Walls of a Mind

by John Brooke

  It was a murder. If Stephanie McLeod died, that would be a murder too. The bizarre dialogue in the tower was not proof of anything, but it revealed much that was obviously true. Her failure to summon the presence of mind to push a button and record it was another dull needle of frustration pricking at her mind. But she would demonstrate the murder of Prince — still his only name until (if) Stephanie pulled through. If she was lost, he would be Prince forever.

  Magistrate Regarri was sympathetic. But. ‘I need to see your report.’

  ‘This woman is reckless. I will bring her to account. I need you — ’

  ‘Your report. Nothing can happen without your report.’

  He gently suggested the process would take care of itself.

  She did not believe it. She railed, There was no process! That was exactly the problem when it came to the likes of Margot Tessier. But the more she complained, the more the righteous anger of revenge turned in on itself, back to grey frustration. And the truth of it: ‘I have no idea how to deal with her. She won’t let me talk to her agents. And I can’t make her.’

  ‘She’s a spook but she’s not a ghost. You will gather bits and pieces. Bring them to her. Make it impossible for her to slip away from it. You will do this. I know you can.’

  Could she? Sergio reached across his desk to hold her hand.

  ·

  The inspector went first to the intensive care unit at Centre Hospitalier, where she gazed at the near lifeless body, battered, hooked up to tubes, surrounded by electronic readers. You’d assume a head-on car crash if you didn’t know it was a forty-metre tumble down the rocks at Vieussan. Global trauma from the fall included a fractured skull and intracranial hemorrhaging. The patient was in an induced coma; they were watching a swelling in her skull. The inspector left with the cautious advisement that Stephanie McLeod would probably live, but, ‘Whether it’s a good life is still the big question,’ murmured the dour nurse as she went about replacing the intravenous bag.

  Avi Roig, bearing flowers, was being ushered in. His bitterness was gone. So was much else. The inspector briefly faced an empty, confused man, the victim of a different class of trauma. ‘She’s not going to die,’ she said by way of greeting, and continued to the waiting lift.

  Which took her down to the morgue.

  Dr. Annelise Duflot was looking fresh and bright despite an even longer night than Sergio’s. She flipped a page. ‘No, as a matter of fact he died from the fall.’ She led the inspector to a drawer in the wall and pulled it out, lifted the shroud. Like Stephanie, the man called Prince presented with ugly gashes to his skull and face, livid bruising everywhere on his boyish body. And one small hole where breast met shoulder on the left side of his anemic, bony chest.

  ‘I still need the bullet.’ The bullet could clarify the shooter of that shot.

  Dr. Duflot’s treated blonde hair was loose today. She moved her girlish bangs a fraction, indicating negative. Getting a good grip, the petite pathologist rolled the body slightly to reveal a second hole above the shoulder blade. ‘Exit wound. No bullet here, Inspector. Hit a soft and not so vital area and went right through. It happens. In any event, it was not a killing shot. As I say, global trauma from the fall killed him.’

  ‘That was the only one that hit him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Easing the body back down.

  ‘What do you think happened?’

  ‘B’eh, that’s not really my department.’ She replaced the sheet over the battered body. ‘They were saying he was hit, he returned fire, three shots, then — ’

  ‘I only heard one.’

  ‘The gun they found says three… Then the war starts. He would obviously back away. Not much room up there. He probably didn’t know where he was and backed right off the far side. He was either holding onto her, or she was trying to help him and lost her footing. But I’m just guessing, based on what they said.’ She was determined that the inspector understand this. ‘Is this the one who committed the atrocity at Maraussan?’

  ‘That is still unclear.’

  ‘I was informed it is.’

  ‘The first shot hit him?’

  ‘It’s what they were saying,’ reiterated Annelise Duflot.

  ·

  Which left Aliette Nouvelle sitting on a bench in the hospital garden, fighting another surge of desperation. No bullet, no first shooter, no case against a reckless DST. She felt she could not confront Margot Tessier without that bullet. Of course, there were other ways around this problem, but they would involve more people and resources. A longer, more costly walk just to get to the starting line.

