“Just my mustache.”
She laughed, and the fizzy sound of her laughter made him feel ten years younger.
“What brings you here on a Sunday?”
“I have something to tell you.”
“Yes?”
“I think Eugène Rabineau may have had more to do with the L’Ermitage murders than Ali Sedak.”
Mazarelle heaved a sigh of resignation and accepted the inevitable. He was getting pissed off with her meddling. Though he knew better, he’d hoped that this might have been a social visit.
“Why is that, mademoiselle?”
“I understand that Rabineau claims to have gone to Marseilles and been there the night of the crime, but in fact he returned that same evening with two men.”
“How do you know this?”
“They were seen together in a bar opposite the Bergerac train station.”
“Le Cyrano?”
“That’s right.”
“Who were they, these men?”
“I don’t know. Friends of his, I suppose. Well?” Molly raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you the least bit surprised that he was here that night?”
“But what makes you so certain that means he was involved in the murders?”
“Why else would he lie about not returning until the following day?”
Mazarelle scratched his mustache and offered her one possible explanation. “He claims that he just didn’t want to get involved.”
“You mean you
knew
all along that he was back the same day?”
Her lovely green eyes skewered Mazarelle, making him feel even hotter than the room. “No, not all along.”
“But you knew.”
“Yes, I knew. We’ve recently been talking to people who were working at Le Cyrano that night. The reason we haven’t brought Rabo in is that all of them—the bartender, the waiters—confirm the fact that he was there all night drinking. He left when they closed at one a.m.”
Molly’s glance went around the office, looking for a way out. “Well,” she asked, “what about his two Corsican friends?”
“Now there you may have something. He says they weren’t friends.
Claims he didn’t know them. Just two guys he picked up on the road named Georges and Po-Po. Had a couple of drinks together and they left the bar about eleven, he said, heading for Bordeaux.” Mazarelle raised his large thumb—a scarred, stumpy digit—and moved it back and forth over his shoulder.
“Hitchhiking?”
“Uh-huh. We have an alert out for them. They’ll turn up.”
Molly got up to leave, feeling a little deflated. “I just thought you should know.”
“Look,” he said sympathetically, “it’s clear to me that you’re somebody who’s not likely to get lost. But give us a little credit too. We’re not all Clouseaus.”
“Yes, of course.” Molly felt embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to …”
He shook her hand, thanked her. “I understand you wish to help, mademoiselle. I appreciate that. You mustn’t think I’m not grateful. And as for Rabo, don’t worry. We haven’t eliminated him yet, not by any means. Now”—his voice stiffened and he ran his tongue over his lips—“will you please do me a favor and get off our toes? Quit playing detective.”
When she’d gone, Mazarelle sat down, took out his pipe, his tobacco, and started to fill the bowl. Hating how much he’d sounded like her evil stepfather. He noticed she’d left behind a whiff of her perfume. The sort of delicious scent that might easily turn a younger man’s head with thoughts. Perhaps he’d ask her out to dinner and, somewhere between the amuse bouche and the Monbazillac, tell her once and for all to stop interfering with police business. Or better yet, he thought, just ask her out to dinner.
PART FOUR
36
MAISON D’ARRÊT, PÉRIGUEUX
T
he Maison d’Arrêt in Périgueux spread itself out like five splayed fingers of some giant gray beast. Though it was a sun-drenched summer morning with a light breeze that set the tricolor dancing above the Palais de Justice, even spectacular weather could do little to brighten Périgueux’s gloomy Piranesian prison.
Mazarelle parked his police car opposite the entrance and got out. He looked tired, rumpled, his eyes red-rimmed, as if he’d been working late and sleeping in his clothes. Which he had been, and probably smoking more than was good for him too. But he was feeling better than he looked. Didier, the chief of the Toulouse PTS team, had finally come through for him. The marks on the floor mat in Ali’s VW were, as suspected, bloodstains and the DNA matched that of Mademoiselle Reece’s father. Didier said, “My people have been working around the clock for you,
mon
vieux
. I hope you appreciate it.”
