by Gerald Jay
No sooner had Molly told him who she was than he swore that he never killed her parents, swore he never killed anyone. But the police wouldn’t believe him, nobody would. The inspector had the wrong man. Ali said he’d confessed to nothing, he was innocent. He went on and on in this vein, demanding to be set free, demanding a lawyer, demanding to see his wife.
Molly told him that she’d met his wife. Thérèse had been trying to visit him and would probably be allowed to once they moved him to Périgueux. Molly said that she’d also seen their baby and congratulated him on his son, called him a beautiful child.
Ali’s face softened, the color seeped back into his cheeks. “How is he?”
“Fine. He seems fine.”
Ali lit his second cigarette with the burning tip of his first. Then a long drag and he began to complain again. They’d refused to let him see his wife, his child, a lawyer, anyone. Ever since they brought him here they’d been mistreating him. Locked in a cinder block coffin with nothing to do, no one to talk to except when they took him out for questioning or brought him a cold sandwich. And how could he sleep in handcuffs on that wooden slab with the light always in his eyes and them watching him all the time? They were torturing him.
“You feel dirty, tired, humiliated,” he said hoarsely, his voice cracking. “They won’t even let me wash.”
How often had Molly found that wife beaters—not unlike alcoholics—were rank sentimentalists, predisposed to slathering themselves with thick gobs of self-pity. She’d more sympathy for the drunks. So she told him there was one thing she didn’t understand. How come there was so much evidence against him if he was innocent?
“Coincidences, that’s all. What else could it be?”
His question hung in the air like a vaguely unpleasant smell. “Unless …” He looked toward the door to make sure it was closed and lowered his voice so that only she could hear. “Unless the flics are trying to frame me.”
“Tell me about the night of the murders.” As she reached for a hanky from her bag, she turned on her tape recorder.
Ali was so eager to win her over that his story fairly gushed out of him. It was nothing that Molly hadn’t heard before. She gave him a skeptical look. “The police say you were the last one to see Schuyler Phillips alive. Is that true?”
“No, no, no, no.” Ali’s head thrashed back and forth.
“Calm down. I’m listening.”
“They’re twisting what I said. He was alive when I left.”
“Okay, fine. I understand. Then you drove home with your bad back and went right to sleep an hour or so before midnight. Didn’t wake up again until the next morning. Is that the way it happened?”
“Yes, yes. I mean no.”
Molly moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “I’m trying, but you’re not making things easy for me.”
“The telephone rang in the middle of the night. It woke me, but I didn’t get out of bed and, as far as I know, neither did Thérèse. A wrong number. They must have hung up.”
“Did the phone ring again a little later?”
“If it did I didn’t hear it. Ask Thérèse—maybe she heard something.”
“I’ll do that.”
From outside in the street, shouts and cheers and the martial beat of drums erupted as if a tumbrel had arrived to cart him off.
Ali turned in alarm to his visitor. “What’s that?”
Molly guessed that René Arnaud had arrived. “I don’t know,” she told him, shrugging. She mentioned having seen demonstrators across the street when she drove up.
His face collapsed. Shoulders trembling, Ali began to rock back and forth. “They think I’m the murderer,” he cried. “Nobody believes me. Nobody.” He banged his head on the table in desperation and might have done himself some real damage if Bandu hadn’t rushed in and dragged him away.
The first thing the inspector asked when she came out was, “Did he tell you anything?”
“He says he’s innocent.”
“And do you believe him?”
Molly hesitated. “Yes, I do.”
“Really? Despite the evidence against him and his history of violence?”
“That’s right. Because at the time the killer was using his victims’ credit cards to withdraw their money from the ATM machines, Ali was at home.”
“How do you know that?”
“He said that the phone in his house woke him up. And his wife, who thought he was asleep at the time, independently confirmed the first call at about one a.m. You can probably check it out with the telephone company.”
“We have. That still doesn’t mean he was there at that time. The two of them could easily have cooked up an alibi.”
