Thrillers in Paradise

by Rob Swigart

  “May I?” Lisa asked, reaching for the thin leather-bound volume.

  Hugo shook his head and handed her a pair of gloves. “In case the killer touched it,” he said, but his voice expressed his doubts. This killer wouldn’t leave prints.

  She put on the gloves. There were bloodstains on the cover. Avoiding them, she turned it back. The endpaper and flyleaf were stuck together. She carefully pulled them apart. The blood, dried black, let go reluctantly. The two surfaces held mirror images of what Foix had drawn in his own blood.

  “What is it?” Hugo asked.

  A smeared vertical line bisected a circle inside a triangle:

  Lisa frowned. “Some kind of corporate logo?”

  “I’ll have someone check. But he was a professor, wasn’t he, not a businessman?”

  “Retired professor,” Lisa said. “He stopped teaching long ago, though he still writes an occasional article on Hesiod.”

  “So this logo would belong to what corporation?

  She shook her head. “It may not be a logo, for all I know. It could be a couple of superimposed Greek letters. After all, it’s drawn in a book on Greek papyri. Or it could be some kind of alchemical combination of circle, triangle and line, symbols of the masculine, feminine, and individual principals.”

  “Yes?”

  “Then again, a triangle is a D in Greek, a Delta. A circle with a line through it is the letter Phi. So this could mean Delta-Phi, perhaps, a fraternity. Though I have no idea why Raimond would have drawn it in this book. He’s not the sort of man who would belong to a fraternity, and besides the letters shouldn’t be superimposed like that…”

  “So it doesn’t mean anything to you? You said you study old writing. He drew this in his own blood. He left the acrostic list for you, unless he meant that you…” He stopped and scratched his temple. “Well, as I said, we must consider all possibilities.”

  “So I am a suspect?”

  “I wouldn’t say that, not just yet. Of course, he left your name and he did draw this. It all must mean something.”

  “Of course it means something! He wasn’t a fool, nor did he suffer fools. He wouldn’t do anything idly, either, and certainly not when he was dying. I just don’t know what. You brought me here, Captain Hugo, you and M. Rossignol. Do you know why? I don’t.”

  There was an awkward silence, after which Hugo merely said, “Well, please think about it.”

  6.

  “How long?” the Prior General barked, pacing back and forth before the barred window. Intermittent rain spattered against the glass and obscured the village across the river.

  Defago shifted from foot to foot. The opulence of the room unnerved him as much as the Prior General, who was, after all, fifteen years his junior. At the same time, the wait for Brother Cedric’s follow-up report had been difficult, and now that he had received it he just wanted to sink into the deep white cushions of the leather couch, take a handful of the pistachios from the cloisonné bowl on the pear-wood coffee table, shell them slowly, and savor them one by one. Despite the success of this long-planned operation he yearned to let go of the tension he felt since receiving the report. He cleared his throat. “Brother Cedric says the policeman arrived with the woman at eight thirty-two.” His French was lightly flavored with the accent of Languedoc in the south.

  “Yes? And now it’s well after nine.”

  The Prior General’s name was Gabriel Lacatuchi. Back in Rumania when he was a boy it had been Mestere-Lacatuchi, but his family had dropped the ‘Mestere’ when they emigrated to America. The name meant ‘makers of locks,’ revealing an ancient family profession. He often felt it was more than appropriate, and that it was one of the reasons he was so scrupulously organized, so punctual, so impatient.

  He turned back from the window. “Who is she and why did it take so long?”

  “There were some technical problems, nothing serious, but there was some delay. Now we know she is Lisa Emmer, an American, one of Foix’s students a few years ago. She does research at the Institut de Papyrologie de la Sorbonne, reading ostraka from the Egyptian desert, Greek stuff, yes, but nothing threatening. She’s written articles on daily life in a Roman military camp. I have someone looking into it, but the odds are she’s harmless.”

