Murder Without Pity (15 page)

“You don’t think it’s connected to the Pincus dossier?”

“You’re rushing things.”

“You’re leading this investigation. Oh, I should warn you Officer Bonnay’s there too.”

A hell of a way to begin Sunday, Stanislas thought. Hearing a major suspect, however offensive, was dead, and an enemy at the crime scene. He hung up and dialed his clerk.

Christophe mercifully answered. But his wife had guessed his fate. Stanislas could hear her shrill voice in the background, arguing his workload had turned her into a widow. Today was their fifth wedding anniversary. Didn’t he care?

After explaining what had happened, Stanislas hung up before she could grab the phone. He resigned himself to Suzanne hating him. He resigned himself also to another long day.

“I haven’t seen this side of the Eiffel Tower in ages,” a tall policeman with glasses explained while he helped guard the Allée Léon Bourgeois’s southern flank. “All these trees make me feel like I’m in a forest.”

“We’ll pretend we’re on a Sunday picnic,” his partner, a man with a pugnacious jaw, said. A few early morning joggers trotted out from the fog in the Champ de Mars Park across the street and huffed toward the muddy path that trailed under the arc of oaks. The policeman waved them away from the crime scene.

Stanislas pushed shut the rear door to the patrol car and gazed around before going over to the two. Other than those runners and a lone taxi idling further back on the avenue, that part of the grounds appeared deserted. At least the police won’t have to fight back throngs of curious, he thought as he limped over. “Good day,” he said, shaking each policeman’s hand.

“Good for the living maybe, Monsieur Judge, but not for him.” The taller policeman gestured further down the track to his left to make his point. Several other police had gathered around Boucher’s covered body. Opposite them stood Christophe holding his umbrella over Officer Leclair, who chatted into his cell phone.

“The back of his head was bashed in,” the shorter cop said. “A bottle of champagne to whoever did it. My grandfather lost three brothers during the Occupation because of him.”

Stanislas’s driver turned on his klaxon as he squealed ahead on Avenue Octave Gréard back to the intersection. Frightened crows flapped off branches, hurtling down a flurry of drops on them.

Officer Leclair hurried over with the umbrella snapped open. “Nice way to spend your one day off, Monsieur Judge.”

Rain started thudding on the umbrella and nicked puddles that zigzagged along the track to the body. The way looked slippery, Stanislas noticed, and he jabbed his walking stick into the muck with a vigorous stab, and they moved away from the two police. Staring toward the shrouded Boucher ahead, he still felt bewildered at the murder of a principal suspect. Now what? he thought and answered, Get on with it. “Were there any shoe prints?”

Leclair flicked rain away from his brows. “Everything’s washed into slush. One of my men tailed Boucher last night for several minutes. Then he lost him in the fog. One moment our target was there. The next, he had turned into white smoke. Boucher must have headed toward a nearby pay phone.”

He twisted away from the other police while he unfolded a scrape of paper. “I found this on the body. The number’s to a phone booth not far from here. He must have suspected we had tapped his own lines.”

“Or someone in the Annex alerted him we had.”

“He could have been out at night alone to phone his Lenny. If he was, he wasn’t alone for long. The killer—assuming he acted alone—must have been at least as tall as Boucher to have clubbed him. I don’t think he suspected anything. See that little wire fence behind that park bench?” He pointed to a frail green enclosure that ran along the path part way as ornamentation. “It’s high enough of an obstacle so that whoever killed him had to lift him up and over into the plant bed, out of view.”

“Where’s our man-of-the-hour?”

“Shivering over there.” He motioned with his notepad to a black man in jeans and sweatshirt hunched on the bench next to a lamppost. The police looked away from him and acknowledged them now with stares.

Stanislas turned back to Leclair. “Is he credible?”

“With those cops around him he was too scared to lie, I think. He’s from Nigeria. No residence, no steady job. Afternoons, works the streets of the eighteenth as a medium. Mostly around the Barbès Rochechouart metro. Problems with love? Failing in school and need help? Can’t find work? See Professor Jean-Pierre. Mornings, he cleans up around the Eiffel Tower. His French is passable. As I understand him, he thinks working around here will give him cachet with Immigration. He came to what he calls his first job this morning”—he flipped over a page of his notepad—“at 6:30 and saw what he thought was an overcoat discarded in the plant bed. That overcoat happened to cover you know who.”

