Murder in Montmartre

Monday Night

AIMÉE PEERED AGAIN AT her Tintin watch. Nearly eleven o’clock. “What’s taking Laure so long?”

Morbier shrugged, taking a swig from his wineglass. “Better congratulate Ouvrier now, before he leaves.”

Ouvrier stood near them, holding an open blue velvet box containing a glinting gold watch. “Thirty-five years of service.”

She saw a wistful look on his long face.

“Congratulations, Ouvrier.” Aimée nudged him. “How will you keep out of trouble now?”

“Ma petite, I’ve had enough trouble,” he said, giving her a little smile.

Ouvrier, widowed, and estranged from his children, subject to flare-ups in winter from a knee injury in his rookie days, had been sidelined. A new generation of flics was taking over. She felt for him, aware of his scars, inside and out. For now, he had camaraderie but not much else to show for years of service besides the gold watch.

Where was Laure? Aimée stood and pulled on her coat. There was only one way to find out.

SHE CROSSED Place Pigalle toward the mounting zinc rooftops silhouetted against the moonlike dome of Sacré Coeur. Midway, in a frame shop, the white-coated long-haired owner nodded to her as he pulled the blinds down. But not before she saw the notice of an upcoming organic market below a Warhol-style silk-screen print of Che Guevara . . . black and red all over.

Montmartre embodied the bohemian spirit. In its past it had been the home of anarchist Communards and then of artists and writers for whom absinthe provided inspiration. Now it held a mix of small cafés and theatres that hosted poetry readings or a playwright testing a first act on patrons, and dance studios occupying ateliers that once boasted students like van Gogh.

Young Parisians treasured converted studios here, trading the trudge up the steep streets and flights of stairs for the view of the sweeping panorama below, just as Utrillo, Renoir, and Picasso once made their homes in cheap ateliers. This was where the Impressionists, Cubists, and Surrealists had painted. The tradition of the village, eccentric and stubborn, still remained.

There was no sign of Laure. Aimée turned the corner and saw a new Citroën at the curb under a No Parking–Tow Zone sign. Only a flic would dare. It was a nice chrome green Citroën, too. Jacques’s? A glance through the half-frosted window revealed a crushed pill bottle on the floor by the clutch and blue gloves on the passenger seat. Laure’s gloves.

Something smelled bad, as her father would have said.

A gate stood open. Fresh footsteps in the snow trailed across to a darkened building. She entered and crossed the courtyard, her heels slipping on the ice. Strains of music from the building opposite wafted through the courtyard, and patches of light came from a window. Another party?

Snow clumped in the building’s half-opened door. Aimée walked inside into the dark foyer. A broken stained-glass window and water-stained doors met her gaze. There was a darkened concierge’s loge on the right. Once plush and exclusive, she thought, now the building looked shabby.

“Laure?”

A gust of wind rattled the metal mailboxes. Wet footprints mounted the red-carpeted stairs.

She followed them to the third floor. Piles of lumber and paint cans sat under a skylight attesting to a renovation in progress. The apartment door stood open.

“Allô?”

No answer. She went inside, her footsteps echoing in a hallway. Beyond lay a dark, nearly empty series of rooms swallowed by shadows. What looked like a piano stood, ghostlike, covered by a sheet.

She shivered and backed up. In this bitter cold, half-empty apartment something felt very wrong. Metal clanged from outside where a construction scaffold was visible through the open salon window. Had Jacques and Laure, the idiots, gone out there? Snow blew in through the window, dusting a large armchair and wetting the carpet as it melted.

She stepped over the window ledge to the scaffold, which was barely illuminated by the dim light of the moon. Freezing wind and gusting snow flurries met her. Gloves, she needed gloves and a snowsuit!

At the shadowy scaffold’s end, she could just make out a slanted mansard rooftop and behind it, a small flat area piled with rebar and bricks. Snow crusted the wooden slats over the windows; suffused moonlight showed a mesh of footprints.