“I owe you one,” the inspector acknowledged gratefully. Promising that the next time Didier visited the commissariat there was a very good bottle of Black Label he kept in his office for special occasions and that they were going to have the pleasure of polishing it off together. Mazarelle, however, was griped to learn that the chief had no idea what he was talking about when asked if he’d tested the two guns from the McAllister house.
“Never mind,” Mazarelle said, “I’ll see that you get them. The twelve-gauge shotgun may have killed Phillips.” Duboit, he thought,
shaking his head. Why the hell couldn’t he surprise me and do what he was told?
As for
madame
le
juge,
he got what he expected from that party too. “Qualified” approval. She’d sent on his interim report to the procureur who would handle the case in court. Mazarelle didn’t need her telephone call to know she’d want a signed confession and Sedak’s head on a platter before she’d be satisfied. They always wanted the same thing—more and better evidence. QED. How could he blame her? When you’re dealing with people’s lives, you don’t want to make mistakes and cut off the wrong leg, administer the wrong anesthetic. But he’d found the law a little more complicated than medicine. Even a signed confession wasn’t always a guarantee of guilt. Yet he’d almost be happy to settle for that, and now with the proof of Reece’s blood in Ali’s car he felt he just might get the confession that had eluded him.
The uniformed guard at reception glanced at the inspector’s ID, listened to the reason he was there, and told him to wait. Mazarelle wondered why he was getting the fish eye. Putting the phone down, the guard said someone would be there in a moment to fetch him. The prison director wanted to see the inspector.
Mazarelle blew out his cheeks. A bother, he thought. He’d no desire to waste time chitchatting with the top brass. Straightening his old, creased jacket, he was buttoning it up when the director’s flunky came to show him the way. Though Mazarelle fully expected to be kept waiting outside the headman’s office, cooling his fanny, he was shown right in.
The director came forward, pumped his hand. “A pleasure to meet you,
monsieur
l’inspecteur
. Your work on the Taziac murders has been in all the papers.”
Mazarelle wondered why the man seemed so nervous. Did he want an autograph? Something was eating at him.
“Of course I know your Commissaire Rivet. He’s quite a young man for such an important position.”
“Yes, he is young,” Mazarelle agreed, his eyelids growing heavier by the second.
“The truth is, I rarely get down to Bergerac. The job here keeps me much too busy. We may not be as large as Rouen or as overcrowded
as La Santé but we have our share of fights, rapes, drugs, self-mutilations. Every day we’re being sent more and more psychos by the courts, and there are far too few of us to deal with them. I suppose it’s the same all over France.”
Though the handsome, white-haired director had a sonorous radio announcer’s voice, it didn’t completely put Mazarelle to sleep. He reminded the director why he was there.
“My appointment this morning to see your prisoner, Ali Sedak, is for ten o’clock.”
“Oh yes, the captain of the guards told me about that. I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”
“Bad news?”
“At nine twenty-seven this morning prisoner Sedak was found on the floor of his cell covered in blood and barely conscious. His wrists had been cut.”
Though he’d sensed bad news, Mazarelle had no idea how bad it was going to be.
“Cut with what?”
“A double-edged razor was on the floor next to him.”
“How did he get a razor? Didn’t you have him under suicide watch?”
“
Malheureusement, non.
If we had to put every cuckoo here under twenty-four-hour surveillance, we’d need an additional platoon. Alas, monsieur, we don’t have that kind of budget.”
Mazarelle demanded, “Where is he now?”
“We, of course, immediately called for an ambulance, and he was taken to Centre Hospitalier in a comatose condition. A few minutes ago I learned that the doctors were working on him in the emergency room, and he seemed to be responding.”
Mazarelle headed for the door. “I’ve got to go.”
“Before you do,
monsieur
l’inspecteur,
a few seconds more of your time. As I’m sure you’re aware, this sort of thing can do no one any good. In such a situation one naturally must be as discreet as possible. It’s not good for me, not good for this institution, not good for Périgueux. I’m sure you understand.”
“And what if he dies?”
The director paused, as if the thought had never occurred to him. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
Mazarelle was amazed. All those snow-white hairs and nothing in his head. Mazarelle limped hurriedly out the prison gate to his car. As he sped, siren blaring, toward the hospital, he thought that if worse came to worst, he still had a chance for a deathbed confession.
