by John Brooke
Again, Gérard Richand laughed darkly. ‘Would he be hiding her?’
Aliette refused to laugh along. ‘He could well be.’ She ached to tell him the larger story. But for her own sake, and for the trust of Commissaire Duque, she had to play a game with Judge Richand. ‘How do we know until we look? That’s my mandate. No?’
‘If you have solid cause.’
‘What if it’s true?’ Pulling Saturday’s Le Soir from her briefcase, she slapped Rose Saxe’s exclusive on his desk. ‘Bonneau and Pearl Serein — some puppy love thing that’s got all twisted? Wouldn’t be the first serial killer to carry a flame like that.’
Gérard Richand barely gave it a glance. ‘Just more muck we have to wade through. That won’t open any doors. Don’t read any more of it, if you want my advice.’
‘I have to, Gérard. At this point there’s nothing else.’
‘Well I don’t!’ Surging…Then Gérard Richand deflated, weary of parrying with Inspector Nouvelle. ‘We have to prove murder or we’ll never be rid of this mess.’ He shrugged away the notion of Pearl hiding at the center of the storm. ‘Even if we found her sitting in front of his television giggling and completely complicit in this wretched thing, we still need to know the hows and whys of murder for Bonneau to be compelled to reply to the court.’
‘Fine. Pearl or no Pearl, I could get you what you need to compel him.’
‘What?’
‘Pictures.’
Gerard stared glumly at his papers, as if stuck with a stubborn suspect who would not change her story despite all reason. ‘Exactly how do pictures link to heart attacks, Inspector?’
‘No idea. But it is not just Pearl Serein that’s gone missing, monsieur. Apart from Tuche and Belfort — who did not die inside their homes, at each stop along the way, pictures of Pearl Serein have disappeared. Even Martel — he’d just moved into his new girlfriend’s home; she told us she found a photo of Pearl Serein with his things. But it was gone when they went through the place.’
She had his attention again. And again he posed that logical question. ‘How do you know this?’
‘The commissaire was investigating.’ Claude was a safe place to lay this transgression.
‘Perhaps he has them.’ A cynical sniff. ‘Mm? Do we see our bold but foolish commissaire passing his days in retirement with pictures of Pearl Serein?’
‘He’s not the one who’s obsessed.’
‘No? Then why he is no longer on duty?’
Aliette would not go there. ‘It’s Bonneau, Gérard. Pearl Serein is his life’s big cause.’
‘Inspector, these words, these pictures, they are nothing but a distraction. Are you listening? Back page. By definition — a pastime. They do not cause heart attacks. How could they possibly be related?’
‘Let me go in and find out!’ Did she shout? Pretty close. She took a breath and quietly repeated her request. ‘For my colleague’s well-being, we need to go into Bonneau’s house. One quick look before the divisionnaire puts Claude Néon out there like a sitting duck.’
Gérard Richand managed a smile, if rather snide. ‘But you’ll be with him. The divisionnaire has complete confidence.’
That stung — as it was meant to. She took a moment, nibbling at her thumbnail, then inquired, ‘And how will this operation read on my new mandate?’ Her mandate to root out Pearl.
Gérard’s smile rested in place. But it grew softer. ‘It won’t. It will be an informal date. Like the last time — although quite against your current mandate. And the terms of his suspension.’
‘And if something happens?’
‘Which Fauré fully expects.’
The inspector was hearing Chief Judge Richand attempting to lead her, much as she’d been attempting to lead him. She knew him, professionally and personally, and now she was feeling his concern coming through despite his distaste. ‘I don’t think I like what you’re telling me, Gérard.’
‘Nor me. It’s why I wanted to make sure we understood each other’s position going in. OK?’
‘OK. I appreciate it. But what can I do?’
‘You could say you were busy when he calls. Or you could say it’s against the rules and you don’t want to compromise the investigation.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘For your colleague’s well-being? Don’t worry, no matter who he shows up with, they’ll be watching him every step of the way.’
‘I can’t.’ Who else would he show up with?
‘You could. You should. Fauré’s a hard man. But you do have a mandate.’
Yes, he was protecting her. She smiled. ‘Thank you. I will keep it in mind.’
