The Hanged Man's Tale, page 6
“Et pour ça, I had to give up my breakfast?” He shook his head as Mazarelle showed him the police ID.
The commandant wasn’t worried about the grousing. He pulled out his sunniest smile. “Let’s look at the scene,” he said.
Staring down through the wire-cage skylight, he tried to get a glimpse of the steel beam from which the dead body of Alain Berthaud had been hung. The protective metal cage was bolted in place with an impressively solid H-shaped lock.
“Bfffff,” the locksmith sighed. “The Fichet 480. Ten wafers. Two sidebars. Used to be state of the art.”
“So you can’t do it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
He pulled open his shapeless, gray worker’s coat and reached inside the pocket. He drew out an enormous ring of keys—long skinny keys, short squat keys, keys of every shape and dimension. Double siders, dimples, Abloys and paracentrics. Flipping through them, he stopped at the two H-shaped keys he had. He held them up to the light, twisting them slowly in front of his eyes as if appraising a gem. And shaking his head once more, flipped right on past.
Finally, he came to a small featureless shaft of metal, not really a key at all—no shoulder, no cuts, no tip. Jamming it into the tumblers, he gave a quick, strong snap of the wrist…and the lock came free.
He spread his palms out, as if offering up a gift.
“Any blank key of hardened material can be used to forcibly rotate and unlock the 480.” He gave a small, modest smile. “That’s why they discontinued this model.”
With the locksmith’s help, Mazarelle removed the protective metal wire-cage skylight. He knew that the body had been taken down from below by the white-clad Police Scientifique, who’d reached it by standing in a rubber raft on the water. It still griped Mazarelle that they’d done it before he arrived on the scene. He’d had to get their description afterward. The men in white told him how they’d struggled to bring the body down. It was a slow, difficult task. Fortunately they were two strong men.
Mazarelle dropped onto his stomach. Sticking his head through the skylight, he looked down on the scene below, trying to re-create in his mind’s eye how it must have looked.
“Incroyable!” he exclaimed to himself.
Dangling from the steel beam, the dead body must have appeared as an eerie vision. Hanging upside down. The ankle swaying at the end of a rope. And closer to the water, the brilliant blue eyes glittering in the shaft of light that poured down through the skylight.
Seen from above, the dimensions of the steel beam and the canal below made it clear to Mazarelle how challenging it must have been to string up the body there. It couldn’t have been Babo acting alone. At a minimum, it would have taken two accomplices to hang the heavy corpse from the steel beam—at least one above and one below.
From the beginning, a single question had nagged at Mazarelle—why was this strange location chosen for the body? If the murder was Babo’s revenge, he could have left the corpse anywhere. By the side of the road. In a dumpster behind a café. Instead, the murderers had chosen a placement that took real effort. And they’d made no attempt to hide the crime. The whole point was to call attention to it. This murder scene had been staged. Like a movie set. It was too theatrical, right down to the small shaft of light focusing on the body, like a spotlight shining in the blackness of the tunnel. No question—it was a warning. And a very public one at that.
“Now”—the locksmith sighed—“can I go home and have my café crème?”
* * *
—
By the time Maurice returned from lunch, holding a cup of hot black coffee in each hand, Mazarelle was already back at his desk.
“In the nick of time. Thanks,” said Mazarelle, taking one of the cups. “I’d just hit the bottom of my eye opener. I’m ready for a second.”
Maurice accepted the fact that once they started on a new case, they rarely had time for real meals, like normal people. Sipping his coffee, Maurice watched as his chief, using a magnifying glass, examined some of the photographs sent to him by the Police Scientifique. Black-and-white close-ups of the victim’s hands tied behind his back.
Mazarelle passed the magnifier to Maurice. “Do you know what kind of knot that is?”
Maurice gave his boss a puzzled look.
