Murder in Belleville

Tuesday Afternoon

“NO STIFFS SINCE LAST Saturday,” the morgue attendant told Aimée, stifling a yawn.

“Are you sure?” Aimée asked. “Would you mind checking again?”

He looked her up and down, lingering on her long legs, then ran his pudgy finger down the entry ledger. “Try the lab. Sometimes they’re slow with the Yvettes if we’ve had an HP.”

“Meaning?” She felt as if he were waiting for her to ask.

“High-profile death.”

Once she’d arrived at the police lab, she found the carved doors padlocked and a small sign indicating that the facility had relocated due to retrofitting. That meant more walking.

She’d gained more than a kilo recently, and her Chanel suit knew the difference. The waistband cut into her and she wished she had worn jeans and hightops. She also wished she had a cigarette. En route she’d checked her machine, but no voicemail from Yves.

After an hour she ended up back in Belleville, the lab’s temporary space on the edge of Bastille, where the quartiers joined. She recognized the building as her cousin Sébastien’s former lycée from ten or more years before. Turreted and medieval, the surrounding wall crumbled in bald spots, revealing naked stone. She’d often met him here after class when they took fencing lessons together.

There was something appealing, she thought, about the quiet air of neglect. Inside the courtyard hung peeling school posters of tutorials. Behind cobwebbed plate glass were the weekly luncheon menus. Aimée had always preferred to eat at home, as her friends did, so she could be with her grandfather. But since her grandmother died, he’d taken to eating out. Every day. He’d also acquired a younger girlfriend, whom she suspected fed him.

At the vacant meshed window of the concierge’s loge, she saw a hand-lettered sign instructing her to ring. She put her finger on the buzzer. A loud echoing trill reverberated off the stone. Pots of budding red geraniums leaned against the rusted bicycle rack.

No one.

Silence except for the high beep of a truck backing up in the distance. Suddenly the gush of water, from the bouches d’igouts, startled her. The égoutiers, sewer men, had diverted the flow with their sewer rags.

Then a face in shadow appeared behind the window. She couldn’t decipher the gender.

“Oui?”

“Have the criminology personnel transferred here?” Aimde asked.

“Depends,” the person said, “on which branch.”

“Tiens, I’m looking for Serge Léaud, the Luminol expert.”

“Aha,” the person said, warming up. “Name sounds familiar. Let me search.”

The loge light flicked on. Inside stood a blue-uniformed flic, “Police Nationale” stitched on her lapel. A lollipop stick poked from the side of her mouth.

“You know half the lab moved to Bercy,” the flic said. “Ask me why, and I’ll tell you I don’t know. No one else does either.”

The usual bureaucracy screw-up between the branches, Aimée figured. She heard papers rustle as he turned pages.

“Why move the other half here?” Aimée asked.

“These days,” said the flic, who’d grown quite chatty, “much of the work’s on contract. Several labs operate here, so it’s easier to move the stiffs from floor to floor rather than across the Seine.”

“Good point,” Aimée said, wishing the flic would get to the point.

A gray-spotted cat slinked behind the geraniums.

“According to the new renseignement, Léaud operates offices in both buildings.”

Aimée groaned. She’d counted on Serge to show her the report on Sylvie’s explosion. Informally, with no fuss, no paperwork. He owed her big-time from the Marais, where, with her help, he’d leaped up several notches in his criminology career.

“So Léaud’s working today?” she asked.

“You’re in luck, he’s here, and he’s there,” the flic chuckled, opening her mouth. Her tongue was blue. “Wouldn’t you know it, he’s also scheduled at the same time for an inquest in quai des Orfevres—the Brigade Criminelle screws up again!”

“I’ll find him later,” she said, exasperated. “Seems you’re backed up, and the Yvette I’m looking for—”

“You have clearance, I presume.” The flic’s voice changed, becoming businesslike. She pulled the lollipop from her mouth.

Aimée had to think fast.

