Cara Black - AL07 - Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

Hurry, she had to hurry, to catch him before he reached the Metro or hopped on a bus and disappeared.

She saw him, already half a block ahead of her, crossing Pont Morland, and she ran to catch up with him. Below her, the anchored houseboats creaked, shifting in the rising Seine. She finally drew level with him, gravel crunching under her heels, two blocks further on, on Quai Henri IV.

“Excuse me, I need to speak with you,” Aimée said, gasping for breath.

His eyes darted behind her as he fussed with the zipper of his hooded jacket. Eyes that were red rimmed and bloodshot. Had he been crying?

“Why?”

“I’m sorry but in the morgue—”

“Who are you?” He shifted his feet.

Young, no more than twenty, she thought. “Aimée Leduc,” she introduced herself. “Did you know . . . the victim?”

“Know her?” He averted his face. “My cousin’s missing, but that wasn’t her.” His agitation was noticeable as he zipped and unzipped his sweatshirt. There was a slight compression of syllables at the ends of his words. Was he a foreign student perhaps?

“You saw the article in the paper. Are you sure this woman wasn’t your cousin?”

He backed away. “Yes.”

She handed him her card.

“‘Leduc Detective, Computer Security?’” He stiffened. “What do you want?”

“Didn’t you recognize her?”

“As I told the flic, I didn’t know her.”

“ Non , you said your cousin was missing.”

And she even doubted that. She wished he’d stand still. A bundle of nerves, this one.

“Please, I’m not a flic , but I need to establish her identity. It’s vital.”

He broke into a run. She sprinted and finally caught him by his sleeve. Ahead, an old man scattered bread crumbs to a flock of seagulls by the bouquiniste , the old secondhand bookseller’s stand.

“Maybe I can help you,” she said, panting and clutching his arm.

“A computer detective can help me with what?”

He pulled away, knocking her shoulder bag to the ground. The papers in the Regnault file spilled onto the pavement.

“Sorry. Look, I’m in a hurry.” He bent down, picked them up, and then stared at the pages he held, before slowly handing them back to her.

She caught his sleeve before he could take off again.

“If you’re illegal, that’s not my business. But if you know her identity, that is my business.”

Instead of showing fear at the intimation that he might be an illegal immigrant, he bristled. “I’m an émigré ; I have been granted political asylum. But the manipulations of ministries and business here are just as bad as it was under the Communists. You call this a corporate economy, but it’s all the same.”

What was with the political jargon? Though he had a point.

“Tell me her name, tell me where she lived.”

A bus crossed Pont de Sully, slowing into the bustop on their right.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

How could she reach this stubborn kid? She wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. Two nearby matrons holding shopping bags paused in their conversation and moved away from her.

She stepped closer to him, so close she could see small beads of perspiration on his brow.

“You work for them! I’ve seen the names in your papers,” he accused her. And he took off, jumping into the rear door of the bus before it took off.

Them? Regnault? What was going on? He knew something. But she couldn’t chase him on the bus. She had another idea. He wouldn’t get away so easily next time.

BACK AT THE MORGUE, Aimée spoke to an older man with a handlebar mustache who sat at the reception center. Behind him were shelves of files and a barred cage in which a bright green parrot perched. Since the morgue’s reception floor wasn’t a sterile environment and due to Ravic’s seniority he managed to bring his feathered pride and joy to work. “ Ça va, Ravic?” she asked. “Pirandello got any new languages under his beak?”

Ravic grinned. “Esperanto—he took to it like his mother tongue.”

His claw-footed wonder had won prizes, even talked on an RTL radio pet show once.

“Do me a favor, Ravic. Let me see the visitors’ log.”

“Eh? Didn’t you sign in?”

Of course she had; she’d had to show her ID. The student would have done so, too.

She leaned closer over the chipped Formica counter. “It’s embarrassing. I just saw an old friend, but I’ve forgotten his name.”

Ravic, one of her father’s old poker crowd, smoothed his mustache between his thumb and forefinger. “Regulations, Mademoiselle Aimée. I can’t.”

“Of course, I understand. But you could just slide the book across.” She flashed a big smile, lowering her voice. “We’re meeting for coffee and I feel stupid.”

“A chip off the old block, like they say,” he said. “I’d like to, eh, but I’m sorry.”

Ravic had aged little in the five years since she’d last seen him. She wondered how her father would have looked, had he lived.

“If I let you, everyone else and their mothers will want to . . .”

“Ravic, no one has to know.” She grinned, wishing he’d relent. A line had formed behind her; someone cleared his throat. “Just turn the log a little more to the right so I can read his name. That’s all.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “For old time’s sake then.” Ravic slid the register in front of her. There was a blue scrawl under her signature but it was undecipherable.

She thought hard. She’d shown her ID; he would have had to do so as well.

“Ravic, it’s not legible,” she said. “Remember anything from his ID?”

“A student card, that’s all,” he said. “I’m sorry , Mademoiselle Aimée.” He raised his hand to beckon to the person in line behind her.

She had to persist, couldn’t leave without something. Ravic had been a formidable poker player; he always remembered all the cards that had been played.

“You need to see an ID with an address,” she said. “Remember anything from this one?”

He scratched his cheek. “Polish?” Then he shook his head. “I’m not sure. So many people came today.”

“That looks like an L at the beginning and it ends with an I,” she persisted.

“Maybe it’s a Polish name,” he said.

She took a guess. “Lives near the Sorbonne or he used to.”

“That’s right. Rue d’Ulm.” He grinned. “My wife’s father worked on rue d’Ulm, I remembered thinking that.”

She pointed to the scrawl. “Look again, Ravic. Does anything jog your memory?”

He shrugged. She heard shuffling. A long line stretched behind her now. He didn’t remember. Disappointed, she turned as an irritated woman edged in front of her.

“Aha . . . that actress,” Ravic said. “Sounded like that actress.”

She paused and looked back. “Which actress . . . You said it sounded Polish.”

“Rhymes with Nastassja Kinski.”

“You mean Linski?”

He winked. “Got it in one.”

KRZYSZTOF LINSKI WAS the name she’d found listed in the phone directory at an address on rue d’Ulm. He lived in a sand-colored stone building near the Panthéon, a few doors down from the Institut Curie and the Lebanese Maronite Church. The ground floor contained a bar/pub with posters advertising heavy metal and rockadelic nights. Bordering the nearby Sorbonne, this was a student area, the Latin Quarter. The building had no elevator but there was a flight of wide red-carpeted stairs with oiled wood banisters, leading to apartments containing lawyers’ and psychiatrists’ offices. The staircase narrowed to bare wooden steps as it reached the sixth floor, which held a row of chambres de bonnes , former maids’ rooms.