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

Typical cramped student accommodations. Hovels was more descriptive, she thought. A shared hall toilet; the odor of mildew coming from the dirt-ingrained corners. Peeling floral wallpaper illuminated by a grime-encrusted skylight that let in only a sliver of light. Dust motes drifted in it and she sneezed. The chords of an amplified electric guitar reverberated from down the hall.

She knocked on the third door. No answer. Knocked again.

“Krzysztof Linski?”

The guitar drowned out her voice, her knocks. Either Krzysztof hadn’t returned yet or he was ignoring the raps on his door. His attitude had become belligerent; she doubted he’d welcome her. She’d have to convince him to trust her, open up.

The guitar stopped, someone swore. She heard footsteps below, slapping on the stairs.

A red-haired, pale-faced tall scarecrow of a mec edged past her and inserted a key into the lock on Krzysztof’s door.

She thought fast. “So you’re Krzy’s roommate.”

He nodded.

“I’m supposed to meet him.”

He shrugged.

Unsociable, and no conversationalist. Or was he mute?

“Mind if I wait?”

“Suit yourself.” He actually spoke as he started to shut the door.

“Inside?” She didn’t wait for an answer.

Once she was inside she realized the problem. The attic room wasn’t much bigger than a closet. Two people standing in it would touch shoulders. She hoped the mec wasn’t about to change his clothes.

Orange crates with slats for shelves supported piled textbooks and a Polish-French dictionary. On one side of the tiny room there was a sleeping bag crumpled on a Japanese straw futon. The mec stooped; still his shoulders touched the sloping wood ceiling. She could imagine him sticking his head out the skylight, like a giraffe, to breathe. A pair of black denims and a tuxedo under plastic wrapping hung from the rafters. Perhaps Krzysztof moonlighted as a waiter at fancy restaurants or catered affairs as many students did. She filed that thought away for later.

The mec set his backpack on the floor, sat down cross-legged, and pulled his damp sweater over his head, then started on his T-shirt.

“Sorry, I’ll turn around . . .”

In answer, he pulled closed a little curtain suspended on shower hooks—like those in the sleeper compartments of trains—for privacy. His welcoming skills rivaled his conversation for charm.

The small corkboard on the opposite wall, pinned thickly with photos, ticket stubs and fliers, caught her attention. She looked closer. Photos of a demonstration, Krzysztof carrying the banner of MondeFocus, groups of young people handing out leaflets clustered around a pillar that she recalled; it belonged to the Panthéon.

No one she recognized. Another dead end. She glanced at her Tintin watch.

“Any idea when Krzysztof will get back?”

“Not anytime soon,” the mec said from behind the curtain.

“Why’s that?”

“His stuff’s gone. Guess he forgot to tell you.”

“But the tuxedo?”

“He hated that tuxedo.”

Done a runner. Lost him. Again.

As she was about to stand up, she saw several MondeFocus pamphlets stuck halfway into a dictionary. She’d take one, get the address, and ask around for him there. She coughed to cover her actions as she slid a leaflet out.

A photo fell to the floor. A group shot of student types sitting in front of the Panthéon. And then her heart skipped a beat. She saw the dead girl—straw blonde hair, wearing jeans and a denim jacket, a serious expression on her face. Sitting next to her were Krzysztof, two other women, and two men. But the blonde girl didn’t look pregnant.

The curtain was pulled back. “Jealous type, aren’t you?” he said.

She thought quickly. When caught, brazen it out. And pointed to the blonde girl. “Then she is his girlfriend!”

“What else?”

“For me, eh, it’s casual.” She shrugged. “I met Krzysztof two days ago,” she said, improvising. “But he owes me two hundred francs. Do you know his friends or where he hangs out?”

“You know him a day longer than me.” He shrugged. “No clue.”

This one was really helpful!

All the way down the stairs she thought of Krzysztof’s look of recognition as he saw the dead woman’s face, his reaction to the pages of the Regnault files that he’d picked up and scanned, his parting shot, “You work for them .” It all tied together . . . but she didn’t know how.

She caught the bus, sat in the rear, and turned the photo over. “Orla, Nelie, me, Brigitte, MondeFocus antinuke” was the inscription, but there was no date.

So Orla was the blonde woman in the morgue, his girlfriend, and both were involved with MondeFocus. Strange that he’d refused to identify his girlfriend. Then she wondered if the dead woman might have been the mother of his child. And why would Orla have telephoned her for help and entrusted her infant to Aimée? But now that she had the MondeFocus address, she had someplace to start.

Aimée debated calling the flics and dropping the information she had so far into their hands. But she knew what they’d say. No proof this Orla was the mother or Krzysztof, the father. Why wouldn’t the dead woman have left the baby with Kryzsztof if he was the father? She decided to postpone making any decision until she received the results of the autopsy. First she had to go shopping.

SHE STARED AT the Monoprix aisle crowded with diapers, formula, teething rings, bibs, nonirritant soap . . . endless. How could tiny babies require all this? Every package bore labels color coded to age and weight. Endless varieties of formula, including soy and lactose-free. A large display printed with symptoms and arrows cross-referenced photos of homeopathic herbs for diaper rash, floral remedies for colic, a veritable rainbow of products for ages zero to five; it resembled the duty-free brochure on an Air France 747. Her mind balked; she was overwhelmed. Unless it was for shoes, shopping wasn’t her forte.

Did it have to be this complicated, did she need to take courses? In Madagascar, women squatted by thatched huts, letting their diaperless babies do their business in the white sand, then rubbed them with coconut oil. No vast crowded Monoprix aisle for them.

Her hand brushed a booklet, Using a Pacifier or Not . . . the Hidden Traumas. Here was a new world, new worries . . . pacifier trauma?

She had to get a grip; it couldn’t be that difficult. She looked for the newborns section, figuring the baby weighed less than five kilos, like her laptop. But she stood devastated by the array of baby wipes, scented and unscented; shampoos; vitamins. She would need hours to read the labels, to compare and match them to the baby’s skin condition and digestive disposition. She didn’t have that kind of time; she had work to do—a body that had been found in the Seine to identify, her security programming assignment to complete . . .

She needed a method to bring order out of confusion.

Within three minutes she’d located several women with infants. One held a baby in a carrier across her chest, its pink knit cap with rabbit ears poking up, who looked the right size. She trailed the woman to the baby aisle. Every time the woman selected an item from the shelf and put it in her cart, Aimée followed suit.

With a full cart she stood at the cash register.

“You sure you want the night-control protection diapers for a newborn and for a ten-month-old?” the cashier asked with a wink. “Had them close together, eh?”

Aimée reddened. “ Oui . . . non , I mean you can’t be too careful at night.”

A woman chuckled behind her in the long checkout line. She stammered merci , grabbed her change. Ran out and hailed a taxi, jumped in, and piled her bags on the seat.