A vague shake of his ponderous head. He did not want thanking. ‘I’m doing my job, Inspector. To the best of my ability. The record will show that. The rules will bear me out.’
‘You can still call me Aliette, Gérard.’
‘I am advising you, Inspector, not to ruin whatever measly substance this absurd thing might have. Or your career in the process. You people are on shaky enough ground as it is.’
‘What about Claude?’
‘I don’t understand why you defend him.’
‘I don’t expect you would.’
‘He betrayed our trust. Yours included. It won’t bother me if he sinks in his own mess. I don’t see why it should bother you.’
‘I can deal with my own life, Gérard.’ She sensed he was fishing for a confession. That his concern came with a quid pro quo. Well, to be a cop was to deal in trade-offs. But this was not about being a cop. Sorry, monsieur, my lips are sealed — Fauré’s slimy intimations will have to do.
Richand nodded. OK. No confession. ‘Still, my best advice is: Stay home.’
They sat there staring at each other.
‘Pearl Serein…’ Gérard twiddled his pen, musing bleakly. ‘Do you think she’s still alive?’
She shrugged. She didn’t care. She asked again, ‘Let me go into Bonneau’s for half an hour.’
‘No. Duque wants a word tomorrow. Something from IJ. Maybe things will change. Until then, we stick to the line we’re taking till we find her or the doctors give us reasonable cause.’
‘We’ll get closer to our cause if we go inside Bonneau’s house. I know we will.’
‘We have an expert from Strasbourg working on it, Inspector.’
‘If you could call it that.’
He nodded once, noting her contempt for the non-results of so-called experts. Then Chief Judge Richand took up his pen and shook his head, boggled by it all. ‘You can watch Monsieur Bonneau. I dare say you already are. But you will not — and this is a formal instruction — go near him. If you are coerced into doing something you shouldn’t, the court will deal with it, according to the rules of law. As for me, I’m still waiting for a rational, scientific statement explaining how a criminal act causing death was committed. And I am waiting for a missing woman to be found. D’accord?… Inspector?’
‘Don’t you see, Gérard? Do you really not see the link to pictures of Pearl Serein? And the link from there to Tommi Bonneau? He is the source of this thing… Gérard?’
‘Don’t you see that if we respond to that cretin in any way, our position in the eyes of our public is utterly undermined?’ Easing back into his plush leather chair. ‘Can’t you see that?’
As she was leaving, the judge was jotting a note.
39
Flying Blind
Two hours later, a softening spring sun was beginning to decline…
Rose’s column in that day’s Le Soir was headed Pearl and Tommi: That was then…
The full-page piece, overleaf from the Editorial page, included an allusive photo of a street sign signaling Rue Marianne and a view from earlier days of Lycée F-A-Bartoldi. The narrative meandered, weaving together varying interpretations of local history. Gay culture advocate Léo Lacan insisted Tommi Bonneau was a nerdy camera fanatic who wanted nothing to do with girls, Pearl Serein included — whom Léo remembered as
‘modest and withdrawn and not at all boy crazy.’ But Bernadette Leclercq, who described herself as a ‘full-time mother,’ said, ‘I always suspected they had something going.’ But Louise Montvalon, now a real estate agent, implied that Bernadette Leclerq had always had a ‘bitter streak.’ Louise Montvalon said the ‘golden age’ of Pearl and Tommi was pre-teen, that the pair were ‘definitely the talk of the town at ten,’ adding, ‘a time when love is pure, maybe purest.’ This latter scenario was more or less backed by retired philo prof J. Gregoire, who had overseen the student-run weekly journal at Lycée F-A-Bartoldi. He remembered Tommi Bonneau taking excellent pictures of whatever was required, although his passion was clearly birds, not girls. But retired bio prof Paulin Soublin, who had organized the student photography club, recalled ‘a wall full of student-body beauties adorning our darkroom, all provided by our club star, Tomas Bonneau.’ Although Soublin could not recall a dewy Pearl amongst them. ‘Mostly blonde…and much more, let’s say vibrant,’ noted Soublin, adding that he still cherished a pile of these classic shots, and that, ‘I don’t remember her at all.’ Marguerite Dandurand, a neighbor who had minded a very young Tommi, would only say that, yes, she was aware they’d been friends. And that Tommi Bonneau had loved a good story. Several other former neighbors added wistful, if vague, recollections of the street.