“What’s the matter? They don’t have knots in West Africa?” Scowling in annoyance, Mazarelle explained that the knot tying Berthaud’s hands behind his back was one of the simplest in the book—a half hitch. And none too dependable unless secured by an additional half hitch. Which made Mazarelle think that it was probably tied postmortem. The work of an amateur. It wouldn’t keep anyone captive.
“But this one—” Sounding impressed, he pointed to the knot around Berthaud’s ankle that had bound him to the beam above. “This one was most likely tied by someone who knew a thing or two about knots. It’s known as a constrictor, a secure weight-bearing knot. Difficult to untie and once tightened a real bitch to release.”
“Sorry, boss. Not my area of expertise—”
“Forget it,” Mazarelle said. “The point is…two different knots—two different suspects. At least two people working together. Which is borne out by the scene at the canal. I’ll double-check the knots with Jeannot when he gets in. All those years of scouting have to be good for something. So where the hell is he?” Mazarelle checked his watch. “We’re already late…”
14
The Alain Berthaud autopsy was scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. sharp. By the time Mazarelle and Jeannot showed up, it was already underway.
One of the advantages of being head of his own homicide team was that these days Mazarelle didn’t have to attend most autopsies himself. Usually he could avoid their suffocating mix of chemicals and death in the air—a foul cocktail of formaldehyde, ammonia, and gastric acid. He was glad to delegate the assignment to younger, less sensitive noses like Maurice’s. But this time the case was simply too big, the pressure from above too great.
Cracking two tiny pieces of clove—one for each nostril—he pushed open the door to the morgue’s autopsy room and strode inside, with the hesitant Jeannot in his wake.
The medical examiner looked up, his scalpel raised mid-incision.
“Ah, the great man himself.” The examiner beamed, waving the bloody knife in Mazarelle’s direction.
Though Gilles Chardon was short, middle-aged, balding, with a black comic stub of a mustache and Mazarelle a great bear of a man with a hairy horseshoe under his nose, the two men spoke the same language. They were friends. They liked each other’s independence, the confident way each did his job. And inasmuch as Chardon’s mingy ’stache seemed to be temporary—a mere placeholder waiting to be shaved off in favor of something more substantial—Mazarelle didn’t hold it against him. He gestured over to introduce his young colleague Jeannot.
“It’s his first time…”
“A neophyte? We’ll be gentle.”
“So.” Mazarelle jumped right in. “Time of death?”
“Well, you brought me a body that was hanging underground. In a tunnel. Cold and moist—right?” He started to make the incision in the chest. “I can’t give you much more than you already know. It’s some time yesterday morning, between one a.m. and nine a.m., when the body was found.”
Jeannot wasn’t really listening. He was staring down at the knife as it cut its Y across the victim’s ribs. Chardon followed his riveted gaze.
“Don’t worry about the chest,” he said. “Look at the eyes.” He pointed his scalpel down at the victim’s face. “See the red dots?”
Jeannot was trying hard to stay focused. But his chalky pallor was getting closer and closer to the color of the body on the slab. Mazarelle gave him a little poke in the side.
“This is interesting. Pay attention.”
He and Chardon exchanged small conspiratorial grins.
“They’re burst blood vessels,” said the medical examiner.
Jeannot brought his hand up to his mouth.
Mazarelle had started nodding vigorously. “Petechial hemorrhaging. Right?”
“Telltale sign. All those red dots. Some sort of choking. Supply of oxygen gets cut off. The blood vessels in the eyes start to burst.”
“Cause of death, then?”
“Well, we won’t be sure till the tox screen comes back later this week. But it looks good for it.”
“Wait a minute.” Jeannot was trying hard to rally. He turned to Mazarelle. “I thought you said that death wasn’t by hanging.”
Chardon nodded. “That’s where it gets really fascinating.” He slashed the rest of the incision into the stomach lining to reveal the intestines. “Our subject here was hanged, not by his neck but by his left ankle. But that’s not what killed him. The hanging happened after he was already dead—and before rigor mortis set in. You can tell by the way the blood pools in the body.”
