Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis (5 page)

“I’m not up to speed on your client accounts yet but . . .”

He noticed her gaze, shrugged. “The environmentalists don’t understand. Our premier oil company account is Alstrom. They have recently acquired some small companies that have ignored regulations. But Alstrom has already taken steps to cure these infractions.”

Typical spin from a PR man. She thought back to the article about the MondeFocus riots in
Le Parisien.

“From what I understand about the MondeFocus allegations—”

“All blown out of proportion.” His eyes snapped. “They jump on any bandwagon, smear ‘the big, bad corporations.’ Uncalled for. They’ve targeted us, not knowing our client is already cleaning up toxic waste. They’re misinformed—that’s putting it in polite terms.” He shook his head. “Look, I’m progressive, so’s our firm and those we represent. Bottom line, my firm’s integrity means more to me than a huge contract. I’ve got a family and like every parent I want my child to grow up in a clean world. Believe me, pollution’s a great concern to all of us.”

His intercom buzzed and he glanced at his watch. “Excuse me, I’ve got a meeting.”

She smiled and tried once more. “Our joint package of security and system administration makes economic sense for you.”

Vavin reached in his drawer. “Right now I need you to continue maintaining our systems.” He slid a new addendum extending their contract across the desk. “Our sysadmin’s been hospitalized with acute appendicitis and we’ve lost two of the contract staff to a crisis in Milan. Count on me to recommend your comprehensive package to my manager when he returns.”

One didn’t say no to a client. Especially one with
this
much potential. Better more work than no work, René would say. She scanned the contract, signed it, and shut down her laptop.

“Last week, when we met,” Vavin said, his voice lowered, “I didn’t realize the ongoing nature of our system issues.” He flipped open a file, studied it. “A few areas . . . well, they concern me.”

Of course, he wanted to look good to his boss, to appear to be on top of his projects. Or was there something else she couldn’t put her finger on?

“Do you foresee more problems, Monsieur Vavin?”

Nadia, his assistant, peered around the door and smiled at Aimée. “Your car’s here, Monsieur Vavin.”

“
Merci
, Nadia,” he said. Then he turned to Aimée.

“In our line of work, we call them issues, Mademoiselle.”

Aimée nodded. She noticed a stack of environmental reports, pamphlets bearing the MondeFocus logo by his key ring and briefcase.

Before she could ask him if he had studied them, he’d put on his coat, dropping his key ring into a pocket, and shouldered his case. Pausing at the door, he said, “Mademoiselle Leduc, I appreciate your help but there is one more thing. Any problems, you deal only with me.”

She detected something behind his words. “Of course, Monsieur Vavin.”

As a system administrator, their firm would monitor Regnault’s network, deal with glitches in the staff’s computers, but rarely, if ever, would this involve the managerial staff. His request was strange. Unless Vavin was watching his back.

“Only me,
comprends?
” he repeated.

OUTSIDE, AIMÉE STARED at the khaki-colored Seine lapping against the mossy stone. Two years ago, a
clochard—
now termed
sans domicile fixe
(SDF)
—
the politically correct phrase for “homeless”—who’d slept under a bridge had fallen in, his foot catching in the branches of a tree carried on the swollen water. The current had swept his bloated body past her window. She shivered. More often corpses sank, drifting along with the bottom currents until they were caught in the locks downriver at Sceaux.

She ran her fingers over the stone wall fronting the L’Institut médicolégal’s brick facade,
Le Parisien
under her arm, her laptop case slung over her shoulder. She had a bad feeling in her bones.

She wondered if the young woman found in the Seine might be the baby’s mother. Her father always said, Think like the criminal, find the motive. If that didn’t work, go with the victim. Retrace her steps. In this case, she imagined a young woman looking over her shoulder, seeing the light in Aimée’s window, trusting Aimée to keep her baby safe. Safe from whom and what, she had no clue. And how had the woman known her name and phone number?

Aimée tried to think the way she must have. Scared, running away from someone, something, she sees light, finds the digicode broken, as it had been for a week, and enters the town house through the front door. Before she can go upstairs, she hears noises; someone’s followed her. Quickly, she takes off her denim jacket—now she looks different. She wraps the baby in it. She runs through the courtyard, sees the garage, which is open late, and uses the pay phone to tell Aimée that the baby’s downstairs. Then she runs to the Place Bayre.

