The Lying Down Room (Serge Morel 1) (4 page)

‘If she drowned accidentally, that means someone else took the time to doll her up and tuck her in,’ Lila said.

‘Any signs of sexual assault?’

‘None.’

Morel glanced at Marco. He was looking at the floor and Morel found himself growing irritable, as he often did with the young policeman.

‘Anything else, Marco?’ he said.

‘Not really.’

‘Not really or no?’

‘No,’ Marco said. Morel saw him blush and wondered, not for the first time, whether the young man really had it in him to work murder cases. He wasn’t assertive enough. You
couldn’t work a crime case the way he did, by being timid and hesitant.

Maybe it wasn’t entirely Marco’s fault. He was a decent person, eager and good-natured. He just didn’t fit in to this team and would be better off in another department.

‘Let’s move on,’ Morel said. ‘But first, I need to catch up with our illustrious chief. Let’s reconvene when I get back.’

‘I didn’t hear from you yesterday,’ Perrin said. He didn’t offer his subordinate a seat, which suited Morel well as it meant the meeting would be
brief.

‘Sorry. I thought I’d wait until I had something to tell you. How was the dinner party?’ Morel, who was significantly taller than Perrin, towered over the small man sitting
before him. He saw Perrin register this, saw the look of regret on his face as he realized he should have told Morel to sit down. Too late now.

‘Don’t try small talk with me, Morel,’ Perrin said, giving him a dark look. ‘Small talk is not your forte. So tell me. What have you got?’

Morel looked at his boss. No matter how hard he tried to look suave, Perrin never quite managed to pull it off. Today he had put gel in his hair to shape it into a slick side parting which gave
his skull a flattened look. He’d trimmed his beard and cut himself shaving. A bloodied piece of tissue, clearly forgotten, had dropped from his cheek and landed in the wiry hair around his
jaw. His tie and shirt were expensive but his skin was grey and he looked like he was in pain, though he tried his best to hide it. Must have been a late night, Morel thought. He guessed that
Perrin was nursing a stiff hangover.

‘We’ve spoken to three women – Elisabeth Guillou, Marie Latour and Irina Volkoff. All three reported the evangelists’ visit, said they wanted to lodge a complaint for
harassment. Going by their description, it sounds like these are the same guys who knocked on Isabelle Dufour’s door days before she died. A man and a boy. These women have something in
common with Dufour. They’re widowed and live by themselves, which may explain why they found the experience unsettling enough to call us in. Our main focus is to bring this pair in, so we can
talk to them.’

Perrin scratched at his beard absently, and the piece of tissue fell from it like an injured bird from its nest. He looked at it, puzzled at first, then angry when he realized it had been on his
face the entire time.

‘OK, so bring them in. The sooner the better. And if we’ve got a solid description let’s get it out there. I think a press conference might be in order.’ Morel could see
Perrin’s face brighten at the thought of a media briefing. Unconsciously, his hand drifted over his shiny hair and his face took on a grave and pompous expression Morel had seen him use
before, whenever there were cameras nearby.

‘That may be premature,’ Morel said. ‘I think we can track them down without that. If we call a briefing, there’s a risk that if they’ve got something to hide,
they’ll go underground.’

Perrin looked put out. ‘Do it, then,’ he said. ‘But if you don’t find them fast, we’ll do the briefing. Every minute counts. There’s no time for
hesitation.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Morel said, and turned to leave before Perrin could come up with another platitude.

After his meeting with Perrin, Morel returned to the others. By then it was 11.40 and the office was like a sauna. The weather forecast had announced a high of 42 degrees. It
felt like more. Morel looked at his team. None of them looked particularly fresh or motivated.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s see a bit of enthusiasm.’ A collective sigh like a deflating balloon greeted his comments. ‘Before we start, Vincent hasn’t
showed up yet. We haven’t heard from him but I’m guessing he won’t be in today.’

No one said anything. Vincent was hardly a presence in the office these days. When he did turn up he was a ghostly version of himself.

‘So where were we?’ Morel said. He pulled his chair up and looked expectantly at the three sweaty officers.

‘Marco, what about the neighbours? What have they got to say?’

‘Not a whole lot,’ Marco said.

‘Did you talk to everyone?’

‘Every living thing,’ Lila answered.

