Merle: A French murder mystery (A Jacques Forêt Mystery Book 2)

by Angela Wren

  Jacques ran his hands through his hair. “Because I don’t want to.” He began to fiddle with the fob hanging from the ignition key.

  “Why?”

  “For a long time, I thought she was the right person for me. But it didn’t work out and I thought it was my fault.”

  “It’s never usually just one person’s fault.”

  “I’d been promoted and was anxious to impress my new team and my new boss. I was spending a lot of time working late at the office, and whenever an undercover operation came across my desk I took it and would then disappear for days and weeks at a time. I came back to my apartment one day after three weeks away on a case and she’d gone. She’d taken everything. Her clothes, CDs, everything. The place had been cleaned and it was tidy. So tidy, it looked like the estate agent’s carefully dressed property to show to prospective buyers. It was almost as though she had never ever been there.”

  “Didn’t she at least leave a note?”

  “No. Nothing. Not even a forgotten piece of mail in the bottom of a drawer. I’d been spending too much time at work, and I hadn’t paid her enough attention. I won’t make that mistake again,” he said as he took Beth’s hand in his.

  Beth frowned. “What did you do?”

  “After I realised that she had gone, I tried to get in touch with her to ask her why. I kept leaving messages for her on her own phone and on her business number. I went to her office several times to try and catch her after work but she always managed to avoid me, somehow. Then, about three weeks later, she turned up at my place.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose with forefinger and thumb and winced at the pain. “She came back to tell me that she had been seeing another man for over six months. I knew something had changed, but I thought it was just our relationship beginning to mature. I had no idea she’d met someone else. When I thought about it later I realised that she really didn’t have to tell me that. She could have just said she’d had enough and left it at that. But she didn’t. She made a point of telling me, and letting me know who he was.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “I’d met him a couple of times at events that her company had hosted. He was another consultant that she came across regularly at business meetings, so I’d heard her talk about him quite a lot.”

  “Is that who she’s meeting today?”

  “The man who went into the building after her? I didn’t see him.”

  Beth flicked forwards through the shots until she found the ones she wanted and showed them to Jacques.

  “No, that’s not him. That’s Roger Baudin.”

  Beth looked over towards the apartment block in time to watch Madeleine and Roger leave, and picked up her camera. “Isn’t that them?” She took a series of shots as they both returned to their cars and drove off in different directions. “Who do we follow now?”

  “No-one,” he said starting the car and shifting it into first. He shot her a sideways glance and smiled. “We go back to Messandrierre where I can focus all of my attention on you!”

  toussaint – all saints’ day, sunday, november 1st, 12.00

  The chill November air forced Jacques to pull up his coat collar as they crossed the car park to Pelletier’s vehicle.

  “So, you’ve known Aimée as a colleague for only a short time, but what can you tell me about her as a person? He said before he unlocked the car and got in.

  Jacques took his place in the passenger seat. “As for Aimée as a person… She seemed quiet, intelligent and efficient to me. But…” He thought for a moment.

  “Just say it, Jacques. We don’t need to dance around each other.” Pelletier reversed out of his parking spot and headed for the main road.

  Despite the encouragement, Jacques detected an edge in Pelletier’s voice and he took a few seconds to frame what he wanted to say.

  “The dynamics between the team members seemed to me to be strained in some way. But I…I can’t be precise about what the issues are. I haven’t been included in all of their meetings, so there may be other pressures that I’m not aware of.”

  Pelletier checked his mirror before taking a right. “Pressures in relation to the project they were working on or personal pressures within the team?”

  Reluctant to commit himself, but recognising that he would have to make a choice, he took a breath. “I’m not certain about this, but I think there could have been some personal pressure being exerted.”

  “By whom?”

  It was a question of what to say next and he took a moment to decide. “By the team manager, I think. I know…knew Madeleine Cloutier on a personal level in Paris. It didn’t end well and I don’t want to discuss the details. But she can be very manipulative. She is very adept at playing people off against each other.” He sighed and shook his head. “There was a time when I thought that she was capable of anything. But that was a long time ago and…now I see that she is determined and still as ruthlessly single-minded as she ever was. She will do her job and do it very well, but it will be at the cost of any other people that she thinks will get in her way. What I think I may be seeing in her team is the result of her manipulating some individuals in order to get them to comply with her particular working methods and principles, which are not the same people management principles as my own. What I think I have seen is internal personal pressure being applied to certain team members. But Madeleine will have someone else she is using working in the background. I have some evidence of who that might be but I’m not absolutely certain yet, nor am I totally sure about how they fit in.”

  Pelletier nodded. “Someone for us to watch and interview perhaps?”

  Jacques shrugged. “I don’t know. I certainly don’t think she’s capable of murder, but I think it is entirely possible…that she could drive someone to perhaps…” He fell silent as his mind went back over the pathologist’s report and recalled the single most important sentence that he had voiced only a couple of hours earlier. Death by exsanguination from a wound to the left wrist.

