Bloodline (23 page)

The taxi fare from Charles de Gaulle Airport to the Notre Dame area is seventy francs, not including a tip. The fare by city bus Number 351, to the same area, is seven and a half francs, no tip required. Detective Max Hornung took the bus. He checked into the inexpensive Hotel Meublé and began making phone calls.

He talked to the people who held in their hands the secrets of the citizens of France. The French were normally more suspicious than even the Swiss, but they were eager to cooperate with Max Hornung. There were two reasons. The first was that Max Hornung was a virtuoso in his field, greatly admired, and it was an honor to cooperate with such a man. The second was that they were terrified of him. There were no secrets from Max. The odd-looking little man with the funny accent stripped everyone naked. “Certainly,” they told Max. “You’re welcome to use our computers. Everything to be kept confidential, of course.”

“Of course.”

Max dropped in at the Inspecteurs des Finances, the Crédit Lyonnais, and the Assurance Nationale
and chatted with the tax computers. He visited the computers at the
gendarmerie
at Rosny-sous-Bois and the ones at the Préfecture of Police at Île de la Cité.

They started off with the light, easy gossip of old friends.
Who are Charles and Hélène Roffe-Martel?
Max asked.

Charles and Hélène Roffe-Martel, residence Rue François Premier 5, Vésinet, married May 24, 1970, at the Mairie in Neuilly, children none, Hélène three times divorced, maiden name Roffe, bank account at the Crédit Lyonnais in Avenue Montaigne in name of Hélène Roffe-Martel, average balance in excess of twenty thousand francs.

Expenditures?

With pleasure. A bill from Librairie Marceau for books…a dental bill for root-canal work for Charles Martel…hospital bills for Charles Martel…doctor’s bill for examination of Charles Martel.

Do you have result of diagnosis?

Can you wait? I will have to speak to another computer.

Yes, please.
Max waited.

The machine containing the doctor’s report began to speak. /
have the diagnosis.

Go ahead.

A nervous condition.

Anything else?

Severe bruises and contusions on thighs and buttocks.

Any explanation?

None given.

Go on, please.

A bill for a pair of men’s shoes from Pinet…one hat from Rose Valois…foie gras from Fauchon
…
Carita beauty salon…Maxim’s, dinner party for eight…flat silver from Christofle…a man’s robe from Sulka
…Max stopped the computer. Something was bothering him. Something about the bills. He realized what it was. Every purchase had been signed by Mme. Roffe-Martel. The bill for men’s clothes, the restaurant bills—all the accounts were in her name. Interesting.

And then the first loose thread.

A company named Belle Paix had purchased a land tax stamp. One of the owners of Belle Paix was named Charles Dessain. Charles Dessain’s Social Security number was the same as Charles Martel’s. Concealment.

Tell me about Belle Paix,
Max said.

Belle Paix is owned by René Duchamps and Charles Dessain, also known as Charles Martel.

What does Belle Paix do?

It owns a vineyard.

How much is the company capitalized at?

Four million francs.

Where did Charles Martel get his share of the money?

From Chez ma Tante.

The house of your aunt?

Sorry. A French slang expression. The proper name is Crédit Municipal.

Is the vineyard profitable?

No. It failed.

Max needed more. He kept talking to his friends, probing, cajoling, demanding. It was the insurance computer that confided to Max that there was a warning on file of a possible insurance fraud. Max felt something delicious stir within him.

Tell me about it,
he said

And they talked, like two women gossiping back and forth over the Monday wash.

When Max was through he went to see a jeweler named Pierre Richaud.

In thirty minutes Max knew to a franc how much of Helene Roffe-Martel’s jewelry had been duplicated. It came to just over two million francs, the amount Charles Martel had invested in the vineyard. So Charles Dessain-Martel had been desperate enough to steal his wife’s jewelry.

What other acts of desperation had he committed?

There was one other entry that interested Max. It might be of little significance, bu Max methodically filed it away in his mind. It was a bill for the purchase of one pair of mountain-climbing boots. It gave Max pause, because mountain climbing did not fit in with his image of Charles Martel-Dessain, a man who was so dominated by his wife that he was allowed no charge accounts of his own, had no bank account in his name, and was forced to steal in order to make an investment.

No, Max could not visualize Charles Martel challenging a mountain. Max went back to his computers.

The bill you showed me yesterday from Timwear Sports Shop. I would like to see an itemized statement, please.

Certainly.

It flashed on the screen before him. There was the bill for the boots. Size
36A.
A woman’s size. It was Hélène Roffe-Martel who was the mountain climber.

Sam Roffe had been killed on a mountain.