She told Morel how they’d canvassed the neighbourhood where Isabelle Dufour lived. They’d talked to people in the neighbouring residential building, and at the newsagent’s and
cafe across the street.

‘The general gist is that no one knows anything about any unusual visits to Dufour’s flat,’ Lila said. ‘No one heard anything that night. The only neighbour who lives on
Dufour’s floor is eighty-nine years old. At 8 p.m. he watched the news with his earphones on because he’s deaf and needs the sound right up. Then he took a sleeping pill and went to
bed. Other than that, a couple of the neighbours have seen Dufour’s son, once or twice, as well as her daughter-in-law and the kids.’

‘So that ties in with what the concierge told us.’ Morel turned to Marco. ‘Anyone in the building had a couple of bible-bashers knocking on their door?’

‘Nope. And the concierge insists she sees everyone who enters and leaves the building.’

‘Yes, well, we know that isn’t the case. Anything else?’

Marco looked at his feet. ‘Nothing.’

‘Can you be a bit more specific than that?’ Morel said, trying not to let his irritation show.

‘Well, the guy who owns the newsagent’s opens up early – around six – and he says he doesn’t remember seeing anyone enter or leave the building. But then he
wasn’t paying any particular attention. No one in the building saw any strangers walking in or out. But few of them would have been up and about that early.’

‘OK. And anything from the cafe? Anyone see anything out of the ordinary early that morning?’

‘No. No one had anything interesting to contribute,’ Marco said.

A bit like you
, Morel thought, and turned back to Lila, who was chewing her nails.

‘What do we know about Isabelle Dufour?’

Lila unfolded her legs and opened her notebook. Morel noticed she wore black leather trousers. Leather trousers, in this heat. He nearly admired her for that. Her hair, usually worn straight
down her back, was tied up in a knot. Strands of hair clung to her neck. She looked miserable. Morel knew how she felt.

‘Isabelle Dufour. Eighty years old,’ Lila said, turning the pages of her pad.

Morel knew she didn’t need her notes, her memory was prodigious. He knew a few things about Lila Markov. She had an IQ of 174 and did not suffer fools gladly. She could be short-tempered.
Very. As far as Morel could tell, she hadn’t made many friends in the department since she’d joined his team. Maybe her cleverness made people uncomfortable. Or maybe they just
didn’t like her manners.

‘Go on.’

‘Her neighbours say she went out every day for lunch, like clockwork, at a place around the corner. Usual place, standard menu. She always ordered the same thing and she ate on her own.
Her son Jacques lives with his wife and two children in Neuilly, just two blocks away,’ she said.

Morel had reached Jacques Dufour on his mobile phone the previous day to inform him of his mother’s death. He’d been in London with his wife and younger child. He was due back today,
Morel remembered.

He turned to Jean, who was sharpening a pencil with intense concentration. Jean was two years from retirement. He was fifty-eight but looked about ten years older. His life revolved around his
job, a fifteen-year-old son resulting from a four-month relationship with the lead singer of a band he’d played guitar in, and a passion for heavy metal – the sort of bands that now
drew titters from people too young to remember when they were considered daring. The only sick day Jean had ever taken, as far as Morel knew, was after a Deep Purple concert when someone had thrown
an empty bottle of beer his way and knocked him out.

‘Jean. Your two widows. Give us a run-down.’

Jean flicked through the pages of his notebook and read out loud.

‘Marie Latour. Born in 1928 in Chamonix. Moved to Paris when she married her late husband Hector Latour. She’s been living alone since his death. She has a son and a daughter, who
live in Paris. She sees them once a month or so.’

‘What else?’ Morel said.

‘Latour says she’s never set foot in a church. She was upset when the man and the boy showed up on her doorstep. She’d never seen them before. The man insisted on giving her a
couple of pamphlets. Wouldn’t leave until she agreed to take them.’

Morel nodded. ‘Go on.’

‘Irina Volkoff. Russian-born. Seventy-six years old. Quite a looker, actually.’

‘A bit past the expiry date, no?’ Lila said.

Marco laughed.

‘All right, get on with it,’ Morel said.

‘Her husband Sergey died shortly after the two of them arrived in France with their son. She was only twenty-four when Sergey died and she never remarried. The son lives on a houseboat,
not far from here as it turns out. Growing up in Soviet Russia, she didn’t get much in the way of religious education, as you can imagine, and she’s not interested in starting now. She
says her two visitors – a man and a boy who was mute – made her uncomfortable enough to call us, but she couldn’t explain why. Just said she doesn’t like people knocking on
her door.’

