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| ...no law saying you have to sell insurance... |
Louis Shalako
With the first train out leaving at five-thirty-five a.m., the
pair had settled into their seats gratefully enough, worn out with walking,
above all, not to mention all that fresh air and sunshine. Travel was
exhausting in itself. It was almost inevitable, but Hubert had tossed and
turned all the preceding night, mostly thinking about the case, or the lack of
one, but also Emanuelle, and their baby, as yet, unborn. The situation had
raised certain questions. There was no law that said he had to be a police
officer. The money was all right, but one could make more elsewhere—maybe even
a lot more, as long as a person had a few skills. No one was holding a gun to
his head, no one could make a person do this against their will, and yet the
truth was that he was fairly good at it. It was also true that no one could put
a gun to his head and make him sell insurance, either. He might even be good at
that, too, in fact he probably would be—he would also be home for dinner, on
time, each and every night.
These thoughts brought little comfort. At some point you just know you’re not going to sleep, and yet to get up and do something was clearly impossible, what with being in a hotel room, and with poor old LeBeaux sleeping in the next bed. With the whole town closed down for the night, what were you going to do?
Where were you supposed to go? The true insomniacs had wrestled with that question over the ages, to his knowledge they’d never come up with any good answer.
Sure, he could get a job somewhere else, sacrificing all the things he had striven for, and he might not even regret it for the rest of his life—
Others had done it.
That much was true, but he wondered how they felt about it on some level. There was no going back, and that much was obvious, for there wasn’t much to be done about it later. It would be one hell of a decision. He’d invested years of his life into this job. At one time it had been all he had ever really wanted. And then he had met Emanuelle, in a kind of happy accident of life. And then there was the baby—Jean if it was a boy, and Monique if it was a girl.
Anyhow.
Lebeaux had said something about coffee, and Hubert had put his feet up on the opposite bench and had promptly fallen asleep.
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| "So, you fell asleep..." |
Now, sitting in the little interview room, room four, first thing in the morning, after two and a half days of travel, it seemed he was in trouble. Deep trouble, mostly through no great fault of his own, but trouble nevertheless. He’d been mostly thinking about Delorme, or Andre Levain, but these guys were almost worse.
He was being interviewed by a Detective Fortier, and observed, by his silent partner Detective Bazin, the latter taking extensive notes as they went along.
“So. You say you fell asleep. You woke up, more than once, noting LeBeaux’s absence, and yet you did nothing about it?”
“Ah. I didn’t think too much about it. The first time, I didn’t even look at my watch. I just went back to sleep, thinking he was in the washroom or somewhere. It’s a long trip and I guess I thought he was up, maybe just stretching his legs.” On the way down, both of them, had, at times, taken a walk through the train, which had quickly worn out any charm it might have had.
It was better than just sitting there, perched on a hard wooden bench for hours and days at a time.
“I guess, if you manage to strike up some kind of a decent conversation, you could just drop into the next seat and pass the time with a perfect stranger or two. LeBeaux was sociable enough. I suppose I just didn’t worry too much about it.”
It was a very long journey and they’d had a lot of time to kill along the way, and only so many ways to do it.
During the innumerable stops, they could at least hop out and try the food stalls, new-fangled vending machines, or even go half a block up the road if the stop was long enough. The conductor would tell them roughly how long they had, and the train would whistle when they were about ready. All of those milk cans took time—far more than a half a sack of mail, a joke which had seemed funny enough at the time, although not so much right now. Fuck, to see them detach the caboose, tack on a couple of box cars to the rear of the train, throw up a ramp and then watch a fucking shepherd hustling forty or fifty sheep in there was something else. Reattach the braking-car, the caboose, and off you went, the problem was that it all took a hell of a lot of time.
“So, you figure he got out at the first stop.”
“He must have. He was on the train leaving the station. By this time we were more or less up to speed. We were just pulling into the second, or possibly the third stop—there’s a couple of stops pretty close together along there. I was still groggy from the nap. And that’s when I began to wonder just where in the hell he was. I don’t know how badly anyone would want to just jump off at any speed. You would need a damned good reason. Not unless they were suicidal. I searched that train, up and down, more than once. He sure as hell wasn’t on it. And of course, by this time, we were moving again. There’s nowhere to hide, that’s for sure. It may have been a mistake to leave him with a good chunk of the cash, but I had figured we might have to separate, down there in Luchon, in order to pursue our inquiries…” With the pair of them together, heading back the same way, there had been no real reason to ask for it back.
“Did you look in the women’s restrooms?”
“Er, no.” He did not say of course not.
There was no such thing in this present situation. The truth was, he probably should have, although it might have taken a bit of nerve, or maybe some help from the conductor. The problem was that he was confused, hit by a situation he did not clearly understand.
As for the money, they would render accounts, hand over their receipts, so to speak, back in Paris.
“Had he been behaving strangely? Was he showing any signs of stress?”
“Not so as you would notice…” Hubert uttered a deep sigh. “Fuck, no. It had to be the girl. I mean, he left his suitcase and everything. Near as I can make out, he waited for me to fall asleep. If I had been awake at the next station, well. He could have waited another hour, half-hour or whatever, and gotten out at any stop along the way. He could buy a ticket, take a taxi, or rent a car. He could go anywhere. But seriously, he was totally enamoured of that girl. It was like he wouldn’t stop talking about her. I should have caught on, really—our last night there, I was in the shower. When I came out, he was gone, out for a walk or so he said. I thought nothing of it. Only after he was gone…it was only then, when I realized he might have simply gone looking. Or even just asking around, someone around there would have to know about the, uh, girl. He didn’t even know her name, but it’s a small place.”
