The Art of Murder (23 page)

They had seen the place, hot as hell up
there, and this early in the season.

“
I have other paintings.
Don’t get the wrong idea. They’re stored in a shed at a friend’s
house.”

“
We wondered about that.
Only one painting, Oh, yes, and a naked girl. Did you have some
sort of a plan?”

“
I know how it
looks.”

“
So. Theo hasn’t been dead
that long.” Andre turned the screws a little tighter.

“
She’s alone now. Her only
means of support is singing. I offered a few francs, not much
really, if she would pose for me. For all I know, she might have
done it before, or even been a whore. I don’t care about any of
that. By the way…if you harm one hair on her head…”

He didn’t finish. There was no need to.
The rest remained unsaid, and no one took it too
seriously.

“
No, we just wondered why
she killed Monsieur Duval.” Henri’s timing could have been a little
better.

Alexis threw his head back and laughed,
and laughed, and laughed.

“
You guys are just too
precious.” Alexis sat with sparkling good humour in his eyes and a
look of real affection on his face.

Except for some details, such as his
landlord, who would vouch for when he rented the place, putting a
small deposit on it until he moved in, there didn’t seem to be as
much here as they had hoped. Gilles was about to tap on the window
when Henri, in some blinding fit of inspiration, asked what clearly
Levain thought was a dumb question, although there really are
none.

“
Do you have any suggestions
for us?”

“
Suivez les argent, mes amis.
Suivez
les argent.”

Follow the money, my
friends. Follow the money.

It was good advice, if only they had
something to go on. Maybe the man was right. Maybe it was time to
wade a little deeper into the paper trail. Gilles wondered if
Alexis really knew anything, or if he was being just
intuitive.

On that note, the interview was over,
and Maintenon’s rap on the panel was welcome enough to those
inside. The wink Alexis gave to the mirrored panel was just an
afterthought, yet there was an ironic message there as
well.

Alexis was an extremely intelligent
young man. It would be wise not to under-rate him.

Chapter
Seventeen

Roger was a forensic
accountant

“
Charpentier’s daily running
totals for the local plant all look pretty clean.” Roger Desjarlais
was a forensic accountant, often consulted by police and other
authorities on matters such as this. “The other plants are similar,
with varying degrees of sloppiness, according to the individual
manager’s personality, and I suppose the help available. The more
overworked a person is, the more sloppy the book-keeping. He’s
actually the best of the bunch.”

“
He seems very competent as
far as that goes.” Gilles nodded in agreement.

His knowledge of business was all
related to police work, in which he had spent his entire life. It
was another field of human endeavour where he would always be a
stranger. Running totals involved things like people on hand on a
given day, and their hours, and their rates of pay. These were kept
and submitted on a daily basis by department heads and
foremen.

“
Things like consumables,
shipments received, and orders shipped from their warehouse. Things
like the electricity are entered in a monthly ledger. Parts from
other suppliers have to be kept track of and paid for, or shipped
for return. But the errors are of a small order, and in fact there
is a small surplus of unaccounted-for cash. It’s nothing too
outrageous, but it just goes to show you what can
happen.”

“
Ah.” Gilles listened
intently as always. “Anything else?”

“
Yes.” Roger’s beady gaze
transfixed him just slightly below the heart, and then he met
Gilles’ look with a shrug. “More instinct than
anything.”

Gilles’ heart leapt
strangely.

“
What?” His own instincts so
far hadn’t done them much good.

But Roger had instincts too.

“
That
Babineaux—amazing.”

“
What? What do you mean?”
The needed a new angle, or that most dangerous and self-fulfilling
of desires, fresh blood.

“
The man is a
psychopath.”

“
What? What the hell are you
getting at?” Gilles hung on his every nuance, almost afraid to
breathe, as who knew what might set Roger off on a tangent. “Come
on!”

This case was becoming personal to
Gilles, which theoretically shouldn’t happen.

“
I have, and I can say this
unequivocally, never seen a set of books like that. They’re
perfect, Gilles, I mean it. They balance perfectly, right down to
the last centime. Oh, Gilles, but you haven’t heard the best
part.”

Gilles jaw was hanging and he shut it.
He’d never heard of this before himself, in fact his own household
accounts were never perfect even in their simplicity. He didn’t
know exactly what he had in cash in his own pocket, for that
matter, nor how much he had at home, or in the bank. He didn’t
really know what his next pay-cheque might be, not exactly, not
down to the last hundredth of a franc.

“
Hah! Unbelievable! But
maybe that’s why they hired him, eh? For all that high-powered
expertise.” Gilles recalled from his notes that Babineaux had been
with the firm for about two and half years, which wasn’t that long,
really. “Hmn. Interesting.”

“
No, seriously, Gilles. They
were perfect. And this is the best part. He hadn’t made one single
false entry. That’s when we put a big ‘X’ in there and go to the
next line. That’s so the next person can read it. But he never
missed one. No scribbles or deletions. I find that
frightening.”

Roger considered his next
words.

“
It’s possible he keeps a
rough copy, but even so—even so.”

“
All right, Roger, we’ll
bear it in mind. We have to talk to him again anyway, I don’t know,
we’ll find something to ask him about. Security threats,
disgruntled ex-employees, or something.”

“
Really? I’d like to meet
him.” Roger was only half joking.

In his eyes, Babineaux was quite a
specimen, which was just what Gilles had him down as anyway. Still,
it was food for thought.

