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| Having a bad dream, Boss? |
Louis Shalako
Gilles tossed and turned. Sylvestre, who had taken to
sleeping beside his pillow, let out a faint meow of complaint when Gilles
accidentally hit him with his elbow.
Under the covers, it was too hot. Take the covers off,
the relatively cool night breeze quickly chilled him, enough so that he wanted
the covers back on again. A reasonable compromise was to get all snuggly under
the blanket, and then pull it back a little and expose one’s backside as a kind
of radiator. Over time, that took a certain consciousness, whereas sleep was
supposed to be a natural, spontaneous occurrence.
Not for the first time, he felt some faint degree of
sympathy for the incarcerated—
There were plenty of such individuals, male and
female, all over the country and the world.
Prison conditions were of course designed to be
uncomfortable. You were there to do time,
in all of its majesty, and time was designed by the system to hang heavy on
your hands. He had worked some long hours to put many of those people inside.
The iron beds, chilly temperatures and wool blankets, the steel toilets, the
bare concrete floors, all of that would have their effect.
Bad food, bad company and the never-ending noise would
all have their effect.
His own bed was at least comfortable. At that exact
moment, it wasn’t so bad. The problem was, of course, that he could see into
tomorrow, and tomorrow would be here all too soon.
He wiggled his toes and yawned, a yawn that went on
and on.
There was always going to be that dull ache in the
lower back, and the left knee, and the left elbow. The feeling that his neck
was never quite right until he’d fluffed up the pillows and put his head down
just so.
Argh.
There were the noises, distant and nearby, some of
them in the next building and some of them seemingly right outside the window.
There were birds that flew, and made noises at night. It was the sort of thing
one never really thought about. The sky was still dark when he looked out of
the window. The clock ticked beside the bed, never louder than when a man
couldn’t sleep.
“Merde.”
There was no great hurry to go leaping out of bed—
He had plenty of time.
It was the middle of the night.
Normally, he never remembered his dreams. It was
almost like he didn’t have too many. This time was different. The last two or
three, all blending together into one disjointed narrative, spewed forth by an
uneasy conscience and a distempered fancy—or something like that, had been real doozies.
Something about a big building, and for whatever
reason, he had a lorry. It was parked inside the building. Perhaps it was a
loading dock, if so it was a big one. It was a big contractor’s supply company,
judging by the stacks of lumber and plywood and cinder blocks. There were other
things too, rows and rows of mysterious objects, and colourful small boxes.
Dreams couldn’t supply too many details if they
weren’t already in the sleeper’s brain. He’d never really done that kind of
work.
Gilles had pulled boxes, metal and cardboard, out of
the back of the truck and dragged them to the cashier.
He was, apparently, just trying to prove it was his
own tools, his own materials, and that all he wanted was to be let out of the
building.
The cashier insisted he would need an exit pass from
the store manager, who was of course hiding somewhere way off in the building.
There were no stairs, no elevators to the second floor.
Gilles had somehow clawed his way up by leaping
upwards at a rectangular hole in the floor above, grabbing the edge of
something and pulling himself into that hallowed country. It was a big, empty
room with white tiles, white walls, the ceiling beams exposed but also painted
white.
Hopefully they wouldn’t ask him to build a set of
stairs for them, or he’d be revealed for the fraud he was…
There were all these people walking around in a
circle, (like the common area of a jail), where a bemused store manager had
told him it was complete balderdash, and that he didn’t need a permit after
all…and of course, there was no way down to the ground floor.
At that point, the dream had changed.
He was still in his little lorry. He wanted to back
up—there was a flash of something in the mirror and the corner of the eye. He
realized that he was waiting for someone to get out of the way.
He was looking around at what looked like a vehicle
repair shop, possibly an automobile scrapyard. Strange how it was indoors.
There were some interesting wrecks, really valuable old antiques if only they
had been relatively intact. As it was, they were rotting into the ground. At
that point some cheerful and handsome young man had backed out from behind him
on a tiny red tricycle, legs too long and pedals too small, feet going like
stink, and then he could finally get a move on, to wherever he might have been
going. The fact he was naked was
something else.
He hadn’t noticed that part before…
Gilles ran down a long driveway, with tall hedges on
both sides. It seemed he would never get to the end. It was night, and he turned
to speak to some people, including his boyhood friend Etienne. The stars
blotted out and everything went pitch-black, and then the stars burst out in
joy again as whatever it was, whatever it might have been, went away.