He pointed to the dark purple shoulders. “See? Lividity. Gravity pulls the blood down to the lowest point.”
“So not a death by hanging, but what then?” asked Mazarelle.
“Some sort of choking. Look at those marks around his neck.”
Circling Berthaud’s neck was an angry dark red band. A thick line just under the Adam’s apple—maybe a couple of thin ones merged together.
Chardon went on: “But he wasn’t choked by hand either. My best guess is death by ligature strangulation.”
“A rope?”
“Well, if it was a rope, it’s like no rope I’ve ever seen.” He pointed back at the neck. “A normal rope digs into the skin. Leaves all sorts of abrasions. This was something smooth.”
Chardon poked at the skin around the neck.
“Whatever the weapon was,” he said, “it was applied with great force by a killer of formidable strength. It looks as if he came from behind. He crushed the victim’s larynx and fractured his hyoid bone.”
Even before the body wall had been sewn up with thick twine and big stitches and hosed down by the diener, and the morgue attendant had gone for his mop and pail to clean up the autopsy suite’s bloody floor, Mazarelle and Jeannot started heading out of the room. Jeannot needed some fresh air. Before leaving, Mazarelle told Chardon that he was expecting the autopsy report no later than tomorrow.
“I’ll try,” Chardon muttered. “That’s all I can promise.”
“You’ll try?” Mazarelle’s face broke into a huge smile. He waved his finger in Chardon’s direction. “That’s just like you. Such a crafty bastard. Always making sure you’ve left plenty of wiggle room. That can mean anything from we’ll get it tomorrow to maybe next year!”
Chardon grinned back.
“But this one has juice, right from the top.” Mazarelle’s index finger underscored the point. “We have to work fast…By the way, did you find any evidence to suggest where the murder might have occurred?”
“Not really. But there was very little blood on the body, including from the lethal wound. And I’m told there was no blood at all at the canal site. In my opinion, the victim must have been murdered elsewhere. Perhaps in his home…The dead body then driven to the canal, and hung there.”
“Which reminds me, where is his car?” Mazarelle turned to Jeannot. “He’s supposed to have had some sort of fancy new Mercedes, right?”
Jeannot nodded. “According to Fournel. We know Berthaud drove it to the Café Arielle. But it’s not in the lot over there, that’s for sure.”
* * *
—
They emerged from the autopsy room with Jeannot still looking a little dazed, as if he were exiting from the darkness of a movie matinee into bright sunlight.
“Was it the smell? Did the stink bother you?” Mazarelle inquired.
Jeannot said that it did, “a little.”
“Me too. You didn’t know Berthaud did you?”
“No, it’s not that. I didn’t know him, but I suppose it was his face as much as anything else.”
“Look, Jeannot.” Mazarelle wrapped his big protective arm around the young man’s shoulders and said, “Cheer up! I know that place can be depressing—a Grand Guignol horror show. They used to come to the old morgue right over there behind Notre Dame by the busload to see the homicides, suicides, and accident victims fished out of the Seine. The dark underside of the City of Light. The stuff we deal with every day. But you have to embrace all of it—every little piece of the puzzle—if you want to put those pieces together. That’s the job.”
“Hard to believe,” Jeannot said. He was thinking about the cadaver’s organs—heart, kidneys, liver, lungs—spread all around the autopsy tables like meat in a butcher shop.
15
Rhythm. It was all a matter of rhythm when it came to breaking down the animal. Each process had its own tempo. The scraping staccato cuts to separate hide from carcass, the legato slices to part fat from flesh. The lean man in the black hoodie did not fancy himself a musician, but with each slice, he could feel his audience mesmerized by his movements.