She heard creaking and forced herself to traverse the scaffold, to look beyond the pepper-pot chimneys and zinc rooftops laced with snow stretching like steps down the hill of Montmartre. Taking small steps, Aimée edged toward the roof edge and tripped. Her arms flew out; icy slush brushed her cheeks. Then she saw Laure’s sprawled body.

“Laure!” she cried.

A groan answered her.

“Laure, can you hear me?” she said, bending down. Her fingers located a weak pulse on her friend’s neck.

She rooted in Laure’s pockets for a police radio, couldn’t find one, pulled out her cell phone, and tried to control her shaking hands to punch in 18, the emergency number for the police.

“Officer down, possibly two, 18 rue André Antoine, on the roof,” she said. “Send backup, an ambulance. Hurry.”

The Commissariat was nearby. Would they get here in time?

“Jacques,” Laure moaned.

Dull thuds came from somewhere on the roof.

“Help him . . . hh . . . have to . . .”

Aimée tried to control her panic. Think, she had to think straight.

“Laure, backup’s on the way. . . . What’s going on?”

“Jacques . . . couldn’t wait anymore, some informer. . . . He saved me . . . I . . . owe Jacques!”

If he had saved Laure’s life . . . Aimée hesitated.

“You came up here after Jacques? Where is he?”

“Over there . . . take my gun. Help him!”

The last thing she wanted to do was deal with Jacques, or his informer. Sleet gusted and the rising wind took her breath away. Aimée felt for Laure’s holster. It was empty.

Worried, she stood, took a few steps, and climbed onto the tiled rooftop, grabbing at the chimney to steady herself. She worked her way across the slick roof, the sleet blinding her. And then her legs buckled.

She landed on something bulky, inert. A body. Her gaze locked on its staring eyes. Jacques’s eyes, his eyelashes flecked with snowflakes. Terror coursed through her as sirens wailed in the distance. She brushed the snow from her face and her hands came back covered with pink-red slush. Blood.

“Jacques!”

He blinked, the whites of his eyes showing. He was trying to tell her something. She checked his neck and found a weak pulse, the carotid artery.

She pulled herself to her knees, pinched his nose shut, checked his tongue, and started blowing air into his mouth. Her hands were so cold. None of the breath-and-pause sequences elicited a response from his blue lips.

“Can you hear me, Jacques? Can you talk?”

His mouth moved. She folded her hands, began quick, sharp thrusts to his chest. As Jacques tried to speak, a thin line of blood trailed from his mouth. She thrust harder now, counting and breathing. The air was stinging cold. Faster now, because while she panted and thrust, she felt him go limp. “Don’t leave me now, Jacques!”

She didn’t know how long her frozen, numb hands worked on Jacques. Finally, she heard footsteps on the scaffolding and the clang of metal. Chalk white beams blinded her.

“Take over . . . he’s . . . respond . . .” She struggled, trying to get her breath.

She heard static from a police radio and the words “Move away from the gun!” And then she was flying into the wall, tackled, her head shoved into the snow. She couldn’t breathe. Her hands were wrenched behind her, she heard the clink and felt the cold steel of handcuffs.

She fought, jerking her head, tried to move her legs. “What are you doing?” She spit out the ice that had been forced into her mouth.

More radio static, biting wind.

Catching her breath, she shouted, “Help him for God’s sake.”

A medic leaned over Jacques. She heard the words “crackling . . . subcutaneous emphysema wound seepage.” A stark white beam of light showed the black-red bullet hole and the blood seeping from Jacques’s chest.

“Too late,” the medic said. “He’s gone.”

Her shoulders slumped.

“Backup’s here, crime-scene unit’s on the way,” a hoarse voice shouted. When it was one of their own they made it a priority response. “Move her . . . careful.”

She felt her arms lifted, hips shoved forward.

“I’ve seen it before,” the hoarse voice said. “They shoot them, then try to save . . .”