There was more,
of course, like the part where he was flat on his back, looking up at a ring of
people gazing down at him. One of them, all dressed in white, using a big,
shiny set of kitchen tongs, removed an impossibly-large piece of something out
of his mouth, twisting and turning it this way and that past rubbery lips
before finally pulling it out for all of their inspection…it must have been a
police badge. Gilles could only see the back side of it, but the size and the
shape were right.
Argh.
Meow?
So
he really was awake, then.
“Come on, Sylvestre.”
Wrapping his housecoat around him and stuffing his
feet into the slippers beside the bed, Gilles went looking for a glass of milk,
as drinking at four-thirty-five a.m. on a workday was probably not a very good
idea.
Sylvestre thought milk was a jolly good idea, although
they said it wasn’t good for cats.
It was funny sometimes, how the gleam of a brandy
bottle followed one around the room…
The cat followed him everywhere too. Maintenon had
felt the odd moment of guilt about the animal, what with the long days he put
in sometimes. Madame Lefebvre, his housekeeper, was there eight or eight and a
half hours a day after all. Gilles didn’t see her sometimes for days at a time.
The cat seemed happy enough, although there were times when Gilles felt himself
a stranger in his own home. Perhaps cats were more accepting than they normally
received credit for.
Cops have consciences, and one of the bigger
nightmares of the job was to get the wrong guy.
Maintenon, if Father Bazin was to be believed, had
done a real number on Marko Dubzek.
Sure, there were other people involved, but that one
had been his case. At the time, Gilles had been disgusted, angry at the failure, and there had been some small
element of hate in there as well. He’d just learned something about himself,
and that wasn’t always very pleasant.
With a little help from Dubois, and Duvall. Gilles
could still see that face.
Such things were bound to happen, and one had to hope
that justice would prevail in the end.
The only way Maintenon could atone, in some small way
perhaps, and better late than never, was to get the person who had killed
Marko.
Marko.
What
a name.
What
a face.
Sitting in the parlour, looking out over the still
darkened city, Maintenon heaved a deep sigh.
The cat was in his lap and the milk was warming up
beside him as he smoked.
He scratched the cat behind the ears, and it rumbled
and purred contentedly in response. The housecoat and pajamas were enough,
barely, to keep him from feeling the claws rhythmically kneading his thigh.
Finally he whispered to the night.
“I’m sorry, Marko. I really am.”
I
might have been wrong about you.
And
my guts are just burning up with the acid.
***
People made certain statements. The police never took
anything at face value, never took anyone’s unsupported word for anything. The
thing to do was to check it out.
It was time to talk to Judith, with her mother and
father right there in what was standard operating procedure.
Sergeant Allard had been asked to do the unpleasant but
necessary duty.
She was very good at it.
They had agreed to come up to speak to police, all
expenses paid.
The questions were pretty basic, whether the answer
was yes or no, but the important thing was not to scare the girl, or even to
scar her psychologically for life.
The girl wore a cute floral sun-dress,
spaghetti-straps over tanned, bird-like shoulders. At this time of year, all
kids were tanned of course.
Maintenon, for the first time, wondered about that
objective stance, the ability to see
things.
What might have been provocative in a grown woman was
just cute on a little girl.
This was one hell of a moment.
It was just some little girl—right.
So far, the results were indifferent.
“So, Judith. You and Marko were great friends. What
sort of things did you do together. Did he like games?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Please call me Christiane.”
The kid was both slightly terrified of the police, and
also probably curious about them. She seemed to be loosening up a bit. Everyone
was being very kind, very friendly. She knew Marko was dead, and that this was
a serious matter. Rather than frighten the girl by taking her fingerprints in
the regular manner, she had been provided with a glass of grape juice.
According to her parents, it was her favourite. It was brought in by a smiling
young gendarme. He was in full dress uniform, thoughtfully wearing clean white
gloves. It might have seemed odd to someone older, more sophisticated perhaps,
but she accepted it readily enough. All major cities had them, cops in full
dress uniform, out there directing rush-hour traffic with whistle and baton,
the white gloves highly-visible.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What sort of games?”
The child’s voice was very low, eyes downcast all of a
sudden. She had some idea of what death was.
Death was permanent. Murder was a sin. Crime was bad,
if she even had any real idea of what that was. If she read the papers…and a
lot of young kids did, if only skipping through to the funnies or the puzzles.
“We played Camelot…and
he liked Word Toss.”
“What other games did you like?”
“Well, Monopoly
of course. Marko liked Rook, but it
wasn’t my favourite and we hardly ever played it.”
“That was nice of him. Was Marko a nice man?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Did he ever buy you candy?”
