A Death in Time, page 23
For the first time, Darac began to feel that the balance was shifting in favour of Julien’s innocence for this crime. But there was still a long way to go.
‘Right, Monsieur Baille. Let’s go on, shall we?’
THIRTY-NINE
After almost two hours of increasingly focussed questioning, Darac concluded that he didn’t have nearly enough to hold Julien Baille on suspicion of murder. But the young man was far from being home free. With crucial contributions from pathology, forensics and various security systems still pending, and with only the first round of interviews undertaken, the investigation was still in its infancy.
‘So is that it? Captain Strong Arm of The State? Are we finished?’
‘Almost.’
‘Not finished. I thought so.’ Julien’s eyes were burning. ‘Listen, I want to say something. Alright?’
‘Of course.’
‘You people—’
‘Are all individuals, Monsieur but continue, by all means.’
Darac heard him out and at the end of it, he concluded that if Julien was acting the role of a persecuted innocent, the young man was up there with one of Darac’s favourite performances in cinema – Anthony Perkins’s portrayal of Kafka’s Josef K in The Trial.
‘Now you listen. As things stand…’
Darac proceeded to advise Julien of his rights, a consideration the young man clearly hadn’t been expecting. But there were directives for him to follow, too, chief among them the requirement that he not leave the city while the investigation was ongoing.
‘And I hope it goes without saying that you should not pay any further calls on Monsieur Dilip Padar at his Avenue Primerose address or anywhere else.’
‘What about him and his goon? Tell them to stay away from me!’
‘I can assure you that Monsieur Dilip Padar has this morning been issued with a reciprocal warning. If he disregards it and contacts you directly or via an associate, report it to us immediately. Here’s a card with the relevant numbers.’
It was not without a measure of sympathy that Darac left the young man alone with his grief or his remorse or both and headed back to the Stade. He also left him with a hidden watchdog summoned from Foch’s site security unit.
With so many players involved, it was only a matter of time before news of the murder broke and that meant coping with varying degrees of interference from both the media and the Palais de Justice. Half expecting to find a pack of newshounds baying at the caravan gate, Darac was pleasantly surprised to find that only Foch’s Finest were in situ. And since there was no sign of the likes of TV’s Annie Provin and her crew camped outside, it was unlikely that camera-hungry Public Prosecutor Jules Frènes was ensconced somewhere inside.
Having negotiated Foch’s reassuringly thorough but speedy ID control, Darac fell in behind a couple of unfamiliar pool cars bumping along the lane. He may not have recognised the vehicles but he had no such difficulty with their drivers, though their simultaneous arrival with his own gave him pause. Assigned to continue with Dilip Padar, Bonbon had left the mobile incident room a full fifteen minutes before Darac had; Flaco had set off five minutes earlier than that to talk to Samira’s flatmate Carole Monteux. Thanks to the case file log, Darac knew their interviews had begun within a few minutes of his own with Julien. That the three of them were arriving back at the same moment told him that they, too, must have had quite a time of it.
FORTY
Innie, Innie, Innie – slow down!’ Sue Talbot said, her words sounding a demi-semi quaver ahead of her mouth movements. ‘I didn’t understand a word of that. And do you have to sit with your back to the window? I want to see you sweetie and you’re all in shadow.’
The request triggering another avalanche of verbiage, at first in vernacular French, Inès grabbed the tablet, jumped to her feet and, segueing seamlessly into English, set up facing the light.
‘The world’s upside down here and you’re worried about… picture quality? Shit! Sometimes, I…’
‘Wow, you look terrible. Come on. Stop! Breathe! That’s better. Now tell me. What... has... happened?
‘Happened? Oh, just that my father’s lover – the gorgeous young Indian woman, Samira? She’s been murdered. Last night. Sometime after the training session.’
On the screen, Sue’s expressive face took on a whole other dimension of incredulity. ‘You… did say murdered?’
‘Yes.’
‘I can’t believe it. Murdered? Who..?’
