Tourquai (6 page)

2.2

T
he meeting had already begun when Anna Lynx threw open the door and burst into the room. She was still feeling stressed after having been scolded by the preschool teachers and leaving a crying Todd with the other cubs in the pillow room. In her frayed state of mind she was completely unprepared for the calm that prevailed up at WE. A kind of half-light rested over the deserted office landscape, and the broad iron pillars cast long shadows across the empty workstations; in the mornings, staffing was always at its lowest.

Larry Bloodhound and Field Mouse Pedersen were sitting in the larger of the two conference rooms in the department. Theodore Tapir had come from the station at place St.-Fargeau. Of Tourquai’s four police precincts, only the largest station, at place St.-Fargeau, had a well-equipped forensics laboratory. Tapir had come to give the brief run-through that Bloodhound asked for yesterday, and would leave again as soon as he was finished. Derek Hare from the Technical Department was there to listen. He was more sprawled than seated in his chair and looked like he wished he were back in bed. His personnel had barely had time to start their examination of the components of the crime scene. Falcon Ècu stood in front of the whiteboard on the opposite side of the room. He had a pink scarf around his neck and was wearing a powder-blue jacket over a white shirt. Compared with how the others were dressed, Falcon seemed out of place. Anna did not interrupt anything when she barged in; the run-through had not begun.

“Super-sorry,” she panted.

Except for a large, severely worn conference table on which coffee cups, cigarette butts, and keys or knives had left ineradicable traces, there was no room for much else. A row of lightbulbs hung above the table, the seats of the chairs smelled of damp wool. In the window boxes were two potted plants that had died from oxygen deficiency. They’d been there for weeks. Why didn’t anyone remove them? Bloodhound asked himself. Through the windows you could look down over the parking lot opposite. On the roof of the lower neighboring building on the other side of the street was a strikingly large, complicated ventilation system; it might have been a modern sculpture of gleaming steel.

“Not that I have much to tell,” said Falcon Ècu, “but may I start, if you will?”

Bloodhound nodded tiredly. He had eaten only half a grapefruit that morning and was now regretting that he hadn’t had anything else.

“Nova Park is solely owned by Oswald Vulture,” said Ècu, who had been at work since dawn, engaged in digging deeper into the company, its owners and history.

“Was owned,” Bloodhound growled.

“What?”

Falcon cleared his throat nervously.

“Are your ears plugged up?
Was
owned, I said,” the superintendent repeated.

“Was owned? Excuse me, but now I don’t think I understand—”

“Vulture is missing a head,” explained Derek Hare, who had no patience for games. “The unkind Superintendent Bloodhound means that Vulture does not own, but rather did own, his company.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Falcon, relieved. “Clearly. Excuse me, Superintendent. So stupid of me, Vulture
owned
Nova Park. He built the company from the ground up . . . starting with nothing, he made his first million before age twenty-five. Rather impressive is what he succeeded in creating in a little less than ten years—a successful venture-capital firm. Vulture invested money in ideas he believed in, and got the investment back with interest, if things went well. Most often it must have gone well. Unbelievably well. Bourg Villette, where Nova Park had its offices, is—”

“Has!” barked Bloodhound.

“Excuse me, where Nova Park
has
its offices,” Falcon corrected, adjusting his pink scarf and trying to sound unperturbed, “is owned by Nova Park. Bourg Villette is owned by Nova Park.”

There was whistling in the room.

“Mm,” Falcon nodded, “it’s at that level.”

“And Vulture was someone everyone liked?” Anna asked.

“He was respected,” Falcon replied. “That’s the image you get. I spoke with almost everyone at the office yesterday, and got hold of a couple of the directors on Vulture’s board this morning. They’re shocked, of course. Everyone says roughly the same thing. Hard as flint, but not dishonorable—”

“He wasn’t hard as flint,” Theodore Tapir interjected.

Field Mouse Pedersen laughed curtly, but no one else cracked a smile at the tired joke.

“No one up at Nova Park has anything in particular to tell about what happened yesterday,” Falcon continued. “We have to double-check with the receptionist about an electrician who apparently came and went, and of course take another turn with the secretary, Emanuelle Cobra, who doesn’t seem to have seen anyone either enter or leave Vulture’s office . . .”

During the course of the briefing Derek Hare had been sinking farther and farther down in his chair, and now with effort he brought himself back to a sitting position so as not to fall down under the table.

