CHAPTER 16
THE TIMES OFFICE, PARIS
The morning after Charlie’s update on the Pierre Jouet story ran, she was sitting at her desk, looking at a selection of photographs of new-season Chanel gowns.
She resented that as the only female on the news desk, the role of fashion reporting fell to her.
But on the other hand, she recognised that haute couture was a key financial cog that kept Paris turning, kept the city vibrant and constantly evolving, with designers, models and artists clamouring to outdo each other on the catwalks and in private salons.
Charlie was trying to decide which photo to run: a floor-length, ruffled, fuchsia dress that featured a cluster of roses on the shoulder; or a simple yellow empire line dress with thin straps.
Even though the colours wouldn’t be on display, readers could get a sense of the lines and textures.
The hue could be explained in the caption.
Footsteps. ‘Got another stiff for you,’ said George as he came up behind Charlie’s cubicle and tossed a large envelope over her shoulder onto her desk.
Charlie twisted awkwardly in her seat and came face to face with her editor’s armpit.
George realised he’d invaded her space and took a deferential step back. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered.
Charlie moved the envelope from where she was surveying the Chanel dresses and asked in a pointed tone, ‘Do we have any details of the person who died?’
‘No. Just this envelope my source slipped to me.’
‘Is your source at the Metro Police?’ asked Charlie, annoyed that Inspecteur Bernard had once again not contacted her. She knew he loathed the press, but they had history and she had hoped that counted for something. Clearly it did not.
‘Can’t reveal sources, James. You know that.
Not even to a colleague.’ He surveyed the newsroom, filled with clacking typewriters and a half a dozen sets of hungry eyes peering over the partitions, then leaned in and said, ‘Never know how long I’ll be in this job before someone topples me.
Got to keep some tricks up my sleeve. My source says these are from a graveyard near Neuilly. ’
‘Well, it is a dead body, so that makes sense.’
‘Ha, ha, James. Opposite the cemetery. Stop whatever you are doing and look at these pics. See if you can come up with something for the news pages by nightfall.’
‘But I’m already working on a murder … Tours, Jouet—’
‘I’ve had no paras for my pages on that front since yesterday. Fresh stiff. Fresh story. World keeps turning, James. New shows, new dresses, new crimes. That’s why we print the news every day. It changes.’
‘I haven’t anything concrete with Jouet.’ Charlie clenched her jaw. ‘But if I just had more time …’
‘Leave the time to the police.’ George shook a finger at Charlie.
‘You know, James, sometimes being an investigative reporter means jumping on the story that you can resolve. Leads. Consequences. Resolutions.’ He clicked his fingers in front of her face.
‘Haven’t seen much in the way of that from this little cubicle of late.
Don’t make me regret slipping you this lead.
If you can’t do something with this tip’—he whistled—‘then maybe one of the lads might be willing to.’
Charlie shivered. There was no way she was going to let one of the others snatch her story.
George lowered his voice and continued. ‘Look, I know the Ashworth case knocked you about. Ending up in hospital after chasing a story would shake the confidence from anybody … but you’re a damn fine reporter.
The Maisy Bell story’—he shrugged—‘was unfortunate, but we’re reporters, not magicians.
We can’t conjure facts from thin air. This is a real dead body. ’
He marched back to his office as he threw the words over his shoulder: ‘Bring me something big.’
Charlie leaned back in her seat and sighed. She could hear the chortling from her newsroom colleagues and didn’t want to look up to see their smug faces. She straightened her shoulders and selected the fuchsia dress to give to the subeditors.
Piling the Jouet evidence neatly in the far corner of her desk, she wiped her eyes with her palms, then wiped her hands on the emerald silk crepe pants Violet had ‘gifted’ her because they didn’t fit. She picked up the envelope.
It had already been opened and a series of photographs fell out onto her desk.
They were shot from some distance, perhaps from behind a tree or from a building.
They certainly were not police shots, up close.
This pleased Charlie in a rather petty way.
She knew Inspecteur Bernard would rather chew his arms off than voluntarily send police images to a member of the press, and Charlie assumed George and Detective Allard would never have crossed paths.
But she did know that George liked to have a series of photographers on retainer from time to time to send off on the police beat when he heard news. Perhaps it was one of them.
She spread the black-and-white photographs across the desk.
A Citroen parked under a tree. Charlie picked up her magnifying glass to examine a shapeless blob in the front seat.
The next image was also of the Citroen, but looking back to vaults and gravestones. There was a modest sign that read Cimetière de Neuilly.
The third image was of an indistinct shape wrapped up in dark material.
It was small, but she assumed this was the body wrapped in some kind of makeshift shroud.
She moved her magnifying glass over the body, looking for anything that stood out.
Blood. Mud. She froze when she got to the end of the shroud where the corner had become unfastened.
Dark leather, an elm leaf stuck to a thick sole. Black boots with a distinctive pointed toe. Charlie shivered. Even though the face and body were obscured by the shroud, Charlie knew exactly who this was. Mael, the philosophical traveller she had met on the park bench in Tours.
She put her magnifying glass down and scratched her head, before picking it up and looking again. It was a coincidence. It had to be.
But Charlie knew never to let coincidences slide. She couldn’t afford to suspect that her life in Paris was on the line, so she picked up the phone and dialled the number for Inspecteur Bernard.
The phone rang three times before the familiar crisp voice answered. ‘C’est Bernard.’
‘Inspecteur, this is Charlie James.’
She heard silence on the end of the phone before he gave a terse, polite reply.
‘How can I help you, Mademoiselle James?’
‘I’ve just come into possession of some images of what looks to be a corpse near a cemetery near Neuilly.’
‘It looks like a corpse or it is a corpse?’