  Her judge knew in his heart she could do this. She had to try.

  She calmed herself, lined up her reasons, mustered her will, made some calls.

  To her surprise, and with very little rationalizing on her part, Commander Jules Pellau committed ten gendarmes for half a day. Aliette sensed that behind the formal tones he was as discouraged and exasperated with Agent Tessier as she. More so: for him the rules were sacred.

  Chief Inspector Nabil Zidane was not so cut and dried and never would be. She heard a man who was willing to invest because he knew it would come back to him over the long term. His two agents who’d been directly involved at Vieussan would be available if Division agreed.

  Division meant the ballistics people at Montpellier. They did not question her purview. Yes, they could determine bullet pathways if they had reasonably determined positions at both ends of the trajectory — it was a matter of course. They would make the call to Dr. Duflot and requisition the necessary imaging. Maybe in two days?

  Aliette would have to live with that. She turned her thoughts to Noëlli Guatto.

  The murder of Roland Bousquet did not look right hung round the skinny shoulders of an idealistic anarchist, much less Stephanie McLeod. DST Agent Margot Tessier had subbornly ignored the logic of that, but Inspector Magui Barthès had found information in Noëlli’s home. There was still a crucial gap that needed closing before it could be used as hard evidence in the matter of Joël Guatto, but Aliette was thinking Noëlli’s signed statement concerning her own involvement in the activities of the man called Prince might be one more useful thing to use against the DST. Noëlli was now in a secured ward up on the seventh floor. Before leaving the hospital, the inspector made one more call.

  Xavier Crevier dismissed it out of hand. His patient was thoroughly sedated.

  And he was perplexed. ‘When she surfaces, she keeps asking for someone called Officer Henri. She whines as to how there are so few honest men. This someone you might know?’

  ‘I might. Would Officer Henri help the situation?’

  ‘Possibly. She definitely needs to trust someone.’

  ‘Can I ask, How do you characterize this sort of crisis? I mean, broadly speaking’

  ‘B’eh, moral. Is there any other kind?’ asked Crevier, rhetorically. ‘Broadly speaking or otherwise, it’s always about our alignment with our fellow humans, Inspector.’

  ‘I see.’ Aliette knew when to cut her losses. ‘And when will she be past it, Doctor?’

  ‘Probably never.’

  ‘I mean, when can I see her?’

  ‘I will meet you here Friday. Same time.’ That was his best offer.

  ‘Should I bring Henri?’

  ‘That could be interesting. Is he up for it?’

  ‘He’s a very moral man.’

  · 47 ·

  TEST

  ‘Thank you for coming.’

  The police gathered on the boules court at the top of the village at 8:00 am. Ten uniforms, led personally by Commander Pellau. Two of Nabi Zidane’s men: Inspectors Cresson and Doub. Alain Gleizes, a forensics expert from Division at Montpellier. Inspectors Magui Barthès and Henri Dardé. And Instructing Judge Sergio Regarri.

  DST Agent Tessier refused to release her agents for the exerc
ise. She had sent Judge Regarri two reports — her own and that of Agent Villiers containing ‘all the facts you’ll need,’ accompanied by a letter objecting to the process. The supplied facts included the DST agents’ self-described approximate positions, make of firearm, ammo calibration, number of rounds fired. She noted her men were trained shooters. They had been ordered to fire high. If they had, through misjudgment, hit the target, the round would have been recovered — hollow point ammunition was standard. Although, she added, oddly (even brazenly) forthright, it was the norm for her teams to use unnumbered ordnance. She confirmed that just two of her men had been assigned to the particular area and simple positioning would substantiate their claims. Ergo: no point wasting precious man-hours on such an exercise. Signed and dated…

  Stoic — fed up with railing, Aliette silently handed the papers back to Sergio. There was nothing she could do about it. There was nothing to say.

  The morning was noticeably cool. The Tramontane had blown in, suffusing the sky with a steely clarity; the clouds were running swift and high. Most of the villagers had gone to their work. But a gaggle of familiar faces watched from a respectful distance. Mothers, grandmothers, children. Chief Inspector Nouvelle nodded a cursory bonjour.

