit, who may be either a judicial police officer or a judicial customs officer. ‘…that would be you, Inspector.’
‘Could work,’ Michel agreed. ‘A bit messy, but yes.’ He suggested Gérard prepare an Instruction for a two-pronged Rogatory enquiry balancing the murder of Martin Bettelman with the theft of an as-yet-to-be-identified painting. He would call Strasbourg to confer with the regional head of Customs. Then a caveat: ‘I’ll do my best with Grimm.’ Prosecutor Artur Grimm was Michel Souviron’s counterpart in Basel City Canton. Never as blustering as Commander Boehler, but just as difficult where it came to the politics of justice.
Gérard rather cavalierly waved this worry away. Given the usual attitude, he was sure Prosecutor Grimm would assign the case to the most junior magistrate in Basel City. Gérard was confident he could instruct legal rings around a callow Swiss.
‘You’ve certainly thought about it,’ Michel murmured, jotting notes.
‘I respect fine art,’ Gérard declared. He neglected to mention murdered security guards.
Was she only one who noticed that? Yes, well, maybe Martin Bettelman did not merit much respect… In any event, Aliette liked the notion of being a special agent. Gérard Richand had not showed such imagination since, well, she could barely remember. She’d long ago slotted those nights into a dormant category called Another Life.
‘As for the painting,’ Gérard went on, ‘I’ve had it sent to a local restoration
expert I happen to know. Very talented. In Kembs. Just up the road from our crime scene, as a matter of fact.’
Aliette, who knew her judge, instantly heard subtext. Not clear exactly what, but she felt vague alarm. ‘I’m sure we’ll be done well before that, Gérard. Doesn’t it take months?’
‘Even so. It would be a nice gesture to return it in the condition that it left, no?’ He passed the forensics photo of the shoemaker to Michel Souviron — effectively his boss. The Proc studied the image. ‘We really ought to have him cleaned and mended.’
Aliette said, ‘But it does belong to someone. Do we have the right?’
‘More than a right. An obligation.’ Gérard had indeed thought about it. ‘Given the context, I won’t be surprised if no one claims it.’ Voice dropping a tone, the judge opined, ‘Those Swiss care more about their business reputations than a wretched security guard. We have to make our shoemaker as attractive as possible. Make someone want him back. We’ll clean him up and put him on display. Someone will recognize it, at the very least. That will help us.’
‘It could.’ Procureur Souviron was impressed. Magistrate Richand had a leg up on this file.
‘Do we have a budget?’ Aliette definitely sensed an ulterior motive in Gérard’s tactic.
Michel had no idea what said budget ought to be.
‘We’ll bill it back to whoever claims him,’ Gérard said, overriding the point. ‘If they want their shoemaker back, they pay. Or we sell him to the highest bidder.’
There! Aliette suppressed a grin but had to roll her eyes at Gérard’s little machination. After a reasonable amount of time Gérard would buy the shoemaker for a nominal fee from the legal equivalent of the Public Lost and Found. He was investing the Republic’s money as a hedge against a future acquisition. Sneaky Gérard. But if Michel went for it, fine.
Aliette was also feeling an extra-legal obligation to mend the battered shoemaker.
If Claude saw through Gerard’s self interest, he let it go by. Not much of an art lover.
But the commissaire left the meeting with the consoling thought that Customs would officially lead the charge across the border. Claude knew that the ones who led the charge were the ones who were killed. He emphasized that he did not mean her. He meant the Office.
Aliette accepted this with a shrug.
She stared out the cab window for the balance of the ride back uptown.
9
Josephina’s role
Swiss side
FedPol Agent Franck Woerli had gone for lunch. So Agent Josephina Perella left a note with a list of gallery addresses on his desk with basic instructions on how to proceed, and went down to the garage for a car. Once out of the city, she took a longer but more picturesque route, destination Oberwil. She glided past harvest-rich fields, grazing livestock, the odd farmer on a harvesting machine. Not that she enjoyed the scenery. She brooded. Any links in this thing would surely lead through Basel and that had to be controlled. On hearing her reasons, a visit to the Aebischer murder site had been graciously arranged by Basel Lands Commander Berger. He was a soft touch, the diametric opposite of his bloody-minded Basel City counterpart. After gleaning what she could, Josephina would confront Marcus Streit — the letter he’d sent had to be dealt with, there was no avoiding it now. The thought of a Reubens torn and sodden from a weekend in the Rhine left her feeling ill. She could not even begin to contemplate dealing with the French. Just over an hour later, upon entering the Basel Lands police detachment at Oberwil, Josephina Perella realized she had never felt so alone.
The receptionist’s buzz produced Inspector Hans Grinnell, the officer in charge of the Aebischer investigation. He was younger than herself by half a generation, and as fit and clean-cut as the junior football coach the photos on his desk showed him to be. His sand-coloured corduroy suit was stylish, but his farmer brush cut ruined the effect. Agent Perella was glad when, after providing tea and a biscuit, he informed her straight off that he had no particular interest in art.
She told him not to worry, few cops did, she hoped her expertise might be of help.
