Killer Critique Read online

  “So that’s it? There’s nothing we can do? We leave the case in his hands?”

  “It’s the law. Only the Cour de Cassation, our highest court, can remove a juge d’instruction from a case, and that’s supposed to be because someone accuses him of partiality. The motion is brought forward by the accused, not a police officer. Unless you’re suggesting we claim that he couldn’t control himself when faced with the allure of Sybille Charbonnier. And I’m not sure how that would go down at the Cour de Cassation.”

  Capucine did not respond to the joke.

  “And the Cour de Cassation is the only way?”

  “Commissaire, you know all this. In theory the Procureur de la République—the federal prosecutor—can limit the juge’s range of investigation, but those cases are extremely rare, and that’s certainly not going to happen when the elimination of the function is such a hot topic.”

  Capucine was about to make a comment about letting a murderer go free but said nothing.

  Tallon massaged his chin and, instinctively, threw both casements of the window open and bent forward to look out, crossing his arms and leaning them on the iron safety bar. Capucine stood up to peer over his shoulder. The parvis was packed with tourists in shorts and sandals and brightly colored T-shirts. Children screamed, wives scolded husbands, people shoved and jostled to have their picture taken in front of the eternal façade showing off their toothy ric-tuses. Tallon was disgusted. Almost imperceptibly, he hiked his shoulders in a shudder. His mood changed with the suddenness of a summer squall. He turned and spoke sharply.

  “Commissaire, we are civil servants, not prima donnas. In a year your juge will be powerless. You’ll catch your killer then. He’ll go to ground and still be there, fresh as ever, waiting for you to snap the cuffs on him. Don’t waste your time trying to buck the system. Work on other things and let this one sit.”

  Possibly the most irritating sound to the human ear was the voice of reason. Irked as she was, Capucine accepted that not only was he speaking with maturity and authority, but he was also unquestionably right. What she couldn’t know was that this was the one time in his life when Contrôleur Général Tallon would turn out to be dead wrong.

  CHAPTER 11

  That afternoon Capucine threw herself into the work of her brigade with fiery zeal. She fine-tuned the duty roster and then went through a stack of personnel evaluations, reviewing each one carefully, making notations in the margins. Next, she attacked the training program and made sure that each of her officers would attend at least one course before the end of the year. At that point it was only three o’clock and she was still haunted by the restaurant murder. It was worse than weaning herself from a lover. With strict discipline she banished it from her mind. But, using Sacha Guitry’s phrase, she was forced to admit she was telling herself six times an hour that she wasn’t thinking about it. She then went through all the open cases on the brigade list, calling in her lieutenants, who were managing them with irreproachable competence, to discuss them in exhaustive detail. Just as their irritation threatened to bubble over, she realized it was almost nine o’clock and Alexandre would be dying to get at his dinner.

  After a long drive home through a pummeling rain, she found Alexandre in his study, sitting in his ancient red leather armchair, tapping energetically on a laptop on his knees, a nearly empty glass of whiskey teetering on the arm of the chair. He stopped typing and read over his copy, keeping time to the cadence by waving the stub of his cigar in the air as if he were conducting an imaginary orchestra. He gave a satisfied sigh and banged the RETURN key with élan.

  “Done!” he said, throwing the cigar butt in the fireplace. “Another chef d’oeuvre in the gloomy annals of restaurant criticism. You’ve arrived just in the nick of time. I was beginning to feel faint from hunger.”

  After Alexandre went into the kitchen to put the finishing touches on dinner, Capucine changed, stripped off her soaking clothes, dried her hair vigorously with a towel, pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, and joined him.

  The sight of Alexandre puttering around his kitchen, nudging his copper pots on his enormous stove and poking through his disparate jumble of jars and bottles, looking for the precisely right spices, always filled Capucine with a sense of calm and security. Like the keep of a medieval castle, this was her inviolable bastion.

  “What are we having?”

  “Tournedos de canard à l’aillade.”

  “Isn’t tournedos beef? It smells like duck.”