  “Aimée was left-handed,” he said. “It’s definitely murder, because Aimée was left-handed.” In his mind’s eye, he was back in the room at Vaux, watching her as she wrote a short paragraph, signed it and passed it across to him to add to his evidence. “She was left-handed.”

  Eyebrows drawn into a tight frown, Pelletier parked up in silence. They both remained silent as they took a familiar route through to the morgue and the viewing room. The attendant carefully folded back the cover to reveal the face of the victim.

  “That’s not Aimée. It’s Hélène Hardi,” said Jacques.

  In Pelletier’s office, Jacques unpacked his laptop and set up the surveillance camera footage for the Magistrate to see. He set the video for Monday October 19th running and they watched in silence

  “Go back to about 18.50,” he said. “I want to hear that phrase she used again.”

  Jacques rewound the video and set it playing again. The Magistrate listened intently and then wrote down the phrase he was searching for. “Take it back once more, please.” This time he let the section play through to its conclusion. “There’s something you need to see.”

  Pelletier pulled out the evidence bag from his desk drawer that contained the piece of paper that had been found at the scene of the crime and showed it to Jacques.

  “I know what you are doing,” he read out loud. “Any fingerprints?”

  Pelletier shook his head. “Could Aimée have sent that to Hélène, do you think?”

  Jacques looked at the note again. “But why would she do that? She has already played her hand as you’ve just heard.”

  “Yes, but in the conversation on the video Aimée is saying that she knows that Hélène is trying to undermine her. What if Aimée knows something else?”

  “If she did she never mentioned it to me.” He thought back over the other conversations he’d had with her. “She told me about how she had been informed by Serge, the Head of Security, about the conversation between Mad
eleine and Hélène about her presentation style. Apparently, Madeleine demanded a meeting with her to discuss training needs. Aimée knew her qualifications were up to date, that she had passed her last consultancy exams with an excellent mark, coming second in her group of ten. She was surprised when Madeleine told her that there had been some comment from a couple of the other senior managers about her nervousness in handling presentations to the management board. At first, she was alarmed but then, as the conversation went on she realised that it was another manoeuvre by Madeleine and she just played along to start with. But when Aimée asked who had made the comments and why, Madeleine told her it didn’t really matter, and that she needed to get some training to help her cope better.”

  “And what was Aimée’s response to that?”

  “She said that she would find out what worked best for her and deal with it. But the insidious undermining of Aimée has been going on for months from what she’s told me… But there might be something else. The expenses – most of Madeleine’s team are misappropriating company funds with Aimée being the exception. What if the letter was sent by Hélène to Aimée because she is not following suit and therefore drawing attention to the expenses issue?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Aimée isn’t the only one to receive taunting letters.” Jacques retrieved his own correspondence and placed them on the desk.

  Pelletier frowned and looked at the three letters together. “It looks to me as though they have all been created by the same person on the same equipment.” Pelletier dropped each one in to an evidence bag and labelled them. “How did these come to you?”

  “In the internal mail at Vaux. The third part of the puzzle is that a property that Beth was planning on renting was involved in a fire in the early hours of Thursday morning. I saw it as the action that was threatened in that second note.”

  “You’d better tell me everything else that you know.”

  “The cyber-attack at Vaux was from the inside. Philippe Chauvin has confirmed that the spurious code found on the network was introduced through one of the PCs in the reception area. He confirmed that by phone yesterday evening. I have yet to interview Madeleine Cloutier and Roger Baudin about their meeting in Le Puy on Friday. Considering the direction they each took after their meeting, I would have expected Madeleine to come back to Mende and Roger to go to his home address in St Julien. Yesterday, I began checking the occupants and owners of the sixth-floor addresses of the apartment block they visited and as yet have found no link to Vaux. The trace on the mobile number that I asked for still isn’t back, and perhaps we should expedite that. Eloise Lapointe has some gaps in her personal history that I still need to explore but Madame Vaux has given me a lead and I need to follow up on that. I haven’t yet found the letters relating to the unknown child and I need to go through the old documents from Vaux.”

  “We’ll work together on this, Jacques, from now on.”

  “There’s some more video footage that you need to see,” said Jacques as he clicked the fast forward button and took the footage to Thursday October 29th.

  surveillance camera footage

  Madeleine paces backwards and forwards and continues to do so for two minutes and forty seconds. She stops as the grill begins to move.

  29/10/2009 10.22.02

  “You’ve kept me waiting.” She glowers, face full to camera, as Hélène comes partially into view. “How dare you keep me waiting! When I tell you I want to see you I expect you to be here immediately.”

  29/10/2009 10.22.17

  Hélène moves out of view. “I got here as soon as I could.”

  “Not soon enough. I’m waiting for an explanation.”

  29/10/2009 10.22.31

  “I’ve checked and double checked everything on the F drive. The Communications Strategy is not signed off, Madeleine. It’s not.”

  29/10/2009 10.22.48

  “I don’t know how Aimée can report to the board that it is. I’ve done everything you told me to do.”

  29/10/2009 10.23.06

  “So how has this happened?”