Tomorrow’s instalment, A Mother in Connecticut, promised further revelations.
Folding Le Soir, Inspector Aliette Nouvelle tucked it under her arm. She was leaning against Anne-Marie’s old Westfalia van, observing the house in Rue Pontbriand. All views within were closed up tight. She had been mulling Gérard Richand’s advice on the long walk from the courthouse to the east end — with a brief detour to give Piaf his supper. She had dispensed with her run this evening; she hadn’t the energy after a debilitating day, courtesy Norbert Fauré. She was beginning to agree with Gérard that acquiescing to Fauré’s crude idea was a no-win game. Nor had she bothered with a silly disguise this evening. There was no more point, not after today. She was back to basics — a cop in the street, in plain view, waiting, observing the source of her problem. She would not knock on Bonneau’s door. But if Tommi Bonneau came out that door, she would ask for his reactions. It was all she could legally do. Reduced to pushing buttons.
Well, we do what we can do. And see what might transpire. She waited, heedless of breaking her supposed cover.
…Pok! A quick, hard, punching sound.
Certain firearms can make a sound like that when discharging and the trained inspector reacted by instantly hitting the ground.
But it was the sound of something punching a clean hole through glass. She raised her head. There was a bird, flying low and straight at her position. Whoa! She ducked again. Without veering in the slightest, the bird flew into the side of Anne-Marie’s van, smacked against it with a feathery thud and dropped onto the pavement, an inch or two from the inspector’s eyes.
Aliette pulled herself to her knees, wondering; What does a bird feel when it is dying?
Looking over her shoulder at the house — the glass that had been broken was the blinded window in Tommi Boneau’s front room. She saw the vertical blind that had been opened a crack, fall shut.
Would Tommi come out? The inspector stared at the window, daring him, and waited…
It did not appear that he would. She turned her attention back to the bird… It was dead.
Poor bird. Bert? Tommi had called it Bert. Now what? She could pick the thing up, knock on his door and present him with this pathetic body. Accuse Tommi Bonneau of killing it.
Cruelty to animals: could that get her a mandate to search his house?
It occurred to her that this was not just a dead bird. This was another victim that had flown straight from the source — the house she wanted to enter but could not. She has seen it come out of that house. She had seen it in the act of dying. Or being killed. One of Tommi Bonneau’s victims? Crashing through a window aside, Bert had had the entire sky and he had flown straight into a car. Flying blind. Why did that happen? She knew she knew the answer — or at least the beginnings of it.
But it would not come clear inside her mind. Too excited, feeling cop endorphins kicking in.
She thought, No, I’ll take poor Bert to the morgue instead. Opening Le Soir to its full broadsheet expanse, Aliette rolled the small feathered body onto it. Then she gathered the edges carefully together into a sack-like package. Grasping the package gingerly like those good people carrying bags of doggy turd home from the park, she took off, now wishing for her jogging shoes, keeping half an eye out for any movement behind her. But there were no steps in her wake.
Responding to the dismissive thing he’d perceived in Norbert Fauré’s smoked-out serpent eyes, Dr. Gilles Conan had decreed he would stay in town for an evening or two in lieu of the hour commute back to the capital. He and Raphaele Petrucci would pick up the pace, work late, maybe crack this thing. But before they started their evening investigations, it was Raphaele’s pleasure to take him out for supper. Inspector Patrice Lebeau found the two doctors at La Piédmontaise, one of the pathologist’s favorite local sources of Italian cuisine. He had ordered for both of them: Bistecca à la Florentine — aged ten days, marinated for three more in a mix of olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and sage. It was on its way. They were savoring the bouquet of a Barbera D’Alba ’89, chosen by Conan, debating an interesting vegetal quality at the farthest reaches of the mouth, when Lebeau rushed in, breathless, insisting on behalf of Inspector Nouvelle that they return to the commissariat forthwith. They weren’t happy with this command, and even less so to discover a dead goldfinch curled on the same gleaming metal pallet where the six victims’ hearts had been displayed in a line that morning. Inspector Lebeau told Légiste Petrucci, ‘She’s upstairs making some calls.’
