A Death in Time, page 34
‘We have the digital audio file available, too – the material from which this written transcript was made. If you would like to listen to it?’
‘No. Not particularly.’
‘What’s remarkable is how spot-on the typed transcription is. Absolutely word for word and no typos, our IT expert tells us.’
‘I’m not surprised. My mother is a very precise person.’
Flaco handed Darac a second document.
‘You may not be aware of a couple of false starts she made typing out the piece previously. Only got as far as two or three paragraphs. Probably other work got in the way and knowing she still had time before her deadline, I think she was waiting until she could bang on with the whole thing.’
‘I didn’t know she had done that but probably so, yes.’
‘We printed this out just now. It’s dated February 23rd. Two paragraphs. I’d like you to look at them, if you would.’
Inès let out an irritated breath but once again, she did as she was asked.
Zoë Laborde
Founder and Managing Director of Zed-Elle Computer Services
My business card says it all. I’m female and I run my own company. Just to underline those two points, there’s a clue in the phoneticized spelling of the initials which form my company’s name. Crystal clear, isn’t it ? One would think so. But think again, everyone. New clients arranging a home call still occasionally ask me when Monsieur Laborde might be available to fix their problem. Considering my husband’s greatest IT triumph remains mastering the steps necessary to send text messages, such requests have been known to make me LOL !
I have occasionally asked the doubters if they had noticed that mine is the sole name on the company’s masthead. Most reply that they thought some sort of tax dodge was behind it. How telling is that ? And if it strikes you as disappointing that anyone should make such a regressive assumption in this day and age, I agree. But I must also report witnessing at least some improvements in this area over time.
‘It’s the same as the one she did on Monday evening, isn’t it?’ Inès looked from one to the other. ‘Yes, it’s identical.’ She sat back. ‘What does this prove?’
‘How long did you say you had been studying and then teaching in the UK?’
‘Eight years, all told.’
‘You were obviously quite fluent in English before you went up to Cambridge but you are absolutely top-notch now, aren’t you? As your mother proudly told us, all of the written work you have produced in that time has been in your adopted language. We have an example from August 2012 to show you.’ He gave Flaco a look and, opening a laptop, she displayed a page from the Science Today website, a celebrated journal written in English. ‘Neither of us understood a word of what you’re writing about here but one aspect of the piece is clear, isn’t it?’ He looked deep into Inès’s eyes. ‘Isn’t it, question mark? Now look at this next piece, one you presented as a paper at a symposium in Paris last November. I need hardly add that although you wrote this one in French, Officer Flaco and myself still barely understood a word of it. And why space question mark? There are two reasons space colon: it’s simply impossible for any non-scientist to grasp such esoteric concepts space exclamation mark! Secondly, comma… Need I go on?’
Inès’s cheeks flushed. ‘I… I may have written those pieces but I was not responsible for typesetting them.’
‘Nice try, Doctor Laborde, but your personal emails also show that in those eight years of Anglophone living and working and writing, you have become accustomed to using English punctuation, a form which eschews the use of spaces before question marks, exclamation marks, semi and full colons and so on – the form we use here in France. More to the point, the French way is the form of punctuation your mother used in those two false starts and in every other document written by her that we have looked at. What this unequivocally suggests is that you typed up the chapter from Boss Women on your mother’s laptop – a task you and your mother claimed she had undertaken. She was not at home during the hours you both stated, was she? She therefore has no alibi for the time of Samira Padar’s brutal murder.’
‘But how could I have used my mother’s laptop in her place? You’re forgetting that her fingerprint ID is the sole means of logging into the device – without taking it apart, that is. And the internal log will have shown that neither she nor I did that.’
