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| As if life wasn't depressing enough. |
Louis Shalako
Gilles put the phone down, after giving instructions
to Doctor Poirier. The lady would be allowed to examine the body for
birthmarks, although she said she couldn’t recall anything in particular—a mole
on a shoulder, a small scar on the shin or a knee perhaps, (and half the young
men in the world had such scars), and so, even if it was there, it could hardly
be conclusive. Poirier would keep the face and hands bagged and covered, and
sometimes that was the best that could be done, and horrifying enough under the
circumstances. She’d said the young man hadn’t been particularly hairy.
Unfortunately, that lined right up with what the
Doctor was saying, and the evidence of their own eyes. Again, totally
inconclusive. It was also the sort of thing that would not be in the paper, for
what that was worth.
Doubts, doubts…always there were doubts. Without
fingerprints, there wasn’t much point in checking police records or for
military service. The name might be
there…that name had to match up with a body,
therefore fingerprints or a mug-shot were essential. It was low-priority work,
and yet someone had to make the phone
call…jot that down on the list.
And, as long as the lady was in a car headed to the
morgue, Detective Hubert could nip around to her place and just see if that
nasty old key fit in the front door-lock…according to her, this was Paul’s
habitual mode of entry. No sneaking around back doors for them, apparently.
Ah, but Paul, rather their victim, had only had one
key—there was her place and then that loft in Montmartre. It was truly
unfortunate, but she’d only been there once and couldn’t really remember much.
Certainly not the address, although it was just off of a main street. They’d
gone there after a night on the town, and they’d both been quite tipsy. He
didn’t inquire any further, the deepening colour on her cheeks had been enough.
Such memories might help to keep her warm at night in her old age—another shitty little thought, but it
was there nevertheless.
He looked inquiringly at Andre, just coming in the
door with a certain look on his face. He’d been called out on some mysterious
errand…
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| Looks like we got us another one... |
The younger man hung up his coat.
“Okay, boss. It looks like we got ourselves another
one—”
“Oh, really.”
Andre looked smug.
“Oh, yes, sir. Indeed we do.”
***
“Tell me more—”
“The only major wrinkle here is the lack of a weapon.
It’s early yet, but the body was found Thursday morning. Time of death appears
to be ten to fourteen hours previously. It was a chilly night, and wet, the low
body weight, all of that affects rigour
mortis. Face obliterated. Fingers and thumbs gone. Scene similar to our
first victim. An alley, not much frequented except by the householders along
the way. The trash disposal people, the odd wino, a homeless person maybe.
Killed or dumped in the night, although the whole place is such a shambles it’s
hard to read the blood spatters.”
Andre quickly gave his impressions, barely consulting
his notes, which to be fair would be competent enough, and admissible as
evidence in a court of law.
“Nice clothes, hair and teeth. Good shoes, not quite
as nice as the last ones. Again, robbery does not seem to be a motive—” The
victim had some cash on him, again no identification, rather expected
considering the attempt (or presumed attempt) to make an ID difficult if not
impossible.
All of those stab wounds—conforming, at first glance,
to their previous victim.
“Go on.”
There was the smell of alcohol, enough that it would
probably show up in autopsy results.
There was the one poker chip, albeit a big
one, five hundred francs, in the jacket pocket. It was either winnings, not
even cashed in at the end of a night, or one hell of a big tip—
This one had been handled by a thousand people, which
added up to about a million smudges.
That was the hell of such objects.
“Let’s have a look.” Gilles studied it through a
magnifying glass.
Totally generic. One could buy them in almost any toy
or department store in the city.
Compression-molded of clay and other materials,
shellac for example, with their colourful inlays—the latest technology, light,
colourful and almost indestructible according to the makers…Andre uttered a
deep sigh.
No one was listening. It was like he was the only one
really there.
“Hubert says the key didn’t fit. I guess you knew
that—”
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| Maintenon: It's all bullshit. |
Andre shook his head. It was like he just wasn’t
getting through, sometimes.
“Madame made no comment on the circumcision…”
He sighed.
“Well, I mean, the question is motive. Why, Gilles,
why?”
Maintenon nodded, eyes on the ceiling where the dead
flies and cobwebs still held their sway after all of these uneasy years...a cob
was a British spider, as someone had once put it.
He was still clutching the poker chip.
“Well, Andre. I should think that would be obvious.”
The next words came in what was a bit of a bombshell. “I mean—well. It’s all bullshit, of course.”
***
And, of course,
there had to be another woman—another bereaved—another lover.
She was waiting in the wings, a little less than
forty-eight hours after filing her complaint.
“And the lady?”
“Mademoiselle Bernier.” She was waiting in one of
their interview rooms.
“All right.” With a sigh, Gilles stubbed out his
cigarette and heaved himself to his feet.
It was very quiet in the interview rooms, with barely
a hum coming through walls, the occasional muffled voice in the hallway
outside.