‘Killed her? Too early to say. So many things to come to terms with here, I don’t know what to think or even where to start. One item is that my mother’s hateful, lying, pitiful excuse of a husband says he wasn’t madly in love with Samira, after all. She was the one who couldn’t get enough of him.’
‘Well he would say that, Innie.’
‘Oh, I’m sure he’s had numerous affairs. But this one? Hypochondriacs get ill sometimes, don’t they? Liars sometimes tell the truth.’
‘But what about the watch? The gift? The Marvell inscription and all that?’
‘We confronted him about it.’
‘And?’
‘Can’t blame Maman at all but she jumped to the wrong conclusion. Yes, my father had brought the watch home in his kitbag but he hadn’t bought it as a gift – his star athlete, one Julien Baille had. The pair were having a word after training when Samira unexpectedly appeared as Baille was taking the watch out of his locker. He didn’t want her to see it so he passed it behind his back to my father who discreetly put it in his own bag, then took it in the next day.’
‘It sounds made up.’
‘Maman believed it.’ She swallowed hard. ‘She went white and almost fainted when he told us.’
‘Perhaps because she wanted to believe it, Innie.’
‘I called him just now – Julien. He’s a star post-grad student, too, by the way. Writing a thesis on the English Metaphysical Poets.’
‘Really? Well, that does fit the inscription part of it. Did he verify the story?’
‘He did and before you say that he and my shit of a father could have cooked it up between them, I just don’t believe that.’
As Sue struggled to digest the story so far, nothing was said for a few moments and then as if a dam had been breached, Inès began to cry.
‘Innie. Sweetheart!’
‘I can’t help it,’ she blurted, her words careering around helplessly in the flood. ‘It’s just such a horrible, horrible thing to have happened.’
FORTY-ONE
For the moment, the man was out of sight but she could hear him – the toilet door was missing. And she heard something else. Scuttling, scratching.
‘Oh, Lord,’ she cried out, holding her blouse to her throat as she scanned the debris-strewn space behind her.
‘Bring the stuff.’
Her stomach turned over as she picked it up and unscrewed the cap.
‘Did you hear me?’
She had to end this. She pictured his knife. Always to hand; sometimes sheathed in a shoulder holster; sometimes in a scabbard looped to his belt over the back pocket of his jeans. But even if she could lay her hands on it, or finesse it away from him, could she go through with it? There would be blood. A lot of blood.
‘Get in here now!’
He was standing facing away from her as she entered. The sight of his naked back and buttocks made her gag. But what she saw next gave her a scintilla of hope. He hadn’t taken off his jeans. He’d just lowered them down to his boots, lassoing his ankles in the process. For as long as it took him to bend and pull them up, he was immobilised. And there was the knife handle sticking up proud of the rumpled cloth. Available. One quick grab away, that’s all it was. One quick grab...
FORTY-TWO
With Darac’s team, Raul Ormans’s forensics unit, and members of Farid’s slog squad crammed into the mobile incident truck, it was standing room only inside. The remaining squaddies were clustered outside like stage door johnnies on an opening night at the theatre.
‘Farid,’ Darac said, having to raise his voice over the buzz. ‘Considering the size of the task, it’s going better than we could have hoped and a lot of that is down to you.’
‘Thanks, chief.’
‘Credit where it’s due, man,’ Darac continued, the words momentarily emerging in a gnomic monotone as he performed a rough head count. ‘Don’t think all your multiple interview people have made it back yet, have they?’
‘No, not all. The assistant coaches are proving elusive. A couple of the athletes are in classes and one is sitting an exam for a good hour yet – team captain Emil Arcot. Mobiles aren’t permitted so he won’t know anything of what’s happened. Big Charlie Presse was my pick to talk to him. For a couple of reasons, it seemed a good match.’
‘We’d better make a start without Charlie and the others, I think. Quiet please!’ As the buzz subsided, Darac looked towards the open door. ‘Can everyone hear me outside?’
‘Yes, Captain!’
‘Good. I don’t think there’s any point pressing the whiteboard into service…’
‘What whiteboard?’ someone quipped.
