 |
| Roger Langeron: separating the wheat from the chaff. |
Louis Shalako
Chapter One
Scene Two
After one hell of a weekend, Monday morning was
predictable enough. Roger Langeron, head of the Sûreté here in Paris, sat
across from Gilles, pausing for a moment as another of the crew shuffled in.
He’d heard the news.
“As police, we can separate the wheat from the chaff,
and ignore the irrelevant. It’s a good thing the average juror doesn’t get to
read all of our case notes, otherwise we’d never get a conviction.” He uttered
a long, drawn-out sigh. “And the housekeeper got the knock at the door and accepted
all of this at face value.”
“Yes. Their timing was perfect. They might have been
aware of her routine. If they knew anything about the lady at all, it was a
dead certainty. To sit there and wait for them to finish would have been beyond
her. Fridays, she heads out, early afternoon, does an hour or so of shopping,
comes back. She puts it all away, probably looking at the clock every two
minutes, knowing her.” She would have been put out if she’d had to stay one
minute over her allotted time, or worse, been forced to deviate from what was
clearly a pretty strict routine. In an emergency, Gilles would have been happy
to pay overtime, but with that one, it simply wasn’t in the cards, at least not
before Hell froze over.
Fridays, she went home early, as agreed between them
on day one…she would have been caught between a rock and a hard place, and
didn’t seem to have much flexibility of mind.
“Fuck. I had no idea of what to do.”
The crazy woman had let them in, accepting their story
at face value and trusting them alone in the home of what was, after all, a
pretty senior police official. She’d taken her purse and her shopping bags and
simply walked away—
Unbelievable, and he was still trying to decide
whether to let her go or just give her a stiff little lecture…any kind of help,
let alone good help, was surprisingly hard to find these days. It would be the
perfect chance to get rid of her, the trouble lay in finding another one.
Madame wasn’t even much of a cook, and he’d taken to
making excuses for her, mostly, and eating out or having his meals delivered.
What might have been acceptable on weekends had now become seven days a week.
That, could only go on for so long.
“And?”
“Finally, it occurred to me that I really ought to
call the police. Ha. She says she signed a delivery form, and yet one would
think a legitimate operation would leave an invoice or something, perhaps a
thin, badly-translated manual, or a warranty card or something. But, no,
nothing.” They’d taken away the crate, or any other materials that might have
gone along with it.
Heavy and difficult to handle, the machine had been
scrupulously wiped down for prints.
It was one hell of a load to drag up three flights,
even in the empty state…how in the hell had they even gotten it in the door,
and that was another good question.
Of course, she hadn’t taken any notice of the name on
the side of their delivery van, parked right out in front, nor much notice of
the men involved, at least three or four of them or so she said. All average
working men, of indeterminate age, nothing that really stood out about any of
them. All of them wearing coveralls, again, with the name of the company
written all over them. She had said that they were very polite, very sincere,
and that was about all it had taken to convince her.
“Bah.”
Gilles practically spat the word in his disgust.
There were hundreds of places where one might purchase
such a freezer, and all of that would take time to look into.
“Here’s the thing. A private citizen could pay cash,
and drag the thing home on their own. A moving company, a nephew or a
son-in-law with a lorry or van of their own. It’s a cash sale, they don’t even
need a story.” While the machine had a serial number, that only led back to the
manufacturer and up to the point of sale. “If the sales person was a little too
persistent, they could simply give a fake name and address, load her up and
take it on home, or wherever.”
It might have been cash-and-carry all the way along.
It was up to the customer to fill in and mail in the
warranty card…the seller couldn’t care less if they did or if they didn’t.
There would be those customers who wouldn’t bother, or simply forgot.
 |
| Gilles. One pissed-off dude. |
After that, it was pretty much untraceable. It was
brand-new, insofar as anyone could determine so far, and yet it had to be looked
into, in the hopes of some future outcome which would require documentation—the
chain of evidence and custody.
“Are we supposed to go around to every recent
customer’s house and make sure their deep freezer isn’t missing?” Maintenon
gave another little snort. “There’s nothing like that in the recent theft and
burglary reports…”
“Ah.”
Roger wasn’t the most intuitive of people, but he was
bright enough to be head of the department. The more professional thieves were
known to take a load of meat, sometimes the whole freezer, better yet, a
refrigerated van or lorry, full of product and easy enough to dispose of. If
you knew all the right, or all the wrong, sort of people. These were mostly
crimes of opportunity, possibly a little planning, given a little bit of inside
knowledge and the right time and place.