‘Yes, and because 99.99% of the time, fingerprint log-in does ID the user accurately, our IT department initially took it at face value. Of course, it was your mother’s fingerprint which opened the laptop so you could begin your task and it reopened it after two brief intermissions during the session, as well. However, she wasn’t there in person at the time, was she? We believe she inscribed her fingerprint on a sliver of some form of conductive rubber – probably silicone – which you then applied to the sensor at the agreed time. As a scientist, Doctor, you must realise that it is pointless to deny all this.’
Slewing forward on to her elbows, Inès dropped her head into her hands. A barely perceptible nod told Flaco that they were going to remain still and silent for as long as it took Inès to think the thing through. It was some moments before she righted herself.
‘There wasn’t an agreed time,’ she said, finally.
‘No?’
‘No. It just fell out that way. But what you’re clearly deducing from all this – that my mother could have…’ Her face crumpled. ‘That is not what happened. No, no, no. I… Oh God… May I have some water, please?’
Flaco provided it and for a moment Inès looked as if for succour into the eyes of her silent inquisitress. None was given.
‘Thank you.’ She took a sip and, cradling the cup, appeared to be resetting herself for what was to come.
‘We’re listening, Doctor.’
‘I… did do as you said with the typing. I was so careful to get the words down, I didn’t think about the punctuation. I finished it, sent it off to the publisher, got an acknowledgement and all seemed well. Look, I know my assurances count for nothing, especially now that I lied to you both for which I’m truly sorry but the thought that my mother could have murdered anyone, let alone that lovely young woman, two-timer though she undoubtedly was – it’s just not... Just not true or possible. You’ve both met my mother. Does she look or act like the sort of person who could do such a thing?’
‘Was it your mother’s plan? The business with the laptop?’
‘It sounds so incriminating to put it like that. No, I offered to do it.’
Darac shared a look with Flaco. If it transpired that Zoë Laborde had killed Samira, daughter Inès had just put herself in the frame as an accessory to that murder. It was a thought that gave him pause.
‘Why did you offer to do it?’
‘Because she needed to go out to the Stade and that evening was the deadline for sending the piece.’
‘Why did she need to go to the Stade?’
‘May I come to that in a minute?’
‘Al-right, when did she leave?’
‘It was 9 o’clock on the dot.’
‘Twenty minutes before you logged on to her laptop and started typing out the piece as her.’
‘Yes and I know using Maman’s silicon fingerprint looks suspicious but using such hacks is an everyday thing for us.’
‘She took her car?’ The BMW Estate that Raul Ormans and his team were now taking apart. ‘The newly valeted one? The one with a folding bike in the boot?’
‘I don’t know what is in the boot but it is the BMW, yes.’
From Eric Cauvin’s diagrams to a battery of corroborating witness statements, everyone attending Agnès’s team meeting knew that wherever Zoë had then parked the BMW, it had not been at the Stade itself.
‘And when did she return?’
‘About 11.25. I’d finished the typing and had gone to bed, a bit worried actually because I hadn’t heard from her since she left.’
‘And how did she seem when she came in?’
‘She was very upset and that leads me on to why she wanted to go out to the stadium in the first place.’ Inès outlined the scenario of the dress watch they had seen Samira wearing on the video footage from the athletes’ celebration party, a gift Zoë originally believed her husband had bought as an anniversary present for her.
‘And that is how she came to suspect they were having an affair?’
‘Yes. We learned eventually that the watch hadn’t been purchased by my father after all but Maman didn’t know that until yesterday morning. It’s ironic because she hadn’t wanted to believe what she saw on the video link. So the night before, she went off to see with her own eyes – my father and Samira together, I mean. Not to catch them having sex in the back of a car or the showers or wherever. She didn’t need to go that far. She would know, she told me, just by watching how they were together – walking back to their cars, say – that they were definitely an item.’
‘And did she? Watch them “walking back to their cars?” ’
Inès let out a long, slow breath. ‘No.’
‘She was away from the house for over an hour and a half. What did she do, then?’
