A Death in Time, page 17
‘Better still, let me count the ways.’
‘Only if you make a better job of it than Monsieur Musso.’
THIRTY-THREE
The car radio beeped. Police comms.
‘Listen.’
It was a superfluous instruction. Cassie had been doing nothing but listen for the past ten minutes.
‘Mobile control. Lacquet, come on? Over.’
‘Lacquet here. Over’
‘Location and ETA? Over.’
‘Crossing the Var on the 6098. One moment, I’ll ask Garlet… Ten minutes, he says. Over.’
‘Pathology already in attendance. Victim still at the scene. Captain Paul Darac leading the operation on the ground. Clear on where you’re heading on arrival at the Stade? Over.’
‘The players’ and officials’ car park? Over.’
‘That’s the one. Over and out.’
‘Ah, what a shame,’ the man said as the radio beeped off. ‘Somebody got themself killed.’ He handed her a folded piece of paper. ‘Know where to go?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then why are you still here?’
Cassie got out of the car and, glad to be breathing fresh air, was soon toying with the idea of keeping on walking. But then a voice called out from behind.
‘Noëmi?’
Her blood ran cold. What to do? Steeling herself, she turned. The man wound his window back up and nodded. It had been his voice. She had passed the test. This time.
THIRTY-FOUR
The immediate upshot of Bonbon’s call with Coach Gilles Laborde was that the Brigade now had to contend with a second inconsolable man bent on vengeance. At least Dilip Padar had agreed to be taken home where the two uniforms assigned to him would continue to keep close tabs. Requesting that Laborde remain in his office until Bonbon arrived to continue their conversation in person had not taken. He was setting off to the stadium immediately and nothing was going to stop him.
It was an arrival Darac was set to miss but it couldn’t be helped. Interviewing the man who had discovered the body remained his first priority and besides, he had complete confidence in Bonbon’s and Flaco’s abilities to handle any tricky situation.
In his time with the Brigade Criminelle, Darac had interviewed far too many Eric Cauvins – ordinary people who in the course of a perfectly ordinary day had chanced upon the entirely extraordinary. For homicide detectives, coming face to face with the brutalised remains of what had once been a human being was an everyday occurrence. In every sense, they were prepared for these moments and for what came next. For a civilian, dealing with the trauma of discovering a murder victim might only be the start of their ordeal. There was no telling how those thrust unwittingly into the foreground of a murder investigation would cope with this second challenge. Whatever the cost to their own wellbeing, many saw it as their bounden duty to offer every assistance they could to the authorities. On the opposite end of the scale, some positively welcomed the celebrity that making a grisly discovery had conferred upon them and relished talking about it. Some would dine out on such a story for years.
With Bill Evans’s Sunday Night At The Village Vanguard along for the ride, it took Darac just over five minutes to drive from the Stade to Eric Cauvin’s address, a venerable four-storey apartment block named La Bella Vista. Circling the building in search of its main entrance, Darac concluded that the beautiful view in question was long gone. Or perhaps there were people who found it pleasing to be hemmed in by the efforts of architects engaged in what Frankie referred to as corporate willy-waving.
To the unlikely accompaniment of the Scott LeFaro tune ‘Gloria’s Step’, a police motorcyclist made a sudden appearance in Darac’s rear-view mirror as he parked. Gathering his things, Darac stopped the track and got out of the car.
‘I have a document for you, Captain.’ He opened his nearside pannier. ‘From Lieutenant Busquet.’
‘Your timing is perfect, Officer..?’
‘Nmante. Based at Joinel.’
‘Yes, I was just about to disappear into the building. What is the document?’
‘All I know is the Lieutenant emailed the incident room asking for it be printed and passed on to you here. I was in there at the time so came immediately. I believe he emailed it to you also, Captain.’