“What do you mean? Check the roof,” Aimée said, melting ice running down her face. “Someone attacked the officer on the scaffold. I heard noises and came up here and found her, then him.”

So you shot him with his own gun.” “

“You’re wrong, I tried to save him!”

More footsteps and a portable halogen light illuminated Jacques’s body slumped on the slanted rooftop between the chimney pots. His coat and pants pockets had been turned inside out. Clumped red matter spread across the snow. He’d been shot at close range, Aimée observed, horrified.

In the beam of the halogen light, Aimée saw a Manhurin F1 38 .357 Magnum nonautomatic, the standard police handgun, in a plastic bag laid down on the blue tarp. Jaques’s gun or Laure’s? Snowy sleet whipped by, sending flurries across the roof.

An officer, his crew cut sprinkled with snow, rolled up Jacques’s pants. “His gun’s still strapped to his ankle. Yet this Manhurin’s police issue.”

“It must belong to the officer at the edge of the roof,” Aimée said.

“And it just flew over here?” he asked.

She realized she’d better shut up and wait to explain to the investigating magistrate.

He leaned into his matchbox-sized monitor and spoke. “Bag the hands of the officer below and check for gunshot residue.”

“You’ve got it all wrong,” Aimée burst out, despite her resolve. “Jacques came up here alone to meet someone.” She’d deduced that from what Laure had said.

“And bag this woman’s, too,” he said. “We’ll send her down.”

The wind rose again, whipping more snow into lacy flurries. Each breath stung. She wanted to wind her scarf over her mouth. The Level 3 weather warning had turned into a first-class storm. The plastic sheeting the crime-scene unit had raised whipped into shreds in the wind and blew away.

“Get another plastic sheet, quick!” a crime-scene technician shouted. “Now! Haven’t seen a storm like this since 1969!”

A few members of the crime-scene unit unpacked their equipment on the coating of ice by the skylight, making a futile attempt to deal with the area.

“The light’s changing every second!” said the photographer, pulling out his camera, his shoes crunching on the brittle snow. “Hurry up, I can’t get a good light-meter reading!”

Aimée noted the interlacing footprints. Any evidence there might have been was now compromised.

“Take her downstairs,” the officer said, an edge to his voice.

“I know my rights.”

The officer waved her away.

From the edge of the roof, Aimée saw flakes swirling in flashlight beams and snow-carpeted rooftops stretching toward distant Gare du Nord. Across the courtyard, several lit windows appeared amid the yawning dark ones. Strains of bossa nova fluttered on the wind. That party in the adjoining building was still going on.

Down in the apartment, Laure crouched as a group of men with snow-dusted shoulders huddled about her, an anguished look on her pale face as the gloved technicians pressed double-sided adhesive tape over her fingers and palms. The wind blowing from the window snatched away their conversation but she overheard “Custody . . . at the Commissariat. . . .”

“Bibiche!”

Aimée froze. Laure’s hair was matted and wet, a large knot welled on her temple, the white of one eye was discolored with blood. “Poor Jacques . . . who’ll tell his ex-wife?” she asked as she tried to stand and slipped on the wet floor.

An officer steadied her. “Sorry, Laure, you know I have to do this and report anything you say,” he said.

“Report what she says?” Aimée repeated, raising her voice to be heard over the wind. “Laure needs medical attention.”

The flic turned to Aimée, irritated. “Who gave you permission to talk, Mademoiselle?”

“I’m a private detective.”

“Then you should know better,” he said, nodding his head at the man beside him. “Run this woman’s ID. Why hasn’t someone bagged her hands for gunshot residue?”

Edith Mésard, La Proc, the investigating magistrate, entered wearing a black cocktail dress under a fur stole. She stamped the snow from her heels. Procedure dictated that in dicey situations she arrive at the same time as the Brigade Criminelle. “Désolé, Madame La Proc,” the flic said.

Aimée stepped forward.

