The Art of Murder (9 page)

“
Hey, Charles.” Levain
stopped, and they waited for a moment to let them finish the
operation.

“
Hey, Andre.”

This involved setting the stone down on
a ramp, and pushing it up on wooden rollers all of fifty
millimetres thick and half a metre long, up into the back of a
battered Citroen C4. It had the rear seat removed for this purpose.
Gilles saw buckets lined up beside the car, all ready to go, with
smaller tools in them, and some shovels, long steel pinch bars, and
more rollers. There was a pile of sand and gravel in a corner of
the yard, and the shop was at the back, set well behind the house.
There was a painted wooden sign over the large door that was
visible from the street in daylight hours, but otherwise unlit. He
saw a black dog on the back porch and one floodlight set high on a
post in the farthest back corner.

After a bored look, the dog put his
head down and blinked at them with a look of
resignation.

The smell of cooking came from the
vicinity of the back door. Gilles grinned unexpectedly, and shoved
his hands into his pockets. There were birds singing from a shade
tree that grew in the next door neighbour’s yard. Birds were not
his strong suit, but they had a certain pugnacious
cheerfulness.

“
Merde!” It wouldn’t do to
get a hand under the slab at the wrong time, but no damage done and
the fellow chuckled again just as quickly.

The language was colourful but
succinct, and as his apprentice set to lifting the stone with a bar
and putting wooden wedges and props under it for security, the
sturdy proprietor of the place dusted off his hands and shook first
with Levain and then Gilles.

“
And, what can I do for you,
sir?”

Gilles eyes traveled up and down the
lines of stones displayed as they would be set, in that they all
sat on a base, although they had no names on them yet. One or two
in the front row did have names, and he realized they were all
finished and awaiting delivery. His eyes took in the stone laying
flat in the back of the Citroen. It had a name on it, an elderly
lady going by the dates. She had been predeceased by a husband and
an infant. Her child had died. She knew what tragedy was, he
thought. She understood loss.

“
I want one like
that.”

“
It’s for his wife.” Levain
beckoned Gilles to look at some of the others. “Seriously, Gilles,
you might want to look at more than one stone. Come on.”

Maintenon reluctantly followed him
along the line of memorials, big, small, simple and ornate. None of
them had an actual price marked on them, but that wasn’t any real
consideration. He just wanted to get it over with.

“
No. I think the first
one—and make sure he puts my name on there too, and my birthday.
Then when the time comes, it’s a simple matter to chisel in the
date of my decease.”

“
Sure, boss. But please,
come on in and talk to the man.” Levain turned and led the way,
relieved to hear Maintenon’s footsteps crunching gravel behind. “I
don’t think he uses a chisel. It’s a sand-blaster now. You won’t
believe this, but he uses one cylinder of the car as a
compressor—”

The boss had been a little funny
lately, but no one else could really do this for him. He had to
take charge himself.

Gilles found the air inside the
workshop cool, a little damp and smelling oddly of something he
couldn’t quite place. He counted out the bills as the man pulled
out a book and took a pen out of the pocket from a shirt hanging on
a peg.

Gilles gave her name, and the fellow
gave him a quick look.

“
He’ll pay the balance after
inspecting the memorial in place.” Levain seemed to know a little
bit about it.

“
Maintenon?”

“
Er, yes.” Levain stepped
in.

“
This is the fellow I told
you about, Charles.” Charles nodded.

“
Oh, yes.” He went blank for
a moment, but then he seemed to recall the incident. “And you want
the black one? With a black base?”

“
Yes, and he wants you to
deliver it.” Levain seemed to be in charge now, and Gilles let
him.

The man named a figure, and Levain
shrugged, looking at Gilles. Gilles agreed, and the gentleman
started putting figures together in a column on paper. It was a
fairly simple sales contract.

Levain told him the name of the
cemetery, and that affected the price somehow as well. There were
certain fees involved, peculiar to the different establishments
around the city. Gilles thought he had paid all of them already,
but apparently that wasn’t so. This was different from a funeral,
the fellow explained, and some folks went years without a monument
while the survivors saved their pennies.

“
For you, sir, I’ll let you
have the base at half price.” Levain gave an encouraging
nod.

“
Thank you.” Gilles accepted
it at face value.

It was only later, jammed side by side
on the Metro when Levain explained that Charles’ wife’s cousin had
been strangled by her no-good boyfriend, and that Maintenon was
responsible for his apprehension and subsequent execution by
guillotine. People often congratulated him upon the conviction of a
killer. He never knew what to think or to say under those
circumstances. There really was nothing valid to say—it sounded
like moral condemnation, which he preferred not to do. Most
perpetrators were as pathetic as they were dangerous. It was
something that happened in the heat of the moment, which destroyed
lives and changed people forever.

“
Who says justice is only
for the rich, eh, Inspector?”

Gilles grinned a little lopsidedly. He
really was feeling better about things, and the ache in his jaw was
finally fading.

“
We have an interesting
errand for Monday.” Gilles’ voice was curiously flat,
expressionless.

“
Which is?” Levain’s
eyebrows rose at the answer.

“
We’re going to see a
hypnotist.”

Levain thought he was
joking.

“
At your command, good
sir.”

“
I’m serious, Andre. Anyway,
it’s better than a dentist.”

So he really was serious
then.

***

Locking the street door, for they lived
above a small dress shop on a quieter side street not far from
work, Andre took his bicycle and locked it up in the back room. He
hung up his overcoat and put his plain old hat on a peg by the back
door. The black rubber slip-ons were a struggle as usual, and as
usual, the hard leather shoes underneath stank of moisture and old
socks. It went with the job.