The LaFaro tune Darac had been listening to was a quiet, lyrical piece yet Darac hadn’t heard the message alert. The reason, he discovered, was not that the email was yet to come in: he had left his phone on silent. This was not best practice and it was his second screw-up of the morning. So far. Telling himself that a fitful night’s sleep was no excuse for sloppiness, he took a deep breath and turned to Bonbon’s accompanying message: Laborde’s attendees list attached. Joinel agreed to deliver paper copy just in case.
Nmante handed over an old-school cardboard file labelled: Fantasy Football 12/13.
‘Bit rough and ready, sir. Sorry.’
‘It does the job. Thanks, man.’
As Nmante rode away, Darac opened the file and grimaced. There was a lot of work here and with the Brigade’s forces stretched, the need to strengthen them was clear. For a moment, his finger hovered over Agnès’s designated number. She had given him carte blanche to call her again if needed, after all. He tapped Bonbon’s number instead and with the phone to his ear, set off up a short flight of steps to the building’s front door.
‘Chief?’
‘Good work on sending Laborde’s list, Bonbon.’
‘Quite a tome, isn’t it?’
‘I guess I had some sort of personal trainer scenario in mind – four or five athletes at most. There must be what… 25, 26 names here? Added to that, although three are sub-headed Coaches, there are no other details or contact info.’
‘Flak has already been on to the university’s central HR for the coaches’ details. As for the athletes, the student records office has returned her call and she’s now talking to them.’
‘Excellent. We’ll need statements from all of these people, obviously. Granot offered Perand’s services earlier. Get hold of him and say yes to that, OK? Of course, if the bodies were available, what we really need is a decent-sized slog squad. If I were acting commissaire at the moment, I could authorise it but I’m not and I’m loath to ask Agnès.’
‘What do you think she would rather do? Keep ploughing through all that crap for the Palais and for Powers That Be in Paris or engage in a spot of proper policing?’
‘You’re right, I suppose.’
‘Plus, she’ll do anything for her golden boy, won’t she? That’s you, in case you didn’t know.’
‘If I am, that’s something else that won’t continue when the new commissaire takes over. I’ll call her after I’ve interviewed the human radio station that is Monsieur Eric Cauvin.’
‘Whatever happens with Agnès, we will have at least one more on the strength, chief. Beat Officer of The Year, one Serge Paulin has managed to swap shifts and he’s joining us.’
‘Perfect. OK, I’ve arrived. One last thing before I go in. Laborde won’t have had time to get to you yet. Anyone else shown?’
‘No, but hang on, do I hear..? Yes, I do. The mobile incident truck is just trundling in. Adam Garlet at the wheel… and praise be, it looks as if we’ve got Bé Lacquet aboard as well. Just give them a wave… Alright, guys? Yeah, so we should have no problems with comms. That’ll make life easier for us.’
‘Excellent. Courage, Bonbon.’
Darac pressed the appropriate number on the Bella Vista’s entry panel and waited. A background check had revealed that Eric Lionel Cauvin had a clean record and had worked for 30 years in the postal service before ill health forced him to take early retirement. It occurred to Darac that someone used to the hustle and bustle of the streets might find working night shifts at the Stade Walter Vallain a somewhat empty experience, particularly after the athletes or the footballers had all gone home. But now the old man with a gammy leg was at the centre of things, wasn’t he? Now he had something unique and important to circulate. Delivering mail? Small fry. This was big news and although it seemed he had been appalled rather than cheaply thrilled by the scene at the water jump, he had already spoken out of turn to at least one party about it.
Tempted though he was, Darac told himself to resist kicking off the interview with a dressing down. It would likely prove counterproductive anyway.
‘Yes?’
‘Captain Paul Darac from the Brigade Criminelle. We rang earlier.’
Buzzed in to the building, Darac looked to the far end of the lobby where a worn-out looking man was standing in an open doorway.
‘Here, Captain.’
Darac reached for his ID but Eric was already hobbling back into his apartment and Darac followed him into a tidy, if fussily decorated space. Every wall in the room doubled as a picture gallery for works on sporting themes.