But the attacker has recognized her. Did they have a confrontation on the quai? Was he the father of the baby, demanding his child?

Questions . . . all she had were questions.

To her right, the Ile Saint-Louis glimmered in the weak sun. Her apartment stood past the curve of the quai. She turned to face the rose-brick médicolégal building.

If she didn’t check out her hunch, she’d kick herself later. She hated this place—the odors of body fluids that were hosed down the drains in the back courtyard, the miasma of misery and indifference surrounding the unclaimed corpses. She couldn’t forget identifying her father’s charred remains after the explosion in Place Vendôme as the bored attendant scratched his neck and checked his watch, as her tears had dropped into the aluminum trough by her father’s blackened, twisted fingers.

She took a deep breath and opened the morgue door.

AIMÉE STOOD ALONE in the green-tiled viewing cubicle of the morgue basement. On the other side of the window lay a young waxen-faced corpse, a white sheet folded down to her neck, livid stains appeared on the skin of her cheek and neck, but Aimée could see that her eyes were deep set and her cheekbones were prominent. Unforgiving, stark white light bathed her features; there was a bruise on her temple, a mole on her chin, and she had straw blond hair that hadn’t been completely combed back, falling in greasy strands over her temple. Her partly visible ear showed raw, jagged edges and there was a frothy blood bubble on her neck. Weren’t they supposed to clean up the corpse to protect the family’s feelings?

Aimée didn’t recognize her. She’d had a hunch, but she’d been wrong. Why had she expected a corpse to sit up and talk, to give her a clue to the baby’s identity? Nothing tied them together.

“I’m sorry,” Aimée whispered, her breath fogging on the glass, “whoever you are.”

The door opened and she heard shuffling footsteps behind her. A blue-uniformed
flic
from whom the telltale aroma of Vicks emanated—used by new recruits to combat the odor—approached her.

“Mademoiselle, can you identify the victim?”

I am so sorry but I can’t help you.”
“

A young man in a zip-up sweatshirt, brown hair curling behind his ears, edged into the room.

“Then if you’ll follow me, Mademoiselle, I’ll see you out,” the
flic
said.

She turned to leave, heard a small gasp, and saw the man clap his hand over his mouth.

“Monsieur, do you recognize the victim?” the
flic
asked.

He shook his head, looking away. He had a copy of
Le Parisien
in his back pocket.

“You seem upset,” the
flic
said, gauging his reaction.

“It’s unnerving to see a dead person,” he replied.

Aimée followed the
flic
but not before she noted that the man had recognized the corpse.

“Mademoiselle, this way please,” the
flic
said, hurrying her past several other sad-eyed people standing in the hallway.

AIMÉE INQUIRED AT three offices before she found Serge Leaud in the morgue foyer, which was lined with busts of medical pioneers, talking with a group of white-coated technicians. She hated bothering Serge, her friend as well as a medical pathologist, but she had to clear up the nagging doubt she felt.

“What if?” kept running through her brain. She had to find out if the woman had recently given birth. She caught Serge’s eye, mouthed, “Please.” And waited.

Serge shifted from foot to foot, his gaze flitting from her to his colleagues, one hand in the pocket of his lab coat, the other stroking his black beard. A moment later, he excused himself and joined her.

No customary kiss on the cheek greeted her; instead, he displayed a harried frown.

“The chief’s here and my blood-screen panel’s waiting,” he said. “I’ve only got a minute, Aimée.”

“Can you show me an autopsy report, Serge,” Aimée said, lowering her voice, “for the young woman found in the Seine by Pont de Sully.”

Serge nodded to a white-coated staff member who passed them.

“Let’s talk over there.” He jerked his thumb toward the corner. “You mean for the Yvette?”

She knew that was what they called all unidentified female corpses.

She nodded.

“I’m not supposed to do this, Aimée.”

“Help me out,” she said, “and we’ll call it quits.”

He owed her. His mother-in-law and wife both down with
grippe,
Serge tied up at work, and no Sunday babysitter available, she’d answered his plea and agreed to take his toddler twin boys to the Vincennes Zoo. The highlight of the day had been the ride on the Metro, and the twins, fascinated with trains, had refused to leave the station. The afternoon was spent greeting trains and saying good-bye to every engine. She’d finally bribed them with Mentos to go home. She’d been exhausted, wondering how his wife coped every day.

