Питер Мэй - I'll Keep You Safe

There was something about the way she said Braque’s name and rank that conveyed a hint of contempt. Braque rarely felt that her rank received the deference it merited. Although it had also occurred to her that it was perhaps not the rank but the gender behind it that failed to command respect.

The receptionist put her hand over the phone. ‘She asks if you could give her a few minutes.’

‘No. Tell her I’m on my way up now.’

Niamh looked dreadful when she opened the door to Lieutenant Braque. Her hair was a tangle of blonde curls, eye make-up smeared around her upper face, eyeliner clinging in coagulated clumps to her lashes. Tears and lack of sleep. The eyes themselves were bloodshot and gummy. Her skin was more grey than white, tinged green around the eyes.

She was fully dressed, but it was apparent from the dishevelled nature of her clothes that she had not undressed since yesterday. A glance beyond her revealed to Braque a bed still made up, but rumpled as if slept on rather than in. Unopened bottles of spirit miniatures lay scattered about the floor. A pair of shoes kicked off and lying at odd angles at the foot of the bed.

‘Come in.’ Niamh held the door open and stood back listlessly.

Braque walked into the stale warmth of the room, and for the first time put herself in Niamh’s shoes — the ones she had kicked off at some point during the night. How would she have reacted to the death of her own husband? Even if he was her ex. Or worse, if something had happened to one of the girls. That veneer of professional propriety that somehow got her through life would have dissolved into the mess that lay beneath it. She knew, without doubt, that she would simply have disintegrated. But none of that conveyed itself to Niamh. Braque unslung her leather satchel and placed it on the bed to open it. ‘You are free to leave Paris, Madame.’ She retrieved Niamh’s passport and a handful of papers.

Niamh seemed startled by the news. ‘What? Why? Have you caught the killer?’

‘No.’

‘But I’m no longer a suspect?’

Braque shrugged. ‘You are free to leave Paris, that is all.’

Now Niamh was confused. ‘You mean, I can go home, right? That’s what you’re saying?’

‘Yes.’

Niamh walked unsteadily towards the window, absorbing the news. She swept the hair back from her face with both hands and turned to confront Braque. ‘What about the email? Do you know who sent it?’

‘No.’

Niamh sighed her exasperation. This monosyllabic French policewoman was infuriating. ‘Someone came into my room and stole my iPad yesterday, did you know that?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘I reported it to reception. And someone called me last night.’ She nodded towards the bedside table. ‘Phoned the room. And when I answered it there was nobody there. Well, there was, but they didn’t speak. Wouldn’t answer me when I asked who it was.’

Braque said, ‘I’ll speak to reception about the iPad.’ She held out the papers she had taken from her satchel. ‘The pathologist has finished with your husband’s remains.’ And she realized how cold she must sound. But how else to put it? ‘As next of kin they will be released to you by a state-appointed undertaker in the Boulevard de Ménilmontant who will have prepared them for air transportation.’ She hesitated. ‘There are very strict rules that govern the shipment of bodies on commercial aircraft.’

Niamh felt sick. Reluctantly she took the sheaf of papers and glanced at the stamps and signatures on the half-dozen official documents which had been processed by a bureaucracy that would, no doubt, have applied the same degree of efficiency to ensuring the provenance of cheese.

‘Under no circumstances,’ said the lieutenant, ‘are your husband’s remains to be cremated. They are, and remain, evidence in a murder investigation.’ Implicit in this was the warning that they could at any time in the future ask for Ruairidh, or what was left of him, to be disinterred.

Niamh said sullenly, ‘You needn’t worry about that. There is no crematorium on the islands.’ And she recalled a decision that she and Ruairidh had made many years earlier which she had regretted ever since.

Braque saw a darkness cross her face, like the fleeting shadow cast by a cloud passing before the sun. A knock on the door broke the moment.

Niamh brushed past the policewoman to open it. A tall man in, perhaps, his late forties or early fifties stood awkwardly in the hall. Inclining to plumpness, his pale skin spattered with countless tiny freckles, his ginger hair going white at the temples and close-cropped across his skull.

‘Oh my God, Donald!’ Niamh threw her arms around him, and he stood holding her, emotional but embarrassed as she sobbed into his chest. ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’

His green eyes darted about in discomfort, and he offered a face to Braque that lay somewhere between acknowledgment and apology.

Niamh broke away and took his hand to lead him into the room, brushing away her tears. ‘This is Ruairidh’s big brother, Donald.’ She glanced at Braque. ‘This is the police officer investigating the murder. I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’

‘Lieutenant Braque.’ Braque turned to Niamh. ‘I have your contact details.’ She laid a business card on top of the dressing table. ‘If you need to contact me for any reason...’

Niamh nodded and said to Donald, ‘They’ve just released the body. We can take him home now.’

The taxi had gone before Niamh realized that it had dropped them in the wrong street. They were in the Rue des Rondeaux instead of the Boulevard de Ménilmontant, which sounded very different to her. But perhaps the confusion had been with the name of the pompes funèbres . The Rue des Rondeaux was full of funeral parlours, but not the one they were looking for. All the streets around Père Lachaise, possibly the most famous cemetery in Paris, were full of shops offering funeral services. A map at the Porte Gambetta revealed that the Boulevard de Ménilmontant ran along the bottom end of the cemetery. The most direct route to it was through the cemetery itself.

This was where the rich, and the famous, came to rest their bones for eternity. Writers, musicians, singers, poets. Even the transient and relatively insignificant American pop star Jim Morrison of The Doors had found unexpected celebrity by being buried here.

Père Lachaise seemed shrouded in a silence incongruous in the heart of the city. Visitors walked its cobbled streets in hushed reverence, passing among the tombs and mausoleums as leaves fell prematurely from trees which had not yet surrendered their greenery to the colours of autumn. But it had been a long, hot summer, and the foliage was burned and bone-dry.

Niamh and Donald stopped briefly to look at a guide to the locations of all the famous names residing here in this city of the dead. Balzac and Maria Callas. Chopin and Edith Piaf. Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein, Oscar Wilde. A roll-call of names celebrated across centuries of Western European culture. Ruairidh would not be joining them. He was just passing through.

From the main thoroughfare transecting the cemetery from east to west, they had a spectacular view out across the west side of Paris, towards the Seine and the Eiffel Tower. A view to die for.

Niamh and Donald had not spoken much since his arrival at the hotel. He had waited for her downstairs, booking their flights back to the island on his phone, while she showered and changed. And then in the taxi neither of them had felt inclined to talk. Her phone call to him in the middle of the night two days before had been traumatic enough. And Donald was typical of the post-war Scottish male. He would never show his emotions. Whatever he felt would be held inside him like a clenched fist, and prised free only with acute embarrassment.