‘We won’t have long, Monsieur, so forgive me if we get straight into it.’
‘That’s fine with me.’ Motioning Darac towards the sofa, Eric eased himself into a straight-backed armchair to which a crocheted blanket had been attached with ties. ‘But first I must apologise. You’ll know by now I rang Mademoiselle Padar’s brother with the news of the… what had happened. I thought it important he knew straight away but I didn’t think he would set off to the Stade there and then. I urged him not to but I couldn’t stop him and that will have made life difficult for you, I know.’
‘It has and yes you shouldn’t have but it’s done and we’re dealing with it. I’ve got a lot of questions to get through and the first one is, did you call anyone else?’
Eric reacted as if the idea were preposterous. ‘No, of course not. Just Dilip Padar, the brother. And I’m sorry, as I say.’
Encouraged that Eric may not have been the irresponsible blabbermouth he had feared, Darac pressed on. ‘When the uniformed officers arrived following your call, you told them about a couple of young boys who had sneaked into the stadium for an illicit kick around. Their football found its way into the water jump and it was in retrieving it that they literally fell on the body. They took fright and ran off. You saw all this from your caravan and that’s what alerted you to go over there. That right?’
‘Yes. Don’t ask me if I know who the kids are. I don’t. They must live around here somewhere but you know, they’re just kids. I wouldn’t recognise them close to.’
‘I doubt that identifying them will prove necessary. From a purely forensic perspective, that is.’
‘Good. They’re mad about football, that’s all. They don’t mean any harm.’
Darac liked Eric’s protective attitude toward the boys but there were other considerations here. ‘However, they may themselves have been harmed by the encounter, so efforts will be made to find them, Monsieur.’ He raised his eyebrows enquiringly. ‘You have no clue at all as to their identity?’
‘I understand it’s for their own wellbeing but I just can’t help you.’
‘Alright. So they sneaked into the stadium unseen. How?’
‘There are various paths off the old builders’yard and if you know which one to take you end up end up at a spot where the spectator entrance fence alongside my caravan doesn’t mesh together properly. If you push and pull it in a particular way at one of the posts, you can squeeze through if you’re keen enough. Then it’s a case of dodging behind the stand for the length of the pitch and you get the far goal to yourself for a bit.’
‘You witnessed that?’
‘Not the first part but it’s what kids do.’
And perhaps not just kids. ‘Could an adult gain entry to the site like that?’
‘Not impossible, I suppose. No one ever has, to my knowledge.’
And overnight, there would be far easier ways, Darac reflected. Especially if day man Reixe’s remark about Eric’s habit of sleeping on the job could be believed.
‘The victim, now. We don’t know for certain yet that she was Mademoiselle Samira Padar. Her face was almost completely submerged and the water in the pit was far from clear. Did you enter it to get a better look? Did you touch any part of the body?’
‘No, no. It was all I could do to look from the side.’
‘With so few visual clues to go on, how could you be certain of who it was?’
‘I wasn’t sure at first. But I remembered she used to wear studs in her ears. Three either side. Stones of some sort. Tiny little things. And then she stopped wearing them and I joked it would save weight so she would run faster. She laughed, bless her.’ He teared up at the memory. ‘I noticed the three pin-prick holes in her right ear. The one that hadn’t been… damaged.’
It was a telling detail. ‘You knew her well, clearly.’
‘I know them all. The ones who can be bothered talking to you, especially.’
‘When you found her body, did you notice her watch?’
‘You couldn’t see it. Both her hands were under the water. Shows you what state that water was in, doesn’t it? But you’ve seen it, so you know.’ He shook his head. ‘That watch, I tell you.’
‘Something occurs to you about it?’
‘Big chunky old thing. That’s why my quip about her ear studs being heavy made her laugh, you see. Partly.’
What was this? ‘It was chunky, you say?’
‘It was one of those sports watches. Proper athlete’s one with loads of dials and things, not just for fitness. It looked all wrong…’ Once again, Eric was having a tough time keeping it together. ‘Yes, it looked too big for her skinny little wrist.’
