It was Thierry Krief, of all people, who cooled the simmering hysteria and focused her mind again. Just as she was about to set off for the Spar, he rang her bell, ignored her order to get out of her sight or else, and asked her to look at a photograph. ‘Taken by a couple of boys by the Mataroc. The day Pessini died, they bunked off school to go looking for wild boars. They heard a noise in the trees and went after it. Turned out to be Daveney, or so they say. All you can see is an arm and a part of the side of his body. Pretty blurred too, I’m afraid.’ He moved a little closer. ‘What do you think?’
‘That’s him. Dark red jacket, light trousers. It’s what he was wearing when I met him.’
‘It was taken at 10.41.’
‘It fits. It was almost half eleven when I met him.’ She tapped the photo. ‘Where was he exactly?’
‘Towards the bottom, they say.’
‘Going up?’
‘They think so. But they didn’t hang around to see. They seem to think that coming across Daveney in the woods was scarier than meeting a wild boar.’
‘I was gone from the house no more than an hour. A bit less. If Paul was going up the Mataroc at 10.41, there’s no way he could have killed Antoine before I got back.’
‘If he was going up. And if this is really him, not someone else.’
‘It’s the same clothes, I tell you.’
‘I might believe you. And I might believe those boys. But they’re a couple of pot-smoking truants and you…’
Magali turned away, not even angry. Resigned. Truth belongs to those who shout the loudest, Balland said. But once a liar, always a liar. She could shout herself hoarse for all the difference it would make. ‘Why did they wait till now?’ she said. ‘Why not come forward before?’
‘One of them had a rifle. “Borrowed,” he said, from his uncle. He wasn’t too keen on that coming out. And they didn’t think the timing was that important, they just assumed he committed the murder after.’
She gave back the photo. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Why not?’
‘I wanted to see if you recognised him.’ He tucked the photo into his wallet. ‘But this is no good on its own. It could be anyone. Maybe, if something else turns up, there’ll be a case to put forward.’
‘So you’ll keep on looking?’
‘Maybe. If I get bored.’ And addressing her a wan little smile, he raised a hand in farewell.
***
All afternoon, as she swiped the items past the till, she thought about Krief’s visit. At one point she was so absorbed that she double-charged a customer, who then accused her of trying to rip him off. He wouldn’t let the matter drop and she had to call Monsieur Retsky to calm him down. He did that very effectively but she could see he wasn’t pleased to have needed to.
As soon as she was back, she sat down to investigate. She started with Roncet. Vincent may well have given the documents a glance but he hadn’t judged it necessary to highlight the correspondence with Coussikou. It didn’t take her long to find it though. Roncet’s email output was hardly prolific and most of it was with two correspondents who, like him, had a bizarre fascination with Napoleon.
The exchange was one-sided – a single message from Coussikou compared to Roncet’s six. The first thanked Coussikou for the book he had sent, Thomas Legros’s Napoleon, Master of War, but informed him, in a mild, cautious tone, that several of its pages were covered in coffee stains. Could he please, he asked, have another copy, and would Coussikou like the original to be returned?
Coussikou’s reply was as short as it was odd: Is that the best you can do?
Over the next few weeks, Roncet’s emails became ever more furious, rising to a crescendo of apoplectic rage. You BASTARD!! If I ever I find you I’ll give you a HIDING why don’t you answer you fucking LILY-LIVERED POOFTER? Go to hell you useless pathetic deceitful CUNT! You hear me? Go to HELL!!!
By this time he’d discovered emoticons: a row of clones, fists clenched and features distorted, lined up to hammer home the message. Albert Roncet was angry.
But Coussikou never answered and Roncet must have decided to let the matter drop. It was either that or collapse from email exertion.
The last message was sent on May 30th 2011, almost six months before the murder. Could there really be a connection? If there was, she was dealing with a killer who was not in any hurry, who planned ahead and was patient. But what made him choose Roncet to be his victim?
