1
French side
For a while Aliette and Claude had walked to work together. Why bother trying to conceal what was never officially mentioned but universally known? A pleasant twenty-five-minute march along affluent streets with school children and professionals, then down through the park and past her old apartment, and on through the labyrinthine old quarter to the musty police building in rue des Bon Enfants. Different schedules had eroded this comfy ritual. The morning of Piaf’s burial, Aliette headed out alone and was glad not to have Claude beside her. She paused in the park to gaze at the third-floor balcony where she and Piaf had shared beer and dreams… Arriving at the Commissariat, the inspector felt the weight of too much time as she climbed three flights of stairs. In no mood for morning chitchat, she went straight to her office, where she sat at her desk, morose, staring through her north-facing window. The sky was pale blue amid vague grey swathes of cloud where it met the rising Vosges. Summer was still making desultory gasps, but it was dying, mirroring back this futile sense of another year, not enough to show. She felt as if her life were collapsing behind her. It was not Piaf the cat. It was Piaf the marker, the mute evidence of an entire part of her life. Her best years? The notion was devastating. She stood, took her coat from the hook on the door and pulled it back on.
It was testimony to the ever-tenuous core of her heart that the inspector still paid rent to Madame Camus for the third-floor apartment beside the park. ‘My pied-à-terre,’ she joked whenever the subject of this ‘needless expense’ came up — because Claude was wanting her to contribute to the payments on the house. Needless? She had tried to see the future but it would not come clear, and so she always put another envelope in Madame Camus’ mailbox at the start of each new month. Indeed, she often climbed the stairs to sit there for a spell. Because love matters and you had to care about it. You had to work at it. Wasn’t work the crux? Claude Néon was proud of his tulips, but guess who’d soon taken over responsibility for the garden in the north end? Aliette watered and dug, planted, pruned and picked. And she tried to help him learn to tend it, but Claude had been happy to watch her do it. He said it stirred something deep and central to see her kneeling with her clippers and her trowel. That was nice to hear but did nothing to ease the encroaching ache in her lower back (like her mother was prone to), nor this evolving worry in her heart. Central, Claude? You can learn a lot about a man from observing him in his garden. Or with your cat. Perhaps she should dig Piaf up and put him in Madame Camus’ tulip bed instead. Madame Camus had never expressed much love for Piaf, but she was at least a studious gardener. She’d won a prize for her nasturtium patch…
Monique, secretary-to-everyone-but-mainly-Claude, buzzed. ‘You joining us for coffee?’
‘Yes. No… I don’t know.’ The inspector sat back down. In her coat. In a muddle. It doesn’t really matter where you put a body. A garden in the north end was just as good as a garden by the park. And the flat on the third floor was a stop-gap, not a final destination. In her heart Aliette knew she could not go back there in any permanent way.
Toward mid-morning, Monique buzzed again. Claude had something. Please come.
She headed down the hall. Monique asked, ‘Are you OK?’
‘Piaf died.’
Monique raced around her desk and hugged the inspector before the tears could start again.
Just in time. ‘Merci, Monique… I’m fine. I’m good…’ She breathed. She smiled.
Collecting herself, stepping into Claude’s domain, she mused that if Piaf were to be cremated his ashes would fit into a cigar box, maybe a hand-thrown clay jar. ‘I could keep him on my desk.’
Claude nodded but refrained from comment. Piaf was a private matter. They had to stick to the rule about leaving private stuff at home. And he knew that whatever he might say, it would surely be wrong and only add to the larger problem. Not easy trying to manage two separate relationships with the same person. Instead, he passed her the information just sent up from the municipal police detachment at Village-Neuf, a bedroom community thirty minutes away on the banks of the Rhine. ‘You should check the situation. It’s up your alley, or appears so.’ A body discovered on the shore. Found by two kids that morning. ‘If you don’t want it, give it to Patrice or Bernadette, depending.’ Inspector Patrice Lebeau was their Anti-gangs specialist. Inspector Bernadette Milhau, still a rookie, was focusing on Vice. A senior inspector knew whose skills fit with what crime. She also had tacit rights of first refusal on whatever case struck her fancy. ‘But if he floated across from one of our neighbours, it’ll be for you. Mm?’ Her own unlabelled specialty being the borderland defining the murky legal edge of France. ‘IJ’s already gone down,’ he added. IJ was Identité Judiciaire, their two-man forensics team. And now Claude smiled, trying to be encouraging — at least in his role as boss. At home, all he could do was dig in and hold his ground. ‘Go. It’ll help you get this off your mind.’ Whether he meant Piaf or them was left professionally unclear, hanging in the space between.
She rose, robotic, file in hand.
He smiled again. ‘I’m sure the right solution will come.’
Inspector Nouvelle descended to the garage and requisitioned a car from mechanics Joël and Paul. Sorry, the barf-green Opal with the fritzy clutch was the only vehicle not out or up on a hoist. Shedding her coat because it was a now sunny and rather humid early autumn day in Alsace, and in no big hurry — she was in mourning and mourners don’t rush — she headed out of town, took the slower D201 down to D105, then went east. The sickly coloured Opal brought her thinking back to Piaf, his poor tummy, always full of fur balls and bugs and only God knew what…