Enzo heard the door open. When he saw it was Brigitte, he told her to leave, not trying now to be gentle. Then he moved towards the kitchen, dismissing her. She followed him, screamed his name. He turned round. From behind her back, the iron bar came into view. He had no time to recoil before she brought it down on his head.
That, or something similar, was what Vincent Darlier was asking her now to consider. Why not? It was entirely plausible on the face of it. And yet for some reason, she couldn’t make it fit. She looked again at the pretty, smiling woman at Enzo’s desk. Was she really capable of doing something like that? Reading again the string of emails Brigitte sent to her lover as he was lying dead, Magali concluded that she wasn’t.
In an attempt to think of something different, she returned to the documents from Nîmes. There was an outline of the course, a list of books to read and a thick brochure, written by Verney himself, Private Investigation: A History of the Profession. Magali managed to read a couple of pages before her eyelids began to droop.
She was drifting off to sleep when the chambermaid knocked – check-out time. She went downstairs, settled her bill and ordered an espresso at the bar. Then she opened her computer and spent the next two hours researching a single topic on the Internet.
Not so long ago, she’d sigh with exasperation when the news went on about murder. It was one of the reasons why the National Front was so popular. When the news was telling you every day that France was overrun by homicidal maniacs, pledges to make the country safe struck a chord. It wasn’t that she had any greater respect for the media now than she did before, but murder had acquired a new significance. It was like visiting a country – you pay more attention afterwards when its name crops up in the news. The country she’d visited was dark and dreadful and the people who lived there moved through the shadows, warily.
Magali now had doubts of a different kind. Less about her competence or lack of it than about the very nature of the work. It took her beyond what she’d ever known or seen, into areas of the human mind that she’d never had to face. Intellectually, yes, she knew that murders exist, that people kill other people in the most abominable ways, but the reality of standing in the room where the Terrals lost their lives, of staring at those patches of blood on the floor, had left her in a state of shock.
A burglar caught in the act. A jealous woman jilted. What goes on in the mind of a person who kills?
There wasn’t a single answer to that, there were dozens. Or that, at least, was how it seemed at first. The descriptions of the victims and the circumstances of their death were all different. From toddlers to pensioners – anyone, anywhere, any time. There wasn’t any pattern to murder. It happened out of the blue, a random event, like lightning.
But the more she looked, the more she managed to impose an order on what at first seemed meaningless. If you took out the (mercifully few) fanatics like Mohamed Merah, the self-proclaimed terrorist in Toulouse, or the Norwegian fascist Anders Breivik, what you had left appeared to fit into three broad categories, accounting for practically every murder she read about: families, lovers and relationships; criminals, money and greed; perverts, madmen and psychopaths.
Within each category, there was of course a multitude of variations. But after a couple of hours, Magali started to feel that murder could perhaps be understood. When you can put a label on something, it no longer overwhelms you. Of course she would never get into the mind of the person who killed Enzo (she’d been in love, yes, but not madly), but this, she supposed, was how an investigation advanced: you sorted through the categories, seeing how well the evidence you had could fit.
There were also, she discovered, a lot of victims whose killers were never found. Cases could be investigated for years and never solved. Relatives campaigned to have them reopened, but resources were stretched. Suspects might be held for a while and released because a procedural error meant the charges had to be dropped. When it came to murder, there may indeed be categories, but this was also a world that was messy and inconclusive.
One thing was obvious though: there were many more victims than murderers. France had its fair share of men who for some reason obeyed a dreadful compulsion to kill again and again, and a handful of these could account for dozens of deaths. In the 1990s, eight men were murdered in Alsace, all of them homosexuals. Between 1995 and 2001, four women disappeared in Perpignan, three of them later found dead, mutilated and naked. The fourth was never found. In Toulouse the target was prostitutes, while in the west of France, teenage girls went missing. Sometimes these killings continued over several years and then mysteriously stopped without the murderer ever being caught.