“Any other witnesses?”

“None so far, thanks to the fog.”

“Let’s see how clairvoyant he really is.” From a bed’s warmth to drizzle and cold, from a live suspect to a dead one, he couldn’t shake the chill or the shock. He stabbed his cane into the slime, feeling like a mountaineer bracing for a difficult climb.

“You not return me to Nigeria, please, monsieur.” Jean-Pierre’s black eyes bulged with the fright of someone at the mercy of the powerful.

“I just want your story.” Stanislas held the umbrella over him, letting himself get wet. Aware that so many police scared the man, he ordered everyone away except Christophe, whom he called over, and Henri. “Monsieur Minh, swear him in. Then get him a jacket, some coffee, and a croissant.” He turned back to the Nigerian. “I must keep you here so you can describe how you found the body. The sooner you do that, the quicker you can get out of this cold.”

“You promise not send me back? My papa write and say guerrillas burn two more villages near home.”

“I’ll talk to Immigration.” He shifted to his clerk to give the oath.

“I come here like I do every morning. To clean trash away. Make pretty tall Iron Lady for everyone, and I see coat there.” He indicated with a toss of his head the plant bed behind him. “I walk closer and see man under coat and think he like me, an SDF, and have no home or work and need help. ‘Monsieur,’ I say, ‘you okay?’ He no answer. Not move. I look closer and see much red over back of head. This bad sign and run for police station under Eiffel Tower. They not there, and I must run to telephone booth.”

He stopped and blinked, and Stanislas realized that in seconds he had told what little he knew. “Did you see anyone else around? Or hear anything?”

“I see no one,” he said.

He still looked too frightened, Stanislas thought, to make him walk through how he had discovered the body. That must wait. He asked Leclair to help him up.

Arms linked, they made their way down the path to a police car, blue light flashing, that idled on Avenue Octave Gréard, as the crime scene technicians pulled up behind.

“With due respect, Monsieur Cassel.”

Stanislas turned to face one of the police who had earlier gathered around the body when he had arrived. “With due respect, what?”

“Officer Leclair said you think this might have been a robbery that got out of hand. With due respect,” Officer Bonnay continued, “this appears more than a robbery. A World War II collabo with no bodyguard around. Out alone maybe late at night.”

“With due respect, officer, I’m heading this investigation.”

“I’m quite aware of that. But there’s the victim’s past to consider.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning he had enemies with long memories.”

“You jump to a conclusion.”

“I make an obvious conclusion.”

“Obvious to you, and in time who knows? You may be right. Let me remind you this investigation’s not that far along.”

More police had gathered around the officer, drawn, no doubt, Stanislas thought, by the raised voices. They looked ready to beat him, though they only glared without saying anything. They must have appointed Bonnay their leader.

“I’m entitled to my opinion, Monsieur Cassel. I hope you see the context: a World War II Vichy functionary. His photograph in the newspapers, in magazines, on the news. Many discovered he was still alive and living quite well in the sixteenth here in Paris. The context. And the motive, revenge.”

Bonnay seemed unable to address him as Monsieur Judge, Stanislas noticed. The policeman still couldn’t accept he was his superior. “He had enemies and was found dead. Therefore he was murdered because of his history?”

“Someone took his valuables to fake a robbery. That’s what we think.”

“He was out alone, as you said. Perhaps out late, as you said. He took a path that on a clear night is dangerous because the trees provide cover. Last night’s fog added to that danger. Ambush was easy. Ambush probably for his valuables, Officer Bonnay. You should listen better at the briefings. Neighbors around the seventh district have reported an outbreak of thefts. Gangs from the suburbs may have taken the metro into Paris. They may have lain in wait and later taken the metro back, this time with Monsieur Boucher’s watch, money, etc. The most we can say for your hypothesis is the situation here is a little odd.”

“But—”

“No ‘but’s.’ Despite your years on the force, you still don’t understand how a criminal investigation proceeds—methodically, on the basis of facts, and under the examining magistrate’s direction! Not on the foundation of a policeman’s well-known right wing political bias.”

“Enough,” a fellow officer said to Bonnay. “It’s not worth it.”

“That’s right, enough,” Stanislas said.