“Commissaire Morbier cleared me,” Aimée said. “Check the report on the Yvette, a car-bomb victim on 20 bis rue Jean Moinon in Belleville.”

“That would be nice,” he said, taking a pencil and scratching her neck with the eraser. “But I don’t have it.”

Of course, she wouldn’t. Procedure would have it at the autopsy table or in the Medical Examiner’s Office.

“Who does?”

“Intake’s slow,” the flic said. “The HP took up their time.”

“Look, I’m working on other investigations too.”

“Show me your clearance, and I’ll check.”

“Like I said, the clearance goes with the report,” Aimée said maintaining her cool with difficulty.

“Says here Commissaire Morbier’s on disability.”

“Par for the course, wouldn’t you say?” Aimée grinned. “Like Serge Léaud’s whereabouts.” Trying to play fair with this flic hadn’t worked. She reached into her Hermes tote and fished for the alias she reserved for special occasions.

“Marie-Pierre Lamarck,” she said, flashing the ID she’d altered from her father’s old one. “Internal Affairs.”

Marie-Pierre, according to Aimée’s computer investigations had returned from maternity leave to very part-time.

The flic studied the ID, looked up the name, then looked at her. “Eh, you could have told me,” she said, punching in numbers on the phone.

And spoil the fun? Aimée almost added.

“No one answers in Léaud’s office.”

After coming so far and going through this charade, she wasn’t going to give up now.

“Fine,” Aimée said. “I’ll leave some things for him in his office. What floor?”

“Third floor,” she said. “Take the stairs, the elevator’s broken.”

Serge’s office door, by the birdcage elevator, had CRIMINO-LOGUE taped below the DÉPARTEMENT DE PHILOSOPHIE stenciled on the glass. Aimée pulled her black leather coat tighter while she waited in the frigid, damp hallway. She wondered why most institutions of learning retained the cold so well.

“Serge could be anywhere,” the harried young woman said, looking up from her microscope inside the room lit by wide skylights. She consulted a schedule from her lab coat. “They’ve got him running from lab to lab.” She threw her hands up. “All this consolidating service!”

“I’m sorry, but it’s important that I talk with him,” Aimée said, nodding in sympathy.

“We’re run off our feet, and Serge has to be in two places at once. Work grinds to a halt when that happens.”

“I’m looking for the report on the car-bomb victim,” Aimée said.

“Oh, yes, parts of an unclaimed Yvette came in,” the busy woman said. “Just bits and pieces, you understand.”

Aimée hoped the woman didn’t notice her wince.

“Try the basement. The formaldehyde smell isn’t hard to miss,” she said, peering back through the microscope. “If you see Serge, tell him he’s got a four o’clock appointment with the médecin légiste about the HP autopsy results.”

By the time Aimée took the creaking stairs to the basement, she’d realized she might as well try to find the médecin légiste herself.

Down in the chill basement, she heard the gallows-humor argot uttered by the group of medical students in the hall. She followed them and found an autopsy being performed. Inside the gray-tiled room, a bitter pine disinfectant competed with the reek of formaldehyde. The dampness mingled with the smell she remembered from when she’d identified her father’s charred remains.

The balding médecin légiste looked up, his gloved hands weighing a tan-yellow organ, huge and glistening. Below, on the enamel trough lay the pasty corpse, its chest cavity open, skin and muscles filleted back.

“Enlarged fatty liver, notice the greasy, doughy appearance,” he said, his voice clear and echoing off the tiled room, to the surrounding white-coated students. “He lived the good life.”

Snickers greeted his remark. “In more ways than one,” one of the students said.

The médecin légiste noticed Aimée and nodded.

“Bonjour. Marie-Pierre Lamarck,” she said, flashing the ID.

“The paperwork isn’t ready,” he said. “This procedure will take another hour.”

He assumed she was here for this corpse.

“Pas de probléme, but I’m picking up the report for the Yvette brought in last night.”

“We’re backed up here,” he said. “That report will be submitted shortly.”

“But the—” Aimée said.

