‘What are you going to do to find the person who did this?’ Florence asked.
Sarit clicked his tongue.
‘The Cambodian police will do everything they can, I can assure you of this,’ Morel said smoothly, knowing it wasn’t true. ‘I will be assisting them in their investigation. I understand you’re flying home for the funeral?’
‘Yes,’ Florence said tremulously.
Morel nodded. ‘You should be with your family.’
‘I’m over seven months pregnant,’ she said. ‘I don’t think they’ll let me travel.’
Sarit spoke. ‘Madame Quercy, perhaps we can help facilitate your travel.’ The first useful thing he’d said all morning.
Florence’s face was white. A single tear rolled down her cheek. Mariko looked at her with concern, then glanced back at Morel. It was time to end the interview and leave the widow in peace, for now at least, Morel thought. He stood up.
‘Would you have a photograph of your husband that we could borrow?’ Morel said.
‘Take that one,’ Florence said, gesturing towards a framed photograph on a side table. It showed her and her husband smiling into the camera. Morel took the frame.
‘I’ll make sure this comes back safely,’ he said. ‘Thank you for talking to us. And again, I’m so very sorry for your loss. We’ll be on our way now.’
Florence Quercy stood up, brushing away her friend’s attempt to help her to her feet. She moved towards Morel and looked up at him. He saw that the light had gone from her eyes. Morel knew from experience that this was just the beginning. From now on, her sadness would permeate everything.
But there was something more. The look Florence Quercy gave him was filled with confusion. She placed a small hand on his arm, and her voice when she spoke queried him as a child might. Begging for reassurance.
‘Monsieur Morel, what was Hugo doing in that hotel room? Was he having an affair?’
FOURTEEN
‘Well, was he?’ Morel waited for an answer.
‘Are you asking me for an informed opinion? Seriously?’ Lila’s laugh rippled down the phone line and Morel smiled. Thank God for Lila.
He’d had Perrin on the phone just before. The commissaire wanted to know what he could tell the minister. He was on his way to see him now. At six in the morning? Morel had asked. His fucking nephew is dead, Morel, he’d responded. Don’t tell me you’ve got nothing for me. Morel had summarized his trips to the morgue, the hotel and the Quercy home.
‘Did they find anything in his bloodstream?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like drugs, Morel. Don’t act stupid.’
‘There’s nothing so far that points to drugs. Then again, no tests were carried out. There’s no pathology service here, remember.’
‘OK, leave it at that then,’ Perrin said obscurely.
‘So is that what everyone is worried about? That the minister’s nephew might be an addict? Or a dealer, maybe? Is that it?’
‘I’ll ask the questions. Anything else?’
‘Not yet, but I’ll keep digging.’
‘Dig fast,’ Perrin said. ‘And give me an update every four hours.’
Morel had been tempted to ask, why four hours? Why not two, or six? Just because Perrin made him feel like a peevish schoolboy. But by then the commissaire had hung up.
‘If Quercy was having an affair, he wasn’t the first or the last,’ Lila said now. ‘Do you know how many men cheat on their wives?’
‘No, I don’t. Do you?’ Morel said. He knew she was provoking him, but he was happy to go along with it.
‘I don’t have a statistic for you, but it is a fact that most men can’t keep their dicks in their pants,’ his colleague said. ‘And I know I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.’
She paused, and Morel heard her sip her coffee.
‘These expat types are the worst, you know. I have a friend who worked in Senegal for a food company a few years back. She was single at the time. She said as soon as the wives headed back to France with their offspring for the summer break, the men would all head straight for the brothels. It was comical, she said, how widespread it was.’ Lila’s tone suggested she didn’t share her friend’s amusement.
It was still early in Paris. Morel had braced himself for a grumpy Lila at the other end of the line, but she seemed alert and in good spirits, which made him wonder what was going on in her life. Perhaps she and Akil had made up. Akil Abdelkader was a young police officer from Neuilly who had helped out the previous year with the team’s investigation into the deaths of three elderly widows. He and Lila had got together once the case was closed. Since then, the pair had broken up and made up several times.