  “Odds!” Lacatuchi stared once more out the window, idly scratching his neck under his double chin. Rain swept across the water and rattled the glass again, then moved on, leaving shreds of fog and cloud. The village appeared in the gaps. “No one in this affair is harmless,” he added, more thoughtfully. “We can’t afford loose ends. Find out where she lives, who she sees, what she knows. If Foix communicated anything to her, anything at all, about the Order, she must be neutralized.”

  “Yes, Prior General.” Defago hesitated. “There’s something else.”

  With a sigh Lacatuchi walked to the desk, a massive, if anonymous, modern monster. “This was supposed to be clean, Brother Defago.” He placed his palms on the empty surface and leaned forward. “A simple burglary, a man surprised at his desk.”

  “It appears Foix may have left some kind of message. Not for the girl, someone else.” Defago looked yearningly at the couch, then straightened. No time for weakness. They were so close.

  Lacatuchi merely lifted an eyebrow. The effect was terrifying.

  “We can’t be certain.” Defago added, wondering where the Prior General got his power. He himself had never commanded such fear, except from Sister Teresa. Of course, though few knew it, Lacatuchi was a powerful man. The very secrecy of his influence made it all the more appalling. “The apartment is well shielded, better than we anticipated. The transmission from our bug is distorted and fragmentary but Cedric caught a few words. Does Rossignol mean anything?”

  The Prior General’s eyes vanished for a moment in their folds of fat. “Nightingale.”

  “It’s a name.”

  “Whose name?”

  “A banker.”

  “Banker?” Lacatuchi sat down with a grunt and leaned his elbows on the surface of the desk. After a long moment of contemplation he mused, as if thinking out loud, “Bankers are money men, Defago. Bean counters. People who oversee investments.”

  “We believe he has another name, one better known, perhaps.”

  “No doubt,” the Prior General said dryly. “Perhaps you should learn it. Bankers are sometimes confidants, and then they’re like doctors, or lawyers, Brother Defago. They know things. Sometimes those are things they should not know. Dangerous things.” He looked up at the plain white acoustic tiles of the ceiling without really seeing them, rubbing his jowls thoughtfully. “These, this banker and this woman, look more and more like loose ends.” He slapped his palms on the blank surface of the desk. “Loose ends!”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Defago murmured, retreating from the room to call Sister Teresa, code name Tisiphone.

  7.

  Antoine Rossignol strode purposefully up the rue des St. Pères and over the Carrousel Bridge, passing between the Louvre and the garden. He scarcely glanced at the glass pyramid with its mobs of tourists waiting to get into the museum. He preferred instead to contemplate the rose colored marble of Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, the first marker of the Grand Axe de Paris, the great line running west from the Louvre to the big modern open square of the Great Arch of la Défense, passing on the way through the Obelisque of Luxor at Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe.

  Today though, he scarcely noticed it. Past the museum he turned left and made his way to the rue d’Argenteuil. At a building near the bend he tapped a door code, pausing for a moment to look both ways before pushing the door open. He climbed four flights of stairs to a small, unmarked office.

  A man with short blond hair was seated behind a mahogany desk near the window holding a yellow highlighter over a bound report. The eyes in his open face were startlingly blue. He looked up as Rossignol entered and said, “Something’s happened.” The digital clock on his desk read 9:29.
r />   “Yes.” Rossignol closed the door and tossed his cap on the coat rack.

  “Can I get you something?”

  “A cognac, if you don’t mind. It’s going to be a long day.” The older man crossed the thick gray carpet and sank into a leather Eames chair at an angle to the desk. “We have a situation.” He put his feet up on the ottoman with a sigh.

  “Police?” Steve Viginaire closed his copy of Secure Banking Cryptography: a Reappraisal and carefully replaced it in the bookcase behind his desk. His movements were those of an athlete: he seemed to uncoil from his chair rather than stand. He was lean, even lanky, but well muscled. Something in his bearing said there was military in his past.

  From a cabinet near the window he poured a snifter of Rémy-Martin. Rossignol took a sip and gazed out the window. A small white cloud raced over the rooftops across the street.

