Speak Softly My Love (18 page)

“
Oh, so the island got him?”

Doctor
Auger had the big steel tray fully rolled out, the bulk of the wall
composed of three rows of small steel doors. Above that were the
ubiquitous glazed ceramic tiles in an unusually cheerful
institutional yellow.

Gently,
he lifted the white cloth from the face.

Gilles
looked down. The water had been at him for a few days. The cold
preserved the body, but the water was absorbed into the cells.
There was a thin film of silt or something visible here and there,
although the doctor had washed the face for identification
purposes.

“
And you think he went in right there?”

“
There are a couple of bridges upstream. We figured somebody
took the wallet, knifed him, and dropped him in along the bank. I’m
thinking a stiletto. The entry wound is very small. See? It’s a bit
old-fashioned. He’d hang up pretty quick. That’s a nice,
professional little cut-job. A real fucking
Apache,
Inspector. Rather unusual,
especially in this neighbourhood. Downtown, or in some of the real
slum districts, yeah. At least that’s what we thought at first,
until somebody recalled your bulletin.” He looked at Andre,
patiently noting their few details so far. “We get a few suicides,
but not too many. It’s a nice neighbourhood.”

Bodies
turned up where and when they would. There were several known
snags. There were eddies, currents, docks and pilings along the
shore. Old barges sank at their moorings and there were a few of
them down along that stretch according to Auger.

Andre
watched in approval as Gilles bent in close and examined the
puncture wound. It was in about the right place. Death was
practically instantaneous. How much knowledge did that actually
require?

The only problem was that face. He stared at it. Like
his
man, the face was
clean-shaven, and yet whiskers continued to grow after death. There
was a good stubble, at least a day’s worth. At most, maybe two
days. The rate of growth was different for each individual. Only
some of that would have occurred after death. His dead man had been
clean-shaven, at least by moonlight.

“
I would like a full report.”

“
Absolutely.”

Andre
drew out their small sheaf of photos.

Maintenon took one, but that wasn’t the real problem as he
compared the face in the picture with that of their
deader.

“
Hmn.
Shit.
Eh?”

Detective Levain beckoned a patient Detective Thibodeau over
and gave him the remaining photos.

“
We need an objective opinion. Just ignore Gilles. What do you
think?”

“
This is the guy you saw in the park, Inspector?”

Gilles’
face went all stone-like.

“
Non,
non,
young man. What Andre means is that we want you to ignore all
of that—excellent idea, incidentally. Andre. This is where we will
go wrong time and time again in this case—and I’ll bet our
killer…”

Mouth
open, Gilles handed his photo to the doctor. He wandered over to
the farthest corner and found himself a seat on a hard maple
chair.

“
No, that can’t be it—” Maintenon was off on a tangent, noted
Andre.

Doctor
Auger looked at Gilles open-mouthed for a second, and then took a
good look at his little snapshot.

“
Damn. It really
is
hard, isn’t it?”

Thibodeau stood over the body, shaking his head
gently.

His eyes
came up to meet Andre’s.

“
Sacré
merde,
eh?”

Andre
took a breath.

“
Well. There’s nothing here that says that this can’t be our
boy.”

Maintenon looked up.

“
Where are his clothes? What was our amiable friend wearing
when you pulled him out?”

The
doctor handed the photo to Thibodeau who kept shuffling through
them, still unable to make up his mind. They were going by
description and photographs, and it was a tough call. The body had
no unique identifying marks, no tattoos, birthmarks, scars,
nothing.

The body
on the slab and the man in the photographs would have generated a
similar description from any number of witnesses. His height would
have varied all over the place, along with his weight. This
demonstrated one of the great difficulties of police work. Everyone
saw the same thing and somehow saw it differently. Even the camera
had some distortion and always would. It was in the nature of the
round, bulging lens and the flat, rectangular picture
plane.

Witnesses described a common experience using a unique
perspective, differing levels of acuity, and using different words.
Some, in fact most, weren’t even paying attention. Eyewitness
descriptions would be all over the place, and yet here they had a
chance to study at their leisure.

Gilles
followed Dr. Auger.

The
doctor had the clothes up on hangars, on racks, over a drain in the
floor in the next room.

Gilles
felt the fabric, still damp at the seams of the waistband. He went
looking for the cut on the front of the jacket, squinting at it in
the dim light of the utility room. The shirt, obviously, was cut as
well and heavily bloodstained. He touched the cuts with the
sensitive pads of his right fore and middle finger. It felt about
right, but then pretty much any rip or tear would feel like that.
The shoes were of good quality, the suit and shirt
expensive.

“
There were no personal effects. He was wearing silk
underwear.”

“
Hmn.” Gilles fingered the fabric. “Nice.”

They were being asked to make
subjective
calls when the manual
stressed the objective call. It was the basis of all rational
investigation. Emotion,
wanting
it to be true, had no place here. Human senses
and recollection were fallible and he, a trained investigator,
should only expect so much of himself.

“
Andre.”

Levain
went in to have a look.

“
This suit is brown—” Maintenon’s face swung around. “Silk
underwear as well.”

Thibodeau called out from the outer room.

