Chapter Two

In the ten days that followed, Rachel got no further with her hymns. Part of the problem was simple lack of inspiration. The commissioning priest had asked her for compositions that, in his words, “found the marvelous in the modern world,” but it was no easy task to produce these in the less-than-marvelous heat of a Parisian high summer, when the feel of sweat trickling slowly down her back made her skin crawl. Every day she would work until she could bear it no longer, then take herself out for a drink in an air-conditioned café—and every day when she returned from her drink she would see that what she had written wasn’t much good. Natural heat apparently did not make for creative fire.

But there was another reason for her difficulty, she knew. She was distracted by the murder. She had begun to think of it as hers, an incident that belong to her. Who was the man in the toilettes? she kept asking herself. When she stood at the long window in her séjour hoping to catch a breath of air, the puffy purple face would float up in front of her and she would try to imagine it deflated, alive, full of expression and attached to a living being. She would feel a twinge of sympathy toward the unknown victim. No one deserved to die like that, disfigured and dumped in that humiliating position.

Then, hunched over her desk attempting to channel the wonders of a modern God she didn’t believe in, she found herself trying to re-create the murder instead, trying to understand the murderer. She imagined the unknowing victim entering the men’s room, pondered the sheer strength it would take for one person to strangle another—the intention that would be required, and required for all the long minutes it took to finish the job. And at the end of it all to saunter out of the café as if you’d done nothing more than have a drink after work! What kind of person could do that—what kind of person could want to do that—what kind of motive could push someone into doing it? No matter how she tried to focus on the hymns at hand, these thoughts kept elbowing their way in.

Perhaps that was why she wasn’t surprised to pick up her landline when it rang ten days after the murder and hear Boussicault on the other end, asking her to come to the commissariat.

*   *   *

“Rachel.” He was waiting for her in reception. He led her through corridors unchanged from her previous visit the year before, around the maze of desks that constituted his dèpartement, and into his office, its three glass walls giving it the feel of a giant aquarium. The last time Rachel had been here, Boussicault had dismissed her ideas and she had nearly wept. But, she reminded herself firmly, at the end of that experience she had solved a murder and they had formed a kind of friendship, so she had no reason to feel awkward or out of place. She tried to arrange herself in the chair in a way that suggested she was entirely at home.

The capitaine cleared his throat. “I asked you here because we’ve now finished our preliminary investigation of the murder at Chez Poule. I thought you might be interested in our findings and possible next steps.”

Chez Poule: had that been the name of the place? Rachel realized she hadn’t even noticed. But Boussicault was right, she was interested. After all, it was her murder. “Thank you.” She leaned forward.

“De rien.” He opened a folder. “It turns out the victim was one Guy Laurent. He worked in the Rare Books and Manuscripts reading room at the Bibliothèque Nationale, and he was a regular client at Chez Poule.” He flipped over a page. “Scene-of-crime examination suggests that Monsieur Laurent was killed one to two hours at the most before you found him, and the disarrangement of his clothing suggests that he was placed in the stall after he was killed.” He turned another page. “His wallet was in his back pocket, and from his carte d’identité we learned that he was forty years old. We also know that he had just emptied his bladder.” He glanced up. “His fly was still undone when he was found.” Finally, he closed the folder and put it on the desktop, leaning back in his chair. “And, as I said, cause of death was ligature strangulation.”

Once more the swollen face appeared in Rachel’s mind. She swallowed hard. “How? I mean, what made the …” But she couldn’t finish. She just gestured near her own throat.

“Well.” Boussicault’s voice was cool, and Rachel remembered that one of his best traits was his ability to meet horror with equanimity. “As you have seen, the ligature was narrow. Next to the body we found a length of string that appears to be a match in size. It was wet from lying on the floor, but we’ve sent it for analysis to see what it can tell us.”

Grateful for his composure, Rachel tried to match it. “Did anyone see him come into the restaurant?” Her voice shook a little.

The capitaine gave her an approving look. “Exactly our first question. Unfortunately, Laurent was such a regular customer that no one can remember noticing him on that day specifically. In fact, they can’t remember him or anyone else acting oddly that day. The place gets very busy in the afternoons.”

“So there’s no obvious suspect.”

Again an approving look. “Exactly. And this may well be a random crime, or a crime of opportunity. It’s hot; heat exacerbates instability. Random murders do increase in the summer. But the victim was an adult male, and there was no sign of sexual assault, both very unusual in stranger strangulation. Which makes it more likely that he was killed by someone who knew him and wanted him dead.”

“Any plausible suspects in that category?” Rachel draped her arm over the back of her chair, trying to seem hard-bitten and worldly-wise. She still had no idea why she was here, but she had no objection to being a sounding board for the investigation.

“Nothing we could find. Monsieur Laurent lived out in Pont de Sèvres, so rather far for a neighbor to travel to kill him, and in any case his neighbors hardly seem to have known him. He kept to himself, apparently—his portable had only his mother and his job as contacts.”

