by John Brooke
‘You walk?’
‘I do, usually. It’s not far.’
Lighting up yet another cigarette, he gestured: Lead on, Inspector.
Holding the door for Norbert Fauré, the inspector prepped him with some local cop lore. ‘Jacques Normand used to eat here all the time.’ Said with a bit of cop pride as she bid him enter.
Fauré paused, as if repositioning her in his mind. ‘Ah, oui,’ he said, and stepped inside.
The noonday sun was refracted through the Rembrandt’s high portals, affording Willem’s guests shady nooks for privacy amid oscillating patches of pure light like diamonds on the floor. Today’s special was fried carp, a local delicacy drawn from the streams of the Sundagau district on the southern boundary of Alsace: cut into strips (with tail if you wanted), rolled in a semolina batter and fried in peanut oil, served with a lemon on the side, mayonnaise sauce and a green salad; preceded by leek soup, followed by a choice of the cheese plate or a dish of Willem’s chocolate mousse. Monsieur le Divisionnaire chose a bottle of Tokay Pinot Gris in the Bruderbach style from a respected domain at Westhoffen, at the north-most end of the Wine Route…
Wine from the north, fish from the south; most eclectic. Willem approved.
Fauré sipped water and asked, ‘This thing about love…Néon. What do you make of it?’
What? It caught her off-guard. She felt her ears heating — God, I’m so automatic. She sipped her own water, attempted a casual reflection. ‘It can certainly get in the way of an investigation.’
‘When we talked to him, he kept insisting he was there to protect her. That any relations which developed did so like some kind of inevitable trap.’
Aliette, breathing evenly, shrugged politely: so?
‘Is he the passionate sort?’ wondered Fauré, also as polite as protocol would have it.
‘Sir, I wouldn’t know.’
He smiled, flat and enigmatic. Whether or not he believed her was suddenly one of life’s darkest mysteries. Aliette was beginning to squirm as Willem reappeared with the wine. Norbert Fauré tasted, accepted and signaled Willem to pour. The inspector stared dumbly at a glass of pinot gris.
‘He mentioned you and he were at the party at this club of his…you were wearing — ’
‘With respect, sir, I know what I was wearing.’
‘I don’t doubt your respect. But tell me, why were you there?’
‘He asked me…he needed a date.’ Hadn’t Claude explained all this?
‘Doesn’t know many women then?’
‘I don’t know who he knows. And he’s not actually a member…just probationary. He felt it was related to the case and I was a logical partner to team with for that part of it.’
‘Back-up?’ Sipping wine. Lidded eyes looking down into it, instead of across at her.
‘You could say. As you know, there was a brawl and victim number six occurred shortly after.’
A cursory nod. He asked, ‘Nice place? Good time?’
She was confused, suddenly trying to protect herself. And Claude. ‘Sir, I don’t see — ’
‘And all contact since that night has been strictly business.’ Not a question; an observation.
Voilà: her suspicions as to Division’s supposed hands-off position were confirmed and more so. She could only nod, oui, and wait while Willem placed their soup and spoons.
‘Never been a member of any club,’ Fauré mused, ‘unless you count the divisionnaire’s quarterly get-togethers. Which I don’t.’ Rueful. ‘It’s strange to me how economies of scale in holes like this allow for things one can’t rightly contemplate up north. Almost a disincentive. Eh?’
Aliette tasted her soup and smiled at Willem — excellent! — as he placed their salads and added a fish knife to each setting. She only shrugged at Norbert Fauré. What was she meant to say? Small is beautiful. Small holes included. Where was he pushing this?
‘You’re not a member of this place?’
‘No.’
‘Not the club type, you?’
‘Not exactly.’ In fact she had spent many childhood and adolescent hours at her parents’ tennis club in Nantes. But Aliette Nouvelle was not inclined to share with this man.
Fauré finished off his soup in eight rapid spoonfuls. Taking a piece of bread, thoroughly swabbing his bowl, he told her, ‘I would like to revisit this idea of you and Néon going dancing.’
‘It was one night,’ said Aliette. ‘We’re well past that episode.’ She spooned her soup at a measured pace.
‘Perhaps we could recreate that moment.’
