Cemetery of Swallows (41 page)

“Poor Gavroche, he had such beautiful eyes. I'd never seen eyes like that, and I haven't since then, either. They were hypnotic. That's why he wore violet, to go with the color of his eyes.”

There it was.

Mallock warmly thanked the old lady and asked her again to pardon him. He hung up slowly. His heart was pounding and an involuntary smile lit up his face. Who could have touched both a cross buried under yards of earth in 1945 and a videocassette sixty years later?

Bob had been right.

 

It was 3
A.M.
when he got to Léon's place.

“Could you find me the name of the man whom General de Gaulle asked to choose the unknown soldier?”

Léon, wearing silk pajamas and a dressing gown in the same material, looked at his friend as if he'd lost his mind.

“Do you know what time it is?”

Mallock looked at him imploringly.

“You know me. You're fully aware that I wouldn't bother you if it weren't important.”

Grousing, and looking like Sacha Guitry in his dazzling outfit, Léon signaled to him to follow. As he headed for the living room, he began to give a grateful Mallock the reply he sought:

“It was a lieutenant, one of the general's aides-de-camp, who was assigned to look for an unidentified body.”

Mallock wanted more.

“His name? Do you have his name?”

The old bookseller sank into the deepest of his armchairs.

“Why do you need to know that? I remind you that it's top secret and that the person who told me would deny everything if you tried to use this information for an appeal or something like that.”

Automatically, as he always did when he came to get information or have a chat with his friend, Mallock had begun making coffee.

“Yeah, I suppose he would, but that doesn't matter. I just want to know the man's name. I need it to close the case.”

The boiling water had begun to sputter as it passed through the filter. The smell of the coffee blended pleasantly with the fragrance of the piles of books and newspapers.

“Well?” Mallock insisted.

“No, damn it, Amédée, I can't tell you. I'm sorry, but I gave my word. And don't tell me you really need it, I won't believe you.”

Mallock just began to fill two cups. One black and without sugar for Léon, the other with sugar and a bit of milk for himself. Then, with a big smile on his lips, he handed the old bookseller his cup. He held it just a few inches from Léon's outstretched hand, looked him in the eyes, and said:

“What would you say if I told you his name is Gaston Wrochet?”

Léon took his cup and pointlessly stirred it with the little spoon that was in it.

He looked up at Mallock.

“I'd say you're a goddamn wizard. That's what I'd say.”

Mallock burst into laughter. And like a magician, he pulled out a photo.

“This is the guy, isn't it?”

Léon gave up and Mallock took advantage of his surrender to ask a last favor.

“Come on, one more effort, old man, be nice to your favorite superintendent. Give me the file you put together. I promise not to open it.”

“I already told you that my informant gave it to a third party.”

“Knowing you, there's no chance you didn't manage to get the documents back. You like old papers too much for that, Léon.”

Without even trying to resist, and without asking the reason for such a request, Léon rose from his chair. Majestic in his Super-Guitry costume, he moved toward the back of the shop.

“You stay here, Superintendent. I'm going to get the file I don't have. So I can not give it to you.”

A few minutes later, still stirring his coffee, Léon Galène was watching Mallock go through the papers. Among the official correspondence with the president's office, there were reports written in English. More surprisingly, he found, in a tracing-paper sleeve tattered by time, a piece of paper that had been rolled several times and was still wrinkled. Along with a small copper tube. Amédée looked up. His friend, who was one step ahead of him, was already handing him a magnifying glass.

“Thanks. Do you have any idea what this is?”

“Yes, it's a band for a carrier pigeon. Decipher the inscription.”

Mallock bent down and read “Lord de Gaulle.” The name of the pigeon that Lafitte's unit had taken with it. And also the explanation for what Manu had said at the beginning of the investigation: “It's done, de Gaulle is flying off . . . It's terribly cold, I'm falling in the wind.”

Then Amédée decided to put a little fingerprint powder on the note, on which was written: “Saint-Jean mission compromised.” Léon still had a little fingerprinting set from the early twentieth century that Mallock had once given him “to take care of.” Mallock bent over the paper for a few minutes, and then said simply: “Bingo.” It matched the print taken from the cross and the one found on the cassette.

