The Lying Down Room (Serge Morel 1) (16 page)

Morel looked pensive. ‘How did he seem?’

‘Who?’ the old lady asked testily.

‘The boy. You said his eyes told you that he understood every word. That he realized he was with a fellow Russian. Being spoken to by a compatriot, in his own language if what you say is
right. Did that realization seem to give him pleasure or to make him uncomfortable? Do you remember?’

Irina Volkoff was silent for a while, her grey eyes lost in thought.

‘I’d say he looked scared,’ she said slowly. ‘I don’t want to say I know for certain. We were not together long, you know. But he certainly did not look happy about
it.’

‘One more thing,’ Morel said. ‘Would you mind telling me what events you might have attended over the past six months or so? By events I mean any plays or concerts, for
example.’

He wrote down the places she listed. She had been to two concerts featuring Russian composers and a production of Chekhov’s
Cherry Orchard
.

‘And also an exhibition at the Louvre, titled Holy Russia,’ she said.

Morel froze.

‘Would you excuse me for a moment? I need to make a phone call,’ he said.

He ducked into the hallway and dialled Lila’s mobile number. This time he caught her on her way into work.

‘Volkoff also attended the Russia exhibition,’ he told her.

‘So did thousands of other people, no doubt.’

‘It’s worth pursuing,’ Morel said. ‘Think about it. The exhibition has a religious theme. It is about Russia, and the boy may be Russian. Maybe there’s a reason the
widows were marked at this particular event.’

‘If that’s how it happened.’

After Morel hung up, he stood for a while in the hallway, thinking about what he’d just heard. Could the exhibition be the common link between the widows?

Morel wandered down the hallway. Several icons lined the wall. Morel stopped to look at them more closely. They were beautiful.

‘You are done with the phone call?’

He turned and found Irina Volkoff standing before him. He felt like a child being caught shoplifting. Now her eyes wandered over Morel as though making sure he hadn’t slipped anything into
his pockets.

‘I was admiring your icons,’ he said by way of explanation.

‘They belonged to my mother. She kept them hidden. I only found out about them when we left the country,’ she said.

‘How did you find that Russian exhibition at the Louvre?’

Irina Volkoff’s face lit up. ‘It was most memorable. I was so happy to see it.’

Just then Marco appeared behind her. ‘Excuse me, Madame Volkoff, would you mind if I helped myself to a glass of water?’ he asked.

Irina Volkoff shrugged her shoulders and followed the young detective back down the hallway.

‘Don’t hesitate to ask my colleague here if there is anything you need,’ Morel said when he caught up with Volkoff and Marco in the kitchen.

Before leaving, he turned to Marco and raised his hand in a gesture of farewell.

‘I’ll be in touch later today. One way or another we’ll organize for someone else to take over from you.’

Marco’s smile was strained. ‘Sure, just let me know how it’s going.’

Poor Marco, Morel thought absently. But as he stepped into the sunny driveway he was glad to be escaping the stifling house and its eagle-eyed occupant.

He drove out carefully, watching for the large dog. Switched the radio to his favourite frequency and listened to the Glenn Gould aria from the
Goldberg Variations.
His mother had
struggled with Gould: she admired his genius while at the same time finding his eccentricities irritating. She felt they were put-on, part of his public persona.

There was nothing put on about the piece of music he was listening to now, Morel reflected as he headed back towards the station. The sun was high in the sky and Gould was playing up a
storm.

Morel beamed at nothing in particular.

No, he wouldn’t swap with Marco for anything.

The pastor was late for class. No matter how fast he went, he wouldn’t make it back on time. Still, he kept up a steady pace along the street.

He ran.

Away from the boy. What he’d learned from the child had opened up a well of fear in the old man’s heart.