Molly knew he was right. And the phone calls alone would hardly stand up in court as exculpatory evidence, but she felt certain this wasn’t a case of collusion between husband and wife.
“You’ve got the wrong man, Inspector.”
“We’ll see.”
Much to her annoyance, Mazarelle seemed convinced. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”
“Merely that the calls you speak of were both made on your friend Monsieur Phillips’s cell phone, which we found in Ali’s car trunk.” Molly appeared so stricken by the news that the inspector almost felt sorry for her. “I’m afraid, Mademoiselle Reece, you have too trusting a heart.”
It wasn’t her heart Molly was worried about but her head. She realized that she was probably right about Ali being innocent, but for the wrong reason. He himself had given her the clue. Her problem was that she’d largely dismissed it as guilty, self-serving bunk. He was being set up by somebody. Oh, maybe not the police, as he claimed, but somebody was out to frame him. It had to be something like that. But Molly wasn’t about to tell Mazarelle what she suspected. She had plenty of other reasons to doubt Ali’s guilt.
“I just can’t believe a guy his size could have handled four people by himself. Even if he killed Schuyler before the other three returned from the restaurant, he still had to tie up my parents and Ann Marie, and then carry them to different rooms in the house. No, I don’t think so. He may be a batterer, a druggie, a small-time pusher and thief, but that doesn’t make him a quadruple murderer. Not the shaken little man I just saw. Even without heels, I’m taller than he is. The only way he could have killed them is if he had an accomplice.”
Though the inspector didn’t say so, he too had his doubts. Call it a gut feeling. There was something about this case that smelled bad to him. He also said nothing about the unidentified fingerprints that were found on the tape binding the victims in addition to those belonging to Ali Sedak. And, as always when it came to murder and gut feelings, he reminded himself, the nose knows.
What he did tell her was that the evidence against Ali was strong and mounting. And that they had recently impounded his car. If those were actually bloodstains linked to one or more of the victims he’d seen in it, PTS might well give him something decisive. Anyway, he assured her their investigation was far from closed.
The angry shouts outside grew louder. Mazarelle was becoming increasingly uneasy about the nasty mood of the FN supporters across the street. It could mean trouble. Fortunately they weren’t going to move their prisoner to Périgueux for a couple of hours. It was important to him that this transfer be carried out smoothly.
“Where did you park your car?” Mazarelle asked her.
“A few blocks away. Not far. That sounds like quite a crowd outside.”
“Would you like me to send along one of my men to help you get past the reporters?”
How considerate, she thought. But she’d no intention of letting him think that she couldn’t take care of herself. “No, thanks. They’re so busy out there with Arnaud they’ll never notice me. Besides”—taking out her dark glasses, she beamed at him as she put them on—“I’ve got these.”
René Arnaud, unlike his leader Jean-Marie LePen, was not a big man, but he was well put together and quite striking with hi
s shaved bullethead. And he was media savvy. He’d brought out an enthusiastic crowd and they applauded wildly, lapping up everything he said. Arnaud spoke bluntly, passionately, and his message was clear.
“I call a spade a spade. They’re backward people with a backward religion. Even when they come here legally from North Africa, they don’t speak our language and fail to integrate into French society.”
Then as the crowd roared its approval Arnaud went on to discuss the evils les bicots brought with them from Africa. Bad schools, bad kids, dangerous drugs, SIDA, and rising crime. But most dangerous of all, beurs like Ali Sedak—that cold-blooded butcher of four who kept many good Bergeraquois up nights with their loaded shotguns under their beds.
“I promise you, mes amis,” he assured them, “we’ll all be much happier when that piece of shit across the street is put away for good.”
Arnaud’s speech was followed by delirious applause. Passing by on the edge of the crowd, Molly was fascinated by the scene and the charismatic speaker. She couldn’t believe what he was saying. He reminded her of Mussolini with his jutting cowcatcher jaw and racist dogma. She’d made the mistake of stopping to listen when someone spotted her. Soon reporters were crowding around, hemming her in, asking questions. Their cameras clicking like telegraph keys, flashes blazing.
