Stifling Folds of Love Read online

  Stifling Folds of Love

  An Aliette Nouvelle Mystery

  John Brooke

  © 2011, John Brooke

  Ebook Edition 2011

  ISBN 978-1897109-85-4

  ISBN 1-897109-85-7

  Print Edition ISBN 978-1-897109-57-1

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, for any reason, by any means, without the permission of the publisher.

  Cover design by Terry Gallagher/Doowah Design.

  Photograph of John Brooke by René De Carufel.

  Acknowledgements

  ‘Verse of the Maid of Nagara’ is from The Three-Cornered World by Soseki, translated by Alan Turney and Peter Owen, Perigree Books; excerpt from ‘The Motive for Metaphor’ by Wallace Stevens is from Wallace Stevens, The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play, Vintage Books; lyrics excerpted from ‘Frou-Frou’ were written by Monréal and Blondeau, music by Chatau.

  We acknowledge the support of The Canada Council for the Arts and the Manitoba Arts Council for our publishing program.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Brooke, John, 1951–

  Stifling folds of love / John Brooke.

  I. Title.

  PS8553.R6542S75 2011 C813’.54 C2011-907599-7

  Signature Editions, P.O. Box 206, RPO Corydon

  Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3M 3S7

  www.signature-editions.com

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part 1

  1. The Pearl Effect

  2. Three Broken Hearts

  3. A Sullied Story

  4. Clippings

  5. Pearl’s Burden

  6. Gazing Up

  7. Total Fan

  8. Pumped-Up Cops

  9. Claude Calls on Pearl

  10. Bruno Weeps

  11. Adding Murky Innuendo to the Mix

  12. A Chat With Ray

  13. Dancin’ the Night Away

  14. For Claude?

  15. Tommi’s Place

  16. Sunday’s Bitter End

  17. Good Cop, Bad Cop?

  18. Didi Discovered

  19. Stifling Folds of Love

  20. Inquisition

  21. The Price to Pay

  Part 2

  22. A Very Specific Mandate

  23. A Question of Co-Enabling

  24. AdrénalineAlors!

  25. Some Prehistory

  26. Transcript of Interview With Remy

  27. Constructing a Deeper View of Tommi

  28. Claude in Exile

  29. Expert Opinion?

  30. Tracking Instincts

  Part 3

  31. Pearl’s Kiss

  32. Saturday at the Rembrandt

  33. Just a Guy With a Camera

  34. Sunday’s Worse than Saturday

  35. Remy Aggrieved

  36. Pushy Rose

  37. Lunch With Monsieur le Divisionnaire

  38. Breakthrough?

  39. Flying Blind

  40. The Judge Could See

  41. Anne-Marie Regrets

  42. Claude’s Mind

  43. Feeling Sage-Like

  44. Georgette Makes Her Move

  45. Tommi’s Mistakes

  46. Convergence

  47. Face in a Pool of Light

  48. Pearl’s Recurring Dream

  Epilogue

  About the author

  for Annie

  …for love without the folds

  Prologue

  They were keeping a close eye on Inspector Nouvelle that spring. The way she’d been smiling lately. Had she finally found someone? Everyone in the third-floor Police Judiciaire detachment at Rue des Bons Enfants was attentive to the investigator’s every move. PJ Commissaire Claude Néon nodded knowingly. Monique Sparr, Claude’s secretary, was positive she saw something. Which meant that everyone was catching snippets of surmising as they filtered down to Commissaire Duque’s busy City Police station occupying the second and first. Cops of all description beamed their curiosity when they encountered the inspector on the stairs. Pathologist Raphaele Petrucci observed her carefully whenever she came down to his basement morgue to view a body. Forensics specialists Charles Léger and Jean-Marc Pouliot of Identité Judiciaire were both sure they’d spotted traces of a blooming passion.