Inès gathered herself. ‘She said she knew a way of getting into the stadium unseen. My father used to sneak in with his friends as a kid and he described the route to her once. Being him, in great detail. You can still do it apparently, even after all this time. But it’s a convoluted path and she took a wrong turn somewhere. I hate to think of her scrambling around in the dark trying to find her way and getting more and more lost.’ Tears came. ‘If you appreciate a telling metaphor, Captain – how does that one work for you? She fell over a couple of times.’ More tears. ‘Like a child, she was – coming home all grubby with ripped trousers and a cut knee.’
Darac pictured Samira face-down in the water, the back of her head a bloody mess. ‘Those trousers have already been binned, haven’t they?’
Inès dabbed her eyes. ‘Uh… Well, they couldn’t really be worn anymore.’
‘However, your mother washed them first.’ But if she had assumed that would have taken care of the bloodstains, she was mistaken. As Professor Deanna Bianchi had once remarked to Darac: “There’s clean and there’s Luminol clean, isn’t there?”
‘Had they been washed?’ Inès’s brow lowered. ‘Well, I suppose Maman wanted to see if it was worth repairing them. I don’t know.’
‘Doctor, why did you lie about your part in this?’
‘I’ve already said I’m truly sorry about it and I mean that, Captain. When we learned what had happened to Samira, we realised just how suspicious it might look.’
It seemed to Darac that he had gone far enough with Inès Laborde for now.
‘It’s been explained to you that you’re being held for questioning in connection with a murder enquiry and as such I’m returning you to the cells for the time being.’
‘May I see my mother?’
‘Not at this time.’
Inès looked utterly forlorn but she nodded, stood, and as Darac formally tagged off the session on the recorder, she was led away.
‘We’ve got quite a lot to digest here, Flak,’ Darac said. ‘I think we’ll give it a good half an hour before bringing Madame Laborde up.’
‘Right, Captain.’
Darac turned to the two-way mirror wall. ‘Come on in, Bonbon, and we’ll head off to my office in the interim.’
Once there, Darac parked his backside on the corner of his desk and got the discussion moving immediately. ‘So what do you make of what we’ve just heard, Flak?’
‘As to Madame Laborde’s possible guilt and Inès’s complicity in the murder?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I’m not sure about either. You, Captain?’
‘Let’s look at the second question first. OK, Inès fibbed to us about how the pair of them had spent their evening but I’m pretty sure she was an innocent dupe in the murder itself. Why? Partly because once Inès had admitted that she had typed up Zoë’s piece, she made no attempt to hide the fact that she’d done so voluntarily. In fact, she stated that she’d offered to do it. I don’t think she would have done that if she’d suspected for a moment what might have been its true purpose – i.e. providing her mother with an alibi for murder. Do you? For one thing, consider the charges it opens Inès up to.’
‘I hadn’t thought of it like that, Captain.’
‘What’s your take on this, Bonbon?’
‘I agree. As for Zoë’s possible culpability for the murder?’ He drew down the corners of his elastic band of a mouth. ‘I strongly suspect Inès is soon to become mightily disillusioned with her dear Maman.’
‘The case against Coach Laborde has got a lot weaker.’ Flaco said.
Darac nodded. ‘Killed it altogether, in fact.’
‘Another thing I would never have thought of, Captain – the French/English punctuation anomaly.’
She was in good company, Darac reflected – neither had Frankie and Erica. And they had both read the piece. ‘Once again, jazz comes to the rescue, Flak.’
‘Sorry? Don’t understand.’
‘My knowledge of English? Yes, I learned the language in school as we all did but I owe the more nuanced stuff mainly to Jazz Beat magazine. Every month since my teenage years I’ve waded through it, dictionary in hand.’ Absent for some hours, the smile that habitually played around Darac’s lips put in a return appearance. ‘You could do worse than take out a subscription.’
Bonbon’s brown eyes were all a-twinkle. ‘He never stops, does he?’