“Look this way, mademoiselle! Over here.”
“Sorry,” she said, attempting to move away.
“Will you be returning to France for the trial?”
“Mademoiselle Reece,” called another reporter, “why are you here? Changed your mind? Do you still think they’ve got the wrong man behind bars across the street?”
Molly tried to keep calm. “Yes, I do.” She hoped that would be the end of it.
“Why is that?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and turned away.
“Why do you think so?” he demanded, louder this time.
“Because Ali Sedak was home and in bed when my parents and their friends were murdered. The police ought to spend their time hunting for the real killer.”
There were angry shouts from those in the crowd who heard what she’d said.
Though feeling trapped, Molly wasn’t frightened. She just prayed that the reporters, who were standing between her and Arnaud’s followers, didn’t move.
Deserted by the media, René Arnaud wasn’t happy. Informed who she was, he was doubly annoyed. But he hadn’t risen in the ranks of the party without knowing how to turn heads and cameras in his direction. Pushing his way into the center of the circle around her, he confronted Molly. Called her a naive young American who thinks Frenchmen need a lesson in liberté, égalité, fraternité.
Molly tried to get around him, but each time Arnaud stepped in front of her, blocking her escape. He was a taunting, diabolical cat playing with a mouse.
“Okay,” she said, “that’s enough.”
He laughed at her.
Fed up, Molly cried, “Get out of my way, you fascist!”
Arnaud’s face reddened in blotches and he flew into a rage. “I am no fascist,” he boomed. Lunging forward, he grabbed her by the collar of her green jacket and held on tight like a pit bull.
“Take your hands off me!”
As Molly tried to free herself from his grasp, Arnaud shook her violently back and forth and the crowd cheered him on. The police who’d been watching came running. Swinging their clubs and pushing back his supporters, they seized him. The crowd howled in anger and, attempting to rescue Arnaud, a shoving match ensued. People began to heave rocks, throw bottles.
A passerby, seeing one of the bottles flying in Molly’s direction, lashed out, knocking the bottle aside. In the confusion, he grabbed her by the arm. “You’re going to get yourself killed here. Quick! Follow me.” She raced after him. Her rescuer seemed to find his way through the back streets as if he knew them all by heart. They were soon blocks away, standing safely below the clock tower in front of Bergerac’s own modest but enormously comforting Notre-Dame. Catching her breath, Molly didn’t know how to thank him enough.
He pointed to the Café Chat Noir opposite them in the mall. “You look as if you could use a cognac,” he suggested, which under the circumstances seemed to her like a damn good idea.
When they were settled at a table with their drinks and she had calmed down, Molly said, “You saved my life. That bottle just missed hitting my head by inches. It was like being in the middle of a full-blown riot.” She called it, “Tout à fait fou.”
He agreed that the scene was bizarre. He’d merely stopped out of curiosity to see what was going on. “Mademoiselle Reece, isn’t it?”
Molly glanced up in surprise at her savior and his striking blue eyes, which only seconds before had seemed utterly reliable. “How did you know my name?”
“Oh that.” His voice was so calm, so reassuring. “Surely you must realize that your picture has been all over the newspapers, the TV.”
“Yes, of course.” She’d forgotten and felt a little embarrassed.
“I’m afraid that France hasn’t been too kind to you and your family.”
“Please don’t mind me. I haven’t been myself since I arrived.”
“Frankly, it’s a wonder you’re still here,” he confessed, and his sympathy was obviously appreciated. “Quant à moi, if I were you I’d have gone home by now.”
“I’ve given it a thought.”
“Oh by the way,” he said, holding out his hand. “Pierre Barmeyer.”
They seemed to enjoy each other’s company. He told her that he’d just come from Bergerac’s Museum of Urban History, which had a little-known collection of prehistoric artifacts considered quite respectable by some experts. He fancied himself an amateur archaeologist. One of the reasons he’d chosen to holiday in the Dordogne was to be near the caves at Les Eyzies, the capital of prehistory. He was actually a vacationing artist renting a house in Taziac, not too far, coincidentally, from L’Ermitage.