  “Raimond Foix was assassinated early this morning,” the banker said slowly.

  “Assassinated?” Steve became still and attentive. It was as if ripples vanished from the surface of a pond. “Foix?” he said. “Yes. Do you need the file?”

  “No, he’s a special client.”

  “He had a monitor? What time did it happen?”

  “Just before four this morning.”

  “You notified the police?”

  The older man looked into the amber liquid in the snifter and sighed. “Of course. I’ve just come from the apartment.”

  “Next of kin file?”

  Rossignol shook his head and set the brandy aside. “No, I must handle this one personally. Nothing to do with you. It’s messy.”

  The telephone chirped. “Your private line,” Steve said with a glance at the screen. “No caller ID.”

  “The police were still talking to her so it won’t be the girl calling this soon. Let the machine get it.”

  “She?”

  “Never mind. I must run an errand. If she calls tell her to meet me here. Her name is Lisa.” He pulled himself to his feet. “So dark,” he murmured. “And now this.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I’ll be back within two hours.” Rossignol put on his cap and left, closing the door carefully behind him. Steve listened to his boss’ footsteps descend the stairs and fade away. He checked the machine but whoever had called had not left a message.

  With a puzzled frown he retrieved Secure Banking Cryptography and settled once more at his desk.

  8.

  “Can you say if anything’s missing?” Hugo asked, at once perplexed and annoyed. “You’ve spent time in this room. Perhaps something looks out of place, even something small or that seems insignificant. Anything.”

  She remained by the courtyard window. “Aside from these books on the floor, the broken cupid, the body of Professor Foix, a bullet in the wall and another in the window, you mean?” A dozen rare volumes, many of them several hundred years old, were scattered at her feet. It was painful to see them treated like this. She opened the drapes and started to open the windows. “May I?”

  Hugo nodded, ignoring her sarcasm. She folded the shutters back. Their elegant wooden slats clattered. The sun had risen above the buildings on the opposite side of the tree-filled court and poured light into the room, setting fire to the deep gold and orange of the Sarouk carpet.

  She stepped over the debris and sat on the small sofa near the desk.

  Hugo stared at the carpet, tugging on his lower lip. Suddenly he turned and shouted down the stair, “Mathieu!”

  The lieutenant downstairs called back, “Oui.”

  “Come! And you, too, Bernard.” He beckoned to the stocky policeman on the landing.

  They appeared in the doorway.

  Hugo pointed at the carpet. “Aside from the mess they made carrying out the body, look down there. What do you see?”

  The two officers examined the debris from the explosion. “Here?” Bernard pointed with his pen.

  Hugo nodded. “That’s it. What do you think?”

  Mathieu touched the spot with the toe of his shoe. “Hard to say. It’s a small indentation, and from the sideways pattern it looks as if someone tried to brush it away. But something pressed splinters into the carpet.”

  “I noticed that spot when we started,” Bernard said. “I thought it was just an irregularity in the blast pattern.”

  “Go on,” Hugo urged. “Look again.”

  “There’s another one!”

  Mathieu took out a tape and measured between the two spots in the wood dust. He tipped his head to one side, pursed his lips, and made a questioning sound.

  “Now take a look at the carpet over here,” Hugo suggested.

  Lieutenant Mathieu moved toward the desk on his hands and knees, staring intently at the carpet from a few centimeters away. He glanced up with a grunt. “Two wheels pressed into the carpet,” he said. “They match, same width.”

  Hugo grunted. “What kind of wheel?” He turned to Lisa, who spread her hands. “Did he know anyone in a wheelchair? Did he have one himself?”

  “Wheelchair?” Lisa blurted. “What are you talking about?”

  “There are the impressions of wheels in the carpet, on top of the sawdust. The trail points toward the landing.”

  Mathieu shook his head. “I didn’t find anything, either on the stair or downstairs.”

