Louis Shalako: A Stranger In Paris, Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery #9, Pt. 25. Louis Shalako.

A handsome guy, he's been letting himself go...

Louis Shalako

“Imagination, my dear Watson. Imagination, is where crimes are solved—and they are also conceived.” Conan Doyle, Maintenon was almost sure.

Maybe not the exact words, but close enough for the girls he went with these days...i.e., nothing. Another nonsense observation. There was more, of course—there always was.

He hadn’t read any Sherlock Holmes stuff since he was a boy, and there were so many of them—but Hound of the Baskervilles came to mind, perhaps one or two others. The Speckled Band, the League of Red-Headed Men, for example. There were none on his bookshelves, all of that, dog-eared pages and covers missing, had been put away so long ago in the past. But the books, the films, the short stories by crass imitators, radio shows, theatricals, hell, even musicals, it was all over the place. Translated into a hundred languages and exported all over the world.

His old books, mouldered away in the ancestral home, hopefully burned or tossed and not still stinking up an attic somewhere. A fictional character had become an icon, which was one shitty word for it in his opinion…admittedly, he didn’t have much to suggest as an alternative. At least one senior officer affected the very same hat, and people were careful not to mention it, or to stare at it, or laugh at it or to take any notice of it at all. It was just an affectation, and harmless enough for all of that. It was perhaps something else as well—like the rattle on the tail end of a copperhead. It was a warning in some ways. But these were stories of imagination, where the real, daily police work was dull, plodding, and methodical, it was all about procedures, and imagination was unlikely to rear its ugly head, if not actively discouraged in some circles. It was all about taking accurate notes, and spelling people’s names correctly, and getting the times and dates and addresses and occupations down properly. It had all been boiled down to standard operating procedure, and to deviate was to take a risk.

Imagination was risky.

And it was all too lacking, in some circles…

In the end, Gilles had picked up a copy at a bookstore on the way home, a patient Alphonse sitting in the car, smoking away and keeping the engine warm, as he put it. He could always read it and then donate it…somewhere. Trying to explain that one on the expense account would be a foregone conclusion and so, why bother.

Truth was, he probably couldn’t be bothered, and didn’t really need the money anyways.

Think of it as a treat.

He had found it. The relevant chapter, in Hound of the Baskervilles, when Holmes and Watson were walking across the moors; this after a disguised Holmes had been living in a pre-historic stone hut, a barrow, and somehow having his mail forwarded from London. Bullshit of the finest vintage, in other words—sure, there must have been general delivery, poste restante, in a nearby village, and yet a stranger going back and forth would have been observed, and a real object of interest to the locals. Sooner or later, you had to walk down a road, a street.

“This is why so many crimes go unsolved, Watson…because people insist on the facts when they prove nothing…”

Well, that was the problem, wasn’t it? Police and the courts, the press and the general public, insisted on the facts and their assumed significance. He owed a lot to Conan Doyle, although much of it was pure bullshit. Sometimes they made up their own facts—that was especially true when the facts didn’t suit their opinions.

Wasn’t that what he had been saying all along. Fucking bullshit—

The whole thing was just pure bullshit, from beginning to end. And whoever had cooked this one up, for a committee seemed unlikely, or was it? Maybe it was more than one mind.

Whatever the case, that was one sick little imagination.

There was the sound of the key in the lock, and Sylvestre turned and left the bathroom, ready for breakfast and more amiable company...he looked at himself in the mirror. It might be time to close the door, although she wasn’t likely to come in here first thing.

Either he was late, or Sophie was unusually early…he’d left his wristwatch on the bedside table. He would have given his left testicle for another four or five years in bed, right about then. Ten years, that would just about do it.

He needed a shirt, and socks, and cufflinks, and a tie, and all of that other bullshit.

Merde.

Stop thinking like a Frenchman all of the time.

And when do I get around to shaving off this horrible little beard.

***

It was a black night, very black.