“Uh-huh.”
“At the store in the park?”
Judith nodded, eyeing her parents, who sat there
looking as unconcerned as they possibly could.
They had been carefully briefed before bringing the
girl into the room. They nodded happily, as if egging her on.
“Did you play cards?”
The girl nodded.
“Did he play Go Fish?”
A small smile came over her face, presumably a fond
memory of her friend.
“Yes.”
“Did you guys ever play hide and seek?”
“Yes, but not with Marko.”
“So who did you play with?”
Judith mentioned a few names, and, judging by their
list, with Tailler standing beside Gilles and madly flipping the pages, they
were all mostly around her own age.
“Did Marko ever touch you?”
She nodded solemnly. She was pretty miserable, what
with the strange adult, a police officer, interviewing her, perhaps
understanding the significance of the questions on some level.
“I just want you to know that you’re not in any
trouble. It’s just that we’re trying to catch his killer, right? I don’t want
you to be afraid of him, either, because we’re going to get him. I think I can
promise you that. Can you show me where he touched you?” Christiane had the
doll, sitting knee to knee with the girl, but Judith reached up and touched
herself on the left shoulder.
“Did you mind that? Did it make you feel,
uncomfortable?”
“No.” The girl’s voice was very low.
Christiane moved on, quickly.
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| Let's move on here. |
“Anywhere else?”
With some hesitation, she touched herself on the nape
of the neck, and then on the top of the head.
“Did he ever ask you to sit in his lap, or anything
like that?”
“Um…no.” There was a slight hesitation in the
response, and Sergeant Allard picked up on it immediately.
Her mother was looking daggers at this point, the
father looking distinctly worried, but the sergeant pressed on.
“Did you ever sit in Marko’s lap?”
The girl looked at her mother.
The mother looked at the sergeant.
“It’s okay, Judith. Please tell us what happened.”
In a halting voice, the girl explained.
They had been in the pool, and Marko had been there.
This was a couple of summers ago, and her mommy and daddy wanted to go into town
to get a few groceries. It was cheaper in town, and the girl explained that
part very well. More selection, she
was quoting her mother no doubt.
Judith had adamantly refused to go, and Marko, always
cheerful, and she’d liked him at the time, had offered to keep an eye on her
for half an hour or so.
“And so what happened.”
She’d climbed up into his lap, until he laughingly
insisted that she get down and sit in her own chair or maybe go swimming or
something.
Watching through the one-way mirror—even rural
detachments seemed to have them, Maintenon blinked back tears.
His instinct was that there wasn’t much to it, and if
they interviewed every kid in the camp, they would all probably say the same
sort of things.
“Was there anyone who didn’t like Marko? You know,
sometimes that happens, right?”
People didn’t always get along.
Judith shook her head, and at that point Maintenon had
to leave the room for a little fresh air and sunshine of his own. Tailler
resisted the urge to give him a pat on the back on the way past. It wasn’t that
kind of situation. Or maybe, Maintenon wasn’t that sort of guy—it just wasn’t
that easy sometimes.
“So, who else did Marko play with?”
She mentioned more names. Police would talk to the parents,
and it was always best to be sure.
Sergeant Allard would be very thorough, but the girl
was getting restive and they really couldn’t keep the family much longer.
Police had gotten lucky, in that they had friends and family in the Paris area,
and they were willing to come up here from Auxerre. Their one-week stay at the
camp was a summer thing, and they wouldn’t see it again until next year.
How
the parents must hate us right about now…
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| They hate us right about now. |
And yet, they were never
going to get the full story of a man’s life. It was too much information, and
too much to ask for, and there were very few people to ask anyways. Marko had
been an isolated, private man in so many ways. Marko, in public view, known to
have another family’s child with him, alone in the chalet or by the pool as
they might have been, might have very well been on his best behaviour.
He might have been a very different sort of person, at
home in Paris, in the dark of night and in the anonymity of the crowd. As far
as money went, such things (sexual things) often went for as little as five or
ten francs…sometimes just the price of a drink, or a pack of cigarettes.
Those
last ones would be juveniles, homeless, unwanted, and with nowhere else to go.
That might be so, but unless something really
startling leapt out at them in the next few minutes, Judith wasn’t going to be
able to help them.
This was some relief, but Maintenon still wasn’t very
happy about it. Naturally Tailler understood.
Somewhere in the world, their killer was still out
there. Catching killers had become Gilles’ sole reason for existence. Without
that, he had nothing. Tailler understood that much.
So far, they had no idea of motive.