Then there were isolated cases which didn’t seem to fit any pattern. A young woman battered to death in Bordeaux. A middle-aged woman strangled in Brittany. A man in Montauban, lying by the hearth with his neck broken. The police appeared to be making no progress in any of these cases.
The affair which caught her attention, though, was one which had been solved. Two years previously, an old man, Albert Roncet, had been stabbed in the neck in Wallenheim, a village not far from Mulhouse. A fortnight later, Nassim Benamrouche, a thirty-eight-year-old drifter with a previous record of petty larceny and pimping, was arrested. Several witnesses had seen him wandering through the village on the day of the murder, and the following day he had turned up in Noubach, twenty miles away, causing a disturbance at the home of a former girlfriend. He was currently serving a twenty-five-year prison sentence. All cut and dried then – except that a local journalist was campaigning to have the case reopened. According to Philippe Roudy of the Courrier de l’Est, a convenient culprit had been locked up on evidence so flimsy it was practically non-existent.
If that was true, the murder had been put in the wrong category. Was Roncet’s killer still at large? What category did Roudy put it in? He seemed convinced that Benamrouche was innocent, but offered no alternative solution. The mind of a murderer must be as hard to enter for him as it was for her. Except he’d been trying for two years now – had he drawn up a map? Did he have an idea how to get there?
As the afternoon drew to a close, Magali shut down the computer and made her way to the station. After hours of reading the grisly stuff of murder, she found it a relief to be surrounded by normal people. Except, of course, that none of them was normal. Or rather, you just couldn’t tell. Beneath the expression worn on the platform, any one of these travellers could be planning right now to kill another person. And any one of them could end their lives as a victim.
Her telephone buzzed: a text message. Terrals to DIY shop 3 weeks ago. Bought paper & glue, nothing else. Y.B.
She nodded to herself. The message meant two things. Firstly, whoever killed the Terrals had in all likelihood brought the weapon with him. And secondly, Yves Balland was taking her seriously.
The train to Marseilles drew into the station, but Magali didn’t get on it. Instead, she returned to the entrance to consult the timetable board. Then she made six phone calls in succession. The first was to the Courrier de l’Est, where she was put through to Philippe Roudy. He agreed to meet her at 7 p.m. the next day. Then she booked a room in a hotel in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, close to where Charlotte Perle lived. Then, to Charlotte herself, she asked if they could meet in the morning. Charlotte said she was busy – how about this evening? Call number four was the hotel again, to cancel – she’d taken up Charlotte’s offer to stay in her flat. That left Paul Daveney, who thankfully didn’t answer. ‘I’m really sorry, Paul, I got confused. I didn’t mean Thursday but Sat– no, make that Monday. Next Monday, all right? Call me back if there’s a problem. And well done, seriously. I know it’s not easy to talk about your father but you’ve decided to and… well, that’s great. I’ll see you soon. Bye.’ She lowered the phone.
Was that a good message? It was meant to be encouraging but she’d really messed up with the days. And would he be encouraged by the mention of his father? She picked up the phone again and call
ed his landline. But she still didn’t speak to Paul because it was answered by his mother.
‘I’ll tell him, of course,’ said Lucille Daveney, a little stiffly. ‘But he’ll be so disappointed. He loves having those chats with you.’
‘Oh... That’s good to know.’ Magali was taken aback: psychotherapy reduced to an afternoon chat. For a moment she debated whether to pursue the issue further but decided it was neither the time nor place.
One day, perhaps, she would get to the knot at the heart of Daveney’s problems; in the meantime, though, there were far more pressing questions to answer.
Chapter 9
‘I suppose it’s time. The great healer. I thought at first I’d never get over it – and of course I never will. Not in the sense of it going away or not being unbearable to think about. But I find myself thinking more about other things. The first time it happened – or the first time I noticed – I felt guilty. As if I had no right to allow normality back into my life. Or as if I was somehow betraying Enzo’s memory. But then I thought that’s what the healing process is all about. And I said to myself there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m allowed to feel better when I can.’