Andre wearily climbed two flights up
from the street, as the sounds of the heavy evening traffic and the
clanging of trams faded. It was hot at the head of the stairs, the
air permeated with an enticing aroma. There was a roast in the oven
and boiled cabbage on the stove-top. It was a moist, buttery smell
that brought an instant arousal to his famished stomach. It felt so
good to be home. The door had squeaked on its hinges from the day
they moved in. It still did, and he just couldn’t seem to get
around to oiling them.

“
Daddy, daddy, daddy!”
Maelys came running from the other end of the hall as he
entered.

What a day.

“
Nichol. Come and pry your
daughter off me.” He chuckled as she came out of the kitchen,
wiping her hands on an apron stained with flour and red juices,
hopefully from some kind of pie.

It was a joke just between the two of
them.

“
That, my fine fellow, is
not my daughter. She is obviously yours.” She smiled and pulled
Maelys off her father. “Let him get his jacket off first, and then
you can have him all to yourself.”

They had a quick kiss for each other,
and then he stripped off the jacket and ran his hand through his
hair, much of which seemed to end up in his hairbrush lately, a
little more of it going with every morning that came along. He bent
and picked up his daughter, fickle as all kids were, and she
struggled and wriggled in some spontaneous desire to run off
again.

He gave her a quick kiss and let her
down. It was for the best anyway, as he was almost dead on his
feet.

“
Vache sacrée.” Andre’s head
swam and he looked for the antidote. “Holy, cow.”

It was right there, an old and familiar
friend.

“
Do you want me to draw you
a bath?” She called from the kitchen as he slumped into his sagging
brown armchair.

Andre had only been home a few hours
after his night shift, then off to find Maintenon again.

“
Naw. I’m having a drink.”
Andre Levain was home, he had two whole days off and it was the
weekend.

This event was kind of a rarity in
police work.

“
We can have a bath
later.”

Her giggle acknowledged the signal.
They would have a nice, quiet weekend together.

She would bring him a glass of wine
when she got a minute. It was all he needed, really. The pair of
them would be in bed by ten o’clock, and according to her usual
testimony, he would be snoring five minutes later. But he had a
funny feeling they might be in for a little treat tonight, and he
was quite looking forward to it. They were still young enough and
their marriage still fresh enough, that sex had not become a weapon
or a bone of contention. For that he was grateful. Maelys was a
sound sleeper, which seemed to help. At four years of age, Maelys
was still totally innocent of guile, although lately she was
learning to manipulate her parents to some extent. For the most
part, she was completely absorbed in her dollies and her tea-set.
Having a daughter was pretty much the only thing in the world that
could have made him read up on the subject of children and
child-rearing. At first it had been God-awful, but Andre was a
quick convert to the joys of being a father.

He yawned in a kind of surprise,
discovering a smile to go with it which made his fact twist, stiff
and awkward in its involuntary contractions.

“
Aw.” It had been a long
time since he had enjoyed a good Saturday morning
lie-in.

He only hoped nothing came along to
spoil it. Reaching for the paper, he put his feet up. Fatigue
flushed over him in a wave that when it ebbed, drained much of the
day’s stress and worry from his tense frame. The room was warm,
although windows opened a few centimetres to let in some air
promised a cool breeze later. Andre absently reached for his pipe,
but laid it aside again as he was too tired to mess with it. It was
like he just didn’t care, besides, he must have had fifty
cigarettes in the last twenty-four hours. It was a special kind of
taste in his mouth.

That wouldn’t all come off in the
shower. He longed for his toothbrush, such a simple little thing.
People all said the same things. In the long hours of the night
shift, they longed for their beds, their armchairs, and their
toothbrushes. They longed for a drink, or even just a hot meal and
a friendly face. They longed for their wives, their kids and their
homes.

He looked at the bottles on the
sideboard. It was just ten feet away. Inertia defeated him. Maybe
he didn’t need it after all. The smell of cabbage was making him
ravenous, and it would be a nice change from their more usual
staple diet of anything and everything that went with carrots.
These days, it was like everything seemed to go with carrots. There
was also the promise of pie in the air, baked this afternoon most
likely.

There was something about pie that made
everything else all right.

Chapter Six

His life had
changed.

In the early days, he never would have
brought a valise bulging with work home with him. Back then, his
life was compartmentalized. His life had changed, to the extent
that he dreaded coming home. Weekends were the worst. All around
were objective reminders of his past bliss and present suffering.
He lived to work, and he worked to keep on living. It was his
escape and his only acknowledged reality. Nothing else existed for
him.

There was a book in the parlour. It
bulged with the names, addresses and phone numbers of hundreds of
people, their old friends, newer friends, aunts, uncles, cousins
and acquaintances. There were tradesmen, doctors, and priests.
Every one of his wife’s relations was in there. It wasn’t that
Gilles didn’t like many of them, although that could be said of
some more than others. But they were their friends—not so much his
friends. They were the sort of friends that couples had, and not so
much the kind scruffy old bachelors had. This was especially true
for those with a miserable outlook and nothing but sentimental and
often poignant memories to share in a world where life moved on at
a frenetic pace.

Seated at his desk in the study,
patiently built-in as he recalled, in the spare bedroom that had
never been needed for a child, he pulled out the brown envelope
with a number of snap-shots, some studio portraits, and other, more
candid shots of Theodore Duval. They were provided under some
protest by Madame Fontaine, and Gilles had been pressed to sign a
receipt for them. Out of sensitivity, he obliged the old girl, but
even so. Her cooperation might be priceless, one never
knew.