Wiping his hands on the sides of his black sweatshirt, he hefted the blade again. A nasty looking number, the Camillus combat knife, with a seven-inch bowie blade ending in a vicious clip-point. In the twenty-odd years he had owned the knife, the Camillus had yet to let him down. You could soak the compressed leather hilt in water, blood, it didn’t matter—and still keep a vise-tight grip on the handle. Best of all, it was not flimsy. Where other knives would bend or crack when cranked around inside a body, the carbonized-steel bowie blade of the Camillus made the body do the cracking instead.
It had been many years since the knife had seen any true action, but once sharpened it would not forget its purpose. Picking up the ceramic rod he set to work.
Shhhhhing. From the linoleum-covered floor the black and brown German shepherd looked up, eagerly tracking the man’s precise movements.
Shhhhing. Ceramic on metal, grinding away the dull layers of carbon steel that had already done their job, revealing the vicious gleam of a sharpened edge.
A familiar rhythm beat its way into his head, one he had not thought of in years, not since the days he first used the Camillus. The rigid lockstep march of his unit, the blinding brightness of their képi blancs against the dark green hues of the jungle, their regimental chant.
With each sharpening stroke, he hummed to himself: “For this knight destiny, / honor, fidelity, / We are proud to belong.” He worked his way up to a crescendo. “The Devil is marching with us!”
He turned to the German shepherd, grinning, gesturing with the Camillus. “The Devil marches with us! Right, Teufel?” The dog wagged his tail jovially in response.
Spinning back to the counter, the man began to carve. Long, deliberate strokes, placing the meat into a bowl beside him. “See this? If you truly respect the hunt, nothing goes to waste.” The dog sniffed the air approvingly, as if admiring the man’s frugality.
As he finished, the man turned to face his German shepherd. “We eat everything! Isn’t that right, Teufel? Good dog.”
Teufel wagged his tail enthusiastically as the man approached with the bowl, giving it a final stir before placing it in front of the animal. The dog didn’t delay, sticking his snout right into the bowl. The dog’s owner watched his canine companion with a look of fascination. Until something caught his eye.
Clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth, he reached down into the bowl. How could he have missed that? He shook his head, and tugged at the ring on the small hunk of meat, allowing the light to catch the gold band—the bright green emerald fixed in its center refracting streaks of blue and green around the kitchen.
“Well, almost everything. Right, boy?”
He scratched the dog behind the ears. Pocketing the ring, he tossed the finger back into the bowl.
A minute later, Teufel licked the bowl clean.
16
The message sat on Mazarelle’s desk—a pink summons from the powers that be. It was Coudert, wanting to know the status of the investigation. Calling to make sure the prosecution was on track and all the details lined up as the case headed toward trial. Mazarelle hadn’t quite gotten around to mentioning his misgivings about their suspect, Babo, in the jail, or his latest findings. In his experience, bosses were like pets. You didn’t want to confuse them with too much information, too many words. They were skittish and easily rattled.
In the meantime, he was pushing hard for new facts. And his team was retracing Alain Berthaud’s final steps, trying to figure out who saw the victim last.
Maurice had just come back from the Café Arielle. The owner had recognized Alain Berthaud from the blown-up photo Maurice had shown him. “Yes, that one. He was here Friday night.”
“You’re sure?” Maurice asked.
The owner examined the photo again. “I’m sure. There were three of them,” he recalled. “Never seen them in here before. Friends celebrating. Having a good time. The only odd thing I remember is that the one with short gray hair suddenly left early. When I asked him about paying, he said, ‘They’ll pay.’ ”
“What time did his friends leave?”
“About one a.m. They were laughing, telling each other jokes. Stayed on drinking until closing. By the time they left arm in arm—holding each other up—that one, Berthaud, was completely sloshed.”
The owner thought one of them had a car, but he had no idea who drove, or where the car was now. It seemed to have disappeared from the lot. Like Berthaud.
Mazarelle was only modestly encouraged by Maurice’s report. “So we know where he was up until around one a.m. or so. The last few hours are a blank. Which doesn’t help us much.”