‘Are you and Akil back together?’ he asked, knowing she would probably tell him to mind his own business.
‘Why the hell are you asking me that now?’ she said.
‘It’s just that you seem happy. I thought perhaps you two had made up again.’
‘Can we get back to what we were talking about?’
‘What was it again? Men who can’t keep their—’
‘Yes,’ Lila said firmly, cutting him off. ‘Like I was saying, it’s a known fact that most men will cheat on their wives, girlfriends, whatever, if they can do it without any fuss and without getting caught. It’s all vanity. The men convince themselves that these girls actually like them when they are only in it because it might take them out of their shit circumstances. One minute a guy is happily married and behaving himself, the next he’s fucking some girl half his age because she tells him he’s big and strong and she loves the colour of his eyes. It’s boring and predictable and pathetic.’
Morel laughed. But he also found his thoughts returning to Hugo Quercy. He would have to find out whether the man had been seeing someone. He made a mental note to check with Quercy’s colleagues and with his close friend – what was his name? Paul. Paul Arda. Presumably if anyone knew whether Quercy was having an affair, he would.
Given the force used, Hugo Quercy’s attacker was unlikely to be a woman. But perhaps they were looking at an angry husband or a jilted lover.
‘Predictable fools,’ Lila was saying, and Morel realized he hadn’t heard a word she’d said over the last few minutes.
‘Did you get a chance to dig into Hugo Quercy’s background yesterday?’ Morel asked.
‘Hugo Quercy,’ Lila said without missing a beat. ‘Only son of Martin and Bernadette Quercy. Martin Quercy is deceased but Bernadette is alive and well. The minister – you know this already – is her brother. They play golf together every Sunday morning. Bernadette then stays on and has lunch with the minister and his family. They spend their holidays together. Bosom buddies, in other words. So naturally he is on the warpath with this. He has told Perrin he wants updates every four hours. Pretty specific, don’t you think?’
‘I understand now.’ He told Lila about his conversation with Perrin, that there was clearly some concern about Hugo Quercy and the bad habits he might have picked up in Cambodia.
‘Drugs and prostitutes?’
‘I guess.’
‘Would that be based on simple prejudice, given what we know of the minister’s conservative views, or do they have information about him that we don’t?’
‘Going by what I’ve heard about Hugo Quercy so far, I’d say it’s not based on anything tangible. But I can’t say for certain yet.’
‘Well, Perrin’s pretty adamant about keeping the story out of the papers.’
‘If it gets into the papers, it won’t be our doing,’ Morel said. He reached for the bottle of Otard and poured himself a single shot. He looked again at the photograph of Hugo Quercy that Florence had given him. An interesting-looking man, whose strong, sensual features conveyed an appetite for life.
‘Perrin must be in a state,’ he said.
‘It’s not a pretty sight.’
Morel sighed. ‘I’m having a hard enough time getting information, let alone having to update
Perrin every five minutes.’
‘He did say something about making sure you stayed on your toes. Though “say” is perhaps the wrong word. Growled may be more appropriate. Says he’ll be monitoring your every move.’
‘That’s comforting,’ Morel said. He took a sip of cognac and rolled it around his tongue, savouring its silky texture.
‘I’m not joking. I think you need to be careful with this one,’ Lila said. ‘People are on edge here. The minister doesn’t want any negative publicity and if he gets it, he’ll look for someone to blame. You know who that will be.’
‘Perrin?’
‘No, funny man. You.’
Morel told Lila about Sarit and about the morgue, where Quercy’s body lay without any hope of ever being properly examined. He told her too about Sok Pran’s verdict, that Hugo Quercy had died of a depressed skull fracture.
‘It looks like he was slammed or thrown against that wall and the impact against the back of his skull was what killed him.’
‘So it might have been accidental? A fight that went badly wrong?’
Quercy’s pummeled face loomed before Morel.