Delicately breaking her bread, studying it. Then meeting his eyes. ‘Why would we want to?’
‘This club remains a locus — and what else have we got? Precious little. Adrenaline — according to Conan. And love… Love for this woman, Pearl Serein. But everyone associated with this accursed thing has been a member of that club. Alors…’ Popping soup-soaked bread into his smoke-stained mouth, ‘Néon is the latest object of this gossip writer’s ridiculous darts. He has time on his hands and he’s been spending a lot of it at this club. Learning tennis.’ The divisionnaire seemed perplexed as he paused to sip his wine.
Aliette sensed he found the notion of Claude and tennis somehow wrong. Un-cop-like?
Fauré dabbed his lips, laid out his thinking. ‘Néon is perceived as the latest suitor for the lady’s affections — failed perhaps, if one believes Bonneau, but that’s all to the better since the killer strikes at her failed lovers. And if the killer is a member of this club, which you’d have to think he — or she…this is a possibility, Inspector — might well be, and if Néon were to appear there in the right sort of situation, then something might occur. Like last time? If you were there with him, better prepared, mind you, you might succeed in intervening. You are known for your sense of timing.’
Her cheeks (not to say her ears) were burning and she knew it showed.
He leaned forward, the better to impart professional confidentiality. ‘Inspector, I don’t care about your personal relations with Commissaire Néon. What I do care about is having this thing resolved before the center collapses around what remains of our integrity in this godforsaken place. For which I am ultimately responsible. Not you.’
Willem was waiting with two specials. Fauré took knife and fork in hand. Inspector Nouvelle had lost her appetite. As Willem set her plate down, he bent close to her ear. ‘Are you all right?’
‘What?’ She emerged from a breathless space, heart pounding. ‘Oh…yes, yes, fine.’
‘Do you want more water?’
‘Please.’ She resumed a careful examination of her crust of bread.
Fetching water, Willem van Hoogstraten watched her, concerned. The inspector was perspiring. Her face, usually so calm, somehow inspiring, was drained of the thing he loved to see. She looked like she’d been in bed for a week with the flu. Willem had never seen her looking this way.
When Willem returned to their table, the inspector’s dining partner was savoring his fish. ‘Good,’ he pronounced through a full mouth. Reaching for his wine, his suit coat fell open, exposing the handle of a holstered gun. Guns in the Rembrandt! What was going on? Did it have to do with Pearl? Willem felt unwell himself. Bowing stiffly to the compliment, he moved to pour water for Aliette. His hand unsteady, he asked her quietly, ‘Do you need an aspirin?’ He was loath to leave her alone with this man.
‘I’m fine, thank you, Willem.’
He continued to watch as he made his rounds: the man with the gun talked on, the inspector not meeting his eyes, barely touching her food — which Willem knew she loved.
When they left, she glanced at him, deepening his discomfort with a pale, apologetic smile.
Returning to clear and re-set the table… The man had left a twenty-franc pourboire.
Willem was not sure he wanted it.
38
Breakthrough?
The divisionnaire would set it up. He would speak with this Gaston person, the man at the club.
All the inspector would have to do was show up on Néon’s arm. ‘Good lunch.’ Patting her arm as he left her at the second-floor landing, heading off to meet with Commissaire Duque and Captain Deubelbeiss. Then it was down to the courthouse. Busy day indeed.
‘Good lunch?’ Monique passed her a reply memo from Gérard Richand responding to her request for an Article 9 against Le Cri and Tommi Bonneau. The judge said no. Again. He noted that despite certain rhetorical turns, Bonneau’s innuendo was essentially personal as opposed to institutional. And it had nothing to do with heart attacks. He intimated that, given the context, a counter lawsuit could serve to derail the entire process. He advised her to focus on her mandate. Which was: Find Pearl Serein. Good lunch? Aliette Nouvelle felt sick. She sat at her desk, unable to concentrate on more paperwork forwarded by the Swiss police. A two-page memo from Children’s Judge Tuillot regarding her pending disposition as to the Hashish Twins was a meaningless blur. The inspector’s heart was racing.
It was anger — Norbert Fauré spying, far beyond the context of the situation!