  “Nonetheless something made those tracks after the explosion. Mademoiselle Emmer?”

  She shook her head. “He didn’t have a wheelchair. And except for his hearing implant he was in good shape.”

  “Still, a wheelchair,” Hugo said emphatically.

  “Or some kind of cart?” she suggested. “Or a gurney? Maybe the assassins wheeled something in here. Oh, what am I saying? You’re the detective.” She went back to staring at the bookcases.

  “What do you think?” Hugo asked Mathieu.

  “We have good digital close-ups,” he replied. “If there’s a tire pattern, our search software might find it, but I wouldn’t expect much. The wood debris is too large and scattered for a decent impression. I would say it was pretty heavy, though.”

  They fell into a technical discussion of rubber traces, fiber density and weight calculations.

  Lisa looked from the books to the shelves and back. Finally she interrupted Hugo by tapping him on the shoulder. “May I?” She gestured at the books.

  He frowned a moment, then turned down his mouth and spread his hands. The gesture was so familiar, so Gallic, so dismissing, that she flashed him a bright smile that said more than words. She bent down and measured the spine of the Hesiod without touching it. Standing, she held her forefinger against the shelf and moved it slowly back and forth in front of the gaps. She made a small mewing sound. “Yes,” she breathed. “That one was there.” She turned to Hugo. “It seems to me something’s missing but I can’t really tell without actually replacing them.”

  “Very well, go ahead. We have detailed pictures.”

  She lifted the Hesiod from the floor and blew off the scattering of wood chips and dust on the cover. She started to replace it in the bookcase when she stopped abruptly. “Well, now, that’s something!”

  “What’s that?”

  “These books were on the floor before the explosion.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “Yes?”

  “The splinters are on top. The books were already on the floor.”

  “Ah, yes, very observant. That would be strange, would it?”

  “Yes, that would be strange,” she agreed. “He took good care of his books, especially these. He’d never do this without a reason.”

  Hugo broke into a broad smile. “I am impressed. That is good, Mademoiselle Emmer. Very good. Please continue. It may be important to know what was taken, if anything.”

  “They’re from different shelves,” she muttered. “From different places from the case left of the window. The right hand case is untouched. Was he trying to say something? And if so, what? And to whom?”

  “Pardon?” Hugo was try
ing to follow her ruminations in English.

  “What does it mean, Captain Hugo? Raimond spilled these books on the floor. Was there a pattern in the way he did it? If it’s another damn acrostic I’m going to be very angry with him.”

  “I doubt that, Mademoiselle Emmer.”

  “These books mean something.”

  Hugo nodded, pulling down the corners of his mouth. “Perhaps, but it all seems a bit complicated for someone under stress,” he said. “I still think someone else was here before the killer.”

  She was placing the Hesiod in its place on the third shelf from the top. “It was open to line 500,” she said, reading him the title.

  He wrote it down.

  One by one she held books, considering their spines and titles, their size and relation to one another, and after reading out their titles carefully returned them to their places, moved them, tried again, matching width of spine, color of leather, height. It was like piecing together a puzzle. Once she removed them all and started again.

  Time passed. Finally she was satisfied.

  An empty spot remained. “That’s it!”

  “Yes?”

  She drew a face. “Well, there was a book there and now there’s no book. So that one was taken. Someone broke into the apartment to…”

  “No, Mademoiselle, as I told you, there is no sign of forced entry downstairs. Here, of course, is another matter.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “All right, someone entered, killed Raimond and took a book.”

  “It would seem so.”

  “OK, which book?”

  Hugo struggled to suppress his impatience. “I was hoping you would tell me, Mademoiselle.”

  She appraised him. He’s under pressure, she thought. Raimond’s death was important, more important than the death of an obscure old Greek professor would seem to warrant. An obscure professor with bulletproof windows, she reminded herself. There was more to this case than she thought at first. Hugo wants results, a quick solution. Was she a witness or a suspect? She pressed her lips together and stepped over the debris. “I need some time to think.”