Grinnell said there was not much more to be told than had been reported. He called up a file and turned the screen. Josephina Perella dutifully perused the Basel Lands forensics team’s scant collection of indicators: the bullet from the victim’s brain, but no casing found; a photograph of a casting of a shoe sole taken from the lawn — ‘a hiking boot, killer came up from the forest’; photos of some markings along the killer’s likely trail; one unfinished glass of beer, pieces of another unused glass smashed on the patio flagstone, one empty bottle, one full — opened, Boxer, indicating a social occasion barely begun, violently occluded. ‘Pretty clear he knew his visitor, which gives one to wonder why he arrived from that direction,’ Grinnell mused. ‘Apart from wanting to conceal a murder, of course. There are always lots of hikers on a nice day. We could put out a call for possible sightings…we’ll see. There are some other things that might happen first.’ A shrug. ‘That’s about it just now,’ Grinnell concluded. ‘Plus he was gay.’
‘And so was the man the French found. Martin Bettelman.’
Grinnell nodded. ‘Which is why you are here.’
‘That and the fact both Bettelman and Aebischer worked within the art community,’ noted Perella. ‘And the time frame. Seems too tight to be coincidence.’
Hans Grinnell did not react. He was waiting to hear more.
First she confessed, ‘Not many of my cases involve murder.’ And she sipped her tea. ‘But the art community is small. The gay element reduces it further. When we received that call this morning the links were there, and it occurred to me that if I can find something in his desk as to clients, contacts, etcetera, well, we might make some progress.’ She bit into her cookie.
Grinnell leaned forward. ‘Still, I’m intrigued as to why you would receive such a call.’
Josephina blanched. Her nerves were fogging her antennae. She wondered, What else did they know about Justin Aebischer? ‘I don’t understand, Inspector.’
‘Why call a Federal art cop about a security guard killed in France?’
‘Oh. Well… But they didn’t call me. It was my colleague. He has worked with the French investigator. She needed help identifying the gun — to get around Boehler?’ Grinnell nodded. He knew Boehler too. Josephina was glad for that. ‘They saw the links, he brought it to me, I talked to Bettelman’s employer, got a little more — here I am.’ She smiled and hurried past the moment, gently asking if he could maybe show her any pertinent business materials found at the scene — contracts, client lists, an agenda book, that kind of thing? Grinnell said no, the victim’s desk and papers were an unfathomable mess. She said much of the art business was not exactly regular and suggested that, given an hour at Aebischer’s studio, she might notice something useful in that vein. She expressly made no mention of a painting found with Martin Bettelman.
And neither did Hans Grinnell. ‘So you’re thinking crime of passion?’
‘Yes. Or something like it. The thing is, no one has mentioned if anything was stolen.’
‘No. We’re in a bit of a holding pattern there.’ Grinnell folded his arms and waited.
Josephina swallowed. She was not doing this right. ‘Was anything stolen?’
The Basel Lands cop’s grin broke wide and bright, just this side of laughter. ‘Agent Perella, I thought you’d never ask.’ She gaped. He shrugged. ‘We don’t really know.’ He turned to the forensics report on his screen. ‘I’ll just send this along to your shop, then let’s you and I go see.’
Grinnell’s smile had a unreadable edge. He made her nervous. He seemed to want to.
***
Josephina Perella followed Hans Grinnell out to an isolated cul-de-sac on the farthest edge of the village of Biel. The twenty-minute drive gave her time to calm down, get her priorities in order. The crime scene was the last property up a winding hill lined with chalet-styled homes. On the outside it was a mundane exam
ple of Swiss alpine design. Two uniformed officers were keeping the site secure. Grinnell exchanged greetings and introduced Josephina, and they went in.
Inside, Justin Aebischer had effected simple but tasteful changes to enlarge and brighten the place, for himself and no one else, this was quickly apparent. Grinnell led her down to the basement, to a beautifully opened room. They walked directly out onto a patio with a view looking over the forest and all the way to France. Josephina followed him to the edge of a cared-for garden, already showing signs of missing Justin. ‘Here,’ he gestured. ‘Whoever did it came out of the woods. Went back the same way.’ She dutifully studied the garden, the path down to the woods. It meant nothing. When Grinnell finally ushered her back inside, through the stylish recreation area and into the victim’s workroom, Josephina’s heart was banging in her chest.
Justin Aebischer’s studio was nothing special. He did not need the very latest technology — that was available in the lab in the basement at the Kunstmuseum if a job required it. But he had the tools he needed and, more important, the reputation he’d built as one of the very best. Opening cupboards, the fridge, Josephina Perella perused the place where Justin Aebischer had performed his magic. She was in her element now — a slow tour through his tools and materials helped calm her rattled nerves, giving her eyes a chance to see correctly.
Knowing Hans Grinnell would not know what she was seeing helped.
But she could not poke around forever. Lifting back the thick plastic drape, Josephina Perella saw what she had come to see. Hans Grinnell joined her. ‘A Reubens, apparently.’
She heard his insinuation loud and clear. ‘Apparently?’
The canton cop was pensive, gazing at the work. ‘Still waiting on a definitive answer, Agent Perella. I’d be very interested in your opinion. I gather your expertise includes forgery?’
‘I have dealt with dozens of instances, Inspector.’
‘And would you authenticate this painting?’ So saying, he retreated, leaving her to study it.