It was frustration — she had worked hard and faithfully to guard the special thing that was herself and Claude Néon. She needed to believe Claude had too.
It was fear — fear of the judgement Fauré might pass.
It was not right. Not fair that her heart should be used so coldly…
It was a lonely moment, a professional hazard, confronting one’s true place in an endless line of dispensable pawns. Aliette Nouvelle juggled people all the time, didn’t she? She did. And a heart was often central to the balance. The inspector was feeling the coldness at the heart of the law.
Monique buzzed. Identité Judiciaire might have something for her. ‘Merci.’
Five minutes later, a breakthrough. Forensics specialist Jean-Marc Pouliot waved her over to his bench. He turned on his projector. ‘Resin-coated paper: scraped from beneath the noble’s fingernails.’ She gazed, trying to read the magnified image. What exactly had Belfort sunk his claws into?
“With traces of silver and gold.”
‘Explain. Please.’
‘Photographic paper, to be more precise,’ added Jean-Marc, clicking up another transparency.
‘Photographic paper?’ It looked like nothing so much as several microscopic turds.
‘I’ve found silver halide and gold, along with traces of sodium thiosulfate. The silver halide suspended in gelatin is the surface of the paper, the gold would be residue from the toner solution used in the photographic process. The sodium thiosulfate would be from the fixer.’
Her first guess was automatic. ‘Could it be newsprint? I mean, he arrived wrapped up in it.’
‘Perpetrator’s a fish dealer perhaps,’ suggested Pouliot’s partner Charles Léger, joining them.
‘No, no,’ muttered Jean-Marc, meticulously focusing another slide. ‘Different process altogether. This is definitely from a photo. Not well rinsed, I’d say. Still traces of the fixer… Photo image breaks down, turns rather metallic-looking with exposure to light.’
‘And yellowish?’ Aliette Nouvelle heard the buzz of revelation in her brain.
Jean-Marc mulled it for a moment. ‘Yes, bronzy, yellowish, sort of a used-up tone.’
Voila. ‘Merci, messieurs.’ Bravo les IJ’s! That odd metallic look of the enlarged and somewhat tattered print of Pearl Serein in Bonneau’s studio! Didier Belfort had been inside the house in Rue Pontbriand.
Carrying a photocopy taken from an enlarged slide — it really didn’t look like anything — she went to the second floor. Duque and Deubelbeiss were in the conference room, mulling their meeting with Fauré. ‘We were just talking about you,’ said Duque, gesturing her toward a chair.
She didn’t doubt it. She felt both men watching her as she sat down.
It was coming up five when Monique buzzed. Gérard Richand was on the line.
‘Merci… Oui?’
‘Can we have a word?’
‘Of course.’ Opening her book. ‘When?’
‘Now, if you can manage it.’
Now? Most judges would be heading home at this hour. ‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’
Aliette Nouvelle and Gérard Richand knew each other well, the way ex-lovers sometimes do — no longer close, yet one still has a sense of the other that extends beyond the job. She could feel the judge’s raw nerves through the telephone line. Feeling caught in the middle here, Gérard? The inspector had felt Norbert Fauré’s gray, relentless pressure impinging on her own best instincts. As had Commissaire Duque. Job descriptions meant little when mandarins grew cranky. Had Fauré imparted his message to Gérard Richand as well? Was an old cop squeezing a purist judge? She hurried out.
The courthouse was quiet, all courts adjourned since four. Climbing the stairs, passing secretaries heading home, Gerard’s among them. ‘Door’s open. He’s waiting.’
‘Come in, come in…’gesturing without looking up, gazing dully at his notes. She took a seat. Now a perfunctory smile to greet her. ‘Just wanting to make sure we’re on the same page.’
‘This, I assume?’ Dropping a copy Le Cri on the judge’s pile of reading, open at the photo of Claude, lost and stupid in his spring garden. On the strength of their past intimacy, Aliette could be less than formal and not get slapped.
‘Yes. God, yes,’ Lamenting. ‘My poor wife’s become addicted. Souviron sits there studying it. My staff…the divisionnaire was growling about it throughout our chat. It’s too absurd.’