“Yes. Anyhow, the idea of a bomb or something struck
me, and of course there are the times we live in…”
Roger nodded. Recent events came to mind—
It was a like a virus going around, and the political
climate had not been good for some years in this country.
Gilles had made the call.
Officers had attended to his residence, and thinking
furiously, they’d found a dustpan and some large bowls. It had taken quite some
time, just scooping out ice cubes, which had tended to fuse together in large
lumps, once the lid had been open for any length of time. Once the kitchen sink
was full, they’d started in on the bath tub and the little sink in there. Once
they’d gotten a ways down, running hot water through the taps to sort of help
the melting process along, a dark colour had shown through the ice cubes and it
was clear they had something else on their hands—
Gilles growled.
“One dead body, well, that’s a tragedy. Three, dead
bodies—that, is damned interesting.”
Cause of death as yet unknown. It would take time to
make any kind of identifications, or perhaps there would be no identification.
At this point, once they’d figured out there was at least one corpse in there,
the thing to do was to call in the crime-scene photographers. Then to drag it
down the stairs again, all very carefully, so as not to spill it, and take it
all down to the lab. Gilles had spent Friday night with the thing in his
kitchen and an officer on the door for crime-scene security. On some level,
Gilles might even be a suspect. It was laughable. Yet appearances of propriety
had to be kept, even so, he’d been allowed to remain in his own home. It was
the privilege of rank or something, and there would probably still be questions.
They had literally discussed the fate of the cat.
Perhaps that had been the clincher—that and his own glares and grunts.
What were they going to do, arrest him? Were they
going to arrest Sylvestre?
He had laughed in their faces.
He’d been pretty pissed-off by that point. He
outranked the whole damned bunch of them, all at once sort of thing. For a
senior officer to lose it like that wasn’t good and yet he still had the
stubborn feeling…that was it. He really didn’t have much of an excuse.
A bad compromise all around.
And there still might have been a bomb, down in the
bottom somewhere, as he put it.
It
was one hell of a mess, and the news-hounds, the average tabloïd de
journalisme jaune
would be all over it, and for good reason: it was downright sensational, there
was no other word for it.
 |
| "Looks like you're screwed, Boss." |
“It gets worse from here, Gilles. I’m going to have to
suggest that you are excused from this investigation. Mostly for the sake of
appearances—”
Gilles nodded glumly.
“I agree.”
“There’s more, Gilles.”
“There is?” As if it wasn’t bad enough already.
“I hope you understand, as your boss, but also as a
friend, that I am also under a bit of pressure here…” He trailed off. “Well.
It’s a question of your vacation time.”
Maintenon groaned.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist this time,
Gilles.”
“Argh.”
“Gilles. Take three weeks—please. Or the Minister will
be having my head.” He rose, glancing
at the others in the room, all desperately trying to look busy and not like
they weren’t eavesdropping on every word. “It’s been years, Gilles. Years. It’s
fucking summertime, Gilles. The weather has been beautiful, and you really,
really do need to get out of this town once in a while. Just for the sake of
your own sanity.”
And mine too, although he didn’t say it.
“…look, you can hand off your files to the other
detectives. Cold cases won’t get any more hopeless with a few weeks off. Your
people are very competent when it comes to the live ones and you know I have
full confidence in their abilities. But you’re off, as of Friday at quitting
time…” That would give Gilles a little time to get used to it.
He could tidy up the desk and his files…
It might even give him a little perspective on things.
He didn’t say that either. Halfway out the door—
Gilles growled again.
Spinning on one heel, Roger turned back, half-choking
on a laugh which would be real bad politics just then. He waggled a finger in
Maintenon’s darkening face.
“That’s an order, Gilles. I’ll put that in writing, if
I must—” And then he was gone.
Faces turned to him and Margot, for one, caught his
eye.
 |
| Levain: about time, too. |
“Looks like you’re kind of screwed, eh, Boss.” Her
eyes dropped and she went back to her notes.
And there was Levain, grinning in the background over
his own typewriter.
“And it’s about effing time, too.” Levain snorted,
pleased with his joke.
His eyes came up and stabbed Maintenon right in the
gizzard.
“…sooner
or later, it had to happen. Right?”
Fuck.
END
Louis
has books and stories available from Amazon.
See his works on Fine Art America.
Here is our #superdough food blog.
***
Thank
you for reading.