“It looks to me as though you've hit the jackpot again. And so we're going to have to congratulate you again on your perspicacity! Don't you get tired of always being right?”

Closing the fingerprint powder box and handing it back to Léon, Mallock explained:

“I'm not the one. Daranne. It was Bob Daranne who was right. Nothing is as good as the traditional, tried and true methods, and he was the one who stuck to them, the old devil.”

All down the line, Amédée thought. “It's always a family member or a neighbor,” Bob had reminded him. Even the use he'd just made of dactyloscopy to catch the perpetrator was entirely traditional.

 

Suddenly Mallock realized that he'd just received, from beyond the tomb, the very last lesson of the man who'd trained him when he was just starting out. If he'd proceeded seriously and systematically, he would have gone to question Manu's nice neighbor who had recorded for him the documentary entitled “Tobacco and Cigars in the Dominican Republic, a Mirage or a New El Dorado?” In fact, mentally, he also blamed Julie. It was she who had been responsible for the investigation into her brother's disappearance. Far too worried about Manu, she'd bungled the job.

He looked at his watch. In an hour and a half, he could arrest the man. The perpetrator, the only one, the true one, Gaston Wrochet, a.k.a. Gavroche. A young man who must now be over eighty years old. To be sure, there were still plenty of holes in the new version Mallock was constructing, but he hoped the old man wouldn't refuse to provide the missing pieces of the puzzle.

To get another trial, they'd need new, conclusive evidence.

Impatient to go pick up his perp, Mallock went out in front of the bookshop to wait for backup. Julie, of course, Jules, and a couple of uniforms to make the arrest. He tapped his shoes on the frozen ground. That night, the temperature had fallen again, freezing the last little rivers of melted snow in the gutters. With his head ducked between his shoulders, Mallock seemed to be expecting blows. Those of a fate that could still play nasty tricks on him. It had been doing that ever since the beginning of this case. Unless . . .

Mallock shivered. Yes indeed! Unless . . .

The church of the Madeleine had changed religion. Rising at the end of the rue Royale, draped in its layers of snow, it resembled a giant Berber tent. Mallock, Julie, Jules, and half a dozen uniforms had parked as best they could on what remained of a little recess at the corner of the boulevard Malesherbes and the Place de la Madeleine. Kiko, wearing a red ski jacket, was waiting for them in front of the building.

“He's on the floor right above us.”

“Don't you live on the top floor?”

“Yes, but Monsieur Wrochet lives in the attic. He rents an apartment made by combining several maids' rooms.”

“Do we have to go up on foot?” Amédée asked uneasily.

“No, there's an elevator that goes all the way up. In his condition, he'd never be able to climb that many stairs.”

“Does he have trouble walking?”

“He's had several heart attacks, I think. He spends almost all his time in a wheelchair, and has everything delivered. On several occasions, Manuel and I have offered to go shopping for him.”

When they arrived in front of the main door to the suspect's apartment, Mallock rang the bell. Then he knocked, before finally making up his mind to shout:

“Police! We have a warrant for your arrest. Open up, Monsieur Wrochet!”

Then, since he didn't feel like waiting, Amédée broke down the door. He did it himself because he was big enough. But also because he really wanted to. Smashing in a door is a great tension-reliever, especially when you're in the state he was in.

Generally speaking, old people are found peacefully lying dead in their beds or next to the front door, having collapsed there in a last effort to get help, or perhaps out of politeness, to let their neighbors know that they're dead. Here, as in this whole case, things were very different.

Old Gavroche's apartment was jammed with stuff. There were piles of books everywhere. Maps, photos, and war souvenirs in what seemed to be the entry hall and the living room. After the kitchen, which was equipped with two freezers and loaded with canned goods, the third room was in relatively good order. In the center stood a big desk, very medical-looking, and a couch. It was certainly there that Wrochet had treated Manu's headaches. The bathroom, which was next to the office, was all set up so an invalid could manage on his own. There remained only one door, all the way at the back of the apartment, probably that of the bedroom. Mallock hesitated to draw his gun.