‘Maybe not absurd…Maybe time to move on Bonneau? He’s turning Claude into a bullseye.’
Gérard seemed to laugh privately. ‘That’s what we need to discuss.’
‘I don’t think it’s funny, Gérard. I think he’s at risk.’
‘Néon’s a professional — he’ll handle it.’
‘Like the others?’
‘He has no choice.’
‘I think it’s very close to boil-over time. It’s dangerous.’
‘He has to bear up. His career is on the line…’ a quick, tense shake of his balding head. Poor Gérard, she thought — he really found it distasteful, truly believed Claude had got far less than he deserved by way of censure. ‘He lets his silly adolescent passion create this ridiculous mess for all of us, and that includes you, and I for one will not — ’
He was taken aback as she produced a reprint of her second memo requesting an Article 9 charge against Le Cri du Matin and Tomas Bonneau, and laid it on top of the rest of his materials. Second try in one day. Pushing. And Gérard Richand was not accustomed to being pushed by cops. ‘But I sent my response to this. Did you not receive — ’ The judge stopped himself mid-stream.
She could read him, yes. And he could read her — gazing into him.
Pointedly wondering, ‘What’s the problem? Gérard?’
Yes, she had latitude. But he would not be pushed. He flared. ‘The problem? This is garbage!’ A voice that boomed, a large sweep of his arm demonstrating his contempt, sending Le Cri du Matin flying from his desk as if it were unclean. Her memo was swept away with it.
The inspector scooped up the mess of pages and quite brazenly put them back in front of him. Pushing past the limit? She was past caring. It suited her to see Gérard Richand less than certain. Being on the same page required it. ‘Not garbage, monsieur. A love story. Talk to him. He’ll tell you himself: Tommi does love. That’s his purpose and it is a very high-minded one.’
‘Well he treats it like garbage and Néon looks like a fool and I take it personally!’ Glaring, he reminded her, ‘And you should too!’
‘But the man who runs me is going to leverage that garbage to get a result.’
Gérard’s glare and flush abated. ‘His people were supposed to respect the order. If not, what is the point?’ Sighing, eyes clouding, fuming, ‘I have standards, Inspector. Someone has to.’
The inspector smiled her sympathy. Message: I would never lump you into the same slimy bin as the principal actors in this sordid s
ituation. But she insisted, ‘Have another look, Gérard. Tommi Bonneau treats love as though it were what we all hoped it would be. Love is sublime. Love is ennobling. Love is the biggest challenge and the most profoundly simple secret in any man’s heart — and his readers hang on his every word. It’s the ones who fail at love that he treats like garbage. Pearl Serein is some kind of yardstick for Tommi Bonneau’s idea of love and the men who want to make it. He harassed the men who failed with Pearl Serein — and they all died. Now he’s after Claude. Fool or not, we have to protect him… I mean, this is our duty, no?’
‘You are allowed to attack a man with words, Inspector — even ridiculous ones. To a point, this is fundamental to our system. And Monsieur Bonneau has not passed that point. At least not as far as this office is concerned. Souviron will stand with me on that. As for Néon the private citizen, that’s his affair and he has chosen to stay silent.’
Aliette said ‘He’s still my colleague, Gérard. Yours too, when you get down to it.’
Richand’s pinching shoulders, hardening eyes, said in no uncertain terms, ‘No way. Not mine.’
And he told her, ‘And those men still died of their own account.’ Pearl’s failed men. But perhaps Chief Instructing Judge Gérard Richand noticed her rising color. It was easily evident in a slender neck he’d once kissed with exceeding care. ‘What do you care what happens to him?’ Gérard knew the professional history of Néon and Nouvelle. Everyone did.
But he couldn’t know their emotional present. Could he? She had no more faith in Norbert Fauré’s integrity than Gérard did. An ugly, brutal, manipulative man.
She could not ask her judge what that old prick had been sharing as he’d made his strategy known. All she could do was plead, albeit calmly, ‘Let me go into Bonneau’s house — for an hour. I know I will find links, if not evidence, that can move this thing forward.’
Gérard Richand sniffed, hunkered down. ‘What links?’
‘Pictures. Pictures of Pearl… And maybe her. She could be there.’