At this revelation of a limited life, Rachel felt another stab of pity for Guy Laurent. Nonetheless, “Maybe a resentful colleague?” she offered.

“Yes, our conclusion, too. So we questioned his colleagues. And it appears that among them Monsieur Laurent has not kept to himself. Their feelings toward him were quite strong. Very strong, in fact. His colleagues, well …” He said abruptly, “They all hated him.”

Rachel frowned. “But surely that just makes your job easier. It’s just a matter of finding out who hated him enough to kill him.”

He sighed. “Under normal circumstances, perhaps it would be that way, yes. But Monsieur Laurent seems to have inspired equal loathing in all those he worked with.”

“All of them?”

The capitaine opened the folder again and began to lay out a series of photographs, turning them so they faced Rachel. They were enlarged identity card photos, and as was the way with such pictures, each made its subject look not only as if they could commit a murder but as if they just had.

“Giles Morel.” A man in his late twenties, with a thick blond beard and black-rimmed glasses. “He called Laurent”—Boussicault consulted a sheet of typed notes—“ ‘a brainless pig whose remains he wouldn’t wipe off his shoe.’ He then refused to explain why he felt that way. Louise Fournier.” A second photo, a pale young woman whose dark hair straggled into her eyes. “She first asked to be questioned by a female officer, but finally told us that in her opinion Laurent was”—another glance down—“ ‘a better-dressed street mugger.’ Then she wouldn’t say any more.” The next photo. “Docteure Alphonsine Dwamena.” A dark-skinned woman in late middle age, silver hair cut close to her head. “Head of Laurent’s department. She told me that Laurent was a troublemaker and that she found him”—again he consulted his notes—“ ‘repellent as a person.’ She also declined to elaborate.” He looked up. “We can’t determine which of these people hated him most, or whose hatred might push them into murder, for the very simple reason that they won’t open up to us. They are like a little club—they won’t say anything to outsiders—and without further evidence we can’t make them.”

He put down a final photo. “Laurent.” Rachel bent over it. At last, the face she’d been trying to imagine for nearly two weeks. She couldn’t find anything in it that would obviously inspire loathing. She knew people tended to find in photographs what they sought, so on being told that a man had saved a kitten from a tree, one group would see benevolence and decency, while on being told that the same man was a thief, another group would find thuggish shiftiness. But the person looking out at her was entirely unremarkable. She felt another twinge of pity. She reached out with her thumb as if to stroke the photo’s hair, but pulled back. When she looked up, Boussicault was watching her. He said, “Rachel, I need your help.”

He wanted her to help him identify the murderer. That’s why he’d brought her in! Her heart leapt, then fell as she cast her mind back to the moments in the bathroom. “I’m sorry, but I really can’t remember anything else. The door was open, and I went in. No one was coming out, and I didn’t see anyone when I was inside except for him. I’m really sorry.”

He shook his head. “Not that kind of help. You see, in summer crime goes up.” He sighed. “It’s the tourists.”

Rachel nodded. All Parisians dreaded the arrival of the tourists in July and August. They blocked the sidewalks as they stood in groups trying to read their maps; they clogged the less defined sites like the Pont Neuf or Notre Dame by lingering in uncertain clumps. Somehow the temperature seemed to increase merely at the sight of them standing doggedly in line outside the Palais de Justice or the Eiffel Tower. And every year with their arrival came newspapers reports of a rise in pickpockets, in assaults, in public drunkenness and criminal damage. Most Parisians fled the city for vacations during this period, but of course the police had to stay to deal with the extra work as well as the usual Paris crime.

As if reading her mind, the capitaine said, “And in addition to the usual increase, we are dealing with a sudden influx of very good, very pure, heroin into the city. Many of my undercover people have been pulled into that investigation. And to add to that, two of my best women … maternity leave! It must have been a very cold winter, hein?” He tried for a grin but could only manage a weary smile. Then he collected himself. “And just when all I could think of to move forward on Laurent’s murder was maybe to put someone on the inside … a new colleague in their department, one who needs things explained but who also might become part of their club—and maybe especially a woman, who is less threatening …”

Rachel caught her breath. She was a woman! She saw where he was heading: she was going to be part of a plan! She focused again on Boussicault’s voice. “… only meant to listen and observe,” he was saying. “I checked with my superiors, and as long as this remains a passive and time-limited undercover action, one in which I can guarantee there will be no danger, they will sign off. I remember that you were very good at blending into Monsieur Bowen’s household, and your previous experience in libraries, and so I have brought you here to ask—”

A business card flashed before Rachel’s eyes: RACHEL LEVIS, POLICE CONSULTANT. Or maybe RACHEL LEVIS, P.C.; initials were always better. She couldn’t control herself any longer. “Yes! I will. Yes!”