by John Brooke
And she wanted to hear more. ‘The… the petite blonde. She introduced herself?’
‘No. She’s never said one word. I was thinking she’s a foreigner. Lots of them everywhere now.’ He glanced, maybe resentfully, toward the enclave of newer, larger homes on the rise. ‘We were watching her fix her chain. Quick as a wink, very impressive. My neighbour works at the Poste. She recognized her.’
‘Annie?’
‘C’est ça. I was pleased to hear it. Both of them jolie cops on bikes. Not Tati, but something different.’ The subject of jolie cops on bikes was amusing.
‘When?’
‘All hours of the day.’ A shrug. ‘Don’t sleep much anymore, why bother by yourself?’ It was just him and his chickens now. ‘And le brave Adolfe there.’ The officious, if ratty looking, rooster strutting though the crowd of indifferent hens.
‘Do you mean together?’
‘Never seen them together. But then they’re on different machines, aren’t they? The brune, she comes up from the highway and over to the Departmental, really moving, low, good form. The blonde comes down from the woods, the vines. It’s an entirely different thing, quoi. But I’d like to see that. I’d like to see them race.’ Germain Bidène warmed to the subject. ‘Used to race a bit myself. Now the brune: solid girl, strong legs, I’d bet on her for the long haul. But you’d have to get them on the same kind of machine. Those all-terrain things, never been on one, don’t like the shape. Nor the idea much. Just give me the flat road, speed…no way the blonde’s going to keep up till she gets on a normal bike. Even then.’ No, Germain Bidène liked the brune.
‘Face like the moon, quoi.’ He laughed affectionately, picturing the young inspector.
Luc Malarmé was working in his studio. At his keyboard, repeating a phrase, again and again, ending it one way, high and minor, hanging; then trying it low, major, definitive, over and done.
He removed his headphones. ‘You’ve been avoiding me.’
‘You’re not the only thing I have to do, monsieur.’
‘I know how it is.’ A flurry of notes. ‘Been here for hours, four new things, all in one rush. When good stuff’s happening, you don’t want to lose anything. Stay up all night.’
‘That, and sleep with everyone who comes along?’
Luc stopped his noodling, squeezed his eyes tight, sat frozen, bent over his keyboard.
Then he met her eyes. ‘Is this really your problem?’
‘I think it is.’
‘You’re blaming me for all these woman cops?
‘I think I am.’ But: all these woman cops? She was suddenly quite unsure.
He saw her uncertainty.‘Why don’t you just send a man?’
‘I have limited resources, monsieur. And really, one expects —’ But what exactly did one expect from him? Aliette had no idea. She breathed. ‘Can’t you just say no?’
Luc Malarmé grabbed his guitar. Smiled at her in a disconcerting way. Sang,
Dear dreamer, help me to take off
Into my pathless, pure delight,
By always holding in your glove
My wing, a thin pretense of flight.
That one ended high, effervescent…flight…disappearing, ephemeral. ‘Words by mon oncle Stéphane,’ he noted, replacing the instrument on its stand, giving credit where it was due. ‘Little thing called “Another Fan”?’ As if that might help her understand.
‘Two l’s in that Mallarmé,’ muttered Aliette, not fooled, not in a mood for games.
Prompting him to throw up his hands. ‘Women come to me! They never stop coming to me. Can’t concentrate, never get a thing done. It got to where it’s simpler to say yes. It’s usually all they want.’
‘Why?’
‘You tell me.’
She couldn’t. She felt herself rising to a fight. ‘Is that all Chloé wants? You just write a note, and write her off, go on to the next?
‘They won’t let me visit. It was recommended that I should send her a note, then give it a rest.’
‘Isabelle recommended?’
He glared at her. But deflated, staring down at his keyboard. ‘Martine.’
‘Right. Martine.’ Who was, in her own way, another flic. And another gap in the inspector’s information. But she felt it closing…Aliette looked out the wide soundproof window. Was that Alain Grasset on his tractor, pulling a watering machine slowly up a row of vines, fretting over a cherished gun lost in decadent Paris? Poor Alain.
