The Art of Murder (8 page)

Psychologically, it didn’t make sense.
A shot in the temple would be regarded as cleaner, and perhaps
leaving less of a mess. People often committed suicide with
firearms in a bathtub, or in a basement, or a garden shed for just
that reason. They didn’t want to leave a mess.

“
Hmn. It takes all kinds to
make a world, Gilles, but I see the point.” Levain studied the rest
of the cadaver. “I don’t see a lot of moles, birthmarks, anything
like that?”

Doctor Guillaume shook his head in
discontent.

“
No. I’ve taken a good set
of prints. With luck, he has done some official service, hopefully
in the military, or maybe at some time he’s been booked for a
crime. Other than that, we have the teeth, some of which are
fragmented, some of which have had expensive dental work. Gold
fillings, but that’s the usual anyway. The fact that he even had
them speaks volumes.”

Guillaume believed in official
documents. Eyewitnesses were unreliable. The fact that Duval had
been found dead in his own home, with plenty of testimonial
evidence that it was indeed him, meant little to a real
professional.

Behind its dome of glass, the minute
hand of the wall clock clicked ever forward in its inexorable
fashion, reminding Maintenon that no one really ever knows just
exactly how much time they have left. Death came so unexpectedly to
people. You could never really count on reaching your natural
age—too many accidents, too much disease, and not much love in the
world when you got right down to it.

Gilles understood that one well enough.
If it wasn’t for that, there would be little need for police at
all. The pain in his jaw was just a dull background ache at this
moment in time, but it would come back with a vengeance all too
soon. There was a world of pain out there.

“
So far no one has mentioned
any military service, but they have all known him for varying
lengths of time…perhaps the brother, n’est pas?”

This was greeted by non-committal looks
from Levain and Guillaume.

“
I think the company made
military equipment during the war.” This was from Gilles. “He would
have been exempt from service. But that’s not to say that he didn’t
join up anyway, back in the heady days of the summer of
1914.”

“
Did you notice anything
else? What about his overall physical condition?” Levain kept him
on topic, as Gilles seemed preoccupied.

The doctor outlined how his subject was
about thirty-eight years old, not overweight, how he had fairly
firm muscle tone, and while there were no major ‘sporting injuries’
to report, he had led an active life, which resulted in a bony lump
on his left shin that had been there for many years. He was
tolerably well-built, but otherwise unremarkable. The man had
smoked, lightly thought Guillaume, but definitely a yes. As for
drink, again, not enough to scar the liver, but probably, yes.
There was a broken vein up in the soft flesh near one eye, very
small. His blood work, alcohol levels, nothing appeared out of the
norms, and most importantly, he had found no signs of terminal
illness, nor anything else to cause any real suffering. There were
no recent bumps, bruises, abrasions, or anything like that.
Interestingly, he had eaten a good dinner the night before his
death. Men like that never went hungry. But a suicide with an
appetite? It made for suspicion. Both men appreciated the doctor’s
use of plain language, as at this point medical terms just
complicated the process. His official write-up would be a paradigm
of clarity and use all the proper scientific terms.

Stomach contents reflected the menu
provided by Madame Fontaine for the night before, just as Gilles
had expected.

A full report would be
forthcoming.

Levain had learned to trust that look
of Maintenon’s. When he appeared to be a million miles away, then
somebody somewhere had better look out.

“
I’ve been thinking about
that make-up.” In pure impulse, Gilles stared at Guillaume, and
gave a quick and wild look at Levain. “This could all just be
make-up. Window dressing. Think about it. We owe something, a
little gratitude I might say, to our anonymous floater. Any firm
identification of the deceased relies upon those closest to him.
It’s always up to them, right?”

Interesting.

“
Then we need more on him.
Dental records, medical history, surgeries, his childhood
afflictions, everything.” Doctor Guillaume shrugged in sympathy.
“Find a record of his prints. That would settle it for me. Assuming
they match, of course.”

Gilles nodded at his
thoughts.

“
There are fingerprints in
his house.” Levain pointed out the obvious.

“
Yes, but…” Gilles
hesitated.

How should he put it?

“
Where there’s a will,
there’s a way. And we are going to need more manpower. For both of
them, actually.”

To fake a lot of fingerprints wouldn’t
be easy. You would have to lug your victim, dead or alive, all over
the house, and he quickly discarded the idea.

Guillaume’s approving eyes gleamed in
the lurid glare as he stared into Levain’s.

“
That’s why we keep him
around, eh, Andre?”

Levain shrugged. His head sank deeper
into his collar, that was about it.

“
There’s never a shortage of
overtime in this department.” Guillaume laughed and slapped his
thigh with a sharp crack.

Gilles was lost in thought. It could be
a suicide, or was it just a bunch of window dressing for a
homicide? Duval was a rich and important man, who held many
patents. That’s what Rene had been trying to tell him without
actually coming right out and saying it. He wasn’t trying to push a
point of view. Rene just wanted him to trust his
instincts.

Chapter Five

What was real

What was real, was when you could
forget, and those moments when you did forget, but there was always
that moment when you remembered. There was always a lurch, a
wrenching back from momentary pleasure into the pain of seeing her
face again. Lately even her image was fading, which was cause for
more heartache. There were times when he literally panicked, with
his guts trembling and heart pounding and knowing that it was real,
all real, and that life would never be the same again. He could not
think her name without pain. It was his new reality.

There were times when the solitude was
comforting, and there were times when it was unbearable. It’s not
that Andre didn’t understand, he understood as well as any man
could. But there were things that must be borne, and they must of
necessity be borne alone. It was a common fate, and an individual
cross for each person to bear in their own way. Sooner or later,
they all had to do it.

