The Art of Murder (28 page)

“
Hello.” He took a chair
behind another desk, and sat sipping a scalding hot cup of coffee
while staring dreamily out the window.

Gilles was just opening his mouth to
speak when Henri entered, bearing a pair of cups. He brought one
over and put it on the corner of the desk.

“
Boss.” His good-morning nod
was cheerful yet reserved, unusually so for Henri.

“
All right, all right.”
Someone must have seen him coming, perhaps looking out the window
at the time, and they were having a little bit of fun with him.
“So—”

“
So. Where were you? And why
didn’t you call home? God, I hope it was a woman.” Andre spoke in
resignation and despair, although he wasn’t much of an
actor.

Gilles sighed.

“
No, it wasn’t a woman.”
There were snickers from the others. “Look, I’m sorry—”

But there was to be no appeasing
them.

Henri, at his most insufferable now
that he had sufficient justification, sat on the corner of Le
Bref’s desk, and put his hands up to his temples. His eyes rolled
back and his mouth went slack in some abominable parody of a
medium’s trance.

“
Ah…ah, he followed
somebody. Babineaux! And he’s only just returned to tell us the
gory details. Am I right, Inspector?”

“
Yes, damn you! How did you
know that?” He was almost impressed.

“
Easy. We called the plant
looking for Babineaux and his secretary said he was sick. When you
didn’t show up, we sort of put two and two together, bearing in
mind there wasn’t a whole lot of activity at his home. His wife
said he went to work as usual, but got tied up late in meetings and
had to stay overnight. That was Saturday morning. You weren’t at
home, either. We only made a few calls. We, ah, didn’t want to give
the game away. We’ve been sitting on pins and needles ever since.”
Andre beamed at him from across the way. “So, Gilles. What
happened? Where did you go?”

The three pairs of eyes regarding him
were steely in their determination, both to have a good time and
get his story without further delay.

“
I see, yes. It would have
to be something like that.” Gilles swung his legs up and put his
feet on the corner of his own desk. “So Monsieur Babineaux has been
lying to his wife as well? Interesting.”

“
What must she be thinking
right now?” Henri shrugged in a kind of mockery.

Babineaux had taken some personal risks
with his wife. Interesting. For a brief moment of time he enjoyed
the sight of them all grinding their jaws and looking at each other
in consternation.

“
He isn’t going to tell!”
Henri approached with hands extended as if he was either going to
strangle Gilles, or tickle him to death in an attempt to pry loose
the secrets locked up inside of his head.

“
I’m waiting for a call from
Roger Desjarlais. In the meantime, someone takes notes while I
talk.”

Henri raced back to his seat to grab a
pen and paper, all eyes and ears at this announcement.

“
Roger Desjarlais?” Andre
perhaps understood the significance a little better than Henri,
while Le Bref just smiled amiably, licking his lips and
waiting.

“
You mean Babineaux is
dirty? Financially?” Henri caught on fast. “I suspected all along,
of course.”

This remark raised a hoot that could be
heard on the next floor, which he seemed to consider suitable
reward for his efforts if his subsequent grin was anything to judge
by.

“
We have a little surprise
for you too, sir.” Le Bref picked up a file and brought it over
wordlessly. “When you have a minute.”

Gilles flipped it open and read the
names and the first three paragraphs.

“
Nice.” They had found the
funeral home, the one missing a corpse.

They had simply asked around in a few
places, relying on the rumour mill and gossip to take a hand. They
only just got the call this morning.

Andre and Le Bref had signed an
application for exhumation, and they confidently expected the
coffin to be empty, weighted down with sacks of waste, old clothes,
a few bricks, and whatever else the poor bastards doing the job had
found to put in there.

Gilles threw his head back and
laughed.

“
Ah, but that’s not the best
part.” Andre nodded insistently. “Read the last bit on the next
page.”

Gilles flipped the pages and had a
look.

“
Incroyable!” But people
were often stupid, and drunks stupider than most, and young men the
stupidest of all, or so it seemed sometimes.

Less than six blocks away from the
scene of the crime, a noisy party of young men from a private
military academy had been having a wild party, in a rented room at
an inn, not exactly unusual for the type, and had drawn some
attention to themselves from the local gendarmes.

“
Say it isn’t so!” Gilles
was smiling like the village idiot after three beers.

“
Looks all too true to us.”
Andre was patiently waiting to deliver the punch line. “When do you
want us to pick them up?”

Gilles thought it through. Then his
mouth closed again. He shrugged expressively.

“
It’s not a big priority.”
He shook his head. “Let me think about it for a while. In the
meantime, I have work to do. Gentlemen.”

Henri sat up, pencil poised. With that,
Gilles proceeded to tell his own story, in as great a detail and
with as much precision as he could scrape up from his own rather
sparse notes.

***

Gilles stood behind the mirrored glass
and observed the proceedings. It was time to delegate a little
authority, and also to see how far Henri had progressed.

An unhappy young man sat across the
desk from Henri, squirming in his seat. The peremptory summons from
the police must have come out of the blue and like a fool he had
arrived without a lawyer. At his age, calling his father’s
solicitors would have brought unwanted complications on the Home
Front.

Henri weaseled it out of him. While he
was the cadet son of a very prominent family, his bluff and bluster
did him no good today. Now the boy, chairman of the Spider’s Web, a
kind of bad-boy association with deep roots and a long history
among the ruling classes at his school, sat there ashen-faced. He
was in a lot of trouble and he knew it. Gilles assumed that he had
consulted with his colleagues and a consensus had been arrived at:
to deny everything, and tell the gendarmes to go to hell. Henri had
thoroughly disabused him of that notion.