‘She never wore a dress watch to training? Smaller, more elegant, just the one conventional dial?’
‘Not that I remember but that doesn’t mean she didn’t have one. She was wearing the usual chunky one on Friday, I noticed. But you don’t always take things in, do you?’
In Darac’s many years of questioning witnesses, the majority reported seeing nothing at all. But there was a type who would swear blind they always noticed everything. That Eric fell into neither camp inclined Darac to give credence to those things he had reported seeing.‘That’s true, Monsieur. And you definitely didn’t notice what kind of watch she was wearing last night?’
‘No, I didn’t. Was it a smaller one, then? Perhaps she had just got it or something.’
‘Perhaps she had. The call you made to Dilip Padar earlier. You knew how to get hold of him? Or did you just—’
‘I know him. He slipped me 30 euros at the start of each term to keep an eye on his car, not because he was worried it would get nicked but he was concerned the team bus might give it a good old scrape one day and a witness might come in handy.’
‘Sorry, his car, you say?’
‘Yes, the one Samira used, a Renault Mégane. She had it on a free loan basis but it was his.’
‘And why the need for a witness? Does the team bus often scrape people’s cars?’
‘The thing is, most of the athletes use the bus to come to training and it’s about the size of a regular Lignes d’Azur single-decker. To be fair, it does take a bit of to and fro-ing to get it into the players’ car park. Never has scraped anything, mind you.’
‘Right. And was Samira driving the Mégane last evening?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘There’s no vehicle of any sort in the car park now.’
‘No, I checked them all out.’
‘By what time?’
‘Last one left just after 10.30. Bit later than normal. We aim for 10.15 as a rule.’
Whether it would prove to be of the utmost significance or entirely misleading, the hour and minute hands on Samira’s possibly brand-new dress watch were stopped at 10.30, Darac recalled. ‘You saw her leave?’
Eric took a couple of deep breaths. ‘Yes, I did.’
‘We’ll get to everyone’s movements in due course but what time would that have been?’
‘Didn’t really notice. Wasn’t before ten. Maybe five past? Something like that.’
‘Was she with someone else or was she in her own car?’
‘No, she was in the Mégane. Alone.’
‘Colour of the car?’
‘Grey. About five years old. Never really noticed the number plate.’
‘That’s fine.’
If, as seemed the case, the Mégane was registered to Dilip, finding its number would be a routine matter. As finding the vehicle itself was something of a priority, that process just got a whole lot easier.
‘And was there anything out of the ordinary about Samira’s departure? Did she seem distressed or anxious to get away?’
‘The team bus was parked alongside the changing rooms with its lights on and I was looking into them as she passed, so I didn’t see her clear enough to tell what mood she was in. Just her silhouette. She waved, though.’
‘She did?’ Or someone did, Darac thought to himself. ‘Uh-huh.’
‘Her whole life ahead of her, Captain.’ Eric’s eyes welled with tears. ‘Beautiful young woman, too. Shouldn’t make it worse but it does, somehow.’
‘How did she get on with the other athletes and the coaches? Do you know?’
Eric blew his nose and set himself to answer what he clearly recognised was a key question. ‘I don’t speak ill of the dead even if they’re bastards. And she wasn’t.’
‘Samira isn’t just dead though, Monsieur Cauvin, is she? She was murdered. We need to know everything.’
Eric considered the point. ‘Alright. She could be a bit… uppity with people, though never with me. You’ll have encountered Brice Reixe, I suppose?’
‘Yes.’
‘She cut him well and truly down to size. Deserved it, though. He’s OK really but he doesn’t half fancy himself, does Brice.’
One of the first lessons Darac had learned from Agnès was that the defensive male ego was a fragile thing. And many a male had expressed his fragility by brutally murdering a woman. And, come to that, so had seemingly harmless old men with spotless records like Eric Cauvin.