Rue Armengaud was a quiet Paris street lined with one- and two-story private residences, each with its sloping guttered roof. Towering above its neighbors was Number 26, an eight-story modern structure of glass, steel and stone, the headquarters of Interpol, the clearinghouse for information in international criminal activities.

Detective Max Hornung was talking to a computer in the huge, air-conditioned basement room when one of the staff members walked in and said, “They’re running a snuff film upstairs. Want to see it?”

Max looked up and said, “I don’t know. What is a snuff film?”

“Come take a look.”

Two dozen men and women were seated in the large screening room on the third floor of the building. There were members of the Interpol staff, police inspectors from the Sûreté, plainclothes detectives and a scattering of uniformed policemen.

Standing at the front of the room next to a blank screen, René Almedin, an assistant to the secretary of Interpol, was speaking. Max entered and found a seat in the back row.

René Almedin was saying, “…for the last several years we have been hearing increasing rumors of snuff films, pornographic films in which at the end of the sexual act the victim is murdered on camera. There has never been proof that such films actually existed. The reason, of course, is obvious. These films would not have been made for the public. They would have been made to be shown privately to wealthy individuals who got their pleasure in twisted, sadistic ways.” René Almedin carefully removed his glasses. “As I have said, everything has been rumor and speculation. That has now changed, however. In a moment you are going to see footage from an actual snuff film.” There was an expectant stir from the audience. “Two days ago, a male pedestrian carrying an attaché case was struck down in a hit-and-run accident in Passy. The man died on the way to the hospital. He is still unidentified. The Sûreté found this reel of film in his attaché case and turned it over to the laboratory, where it was developed.” He gave a signal and the lights began to dim. The film began.

The blond girl could not have been more than eighteen. There was something unreal about watching that young face and budding woman’s body performing fellatio, analingus and a variety of other sexual acts with the large hairless man in bed with her. The camera moved in to a close-up to show his enormous penis driving into her body, then pulled back to show her face. Max Hornung had never seen her face before. But he had seen something else that was familiar. His eyes were fixed on the ribbon that the girl was wearing around her neck. It triggered a memory. A red ribbon. Where? Slowly, the girl on the screen began to build to a peak, and as
she started to climax, the man’s fingers went around her throat and began to squeeze. The look on the girl’s face changed from ecstasy to horror. She fought wildly to escape, but his hands pressed tighter, until at the final moment of orgasm the girl died. The camera moved in for a close-up of her face. The film ended. The lights suddenly came on in the room. Max remembered.

The girl who had been fished out of the river in Zurich.

At Interpol headquarters in Paris, replies from urgent inquiry cables were beginning to arrive from all over Europe. Six similar murders had taken place—in Zurich, London, Rome, Portugal, Hamburg and Paris.

René Almedin said to Max, “The descriptions match exactly. The victims were all blond, female, young; they were strangled during sexual intercourse and their bodies were nude except for a red ribbon around their necks. We’re dealing with a mass murderer. Someone who has a passport, and is either affluent enough to travel extensively on his own or is on an expense account.”

A man in plain clothes walked into the office and said, “We ran into some good luck. The raw stock of the film is manufactured by a small outfit in Brussels. This particular batch had a color-balance problem, which makes it easy for them to identify. We’re getting a list of the customers they sold it to.”

Max said, “I would like to see that list when you have it.”

“Of course,” René Almedin said. He studied the little detective. Max Hornung looked like no detective he had ever seen. And yet it was Max
Hornung who had tied the snuff murders together.

“We owe you a debt of gratitude,” Almedin said.

Max Hornung looked at him and blinked. “What for?” he asked.

Alec Nichols had not wanted to attend the banquet, but he had not wished Elizabeth to go alone. They were both scheduled to speak. The banquet was in Glasgow, a city Alec hated. A car was outside the hotel, waiting to take them to the airport as soon as they could decently make their excuses. He had already given his speech but his mind had been elsewhere. He was tense and nervous, and his stomach was upset. Some fool had had the bad judgment to serve haggis. Alec had barely tasted it. Elizabeth was seated next to him. “Are you all right, Alec?”

“Fine.” He patted her hand reassuringly.

The speeches were almost finished when a waiter came up to Alec and whispered, “Excuse me, sir. There’s a trunk call for you. You can take it in the office.”

Alec followed the waiter out of the large dining room into the small office behind the reception desk. He picked up the telephone. “Hello?”

Swinton’s voice said, “This is your last warning!” The line went dead.

The last city on Detective Max Hornung’s agenda was Berlin.

His friends the computers were waiting for him. Max spoke to the exclusive Nixdorf computer, to which one had access only with a specially punched card. He talked to the great computers at Allianz and Schuffa and to the ones at the Bundeskrimalamt at Wiesbaden, the collection point for all criminal activity in Germany.