She turned to her client, ‘Get me a beer.’
He folded his arms, petulant.
‘Please?’
That was better. He did, and one for himself.
‘Now, tell me. Please.’
He tried. He made a few wrong turns, got lost in some flaky artistic musical metaphysics…
But Luc tried to communicate the challenges of being Luc. She felt him honestly trying.
And she honestly tried to hear him. They talked for almost three hours. Just talked.
• 46 •
THE KILLING GUN
She went straight to the house in chemin de la Roquette. Nic Legault’s gendarme held the tape so she could pass and park inside the gate. She removed a large plastic evidence box from the boot of her car.
‘Progress, Chief Inspector?’
‘À peine, à peine.’ Inching along. ‘A few more things we need to look at here.’
He unlocked the door, bowed to her like an old-pro concierge, and she went in.
She called the uniform when she was ready. He carried the evidence box, heavy now, filled with more old magazines, glasses and plates and several books, and laid it in the back of her car.
‘Merci, officer.’ He lifted the tape again, she nodded a friendly bonsoir to neighbours who happened to be out and about — and very interested in the case.
Aliette took the evidence box directly home, where she removed the sundry objects covering the hunting rifle wrapped in Jérome Giffard’s tea towels and stowed them in her kitchen. The rifle handed over by Luc Malarmé was wrapped in a pillow case. Aliette laid the two bundled rifles in her trunk, then continued on to the city.
She parked in boulevard d’Angleterre. Still quite light out — anyone could see her breaking the law. But, terrified of city thieves who popped trunks like beer caps, the inspector carried the swaddled rifles like a baby in her arms up the steep city stairs. Sergio’s front door safely locked, she laid the guns on his table and went up to a night in his huge bed in his airy, sky-lit room, some love underneath the summer stars.
He enjoyed the tension her body released that night. But he worried.
‘It’s fine, good job,’ Aliette assured him, patting his back, distracted.
‘It’s not a job. Is it?’
‘I mean to say I’m fine and you are great. And I’m almost there.’
He was glad to hear it. They slept. She was fighting a sadness. But she was almost there.
Aliette was already en route to Montpellier when she pulled over and called to tell Mathilde she was in Béziers for meetings, probably all day; there had been some developments. Magui and Bénédicte should carry on. Arriving at regional Policie Judiciaire headquarters in rue du Comté-de-Melgueil, she made another call from the parking lot. IJ Inspector Daniel Drouin came down to personally escort her through the scanner. A gentleman, he carried the two guns and presented them to a specialist in the lab.
The specialist nodded wearily and got to work. Aliette lingered. Drouin gently advised that she go downtown and buy herself something nice. ‘Or the beach. Nice there in the morning. Not so busy.’
She opted for the beach. Walked in the warm surf. Read the paper. Lunched on frites and a beer.
By mid-afternoon, Drouin could tell her, ‘You were right. This one…’ holding the prize. Forensics technology confirmed to a minimal deg
ree of doubt that Jérome Giffard’s hunting rifle was the gun used to shoot the bullet that shattered Jérome Giffard’s head.
Luc Malarmé’s gun was off the hook.
Aliette was grateful, falling over herself with effusive thanks and promises of owing him one as she signed the forms. A bottle of her local wine for sure. And one for the specialist. Sans faute! Drouin was grateful too. Like everyone, he had a budget and 209 tests on boar-hunting rifles had eaten it up. ‘Maybe we can close this black hole of a docket.’
She immediately begged another favour. ‘Please don’t send anything back yet.’
The two guns today — the paperwork, memos, receipts… Mathilde Lahi was a blessing but sometimes did not cotton on to the subtleties of the way things sometimes had to work, and the wrong person could not inadvertently know she had the killing gun. ‘A week? Please.’ Daniel Drouin understood how it sometimes had to be. He said a week was normal and she knew she could trust him. He escorted her — and the two guns — through the scanner and back to her car.