“Going to be hard to get a judge to believe in ghosts,” Derek interjected. “But if neither the receptionist, who sits right across from the elevators, nor the secretary, who sits outside Vulture’s office, has seen anyone come or go—”

“Excuse me, Derek, but that’s not really the whole story,” Falcon resumed, blushing at the same time over having interrupted the experienced Hare. “We have the inventor, Oleg Earwig, who was the last one to see Vulture alive. Earwig and Vulture have worked together for a few years. It started with the vacuum-cleaning wall . . .”

“I have one of those walls,” forensic physician Theodore Tapir admitted.

“Well then, shit on you! Does it make you happy?” Bloodhound was seldom sarcastic, but when he was, it hurt.

“All new houses have vacuum-cleaning walls,” Falcon clarified. “The wall was a great success. Earwig became the hottest inventor in Mollisan Town, and he formed a company with Nova Park and Vulture. They called it earWall Inc. There were a few more patents, not equally successful, but . . . in recent years his ideas have been meager, and a few months ago Vulture broke off his arrangement with the inventor.”

“Just like that?” asked Anna.

“In the most recent reissue—”

“Reissue?” asked Tapir. “Explain so a medical doctor can understand.”

“You issue new shares and sell them on the market to bring in capital. Despite the fact that Vulture was the largest shareholder, he didn’t take part in the reissue. And then of course no one else dared to buy, either. EarWall Inc. was out of cash, and Nova Park made a bid for the inventor’s shares. They said they would consider taking them over without paying anything, or else the company would go bankrupt and Earwig would be stuck with the debts.”

“Can you do that?” asked Tapir.

“Vulture would never do anything that was in violation of the stock exchange rules. Or of any other rules, if I’ve understood who he is.”

“But you’re saying that ethically the issue is debatable?” said Tapir.

“That must have been what Oleg Earwig said during their meeting that morning,” Falcon noted drily.

“Go to hell,” Bloodhound barked. “You look like a little pansy, Ècu, but this shows that you shouldn’t judge everyone by their clothes.”

There was giggling. Falcon nodded. He had never been praised by Bloodhound before, and it made him confused and proud. He sat down.

“Theodore?” barked the superintendent.

“Yes, well,” Theodore Tapir began, as he stiffly positioned himself so that everyone could see him, “it seems like everything is pointing in the same direction. Cobra or Earwig. Anything else doesn’t seem possible. But when things are too obvious, I become wary. As far as the forensics report is concerned, I will return tomorrow with a more complete description. But so far, I’ll start with the cut. The one who separated Oswald Vulture’s head from his neck knew what he was doing. A single cut, from side to side, with a sword or a long knife. More conviction than force. If the edge is sharp and the angle correct, the stroke is like a good golf swing. It’s not the strength in the arm, it’s . . . the zing in the swing. The murderer stood behind Vulture, either accustomed to the movement or with plenty of time.”

“Excuse me, but do you mean that someone sneaked up on him? Or that it was someone he knew well and turned his back on?” asked Falcon.

“My friend with the pink scarf, I don’t know who you are,” said Tapir, “but that was a stupid question. How would I know that?”

Falcon stared intensely down at the conference table and decided not to say anything else.

“On the other hand what I would ask myself,” said Tapir, “was how the murderer concealed his weapon from the victim when he or she entered the room. It must have been a rather bulky object.”

“And there was an attack alarm in the desk,” Derek Hare pointed out. “If Vulture had sensed trouble he could have easily called for help.”

“A brand-new invention?” Anna proposed. “C’mon, Earwig could have possibly pretended he was carrying around some contraption that was a new patent.”

Tapir shrugged his shoulders to show that he was not convinced.

“The curtains,” said Anna, changing tracks, “are another idea. The crazed animal could have hidden himself behind the curtains already the day before.”

“Shut up now,” Bloodhound asked. “The question is when did the murder occur?”

“Ah, but that’s more difficult,” said Tapir. “I prefer to wait for the autopsy before I give any definitive statements.”

“If Cobra is telling the truth,” said Anna Lynx, “there’s not much to talk about. Earwig left, we came, in between someone trimmed the head.”

“That doesn’t need to be wrong,” nodded Tapir. “That was actually what I wanted to say. That doesn’t need to be wrong at all.”

Tapir never took any risks, and Bloodhound knew that the doctor wouldn’t say even this much without being fairly certain.

“Thanks,” said the superintendent. “You can go now if you want to, Tapir.”

“I do,” said Tapir.

The elderly doctor left the room.

“For any of you who think that as usual it’s the widow who’s guilty, you can get that thought out of your head,” the superintendent stated. “Apart from the fact that she was genuinely surprised, suitably dense, and generally incapable of action, she thinks the vulture has swindled her out of all the cash. Rambled on that he was going to donate the fortune to some foundation. Still remains to be seen whether that’s true, I assume, but the point is this: she assumes she has less money now than when he was alive.”