What can we do for you?
they asked.

Tell me about Walther Gassner.

And they told him. When they were through telling Max Hornung their secrets, Walther Gassner’s life was spread out before Max in beautiful mathematical symbols. Max could see the man as clearly as if he were looking at a photograph of him. He knew his taste in clothes, wines, food, hotels. A handsome young ski instructor who had lived off women and had married an heiress much older than himself.

There was one item that Max found curious: a cancled check made out to a Dr. Heissen, for two hundred marks. On the check was written “For consultation.” What kind of consultation? The check
had been cashed at the Dresdner Bank in Dusseldorf. Fifteen minutes later Max was speaking to the branch manager of the bank. Yes, of course the branch manager knew Dr. Heissen. He was a valued client of the bank.

What kind of doctor was he?

A psychiatrist.

When Max had hung up, he sat back, his eyes closed, thinking. A loose thread. He picked up the telephone and placed a call to Dr. Heissen in Dusseldorf.

An officious receptionist told Max that the doctor could not be disturbed. When Max insisted, Dr. Heissen got on the telephone and rudely informed Max that he never revealed any information about his patients, and that he would certainly not dream of discussing such matters over the telephone. He hung up on the detective.

Max went back to the computers.
Tell me about Dr. Heissen,
he said.

Three hours later Max was speaking to Dr. Heissen on the telephone again.

“I told you before,” the doctor snapped, “that if you want any information about any of my patients, you will have to come to my office with a court order.”

“It is inconvenient for me to come to Dusseldorf just now,” the detective explained.

“That’s your problem. Anything else? I’m a busy man.”

“I know you are. I have in front of me your income tax reports for the past five years.”

“So?”

Max said, “Doctor, I don’t want to make trouble for you. But you are illegally concealing twenty-five
percent of your income. If you prefer, I can just forward your files to the German income tax authorities and tell them where to look. They could start with your safe-deposit box in Munich, or your numbered bank account in Basel.”

There was a long silence, and then the doctor’s voice asked, “Who did you say you were?”

“Detective Max Hornung of the Swiss Kriminal Polizei.”

There was another pause. The doctor said politely, “And what is it exactly you wish to know?”

Max told him.

Once Dr. Heissen began talking, there was no stopping him. Yes, of course he remembered Walther Gassner. The man had barged in without an appointment and had insisted on seeing him. He had refused to give his name. He had used the pretext that he wanted to discuss the problems of a friend.

“Of course, that alerted me instantly,” Dr. Heissen confided to Mox. “It is a classic syndrome of people unwilling or afraid to face their problems.”

“What
was
the problem?” Max asked.

“He said his friend was schizophrenic and homicidal, and would probably kill someone unless he could be stopped. He asked if there was some kind of treatment that could help. He said he could not bear to have his friend locked away in an insane asylum.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that first, of course, I would have to examine his
friend,
that some types of mental illness could be helped with modern drugs and other psychiatric and therapeutic treatments, and that other types were incurable. I also mentioned that in a case such
as he described, treatment might be necessary for an extended period of time.”

“What happened then?” Max asked.

“Nothing. That was really all. I never saw the man again. I would like to have helped him. He was very distraught. His coming to me was obviously a cry for help. It is similar to a killer who writes on the wall of his victim’s apartment, ‘Stop me before I kill again!’”

There was one thing still puzzling Max. “Doctor, you said he wouldn’t give you his name, and yet he gave you a check and signed it.”

Dr. Heissen explained, “He had forgotten to bring any money with him. He was very upset about that. In the end he had to write the check. That’s how I happened to learn his name. Is there anything else you need to know, sir?”

“No.”

Something was disturbing Max, a loose thread dangling tantalizingly out of reach. It would come to him—meanwhile, he had finished with the computers. The rest was up to him now.

When Max returned to Zurich the following morning, he found a teletype on his desk from Interpol. It contained a list of customers who had purchased the batch of raw stock used to make the snuff murder film.

There were eight names on the list.

Among them was Roffe and Sons.

Chief Inspector Schmied was listening to Detective Max Hornung make his report. There was no doubt about it. The lucky little detective had stumbled onto another big case.

“It’s one of five people,” Max was saying. “They all have a motive and they had the opportunity. They were all in Zurich for a board meeting the day the elevator crashed. Any one of them could have been in Sardinia at the time of the Jeep accident.”

Chief Inspector Schmied frowned. “You said there were five suspects. Aside from Elizabeth Roffe, there are only four members of the board. Who’s your other suspect?”

Max blinked and said patiently, “The man who was in Chamonix with Sam Roffe, when he was murdered. Rhys Williams.”