‘There was nothing accidental about it. And I’d guess that whoever attacked him wanted to hurt him badly. At the very least. You should see the state of his face. Quercy was beaten over and over again. Whatever took place went on for a while.’
Lila kept quiet for a moment. Taking it in.
‘What is she like, Quercy’s wife?’
‘Timid. Frightened. With good reason.’
He told Lila about the dirty footprints in the house.
‘Bloody hell. Must have been a nasty shock when she got up. Those prints will be handy, though.’
‘They would have been.’ He told her about the two women cleaning up the evidence, and Lila swore.
‘I need a favour,’ Morel continued. ‘Quercy was involved in a car crash ten years ago. Apparently he was driving. The passenger was killed. I’d like to know exactly what happened and whether there were any consequences for Quercy. His wife says he swerved to avoid a dog and crashed into a tree.’
‘You don’t believe her?’
‘I’d just like to check it out.’
‘Sure. I’ll let you know what I come up with.’
They were both silent for a while, neither knowing what to add.
‘How are you anyway?’ Lila asked finally, surprising him.
He tried to think of an appropriate answer but nothing came to mind. The morning’s events were finally catching up with him. One way or another, this investigation had become his. He had gone from lending assistance to running the case. In Sarit’s eyes, at least. He could tell the Cambodian detective was eager to wash his hands of it. What had the man said? That the answers clearly lay within the foreign community. Sarit had seen how quickly the Quai d’Orsay had reacted to Quercy’s death and he had understood that the case had political overtones. Clearly he did not want this murder to reflect badly on his people or his country.
Morel took another sip of his cognac and realized he had emptied the glass already. He opened the bottle and poured another shot, feeling his body relax a little.
‘Morel? Are you still there?’
‘Yes. Sorry.’
‘Everything OK?’
This was supposed to be his long-awaited holiday, one he had badly needed. What he wanted, more than anything, was to take the first plane back to Siem Reap and check back into the room he’d stayed in. Meet up with his guide in the early morning and ride on the back of his bike to Ta Prohm to watch the sun rise over the ancient stones. Walk through the lobby and see the pretty girl with the gap-toothed smile light up when she saw him – and maybe ask her out for dinner.
Since none of these things seemed likely to happen, it was difficult to think of anything positive to say in response to Lila’s question.
‘Ask me tomorrow,’ Morel said.
He had nearly two hours to kill before Sarit picked him up. Glaister had left a message at Morel’s hotel to say the five employees who’d been on duty the night Hugo Quercy was killed would be present then.
He dozed off, and woke twenty minutes later, with a sadness that seemed to come out of nowhere. It was too cold in the room and he checked the thermostat before turning the air con off. He looked at the time. It was 3 p.m.
He needed to get out. Grey thoughts fluttered like moths inside his head. His father’s tall figure appeared before him; then there was the poor, battered body of Hugo Quercy, decomposing in the mortuary. To Morel, there was something pitiful about the fact that even the generator had failed the man. And in the midst of these shadowy thoughts, Morel managed to think of Mathilde, whom he had loved and lost. How could he still pine for her? She was obviously getting on with her life. To long for a woman he hadn’t touched or held for more than twenty years seemed masochistic.
A year ago, he had tracked Mathilde down. Watched her from a distance, because he was too cowardly to call her. If he’d hoped to rekindle their relationship, stalking her had probably not been the most tactful way of doing it. The last time they’d met she had been livid and told him in no uncertain terms to leave her alone.
He dressed hurriedly and stepped outside his hotel. He began walking down Sisowath Quay. Gradually, his worries trailed behind him and vanished in the steamy afternoon air.
He walked along the river for a while, remembering a quieter esplanade. A man rode past on a bike loaded with balloons twisted into animal shapes. There were stalls selling soft drinks and num pang, the local French baguette, a relic of colonial times. Overhead the sky was the colour of chalk. He stopped at a stall selling cheap plastic raincoats and bought one, which he put into his backpack. A grubby child clinging to his mother’s sarong surprised him with a wide grin and turned away before he could respond.