It had been so pleasant, at first. They had lunched together in a bistro in Rue Daru, with its exotic array of Russian shops and restaurants. The Bistro Russe, its name spelled out in Cyrillic
letters on the dark red awning, stood near the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. Though he himself preferred to worship in more modest surroundings, the pastor took a childish pleasure in the
cathedral’s gilded onion domes and neo-Byzantine curves. As they walked past it on their way to lunch, he pointed out to the boy the contrast between the church and the bourgeois architecture
of the neighbouring buildings. He felt happy, even in such silent company. At the bistro, the day’s special was home-made
pelmeni
, and even though dumplings were the last thing he
felt like eating on a hot day the pastor ordered two portions. The boy looked like he could use a hearty meal.

On the way back he suggested they visit the cathedral. He didn’t know what the boy’s beliefs were, but the cathedral was frequented by the Russian community and the pastor thought
this might be of some comfort to him. Throughout lunch he’d been struck by the boy’s lonely demeanour. The pastor had talked and talked, to fill the void. Hoping to clear the darkness
in the boy’s eyes.

Maybe a little excursion into the beautiful nineteenth-century building would be something nice for him, reminding him of home.

They entered the cool interior. The smell of incense wafted through the air and the church was half full of people standing as the priest officiated. On closer inspection the pastor saw that an
infant was being baptized. The mother was holding the child and nearby was a large receptacle full of water.

He gestured to the boy to remain with him at the back of the room so as not to intrude on the ceremony. While the priest spoke words the pastor didn’t understand, he looked around the
cathedral. The golden icons, the candelabras and the liturgy overwhelmed him. So much gilt and pomp. It was nothing like the simple, unadorned rituals he was used to and had grown to love over the
decades. He felt bloated and wished he hadn’t eaten the
pelmeni.
It sat in his stomach like a brick.

When the priest undressed the infant, the pastor felt the boy stiffen next to him. He turned to find him staring wide-eyed at the naked baby. His hands were fists, the knuckles bled of all
colour.

‘What’s wrong?’ the pastor asked, worried that perhaps the
pelmeni
didn’t sit well with the boy, either. What a stupid choice.

The boy shook his head. He didn’t stop, just kept shaking it. His hand gripped the pastor’s arm so hard he had to remove it gently. A moan escaped from the boy’s lips, loud
enough for the people nearest to them to look their way.

‘Ssshh. What’s wrong? Shall we go outside?’ The pastor tried to lead the boy out but instead he was being tugged forward, towards the infant who had started to cry, a thin
wailing that seemed to add to the boy’s distress. The pastor began to panic. The child’s strength, fuelled by a strange determination, was surprising.

‘Stop it!’ the pastor hissed. He was about to berate the boy but then something happened.

The priest faced the crying infant forward and plunged her once, twice, three times into the water, immersing her completely.

There was a tense silence, or was it the tension coming from the quivering boy at his side?

Then a wail like nothing the pastor had ever heard rose through the church and bounced off the walls. Everyone turned to look at them. Even the singing stopped.

Keeping his eyes lowered to the ground, the pastor dragged the boy shrieking and trembling down the aisle and out into the street.

As soon as they found a place to sit, an unoccupied bench, the pastor forced the boy to sit next to him. For several minutes neither of them moved. The boy had stopped wailing but his body still
shook. His eyes were restless, shifting from the pastor to the street as though expecting something to happen.

The pastor looked down at his arms. Despite the heat he had goose-bumps.

‘Perhaps you should tell me what happened in there,’ the pastor said.

Nothing.

Struck by inspiration, the pastor dug in his pocket and pulled out a notepad and a pen.

‘Perhaps you can write it down for me,’ he said. The boy looked at him then. He seemed to be hesitating.

While he waited, the pastor rubbed his chest to ease the stinging sensation there. Heartburn.

Those damned dumplings
, he thought, before automatically mouthing a silent apology for his use of profanity.

Now the pastor was running, leaving behind the words scribbled on his notepad and the one who’d written them down for him. How innocent words were, until they were strung
together into sentences and armed with meaning. Then they could fell you as effectively as any weapon and rob you of your power.

He ran, oblivious to the mounting tension in his body. Sweat poured down his face, blinding him. He didn’t try to wipe it away.

The pastor was only a hundred metres or so from the faculty. He could see the tall gates in the distance and the whitewashed building which he called home. As he ran, the words began to fade,
the fateful sentences decomposing in his mind until he forgot their meaning.