As for the girl, unforgettable. Half the town, the male half anyways, anyone who had gone through puberty and wasn’t totally fading into senility, would know that girl. It was a deduction, but a logical one.
He’d had two whole days to think about the pickle he was in. Unfortunately, there weren’t too many good answers.
“And you say nobody on the train seemed to recall seeing him go, is that correct? How many people did you speak to?”
“I spoke to the conductor, I spoke to the porter in charge of the baggage car, there’s mail and light freight in there too. The people in the so-called dining car, and at least a dozen civilians. That is to say, anyone at all that would respond. The civvies just shrugged, mostly. Raised their eyebrows and shook their heads. I’m a perfect stranger, asking a lot of crazy questions sort of thing. I went up and down that train, quite frankly, in something of a state, as I just didn’t know where he might have gotten off to…”
And, at every little station, every little stop, a few people got off, and a few more people got on, to the extent that it quickly became a whole new crowd of strangers, and none of them could have possibly known anything.
It was a sick kind of feeling in the guts.
The restrooms, men’s and women’s were right there at the end of the car, then there were the doors between carriages, and then, in between the carriages, the steps down, right and left. Whether the train was moving or at rest, he could have been gone in ten seconds, fifteen at the most. The luggage would have slowed LeBeaux down, perhaps that was it.
All of this was in his initial, written report and yet they kept coming back to it. The fact that he understood the technique and had used it often enough himself, wasn’t of much comfort. No, it was poor old Éliott LeBeaux that he didn’t understand.
As for Hubert, he could hardly fault himself, but they might think otherwise and probably would.
The actual investigation wasn’t so much their concern, they were exclusively concerned with the disappearance of LeBeaux. Police officer disappears on duty, and you’re the guy standing right next to him. Rubbing elbows with the man one minute, and now he’s gone. It was a very simple equation. It wasn’t personal, which was what they always said. When he got back to the room, it would be a different story, and a different kind of ordeal, and he had that much to look forward to.
“Okay, so how much money do you figure he had on him?”
“Oh, God. Close to a thousand at least—” Whether it was impulsive, or planned, it would be enough to get him quite a ways, yet he was almost bound to get caught. “We didn’t know what we might run into, or how long we might be down there.”
He would be caught, one way or another. Which was small comfort for Hubert. He had signed for the money as senior man.
“So, just a few more questions. Um, what sort of things did you guys talk about? In your off moments. Anything in particular strike you, after the fact so to speak?”
This guy had patience, and the other one had been dead silent, just listening, eyes non-committal, since the introductions. That one just sat there, legs crossed, hands in his lap, with a pencil and a notepad—and just listened.
For a moment, they exchanged a long glance.
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| "It had to be the girl." |
“We’re not judging you—” It was only a matter of time, sure as hell, and someone would say it.
“No. Not really. We talked about the investigation. We talked about the job, in a more general sense. It’s a unique way of life as we all know. We talked about our friends and co-workers. My wife, his mother, my mother, his brothers and sisters, and all of that sort of thing. He still lives at home, and with the old man sick, he’s paying all the bills. That sort of thing, in fact he has to come back—sometime, one must presume. He seemed to be a pretty responsible person…otherwise, how did he ever make detective.” Hubert trailed off, knowing that shifting blame wasn’t much of an option for the senior man. “He really didn’t seem the type to just abandon the whole effing family like that…”
He blew out some air.
“Our most interesting conversation, at least from my point of view, was when we discussed the role of social conditions in crime. It’s not like we drew any Earth-shattering conclusions, but he is definitely intelligent. He has a sense of humour, which is helpful in this business.” He wasn’t going for irony, but they were asking for everything he had. “Ah, but mostly. He talked about the girl. Holy, unbelievable. But it really was like that.”
He felt somehow responsible, even though he knew he wasn’t, not
really—although the whole thing had been his idea, he had no control over what
other people said and did.
He kept that part to himself. It would just sound like belly-aching.
“All right, Detective Hubert. File your reports and thank you for speaking to us.” Bazin looked up from his notes. “Okay, we’ll get this typed up and you will have the opportunity to go over it. Ah, you can sign it later. And, ah, you will be provided a copy of the transcript for your own files.” A written record, of the questions asked and the answers given, and nothing more.
Something for the files.
Nothing personal.
“Thank you.”
The interview was over, and Hubert was covered in a cold sweat and he wondered if it was even possible to come back from something like this—to lose a partner wasn’t exactly unheard-of. People got hit by vehicles, fell down the stairs, got trapped in burning buildings in their heroics, or got shot or stabbed or knocked on the head from time to time, but this one was definitely different.
People don’t just disappear.
“I’ve been wondering about his mental health.” Hubert wasn’t quite ready to go, not just yet.
“Thank you, Detective Hubert, you may return to your duties now.” And that was it—these guys, Internal Investigations, weren’t going to tell him anything, anything at all and that was pretty plain.
There was nothing to do about it, except, to hope, to marvel, and to wonder.
He could say a little prayer, maybe—
That always helped.
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