The Art of Murder (21 page)

Yvonne Verene did not give the
impression of a woman bereaved. While she didn’t skip gaily along
the street, neither did she seem overly despondent. She was attired
in a navy blue skirt and a white blouse that belied her profession.
She might have been a sales assistant in some bourgeois millinery
shop. Her charcoal grey coat was casual and functional, made for
cool-weather wear rather than show.

Her daily routine began shortly before
nine when she exited the small bed-sitting suite she inhabited in
the Latin Quarter, and then went to the nearest Metro entrance in a
rather anti-climactic fashion. They followed her down, first Le
Bref, the near-midget who hadn’t actually been seen by Mademoiselle
Verene at the scene. He hadn’t been involved with them at the time.
As a bonus, he wasn’t too well known from the papers.

Gilles followed fifty or sixty metres
farther back, relying on Le Bref’s body language and well-rehearsed
hand signals to avoid detection by the subject.

After a few stations, she got up and
left the train. Le Bref sat in the next compartment, with the
subject, but Gilles could see him through the glass door panels as
he was just on the right angle. When Le Bref gave him a quick
glance and then rose in a rush to exit, Gilles went out the door of
his own compartment at a casual pace, fairly well disguised by a
rough working man’s cap, and a long white raincoat that he never
would have chosen for himself. The shoes, with six or seven
millimetre-thick soles and obvious steel toes, made the man. She
brushed past him without a second look, intent on her own business.
Le Bref touched the brim of his hat on the way by and Gilles
inclined his head politely. Unfolding his newspaper, he watched her
go up the stairs as his friend followed. Stuffing the paper back in
his pocket, quickly rolled up for later, he followed as
well.

She was going somewhere different
today. That much was clear.

All the crew agreed that the seven days
growth of whiskers he now affected made him look fifteen years
older, considering the amount of white in his beard. That part
shocked him, when he saw the white in amongst the black. The odds
were he could remain anonymous. It was Le Bref that he was worried
about, but the man was a marvel to watch. They’d never been
partners before, certainly not undercover like this, and Le Bref
had a way of hovering in behind someone else, where with a little
side-step, he could keep the subject under surveillance, and before
the next stride, was completely obscured again. Gilles thought he
was also using the windows very cleverly, especially the ones on
the opposite side, but the thought came that she might do that as
well. That would require a certain amount of paranoia, or
experience or expectation on her part. If she was doing it, she was
good. From this far back, she would never recognize him, and if she
spotted the tail, then she was some kind of pro and that would say
a lot about her.

Yvonne entered a small shop, and Le
Bref, convinced that she was completely oblivious to them, stepped
right smartly up to the door and went in without a backward glance,
trusting that Gilles would be properly deployed when he came
out.

Seeing something that would suffice,
Gilles stepped into a recessed doorway, and intently examined the
wares in a tailor’s window. With a couple of oblique panes of glass
in the way, he could still see the ten or fifteen metres necessary.
After a few minutes, Le Bref came out with a bundle wrapped up in
brown paper under his arm and strolled past whistling a merry tune.
He was headed back the way they had come.

Gilles focused on where she ought to
be, and was rewarded by the sight of her silhouette coming back out
onto the street. Like Le Bref, she had a bundle as well now,
although hers was larger. She continued in her original direction.
As he swung out onto her tail, walking slower so as to drop back as
they went and not look like he was in a big hurry to go somewhere,
he wondered how he was going to justify a couple of pounds of
summer sausage or whatever it was on the departmental expense
account.

Le Bref strode past him at a good clip,
ignoring his presence. Gilles dropped back further.

Yvonne went past the next Metro
entrance, paused in front of a flower seller’s display, and then
after dallying for some time, checking her watch at least once that
Gilles saw, she went another half block, turned a corner, and by
the time Gilles got there, she had, for all intents and purposes,
disappeared.

Maintenon took a quick glance at the
street sign screwed high on the side of a corner grocery store, and
with a jolt of recognition, realized that this was a fairly long
block, and that she must have gone into one of the tall and narrow
pension-type apartments that lined both sides of the narrow but
rather quiet thoroughfare.

“
Merde.”

Le Bref was at his shoulder.

“
I see a kid, Inspector.” He
proffered a coin. “Shall we give it a try?”

Gilles shrugged.

“
I don’t see why not. We
have nothing to lose at this point.”

“
Kid! Kid!” Le Bref’s hoarse
whisper could be heard a mile away, as Gilles grimaced in
embarrassment.

Le Bref waved him over and the
youngster complied.

“
Yes?” The kid’s natural
caution showed through his slightly-cocky demeanor, but he was a
big strong boy and probably thought he could look after
himself.

“
I’ll give you five
francs—no, ten—if you can answer a question for me.”

The kid’s eyebrows rose, his internal
bug-like antenna quivering at the obvious temptation. He had some
smarts. He stayed out in the light at the opening of their alley,
which was dead-ended and arrived at a cellar door and some
dustbins, sheltered and cold on this side of the street all year
long.

Le Bref handed it over.

“
It’s no big thing, but did
you see a tall blonde lady, pretty and young, come into this street
or go into any of these houses? She was wearing a scarf, and a
mid-length coat, and stockings but, ah, shoes with sort of flat
heels…she had a shopping bag, pretty heavy.”

“
No. Sorry.” The kid stood
looking at the money for a second.

“
Aw, for crying out loud.”
Le Bref was flustered at giving up money for that.

Gilles gave the kid a wry
grin.

“
That’s okay, he’ll get over
it. Thank you.”