Raindrops still speckled the puddles and dripped from lampposts, tree branches and the corners of the eaves. It was a black night.

The constable’s feet were sore, wet, and damp. He’d been suffering from a bit of toe-rot lately, and that was just the truth. It was the wet, the weather and the black wool socks never really drying out. It was foot-fungus.

He stood there, studying it.

The vehicle was a small delivery lorry, red. Blood-red in this light. Originally based upon a sedan, but with some imagination, it had been adapted into a four-cylinder panel van with two back doors, an elevated roof and with nothing but sheet metal behind the passenger doors—that, and the name of the provender, in the present case, Delacroix et Cie, and then there were the flowers painted on there, and an address, and a phone number. There were any number of them in the city.

The vehicle had been there for a week. His own soggy tickets attested to that, his own notebook, and yes, a couple of days off there in the middle of the week due to shift changes and rotational scheduling and all of that.

And still, the vehicle was there. It was like they just couldn’t take a hint sometimes, or maybe they had simply gone bankrupt. If they’d run out of gas or had a breakdown, they would have moved the vehicle sooner rather than later…you could call the fucking cops and tell them all about it, and that might have saved you the ticket in the first place.

The actual address of the company, also painted on the side panels, was nowhere near this present location, and if nothing else, the constable was a logical thinker. He did have a phone number…right?

What in the hell was it doing there, admittedly not doing a whole hell of a lot of harm, but also, in violation of certain traffic and parking codes. As a bit of cold rain trickled down the back of his neck, standing there in the uncertain light of a yellowing streetlight, he noted that the back doors were ajar—not more than a few millimetres, six or seven at most.

That being said, it sure as hell hadn’t been like that yesterday.

Kids, thieves, drunks, cars were stolen all the time…the handle turned and he pulled the back door on the right side open…

***

The back of the vehicle didn’t even really smell, not after all this time. Towed to the police forensics garage, under the lights and what minimal heating there was in what was nothing more than a really big shed, it seemed as if at least one frozen fly had felt the warmth and come to life again.

It reminded the constable of the time he’d had the refrigerator door open and a fly went in and landed. With a sort of cruelty, he’d shut the door for a few minutes just to see what happened. Ten minutes later, feeling slightly guilty, he’d scooped the thing up and put it out the window, still alive, perhaps shivering in some insectoid manner. Maybe just grateful to get out of a hell that had frozen over; and all of that lovely food inaccessible.

Little bones, and a lot of them…shriveled meat, with the time, the temperature, with the loss of the blood and consequent drying of the tissues. The human body was ninety-nine percent water, after all. Ninety-eight-point-six, as he recalled from a failed attempt at medical school. Even so, one had to be objective.

The blood had pooled, not much of it really.

A flash bulb popped, the constable consulted his notes and then continued them along with the process of documenting his discovery. But the back of the little van was littered with fingers—just fingers. Chopped off, discarded, macabre as all hell. They were hard to count, stuck together in little clumps, singles, thumbs…he nodded sagely. Let the techs count them. They had their pictures.

He read the papers, of course. He knew something about it. Even if he hadn’t, this was going to be one hell of a report. He’d make sure of it.

Full of dead fingers...

Other than that, there was no way in hell one could get a decent set of fingerprints off of any one of them. That much was obvious, not all dried up and shriveled like that. Half frozen, freezer-burned. He was reminded of something, the shrunken heads of savages somewhere off in the south Pacific. The constable, soaked to the skin, ignored by all the auto mechanics and technical people, as another flashbulb popped, closed the notebook.

Overhead heaters blasted out their noisy hot air, and the floor steamed with moisture.

They were ready with their little bags and tweezers. Little labels and little envelopes.

It looked like another one of those nights—one of those nights where you come home, take off the heavy shoes, put up your stinky socks on the radiator, eat your dinner and don’t talk about the job with the wife and kids.

And that was just the truth.

***

END