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| A delicate feminine flower... |
Louis Shalako
“I
wonder what her name is.”
“Oh, God.” Hubert had just about had enough of it.
They were sitting in their room, with the radio down low, with some fairly rustic music coming out in a kind of raspy, mid-range set of tones, and planning what to do the next day. It had been one hell of a day, no shit.
“We have our list, names, addresses and phone numbers, we have our vehicle. We have our work cut out for us. If we are seriously not getting anything, anything at all, then we might as well shut it down and go home.” Hubert was philosophical about it. “I mean, seriously.”
“Sure. In the meantime.”
Hubert sighed.
“Yes.”
“What in the hell are we going to eat? I’m bloody starving.”
“Well, it probably isn’t going to be fish—that’s for sure.” Hubert shrugged.
Quelle surprise, but they had at least gotten their lines wet—as the saying went. The phone was right there and it was still early enough if they decided to go out. What a lovely part of the world, no matter the depressing circumstances, and he was still sort of processing it all.
“Anyhow, it’s easy enough for you. You’re lucky, you probably just don’t remember what it is to be single—and alone.”
Hubert groaned.
Back to this again.
Argh.
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| "I wonder what her name is..." |
***
The dull, plodding routine of investigative police work wasn’t getting them anywhere, and the detectives of the Special Homicide Unit would have been the first to admit that.
Yet, it had to be done, if nothing else, to rule things out. To show thoroughness, in the sense that the accused had the right to a defense, and the defense had the right to cross-examine. A jury had the right to some sort of logical theory of the crime, one backed up by discernable facts. If only they knew who to arrest, it would have been very helpful. It would have helped to focus their attentions. In which case, they might even get something.
As might be imagined, considering Maintenon’s disappearance, the whole department was involved, and the reports were flying in, thick and fast. The only real problem, of course, was that it was all negative information.
It proved nothing, indicated nothing, all it did was rule things out. So it was with some deep sigh of hopelessness that Andre noted the file, sitting there on his desk, when he arrived, five minutes after eight that morning. Feeling no great urgency, the first thing he did was to get himself a cup of coffee.
Settling in, opening up the file, from Dr. Poirier over at the morgue, he didn’t have to read too far before he sat up with a start—
“Putain de merde.” Holy shit, in other words.
The three cadavers from the deep freezer incident had all died from natural causes. Poirier, with his usual thoroughness, had listed them in some detail, as well as noting that due to certain signs in the cell walls under microscopic examination, he was convinced that the bodies had been in cold storage for quite some time…
“Oh, my God.”
People were staring at him, and he looked up.
“Ah. Ah. Ah—”
Flummoxed indeed, he handed off the file to Margot, with LeBref and Firmin waiting in the wings to pounce.
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| "Flummoxed ain't the word for it." |
As for Andre, he got up wordlessly. Leaving the coffee, he grabbed his hat, and his jacket, and headed for the door. But he badly needed a walk around the block right about then, and hopefully that would clear some of the fog out of his head. But this, this was just too much—
And of course it was spitting rain, nothing to brag about, but it just set the mood and underlined the situation in grey half-tones and even less distinct shadows. There were the wide front steps where all the big-shots and senior officials came and went, and then the secondary entrances, at intervals, and then the more utilitarian doors along the far end of the building. Parking would always be at a premium, as his feet pounded the pavement, gusts of wind buffeted at his jacket and hat, and his mind sought some kind of revelation in all of this—
“C'est la pluie comme toujours. Always the rain…”
It was called doing laps, with the headquarters, the big 36, a big, heaping pile of masonry, centred on an island in the Seine. The Quai d’Orfevres and the headquarters of the Sûreté. It was all one could do but to think sometimes, and sooner or later he would have to go back up to the room. Surrounded by a street on all sides, then a break-wall, and then the river itself, it had more than a little in common with the courtyard of a high-security prison, better yet, the perimeter, the exercise track of a prison-camp.
There was a long, low rumble of thunder in the distance, and it seemed like this would go on all day. Not that it wasn’t warm, exactly, it was the humidity. The air was saturated, in fact there was a trickle of sweat coming down from the armpits inside of his shirt. It was old, familiar weather.
Many a long and heated conversation had taken place along the circuit, the fact that he was alone with his own thoughts didn’t take too much away from it.
Far from it—but this one had the stink of the enemy all over it. It was pure instinct, with absolutely nothing to go on other than his own thoughts, his own experiences, and one might suppose, the daily headlines which went back years and years when he thought about it.
And, when he finally got back up to the room, he’d have to either get right back into it, or quit, give it up, go home, and just accept that he, and they, had all been beaten. There were plenty of other cases to work on.
You can always put in for a transfer—to Martinique, or Guyana or somewhere. Tahiti was nice, if a little boring, or so they said.
He hadn’t felt this way in a very long time, and that was something to consider as well.
Perhaps it was just the grief, perhaps it was a form of denial, or perhaps it was one of acceptance, which must surely come.
Gilles was dead, and there was no getting around that fact.
Maintenon was dead, and there would be no bringing him back.
It was like something was dead inside of Andre, and he probably wasn’t getting that back either.
Fuck.
END
Louis has books and stories available from iTunes.
See his works on Fine Art America.
Quai d’Orfevres. Classic Noir Film. (Wiki)
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| A modern view of the Quay d'Orfevres. |
Thank
you for reading.
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