After ten minutes or so, he turned his back to the river. On a whim, he headed down Street 178 towards the National Museum. A couple of tuk-tuk drivers stationed outside the museum called out to him as he went in. One man followed him for a while, insisting that he buy a newspaper. Morel walked past a group of wretched-looking tourists standing outside the entrance in their floppy hats, shorts and sandals, looking listless as their guide gave a rambling description in broken English of the stone-carved, curvaceous goddess standing before them.
Morel paid the $3 entrance fee and on his way in dropped another $50 into the donation box.
This was one place that hadn’t changed since his last trip. For half an hour he wandered through the building, looking at things he had seen often enough for them to be familiar. The statues and carvings from the Bayon period were the ones he was most drawn to. They reminded him of the pieces his parents owned. Morel’s father had bought them in the late 1960s, when he’d made that first trip to Phnom Penh with his young bride. The first trip, and the last. Morel had often heard about it from his father. The story of how Philippe had fallen in love with Phnom Penh.
‘It’s impossible to describe what it was like to someone who never saw it before 1975,’ Morel had heard his father say many times, while Morel’s mother remained silent, keeping her memories to herself. ‘It was utterly captivating. The most delightful place I’ve ever known. Given what has happened since, I feel privileged to have known it then.’
It didn’t take long to go around the museum. After all, he already knew most of the collection intimately. Once he was done, he drifted into the sunlit courtyard. He sat down on a bench and drank from a bottle of mineral water he’d brought with him. On the opposite bench, an old man dozed with his mouth open, hands folded on his lap. A couple of Japanese women stepped past him, holding open umbrellas against the sun, and he caught the girlish pitter-patter of their voices as they went by. Emerald-green water lilies floated on the ornamental ponds. Morel watched as a dragonfly skirted across the water, reminding him of his hotel in Siem Reap. Out of habit, he pulled a square piece of paper out of his pocket and began folding it, but he couldn’t think what it was
he wanted to make. After five minutes, he folded the crumpled square into a thin cylinder shape and dropped it into the empty water bottle.
Given the upheaval Cambodia had endured in the 1970s and 1980s, through the Khmer Rouge scourge and the Vietnamese occupation, and the uncertainty that now surrounded the country’s future, this place was a wonder, Morel thought. It had been miraculously spared. And these days it managed to keep going despite the lack of government funding. The museum received some funds from private donors, and restoration work continued through the École française d’Extrême-Orient.
Morel sighed. Something nagged at him, a promise he’d made and failed to keep. Death always reminded him of unfinished business. You couldn’t keep putting off the difficult things.
How many times had he come here now since his mother’s death, without accomplishing the one thing he knew she wanted? The one thing she had requested before her death. For her son to form a relationship with her surviving brother. Not so much a request as a gentle prod, but for her to mention it at all meant that it had mattered.
Morel had tried. Or had he? The memory of that first meeting came back to him. They had both been childish. He shouldn’t have left it at that.
It’s time to try again, Morel thought.
He took one last look around, before pulling himself to his feet. The sky was turning dark. As Morel stepped across the courtyard, the first warm drops began to fall.
FIFTEEN
When Morel got back to his hotel, there was a message for him. Apparently Sarit couldn’t make it, he’d been held up. Morel took a tuk-tuk to the Paradise Hotel and met Glaister in the lobby, where the hotel manager had been waiting for him. Antoine Nizet was there too.
‘Sarit told me you were interviewing the staff,’ the police attaché explained. ‘I’d like to sit in. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Of course not.’ Morel was puzzled. Had Sarit asked Nizet to attend on his behalf? The two men seemed to know each other reasonably well and had reportedly come together on cases before, though Nizet’s role remained an observational one. Yet Morel had told Sarit he would brief him after these meetings. He took Nizet’s presence as a sign that despite his earlier behaviour, the Cambodian detective wanted to keep an eye on him and retain some control of the investigation.
Death in the Rainy Season Page 8