“Scalpel,” he interrupted. A medical student handed him the diamond scalpel.

The neck vessels, she noticed, were clearly well preserved for better embalming. Care had been taken to conceal the scalp incision in his sparse hair.

Very careful job, she thought. More appropriate in a private funeral parlor for concerned relatives than in a morgue. Or maybe she was being too hard on the public morgue.

Aimée noted the expression on the corpse’s face. A lopsided grin. She wondered why.

“Some of us dream of going like this,” the médecin légiste said, noticing her gaze. “This chamber deputy had a heart attack in the arms of his mistress. During the heat of passion, we’d say. Scandal or not, he doesn’t care anymore.”

Major coitus interruptus, Aimée thought.

“Frightened the lady out of her bustier,” a student added, grinning. “It took a paramedic to untangle them.”

Aimée wasn’t keen to hear the details.

“Do you do such a good job for the Yvettes?” she asked.

The minute she’d spoken she willed the words back into her mouth. Embarrassed, she looked down. René often pointed out how her reactions got in the way.

Apparently they hadn’t registered, for the médecin légiste ignored her remark. The scraping and clang of stainless steel instruments echoed off the tiled walls. Aimée shifted uncomfortably in her damp heels. The formaldehyde reek, the crowding medical students, and the open dissection of the corpse’s innards made her claustrophobic. She wished he would hurry up.

“About that report?” she asked.

“I’m not finished,” said the médecin légiste, waving aside her question.

“He’s got an open-casket state funeral,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “And the family wants him, let us say, dignified.” He explored a smooth red-brown organ with the scalpel, then sniffed. “I need a resident student to weigh this spleen.”

A large-boned woman, her ponytail crushed in a hairnet, volunteered.

“Léaud’s checking the unusual results,” he said. “Et voila, then the report will be yours.”

“Unusual results, doctor—can you explain?” Aimée asked.

The organ scale’s chain creaked with the spleen’s weight as the student weighed it. Aimée pulled her coat tighter in the frosty room.

“We found traces of Duplo plastique,” he said. “Embedded in part of a leg.”

“Duplo plastique?”

“Duplo’s an English cousin of the cheaper Czech Semtex,” he said. “You’ll have to wait for the report.”

Puzzled, she stepped out into the hallway.

Out by the dark stairwell, she ran into a figure who rounded the corner at the same time.

“Merde!” he murmured, flicking away a cigarette.

“You’re a hard criminologist to find,” she said, staring into the bearded face of Serge Leaud.

“And I like to keep it that way, Aimée,” he said with a half smile. “I’m doing two jobs and filling in for someone on leave.”

“Which you thrive on,” she grinned. She looked down. “Smoking in the lab?”

“Ever since I published the Luminol paper about that fifty-year-old blood, I’ve had no peace,” he said. His full face, pinkish and scrubbed shiny, was framed by the beard flowing from his curly hair. “I’ve started smoking again. Tiens, my wife won’t let me near the twins when she smells smoke on me.”

“Sometimes the gods punish us by giving us what we want, as Oscar Wilde pointed out,” Aimée said. “In your case, making police bulletins around the world.”

“Why do I have the feeling you’re after me?”

“But I am,” she said, tugging his sleeve and pulling him toward a slitlike basement window. “Just as a bad centime you throw away keeps coming back. Tell me about Duplo plastique.”

Serge’s pager beeped.

“I’m late,” he said, glancing down and reading the message. “What’s your interest in it?”

“The victim got blown up in front of me,” she said. “I’ve been hired to find who did it.”

“I didn’t hear that,” Serge said, shaking his head. “You know I can’t say anything.”

“Don’t speak,” she said. “Just let me see the report when you’re finished.”

“I’m due at quai des Orfevres,” he said, rolling his eyes. “There’s another inquest in an hour, and I promised my mother-in-law I’d pick her dog up from the groomers’.”

“I think we can work something out,” Aimée said, taking his arm. “What’s your mother-in-law’s address?”