Peter May - Extraordinary People

He replaced the lid and lifted up a moulded pewter crucifix, adorned with the figure of Christ. It was about fifteen centimeters long. He turned it over, examining it minutely. ‘There’s something engraved on the back.’ He produced a small eyepiece to magnify it. ‘It’s a date. April 1st.’ He looked up at all the faces looking down at him from around the edge of the pit. ‘Is it a joke?’

‘Do you hear us laughing?’ the police chief said grimly.

The forensics officer laid the crucifix back in the bottom of the trunk and lifted a small disk which looked like a bronze coin. ‘It’s a lapel pin.’ He examined it. ‘Two men on a single horse in relief on the front. An inscription around the perimeter.’ He used his eyeglass again. ‘ Sigilum Militum Xpisti ,’ he read. Then, ‘Latin, I think. No idea what it means.’ He put it back in the trunk and picked up what seemed to be another coin. But it turned out to be a simple metal disk engraved with the word Utopique . ‘Looks like a name tag for a dog.’

The officer laid it down and picked up the final item in the trunk. Another bone. ‘Doesn’t belong to the arms,’ he called. ‘Too short to be from a leg. I don’t know what it is.’ He looked up again, his face a mask of confusion. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘What’s all this stuff supposed to mean?’

But Enzo knew what it meant. He stared into the pit, focused on the contents of the trunk. The sickening realisation had already dawned on him that these body parts, and the things found with them, were just more pieces of a much bigger puzzle. And only the beginning of some kind of macabre treasure hunt for the remaining bits of the murdered man.

They drove up Avenue President Wilson to the Place du Trocadéro. Across the river, the Left Bank fell away below them, still dominated by the Eiffel Tower. This close, it was a massive presence, its unmistakable girdered steel structure piercing the evening sky. On the concourse of the Place des Droits de l’Homme, crowds had gathered to watch an anti-China demonstration by the extreme religious group Falun Gong, whose leader claimed to be a visitor from Outer Space. Enzo wondered where he had parked his flying saucer.

The cafés around the Place du Trocadéro were doing brisk business. There were queues standing outside Carette, people desperate for seats on the terrasse . They were in the sixteenth arrondissement , after all, and this was the place to be seen. Worth standing in line for twenty minutes with your Shih Tzu tucked under your arm.

Enzo felt as if all his faculties of perception had deserted him. The items found in the trunk under the shell in Toulouse made not the least sense to him. Not that there had been even five minutes to consider them. He and Raffin and Nicole had spent most of the night being questioned by police. A long, sleepless night. And then, this morning, he had been summoned to Paris and a rendezvous with the French Minister of Justice, otherwise known as the Garde des Sceaux, literally the Keeper of the Seals, one of the most powerful and prestigious posts in government. Political master of both the police and the French justice system. Enzo had assumed that the Minister wanted to congratulate him on the success of his investigation.

Raffin had a more cynical take on it. ‘They’re going to warn you off.’

‘If I was going to be warned off, surely I would have been summoned to her office at the Ministry? Not invited to a private dinner at her apartment.’

Raffin shook his head. ‘If she called you to her office, that would make it official. And you would run from the building screaming “Cover up!” Dinner in her apartment means it’s all off the record. She’ll appeal to your sense of duty, request that you desist, rather than order it.’

‘But why? What has the government got to hide?’

‘Its embarrassment. Ten years ago the top advisor to the Prime Minister disappeared. It was a mystery. No one could explain it. The papers were full of it. For a while. And then it just went away. And it remained a mystery. Everyone could live with that. But you’ve just proved that he was murdered. Not only murdered, but dismembered, and bits of his body strewn about the country. And now people are going to want to know why. It’s already caused an uproar in the press, and when my piece appears in Libération tomorrow on the discovery in Toulouse, the government is going to have a very red face. The leader columns are going to be asking why, with all the resources at their disposal, the government and the police in ten years were unable to solve the mystery of Gaillard’s disappearance, when a biology professor from Toulouse could do it in under a week.’ Raffin grinned. ‘I tell you, Enzo, your name’ll be mud at the Élysée Palace.’

‘Well, at least it’s mud in classy places,’ Enzo said.

Raffin turned his car into the Avenue Georges Mandel. A treelined walkway between the two carriageways was named after the opera singer Maria Callas. Raffin pulled up outside the apartment block at number thirty-three, opposite the late diva’s former apartment. Enzo got out and stood uncomfortably on the pavement, unaccustomed to the formality of a suit and collar and tie. The air was soft and warm after the heat of the day. Kids on roller blades drifted past. A young couple stood embracing and kissing unashamedly in the middle of the street. A man with a young girl perched on the back of his bike cycled by at a leisurely rate. The child turned her head to stare at Enzo with naked curiosity.

Raffin leaned across to the open passenger door. ‘Don’t let her bully you, Enzo. Let me know how you get on.’

Enzo watched Raffin’s car head back towards the Trocadéro, and he turned to look up at the apartments behind him. Five floors clad in pale stone hacked from the catacombes of Paris. An inner courtyard reverberated to the sound of voices from the open windows of a first-floor apartment. Enzo could see figures in dinner jackets and evening dress milling around a large salle with champagne flutes in their hands. But that wasn’t his destination. He pressed a buzzer, and after some moments a woman’s voice responded.

‘Enzo Macleod for Madame Marie Aucoin,’ Enzo said, and an electronic mechanism released the lock on the door. He crossed a mosaic floor, passing between marble pillars to a red-carpeted staircase, and climbed two floors to the apartment of the Minister of Justice.

She opened the door herself. He had seen her on television many times and had always thought her a handsome woman. But she was even more attractive in the flesh. She was just forty-five years old, young to have been appointed to such a powerful position. Long, black hair fell to her shoulders, a loosely parted fringe above a lean, youthful face. Her full lips parted in a wide smile. Dark blue eyes radiated unusual warmth. She was smaller than Enzo had imagined, a sheer black evening dress clinging to a slim figure, the slash of her V-neck revealing the ivory white skin of her neck, and just the hint of a cleavage between small breasts.

‘Monsieur Macleod, I’m so pleased you could come.’

Enzo wondered if he’d had any choice in the matter. ‘It’s my pleasure, Madame Le Ministre.’

She smiled at his clumsiness in addressing her and presented him with her hand. He took it awkwardly. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Come in.’

Light spilled into the hall from leaded windows. Exotic, hand-carved wooden figurines stood on a marble-topped dresser. A huge antique armoir reached almost to the corniced ceiling.

‘Lyonnaise,’ Marie Aucoin said. ‘Louis Quatorze.’ She smiled. ‘You know, there is a depository in the thirteenth arrondissement of priceless antique furniture from which government ministers can choose to furnish their offices. Sadly we must furnish our homes at our own expense. Which is a pity, since they don’t really pay us very much.’