The pair sat in a small, lower-level
bistro that had the advantage of being quiet and out of the wind.
The other customers, more intent on drinking than eating, ignored
them. The blue haze in the air was close and warm, making strangers
seem like intimate friends, names forgotten but faces remembered
from some other time and place, far, far away and long, long time
ago. They were all familiar types to someone who had walked a beat.
Everyone had a role to play in life. That was the theory. The
surprise was that he loved them so, and for no good reason. It hurt
to think on it.

“
Listen, Inspector, there’s
no good way to bring this up.” Andre sipped at his beer. “But the
boys and I got to thinking…”

“
What’s this?” Gilles knew
he had been sort of absent in spirit lately, and had wondered with
a sense of guilt once or twice if it was affecting his job
performance.

Of course it had to.

This was something he once would have
sworn would never happen, but of course things did happen. Guilt
was his constant companion these days, and what was one more thing?
It was just icing on the cake. His life was shit, and he had
nothing but cake to eat anymore.

There was a brief rise in the volume of
the background buzz in the room. A pair of fellows came in, voices
raised and likely with pay-envelopes in their blue coveralls. They
were greeted by some men at a big round table in the corner, who up
until now had been more subdued.

Gilles belatedly recalled that it was
Friday, and not a bad afternoon. He found himself studying the
stubbled faces, the strong hands and forearms on some of them. They
had the brick-red faces and necks of the typical Poilu. It was a
word fraught with meaning to Gilles and the blood-tattered remnants
of his generation. No one ever really talked about the affection
felt by men for each other on the eve of battle, the night before
inevitable destruction and the bliss of their oblivion. They talked
about everything else but the war at times like that, in his
experience.

Andre pulled a buff letter-sized
envelope from his inner jacket pocket. He placed it flat on the
table and shoved it across to Gilles.

“
They’ve delegated me to go
with you. I’ve been press-ganged into it, and you know I wouldn’t
lie to you.” Andre leveled a grin and a look. “We took up a
collection. I know a place, a really good place, where we can get a
tomb-stone.”

Gilles nodded glumly.

“
Yes, yes, I know.” He
sighed deeply.

They would take a hand in it sooner or
later, and this was better than simple badgering.

“
It’s been what, about four
or five months? The ground has settled, and, spring is here, and
honestly, Gilles, there’s a bit of a waiting list. It’s the
practical thing. He has to make the monument, and then it gets put
in the queue for delivery. You can expect some kind of delays. They
try to stay out of the way of all the funerals, so he can only put
them in on certain days. He does it in the mornings if he can. He
does beautiful work, and I know. My father and mother are in the
same cemetery, and he did the marker.”

“
Well, this certainly
explains the liquid lunch, or puts it into its proper perspective.”
Gilles scowled mildly at his drink.

He looked up.

“
Thank you very much,
incidentally.” Andre had twisted his arm, and didn’t offer to buy
lunch all that often.

Gilles had fallen for the trap. The
soup was good, and the bread excellent. Soaked in the bowl, the
bread made a surprisingly hearty meal. Of course his standards had
fallen deplorably in terms of what made a meal these days. The
lunch special meant a lot to men like Gilles. The place didn’t seem
to matter very much. It could be anywhere. It wasn’t exactly bliss,
nor was there a sense of fulfillment. But he felt half-human, and
that was really something lately.

“
Hah! That’s the spirit,
Inspector. That’s the spirit. Anyways, you’ll like him. He’s
married to one of my cousins, and he’ll take care of everything.
All you have to do is pick out a stone and give him the essential
details.”

“
That’s very thoughtful,
Andre. Thank you.” A terribly dark mood settled over Gilles, but
then he shrugged it off as best he could and reached for the pill
bottle.

Gilles sloshed a couple down and
slugged back the last third of a cold dark lager. Levain watched
the performance wordlessly, not judging him.

“
Another drink, sirs?” The
waiter hovered at Levain’s side.

“
Yes, and quickly.” Levain
regretted putting Gilles through any more grief, but his wife had
been gone for a while now, and quite frankly his old friend would
be a lot healthier and probably a lot happier if he took care of
one or two simple little things.

He needed to confront some issues,
rather than beat himself down. The procrastination he’d been
displaying lately was out of Maintenon’s character, and it showed
the boss’s state of mind or rather emotions.

He’d heard the couple’s bedroom hadn’t
even been gone through and cleaned out yet—the boss went home at
the end of the day, and crawled into a bed that would be a constant
reminder that she was gone. At this point, even her smell might
still linger. It probably did. The old man smell would come sooner
rather than later. Loneliness was almost a kind of an illness, in
that it couldn’t go on for too long without proper treatment. If
Gilles didn’t get some help, from somebody, almost anybody, serious
consequences would ensue. Levain was sure of it. Among other
things, Gilles needed to redecorate, and a couple of new shirts
wouldn’t exactly hurt his chances of advancement. The poor fellow
was looking distinctly seedy as of late.

***

They were in a straggling neighbourhood
of trades establishments behind a major thoroughfare. Gilles
realized he was completely lost, not just in symbolic fashion but
for real. He hadn’t been paying too much attention. He had other
thoughts, most of them not good.

The taxi sputtered off up the road,
trailing dust from the wheels and throwing up a cloud that hung in
the air, yellowing the sunshine and desiccating the nostrils.
Maintenon and Levain walked up the gravel drive towards a pair of
shirtless workmen who were sweating and grunting as they heaved on
the chains of an I-beam lifting device, trying to steady a slab of
black granite as it swung back and forth. Their contraption was
sturdy if obviously home-made. The stone looked to be several
hundred kilos in mass. Clearly there was some hazard, some
difficulty involved. It was all so prosaic.