“Oh really.” Given how small Taziac was, Molly supposed that this wasn’t very surprising.
Pierre Barmeyer called it a lovely setting, though the crime had put a pall on his visit. Naturally he felt much better now that they’d caught the murderer.
“If he is the murderer,” said Molly.
“You don’t think so?”
“Not really. Where did you learn your English?”
Reiner stared at her, wondering what she was driving at. With her bright red hair and lambent green eyes, she was unquestionably a beautiful woman. It was her disconcertingly abrupt style and inquisitive mind that troubled him.
“Why? Is it so bad?” he asked softly, his voice perfectly controlled.
“No, it’s really very good of its kind. It’s English-English. In a way perhaps too good, too careful. In fact you could be a BBC announcer. But I can hear the German in it.”
“You noticed. You don’t miss much, do you?” He sat back in his chair and sipped his brandy. “That’s because I’m from Alsace. I went to school in Strasbourg.”
“I’ve never been there.”
He explained that the Romans called it Argentoratum and that today it was still an important commercial center. Not the most attractive of cities, he frankly admitted, but definitely worth a visit. If she ever went, he offered to show her around.
“It’s a deal. That is, if I ever get out of here alive.”
“Perhaps I can help.”
“You’ve already saved my life once.” Finishing what was left of her brandy and feeling much better, Molly got up. “Now if I can only get back to my car.”
He offered to drive her. He was parked just across the street in front of the church. “It’s no trouble at all,” he insisted.
As Molly got into his small car and fastened the seat belt, she said, “I’m afraid I’m getting to be a burden.”
“Yes, but that’s all right.”
Molly found his honesty disarming and, perversely, liked even better that Pierre Barmeyer was no charmer. But
there was something else she felt about this tall, blue-eyed, dark-haired, intense Frenchman that she couldn’t put her finger on.
“What’s that awful smell?” she asked, catching a whiff of rotten eggs as he turned on the engine.
“This is a Renault,” he said, as if that explained everything. “It’ll go away once we start to move. It’s the catalytic converter.” He opened the window as they exited the parking area. “Did you think it was poison gas?”
“Something like that.”
The police had dispersed the crowd opposite the commissariat, and all that was left on the street were torn leaflets, broken glass, a few discarded signs. Molly thanked him one last time when they got back to her car, and as she was about to get out he stopped her.
“Yes?”
“What about dinner tomorrow night?”
He looked so grim, she thought, so vulnerable. Was he afraid she’d turn him down? Molly had always felt that in these classic dating situations women had all the power.
“But only if I pay my share. I’m getting a little tired of thanking you.”
Reiner felt he could live with that. “Yes, why not?”
He agreed to pick her up at the Hôtel Fleuri tomorrow night at 8 p.m., and as Molly waved and got into her car, Reiner drove off smiling. Amused at the absurdity. Given what he’d been told that morning by his bank in Zurich, Mademoiselle Reece had already paid for far more than her dinner.
The lobby of the Hôtel Fleuri was empty when Molly returned. She hit the silver bell on the front desk, and its thin, sharp, metallic note still hung in the air when Monsieur Favier shuffled hurriedly out from the kitchen, wiping his mouth. His face fell as if he’d been expecting a new guest.
“Oui, mademoiselle?”
Molly asked for her room key and he seemed irritated to be bothered. Perhaps she’d interrupted something. She could hear a TV that was on somewhere inside. The key was connected to a heavy chrome blackjack with a hard rubber tip, nothing you’d want to carry away with you by mistake. She supposed Favier was tired of losing his keys.
“Any messages?”
Without needing to look into the small pigeonholes behind him, he grunted and marched back to the kitchen. Molly raised her eyebrows in annoyance and, hefting her key, walked up the stairs. She wondered if Favier had lost his fondness for American movies.
