‘Oh, no, I’m not falling for that trick. I won’t be in the paper.’ He waggled his finger at her.
‘Understood.’ She moved along quickly, keeping her notebook closed so she didn’t spook him. ‘If I promise that I won’t reveal my source, will you tell me about the dead man?’
‘How are you so sure I know anything about a dead man?’
‘Because you’re sitting here watching everyone who moves along that path. In my line of work, I’ve learned it’s not uncommonfor the killer to stick around. Sniff out the investigation. Sometimes they’re family, other times a colleague or friend. It can be a stranger too’—she gave the man a long, steady look—‘but less often. The killer might even go to the funeral.’ She shook her head. ‘Honestly, the chutzpah of killers rarely surprises me.’
‘You speak like you’ve seen many dead bodies. Like a woman far older than you are.’
‘Death and destruction … reporting of the darker stories … it can age you,’ she said simply.
‘Hmm.’ Mael pulled a silver hip flask from his internal vest pocket, twisted off the lid and passed it to her for a sip.
Charlie caught a whiff of cheap red wine and shook her head. ‘Merci. Have to work when I get back to the hotel and I’ll fall asleep here in the sunshine if I have that.’
‘As you wish. That’s exactly what I plan on doing once this little visit is over, Charlie James. Got my accommodation sorted.’ He tapped the planks of the bench with his left hand as he poured red wine down his gullet with his right.
‘What can you tell me about the dead man in the forest?’ She counted to ten in her head to give space for Mael to answer.
Galvanised by the red wine, the wanderer burped and slapped his chest. ‘I saw him just after lunch yesterday. Just over there.’ He pointed to a patch of lawn under an elm tree a hundred metres or so from the food stalls. ‘His black suit was all I could see of him.’
‘All you could see?’ replied Charlie, who was now taking notes.
‘He was lying down, relaxed, asleep on a picnic blanket. Had a newspaper over his face to shade himself from the sun. He stayed there asleep all afternoon.’
‘Until dark?’ Charlie asked.
‘No idea.’ He took another sip of his wine. ‘I left at dusk to get to my soup kitchen. French onion, it was, proper like, not gruel. Generous with the comté.’ He sounded pleased.
Charlie shivered. Hadn’t Allard just said the man had been dead for over twenty-four hours, judging from the rigor mortis? Could it be that the man had already been shot and the newspaper had been draped over his face to keep prying eyes away from the body until he could be disposed of under the cover of darkness? It would take a tall, strong person to carry an eighty-kilogram body into the woods. Or multiple people.
‘How do you know the sleeping man is the dead man? You just said his face was concealed by a newspaper?’
‘So it was. But the clothes are the same. Same star on the collar.’
Charlie shot him a look.
‘Yes, I followed the shouts when the body was discovered by walkers at first light and went and had a look at the body myself. I didn’t touch anything.’ He held his hands up defensively. ‘Don’t tell the police, they’ll lock me up.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Anyway, the man was fast asleep. His friend was whistling a tune so loud that I asked him if he was worried he’d wake his companion.’
‘Friend?’ Charlie sat up straighter.
‘Yes. He was with a man. Tall, dark, short hair. Blue eyes. Very cold. Trimmed moustache.’ He combed his own beard with his fingers. ‘The man said he wasn’t worried a jot about the whistling. His exact words were: “I’m surprised you can’t hear the snoring from where you are. My friend sleeps like the dead.”’
Charlie shivered. ‘May I ask if the man you spoke to had an accent?’
‘Sure as eggs he did. German. No question.’
‘Certainement? Not Swiss? Sometimes they can sound the same.’ It was a long bow to try to connect Maisy Bell’s case to this one, but Charlie was trying to justify keeping it open in her mind, if not her work logbook.
‘Look, m’lady, maybe accents sound similar to your foreign ears, but my family has been performing across these regions for centuries. I tell you … I know a northern German accent when I hear one.’
‘Understood. May I ask where you are from, Mael?’
He waggled his finger again, shaking his head before taking another gulp from his flask. ‘My people are from all over. We belong everywhere and nowhere,’ he said sadly as he spat on the grass. ‘What about you? Where’re you from?’