The waiting area outside the emergency room was crowded, people talking in whispers. A nurse called out someone’s name, and a well-dressed woman in her fifties got up, holding a blood-soaked handkerchief to her nose, and followed her. At the front desk the inspector was told he could go inside.
A tall, bearded doctor with a stethoscope around his neck was talking intently to a heavyset, middle-aged man holding a worn leather briefcase. Mazarelle identified himself and asked about Ali Sedak.
The doctor pointed to the gendarme filling out forms at the desk.
“Dead. He never regained consciousness. Maybe if we’d gotten him here a little sooner, perhaps then …” Someone was calling him. Not knowing what else to add, the doctor apologized and walked briskly away.
“A tragedy,” said the man with the briefcase.
He introduced himself as François Astruc. Mazarelle had seen a picture in the paper of the militant, high-profile defense lawyer from Toulon. With the financial help of Ali’s sisters, Thérèse had managed to hire him for her husband, but now it was all for nothing.
Astruc said, “I know that since he was put in prison, his morale had plummeted. But we were preparing for trial and I personally believe, though you may not, that we had a good chance of success. Even that didn’t cheer him up. So sad …” The lawyer shrugged. “If only I hadn’t been late this morning for our appointment, he’d have been found sooner and this wouldn’t have happened.”
“What time was he expecting you?”
“Nine. I was held up by a telephone call and didn’t get to the prison until twenty minutes later. When the guard and I found him on the floor of his cell with his wrists slashed, he’d already lost a lot of blood but was still breathing. What a shame! To have been driven to take his own life.”
“You believed he was innocent?”
“Of course I believed he was innocent! What kind of question is that? Innocent and despairing of justice. The first time I met him he said, ‘I wouldn’t be in prison if France didn’t have two kinds of citizens—those born here and second-class ones like me.’ Why else would he have killed himself?”
“In my experience,” the inspector offered, “it’s the guilty ones who kill themselves.”
“Your experience and mine differ, monsieur,” Astruc replied coldly. “The outrage of Ali Sedak’s death lies entirely with the prison authorities and people like you, Inspector, who had a responsibility to safeguard my client’s life and failed.”
On Mazarelle’s list of least favorite people, defense lawyers like Astruc ranked right up there just below murderers, pederast priests, and
pégriots
who stole from blind men’s cups. Why, he asked himself, why do I waste my time?
There was a public phone near the entrance and, checking his address book, he dialed the procureur’s direct line. When he told d’Aumont who was calling, the procureur seemed pleased. As Mazarelle hoped, he hadn’t heard yet. Mazarelle certainly didn’t want him to learn the news of Sedak’s death from TV reports. He promptly explained where he was and why.
D’Aumont was furious. It was inconceivable to him that the director hadn’t arranged to have the new prisoner watched around the clock.
“The man is an imbecile! The only reason he got the job was because his father was once mayor of Périgueux. That plus the fact that he has a good tailor. But thanks to you, Inspector, Sedak would have been found guilty no matter what. The evidence against him was overwhelming.”
Mazarelle told him of PTS’s discovery of Reece’s blood on the floor mat in Ali’s car.
“
Voilà!
An open-and-shut case. Outstanding, Inspector!”
Mazarelle was annoyed with himself for feeling as pleased as he did about the procureur’s bureaucratic flattery, which he knew was largely hot air. Though he thought they had a case, it was hardly open-and-shut. For example, the shoes Ali was wearing the night of
the murders. According to the lab report, they didn’t have any blood on them. Not a trace. How could that be if he was in the kitchen at L’Ermitage, where the white tile floor was awash in Reece’s blood? Unless, of course, those weren’t the shoes he was wearing. As for Ali’s suicide, Mazarelle certainly didn’t see it as a clear message from the land of the dead of either guilt or innocence. Nothing more than a simple miscalculation. A clever manipulator’s desperate attempt to win sympathy as the wrongly accused, while being saved by his lawyer’s timely arrival. Unfortunately for Ali, Astruc’s telephone rang as he was leaving and he answered it.