Michel Terral’s history was harder to read. Unlike his wife, he was punctilious with his emailbox, so there weren’t any bold-typed angry emails here, just a long list of addresses, none more distinctive than the others. Unable to concentrate on the screen, she printed it out, then started with Lucie Terral’s birthday and went backwards, using a ruler to work up the page, marking each line as she went: red for no, green for maybe. In between the football and cars she looked for the names of shopping sites. Michel visited two of them, La Rue du Bazaar almost once a week and less regularly, Bonboutik.
A month before Lucie’s birthday, Michel began to visit both sites more often. Hmm... What can I get her? Then twice in the same day, a Sunday, once in the morning and once late in the evening. Early next day, he went back to La Rue du Bazaar. Yes, the purse, she’ll love that. Click. However did we manage before Internet?
The URL gave her the description of the item (antique purse, 1920s, French), the category it had been entered under (decorative) and the seller’s region (Normandy). But when she entered the URL itself, she drew a blank – ads on La Rue du Bazaar were withdrawn after sixty days and besides, the item was no longer for sale.
The Satie score took longer. Enzo was an ardent Internet browser, sometimes spending three or four hours a day. Apart from food, it was also where he seemed to do most of his shopping. Kitchenware, gardening tools, furniture, clothes, books – all were the objects of multiple searches, if not of actual transactions. Vincent had said they’d found nothing unusual in his finances but they hadn’t been looking for any specific purchase. What if he’d bought the Satie score online and paid for it with a cheque which was never cashed? Wouldn’t that count as unusual?
The search was further complicated by Enzo’s frequent visits to sites about composers, Satie foremost among them. Some days there were a hundred or more of such visits, not all with Satie’s name present in the URL, which meant she had to go online and check them all out herself, just in case one of them might have offered scores for sale.
After a couple of hours squinting over pages of URLs, Magali had a list of eleven possible sites from which a music score could be bought. She visited all, eliminating those that made use exclusively of PayPal or credit card transactions. That left four: the two that Michel Terral used, plus AVSuper and Ventastica. She went back through the list of addresses. At various times, Enzo had searched all four sites for Satie’s scores. But when she tried the URLs herself, nine times out of ten, she drew a blank. Out of the hundreds of visits, it was impossible to tell which one had given rise to the transaction she was looking for.
The most frequent visits were to La Rue du Bazaar. On the off-chance, she searched for the name Coussikou. Nothing came up. Hardly surprising. He’d use a different pseudonym each time. When she entered “Philippe Brun,” the name on Roncet’s cheque stub, she got eight answers, all but one of them books, related in some way to one or other of the Philippe Bruns she knew about: lawyer, trumpeter, and connoisseur of lentils.
She typed “music score” and came up with 3,109 answers. For several minutes, she clicked at random, looking for pseudonyms that might resemble Coussikou. Many people used their own names, or at least real names, but there was also an impressive variety invented: collection88, safti, mirabelle64, 123soleil, mogmu, speleo, le petit chineur, kriska... She leant back, rubbing her eyes. She was going to be at this all night.
“Eric Satie” narrowed it down to sixteen, of which five were scores as opposed to recordings. Sh
e noted the pseudonyms: veron25, ricky, nathalie, chanty and achille. She tried the same with the other sites but they were much smaller and “Eric Satie” provided just one result, a CD collection being offered for twenty euros by Zenouba. But when she went back to “music score”, she got 418 answers on AVSuper alone.
He had to be in there somewhere, hidden in the whirl of URLs that was now beginning to swim before her eyes. But there were too many possibilities, and even supposing she found the right transaction, the web page itself would have gone and whatever pseudonym he’d used would have gone with it.
She sighed. For this to work, she needed more than a list of addresses. What Vincent had given her was a maze with dozens of entry points and no exit. But what she needed was a computer forensics team, equipped with the right software. Or had Vincent already done that and decided there was nothing? Except he didn’t know what he was looking for when he did it.