They were finishing dinner in Charlotte’s tidy, brightly lit flat in the rue Chomel. ‘Of course you are. I just wish I could do a bit more to make the healing quicker.’
‘You’ve done a lot. You’ve taken an interest. It’s enormous.’
Magali sighed. ‘It’s not enough. Darlier takes an interest too.’
‘You mean he’s not getting anywhere?’
‘I don’t know. Not very fast, anyway. That’s what you said when you hired me.’
‘Yes. I was impatient. Vengeful, in fact.’ Charlotte spread her hands, searching for the right words. ‘It’s always that old argument, you know, you say you’re against the death penalty but imagine if it was your own child. But the argument doesn’t work because it’s impossible to imagine till it happens, and then… Why did I ask you to find him? It isn’t just the satisfaction of knowing. It’s because I wanted to tear him limb from limb.’
‘And now? You’ve got over that?’
‘I don’t know. If I had him in front of me now, I honestly don’t know. Occasionally I still get the fantasy. I try to suppress it but I can’t and it... It’s frightening. I’d like to think I have it in me to forgive. But I don’t think that’s true. Not yet. Maybe not ever.’
‘And if it was her?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Darlier’s switched his sights to Brigitte Bussert.’
‘Ah.’ She nodded gravely. ‘He didn’t tell me.’
‘I think it’s quite recent. They were checking all of Enzo’s acquaintances, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on, plus everyone he was at school with. Getting on for 800 names. But they’ve drawn a blank, so it’s back to square one. Except this time, Brigitte rather than Loïc.’
‘Is she being charged?’
‘I don’t see how they can.’
‘Why not?’
‘She was with a friend for a start, Alice Perrin, which Perrin corroborates, from 7 p.m. onwards, which was when Gilles Mattell left Enzo’s house. Brigitte didn’t leave till after midnight, when she says she drove straight home. But Darlier thinks she could have called on Enzo first. Would he be cooking an omelette at that time? It’s not impossible. So let’s suppose he lets her in and they argue and she grabs an iron pipe from outside and goes back in. She has to keep the pipe hidden behind her back, otherwise Enzo would have managed at least to raise an arm to defend himself, but he didn’t. She’s left-handed, so she was facing him when she hit him, but he fell forward, towards the kitchen table. Strange, but again, not impossible. But it means she’d have moved all the way round him and into the kitchen herself without him noticing she had something behind her back. Possible, too if, for example, he was at the fridge getting the bottle of wine. Then he poured her a glass and put the bottle back and stood up to face her, at which point she hit him. And all this time she’s been standing with a weapon she’s just picked up on an impulse in order to kill him? Why didn’t she do it from behind when he was at the fridge?’ Magali stopped, suddenly seeing the fright in Charlotte’s eyes. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be saying all this, it just… I suppose I get carried away.’
‘No, it’s just…’ She put a hand to her forehead. ‘You’re only doing your job.’
Magali murmured as she reached out to touch her, ‘It’s not my job to be insensitive.’
There was a long silence. The Magali got up and fetched some pages from Darlier’s file. ‘This is the last email Brigitte sent him. Some of it’s quite intimate – well, very – but I thought you might like to read it.’
Charlotte made no comment as she read. When she finished, she was smiling sadly and tears welled in her eyes. ‘It’s beautiful. He was all of that, yes, I’m sure.’
‘She sent it on Monday morning, not long before he was found.’
Charlotte frowned as she grasped the implication. ‘Could she be that cynical, to write something so heartfelt when she’d killed him?’
‘She’d have to be very cynical indeed. And sly and manipulative and… There were several others over the weekend, shorter and more impassioned, and then this one when she realised he wasn’t going to change his mind. A sort of homage to him and their time together. Maybe I’m just naïve but I can’t square this with the idea of her killing him.’
