Authors: Peter Morfoot
Darac needed just one more guideline.
‘So it’s more likely that once injected, the drug would take effect quickly. But go to the low probability end of the scale. What sort of time gap is possible with the slow-acting types?’
‘That’s much more difficult to say.’
‘Seconds? Minutes?’
Deanna shrugged.
‘Seconds. Minutes. Hours. Come on, Darac – give me a break.’
‘If we have to,’ he smiled.
‘Oh, there’s one thing I haven’t mentioned. His feet.’
Granot and Darac studied them for a moment. And then shook their heads.
‘There are signs of a residue between the toes. It’s faint but see there?’
Now that it had been pointed out, Darac could see it clearly.
‘Talcum? Soap?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll let you know what I find. So – okay to move the body?’
‘Sure.’
‘Boys?’
The men from the morgue unclipped the stretcher from the trolley and began picking their way towards her.
‘And where’s the photographer got to?’
‘Here, Professor.’
‘The cardboard mats are almost ready for their close-ups.’
Granot pulled Darac aside.
‘This thing is intriguing, alright, but it doesn’t look like we’re dealing with World War Three here, does it?’
‘No, no.’
‘Okay, so after the lycée principal has formally identified our friend over at the morgue, I might take the rest of the day off, after all. Alright with you?’
‘Sure.’
They watched as the stretcher boys trod their way carefully around the body.
‘So, the Shopping Trolley Killer.’ Granot tugged at his moustache. ‘You’re not seriously giving credence to the idea, are you, chief? For one thing, where would an old woman get hold of a potentially lethal muscle relaxant?’
‘If she did do it, she’s not just any old woman, is she? And the drug got into the dead man somehow – assuming Deanna’s right about it, and I’ll bet she is.’
‘One, two… lift!’
The move was carried out with a precision that belied the morgue boys’ brawn. Nevertheless, freeing the body moved both bits of cardboard a fraction. Sticking out from under one of them was the point of something shiny.
The flashgun fired.
‘What is that?’ Granot screwed up his eyes. ‘A needle?’
Deanna’s ears pricked up.
‘Print kit back here, please! Uncover it, will you, Granot?’
He did so. The shiny point wasn’t a needle. It was the tip of a key.
At first, he hadn’t understood why the climate control unit featured two display screens. But then someone explained it to him. The first screen showed the temperature the room should be; the second, its actual temperature. He looked at them. Both read 21.2 degrees. Twenty-one point two, he noted. They go in for precision here. Reassuring.
He drifted off to sleep. He drifted into wakefulness.
Once his slow-mo eyes had finally racked into focus, he noticed that aspiration and performance were still locked at 21.2 degrees. He felt reassured all over again. But then, out of nowhere, a subversive thought hit him. Why should he believe what the displays said? How did he know those figures were accurate? Perhaps the numbers were just stuck at 21.2. Perhaps the thing wasn’t working at all. Perhaps it was all a trick. A trick to gull the naive.
No, no – everything was alright. He remembered that a minute ago, or ten minutes ago, or ten days ago, the second display had briefly read 21.1. Yes, that’s right, there had been a cold snap. It had been freezing. He’d forgotten that for a moment. He looked at the second screen once more. It was 21.2. Good.
Numbers. Numbers everywhere. Red, most of them. Red numbers and graph traces. The machine next to him looked like a jetliner’s control panel. Someone had explained to him what it all meant but he couldn’t grasp it at the time. Too soon after the op. Numbers would cease to matter soon, anyway.
A blur of green. A rustle of cloth.
‘Hello, darling. How are you today?’
It was the blond girl. All beams and bellows. He blinked once.
‘That’s great! Soon have you up and running about, won’t we? Won’t we?’
He blinked once.
‘That’s the way.’
The fat one was with her. She smiled at him. A gentle hand on his forehead. And then on his endotracheal tube. The smell of soap under his nose.
‘The flange is making his mouth sore, look. Couldn’t we loosen it a little?’
‘Needs to be secure. Besides…’ The blond one dropped her voice. ‘…I don’t think he’ll feel it.’
She was right. He wouldn’t.
‘I’ll just swab on a little barrier cream, then. And put some gauze under it. Just where it’s rubbing.’