“But that isn’t—” Anna began, but was brusquely interrupted by the superintendent.

“For a hag like Flamingo, I can promise you, money is everything.”

Hare squirmed impatiently in his chair.

“Was there anything else?”

“In a hurry, Derek?” asked Bloodhound. “Have you promised some little female she could play with all your fine toys down there?”

“Just tired of you, Larry,” Hare replied.

“Children,” said Anna, “you’d be happy in day care. In the pillow room. Tell us about Vulture’s office, Derek. I know you haven’t started your full analysis, but your impressions? Feelings?”

“The office was completely void of personality,” said Hare. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Nothing. The only thing that fell outside the frame was the small laptop computer on the desk. His business correspondence was in the desktop computer. But there were no personal folders or documents. We haven’t got into the small machine yet. No, the vulture seems to have had gloves and a face mask on at work. What I think is strange is that the murderer seems to have been equally meticulous. Maybe we’ll find something today, but up to now we haven’t seen a single trace of the head. I mean, even if the murderer is a ghost, someone must have seen the vulture’s head being carried out of there.”

Falcon nodded. Now that Tapir had left the room, Inspector Ècu regained some of his courage.

“You’ve already thought about this, I’m sure, but it struck me that even if we do find the head, it’s not a certainty that Vulture can tell us who did it,” he pointed out. “Tapir said the stroke did come from behind.”

The stuffed animals in the room pondered this truth in silence.

“Surveillance cameras?” asked Anna. “Shouldn’t there be some?”

“In the reception area,” Hare replied. “I’ve asked for all recorded material since before the weekend. Perhaps the murderer’s been caught on tape. We’ll soon see.”

Bloodhound got up.

“Well, we can’t sit here fiddling with our belly buttons any longer,” Superintendent Bloodhound said. “This is actually a classic case. A murder has been committed in a room with only one entrance. And the murderer does not seem to have either gone out or come in. Two suspects. We’ll question them right away. I’m going back to Nova Park to have another chat with Cobra. Anna, you take the newcomer with you and have a visit with that inventor . . .”

Derek Hare stood up leisurely.

“Does this mean I can go now?”

“Get out of here,” Bloodhound barked.

2.3

T
his will only take a sec,” said Anna Lynx less than an hour later.

“Not when—”

“No, come on now, I just didn’t have time,” she nagged.

“But we’re on our way to—”

“C’mon—please?”

Falcon Ècu sighed theatrically and parked. Anna hurried. She threw open the car door and ran the few steps across the sidewalk into Springergaast. When she returned a few minutes later, she smelled like fresh-brewed coffee and blueberry muffins. She handed a croissant dripping with butter to Falcon in a conciliatory gesture.

“My morning was a circus,” she said. “But you’ll see. One fine day you’ll have cubs.”

“Right now I’m prioritizing my work,” Falcon mumbled.

“That’s ridiculous,” Anna laughed. “Don’t become one of those bitter old guys at the station who think they made a choice at some point. They never chose.”

Falcon had rolled down the window on his side, and the scent of the city filled the inside of the car once they were on the road again. The mild breeze had just blown in through the city. They took the route along orange-colored rue Leblanc, one of the quickest shortcuts through Tourquai if you wanted to avoid the main streets and avenues. The neighborhood was empty and silent; at this time of day the stuffed animals had already gone to work.

“We’re just at different stages in our lives,” Falcon attempted.

“What’s that my ears are hearing? That I’m ancient?”

“No, no, but . . . I mean, I don’t even have a . . . friend.”

“They’re not going to throw themselves into your arms automatically, if that’s what you think. You have to try a little, Falcon,” Anna replied.

She knew that her advice could get a bit personal, but she was looking after him.

Anna’s mother was a light green Shetland pony and one of the most intelligent animals that ever lived in Mollisan Town. And not just according to Anna. She was the youngest ever to graduate from Lanceheim’s medical school, and she had registered two patents for the treatment of Triklin’s disease before she was twenty-four. For the past twelve years, however, she had remained secluded in her two-room apartment in south Tourquai, sedated but bitter. She never went out, she had lost all interest in the world around her, and she barely recognized her daughter on her rare visits. Instead of running with her talent and opportunities, she had fallen in love with a macho firefly who demanded she stay at home. He was going to take care of her, he was the master of the house; she would be his spoiled princess. And the hardworking scholar, the highly promising research scientist, accepted the idea. Because that is, sometimes, what love does to us.

