Jacquot and the Waterman (50 page)

'Third door down,' he told them, then turned to his own room directly opposite the stairs, closing the door quietly behind him.

For a bedroom that hadn't been slept in the place was a mess. The first thing that Jacquot and Gastal noticed was the bed. The duvet had been thrown to the floor, the bottom sheet was crumpled and the pillows were dented.

'Not the most comfortable way to sleep,' said Gastal, nodding at a lone pillow doubled over and deliberately placed in the middle of the bed. He picked it up, buried his face in it, sniffed deeply. 'Looks like afternoon delight, you ask me.'

'Fun and games all round,' replied Jacquot, nodding at a mirrored square on the dressing table. Its surface was smeared with white, and a length of straw and a platinum American Express card lay beside it. He bent down, read the name: Suzanne de Cotigny. 'We better get Clisson up here,' he said, going to the window.

Pulling up a blind, Jacquot looked down into the garden. By the pool, the Forensics boys had bagged the body and were lifting it onto a stretcher. Clisson had stepped off the flagstones and was taking some long shots of the pool. Down below, on the far side of the middle terrace, Chevin and Dutoit were diligently working their way through the flower beds. Jacquot tapped on the window, signalled to Clisson.

The Forensics man looked up, saw Jacquot and nodded.

'What do you think?' asked Gastal, sliding open a panelled wardrobe door and peering inside. 'She got herself a bit of
cinq à  sept?'

Jacquot came back to the bed, tipped one of the pillows, then turned his attention to an ashtray on one of the bedside cabinets. He pushed his finger through the ash, picked out two cigarette ends, turned them in the light.

'Looks that way,' he replied. 'But a lover who wears lipstick.' He held up the stubs. 'Different colours.'

'Dirty cow,' smirked Gastal.

They passed Clisson on the stairs, lugging his box of tricks.

'Third door,' said Jacquot. 'Cigarette ends in the ashtray and hair on the pillow. Coke, too. On the dressing table.'

Clisson nodded and carried on up to the landing, his sterilised Tyvek suit swishing with every step.

Downstairs, Jacquot and Gastal made a tour of the ground floor.

'Some place,' said Gastal, taking it in.

Jacquot nodded. It certainly was. Though the house clearly dated from the turn of the century, probably one of the first to be built in this part of the city, its interior was resolutely modern, the kind of spotless set-up you might see in
Elle
Decoration
or
Architectural Digest.
While the original cornicing, marble fireplaces and marquetry flooring were still in place, the walls and doorways that had divided and connected the various ground-floor salons had been stripped away, creating an open-plan space painted in soothing pastel colours, filled with gleaming tubular steel furnishings and hung with bold modern artwork, golden slants of morning light spilling through a line of terrace doors running the length of the room. Between two of the doors was an ancient Balinese chest set with a tub of orchids and a telephone.

Gastal stopped by the phone. 'We got ourselves a message.'

Taking a pen from his pocket, he pressed the playback button. The tape rewound with a whirr, then connected.

'You have one caller,' came the recorded message. 'Timed at eighteen seventeen.'

And then: 'Darling, it's me.' There was no mistaking de Cotigny's voice, harassed, a little frantic. 'Just thought I'd call to let you know . . . I'm not at mothers yet, the traffic, you wouldn't believe ... oh hell . . .' There was the sound of a car horn in the background. 'Hold on . . .' said de Cotigny, and then there was a click as Suzie de Cotigny came on the line, her French good but the American accent unmistakable.

'Honey? Honey, you okay? Where are you?'

The conversation that followed was exactly as de Cotigny had described it to Gastal. The traffic was dreadful and he still hadn't got to his mother's place. He'd likely be late back. And then Suzie telling him not to rush home; she wasn't feeling too well; she'd sleep in the guest room, wake him in the morning. Then their goodbyes. The connection broken. The last time they'd ever speak to one another.