Bless you. Bless you for wanting to do something just in case it helps.
The blond one shrugged.
‘Alright, then.’
‘Won’t be a sec.’
For the moment, the only sounds in the room were electromechanical: the peculiar hollow
thuck
of the ventilator; the beeping of the heart monitor. Then the blond one unsheathed a chart from its scabbard at the foot of the bed. Glances jetted at the equipment. Pen strokes on the page. Brisk. Efficient.
‘Now we’ve got something for you,’ she said, ramping up the volume as she put away the chart. ‘You know what the Tour is, don’t you? The Tour de France? Cycling?’ She mimed riding a bike.
He blinked once.
‘Starts tomorrow, doesn’t it? Did you know that? Well, it does. And you, young man, are going to be able to watch it. That’s right! You’re going to have your own TV in here. And it’s going to be set up at just the right angle to make it easy for you. You won’t miss a moment. Now you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
At last, the blond one had said what he wanted to hear. At last, there would be something absorbing to focus on. Something full of movement and colour. Something he loved. Something, indeed, he was depending upon. Using all the strength he could muster, he blinked repeatedly.
‘You don’t want it? Oh well, never mind. It will be more peaceful in here without it, won’t it?’
No, no, no…
The fat one returned. He smelled her fingers under his nose as she eased the pressure on the holder plate. It gave him a chance to correct his mistake. He tried to move his lips but there was no movement in them. With the tube pushing between his vocal chords well down into his trachea, it would have been impossible to speak anyway.
The smell of salve. A smile from the fat one.
‘He didn’t even want the TV,’ the blond one said to her. ‘After all that rigmarole.’
Darac was already stripping off his overalls as he emerged from the crime-scene tent. Pulling at the hem of his polo shirt, he fanned a little air around his torso as he rang his home station, the Caserne Auvare.
‘Agnès – good, I caught you.’
‘How’s the riot?’
Darac gave her an account of the story so far.
‘And thanks for your help with Frènes earlier. How the hell am I going to cope after you’ve gone?’
‘Providing you become a completely different person, you’ll have nothing to worry about.’
Darac laughed but he knew she had a point.
‘We’re all still hoping you’ll change your mind and stay on, you know.’
‘All?’
Darac glanced into the prayer room’s white-painted vestibule. At the far end, a door opened.
‘
All
. Better go, boss, Bonbon’s here.’
He ended the call as Bonbon joined him on the pavement.
‘Learn anything?’
‘Nothing further, chief.’
Darac heard a message ping into his inbox.
‘Except one thing.’ Bonbon dragged his armband back over his wiry bicep. ‘They’re all dying to meet you.’
‘I’ll bet. Have you seen Granot?’
‘Yes – he filled me in on the unfortunate Monsieur Emil Florian. The old woman still wearing her chief suspect’s hat?’
‘In the absence of anyone else.’
‘We’ll do better.’ Shielding his eyes, Bonbon glanced across the street. The young officers Yvonne Flaco and Max Perand were still struggling to get through their quota of interviews. ‘I was going to do the apartment houses next but…’ He gave Darac a look. ‘What do you think?’
‘I’d give the guys a look first. Or we could be here all day.’
‘See you later.’
Darac’s text was from his girlfriend, Angeline. There had been a change of plan, it seemed. No jazz club for her tonight. Some of her fellow academics had decided to go out for a drink after the final session of the conference they were attending. Probably turn into dinner. Best make his own plans. She signed off simply:
A
.
Darac stared into space for a moment before replying:
Enjoy it, chérie – Paul.
Frènes’s instruction to tread carefully came back to him as he took off his shoes in the vestibule. Featuring cartoon-like musical notes fighting to free themselves from a page of sheet music, his socks would probably be considered bad form. But he stepped into the prayer room itself doubting anyone would notice them.
A single fan circulating in the middle of the ceiling was doing a good job of stirring up the warm air. The uniform on watch, Jacques ‘Seve’ Sevran, was a short, chunkily built individual. Raising eyebrows as rounded as Norman arches, he acknowledged his superior’s arrival with a wry, conspiratorial smile rather than a salute. He was safe: everyone knew Darac’s couldn’t-care-less attitude to hierarchies cut both ways.