  For her part, Aliette had to wonder, Does it really show when you’re in love? Because in fact she was. Or hoped so. Still early days, one moves cautiously. There’d been no talk of anyone moving in. My place? Your place? It depended on the night. But it had been a beautiful change in her life since New Year’s Eve and it was still going strong in April when the problem of Pearl Serein arose. A gentle, unseasonably warm spring was a perfect time for love and the inspector was enjoying it. She just didn’t broadcast it. It was private. Love had not affected her professional abilities — as her results showed clearly. Au contraire, she told herself, being in love helped her do her work. They could speculate till they dropped. Aliette Nouvelle stayed mum and carried on.

  She could not have cared less about Pearl Serein and her fabulous life. Stardom was the last thing she needed. It went counter to her style. But the problem touched her: Love. Work. The basic virtues. A question of the well-tuned heart. Pearl’s life threw Aliette’s into turmoil.

  Because it was a time of confessional display. We French call it le déballage — literally, the unwrapping. Thus the verb déballer, in the figurative sense: to spill your most intimate secrets in the public square. Everywhere you looked someone was baring his heart. And everyone gleefully enjoyed a piece. The Pearl effect? It seemed Pearl Serein created a murky nexus wherein deeply private notions of romance converged, and each citizen was a separate entry point to the mystery.

  Our city is really very small. If nothing else, Pearl Serein proved that.

  Pearl Serein was a fantasy and nothing more. But this fantasy gripped us and revealed us. All of us. It started on a Friday, a Friday evening in our unusually gentle spring when three men died — each of them a leader in his field, three of our very best. Banker Jerôme Duteil was discovered first. Normally it would’ve been ruled a heart attack — because it was — and that would have been the end of it. But these weren’t normal times. There was a disturbing coincidence clouding the death of Monsieur Duteil. Popular radio personality Jean-Guy Gagnon also died that night. Then noted documentary filmmaker Pierre Angulaire was found on his office floor. Three within twenty-four hours, and in much the same manner, according to pathologist Petrucci’s preliminary prognostics. But it wasn’t the hearts. It was Pearl Serein.

  Commissaire Claude Néon latched onto this apparent fact.

  Although Inspector Nouvelle and Commissaire Néon worked closely together, their approach to the mystery was fundamentally different and diverged from there — dangerously, all things considered.

  And Pearl herself was nothing if not problematic to the process of ensuring justice for the dead.

  PART 1

  She was the focal point of light at which the totality of things converged.

  — Gustave Flaubert,

  A Sentimental Education

  1

  The Pearl Effect

  Saturday. Inspector Aliette Nouvelle had a major operation planned for the checkpoint at the Swiss border that afternoon and had come in to the office to finalize details. A certain car would be stopped and searched as it tried to enter Switzerland, its ultimate destination a town on the Dalmatian Coast. A well-connected car, where it came to Turkish drug channels. She had been working on this one all winter. Her counterparts in Switzerland, Austria, Italy and various jurisdictions along the shores of the former Yugoslavia and Greece were expecting big things. Commissaire Cl
aude Néon too. Her bust, Claude’s feather. So he was in that morning, working the phone confirming Swiss actions — and non-actions, composing final memos, signing forms. Which meant Monique had to be there too, to ensure letter-perfect presentation. Junior Inspector Bernadette Milhau was also in, on Duty Desk, because weekend duty is a right of passage. The four were gathered in Monique’s office, taking a break, sipping coffee. Monique was all aflutter. The news was too late for Le Cri du Matin, but the deaths of Jerôme Duteil and Jean-Guy Gagnon were all over the morning broadcasts. All reports mentioned the common link to Pearl Serein.

  Inspector Nouvelle wondered, ‘But who is Pearl Serein?’

  ‘Never heard of her,’ replied Commissaire Néon.

  So much for the Police Judiciaire’s two top investigators and their knowledge of the local social scene.

  ‘She’s always in Tommi’s column,’ Monique explained, ‘going to parties, falling in and out of love with interesting men. She was with both these guys, but then she dumped them.’

  Aliette remained in the dark. ‘And who’s Tommi?’

  ‘Le Vrai Tommi.’ Monique poured more coffee. ‘Celeb gossip guy in Le Cri du Matin?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ At the back with the birds and the gardening. Aliette had never really read it.

  Claude asked, ‘With them at the same time?’