  “It’s a magret de canard that’s been coaxed into the shape of a block of beef fillet with the help of the end of my rolling pin. I’m going to sear it and then cook it for three minutes on each side so it’s nice and rare. I’ve already cooked two apples in duck fat in this skillet, and I’m going to use the remaining fat to cook the duck,” he said, putting a much-battered steel frying pan on the high heat section of the central burner. When it was hot enough, he gently placed the two “tournedos” on the pan. They hissed and spat angrily in the duck fat.

  “The apples are nice and warm in the oven, and I’m just going to finish the sauce, which has been waiting patiently for you in a tepid bain-marie.” He moved the double boiler closer to the hot center of the burner. When the water began to boil, he wrinkled his nose and squinched his eyebrows in concentration, carefully adding two spoonfuls of a dark liquid, which he whisked energetically into the sauce.

  “What’s that?” Capucine asked, pouring herself a glass of Bordeaux from a bottle that had been breathing on a sideboard. She sat at the long Provençal table, crossed her legs on the bench, and leaned back, supporting herself by holding on to the sides of the bench. Stretching her back sensually, she felt the irritations of the day volatilize.

  “Duck’s blood. Not easy to find when you’re not in the country. Two spoonfuls only. A thickening liaison to give the sauce body.”

  “Smells garlicky.”

  Alexandre laughed and brought their dinners over to the table. “That’s why it’s called an aillade.”

  The dark brown sauce was rich and pungent, almost as if intended for a steak. The thick slab of duck was charred brown on the outside and bright pink at the center. The apples had acquired the taste of duck but had retained their fruity unctuousness. Capucine told herself that she didn’t come close to doing Alexandre’s cooking justice when she thought of it as a mere palliative.

  When the meal was over, Alexandre looked at her with liquid eyes. “You didn’t seem your usual bubbly self when you came in. Case getting you down?”

  “Not anymore. It’s history. Toast. Gone. Finito.”

  “That might require a word or two more of explanation.”

  “I went to see Tallon this morning. The main point of the meeting was that he hates his view of Notre Dame. He’d much rather be at the back of the building, where he could watch officers unload detainees. But he also explained that the juges d’instruction have been around since the Revolution to protect the downtrodden citizenry from the ruthlessness of the police.”

  Alexandre refilled his wife’s glass. “And so?”

  “And so Martinière is well within his legal rights to refuse to let the police conduct their inquiry. That’s all there is to it. He was very philosophical. We’ll just wait until the function is discontinued and solve the case then.”

  “You’re just going to drop it?”

  “No, we’ll finish all the background checking. Of course, there won’t be anything that even remotely looks like a motive. We’ll write it up and send it to the most excellent juge. He’ll parade around for a few weeks and get absolutely nowhere. And that will be that. Yet another unsolved case.”

  “How frustrating, my love.” Alexandre put his lips on her neck, kissed her gently, and muttered something that might, or might not, have been, “The heartbreak of coitus interruptus ...”

  “Did I really hear what I think you just said?”

  Rather than answer, Alexandre moved from her neck to her lips and slipped off
her T-shirt.

  Capucine’s cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID on the screen, then at her watch, and flipped the phone open. Alexandre well knew what ten-thiry calls meant and moved off to collect the dishes and put them in the sink.

  “Capu, it’s Bruno Lacombe. You know, your pal who runs the PJ brigade in the Fourth Arrondissement East, your best buddy at the commissaires’ school—”

  “Bruno, it’s nearly eleven at night.” The detested nickname made her sharp.

  “So it is. So it is. I’m calling from a restaurant called Dans le Noir, on the rue Quincampoix. You know, the little street right next to the Beaubourg. It’s a creepy place, and it’s even creepier right now because there’s a dead guy lying in the middle of it. So I figure this is a case that’s gotta be yours. A guy gets bumped off in a restaurant, and I’m already thinking you. When the stiff turns out to be a restaurant critic, I know it’s yours. Come on down and join the fun. Don’t bother to change. Just come as you are.”