‘How’s it going, Seve?’
‘Not so bad.’ His eyes slid down to Darac’s socks. ‘Tasteful. No wonder they wanted to kick you off this thing.’
‘Frènes hasn’t seen these. I’ll give you ten euros to leave them out of your report.’
Seve’s smile didn’t match the strained look in his eyes.
‘Listen, we’re all sorry about Hélène. But she’s doing better, I hear.’
‘Practically got a season ticket for that hospital. But yes, she’s responding well this time, thanks.’
‘That’s good.’ He waited a respectful couple of beats before casting a glance over his shoulder. ‘So you’ve been in here from the start?’
‘More or less.’
‘And you haven’t had to interpret at any point?’
Seve shook his head.
‘So the people in here haven’t twigged you can understand what they’re saying?’
‘No. And why should they? I’m white, low-ranking, middle-aged – just a glorified guard dog, really, aren’t I?’
Pursing his lips, Darac nodded ambivalently.
‘I suppose they could see it that way. Have they been speaking to each other in French?’
‘Not all the time, no.’
‘Pick up anything?’
‘I’m only really fluent in Arabic, remember. I’m pretty sketchy on most of the West African languages. They’ve been talking about what happened, naturally. But they seem as bemused by it as everyone else. The fellow who led the outdoor congregation – Toulé? He gives me the creeps, though.’
‘Which one is he?’
‘Over in the corner, the two talking together? He’s the one in the white agbada.’
Darac turned. Toulé was a tall, wisp-bearded man wearing a full-length caftan-like garment. A joyless smile featured a row of long, protruding teeth.
‘What’s your problem with him?’
‘He reminds me of a character in
I Walked with a Zombie
. The zombie, to be exact. And how about those teeth? He could chew a corn cob through a Venetian blind, this guy.’
‘Seve, you are a wicked man.’ Darac took Bonbon’s notes out of his back pocket and consulted the congregation diagram. ‘So which one’s… Slimane Bahtoum?’
‘The kid who was praying next to the victim?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Over there in the corner. He’s the nervous-looking one in the T-shirt.’
‘Okay, I’ve got him. And the guy who was praying next to
him…
Anthar Ibdouz?’
Sevran indicated a fleshy, middle-aged man sitting contemplatively in the opposite corner.
‘There – the one squatting with his backside between his out-turned ankles. Ever tried that? Kills your knees.’
‘Okay, I’m going to talk to them. But first – a spot of general PR.’
‘You?’ Sevran grinned. ‘PR?’
‘I know. But you’ve got to play with who you’ve got.’
‘I’ll be listening. And thanks again, my friend. I’ll tell Hélène you were asking after her.’
There were a dozen or so men waiting to be re-interviewed; some talking quietly, others sitting contemplatively on the carpeted floor. The room, a small clean-lined space decorated in creams and sky blues, felt light and calm, an atmosphere very different from the guilty shadows and images of torture and death Darac associated with Catholic churches.
Yet there was little room for error here. A series of wall-mounted clocks specified to the minute the times of the day’s prayers, and parallel lines woven into the carpet pointed towards a niche in the room’s eastern wall, presumably denoting the direction of the Muslim’s holy city of Mecca.
‘Gentlemen. I am Captain Paul Darac of the Brigade Criminelle and I have been charged with leading the investigation into the death of the man who temporarily joined your congregation earlier.’
All eyes were on him. In them, he read a range of expressions: acquiescence, wariness, irritation – what he would have expected from any group detained for further questioning.
‘I know you have all been questioned separately already and so I would like first to thank you for your patience and co-operation on what I know has been a very trying and difficult day for you. I am well aware of the approach of…’ What had Bonbon called the next prayer service? ‘…
Asr
, but I am confident that if the level of co-operation you have all demonstrated so far is maintained, we should have no problems meeting that deadline. As we speak, a separate area is being cordoned off outside so that the…’ For a moment, Darac couldn’t think of an alternative to ‘overspill’. ‘…the others can be accommodated there.’
In the corner of the room, Seve Sevran gave him a discreet, reinforcing nod.