He preferred to repeat his warning:

“Police, we have a warrant for your arrest. Open up, Monsieur Wrochet!”

Then, after a minute of silence, he shouted:

“Please, Gavroche!”

Then he tried to turn the doorknob. Everything was locked tight.

In the meantime, one of the police's locksmiths had arrived.

“Go ahead, open that for me,” Amédée said, beginning to lose his temper.

At Gavroche's age, it made no sense to barricade himself that way. And it also didn't correspond to the image he had formed of Lieutenant Lafitte's friend.

After a few grunts, the locksmith turned to Mallock.

“It's odd, Superintendent, it isn't locked. Something else is blocking the door.”

Amédée sighed, stepped back, and then slammed his body into the door. The door literally exploded and Mallock fell into Gaston Wrochet's bedroom. Or rather, into an enormous pile of snow.

Under the roof, the room, which was located right at the corner of the boulevard Malesherbes and the Place de la Madeleine, was triangular in shape. The big fanlight on the right side being broken, the wind blew through the room, filling it with ice, snowflakes, and dead pigeons. A room frozen solid, with a bed in the middle, covered with sheets of snow, with just an arm with twisted fingers emerging from this shroud of ephemeral marble. It wasn't Rousseau's fault, or that of Voltaire: Gavroche's hand blamed the winter air.

“Suicide?” Jules asked Mallock.

“Or an accident,” he replied.

“It's incredible,” added Julie, who had just joined them in the room.

Mallock went up to the bedside table and tried to wipe off the snow with his hand.

“In any case, this didn't happen yesterday. There are several layers of snow, with ice underneath.”

Then, just to be sure, and because someone had to do it, he decided to clear the snow off the place where poor Gaston's head had to be. It took him more than ten minutes to scrape off the layer of snow and ice. He ended up asking someone to bring him a little hot water. As he carefully poured it, he saw gradually appearing the face of Gaston Wrochet, Lieutenant Jean-François Lafitte's Gavroche. It was a handsome face, lined with wrinkles and old sorrows, and with two unbelievably luminous eyes with violet-colored irises, gleaming under an inch of transparent ice.

Gavroche was no more, and with him had disappeared Mallock's witness and perhaps his story. Julie, whom Mallock had briefed as he was going from Léon's place to the apartment, looked at him apprehensively.

“Now we just have to find a file or a letter,” Amédée replied to her mute question. “Otherwise we're in trouble.”

“But we still have enough evidence. With the testimony from . . . ”

“Don't waste your time. I'm not the one you have to convince. A file, a letter, a photo . . . anything is good. But with this mess!”

Julie understood the message, and started searching, full of hope.

After two hours, the three of them looked over what they'd found. Nothing, or almost nothing, that was interesting. Of course, there were his papers, a few photos, notably two showing him with the General de Gaulle, but no confession, no diary, not a single letter. More out of habit than anything else, Mallock had then gone back to examine the cadaver, which they had begun to free from its coating of ice.

The violet eyes, wide open, seemed to be trying to pierce the ceiling.
What a look
, Mallock said to himself again before leaning over the body. A rapid examination suggested heart failure. To judge by his grimace and his right hand clasped tight on his torso like a bird of prey's claw. As for the date of death, it would not be easy to determine. It wasn't recent. Two or three weeks? The body had been mummified by the cold. The bones of the face protruded, and the lips, as they froze, had bared the teeth. Gavroche seemed to be mocking the mystery he'd left behind him.

Jules and Julie came in. Julie couldn't help insulting the corpse:

“This old bastard left us nothing. What did he do to Manu? Damned old jerk!”

Mallock preferred not to respond. He understood the young woman's frustration. He continued to look at Gavroche's hand, clenched as if it were going to open up and reveal a truth. Then he looked at the left hand, which they had seen first, sticking out of the bed. Once again, he felt certain there was something to be understood here, a sign to be decoded.