The subtle terror already began when Anna was delivered. And year by year, Anna’s brilliant mother turned into a pill-eating wreck, deprived of a will of her own. Without even trying—or trying because of that—the firefly closed the door on the Shetland pony’s life, inch by inch. He spoiled her, and she grew accustomed to it. When he finally left her, she was already an addict. Years before that Anna had stopped calling him “father.” She swore that what happened to her mom would never happen to her. Perhaps the idea of joining the police force was rooted there, in her mother’s tragedy.

Falcon had found out that Earwig was a denizen of honey yellow Carrer de Carrera in north Yok. Rue Leblanc led down to Western Avenue; after that it was only a matter of driving through the Star and into the southeast part of the city.

“I did a little research this morning,” he said as he stopped at a red light. “Nothing to speak of, but I thought it would be good to be prepared. Oleg Earwig is thirty-eight years old. He has no criminal history, has never been arrested, and, apart from a few parking tickets many years ago, the authorities have never been interested in him. According to his tax returns, the last few years have been meager. Even a police officer earns more. Earwig owns shares in the company he has with Nova Park, but they’re almost worthless.”

“Hard to be an inventor,” Anna commented, taking a drink from her still-hot coffee as Falcon put the car in first and accelerated.

At the next red light Anna took the opportunity to drink up before she spilled. In the car alongside sat a peacock, looking straight ahead and putting on his seat belt without letting on that he was doing so. The sight of a police car instilled guilt in most. The peacock hesitated when the light turned green.

“I was forced to search eight years back before I found traces of the vacuum-cleaning wall in his tax returns,” Falcon continued.

“Do you mean you’ve searched through eight years of tax returns already this morning?”

Falcon sat quietly. During his career this was the third murder investigation he had ever taken part in. This was major. Coming in early this morning and sitting hunched over a computer a few extra hours was the least he could do.

“I took the opportunity to look in the Patent Office’s registry a little, too,” Falcon admitted.

“Lunatic. Did you ever go home last night?”

“I got home before midnight,” he lied.

“I don’t want a partner who spends the nights on research and then isn’t sharp when we need it.”

“I know,” said Falcon.

Anna shared Larry Bloodhound’s sense of priorities. Police work was something you did out on the streets; cowardly bureaucrats sat behind desks.

Falcon turned out onto the bloodred avenue and increased speed.

“And the Patent Office?” asked Anna after a moment of silence.

“Oleg Earwig has four new patents being processed right now. He has registered a hundred inventions since ‘the wall.’ But apart from the self-cleaning oven, none of them seems to have been a success. At least I’ve never heard of any of the others.”

“So, an earwig hungry for cash and recognition,” Anna summarized.

“Hmm. Might be right,” Ècu agreed.

A few minutes later
they drove through the golden Star, Mollisan Town’s geographic center and the roundabout from which the four avenues ran. You might get the impression that these broad streets had been the starting point for the city planners when the city was divided into districts, but nothing was farther from the truth. On the contrary, the fact was that before the four independent towns of Amberville, Tourquai, Lanceheim, and Yok grew together, political boundaries were the scene of battles for centuries. Today these boundaries were reduced to multilane expressways; only scattered monuments were a reminder of history.

Western Avenue separated Amberville in the south from Tourquai in the north; Eastern Avenue separated Lanceheim in the north from Yok in the south. When Falcon turned into the poorest part of the district’s labyrinthine swarm of cramped, discolored streets and squares, as usual he could not avoid wondering what it would be like to work down here. Larry Bloodhound was the toughest police officer the falcon had ever met, but Bloodhound was also sitting safely in north Tourquai, where things were actually pretty good. The superintendents who worked at the police stations in Yok were made of different stuff. In these neighborhoods you never asked first.

When they arrived, the address on Carrer de Carrera proved to consist of a large, freestanding warehouse, built of corrugated sheet metal, without windows, and bombarded with graffiti. Falcon chose to park a short distance away so as not to attract attention.

“How much of the car do you think will be left when we leave here?” he asked worriedly as he locked the doors.

“Falcon, now you’re not thinking right,” Anna replied with a broad smile. “You know, the secondhand market for police-car wheel rims is rather limited.”

Obviously. The Volgas that the police drove were specially made. The spare parts only fit other police cars. Falcon swore to himself. Every time he tried to drop a comment that he thought sounded police-like, he only revealed his lack of experience. Who did he think he was fooling? Nervously he adjusted his pink scarf again.

There was a doorbell, but after trying it they pounded on the door instead. Nothing happened.

“Do we have the right address?”

Falcon nodded. He was certain.

They decided to see if there was an entrance at the back and went around. The building covered the entire block. On the other side there were tall windows and the sheet-metal walls were exchanged for wooden planks. From inside, the sound of continuous pounding was heard.