Without warning, his heart clenched. Like someone was squeezing it hard. The sensation was so acute he cried out, scaring a well-to-do young woman with a designer pram whom he’d been about
to overtake.

She too let out a shriek and swerved out of his way as he fell to the ground, fighting for breath through a miasma of pain.

Dear God
, he prayed.

He wasn’t ready for this.

Morel knew most of the journalists in the room. He liked very few of them. There was a hubbub of noise and activity as people greeted each other and got comfortable on their
chairs. The camera crews positioned themselves along the side of the table where Perrin sat.

Morel would have preferred to stay away from the podium but that wasn’t an option. Reluctantly, he took a seat next to Perrin. His boss could barely contain his excitement. At last, the
audience he pined for. Morel didn’t mind so much; it was a nice change from Perrin’s daily haranguing about the case.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming at such short notice. We know how busy you are but we are at a crucial stage of our investigation and hope that you will assist us in speeding
things up. Time is of the essence.’

The first of many clichés to come, Morel thought. The same well-worn expressions he’d heard a hundred times from Perrin. He made a silent bet with himself to see how many the
commissaire would come up with over the course of this briefing. He guessed ten, at least.

Thanks to a projector installed earlier at the back of the room, the drawing of the man and the boy who’d visited the widows’ homes appeared up on the wall directly behind
Perrin.

‘This is a composite sketch of two people we believe may be able to help us with our enquiry. We know that the two women who were killed were visited by these people a week or so before
their death.’

A murmur went around the room.

‘Two women have been killed. Are we dealing with a serial killer, then?’ a man asked from the second row. Morel recognized the
France-Soir
reporter. A weaselly-looking
character whose stories always stank.

‘We do believe there is a connection between the two murders. However, I am reluctant to use the words serial killer,’ Perrin said, making ‘reluctant’ sound a great deal
like ‘eager’. ‘All I can say is that at this stage we are treating them as the work of a single person.’

‘Do we know why they were targeted?’ a woman asked. Her name was Laure Rousset and she had been with
Le Monde
ever since Morel had known her. They had dated for a while,
nothing serious, but he liked and respected her.

‘We are still looking into that,’ Perrin said.

‘Are these the ones who killed the two pensioners?’

‘How big is your crystal ball?’ Perrin said while Morel cringed. ‘It would be great if we could be that certain. At this stage it’s too early to draw such conclusions.
But we think they – the man in particular – can help us solve these murders. It’s crucial that we find them.’

There were more questions. Morel had a feeling Perrin would sit here all afternoon if he could, but after a while even he saw that it was time to end the briefing. Several of the journalists
were looking at their watches. He stood up and called the briefing to a close.

‘Time to let us get on with our work,’ he barked. ‘Thank you for coming.’

As the camera crews gathered up their equipment and the room slowly emptied, Laure came up to Morel.

‘Have you got a minute?’

‘Sure.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘How are you, Laure?’

‘Well. I expect you’re pretty busy with this going on.’

He nodded, waiting to hear what might come next. She hadn’t spoken to him in over a year. He figured her sudden interest in him had more to do with the dead widows than with any nostalgia
about their brief encounter.

‘Any chance we could catch up over a drink?’

Morel gave her a rueful smile. ‘In other circumstances, I’d be delighted. But I don’t think Perrin would be too happy to see us huddling over drinks together while this
investigation is open.’

‘Well, maybe when this case is closed,’ Laure said, looking around the room, perhaps for someone else who might buy her a drink. ‘Any idea how close you might be to catching
your killer?’ she asked, turning to him again. He saw her feign an interest she did not feel, hoping no doubt to sway him.

‘I’d like to say we’re close. But you know I can’t talk to you about it.’

‘Fair enough. I had to try,’ she said. She touched his arm. ‘Keep in touch, OK?’

‘Sure,’ Morel said.

No one else was there just yet when he returned to his desk. Making the most of his time alone, he dialled Solange’s number and arranged to meet her after work.