  ‘Our Pearl could do it,’ Monique replied, vicarious pride suffusing her voice. ‘She’s amazing!’

  The discussion was interrupted by a call from the city police dispatch desk downstairs. They’d just heard from the beat cops who responded to a call from an east end building. One Pierre Angulaire had been found dead in his office. Someone from PJ should come and have a look.

  Bernadette Milhau said fine, drained her coffee and bustled out.

  Claude asked, ‘Pierre Angulaire — isn’t he some film guy?’

  Monique gasped, ‘Yes! And he was with her too.’ With this Pearl Serein.

  Aliette and Claude got back to work. When Inspector Milhau called an hour later saying she needed a second opinion, Claude was happy to oblige. The view from his office window showed a clear morning in Alsace. The temperature had dropped to more normal seasonal levels overnight. Sparse clouds were running quick on a fresh nor’westerly, the Vosges mountains had assumed a splendid green, the vines along the Wine Road were taking leaf. The invigorating air was a good enough reason for the commissaire to decide to personally lend his experience to his rookie’s uncertainty. He could sign international documents just as boldly in the back of a cab.

  He turned to his senior inspector. ‘Care to come along?’

  ‘Why not?’ Everything was pretty well in order for the afternoon’s operation.

  They joined Inspector Milhau, two uniformed beat cops and two SAMU (Services d’Aide Médicale d’Urgence) ambulance medics in the scarred and threadbare hallway on the low-rent east side. The tarnished brass plaque on the door read Les Productions Angulaires. Directly inside the cluttered but obviously low-rent office, a medic carefully lifted a blanket to reveal the victim rigid on the floor. His death-misted eyes were wide open. His arms hugged his chest as if he had just heard a great joke. Adding to the effect, the curve on his lips was hauntingly glib for a man stone dead where he lay. It looked like a heart attack. But this Pearl woman, the two others found last night: Claude called Dr. Raphaele Petrucci and requested that he come. Saturday or not, in a small prefecture the pathologist is also Légiste, the medical expert whose role it is to liaise with physicians and police in determining criminal cause in both the living and the dead.

  A too-thin woman in cowboy boots had been crying but was now collected. Nanette. She had been with the deceased for a dozen years. With an exasperated sigh, Nanette explained, ‘It’s very near what he looked like when he was getting rid of someone.’

  ‘Anyone in particular?’ Aliette asked.

  ‘Everyone? He was so stressed and depressed lately, not a lot of patience. If someone wasn’t on the same page for whatever reason, Pierre’s eyes would roll up like that — like: Oh God, why do I have to put up with such fools? And he’d tell them to get out. He was alienating a lot of people.’

  ‘What was he working on?’

  ‘Nothing much. We kept it going on little pieces for the regional news, regular enough thanks to his track record, but still hand-to-mouth. Mostly he was in perpetual pre-production on his Pearl project.’ Nanette reprised her large sigh. ‘Not that anyone in their right mind would ever license two hours on Pearl Serein. But he was beyond listening. It was getting embarrassing. Poor Pierre.’

  ‘His Pearl project. Meaning a film?’

  ‘A doc. Pierre only did documentary. He said he could easily deliver two hours.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘B’en, Pearl Serein.’ Obviously was implied; same presumptive tone as Monique’s. ‘Pierre was an expert. A broken-hearted expert.’

  Claude asked, ‘What he did say about her?’

  Nanette shook her head, glum, mystified. ‘Almost nothing. That’s what’s sad. He’d say, Nanette, this Pearl thing has so many layers! And he’d sit there for a week and think and think, make a few notes, then throw them away. He’d come out of it to earn some money stringing for the news, then sink straight back into his obsession. I talked to his last ex-wife once or twice, trying to find out if she had any idea…’ Nanette was still shaking her head.

  ‘Was she angry, his last ex-wife? How many did he have?’

  ‘Four. Everyone who loved him was angry! It was a waste of a man and his talent.’

  ‘I meant was she angry at this Pearl Serein.’

  ‘Not really. It’s like, well, she’s really just some schoolteacher, if you know what I mean.’ Nanette’s eyes were focused on Aliette — not Claude. ‘I think Pierre did it to himself.’