“Check it out,” said Falcon, nodding.

Through the windows they saw an earwig in a white coat running back and forth in front of a machine that resembled a printing press, but with more indicator lights and gauges.

“C’mon, look, the door’s open,” Anna noticed, pointing.

They went in. What they had not been able to see from outside was the impressive ceiling height of the space. Mechanical apparatus and technical gadgets were everywhere.

“If I were five years old and imagining an inventor,” Anna whispered to Falcon, “it would be exactly like this.”

The earwig stood with his back toward the door in front of a massive machine that rattled, hissed, and puffed. What the machine was doing was a mystery. The inventor held an oilcan in his hand, and he could not possibly have heard them arrive.

Anna took a few steps forward, holding up her police badge.

“Oleg Earwig?” she asked.

Without taking his gaze from the oilcan and the machine and without turning around, Oleg shouted back.

“That’s me, that’s me. Come back later. Come back tomorrow. Or next week. Next week. Right now I’m busy.”

“Mr. Earwig,” Anna shouted to be heard above the noise, “we’re from the police department.”

This had a certain effect. Earwig lowered the oilcan and twirled around. He was disgusting to look at, with long, hard feelers that stuck out from his head and razor-sharp fangs that hardly fit in his mouth. Arms and legs were poking out in all directions, it seemed. He was completely black, and the blackness was in sharp contrast to the white coat he was wearing.

“This won’t take long, Mr. Earwig,” said Falcon. “We only want to ask a few questions.”

“Don’t you see that I’m busy? Busy!”

“We are, too,” Anna replied. “Do you have a place where we can sit down?”

“Sit down? Sit DOWN? This is a cardan filibrator that’s about to explode. Explode! I can’t sit down!”

“Turn off the machine for now,” Falcon ordered. “Otherwise you can come along up to the station. We can talk there instead, if you want.”

“The station?” said Earwig, taking a few steps backward, astounded at this lack of respect.

“C’mon, knock it off!” Anna insisted.

Earwig looked from the lynx to the falcon and back again. He realized they were serious. Under protest, he turned off the hissing machine, muttering about irreversible processes and days of work that were now wasted. Then he led the police officers through the mechanical garbage dump that was his place of work. Among piles of potting soil, cans of fertilizer, and clay flowerpots was a round table where he sat down. With a preoccupied gesture from one of his many legs, he invited the police officers to be seated. He explained that the dirt on the floor was the remains of the unbelievably successful work he’d done on the organic toothbrush—on which new bristles grew by themselves.

“Oswald Vulture,” said Anna, without revealing that she had never heard of such a toothbrush. “Does that name mean anything to you?”

“Vulture?” Earwig repeated. “Oswald Vulture? Does that mean anything? To me? A bigger fraud than Oswald Vulture has never walked the streets of Mollisan Town. A more cold-blooded liar has never been fabricated! He is a disgrace to his breed, a disgrace to all breeds, to our society. Oswald Vulture should—”

“Someone cut Oswald Vulture’s head off yesterday morning,” Falcon interrupted.

“Good!” Earwig exclaimed with feeling. “Amazing! Not a day too soon. Not a single day. It should have been done a long time ago. I should have done it myself! A long time ago.”

“That leads us to the next question,” said Anna without changing expression. “Where were you yesterday morning?”

“Me?” Earwig was offended. “Me? Where was I? That’s none of your damn business!”

“I must remind you that a murder has been committed,” said Falcon. “You seem to be taking this lightly.”

“He’s missing a head, you say?” Earwig continued. “He’s truly missing a head? Well, I’ll be damned. Not a day too soon. Not a day. I have an alibi, don’t worry about that, sweet little cat.”

“I am not a—”

“Headless, headless, headless,” the inventor sang. “Yes, what the hell . . .”

“Hasn’t Nova Park invested considerable money in your company?” asked Falcon.

Oleg Earwig was not listening.

“How did they cut his head off?”

“For investigative reasons we can’t comment on that,” Anna interjected before Falcon said too much.

“No,” Earwig replied, nodding. “No, that doesn’t matter. Yes, the company. Yes, can it be any more rotten than that? He betrayed me, that SWINE! He betrayed me. I was in the middle of great, revolutionary work on my Dry-o-plex, and—”

“Dry-o-plex?” asked Falcon.

“The drying cabinet,” Earwig explained. “I was in the process of transforming our dreary drying cabinets into four-dimensional cinemas! Instead of standing there, drying for hours, you have flat screens around you, above your head and under your claws. You’re standing on the movie! The experience is . . . it can’t be described. Not a single wet stuffed animal in this city is going to want to be without a Dry-o-plex.”