“Let it go,” the fellow officer said to Bonnay. “Don’t risk another disciplinary notation.” He turned to Stanislas. “He meant no disrespect, Monsieur Judge.”

“I’ll not repeat myself,” Stanislas said. “Even those who live rarefied lives succumb to the ordinary. Don’t make this more than it probably is.”

Officer Bonnay glared at him as his friend tugged him away by his forearm.

He had had trouble with that one before on another investigation, Stanislas recalled. And he had to report the insubordination to a superior, who had noted the problem in the man’s file. That could be the only explanation for such surliness this morning. Bonnay could add nothing whatsoever to this case.

The mist still lay thick, and he made his way through the mud back toward Avenue Octave Gréard where Officer Leclair would pick him up. Several steps from the sidewalk as he emerged into thin fog, he startled the two policemen, caught off-guard by his abrupt appearance. The joggers had moved on, leaving that area of the Eiffel Tower’s grounds more deserted than before except for him and the two men standing guard. Except also for the movement of a taxi, he noticed, when it sputtered past and gathered speed toward the intersection, as though the driver were frightened. Stanislas stared at it as it turned the corner without stopping. He continued staring several moments after it headed away from him and the murder scene. Work fatigue and arguing with Bonnay might have distorted what he had seen, he thought when he got over his shock. But the passenger in back looked like Jules Altmann.

The possibility deeply disturbed him.

THE FREEDOM ROOM

Several hours later.

Officer Henner met him in a Renault outside the Annex. During the drive to Boucher’s residence, the gaunt plainclothesman talked mostly, complaining at length about the difficulty of living on his salary. Stanislas at times half listened. Other times his mind wandered in unease to a dead ex-collabo who might have been innocent and to a not-so-innocuous-looking old man, possibly caught unawares at the Eiffel Tower crime scene.

After awhile, they reached Boucher’s apartment complex. The building itself resembled other mundane luxury residences on that avenue that stretched west toward the Bois de Boulogne. Yet signs abounded, Stanislas noticed as he pushed shut the front passenger door, that set it apart. Police still patrolled along the sidewalk. Heavy chains still coiled around the wrought-iron gate’s bars. A third-floor pane in one of the deceased’s library windows overlooking the boulevard had been smashed. The likely instruments of that destruction, a few rocks, were scattered near the walkway to the entrance. This was visceral hate, he thought, turning the ground floor doorknob. No wonder Boucher had never mentioned Marcel Cassel during their interrogations. He had probably wanted to put that era behind as much as possible.

He found Officer Leclair already searching the bedroom and a narrow-faced plainclothesman probing the library. During his first hour there, his men uncovered nothing incriminating, though the narrow-faced cop did discover something alarming, at least to Stanislas. Two books pulled from the floor-to-ceiling bookcase, the first titled
The Scientific
Basis for Racial Differences
and next to it a bound volume of the journal,
The Phalanx
. To which a livid Stanislas knocked both from the policeman’s hand and shouted, “Get those away from me!” and stormed out. Seeing the collected hatred of Collabo Marcel Cassel that close was too much for him.

As he reached the lobby, his cell phone went off. A police lab tech stammered out they had found two hairs at Pincus’s studio, not one, as originally claimed. This made Stanislas wonder aloud about their competence. And where was that lab report? he demanded. Misplaced, came her weak reply. She had seven days to locate it, he said and punched the disconnect.

A door on a floor above whooshed shut. He glanced up. Officer Leclair leaned over the railing, shaking his head at him. No weapons found buried. No notebook uncovered with jottings of Pincus’s daily routine. Nothing to incriminate Boucher. Maybe that man had never met the victim until that morning. Maybe someone really had committed robbery, killing him while fighting to flee, and his murder had nothing to do with Pincus. Yet as he made his way out, he recalled Madame de Silvy’s sworn testimony about Pincus possibly shouting a name. Somewhere in the murky tangle, he feared, a connection between the two dead men still existed.

Next, by appointment, the director at Pincus’s little school near the Place de la Bastille. Having excusing himself from attendees at an open house that weekend, he answered questions behind closed doors. Stanislas learned four startling facts. First, without explanation, Monsieur Pincus had quit four years ago. His sudden resignation had nothing to do with any student’s evaluation, Léon had stressed. And the director said it had nothing to do with that teacher’s salary; their Zürich headquarters had just granted him a sizable raise.