  For once, Capucine decided that, given the hour and her mood, she might as well look like every other female detective on the force and show up in grunge. She pulled her T-shirt back on and decided it was just the ticket, even though it was a Jean Paul Gaultier original and cost far more than she would ever dare confess to Alexandre. The low-heeled Zanottis were probably all wrong, too. But so what? She was never going to be a typical female flic no matter how hard she tried.

  “Know anything about a restaurant called Dans le Noir on the rue Quincampoix?” she asked Alexandre.

  “Dans Le Noir? In the Black? It’s that blind restaurant. A supposedly sightless maître d’ leads you into a completely dark room, and you get to spill mediocre food all over your shirtfront, or down your décolleté, as the case may be. The only appeal seems to be that they seat you at a long table and you chat away with people you don’t know. Seeing them in the light when you leave is supposed to teach you that beauty is not just skin deep, or some nonsense like that.”

  “Well, a restaurant critic’s been murdered there.”

  “Good Lord, that must be Jean Monteil. He was with the Le Figaro. The restaurant was bought out by an international chain, and he was going to review it. He even asked me to go along to keep him company. I decided it would be way more fun to eat with you than to spill bad food all over myself in the dark. Of all the bad luck. If I’d gone, I’d be spending the rest of the evening with you.”

  He leaned over to kiss Capucine, who pushed him away roughly.

  “That’s in very bad taste and not funny at all,” she said as she stormed out of the apartment, stuffing her Sig into the back of her jeans, not at all sure why Alexandre’s comment had upset her so much.

  CHAPTER 12

  Even though Capucine left the Twingo double-parked directly in front of the restaurant, the rain was heavy enough to soak her by the time she reached the protection of the low black canvas awning over the restaurant’s door. She cursed the heavens. Two times in one night was just too much.

  Inside the tiny anteroom, decorated only with jet-black felt on the walls, a uniformed PJ officer stood guard in front of a high dark black wooden desk.

  “Commissaire Lacombe’s been waiting for you, Commissaire. He’s in the dining room downstairs. Go through that door and then the next one. But watch out. The stairs are right after the second door.”

  A ten-foot hallway, decorated in the same deep black felt as the anteroom, lay behind the first door, which swung shut behind her with the whoosh of a pneumatic door closer. She was in total darkness. The effect was surprisingly discomforting. She inched forward, guiding herself with a hand on the wall, and found the second door, which opened onto a precipitous staircase. The light from below was almost blinding after the dark.

  Lacombe was waiting at the foot of the stairs.

  “See, you’re having a good time already,” he said with a deep belly laugh. “Nice setup, eh? There’s a pretend blind maître d’ who leads the customers down the stairs, whispers the menu in their ears, and then the fun begins.”

  “The fun?”

  “It’s a real gas. The food is as liquid and as hard to eat as they can make it. The idea is for the customers to feel as helpless as possible and think they’re bonding with blind people,” Lacombe said with heavy irony.

  Brightly lit, the room was even more depressing than a nightclub when the lights were turned up at four in the morning to induce everyone to go home. The walls were a shabby, faded, and splotched dark green and hadn’t been repainted in years. The beige carpeting was streaked with dirt and dotted with food stains. On the tables, once jet-black tablecloths were covered with a mosaic of spots and spatters in varying shades of brown and purple.

  “Must look a whole lot better in the dark,” Lacombe said. He moved aside to give her a view of the room, revealing a heavyset man slumped over one of the center tables. His body was twisted to the right, his head turned away from them, his ear resting in a deep dish of lumpy, liquid stew.

  Capucine was blinded by a spasm of anguish. For a split second she was convinced it was Alexandre. But as they approached the table she gratefully recognized Jean Monteil, whom she had seen many times at cocktail parties and restaurant openings. She breathed again but was still held by the nightmarish sense of déjà vu.

  Monteil was wearing the same sort of clothes Alexandre favored, a tweed jacket and gray flannel trousers. His head lay peacefully on the side of what was unmistakably a dish of bœuf bourguignon. Unlike the body in Chez Béatrice, there were no splashes of food. Shattering the image of repose, a six-inch metallic tube projected straight up from Monteil’s right ear.