Darac glanced at his watch. ‘Moving on… Zoë’s appalling plan was clever, I must say – exacting revenge on her husband by murdering “the love of his life” and implicating him into the bargain. And we may never have realised it but for her brilliant daughter’s most uncharacteristic lapse typing out the Boss Women piece. And this is the key thing. Zoë will have had complete confidence in Inès’s ability to accurately transcribe the audio file. Even if it contained mistakes, well, Zoë could’ve made them, couldn’t she? What she could never have guessed is that the nature of the mistakes Inès made would tell us so clearly that Zoë had not made them.’
‘Absolutely,’ Bonbon said.
‘Flak, any questions?’
‘Yes. We know how Madame Laborde could have used her IT and Télécom expertise to implicate her husband before and after the murder. But how do you think she went about the murder itself?’
‘We can really only speculate at the moment.’
Bonbon gave Darac a look. ‘Mate – we know that behind that “we can only speculate” front, the What Ifs are going hard at it. Want to walk us through them?’
‘OK. Where to begin?’
Bonbon took a small yellow tin from his pocket. ‘With a lemon love drop?’
‘What’s the love made of? No – never mind. Pass.’
‘Ditto,’ Flaco said. ‘But thank you.’
‘You literally don’t know what you’re missing.’ Bonbon took one. ‘OK, let’s hear it.’
A moment gazing at the floor was enough to focus Darac’s thoughts. ‘Zoë’s folding bike is the key, isn’t it? Considering all we know or strongly suspect so far, how’s this? Feeling safe in the knowledge that Inès is giving her a perfect alibi, Zoë drives off and parks somewhere near the Stade. She takes the bike out of the boot and with her VTT skills to the fore, rides it along the secret path she knew about from her husband’s childhood days – the same route, presumably, taken by the young footballers who discovered the body on Tuesday morning. She doesn’t stumble around in the dark getting lost as she told Inès she had. Once in the Stade itself, she makes her way unseen to the players’ car park and from there follows Samira to the hidden area at the end where she witnesses the clandestine encounter we know then took place between Samira and Gilles Laborde. What Zoë overhears appals her. Gilles then drives away leaving Samira alone for a moment or two. However humiliated and infuriated Zoë is feeling at that point, she doesn’t show it as she makes herself known to Samira who must have wondered what on earth she was doing there and what she had overheard. We know Zoë doesn’t kill her there and then because several witnesses report seeing Samira driving away from the site perfectly happily. I think we’re alright with this so far?’
Flaco nodded. ‘I think it must have been something like that, Captain.’
‘Bonbon?’
‘Agreed. I tell you one thing. I’m looking forward to discovering what Zoë said to Samira to account for her popping up like that in the dark. Whatever it was, it seems it convinced her all was well.’
‘I wonder if the bike is key to that, too. There used to be a jogging enthusiast who lived downstairs from me in the Place. He went running at night. Preferred it that time, he said. We know Zoë won trophies for VTT when she was younger. I bet every member of Laborde’s squad knows that, too. So although seeing her emerging from the trees on a bike would certainly have been a surprise, it may not in itself have been a shock. There was a ready-made context for such a happening in Samira’s head.’
Having extracted all the lemony love his sweet had to offer, Bonbon crunched its dying embers between his teeth and nodded. ‘I can picture that. All Zoë needed to say was “Ooh, sorry if I scared you. I love bombing round all these rutted tracks around here but I don’t have time during the day.” That would work fine, I think.’
‘I think it would, too,’ Darac said. ‘An issue we have from this point on is that we don’t know whether Zoë had planned everything that happened or whether she just came up with it on the hoof. A mixture of the two is most likely, I think. Flak?’
‘If Madame Laborde had overheard her husband asking Samira to wait for him at the place he’d once shown her – a secluded spot around the corner by the builders’ yard – she would know where to find Samira, wouldn’t she? And it was from around there that the message we originally thought Coach Laborde had sent to himself came from.’