Besides, supposing she found the transaction, even the seller’s pseudonym, what then? If he changed his identity each time, had telephone numbers that no longer existed, she’d never be able to find him on her own.
If she went over Enzo’s accounts, would she come across a cheque that hadn’t been cashed? And what would Enzo have written on the stub? She doubted he was as meticulous as Roncet. In any case, access to his accounts could only come from Vincent, and she wasn’t about to ask him for that.
She moved to the settee and stared into the embers of the fire. Her mind was a frazzle. She needed a good night’s sleep.
She woke at three in the morning from a bad dream about someone shouting at her. ‘You’ll see,’ he said, ‘it’ll be all over the Internet. Avoid this seller!’ In the dream she served in a shop where all the food turned out to be made of plastic.
Her name, she thought as she lay awake trying to restore some calm to her mind, would soon be going viral. Fake detective, charlatan therapist, thieving cashier.
She went downstairs and switched on the computer. Into the search bar she typed Internet damaged article.
There were a lot of articles bought over the Internet that were different from what was expected and a lot of advice on what to do when that happened. Telephones and computers that were different models from what had been ordered, furniture that never arrived, a pair of boots that were black, not blue, bulbs that didn’t work, a bathroom mirror that was broken.
She kept on searching. Roncet’s emails to Coussikou had stopped after his angriest. Had he then gone somewhere else to complain? Had Michel Terral or Enzo asked for advice from a forum?
Doggedly she typed in various combinations of search terms, but found no link to any of the victims. Then she typed online sale rip-off damaged item. Among the links, causing her heart to accelerate, was a forum thread, posted by a certain Victor56: Vandal deliberate damage. It was dated just three days before: A picture I bought on an Internet site arrived deliberately defaced. I’m an experienced buyer but it’s the first time I’ve come across this. I know I can complain and I may even get my money back. But this is more than dishonesty – it’s a form of vandalism and should be treated as such. Any suggestions?
There was only one reply, which suggested beating the living daylights out of the seller. Magali scoured the forum to see if there was any way of identifying Victor56. Finding none, she replied, rather more helpfully, she hoped: Please contact me urgently. I have some important information about this seller. She added her phone number and leant back, rubbing her eyes.
She went back to bed. It was 4.24 in the morning. There was nothing she could do but wait.
Chapter 26
It was getting dark when Magali arrived in Clermont-Ferrand, where Victor Metot lived. He’d called her just before lunch and asked what she knew about the seller. Not a lot, she said, but it wasn’t the first time it had happened, and she was committed to finding out who was behind it. If he didn’t mind, she’d like to see the damaged article herself.
‘Are you a police officer?’ said Metot.
‘Helping them, shall we say.’ Magali moved on swiftly. ‘Now, what’s your exact address?’
Before setting out, she’d called Vincent, which in retrospect was unfair. An opportunity, she’d naïvely thought, to do something together. Vincent, though, couldn’t mix business with pleasure, at least not with someone whose approach to the business was so different. It’s fine for you to have fun, Magali, but surely you don’t expect me to join in? I’ve got a serious job to do, you know. What he actually said, after a moment’s hesitation, was, ‘That’ll be awkward, I’m afraid. I’ve got the boys coming down.’
Ah, yes. Julien and David. Teenagers in need of a father’s guiding hand. She wondered how they could be coming down when they lived with their mother in Tours and the Christmas holidays were still a fortnight away. The more the merrier. A chance for me to get to know them. But in the end she let him off the hook. ‘Never mind,’ she said breezily. ‘Enjoy your time with them, won’t you?’
So now she was here on her own, at the front door to a comfortable property, 18 rue des Lilas, in a residential district of Clermont. She rang the bell. The door was opened by a man of about sixty with grey hair, glasses and a trim, tidy moustache.
‘Monsieur Metot? I’m Magali Rousseau. I spoke to you on the phone about the damaged painting you bought.’
He eyed her for a moment, then nodded cautiously, opening the door wider.