  There is silence for twenty-six seconds.

  29/10/2009 10.23.39

  “I don’t know, Madeleine. I’ve done everything we agreed. I know she’s been spending a lot of time talking to Forêt. I can only guess that he’s been helping her.”

  29/10/2009 10.23.55

  “Have you spoken to her about the chats with Forêt and found out what they’ve been discussing?”

  29/10/2009 10.24.17

  “I’ve tried to get her to talk to me but she’s been avoiding me, deliberately, I think.”

  29/10/2009 10.24.29

  “Then you’d better do something about it. Go and see her tonight or first thing tomorrow morning. I don’t care. I want her gone.”

  29/10/2009 10.24.42

  “And what if she won’t leave?”

  “Sort it! I’ve been working on this for months and I’m not about to give up just because you can’t do as you’re told.”

  29/10/2009 10.25.03

  “I told you Aimée had to go. I told you she was too clever to have on the team. I explained to you why she would be our greatest threat.”

  29/10/2009 10.25.17

  “And look what’s happened? I’m just about to make the final move and we’ve got Jacques examining everything we do. I told you to get rid of her months ago!”

  29/10/2009 10.25.36

  “But you can’t even get that right, Hélène, can you? I sometimes wonder why I ever bothered to get you out of that first mess you got yourself into.”

  29/10/2009 10.25.48

  Hélène moves into view. “Madeleine, we can still—”

  “Just get out of my sight! I’ll deal with this myself.” Madeleine moves out of camera but does not go back into the building.

  29/10/2009 10.26.07

  monday, november 2nd

  Pelletier and Jacques were seated and waiting in Madeleine’s office when she arrived. She barely acknowledged Jacques and, taking her seat behind her desk, she focussed her attention on the Magistrate.

  “We have some upsetting news for you, Madame Cloutier. I’m sorry to have to tell you that one of your staff, Hélène Hardi, has died.”

  Madeleine remained composed and stared straight ahead for a few moments. She turned her cold hard stare to the Magistrate. “How did this happen?”

  “According to the pathologist’s report, she was drugged with a concoction of sleeping pills and wine and then her left wrist was cut open.”

  “I see.” Madeleine’s face was calm and unreadable. “And when did this happen?”

  “On Friday afternoon. Can I ask you were you were on that day, Madame?”

  “I have a regular meeting with a client in Rodez. I left here at about eleven, and after my meeting I came back to Mende.”

  Pelletier glanced at Jacques.

  “That’s not quite true, is it, Madeleine?” Jacques took out his notebook. “At about 11.15 on Friday, you left the underground car park of Vaux Consulting and you drove to Le Puy-en-Velay where, at about 12.45, you met with Roger Baudin in this apartment block.” He presented a copy of one of the shoots that Beth had taken. “That is you and Roger leaving at about two in the afternoon, isn’t it?”

  “And what has that got to do with you?” She scraped her hand through her hair and stared at the photograph.

  “I also have CCTV footage of you and Hélène arguing that morning. In that conversation, you threaten another colleague, Aimée Moreau, and you encourage Hélène to go and see her that afternoon. Why did you do that, Madeleine?” Jacques waited for her response.

  Pelletier let the silence drift for a moment before prompting her. “If you won’t tell us about that then perhaps you can tell us what your meeting in Le Puy was about instead?”

  Madeleine remained silent.

  “Madeleine, I saw you leave Le Puy at about two,” said Jacques, “and the direction you took would suggest that you
returned to Mende. You would have been back here at about three-fifteen, three-thirty at the latest. Where did you go?”

  “I went to my own apartment.”

  “And did you remain there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure about that? In the same piece of CCTV footage that I’ve already mentioned, you tell Hélène that you are going to ‘deal with this’ yourself. What did you mean by that, Madeleine?”

  “As you know, Jacques, I’ve been having some management issues with Aimée that I’ve had to resolve. She just isn’t handling the work very well and I think what she really needs is to be regraded to a lower level so that she can gain more experience.”

  “That’s an interesting re-interpretation of what has been happening, Madeleine,” said Jacques. “From what I’ve seen and heard what you’ve actually been doing is intimidating a junior colleague.”

  “I sometimes have to take a hard line with staff in order to get the job done in the right way, Jacques. You know that as well as I do.”

  Jacques glanced at Pelletier.

  “And when did you last see Hélène?”

  “It was on Friday morning, Magistrate Pelletier.”

  “And you are certain of that?”

  Madeleine nodded.

  “Alright we’ll leave it at that for the moment. I may need to talk to you again.”

  As they walked across the road to Jacques’ building, Pelletier’s phone rang and he took the call. When he hung up, he turned to Jacques, his face grim.

  “There’s another body – female – found by a dog-walker down by the river. You go and talk to Roger Baudin, and I’ll deal with this and catch up with you later.”

  “Thanks for giving up your time, Roger. I need to talk to you about an incident that occurred on Friday.”

  Roger nodded his agreement and relaxed back in his chair. “Anything I can do to help, Jacques, as you know.”