Speak Softly My Love
Read Speak Softly My Love Online
Authors: Louis Shalako
Tags: #murder, #mystery, #detective, #noir, #series, #louis shalako, #maintenon mystery
Speak Softly My Love
Louis Shalako
Copyright
2014 Louis Shalako and Long Cool One Books
Design:
J. Thornton
ISBN
978-1-927957-73-8
The
following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person
living or deceased, or to any places or events, is purely
coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters and incidents are
the product of the author’s imagination.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
It all
started with a litre of milk. Or rather, the lack of
one.
He’d run
out completely. It was only Thursday. Shopping day was Saturday.
Madame Lefebvre had laid in a fair supply of groceries before
heading off on her annual vacation with her sister in Orleans. He
wasn’t short of food exactly, just milk. He wasn’t expecting to see
her before Monday.
Gilles
didn’t drink much milk. He wasn’t a big fan of cereal, oatmeal and
porridge and the like. His routine was to have at least two cups of
coffee upon awakening. Lately the caseload was such that nothing
much had been happening to disturb the even flow of his
mornings.
He
should have left a note for the milkman, really, but he was
unfamiliar with the routine of his own household. By the time he
thought of it, it was too late.
To have
a little milk in the house might save him from a day that began
badly. At work, they’d have him running his legs off all day long,
with no chance of getting off his feet. Rushing out first thing,
finding a familiar place and then queueing up for one miserable cup
of coffee, and then finding a place to drink it, would not be his
first choice. He wasn’t that sociable to begin with.
Maintenon just felt like a walk.
The milk
was merely his excuse.
It was
good to walk alone sometimes.
It was a
fine clear night in early September. The moon was up but high
clouds obscured it in some places. The dark sky to the north
revealed stark glittering stars down low, in among the branches,
the rooftops and the chimneys. He walked softly, preferring to hear
other people first, which meant that he had an option.
The park
was coming up. Gilles wasn’t particularly worried, although the
difference between night and day could be profound. This wasn’t
such a bad neighbourhood. Not being a young man he had nothing to
prove—as an older individual maybe a little something to fear. The
statistics were clear enough.
He was
also armed and wasn’t afraid to use it, which made a big
difference.
The
fragile, hence doubled-up paper bag tucked under his left arm,
Gilles turned onto the grass and soft wet leaves halfway in between
streetlights. It was a habitual cut-through. There weren’t too many
people about. At this exact hour, most were either at home having
dinner, or they had already gone out for supper, dinner, dancing or
the show. Whatever. An entirely different crowd would be out later,
when the more prosperous victims were coming home again. They would
be mellow and off-guard, with full bellies and as often as not a
skin-full of good wine aboard.
It was very dark under the old oaks and beeches. There were
shadows strewn everywhere and every which way. It was disorienting,
luckily the ground was level underfoot. Benches and flowerbeds were
easy enough to avoid. Flowerbeds were, with their thick black
humus, even darker than the grass. They were topped by dormant
shrubs and those stalks which were trimmed or clipped but not
totally
collapsed
in the way certain perennials might do—horticulture being a
bit of a foreign subject to Maintenon.
When he
stumbled across the body, Gilles fell forwards, almost going flat
on his face. He dropped the bloody milk and put his hands out
quickly in an effort to save himself from falling right into
somebody’s wide-open mouth.
“
Merde!”
Forgetting the bag, he was up in a jiffy.
“
Damnation.” There was something wet and sticky on his hands,
after he touched the body again in the general centre of the body
mass.
It
confirmed what he already knew.
He was
half bent over, trying to get a good look. The only thing he could
properly see was that pale oval face, and the deeper black mass of
the body. A dark suit blocked out the lighter coloured leaves, but
it was darker than the wet green grass. It was a formless shape, a
body nevertheless.
The
full, golden orb of the moon came out fully from behind the thin
cloud layer and that’s when he got a good look at the
fellow.
“
Merde.”
He stood
staring down at a slender male of indeterminate age, high thirties
possibly. The man looked to be about average height. He was a
handsome enough, clean shaven. It might have been a kind, a gentle
face once, curiously unlined. Was that grey at the temples or a
trick of the light? The eyes were wide open and staring, the hair
tousled and lanky. The body was still warm, the blood still wet and
he was a police officer.
With a
quick nod at nothing at all, Gilles left the milk, the cheese, the
butter and the fresh baguettes where they lay.