***

His feet were wet, his socks were wet.
His shoes were wet, his jacket steamed on the radiator and his
shirt still felt damp on top of his shoulders and down his back.
The really strange thing was that he actually felt good. It was
hard to fathom sometimes. The grey of the day, the dim light coming
in through the window, held at bay by the cheerful light of the
desk lamp, wasn’t the source of this mood. It was something inside
of him that did it. Some well of inner strength came up and made
everything all right again. He wished it would happen more often.
The knowledge that it could happen, was enough to keep him going
sometimes, waiting for the blessed relief.

Attitude is the filter of perception,
which forms the basis of subjective reality. While Gilles
understood that he had been suffering for some time, what really
surprised him were those odd moments of happiness. When someone
told a joke and the laughter went on a little too long, it was a
release. It was the contrast that made the effect of his misery
more apparent.

He was reading the case notes for the
twentieth time, or at least trying to when the phone rang. It was
Roger, who he thought had only just left the office a half an hour
ago. He glanced at the clock. Hours had gone by, a discovery he had
been making a lot lately.

“
Yes?” Gilles wondered if he
had left an umbrella behind, as the day was pissing rain and
everyone and everything was slightly damp.

“
Gilles. In the last few
days, the stock of Duval Industries has dropped a little over
twelve percent.”

“
Ah. That is interesting,
but by no means pivotal.” Gilles had expected some ramifications to
the firm once the primary shareholder was dead.

He wondered how the other shareholders
felt about it. However, this was a motive against murder, rather
than in favour of it.

“
It’s interesting, Gilles.
I’m going to keep an eye on it.” Roger was calling from somewhere
public.

There were voices and clinking spoons
or something very much like it in the background.

“
On what? What are you
saying?” Gilles was grateful for the distraction, for his eyes were
very tired and all the notes were becoming hard to read.

He was becoming burned out by his
emotions.

“
Gilles, after Duval, there
are a small number of shareholders. One or two have in fact put
shares on the market, which is a common thing, and they’re selling
blocks of them. There is nothing really unexpected there. That’s no
reason to kill someone. It’s better to sell when they’re high,
right?”

Gilles knew that much about
commerce.

“
Where are you? At the
Exchange?” Gilles was a little confused, as Roger was an
accountant, although he was also very sharp with his own
investments.

Roger knew everybody, and handled his
own transactions.

“
Ah, no, I’m having lunch
with a friend. Anyhow, what is interesting is that someone else is
buying up those stocks. They’re buying them up in large quantities.
It may be nothing, but it’s interesting. It’s a pretty sound
investment, although there is some risk. The company wasn’t in any
financial trouble, and the product line is good. But if you think
about it, that’s not a bad premium—you buy low and you sell high.
Right?”

“
Of course.” Gilles thought
it was awfully thin, but of course murders committed in the heat of
the moment didn’t compare to the well thought out ones. Most
killings were over a few heated words, or fifty centimes worth of
cigarettes.

Most murders were domestic disputes, or
back-alley stabbings over turf or pride, or vanity, or happened in
a drunken brawl between friends. The average murder was senseless,
yet this one, if indeed it was murder, must have made some sense to
the killer.

“
Talk me through it, if you
will.” He listened intently as Roger did just that.

“
Let’s see here. You kill
the owner, and then wait for the stock to take a dive and for
someone to sell off some of their assets in a panic. Maybe the
person selling gets cold feet or they want to make another
investment. The drop in prices spooks them. So then you buy up as
much as you can at a reduced price. But think of this, Gilles. What
if you already had some stock in Duval Industries, and thought the
company had good prospects. You could consolidate a
position.”

“
And if you hated Theo Duval
on top of that…interesting.” Gilles didn’t know what to make of it.
“And who is buying up all these shares?”

“
Yes, there’s the rub.
They’re mostly smaller sales. One company in Switzerland is pretty
active, but they seem to be a bit of a predator and opportunism is
in their blood. Other than that, it’s possible that they know
something we don’t.”

Switzerland.

Gilles began pawing through stacks of
handwritten case notes to no avail.

“
Such as? What do you
mean?”

“
I don’t know. Maybe Duval
had a new product coming out, and they had some inside information.
That’s just speculation. As I said, Gilles, it is a good
investment. I think the stock will go up again, and fairly soon. If
it wasn’t a conflict of interest right now, I’d seriously look at
it myself. It’s probably nothing, but I just thought you ought to
know. It’s something to think about in terms of motive. You
mentioned that.”

“
Yes, I see.” Gilles jotted
a couple of quick lines. “All right, Roger, thank you. And keep in
touch. You have no idea, really, but we’re just sort of floundering
around on gut instinct here.”

The pair rang off. Gilles rose and
checked his pockets for small change. Whistling a small and
subconscious tune, he went looking for a good cup of
coffee.

***

Andre and Le Bref didn’t know each
other very well, but they got along just fine. For lack of any real
inspiration, they had been assigned to find Alexis’ other
paintings, and were about to get a belly full.

“
What in the hell have we
got here?” Le Bref’s disdain for the artistic temperament was
understandable given the dim light, the moldy smell in the air and
the clear evidence of moisture damage to the gritty concrete floor,
breaking up under their feet as they stood.

“
So it’s true, then.” Andre
regarded row upon row on canvases, leaning back against the shed
wall just under the hanging garden tools.

On the opposite side were dusty pots,
brushes, palettes, all of it looking old and disused. There was a
smell of turpentine and general mustiness. There were big paintings
and small ones, some dark with age and smoke damage, some almost
pristine until you saw the grey spider-webs draped over the corners
and onto the next half-dozen pictures. Le Bref picked one that
didn’t look too heavy and held it up, moving over into the spill of
light from the low-set window. With no other source of
illumination, they left the door standing wide open. The fresh air
was cool and very welcome inside the small building, with its line
of windows exposed to the hot sun at the back of a fine formal
garden.