They shook hands. ‘À bientôt.’ Always lucky to find people like that in the system.
Chief Inspector Aliette Nouvelle sat in the car in the far corner of the HQ parking lot, assessing her options. And her feelings.
A bitterness was festering. She had no right to feel it; it was unprofessional, bad for business. She had no right to expect other people’s lives to fit her wishes. But everyone was unprofessional in their own way, police aren’t robots — not yet. Aliette was disappointed and preparing herself for worse. But you have to work with what you have. She had to adjust. Make it happen. Face it.
First the judge. She opened her phone.
Magistrate Martine Rogge, who took most of her meetings in the mornings, took the call. She was irritated, set back by more frustration. Aliette listened politely as the judge complained that there was nothing of any susbtantive use in a stack of rugby magazines.
Aliette could only say, ‘Maybe they’re telling the truth.’ The Dafy twins. Paul especially.
Martine did not want to hear it. She insisted, ‘There has to be something in that house!’
There was. But Aliette was not going to share it. Not now.
Now it was time to tell Martine Rogge, ‘I believe we’ve been looking at this wrongly.’
‘By which you mean, Inspector?’
‘Our shooter didn’t miss.’
A sigh. A silence. She could see Martine rolling her eyes. It was not a complicated statement — except in the ears of a magistrate deeply down a dead-end path.
Finally Martine rejoined, ‘You’re saying our shooter was aiming for Jérome Giffard.’
‘I believe so.’
‘And your belief is based on?’
‘Certain newly filled gaps in the information.’
‘Such as?’ challenged a cranky Magistrate Rogge.
Aliette sensed a woman who wanted to get out of the office and out of her clothes and relax in the sun by the pool. But madame le juge grew audibly wary as the new information was laid out. Calmly, without a hint of judgement — to be sure, the chief inspector went out of her way to say she understood (and she did, to a point). Still, Martine Rogge was shocked. Of course. But she too knew how it sometimes worked and she quietly agreed to Aliette’s suggestions.
And indeed, who knew how it would play out, what might have to be included in the final reports? Or not.
Yes, and beyond that — what if Martine’s two youngest girls found out, the righteous adolescents who would have sent Luc Malarmé to the guillotine, were it still available?
It really made one wonder what the lady had been thinking.
‘Well, I wasn’t. Obviously.’
‘I understand. I honestly do.’
‘Honestly?’
‘Well, perhaps not why you failed to mention meeting Chloé that first day. And her worries.’
‘I don’t quite either,’ muttered Martine. ‘Perhaps I did not want to be associated in any way with over-eager, lurking fans. In my mind. Mm?’
‘Fair enough. I suppose.’ Who amongst a purported thousand women would want that?
There was silence between them. Aliette waited it out.
Till Martine ventured, ‘He likes thin women. Not skinny, Inspector. Thin… He has a song about it.’
‘Yes.’ But thin was not slender, thought Aliette. She considered herself slender. There was a big difference. A person’s life is all in the fine points, no?
Martine Rogge was saying, ‘It has nothing to do with Yves… my husband.’
‘I know.’
‘Or my daughters.’
How could it? ‘À demain, madame.’
Ringing off, Aliette felt badly, we might even say low and dirty; but it was the right and only way to proceed with a minimum of fuss. The affair was already embarrassing enough.
The chief inspector started up the car and headed back. She escaped the Montpellier evening rush hour by minutes but had to leave a grotesquely jammed-up autoroute at one of the exits for Sète. She got lost on the roads around Pezenas and briefly considered giving up, visiting Sergio’s mother, asking for directions, maybe a drink. That would do wonders for their forming bond. But then, no — the inspector wanted to drink alone that night and persevered, eventually found a sign to Magalas, thence to Murviel, avoiding Béziers, enjoying the ride across the rolling paysage in the evening sun, and rolled into Saint-Brin around six.