  Capucine was vaguely aware that Lacombe was asking her something, but she was too captivated by Monteil’s body to be able to focus on his question.

  The left flap of Monteil’s jacket hung limply. Capucine squatted on the balls of her feet and peered, careful to touch nothing. The tailor’s label, CHARLES TOLUB, 7 RUE DE THORIGNY, was clearly visible under the inside pocket. Monteil had had his clothes made by the same tailor as Alexandre. The clips of two plastic pens were visible, the words HOTELS COSTES conspicuous on one of them.

  “You know him?” Lacombe was asking.

  Capucine nodded. “Jean Monteil. He was one of the journalists on Le Figaro’s restaurant page. He wasn’t a close friend, but I definitely knew him.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence.

  “And that metal thing sticking in his ear? Any idea what that is?”

  Capucine’s mood broke.

  “I have two of them in my kitchen. It’s a basting needle. They’re used to inject stock or sauce or whatever into meat while it’s cooking. See, the plunger’s been completely depressed.” If this one was anything like Alexandre’s, Capucine thought to herself, the needle would be over three inches long and would easily have killed the victim without the need to inject anything.

  There was a loud crashing and clanging of metallic tubing from the top of the stairwell. The forensics team had arrived and was having problems getting its gurney down the stairs. Momo appeared, holding the front of the folded aluminum contraption.

  In a high-pitched complaint Isabelle’s voice could be heard from the top of the stairs. “Merde, David, stop pushing me!”

  Ajudant Dechery came up to Lacombe and Capucine. “Luckily, we ran into your brigadiers. The big one was a godsend with the gurney. Whatever you do, Commissaire, don’t let him go. Without him, we’ll never get the stiff out of here.”

  Dechery’s professional enthusiasm took over as he looked at the body and almost rubbed his hands in glee. “A basting needle stuck in the ear. Now, that’s something I’ve never seen before. Good! If you two will give me a little room, I need to get to work.” He waved his assistants over joyfully.

  The two commissaires stood back and watched as the forensics experts opened their cases, slipped into white plastic jumpsuits, snapped on rubber gloves, and began their grisly work.

  Capucine’s thr
ee officers had joined Lacombe’s team, which had herded the fifty or so customers into a corner of the room and were busy taking names and meticulously checking identification papers, an act as sacred to a French policeman as receiving the wafer at mass was to Catholics. The customers hovered patiently but apprehensively in their corner like a small drove of steers who were about to be driven into a chute.

  David came over to report. “They’ve completed the list of the customers, and Isabelle and Momo are starting on the serving staff. The cook staff is waiting in the kitchen. Can I let the customers go home?”

  Isabelle rushed up, her pupils black with anger. “Nobody’s going home!” she said. “Commissaire, you’ll never guess who’s here.”

  Capucine looked at her levelly.

  “Our favorite movie star and her sugar granddaddy.”

  Following Isabelle’s gaze, Capucine saw Sybille Charbonnier and Guy Voisin talking to Momo quietly on the far side of the restaurant.

  “Commissaire, you need to talk to the maître d’ right away. I’m going to get him to tell you what he just told me. You won’t believe it.”

  Capucine exhaled noisily in irritation. Good as she was at her job, sometimes Isabelle was just too much.

  Behind her Lacombe was chuckling happily. “Capu, you really should talk to him. It’ll make your evening.” His protuberant belly shook with laughter.

  Capucine frowned. He was the sort of cop who milked his job for gags. She didn’t like it, but she could live with it. It was the appalling nickname she had acquired during the commissaires’ course that was over the top. One of her deepest fears was that the foul sobriquet would circulate in her own brigade. The thought of being called Commissaire Capu by her own staff behind her back gave her the shivers.

  “Bruno, your guys have done most of the work. There’s not much left to wrap it up. It’s after midnight. Why don’t you and your team go on home?”

  “Capu,” he said. Capucine cringed. “That’s something you don’t have to ask me twice. I’m always happy to leave the late-night stuff to the kids.” He motioned to his brigadiers and they disappeared promptly up the stairs into the rain.