  Their eyes asked, What now?

  Police business. A test.

  She led the way up the stone stairs and along the ridge to the tower. The wind packed a chilly punch. Gesturing to the treacherous side, she addressed the Commander. ‘There: a round with some flesh on it?’ Slowed and wobbled from its passage through the shoulder area of a man still known only as Prince, it would have fallen far short of its normal trajectory. ‘And,’ now indicating the easier slope leading off to the forest on one side, the unkempt edges of the village on the other; ‘there: a shell from same.’

  ‘We’ll give it a go, Inspector.’ Jules Pellau summarily divided his team. They dispersed.

  She turned to forensics expert Alain Gleizes. ‘Alors?’

  Gleizes lugged a wooden case containing instruments. ‘Surveyor tools, mostly. Should do us.’ He also carried several pages of computer-assisted diagrams extrapolating angles and directions based on the entry and exit wounds in the subject’s shoulder area, a few more marrying those calculations with rotated topographic images of the scene. Working backward, they could draw a pathway to the shooter’s position.

  Magui Barthès was about the same size as the subject. She was to stand on the approximate spot (still marked by a cherry day-glo circle) just outside the door to the tower. Leaving Magui to shiver, the party moved down the hill. Gleizes directed the two PJ cops to place themselves as accurately as they could. They moved laterally toward the edge of the forest. They left Cresson at a higher position, walked down toward the olive grove with Doub.

  ‘This seems about right,’ Doub said, adding. ‘Big difference between night and daylight.’

  He was asked to place the two DST men. Sergio Regarri and Henri Dardé would stand in for them. Responding to his directions, they moved. Sergio ended up almost at the stone stairs. Henri stood below the stone foundation of a house, some forty metres below — all the houses along the outermost street on Vieussan’s east-most edge were built into the hill rising to the ridge. Aliette’s information confirmed that these positions were probably right. The people living there said that when the shooting erupted they had looked from their overlooking bedroom windows and seen a man directly below. Villiers… He’d quickly moved up the hill, but he was there when it began. Others on the same street farther up had seen another man firing from behind a rock near the stairs…Sergio was directed slightly right, creating a tighter angle to Magui’s left side.

  Five gendarmes had begun a slow march down the right side, eyes glued to the ground, searching for the ejected shell.

  Alain Gleizes looked at one his charts. Then through a viewer. ‘Not according to this,’ he announced, mostly to himself, then he left Inspector Doub’s position and went across to Henri, standing in as Villiers on the far side. He took a sighting. Waving to the top, he directed Magui Barthès to turn more toward that postion. Another look — no. He moved farther down and into the middle of the slope and tried again. Then came back across to where Aliette stood with Doub, only lower, more to the middle and repeated his test. Gleizes went back and forth half a dozen times. Each time, Magui tried to align herself directly facing him… Cresson and Sergio, at the two upper positions, did not figure at all. To the contrary. Gleizes almost fell backward into a gully as he kept retreating farther down and closer to the middle of the hill. He was on the edge of Avi Roig’s olive grove when he gestured for the inspector to join him.

  He was confused. ‘Ask him if he’s sure.’

  He meant Inspector Doub. She obeyed. Returned. ‘He says as sure as he can be… What?’

  ‘Everything I have says it would have to be down around here… Look.’

  Aliette put her eye to his viewer. Magui Barthès was hardly there at all. A head shot.

  ‘Get her to move forward.’

  Aliette shouted up to Magui and gestured for her to advance. Magui took a few steps forward.

  ‘Still not much to shoot at.’ Gleize passed the viewer back to her.

  Magui’s head. And now the merest edges of her shoulders. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘The imaging, the modelling…’ He took a camera from his kit and clicked off some pictures. He took some reads with another instrument. ‘I will do another model back at the lab — you can have it tonight. But even if she came down toward us ten paces…’ He was dubious.