But perhaps all it took was the frenzy of a moment. Blinded by rage she could have been beside herself, somebody different, consumed by the need to punish the man who refused to give her what she wanted. Yes, thought Magali, such a state can exist. All you need do to see it is snatch away a child’s favourite toy and crush it to pieces in front of him.
‘Maybe Darlier’s looking at it through the wrong eyes.’ Charlotte sighed and rose to clear the table. ‘A man’s.’
‘I may be completely wrong, though.’ Magali got up to help. ‘Sometimes I think it’s pretentious of me to doubt what Darlier thinks.’
‘You know, last time we met, I said I was sorry for dragging you into this? But you’re doing a wonderful job. And if you’re wrong and he’s right, the case will at least have been solved. And that’s important to me. Perhaps, if it was Brigitte… I don’t know, she was so in love with him, perhaps I could move some way towards forgiveness. And if it wasn’t, well, justice has to be done either way. So you mustn’t have any doubts about what you’re doing.’
Magali hesitated. But she owed it to Charlotte to tell her what sort of person she’d hired. ‘I was in Royan this morning.’
‘Really? What for?’
‘Something pretty loony, to be honest.’ She told Charlotte of her meeting with Balland, minus the gruesome bits, then of her appointment with Philippe Roudy in Mulhouse. ‘You know, I hardly gave murder a second thought before. Now it’s becoming an obsession.’
‘Oh, dear. All because I rang your bell that day.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, it’s just the way I am. I get fixated on things. Xavier says I’m actually unbalanced. Semi-autistic or obsessive-compulsive or grade two bipolar – take your pick. He keeps on changing the label. But he’s right, at times I lose all sense of perspective. So you say I’m doing a good job but he’d hoot with laughter if he knew what I’m up to.’
‘Well, it sounds to me like his own sense of perspective’s pretty shaky.’ She turned to face Magali. ‘How are you off for money, by the way? All that travelling around, you could probably do with some more.’
‘Oh no, it’s nothing to do with Enzo. It’s way beyond my remit. I’m paying for this myself.’
‘Don’t be silly. I got you into it in the first place. And there’s plenty more where that came from, I’m looking for ways to get through it.’ She laughed at Magali’s expression. ‘Pierre – Enzo’s father – died a couple of years ago so Enzo inherited quite a tidy sum. Now it’s come back to me, minus the tax, of course, but I don’t think of it as rightfully mine, it’s
money I don’t feel comfortable with. Do you understand?’
Magali nodded. ‘All right. Thank you. We’ll say you’re funding my training. And hope the investment pays off.’
They moved to the sitting room.
‘Darlier’s fine in his way but I can’t speak to him like I do to you. Officialdom, maybe. His uniform or something. It’s probably my fault. It’s just the way I think about the police even when they’re trying to help.’
‘I find him a little sad,’ said Magali. ‘I don’t know if it’s this case or his divorce or something from further back, but he’s not at all happy with what he’s doing.’
Charlotte nodded and was silent. Then she pointed to a box on the floor in the corner of the room. ‘There are some of his belongings. What the police removed from the dining room for analysis. If you want to look…’
Magali glanced at her uncertainly. Did Charlotte expect her to perform a magic trick, pull out a vital clue from the box that all the forensic experts hadn’t seen? But then Charlotte said, ‘I have camomile tea in the evening. Would you like some?’
‘Gladly.’
‘For a while it was Valium. I managed to kick it.’
Left on her own, Magali stared for a while at the box before cautiously opening it. She laid out all the objects on the table. They’d all been put in the box together but on the night of the murder they were separate, each in its own spot either by chance or design. From her memory of the photographs in the file Vincent had given her, she arranged them into two groups: a Murakami novel, a copy of Le Monde Diplomatique, two table mats and a nutcracker had all been on the kitchen table. The other group, from the dresser, consisted of a pair of gloves, a calendar, three pens, a screwdriver, a torch, two piano scores by Eric Satie, and a photograph of Enzo and Charlotte, taken perhaps a dozen years ago.
One Green Bottle (Magali Rousseau mystery series Book 1) Page 7
