‘No one has stepped forward to claim the body and there have been no reports of Romani camps in the Neuilly area—or Tours—of late.’
‘A lone traveller,’ said Charlie sadly as she remembered his kindness. A velvet-clad philosopher on a park bench. ‘Who would do this?’
‘The two incidents may be related. Albu may have been blackmailing the killer in Tours. Certainly, both are shots in the back of the head with a nine-millimetre weapon. But it’s all circumstantial evidence. Romani people, travellers, sometimeshave the unfortunate reputation of being hustlers. Maybe it was a robbery or a bribery gone wrong.’
‘Albu—Mael—didn’t strike me as a hustler. He read my palm …’
Detective Allard’s face creased with scepticism for a second before he composed it into a polite smile. ‘I understand this is a shock. A witness is dead—’
‘Are you confirming these two murders are related?’
‘Not yet. But I’m working both cases and I can’t help but compare them. I’m looking for possible links. I would be remiss not to. We have two dead bodies that have turned up in forests with gunshot wounds to the back of the neck. One victim had cash stolen. We have not been able to find anyone who knows Mael to confirm what he may have carried on his person.’
Charlie remembered the elm leaf in her notebook from the Tours forest. ‘Did Jouet have any leaves stuck to the soles of his shoes?’
‘He did,’ Allard replied. ‘But he was found on a forest floor. That’s hardly surprising.’
‘Yes, but he never did set foot in that forest, did he? His body was carried in.’
‘Ah.’
‘So, both Jouet and Mael had leaves on the bottom of their shoes. Were they leaves from the same forest?’
‘Unconfirmed. But good point, I can ask our technicians to check that.
‘This brings us to a new homicide yesterday. Monsieur Jean Auclair.’ He spread the photographs of the victim across his table. ‘Auclair was also shot in the back of the neck. See?’ He tapped the dark entry hole with his pen.
Charlie winced and nodded. ‘Why didn’t I hear of this?’
‘It came in late yesterday evening, too late for the press to get wind of it. And I knew you were coming down this morning, so I thought best to discuss it directly. We don’t want people jumping to wild conclusions.’ Detective Allard gave Charlie a pointed look. ‘Do you know where we found Auclair’s body, Mademoiselle James?’
‘Charlie, please.’
‘Okay. Charlie?’
She shook her head.
‘Saint-Cloud. At the edge of the woods.’ Allard waited a beat for her to take this in. ‘Our victim was an estate agent. According to his secretary, who I spoke with this morning on the telephone, he was showing a new client a pretty three-bedroom villa on the outskirts of Saint-Cloud the day before yesterday. His secretary became concerned when Auclair did not return the villa’s keys to the office—apparently, Monsieur Auclair was a stickler for office procedures.
‘There is also the matter of five thousand francs that Auclair did not put in the office deposit box. He had collected this rent money from a tenant earlier that day on a routine inspection. Again, most unusual, and so we consider the possibility that this third victim of a gunshot wound was robbed of the cash.’
‘InSaint-Cloud!’ said Charlie with emphasis. ‘Surely there could be a link with Maisy Bell.’ Charlie hastily filled Allard in on the broad facts of the case. She pulled Gigi Rockefeller’s letter from her notebook and passed it to him.
He took his time reading it with pursed lips. When he was finished, his brow furrowed and he said gently, ‘I’m certainly not ruling anything out. But this particular case of a missing young woman was closed by the Metro Police.’ He paused.
‘I know that this Maisy Bell case feels personal for you. I can sense this. I recognise it, Charlie. But let me warn you, this is a deep, dark hole you are digging for yourself. It will stop you from pursuing other cases. It will hamper your reporting of these cases, Jouet, Mael Albu, now Auclair. These are real deaths and they deserve real justice.’
‘The Maisy Bell case was closed by the Metro Police, not by me,’ she replied vehemently, remembering her promise to Clementine Bell. If Charlie James was being instructed to report on men who were already dead, surely she could keep room in her mind for a woman who just might be alive?
Allard and Charlie stood on opposite sides of the desk staring at each other, an abyss of hurt and confusion swimming between them. Also, an understanding that sometimes cases are not solved. That gaps in evidence can be insurmountable.
Charlie looked at the photos of Jouet, Albu and now Auclair on Allard’s desk, and the red pins in the map of provincial France.Charlie would report on the deaths at hand. The mystery deaths of three unrelated men.
Allard came and stood beside her, picking up the photographs and placing them in neat rows. The first row was an eerie line of bullet wounds to three different necks. Same place at the back of the skull.
‘See,’ he said, ‘scorching on the skin, which indicates close range. The killer was close to the victims, behind them. This indicates the victims trusted him.
‘The second row is to your point about the leaves. Look at the shoes of all three deceased.’