'Play it again,' said Jacquot.

Gastal rewound the tape, and pressed
play.

The voices started again, sharp and clear. Suzie de Cotigny was speaking.

'There. You hear it?'

Gastal turned to him, looked perplexed.

'Again,' said Jacquot. 'After she says not to rush home.'

They played the tape again and Gastal leant forward, straining to hear whatever it was that Jacquot had heard.

And there it was. Unmistakable.

But not the sound of traffic. Not their voices. Something else.

A sniff. A girlish giggle, followed by a shushing sound. You could almost see a hand over the mouthpiece.

Gastal's eyebrows shot up and a smile licked over his lips.

'So. What have we got?'

It was mid-morning, the sun climbing above the rooftops of Roucas Blanc, the trees throwing down a cool, slanting shade. Suzie de Cotigny's body had been taken away by ambulance twenty minutes earlier, Monsieur de Cotigny's mother and daughter had arrived shortly afterwards and Jacquot s squad had left the property and were now gathered by their cars.

Jacquot perched on the bonnet of his Peugeot, boot hooked onto the fender, looking at the faces grouped around him.

Luc Dutoit, Chevin's partner, was the first to speak. 'The gardener, Gilles Therizols, arrived sometime around five this morning,' he told them. 'Found the body about an hour later.'

'He a regular?' asked Jacquot.

'Been working for the family the last eleven years. Yesterday was his day off.'

Jacquot nodded.

'Same with the maid,' said Isabelle Cassier. 'Her day off, too.'

'So whoever did this knew the house would be clear Thursdays,' said Jacquot. 'Or was it just chance?'

'Too much of a coincidence,' said Claude Peluze, who looked like he hadn't had time to shave that morning, his stubble bristling black and shadowy around his jaw.

'So?'

'It was planned,' continued Peluze. 'The Waterman scoped the place

'So you say it's our killer?' asked Jacquot.

'Who else, boss?' said Isabelle. 'The maid says nothing's been taken from the house, just the victim's jewellery - big fat diamond and a gold bracelet.'

Her partner, Bernie, pushing back a wedge of hair from his brow, nodded agreement. 'Naked. Drowned. Then propped in the chair. It's got to be.'

Jacquot didn't comment. Until Valéry, the state pathologist, confirmed pronoprazone, he'd try to keep his options open.

'So, sometime between, say, seven-thirty and ten-thirty latest, Madame de Cotigny gets taken out. Now. The husband . . . Could we be talking a domestic here?'

Gastal, unwrapping a coil of
churros
from a paper bag but making no effort to offer it around, shook his head.

'He couldn't squash a bug, that one. And, anyway, he's alibied up to his ear hair. Plus the time frame doesn't give him much opportunity

'So not a domestic?'

A shake of heads all round.

'So . . . another Waterman? Second in a week? He's speeding up if it's him.' Jacquot looked around the faces. 'Anything anyone's found that gets us any closer?'

At that moment Etienne Laganne appeared round the corner and joined the group. He was near enough to hear what Jacquot had said and a big smile creased his face.

'Something you'll like, boss,' he said, chewing on a toothpick.

Everyone turned in his direction. Laganne kept them waiting, opening his car door and tossing his notebook onto the driver's seat.

'And . . . ?' asked Jacquot. It was the first time since he'd tracked down Carnot that he'd felt that tiny buzz of excitement, sensed a way forward.

'Guy at the top of the street,' continued Laganne, taking the toothpick from his mouth and flicking it away. 'A doctor. Jules Crespin. Lives alone. Well, seems he was walking his dog yesterday evening, when this car exits the property. Turns out of the drive here, toots a horn and goes right past him.'

'Time? Driver? Make? Number?'

'Round six-forty, six-fifty. Before seven, anyway. An old Renault, he said. Brown. Rust bucket. Engine like a meat grinder. Couldn't say for sure if the driver was a man or a woman.'