Recognition dawned in Edith Mésard’s eyes. “Mademoiselle Leduc.” She sniffed, then frowned. “Light a match to your breath and the building would go up in flames.”

Before Aimée could respond, La Proc cleared her throat. “Give me the details, Inspector. How does it come about that a flic shoots another flic on a slippery zinc-tiled roof in a snowstorm? Convince me.”

“We found her weapon on the roof.”

“Was it next to her?”

“The officer in question lay on the scaffolding below,” he said, abashed. “Her gun lay next to Jacques . . . the victim.”

“Merde!” La Proc said under her breath, pulling out tennis shoes from her Vuitton bag.

“What? Are you accusing Laure of shooting her partner?” Aimée said. “That’s absurd.”

“Or maybe you shot him, Mademoiselle?” said the inspector.

Panic coursed through her.

“Take her statement at the Commissariat!” Edith Mésard said, before climbing out the window.

The flic shoved Aimée forward and down the stairs.

The few bystanders in the narrow street—an old woman, her bathrobe flapping under her overcoat; a man with tired eyes in a blue-green bus driver’s uniform—were illuminated by the blue rays of the revolving SAMU ambulance light. Morbier stood by an old parked Mercedes, its roof flattened under the weight of the snow. A tow-truck driver had hitched Jacques’s green Citroën to his truck.

“They’ve got it all wrong, Morbier,” Aimée called out.

“Move along, Mademoiselle,” said the flic, pushing her toward the blue-and-white police van.

“Just a moment, Officer,” Morbier said.

The officer raised his eyebrows, eyeing first Morbier and then Aimée’s black leather pants, down jacket, and spiky hair.

Morbier flashed his ID. “Give me a moment.”

“Bien sûr, Commissaire,” the flic said, taken aback.

“What mess have you gotten yourself into this time, Leduc?” Morbier asked, his breath misting in the freezing air.

“You got that right, Morbier. A terrible mess.” She gave him a brief account.

Morbier listened, pulling out a Montecristo cigarillo, cupping his hands, and lighting it with a wooden match. He puffed, sending acrid whiffs into Aimée’s face, and tossed the match into the snow, where it went thupt. When she finished he shook his head and looked away, silently.

Why didn’t he say anything? “Morbier, help me convince them. . . .”

“Might as well teach rocks to swim, Leduc. There’s procedure. You know that. Do the drill. You’re a suspect, shut your mouth.”

“Shut my mouth?”

“Until you give your statement,” he said. “Be smart.”

She controlled her horror. Of course, he was right. She’d explain, diagram her route, show that Laure couldn’t have killed Jacques.

“Laure wouldn’t shoot her partner after practically the whole police force had seen them together in the café!”

Morbier flicked his ashes, they caught in the wind. “And witnessed their fight and your meddling,” he said.

She’d forgotten about that public scene.

“You’ve got clout, Morbier,” she said. “Use it.”

For once, she hoped he’d listen to her.

The flic grabbed Aimée’s elbow in an iron grip. “I’m sorry, Commissaire, the van’s waiting.”

“What a night for this to happen!” Morbier expelled his breath with a noise she recognized for what it was, resignation underlaid with the steel note of authority. A mode he’d perfected. Voices drifted from above them. Lights glowed from the building’s roof.

Aimée noticed a black-leather-coated man, a pack on his back, standing in a doorway. He watched them intently, listening, as if gauging the situation. Could he have witnessed the shooting?

A battered Renault Twingo skidded to a halt beside the white morgue van. Several men jumped out, cameras in hand or on straps slung over their chests.

“The press! Excuse us, Commissaire; allez-y, Mademoiselle.”

The flic bundled Aimée away before she could point out the possible witness to Morbier. He shoved her into the police van, handcuffed her wrists to the bar behind her like a criminal. She slipped on the floor, which had been salted to slow a prisoner’s traction if he aimed to bolt. She felt each cobblestone as her spine jounced against the hard seat and the van headed, siren blaring, into the night.