“
Yeah—yeah, it might be him. It could be him, what the hell.
It probably is him.”

Turning
his head away from the door, Andre looked again at the
suit.

The lady
said black suit, the gentleman is found in a brown suit.

How
significant was that? The guy also took off and left without a
word. Absolutely none of the information they had so far could be
trusted. Not without further facts. Not without corroboration, of
some material kind.

Merde.

Chapter Fifteen

Hubert
and Tailler were looking terribly smug as Gilles finished his
informal briefing on the previous day’s events. Andre gave them a
long look before tearing himself away.

“
Doctor Auger will be forwarding all reports here.” Gilles had
his buttocks perched on the front of his desk, arms crossed as the
thunder rumbled and lightning cracked overhead in an unusual
September thunderstorm. “He can hang onto the body for a while, and
he’s promised to send us the clothing as soon as he’s finished his
detailed examination.”

Levain
heaved in his chair. The two younger detectives obviously wanted to
know what they should be doing next.

“
Okay. So—”

“
Um, Inspector?”

Gilles
had turned to his typewriter, which he had on a second rather
narrower desk, set against the wall and in behind his main
one.

“
Yes?”

Tailler,
with an air of superior accomplishment, slid open the top drawer of
his desk. He pulled out a big buff envelope and got out of his
seat.

He took
it over to Andre. Spreading the materials out on the desk, he
stepped back. Levain whistled, looking up at the tall detective in
astonishment.

“
What is it, Tailler?”

“
Heh-heh-heh. We have a body too, Inspector.”

“
What?”

Andre
looked at Hubert, who shrugged as if he wasn’t responsible for all
of this mess, and Tailler took the pictures to
Maintenon.

He was
suitably impressed.

“
And who is this?”

“
That’s Madame Godeffroy.”

Tailler
turned and gave Hubert a significant look.

It was
his cue.

“
Madame
Zoe
,
Godeffroy.”

Maintenon’s mouth opened and he stared.

“
Three…three wives…?”

“
It seems terribly far-fetched, doesn’t it?”

Andre
leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, watching their little
performance.

“
They’re all
archetypes,
Inspector.” Tailler rubbed his chin. “God knows
where Didier found them…”

Levain’s
eyebrows were climbing straight up, as if to escape from the sort
of forehead that could conceive of all of this, in however limited
a fashion. This was not his idea—the boys were all on their own on
this one.

Tailler
turned and shrugged.

“
What are we supposed to think, Andre? That call
yesterday—just when you were leaving. That was Inspector Delorme.
She was found at the Rive Gauche, the hotel.”

Andre
nodded, as Maintenon studied the crime scene photos. There were
incident reports, the lady’s preliminary physical exam at the
morgue. Dr. Guillaume was a thorough-going bastard when he ran into
a corpse he liked.

She was
blonde, well-dressed. The right age, size and build.

“
She came in from Molsheim. In the wine country—or one of
them, right. But here’s the kicker. There’s a letter. No envelope,
unfortunately. She probably had it folded up in her purse, and kept
it with her. Women are
crazy
about hanging onto old love letters. They were
going to have a second honeymoon. The hotel’s a lot nicer these
days by the way, it used to be a real dump known as the Belle Bleu
or something.”

“
Okay.” Andre’s head jerked a little in
recognition.

He knew
the place.

“
It’s signed,
love—Didier.”

Hmn.

Tailler
closed his mouth and let them ponder that one.

Picking
up one of the better photos of the victim, he took it and sat on
the front of his own desk. Maintenon was studying the photographic
copy of the letter.

He and
Hubert had some ideas, but it was better to let Gilles think on it
for a while.

In the meantime, Maintenon had been thoughtful enough to
bring in a couple of boxes of assorted
beignets,
and if Tailler didn’t snag
one of the strawberry-filled ones quick, some bastard would beat
him to the punch.

Probably
Andre, he decided, as the two of them moved in at once. With Andre
in his chair, Tailler had the advantage and he got there
first.

“
Mmn.” The trouble was the powdered sugar on the cheeks, but
oh, well.

“
So what do you
think,
Inspector?”

This was
just getting too damned good. Hubert was about ready to shit
himself.

Maintenon shrugged.

Thibodeau and something he said came to mind.

“
It could be him. It might be him. Hell, it probably is him.”
He lifted his feet up onto the desk, putting his hands up behind
his head and eyeing the boxes of beignets on Andre’s desk. “The
only question now, is how to proceed.”

It was
one hell of a good question judging by the blank looks that one
drew.

Hubert
got up and grabbed one of the boxes, bringing it over so Gilles
could have a rummage around in there.

“
What is that?”

“
Pardon?”

“
I swear you were just humming—
humming
for crying out
loud.”

“
Oh, that.” Maintenon grunted, half-sad and yet half smiling.
“It’s just an old song…”

He took
in a short breath.

Poor old
Gilles was quite the crooner.

“...speak softly, my love.

Speak
low.

Speak
softly to me my love

Speak
softly and tell me

Please tell me

That
you will never go.”

Maintenon took a
breath and finished it.

Speak softly my love, for the heart can never lie.

Speak softly to me, and lover, please don’t cry.

Speak softly my love, speak softly—