The youngster, easily up to Gilles’
shoulder and sturdy-looking in his hand-me down trousers and
jacket, had this odd look that came across his features
suddenly.

“
There’s some kind of artist
guy who lives just over there. He’s new here.” The fellow pointed
up at a set of small windows on the top floor, about three doors
down on the opposite side. “Maybe she’s a model or
something.”

Le Bref gave him a significant nod. It
was something to go on, and the girl didn’t vapourize into thin
air.

Gilles dug hastily in his pocket and
came up with a couple of small bills. Taking the smaller, he handed
it over with a sense of glee.

“
Can you do us another
favour?” Le Bref flashed him his badge.

The boy was a little staggered, but
recovered quickly.

“
Maybe.” His wits were still
with him.

“
I want you to go somewhere
and get yourself something to eat. Stay there for a while, and
don’t talk about us, okay?”

The kid was gone in a
heartbeat.

“
Don’t forget to put that on
your expense report.” Le Bref wasn’t kidding.

This sort of thing could add up after a
while.

“
Say look, Gilles. I’m all
right here on my own. I wouldn’t mind Henri if you could send him
back.”

Gilles glanced at the doors across the
way, all residential and all locked up as tight as a drum. The
street was quiet, and it was still fairly early in the
morning.

“
I’ll call in and find
somebody to relieve you. There’s a place around the corner.” Gilles
thought for a second. “How long after she turned the corner before
you got there?”

There was a brief
hesitation.

“
Twenty seconds. She
couldn’t do it, Gilles. My hearing is good, and she was in that
coat. She had a package with a fair amount of weight.”

Gilles took an oblique look to the
other end of the street. Even if it had been thirty or forty
seconds, the distance was simply too great, and not silently at
that. There were no dustbins, and no obviously-discarded packages
littering the ground. Shoes with thin, flat soles would only be
painful to run in, and to be observed by a tail in this type of
behaviour could lead to immediate arrest and a thorough
questioning. She didn’t impress Gilles as being stupid, far from
it.

The house across the way, on the other
hand, was at least within the realm of possibility.

“
What’s in the
package?”

Le Bref handed it over before
responding.

“
Five pounds of
freshly-killed kosher baby beef liver.” Le Bref grinned at the look
on Gilles’ face. “It’s okay, Gilles, I can always eat it. Marie is
a wonderful cook.”

Gilles sighed deeply, and lowering his
head, stepped out and turned to their left.

“
Hey Gilles!”

He glanced back.

“
Get a job, Maintenon.” Le
Bref put his back to the wall, and sank down into a crouch like a
tired old man basking in the hot Mexican sun.

The only thing missing was a serape and
Sombrero.

“
I’ll buy you a beer later.”
Gilles headed back to find a phone.

***

Gilles found a corner grocer’s with a
pay phone uncomfortably close to the counter, up front right by the
door. While it was a courtesy and a convenience, it wasn’t very
suitable for confidential talk.

“
Henri?”

“
Yes? Oh, hey! Boss! You’re
not going to believe this!” His voice was uncomfortably loud in
Gilles’ ear, but his natural inclination was to jam the thing in
tighter to his head to drown out the sound, wincing as he did
so.

“
No need to shout, I can
hear you just fine.” Putting his hand over the mouth-piece, he
nodded at the store-keeper. “It’s my mother, she’s half deaf, you
know?”

The fellow nodded knowingly, but didn’t
move a muscle as he sat on a high stool and read the paper, spread
flat on the counter in front of him. While business was slow, a
couple of shoppers moved in a desultory fashion along the aisles of
foodstuffs.

“
Boss, the boys followed
Alexis to another apartment. He went in and hasn’t come out, and he
never mentioned it to anybody. Not as I recall.” Henri was
breathless, his excitement getting the better of his breathing.
“Isn’t he still living at the house?”

They had sort of assumed that he was.
This was the trouble with losing contact with the principals in the
case, however briefly.

“
Hmn. Very well. Where is
this place located?” Gilles waited, presumably Henri had it written
down. “What time was that, exactly?”

“
It was maybe twenty minutes
ago. It was…” He carefully read out the address twice, so
that

Gilles could make a note of it, but it
was hardly necessary.

It was right around the corner, where
he had just left Le Bref.

He hung up on Henri’s breathy
speculations and bolted for the door.

Chapter Sixteen

On a hunch

Instead of going back to where Le Bref
was, on a hunch Gilles continued in the opposite direction, made a
left at the next street, and went all the way to the end of the
block, a distance of about a hundred metres. Then he went left
again, to the next intersection, where there were a couple of
familiar figures loitering like the street-corner thugs that
plagued certain neighbourhoods.

It was a fellow by the name of Le Clerc
and Le Bref’s partner Emile Niguet.

“
Well, well, well. There
goes the neighbourhood.” Le Clerc bid a caustic greeting, and
Gilles waved like he lived there.

“
Hmn. So which one did he go
into?” Gilles stepped forward a half-metre and took a quick glance
up the street.

He had a funny feeling that he knew
already.

“
Third from the far end,
other side of the street. It’s the faded yellow-painted stucco one.
Somebody, we think it was him, opened up all the windows within
four or five minutes of his entry. Top floor.” Emile was more
businesslike now.

“
Did you see the girl go
in?” They looked at each other.

“
No.” Le Clerc stepped
backwards, craned his neck, glanced at the far end of the street,
and explained. “Le Clerc went to find a phone, and I didn’t want
him spotting me. What time did she get here?”

“
Maybe a half an hour, now.
No, it’s only ten or fifteen minutes.” Everyone checked their
watches.