‘A corpse. Has it been called in yet?’
‘Not yet. But this is under the provincial jurisdiction. Often they fall to Detective Allard, who I believe you met in Tours?’ He said ‘provincial’ with such scorn, Charlie was left in no doubt as to what Bernard thought of his country colleagues.
‘I did.’ Charlie tried to keep her voice steady and professional even though her stomach did a flip at the mention of Allard.
‘So perhaps Detective Allard can help you? Do you have anything else?’
‘I do, Inspecteur. If you’ll allow me another minute. I believe I recognise the corpse. I met him, a wanderer, in the park near where Jouet was found. Mael … He wouldn’t give me his surname. Does that mean anything to you?’
There was a loud sigh into the phone, then silence for a beat. Charlie waited.
‘You can’t see the face in the photograph?’ the inspecteur asked at last. ‘You don’t know for certain?’
‘His short stature was distinctive.’
‘There’s more than one short man in the world.’
‘I have only these early shots.’
‘Mademoiselle James, this is a conversation for Allard. If you believe a witness is dead, you need to go directly to the detective in charge of the investigation. Metropolitan does not manage provincial investigations; as you know, there are plenty of crimes in Paris that keep our officers overworked.’
‘Understood. I’ll contact Allard. While I have you on the telephone, have you any updates or new evidence on the Maisy Bell missing person case?’
He sighed again with impatience. ‘Zero.’
‘Nothing? No new leads? Maisy’s name, her face, was all over the news for weeks.’
‘I’m sorry to say this case is closed. The American Embassy have requested it closed at the behest of the family. Clementine and Mason Bell sail for home tomorrow. With no news of Maisy Bell and the case closed, there is nothing they can do. They depart the hotel at 11 a.m.’
Charlie gasped and tugged at the curls in her phone line as her stomach sank. She’d been so busy chasing this Tours story she’d not had contact with the Bells recently. Clearly they were finished with Charlie and wanted no further contact. She mustn’t let them leave before saying goodbye.
Before saying sorry.
She took a deep breath and tried to steady her voice as she said, ‘Thank you for telling me this, Inspecteur. I shall go bid my farewell in the morning.’
‘I’m not sure that’s wise,’ he said gently. ‘The Bells want to leave quietly, no story.’
Charlie let that pass. She was hardly going to publish the story of her own failure.
‘Mademoiselle James, please let this Maisy Bell story go. As police, we have to focus on the evidence and the crimes in front of us. Sometimes, no matter how hard we search, we never find what we are looking for. I hate this as much as you’—he sighed again—‘but I have been a detective for twenty years and not found justice for every story. I wish I had.’
Humans chased answers. It was only natural to seek explanations, to try to put words around events so people had somewhere to place their grief.
Charlie thought of the hurt in Allard’s eyes as he’d told her about the missing child he never found.
A search for a child that took him away from his own child … a case that lingered as a ghost.
She ended the call with Bernard and looked at Detective Allard’s card where it was pinned to the wall of her cubicle before dialling his direct line.
No answer. That would make sense, as he would be out at the latest homicide site. There was no time for her to get to Neuilly and file this story. She dialled his office and left her number with the secretary, asking for Allard to call Charlie James urgently.
She sat at her desk, rearranging the photos, trying to work out which one to run with tonight’s story and starting to put the bones of an article together, when the phone rang.
‘So you didn’t lose my number, Mademoiselle James,’ said a deep voice. ‘We have nothing new on Jouet at the moment, so I’m assuming you are contacting me about this latest case in Neuilly. News of misfortune travels fast.’
‘Misfortune, or murder?’
‘You don’t waste words, do you?’
‘Are you able to give me the facts, please?’
‘It’s early in the investigation. Too early to—’
‘If you don’t give them to me, someone else will run incorrect facts. Speculation. I already have some pics from my editor.’
‘Ah, yes, so it was your crowd that sent the stringer?’
‘My editor sent the freelance photographer,’ Charlie corrected him and cursed herself for sounding like a headmistress. ‘Let’s just start with what you do have and go from there.’
‘To the point. I like it, Mademoiselle James. What do you want to know?’
Charlie grabbed her pen, opened her notebook and asked the question that was on the tip of her tongue. ‘The suit, was it burgundy?’
‘Oui.’
‘It’s the same—I think—as the witness I spoke with in Tours …’
A pause. ‘Are you sure?’
‘It’s hard to tell with so little to go on,’ Charlie admitted. ‘I can’t see the face, but the boots are the same. And his stature. Did you ever find the witness, Mael?’
‘No. Not a whiff of him anywhere. No memory of him at any soup kitchens.’
Charlie’s lungs emptied. ‘We talked about murderers often visiting the crime scene …’ Her voice faded. ‘Also witnesses.’
‘If this gentleman in the burgundy suit is the same man you met in Tours, the chances of him being responsible for Jouet’s death—’
‘What if the same person killed them both? What if Mael was killed because he saw Jouet killed?’
‘Possible. It’s also possible that this was a wanderer who perhaps had sticky fingers and robbed the wrong person in Neuilly.
If this is your Mael, then it could be a coincidence.
Transient people, they are often more likely to be victims of crime, but rarely are they reported.
’ He whistled then dropped his voice to almost a whisper.
‘I understand what it is to see links everywhere. I really do. But the deaths of these two men may not be connected. Perhaps it is best if you come down here and see the evidence?’
‘Thank you. The earliest I can manage is Friday.’ Charlie was grateful that Allard understood her need to resolve at least one story.
‘Bien. Come to Versailles. The medical examiner will have done much of his work and I shall have a story for you. Only for you and your paper.’
‘Merci. I shall meet you in Versailles Friday morning.’