The house was quiet, even a little gloomy, she thought. It was well-furnished but without ostentation. In the hall was a pair of women’s shoes but their owner made no appearance.
Victor Metot led her into the sitting room, as tidy and spotless as a museum. ‘There it is.’ He pointed to the picture he’d bought, lying flat on a dresser of gleaming oak. ‘Exactly as described except for…’ His voice trailed into a puff of annoyance. To point out the part that hadn’t been described was superfluous: two thick squiggles from corner to corner crossed in the middle, obliterating much of the picture. And Magali saw another link which caused her to shiver: the squiggles had been sprayed with an aerosol can. One black, one red.
‘Vandalism indeed,’ she said, peering closely at the picture. It was a small rectangular watercolour of a group of jazz musicians. ‘Lionel…’ she tried to make out the signature.
‘Gourlas,’ Metot supplied. ‘I’ve got a few of his. It’s nothing stupendous but they’re well done and he’s making a bit of a name for himself. This one was quite a bargain. Huh! So I thought.’
‘Where did you buy it?’
‘A website called Bonboutik. It’s like La Rue du Bazaar, you know? Only smaller. A seller by the name of Bambi.’
Magali raised her eyebrows. Very different from Coussikou. Behind any one of the thousands of pseudonyms she’d come across a murderer could be hiding. Bambi. She shook her head at the grotesqueness of it.
On the other hand, you couldn’t expect him to advertise himself as Bluebeard.
‘Can I see the ad?’ she asked.
Metot led her into a study which, unlike the sitting room, showed some signs of being lived in. There was a newspaper open at a half-finished crossword and a plate with some biscuit crumbs. On the wall was a large photograph, taken some years ago, of Metot, his wife and their two children in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles.
The ad was brief and to the point. ‘The Quintet’, Lionel Gourlas (signed). Watercolour, 25 x18, unframed. 80 euros. There was a photograph of the picture itself, unblemished, and another, close up, of the signature. ‘No phone number,’ she said.
‘No. I sent a message through the website giving my own number. He got in touch straightaway.’
She clicked on the pseudonym and Bambi’s profile came up but it told her nothing. The age was given as forty-four, the place of residence Lyons.
‘And you sent a cheque?’
‘He said I could wait till I received the article if I wanted. So of course I didn’t. I trusted him.’
‘Well, if it’s an
y consolation, he’s unlikely to cash it.’
Metot looked across at her, frowning. ‘Why not?’
‘It’s the way he operates. He’s not interested in money.’ She folded her arms, ignoring his expression of bewilderment. ‘Where was the parcel posted from?’
‘Where he lives. Lyons.’
‘Or where he went to post it. On a high-speed train link. He could live anywhere from Paris to Marseilles. Further.’
For the first time, Metot displayed a hint of annoyance. ‘Look, do you mind telling me what this is all about?’
Magali took a deep breath. All the way in the car she’d thought through different approaches, from the truth to the wildest of lies. I’m a private research agent. Detective, if you prefer. The police give me a call when they need my particular area of expertise. Serial killers.
But she’d already lied enough, lied her way into this whole situation, right from the very start. ‘I don’t know if you remember,’ she said, ‘a little while ago, a man was murdered in the village where I live. Sentabour. The Hosepipe Killer, they said in the papers. It happened at my house.’
Metot narrowed his eyes. ‘Magali Rousseau. I knew I’d heard it before.’ They went back into the sitting room, where he motioned to an armchair. ‘What’s the connection with the picture?’
‘I believe the man who committed that murder has committed several others. Three that I know of, maybe more. I’ve been working on all three and I can describe each one to you in detail if you like. But the main point in common to them all is that some time before they were killed, each of the victims ordered an article on the Internet. And when it arrived, the article was damaged. Or rather, as you put it, vandalised.’
Metot stared at her for a while, his eyes widening. ‘Are you suggesting…?’
‘As I said, he’s not after money. I’m afraid it’s far worse than that.’
One Green Bottle (Magali Rousseau mystery series Book 1) Page 19
