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| Not too sure about the present government, either. |
Louis Shalako
It was a Monday morning, and most of them were there. Part of the routine was a weekly briefing, this one no more important than any other, past or future tense…the air was already thick with smoke and steam and a bit of profanity, muttered under the breath as the point of someone’s pencil broke off.
They were ready now.
“Okay. We have a list of names. We need to identify them, locate them, and fast. An obvious association, is that this is a list of victims. An assumption. Yet there they are, three crossed off the list—that’s interesting, with Monsieur Saulnier making his, ah, reappearance. An obvious place to start is the Socialist party. They may be killing each other, for reasons unknown. Luckily, we have a rather large pile of documents. That also includes certain other political parties as well, but by no means all of them.” For the time being, they would focus on major opposition parties and leave the ruling government party out of it. “If they’re party members, they should be on that list.”
The opposition parties, had varying numbers of seats in the Chamber, a smattering here and there, some of them of only nominal importance. Yet they all added up to the will of the people—or something like that. And all of them put together, still in the minority, at least for the time being.
The government already had power, for long or short, for better or for worse. The other ones were battling it out amongst themselves for the hearts and minds of the undecided voters, was how he put it.
Not to say that their own, current government was squeaky clean, for he rather doubted it.
Doodling focuses the mind.
“Also. We need to keep an eye on Monsieur Saulnier, and we might want to take another hard look at the ladies again. We will need more manpower. We need to confirm, one way or another, whether Monsieur Jean Cariveau actually did get on a boat and head for Venezuela or whatever. We haven’t heard back from passport control…it’s possible he has simply gone to ground in Marseilles. It is also possible that this was merely a ringer, someone who fit the description and could use a passport or other documents, registering in a hotel for example. Oh—and then check out again before we get there. Then we will never know, will we. Maybe all they wanted to do was to show themselves to our friend the railway clerk, right? Knowing he was a loyal party member, knowing that he would read the papers as it were. Thereby, leading us on a merry chase, at the end of which we end up with a puff of smoke, er, lady and gentlemen.” There were a couple of quick grins as he flipped a page. “So far. Regarding victims with the same modus. So far, we have nothing back from the rest of France and any overseas dependencies that might have seen the bulletin.”
More page flips…
“Ahem. What about a poker chip worth five hundred francs? In some dead person’s pocket. What is the significance. What if anything does it mean. What about a dead man with seven hundred francs in his pocket. If nothing else, we have to consider that our killer has a budget, and one outside of the normal realm.” As such things went. “They may simply be plants, meant to throw us off the track, muddle our thinking, and present us with so much more bullshit.”
Police could run their legs off and get nowhere, with enough clues strewn about. Insofar as that went, it was clean money, the serial numbers coming back as fairly new bills, currently in circulation. And that was pretty much it.
Flipping through pages, he had another thought. Back to the ladies again.
“Cariveau has family down there, or so we are told. We’ll have to speak with the police down there, and see if they can have a look for him.” It was surprising just how often someone on the run would head straight for home and family.
A half a dozen pairs of eyes were on him, perhaps biting their lip, eyes cocked off to one side, sometimes faces down, as if unable to tear their attention away from their own documents, perhaps it was more charitable to say that they were making notes…hopefully. Doodling, perhaps—
It helped to focus the mind, sometimes. Gilles usually stood when briefing the troops, for it did help with the focus, and also perhaps, it was a small assertion of authority.
He also had a list.
LeBref: I just broke my pencil...
There was more, always more. D’Aubreuil, for example, who had merely disappeared, but he also fit a common description, and then there was the question of party members who fit the description but weren’t dead yet, so to speak—
He would be leaving them busy enough with all of that, and yet each and every one of them had their own investigations. They all had their own backlog, their caseload, all of those dead files that would stay dead, no matter how hopefully they sat in that one special pile on a corner of a desk or on the end of a shelf in a filing cabinet. He was asking a lot of them.
Poor old Gilles had his own pile as well, and then there was the administrative side of running any kind of unit. The buck stopped with him, as the Yanks said.
Fuck, someone had to read the time-sheets. Someone had to sign off, to take responsibility, and account for all hours, all movements and expenses of an extraordinary nature…someone would have to justify all the overtime, his instinct was telling him.
Fucking instincts…
He sighed, nodded, and shut up.
It was time to sit down.
With hours in court looming ahead, all Gilles could do was to send the original note down to the lab. The technical people would look for fingerprints, not much hope there after his own handling. One had to admit—but any idiot could have used gloves to write it, in fact his putative German had been wearing thin knit gloves. Just one more clue he had missed. The day had been cool enough, November being what it was, but even so. Gilles hadn’t even bothered bringing a pair with him, and few at the market had seemed to be wearing gloves. The real exceptions were the stall holders. What with setting up their stall, filling it with produce and then opening up before dawn, with the prospect of hanging on in the great outdoors, rain or shine, until noon, (and then having to pack it all up again), they were more prone to gloves, hats, scarves, perhaps even woolly socks. Here he was, relying on memory. Not good, when you got right down to it.
He’d been walking around in a daze, or so it seemed to him this morning.
It struck him that it was fortuitous—for Von Schleischer to show up just then. They might have been watching him for some time, and that was definitely food for thought. They knew his habits…
For the moment, he kept the thought to himself. At this point in time, it put too much spin on the case.
Merde.
Fascinating.
The lab would look for a watermark or other identifying qualities of the paper. Their resident handwriting analysis expert would take a look and perhaps be able to give them some idea of the personality of their writer.
Hopefully, this would also give them a glimpse into the mind and character of their killer, but it was by no means so obvious.
He was now inclining to the possibility of more than one hand involved, with a glance at the clock…it was time to get moving.
What with the drugging, killing, the transportation and dumping of the body, and then there was the selection process—someone had to gather the information in the first place. It was just one hell of a lot to attribute to one person.
Then there was the whole presentation aspect of it.
Standing, he pulled everything out of his briefcase, put it on the blotter, separated out a few smaller piles, and then began putting certain things back in.
“Boss?”
He nodded.
Andre picked up the phone and called down for a set of wheels.
The hat was dry, the coat, still a bit damp.
God, when will it all end, he thought.
***
END
...when will it ever end...
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