Maxine Bernier was different in some ways.
Mid-fifties. Owned the home she lived in, tall, narrow and jammed in between
all the others, but five floors including an unused loft. Never married. A
sister in Orleans, a brother in the Levant, where he was said to be doing very
well.
Prosperous enough, the clothes were much more sedate,
perhaps that was the wrong word.
The clothes were of good quality but sexless.
This one would be a church-goer…a real do-gooder, unless he missed his guess.
She sat there, bolt upright on the hard wooden chair,
hands clasped in her lap, feet flat in the low heels, on the floor, knees
tightly together.
A good girl,
in other words, with her education by nuns and staid, upright older virgins
written all over her.
This one was already dressed for mourning, as if life
wasn’t already depressing enough.
“So. Mademoiselle. What is this all about?”
In a soft yet precise voice, barely able to look him
in the eye, she began.
“Jean…Jean didn’t come home at his usual time, and at
first I thought he’d just missed the bus and that he’d be home soon enough.”
“I see.”
She nodded.
“Of course, after a time, it was getting late—and I
just went to bed.”
“And he lives with you?”
“Er—yes. That is, he rents the flat above, but of
course, he was—he is such a nice young man, and in some respects, he is almost
a member of the family.” A family, which, upon inspection, would turn out to be
a live-in maid, a cat or two, or three, and a bunch of faded pictures on the
mantel-piece.
“Go on.”
She was blushing, but managed to look Gilles in the
eye before quickly darting away again.
“Quite frankly, he has never stayed away, I mean
overnight before. I’m worried that something terrible must have happened to
him.”
“And what did Jean, er, do for a living? What is his
last name, if you don’t mind?” The pen hovered over the page.
“Cariveau. Jean Cariveau. He is a machinist.” She
mentioned the name of a company.
He’d never heard of it, but she gave him an
address—the street name, at the very least, and police would undoubtedly check
it out. Cariveau would have to take a bus, a tram, and the Metro to get all the
way over there, to the industrial southeastern quarter, but it was a skilled
profession.
For such a young member of the working class, he’d be
making real money, hand over fist, as she put it. It was worth an hour and a
half or more of travel per day. His father, now deceased, had been a
dock-worker along the quays, and his mother a seamstress. The mother,
apparently, had liked books, that love of learning rubbing off on the son. He
had two younger sisters, and a brother who lived in Marseille. They had been
very proud of him, but their flat was small and so, looking to get out on his
own, he’d answered an advertisement of Mademoiselle Bernier’s.
“It’s not that I really needed the money. But it
seemed a shame, just to leave a perfectly good flat empty, and of course people
are flocking to the city these days.” There was a small storefront on the
street level, a man and his wife, green-grocers for the last twenty-four years,
according to her.
The rent was helpful.
“Ah. I see. Thank you. Does he go out often?”
“Oh, no. Not really, although he does have a social
life.” Many of his evenings, according to her, were spent in her flat, which
was much bigger and nicer than his. “He enjoyed playing the piano, and of
course he didn’t have one of his own.”
A musical connection, thin though it was. Gilles had a
piano—Ann had wanted one, and so he’d reluctantly gone shopping with her. Anne
had taken lessons as a girl. As it turned out, Gilles was the one who had taken
some small interest, perhaps even exhibiting some talent.
“..and of course it’s so very difficult, cooking for
one I mean.”
He still had it. It was still there, in the back room,
and a place where he hardly ever went, except to look for the cat, or to open a
window to catch a cross-breeze on the warmest summer nights.
The place was so quiet these days, to tinkle a few
keys seemed a shameful disruption, and so he never did it anymore…the notion
that half the street might hear him, had been more than enough to stop the
impulse dead in its tracks.
“Was he good-looking? Or non-descript, perhaps?”
An innocent enough question, but the sudden blush said
much.
“Yes. Yes, I suppose so—he was a, ah, very personable
young man.”
“I see. So, he had working clothes, and street
clothes?”
“Yes, of course.” She hesitated. “He’d just taken out
life insurance.”
“What?” What?
Heavy thumps from the hallway had half-drowned the lady out.
Apparently, someone was getting a new desk…something big and heavy.
“He’d just taken out life insurance. Oh, please don’t
think what you are thinking—but, he was a very thoughtful young man. He’d heard
someone, some speaker, on the subject. It might have been some magazine
article. Anyhow, it was a good deal, according to him, and yet, he had to have
some kind of beneficiary.”
“And so, he made you his beneficiary?”
“Er, yes, Inspector.” Shame flooded her cheeks. “I
didn’t know what to think, but his poor mother—perhaps he knew something I
didn’t, perhaps she was already provided for.”
“It’s all right, Madame. I understand.”
She put her head down and cried.
All one could do sometimes, was to wait them out.
END
Thanks for reading.
Images. The Internet(s)
Louis has all kinds of books and stories here on
Smashwords, many of them free. Or at least pretty cheap.
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