Raphaele sprinted up three flights…went in without knocking. ‘What the hell are you thinking?’
Aliette was indeed on her phone. She held up one hand — wait! — as she told the party at the other end, ‘Gérard, I assure you I would not disturb you like this if it were not of the utmost — No, we haven’t found her… Gérard, you have to stop being so…’ She caught herself before she said it (so Raphaele would never know) and took a breath before amending her request. ‘For old time’s sake, Gérard?’ Raphaele’s dark eyes narrowed. He’d heard rumors about the inspector’s early days in this city. That tone, that one little phrase spoke volumes. ‘…yes, Gérard, I know every single consequence and repercussion, and I will personally accept the weight and force of each of them.’ There was a long pause, after which she simply said, ‘Merci,’ and hung up.
To Raphaele, the inspector put the pointed query: ‘Why is it men always have to make it crystal clear they’re not going to help you if you make a mistake? I hate that.’
She brushed past him and headed for the stairs.
‘Is it only men who do that?’ asked Raphaele, following hard on her heels. Aliette did not answer. ‘Well, I’m here to tell you the same thing, Inspector. The man downstairs is one of the top men in the region…the country! A dead bird? Is it a joke? He likes you, but you’re really pushing it.’
‘It is not a joke! Give me a bit a credit, please.’
‘We were about to eat!’
‘Is he angry?’
‘Hasn’t said a word…I know he was excited about eating.’
‘He’ll be excited by this.’
‘I hope so.’
‘I know…I know: for my sake, right? Not yours.’ Banging through the doors to the morgue.
In lieu of steak, Dr. Conan was sipping coffee and munching the panettone sent along by Raphaele’s mama to help her son solidify his alliance with the eminent man from the university. His professorial eyes indicated he was willing to hear her problem.
‘I have two questions. One: Can you tell me if this bird was blind before it died?’
‘Probably not,’ said Conan, wiping crumbs from his fingers. He took a light
and shone it. After several shakes of his famous head, ‘I really can’t tell you. Why do you need to know?’
‘I have a suspect who is not supposed to be a suspect. He’s off-limits. This bird was his pet. This evening I watched it fly straight through a window pane and into the side of a car. Once it smashed through the window, it had all the room in the world but no idea where it was going. Whatever happened to it occurred in a place where I cannot go to look.’
Conan smiled, protesting, ‘But it’s just a bird.’
She ignored it. ‘Second question: Can you tell me if any of our lovers were blind at the time of their death by heart attack?’
‘Maybe,’ replied a suddenly cautious doctor.
Turning to Raphaele Petrucci, she demanded, ‘Did you check their eyes?’
‘Yes,’ said Raphaele. Meaning: but only in a cursory manner, a basic matter of course.
‘But not to that extent,’ said Conan, interceding on behalf of his more vulnerable partner.
‘Why not? It’s possible victim number seven died inside that house. Or shortly after visiting.’
‘Didn’t occur,’ Raphaele admitted. A pleading tone. God, how fast it changes, thought Aliette. And Raphaele Petrucci saw this. He glared back at those contemptuous silvery eyes. ‘It was their hearts!’ Adding, ‘…Eyes don’t show much of anything after death.’
Dr. Conan was already pulling open the drawer containing the dead noble — all of him, not just his broken heart. The two scientists aimed lights and dropped chemicals into Didi Belfort’s eyes, then pulled out Raymond Tuche and began to do the same.
Aliette paced, sighing out loud with nervous exasperation.
Raphaele looked up. ‘You’re not helping.’
‘But the bird…I need the bird!’ She came to rest beside the tiny corpse. Laid an uncertain fingertip on the lifeless feathered skull. ‘This bird lived inside that house.’
Raphaele could only shrug, unclear as to procedural legalities.
‘Physical evidence!’ she hissed. ‘From inside his place! If I don’t have it, Richand couldn’t give the smallest damn if everyone he’s ever shot is now walking around with a white cane.’