“The autopsy’s later this afternoon,” Serge said.
“Désolé.
”

First she felt disappointment, then relief. Of course, the baby’s real mother was alive and would return; she might be at Aimée’s now. Yet Michou would have called if she had turned up. A prickling sense that it all connected troubled her.

“No ID, and waterlogged fingerprints.”

“Was the skin on the hand so sloughed off she’ll need the ‘treatment’?”

Serge shrugged.

She knew the treatment, a technique used on waterlogged corpses that consisted of slicing the wrist to peel back the skin of the hand so the technician, inserting his own gloved hand inside the skin, could exert sufficient pressure for a print. Gruesome.

“It’s a hard call,” Serge said. Creatures have nibbled on the fingertips and there are injuries on the hand from the buffeting of the waves. We’ll inject saline for the soft tissue pads to plump them out. And if we’re lucky, we’ll get prints.”

He shook his head. “A sad case, I’d say.” He pulled a sheaf of papers from his pocket. ”I have a prelim report. It indicates suicide. So young.” His brow furrowed as he thumbed through the pages. He flipped one over and read on.

“But the bruise I saw on her temple might mean she was attacked,” Aimée said.

“It could have been caused by contact with the stone bank after she hit the water.”

“And the blood froth?”

“I’d say blood pooling in the ear first, associated with drainage. Or feasting by the river creatures.”

Aimée suppressed a shudder.

“You mean they showed that side because . . .”

“The other side was worse.” Serge exhaled. “The river squad, well . . .” he paused. “Let’s say the turbulent current and sewer grate against which she’d lodged made it difficult to pull her out.”

He shook his head again. “I’ve seen it before.
Suicide d’amour,
a love affair gone wrong, depression. No one to talk to.” Serge read further. “Where was her mother, her aunt? That’s what’s so sad. She’s like any twenty-something you see on the street: lace camisole, espadrilles, jeans.”

Her ears pricked up. “Jeans? What kind?”

“Hmmm . . . Lick, some designer brand my wife wears.”

“That’s all?”

He riffled through the pages of the preliminary report. “It says here that she wore earrings . . . beaded. No, my mistake. No beads on the earrings, sorry. Blue beads were embroidered on the jean cuffs.”

Like the ones on the denim jacket? Aimée’s pulse raced. There it was, the link she had sensed.

“Look, Aimée, I’ve done you a favor, and I haven’t asked you any questions, but what’s this woman to you?”

“A baby was left in my courtyard. Someone called me and begged me to protect her.” She pulled the plastic bag from her backpack. “Look, Serge, this denim jacket is embroidered with blue beads; it was wrapped around the baby.”

Serge stared. “
Et alors
?”

She controlled her apprehension. “What if these beads match the ones on the cuffs of the jeans?”

Serge’s beeper, pinned to the lapel of his white lab coat, vibrated.

“Can’t you check, Serge?”

“Aimée, you’re asking me to wade in deep water for a few beads,” he said. “And I’m late.”

“If the beads don’t match, no one will be the wiser,” she said. “But if they do . . .”

“Why would I stick my neck out?”

Feelings in her bones didn’t count with the
flics
. She couldn’t involve them until she knew positively that the beads were identical.

“Ballet tickets, Serge. Opening night. Isn’t your anniversary coming up?”

His wife loved ballet.

“Eh? You could get tickets?”

With enough francs and her friend at the FNAC ticket office, she could. She nodded. Across the foyer she saw the
mec
she’d noticed in the viewing cubicle mounting the stairs, then entering the restroom. She had to talk to him.

“You’ll inform me of the autopsy findings when you get them, Serge?”

He took the plastic bag with the denim jacket from her. Nodded.

“Of course, you’ll babysit the twins,” Serge said. “We’d make an evening of it, dinner . . .”

“Don’t press your luck, Serge.”

BELOW THE STERN gaze of Pasteur, Aimée tapped her fingers on the blue plastic chair. She’d checked with Michou; still no word. She was waiting to question the
mec,
who she could have sworn had recognized the corpse. The woman might have been the baby’s mother.