Turning,
he sprinted back towards the light.
The
sooner he called this one in, the better. There was barely a
chance, but that body was still warm.
***
Inspector Gilles Maintenon lived in the city’s
14
th
arrondissement. A running man drew attention, and there were
curious looks from an obviously-married pedestrian couple as he
pelted back to the corner store where he had made his little
purchases.
Jamming
coins in, he dialed an all too familiar number.
“
Who?” Dispatchers never wasted a second.
“
Inspector Gilles Maintenon. Hurry. The body’s still warm for
Christ’s sakes.”
“
All right, Inspector. We have units on the way. You say this
is in the Park Montsouris?”
“
Yes, it’s off the path and away from the lights.”
“
All right then.” The dispatcher was calm and cool when Gilles
could only wish. “You had better wait on the sidewalk.”
“
I’ll be on the Rue Gazan. Near the lake.” Pond might be a
better word.
The
dispatcher was speaking into their microphone and he waited on the
line.
“
Right. You live right near there, don’t you,
Inspector?”
“
Yes, I went out for milk. I cut through the park on the way
home. I’m calling in from the store.”
“
Very well, Inspector. We’ll have some people with you
shortly.”
Gilles
hung up the phone. He was a little shaken. There was little else he
could do. It wasn’t an insult, it was just coincidence. The odds
against finding a body on your evening walk were astronomical.
Quite frankly this was the first time it had ever happened to him
and he hoped it would be the last.
Let
other people find the damned things.
For
crying out loud!
It
was
distressing. It gave him a new perspective. Civilians found
bodies all the time and the police were often quite cross when they
muffed it up. They disturbed the body or left their own soda
bottles, candy-wrappers, cigarette butts and footprints all over
the place. The worst one in his recollection had been a cub
journalist. He worked for some socialist weekly down south, and he
was just in Paris for the day or something. It was the seventh
congress, the popular front. The freaking Communist International.
For crying out loud. He’d found himself a body and then spent what
seemed like hours photographing it before phoning it in to police.
That one left a complete circle of footprints around the body,
taking pictures from every angle and carefully bracketing his shots
as he subsequently explained.
Looking
back, Gilles couldn’t quite recall, but he might have seen one or
two on the front page.
The guy
might have made a few francs out of it.
He
looked at Madame Foubister, on duty most evenings in the small,
slightly unkempt but always cheerful little store on the corner. He
lived a few short blocks away and there was a kind of warmth, a
kind of friendship or friendliness at least, that he had learned to
appreciate since Ann’s passing. No doubt she, and the lady standing
goggle-eyed with her, had heard every word, which meant the next
customer and the next, and the one after that would also hear every
word.
“
Ah, Monsieur? Is everything all right?”
He
repressed a sigh, there being nothing he could do about it. It was
only human nature, and anything further would only add fuel to the
fire.
“
Good evening, Madame. Thank you, there is nothing to be
alarmed about.”
She
waved as he made his way out the door, brushing past more customers
on their way in.
***
Gilles
made his way back to the point where he had first entered the park.
He found a pool of light under a lamp-post. On the chill evening
air, the cry of the sirens came from somewhere not too far
away.
He shook
his head. Two young people were coming down the street from the
northeast, a male and a female. Before they got to him, they
turned. They were holding hands and giggling as they entered the
park. His mouth opened. Bits of black verticality, they were too
far away, and it was already too late. There were scattered lights
in there and he watched them. Voices traveled across in front of
him from left to right. Their shadows swept across like the second
hand of a clock and he sighed deeply. He was pretty sure the body
was right along there…
A scream
confirmed it. The girl was hysterical.
The
young man’s voice was high but loud, cursing and swearing and
saying it was an abomination.
He
called out.
“
Please don’t disturb the body.”
There
was nothing but silence and then came the sound of voices. The girl
was crying and the young man was holding her close as the pair came
out of the darkness, seeking his authoritative voice. As soon as
they saw him, a non-descript middle-aged man, standing a little too
close to a dead man and seemingly somehow involved, the pair turned
and bolted off to the southeast.
“
Excuse me—please.” The young man gave an angry look back, and
putting their heads down, the pair ran off up the
street.
Innocent. That was his first impression, and first
impressions are lasting ones. Neither one of them was wearing a
coat. There was little doubt they were from the neighbourhood.
Hopefully they could be located quickly, although they probably
knew nothing. Just what they had seen, and no more.