  ‘But it was the opposite,’ Aliette protested. ‘He comes out the door. First shot. Hit. He staggers back, fires a few harmless returns, they start firing back. She’s there with him by then. Somehow they both go over…After that first shot, all the movement is from the door to the other side. Neither one moved down this way.’ Gazing up at Magui. ‘I wish they had. Her, at least.’

  ‘Two things,’ said Gleizes. ‘Have another go with everyone working that night. Maybe one was floating around at the base of the hill and ended up here at that particular moment. Maybe?’

  Aliette could only shrug.

  ‘And get those uniforms down closer to this position. Have them do the gully here behind us. Unless Annelise got something wrong. But she’s usually very careful.’

  Kneeling, he began packing his kit.

  Aliette was embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m not blaming anyone, Inspector. Now we know. I will double check all this in my lab, but I’m almost sure right now. If those men are being honest, and even halfway accurate, there must have been another gun.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I can send something before five.’ He looked around. ‘Can I get back to the parking without climbing back up?’

  ‘The public stairs down to the road. Over there.’

  Aliette watched Gleizes trudge back across the hill.

  She did not want to believe one of Nabi’s guys had wandered onto this spot and reacted without thinking — and had not owned up. She dreaded fighting her way to the same place with Margot Tessier. If Gleizes was skeptical, then she was truly flummoxed.

  On an impulse, Aliette aimed an imaginary shot at the tower. Then ran for Henri’s position, counting: un pamplemousse, deux pamplemousses… Henri was a good fifty paces from the spot Gleizes was marking as most likely. The stretch of ground was by no means smooth. She had counted out a generous nine seconds by the time she arrived. Listening to the thing unfold through a cell phone had been surreal, but the gap between the first shot and the collective cracking of police automatics in response to Prince’s response had been far less than nine, she was certain.

  She supposed a man could shoot that first shot, then run across to Henri’s position while the others started shooting up the hill, and then join in again from there. But that was far-fetched. It presupposed that man knowing too much beforehand, a de
eply cynical plan.

  Which took her back to Margot.

  Henri asked, ‘What do we do now, boss?’

  ‘We look for a shell over there.’

  She thanked Nabi’s two inspectors and let them go. She urged Magistrate Regarri to leave them to it and get back to his day. He did not say no.

  Shaking his hand, Aliette quietly asked Sergio, ‘See you later?’

  ‘That will be fine, Inspector.’

  Then they — five gendarmes, three inspectors — spent the rest of the morning scavenging the middle swath of the hill, the top reaches of the olive grove. Without result. When she saw Commander Jules Pellau and his group appear on the ridge, she called a halt to the search.

  She was framing her apology to him as they climbed back up, hungry, hot — the midday sun had won a battle with the Tramontane — not a little exhausted, mainly sinking with the futility of it all. Margot Tessier wanted an incomplete file on an unknown but very active bomber. It looked like she would have it. Aliette’s first big murder case looked to be doomed to same.

  Stepping onto the ridge, the wind rushed forward, almost pushed her back down. Commander Pellau’s cropped straw-like hair was dancing madly along the rim of his forehead, making him look like an earnest young priest who’d run all the way with a message. In fact, he had a gift. No, no bullet. But there was this: he handed her a cell phone. ‘Still intact… She recorded it all.’

  ·

  She listened to it several times in the privacy of her car on the place at Vieussan.

  Haunting and unreal — two children arguing about where to go and who loved whom. Hearing Stephanie McLeod confront this Gregor… Sprad?…Sprak?...to Aliette’s mind it was now true beyond doubting that Stephanie had nothing to do with the bombs. Even if it could never be confirmed.

  There was also 1 SAVED MESSAGE. She listened to herself: Stephanie, it’s Inspector Nouvelle…Aliette? It’s Monday, getting on to five. I’m here at Vieussan. So are a lot of other people… I wish you’d communicate with me. You really should. I hate to use clichés, Stephanie, but if you’re planning some sort of reunion with this man, you will be totally surrounded. Please don’t try to kid yourself otherwise. And believe me, that kind of big event atmosphere can make some people act against their better interests. Please, Stephanie. We know you had nothing to do with the bombs… any of them. Call me. I can help you. I will help you. I promise…