Laying all the facts before him,
pointing out that ‘a gang of youths’ had broken a window on the
mortuary and then pelted off up the street, and how several of them
had missed classes the next day, ostensibly due to influenza, but
more likely in Henri’s opinion due to exhaustion from carrying a
body a kilometre and half to the bank of the river…what with the
hangovers and all.

And how he and one or two others
matched descriptions given by witnesses.

Most of it was bullshit, but the kid
didn’t know that.

Henri told him the
facts,
which were that
they had become inspired, and came back later and crawled in
through the broken window and opened up a coffin. One that had the
lid down, but it wasn’t nailed on or anything. How they had gotten
in as a prank, but then someone made a suggestion, and in their
drunken irresponsibility had stolen the body and walked off with
it. How they had tossed it in the river from off of a bridge, most
likely the nearest one, suitably embellished in the form of a
little money, and an empty wallet. They didn’t really think about
it too much, or they would have realized that corpses were
embalmed.

He had threatened the lad
with fifteen years on Devil’s Island, and that was the thin end of
the wedge that found the chink in the boy’s armour. He had
obviously heard some stories about the place. The word,
‘homosexuals,’
clearly
scared the shit out of the young would-be warrior. He had a
suitably graphic imagination. When Henri shoved a piece of paper
across the table, saying it was both an admission of guilt and a
promise of restitution, the boy broke down and cried.

“
What I’m saying, is that
all you have to do is accept responsibility, and admit that it was
wrong. I have better things to do, believe me. Take up a collection
among your friends.” Henri took a long hard look at the young
fellow, with silence hard on the air. “Would you like to speak to
your father?”

The boy’s horrified look said it all.
His father sat in the Chamber of Deputies.

“
I’ll sign.” His voice was
low and broken.

“
Can you and your friends
stay out of trouble for the next two years?”

The fellow’s face dropped after some
consideration.

“
How about six months,
then?” Henri had the hint of a laugh in his voice, but he resisted
the urge to glance at the window. “I guess that’s all we can hope
for, eh? After that, all bets are off!”

The boy raised his head and looked at
the paper.

“
Go ahead, boy. Just get it
over with and make sure you pay the people, okay? I will be
checking up on you. My boss will be checking up on me, just so you
know.”

“
Yes, sir.” The young man
signed, and then Henri pointed at the door.

“
Get out.”

The young man took him at his word and
wasted not a moment’s time in vacating his chair and the interview
room, face flushed with what was hopefully some sense of shame.
Whether it was from the rough talk by Henri, or simply the fact
that they had been caught and somehow would have to pay for
hundreds of man-hours of police work, an exhumation, and the damage
to the window, was of no concern to Gilles.

Henri had scared the crap out of him,
and that was the main thing. As for whether or not it would do any
good, only time would tell.

Henri came out as Gilles opened his
door.

“
Good work, Henri.” He
slapped him on the arm on the way by and headed back to his office
to think about things and hopefully tidy up some loose
ends.

“
Thank you, Inspector.” The
look on his face was priceless.

Henri was shaping up, and Gilles didn’t
begrudge the odd compliment to a man who was working hard and
learning on the job.

He had an appointment with Chiappe in
fifteen minutes or so.

***

With a face like that, the boss had
better stay out of trouble. Pushing that thought aside, Gilles made
his report. Chiappe had a lean and hungry look, as
always.

Jean Chiappe’s big office befitted his
status, but was hardly palatial. It was still a room for work,
albeit a different kind of work, for his role included staff
promotions, political considerations, and in keeping responsible
oversight over the daily activities of the men and women under his
command.

He had deep, comfortable chairs, for
which Gilles was grateful. A cold drink, with genuine ice-cubes,
stood at his elbow on a small round gilt and marble stand. Smoke
curled up from his cheroot as he spoke, permeating the air with its
acrid smell.

The boss and his assistant, Gerard,
listened intently. Word had it that Gerard was going back into
regular duties. No one could say if this was a reward or
punishment. It was just the talk around the building.

“
Babineaux was angry when
this Charles Leroux, a purely nominal figure, was appointed a seat
on the board of directors, a seat he felt he should have
had?”

“
Mostly speculation on our
part.” The admission came easily enough.

Leroux was an old family friend of the
Duval clan, and had a seat on a number of other company boards.
Gerard scribbled notes as Maintenon talked. People said that
Chiappe couldn’t type worth a damn. Perhaps it was true, but why he
should have to do his own typing anyway was a mystery to
Gilles.

“
Yes. That’s our theory so
far, but it makes some sense.” Gilles consulted his notes. “And
this was after only two or three years of service with the firm. He
thought he was the indispensable man. Look at the meticulous paper
trail that he has left for us. When he signed his agreement of
employment, he elected to take stock instead of a cash bonus. He
has an insufferable ego, which he carefully suppresses in public.
He is aware of his weaknesses.”

“
And this shell company in
Geneva?” Chiappe nodded in comprehension. “Not the first time, eh,
Gilles?”

“
He might have done this
before.” Or something like it, perhaps not including murder on
those occasions. “Very quietly, he had already accumulated just
under ten percent of Duval Industries, and the ease of doing so
must have given him cause to think. Once he had enough shares, he
might have been eligible for a seat on the board. More importantly,
he saw a chance to own a significant part of the firm and then he
would literally own a piece of Theodore Duval. This must have been
very attractive to one such as Babineaux, who is a bit of a
megalomaniac on certain matters, including what he thought was his
due.”