One of the pamphlets, the one received by Elisabeth Guillou, lay on Morel’s desk. He fetched it and returned to the chair at Lila and Marco’s desk.

‘Let me give you a quick summary of what Madame Guillou had to say this morning. It’ll sound familiar.’ He briefed his team, then held up the pamphlet.‘This was at
Guillou’s house. It’s the same one that was found at Isabelle Dufour’s apartment, and the same one Marie Latour and Irina Volkoff felt obliged to take, to get rid of their
unwanted visitors.

‘One thing that bothers me is that Isabelle Dufour lived in Neuilly but the three others all lived in the outer suburbs and nowhere near each other. The fact that they live so far apart
suggests they might have been singled out,’ Morel went on.

‘I thought of that too,’ Jean said.

Morel sat up in his chair. ‘By the way, how did she know about the boy?’

‘What?’

‘Volkoff. How did she know the boy was mute? Just because he didn’t speak?’

Jean flicked through his notes.

‘Her visitor,’ he said. ‘The man told her.’

‘Right.’

So they had had a personal exchange, Morel thought. The man had engaged with the woman, talked about the boy accompanying him. To gain sympathy?

‘Did she say anything else? About the boy?’

‘She said he wouldn’t look at her. Oh and another thing. She thought he might be Russian.’

‘How?’

‘She said he looked Russian. Whatever that means. And the only time he looked at her was when she spoke a few words of Russian. He looked like he knew what she was saying.’

‘And the man? Did she say anything else about him?’

‘That he was well dressed.’

Morel thought about it. A seemingly innocuous visit, the sort of thing people were subjected to all the time. A knock on the door and something to sell. A newspaper subscription, a new gas or
electricity supply, a new religion. The promise of something better. So what was it about this pair that had upset these women? Morel considered Madame Guillou again. Describing her visitors to
Morel, he had seen, for just an instant, the fear in her eyes. Yet nothing in her account had stood out.

Morel fidgeted in his chair. He was hungry.

‘All right. I want to talk to the neighbours where Elisabeth Guillou, Marie Latour and Irina Volkoff live. I know it’s going to be time-consuming,’ he added, seeing the
expression on Marco’s face – ‘but we need to find out whether they have had the same people turn up on their doorsteps. If it was just those three women, then we’ll know
they were targeted. Jean, any chance you’ll have some spare time to help us out?’

‘Sure.’

‘Thanks. Can you find out whether any fingerprints turned up on the pamphlets at Dufour’s house. Maybe we’ll get lucky. It’s worth a try in any case.’

Jean grabbed the keys to his motorbike and stood up. ‘I’ve got to go. But I’ll call the lab on my way out and I’ll be free this afternoon to help interview
neighbours.’

‘Before you go, can you leave the transcripts of your interviews with the two widows on my desk? I want to run them against Guillou’s deposition. Maybe something will stand out.
Let’s see if between the three of them they’ve given us enough to go on in terms of our guys’ physical descriptions.’

Jean nodded and left the room.

‘Marco, I want you to meet up with Jean this afternoon. We need those checks with the neighbours done by the end of the day.’

Marco nodded. Morel turned to Lila.

‘Lila, I need you here, to write up the statements from the interviews – the tenants, the concierge and the cleaning lady. I want those before we interview Dufour’s son. Also,
can you give him a call and say we’d like to drop by tomorrow morning. And I want to know where the pamphlet comes from,’ he said. ‘Is it a self-publishing effort? If not,
what’s the organization behind it? There’s no web address here, no number. I suggest we start making a list of religious groups. Forget the Catholic ones, just focus on the Protestants,
the evangelicals. It’s a bit of a hopeless task, I know,’ he said.

‘Like looking for a needle in a haystack,’ Lila muttered.

Morel ignored Lila’s comment and stood up. His Ermenegildo Zegna shirt clung to his back.

‘All right, you two,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if we can make some headway.’

Morel stepped out on to Rue de la Cité to get something to eat. He queued outside a popular
boulangerie
for a ham and cheese baguette and walked down to the
river. He needed to stretch his legs in order to think clearly.