Everyone was gone for the day. She left notes calling a morning meeting. She filled a large blue evidence box with whatever she could find in her office and went back down to the car, where she added Jérome Giffard’s rifle to the box and drove to chemin de la Roquette. Where she returned it to its quiet place on the stand in the victim’s office. Luc’s rifle remained in the trunk of her car.
The same gendarme locked the gate and waved bonsoir. The same neighbours saw her leave.
Finally home, she had a beer. Then another. A third? She needed it. She put some music on.
That really dancy second album, the one with ‘Les Minces Dansent.’
• 47 •
EXPANDING THE WINDOW
Aliette surveyed the team with sluggish eyes as they waited for Magistrate Rogge to log on. She was experiencing a mild hangover, the result of a night decompressing alone, knowing she was on the verge of something, but dreading it. Magui Barthès was fitful, fiddling distractedly with her notes, her brioche, her hair. Paul Dafy wasn’t panning out. Magui knew the boss knew it and would not look her way. Bénédicte Barnay stared out the window, as if determined to remain half removed from everything. She knew the boss was not pleased with her contribution lately. The only bright-eyed one at the table was Isabelle Escande, placidly chewing brioche as she pored over the Giffard file in front of her, apparently oblivious to the less than cheery mood. But Isabelle was still basking in the charmed glow of heroics.
Martine Rogge suddenly appeared on the screen. ‘Bonjour.’ Nodding at her camera, gaunt, like she hadn’t slept well, and dumb-faced for a moment, assessing the disconnected group of cops at the other end of the link. There were desultory greetings. ‘Bon…’ adjusting her glasses, ready to start. ‘I gather that you know we’ve decided to shift the focus of our investigation? As this will expand the locus, we’re bringing Inspector Escande onto the case.’
Magui Barthès asked, ‘Expand how?’
Martine said, ‘I should add, the Dafy brothers are being released as we speak.’
Magui closed her notebook, got up from the table and headed for the door.
Aliette said, ‘Sit down, Magui.’
‘Why?’ Magui paused, staring daggers.
‘We need you. Please?’ Staring Magui down.
Martine watched from cyberspace as Inspector Barthès slunk dully back to her place, opened her book, gulped coffee, not happy, a cop
betrayed. And no one said a word till Magui heaved a repentant sigh, bowed an apology to the judge, and quietly requested, ‘Could someone tell me what is happening here?’
Martine said, ‘We have reached the point where we have to consider the shooter was aiming for Jérome Gifffard. And hit him. As planned.’
Folding her arms across her chest, sitting back, Inspector Barthès asked, ‘Why?’
Ensconced in her plush chair in the Palais de Justice, Magistrate Rogge mirrored the move. After all, she and Magui had been working closely together, by turns leaping on the next bit of circumstantial evidence implicating the Dafy brothers, supporting each other’s hunches and surmising, building a tidy, rock-solid logic. Ending here. ‘Because, Inspector, Paul and Simon Dafy, individually and together, admit to nothing that ties them definitively to this killing and we cannot prove absolutely otherwise. Yes?’
‘But we haven’t —’
‘And because the bloody boar hunters, who could not give a fig for Luc Malarmé, I might add, all say any competent hunter could make that shot.’
‘Unless the sights were —’
‘And because these infernal rugby players have formed an inpenetrable scrum blocking any useful insight on our victim’s recent dealings with Luc Malarmé, or with crazy Paul Dafy — who, with his sibling, presents as the immovable central pillar in said formation. I am learning much about this unruly sport, but nothing to help our cause.’
‘Just let me spend two hours alone with that —’
‘And because without the gun, which you have failed to produce, we need a person. Voilà.’
‘And does Paul Dafy just walk away from attacking and beating a man in the street?’
Aliette doubted Magui’s question came with much, if any concern for justice for said man.
Martine Rogge nodded. ‘The prosecutor is considering an appropriate charge.’
‘Appropriate. Good.’ Magui shook her head, dejected — and disgusted with Martine.
Impasse. Partners no more. Martine sat there nodding, gaze angled to the right and down…