  Aliette understood. A woman knows which rival is deserving of real scorn. Or worse.

  ‘I think they all do,’ added Nanette.

  Claude asked, ‘Who?’

  ‘All Pearl’s sad ex-loves.’ Again Nanette’s response was pointed, as if Claude should know.

  Raphaele arrived with another uniformed cop wielding a camera. All present were quiet as the pathologist perused the body and the officer took pictures. ‘Get his face and eyes,’ requested Raphaele. The officer obeyed. ‘I mean very close.’ The officer adjusted, moved close.

  Aliette thought, Dead eyes are merely dead. It’s the body posture that gives effect. She noted that Pierre Angulaire had been a good looking man: six feet tall, full head of curly black hair, clean teeth, strong jaw. But the way he was lying there was daunting. As if he had answered a knock at the door, listened to an offer that made him laugh — then died. Wham: straight back on the floor.

  She sniffed him. Sometimes smell is the key. She smelled a third-day shirt. And death.

  Nanette asked the pathologist, ‘What do you think happened?’

  ‘Can’t say yet,’ replied Claude on Raphaele’s behalf.

  Nanette reached to touch the victim. Raphaele intercepted her hand. And smiled. ‘You mustn’t.’ Nanette returned the smile. She watched with overly polite interest as Raphaele set about exchanging and signing various official forms with the uniforms and SAMU people. Aliette thought the woman far too thin and perhaps as impetuous as the far-too-impetuous Petrucci. But though the inspector sensed something odd at this scene — maybe murder — she could not sense a murderess.

  Nor could Claude. After providing coordinates, Nanette was free to go.

  At first glance, Raphaele estimated the time of death at sometime the previous evening, which fit with Nanette’s description of her day’s activities, having left Pierre alone at six. Claude noted it was within the same reported frame as the other two men who had loved this Pearl Serein. He made another call, this time to Jean-Marc Pouliot of Identité Judiciaire, requesting his presence.

  ‘We need to have a look at this,’ Claude said in an official way. ‘Someone came calling.’

&nb
sp; The two uniforms were told to secure the site and canvass the building’s occupants, pending the arrival of IJ. The beat cops knew the PJ Commissaire had no right to ask for such a service, not without a mandate. They worked for Commissaire Duque, not Néon, and they’d both heard the légiste muttering ‘heart attack’ after the deceased’s assistant had left the scene. It wasn’t even suicide. But they obeyed. As did the SAMU medics when Claude told them to deliver Pierre Angulaire to the police morgue.

  Raphaele Petrucci was less acquiescent. Every aspect of police work costs money. Claude had leeway with his own time and that of his inspectors, but in ordering these extra services he was getting ahead of himself. Raphaele, though impetuous where it came to women, was ultra cautious when it touched on his career. He was openly dubious when Claude ordered him to make calls requesting that the bodies of Duteil and Gagnon be re-routed through his shop.

  ‘Weird eyes? Think Gérard will go for weird eyes?’

  He meant Chief Investigating Magistrate Gérard Richand. Also called the instructing judge, he or she weighs initial police reports and recommends charges to be laid by the procureur (public prosecutor), then assigns mandates and budgets relating to subsequent police investigations.

  ‘Just do it. Please.’ Waving off the doctor’s caution.

  Petrucci obeyed. Claude announced he was on his way to the other two scenes: Jerôme Duteil’s flat in the boutique district, and Jean-Guy Gagnon’s warehouse condo by the docks.

  It was almost noon. Inspector Nouvelle had her operation at the Swiss checkpoint to attend to. She would ride back to the office with Bernadette Milhau, then head down to Basel. Before going their separate ways, the inspector asked her commissaire, ‘Are you sure?’ Because Claude was being impetuous too.

  ‘This is interesting,’ said Claude. ‘You heard him. Those eyes: something not right. And three in one night? And the same woman? We should check it.’

  Aliette agreed, ‘Yes, it’s interesting.’ Later, she’d be wishing that she hadn’t.

  Like that, Claude got a bee in his bonnet. The Pearl effect had started.