Moments later Bausch ducked under a ribbon of yellow crime scene tape to enter the fifth-floor hall. He made his way up the corridor to the only room with a uniformed policeman at the door. Instead of checking his credentials, the guard said, “Good morning, Inspector.” It was one of the compensations of living in a country no larger, and no more populous, than a mid-sized American city that there were no strangers among the gendarmerie. And on any given day, also one of the curses.
Bausch regarded the man, whose name was Romelu. He hadn’t been on the force long, which made him neither friend or foe. A rare neutral. “Who has been inside?” he asked.
“The coroner is there now. I responded to the initial call, and Boudreaux was right behind me. Otherwise, no one else.”
“See that it stays that way.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bausch reached into his pocket, pulled out a set of plastic booties and nitrile gloves. Once he was geared up, he went through the open door. The smell hit him immediately. As a small nation, Luxembourg didn’t get many murders. Some things, however, needed only to be experienced once to imprint on one’s memory.
He saw the medical examiner, Valerie German, doing battle with a camera strobe. Bausch knew German as well, and better than most—they’d dated twelve years ago when both were new on the force. The relationship had been fleeting, torrid, and doomed to failure, the romantic equivalent of a meteor. Since then, German had married and settled, while Bausch was twice divorced. They didn’t cross paths often, but when they did the jagged undertones remained.
“Hello, Valerie.”
German turned, and when she saw him her lips puckered as if she’d sucked a lemon. “I thought Jardine had drawn this one.”
“It’s your lucky day. I thought you might be here, so I demanded to take over.”
Her face went to something near a snarl.
“Honestly, when I heard the victim was Moussa Tayeb, I volunteered. A few years ago I assisted the French Sûreté on a case involving his brother.”
She looked at him searchingly. “Ramzi Tayeb?”
“Touché. Ramzi is the more famous of the two. The case involved a bombing outside Paris.”
“Did they figure it out?”
“There were a few arrests, the usual ruffians. The teenager who delivered the device went to Paradise. It had all the hallmarks of one of Ramzi’s operations, but they never caught up with him. Last I heard, he was plying his trade in Beirut.”
German went back to fiddling with the strobe. She was going to make him work for every scrap. “Anything of note yet regarding our victim?” he prompted.
“I’ve only been here twenty minutes, but I have a few preliminaries.”
She lowered the camera and turned toward the body. Moussa was lying on the bed in his underwear: supine, eyes closed, one neat hole in his forehead. Save for that, and a distinct pallor, he might have been napping. A good deal of blood had drained beneath him, discoloring the pillow and bedding.
“The cause of death seems apparent. One round, small caliber at very close range. There is powder residue on his shirt. Chances are, he was sleeping at the time. Never knew what hit him.”
“Time of death?”
“I took a temperature when I first arrived—it is only approximate, but I’d say between midnight and three in the morning. I talked to the maid briefly, and apparently there are rumors running amongst the staff.”
“Rumors?”
“It seems our victim was at the bar last night, drinking quite heavily. There was also mention of a blonde …” German let that hang for the appropriate interval. Bausch’s first wife had been a fair-haired Dane. She added, “It’s been suggested she was a working girl, although not one of the regulars. A good detective might talk to the bartender.”
“I’ll see if I can find one,” Bausch said distractedly as he leaned in to look at the wound. His eyes then went lower. “This?” he asked, pointing to the victim’s damaged nose.
“Not related to the gunshot. I’d say he got punched pretty hard.”
“Prior to the bullet?”
“Long enough to swell and bruise a bit, yes.”
German went back to taking pictures.
Bausch wandered the room. He saw the usual accoutrements of a traveler: suitcase, phone charger, toiletry bag. He looked briefly in the closet and saw empty hangars and a fluffy hotel robe. A wallet in plain sight on the ornate writing desk held credit cards and a good amount of cash. His French driver’s license showed a Paris address, and his passport was also French, both in his true name. Moussa Tayeb, like his brother, was Algerian by birth, yet as teenagers they’d immigrated to the banlieues of Seine-Saint-Denis and eventually acquired French citizenship.
Bausch opened the passport and saw a photo of the man on the bed, albeit with better coloring, a straighter nose, and minus one hole in his head. He flicked through the other pages and saw nothing of note. Ten years ago, passport stamps might have given clues as to where he had recently traveled. Now, in the digital world, ink stamps had gone the way of flip-phones.
He went to the bathroom, noted a bloody washcloth and two pill bottles. Hanging on hooks on the door were a jacket and a dress shirt, both stained by what looked like blood. When he returned to the main room it was being backlit intermittently by German’s flashing strobe. Bausch stopped in the center, turned a slow circle with his hands on his hips. The pressure for results, he knew, was going to be high. All the same, he was glad he’d taken the case because it also brought opportunity.
He sank his hands deep into his pockets, and thought, Where to begin?