‘Quite.’ He peered in the general direction of the comms desk. ‘Bé?’ A Red Sea of heads parted and the pair made eye contact. ‘Be useful if you would record the meeting as well and add it to the file log? Especially for those still out there interviewing.’
‘Certainly, Captain.’
The heads closed ranks and Darac turned his attention back to the whole group.
‘OK, everyone, it’s clear that in a very short space of time we’ve garnered a lot of really useful material and so by the end of this session, we should’ve been able to form a picture of more than just the whereabouts of the principal suspects and witnesses on the night Samira Padar was murdered. I think we’ve gained some real insights into the wider picture as well. I filmed the entirety of my interview with our prime suspect Julien Baille but as we haven’t got two hours to spare just now, I’ll summarise. Ready to record, Bé?’
‘Ready, Captain.’
In lieu of counting himself in, Darac gave Bé the nod and the performance began in earnest. Using a three-stage approach derived from playing any number of jazz tunes with his band – start by laying out the themes, fully explore them, finish by returning to the now greatly enriched themes – Darac fully reprised his interview with Julien and added his own take on the young man himself. Thanks to Bé’s efforts, those who were still out in the field would be able to catch up with his account later.
‘Right, let’s test as much of that as we can. Farid, one of your guys interviewed the livewire long jumper, Ade Okoko?’
Farid pointed to one of the faces gathered around the open door. ‘Tana, there. She got a solid confirmation from him that Julien did cycle away from the players’ car park at the time he stated. As to when he arrived at the Résidence, things are far less sure. So far, we only have his word for it that he made it in less than twenty minutes. Several of the students who might have seen Julien return were unavailable earlier. Tana left call-back cards and you never know, they may pay off. Requests to the security people for last evening’s CCTV have gone in but nothing back yet.’
‘Yes, that evidence will prove key, I think,’ Darac said. ‘And well done, Tana, by the way. Staying just on Julien for the moment, do we have anything else?’
‘Here.’
‘Go for it, Bonbon.’
But before Bonbon could say a word, Darac’s mobile rang.
‘It’s Path, everyone,’ he said, holding up a hand. The gesture had the desired effect – on the off chance that a dropped pin would have made it between the press of bodies to the floor, the landing would probably have been heard. ‘Map, go ahead, you’re on speaker.’
‘I have a meaningful update. The massive dorsal cranial injuries Samira sustained were caused by a pitted and jagged lump of rock I estimate to have been about half the size of a regulation football. Fragments of both the rock and crumbs of embedded soil removed from the skull are being analysed now. Purely on the pathology, we can narrow the T.O.D. to between 9 o‘clock and 11 o’clock on Monday evening. Further narrowing may be possible later. As we thought at the scene, the fatal blow was struck sometime before the body was immersed in the water jump. At the moment, I’m favouring at least fifteen minutes. And we have something else. Traces of motile sperm were found in the victim’s vaginal canal.’
As an aid to concentration, most had been listening with their heads bowed until this moment. Now looks were exchanged all around.
‘Are we talking rape here, Map?’
‘There’s no indication of that at all. Samira was a healthy, sexually mature young woman who had had sex at some point in the day. You’re going to ask me at what point and although at this stage it isn’t possible to determine that with any accuracy, it wasn’t immediately prior to the T.O.D. window I gave you. In any case, it’s established she took a full part in the training session which I believe began at 7 pm?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So we’re talking some time in the afternoon. As to who her partner was, we should have a sequencing result within 24 hours and if there’s a database match, we’ll have a name soon afterwards. That’s all I have at the moment.’
‘Enormously helpful, Map. Thanks.’
‘More later.’
Darac rang off and turned to the group. ‘We’ll just reflect on all that before we go on. Alright, Bonbon?’
‘Sure.’
‘R.O. Where are you?’
‘Find Serge and look left.’
‘Got you. So, the murder weapon was a rock and although that doesn’t rule out shot putter Emil as the killer, it does rule out the shots as a weapon.’
‘I’ll cross testing them off my list.’
‘One more less, as my Aunt Sophie would say – always a good thing. So Map’s team is testing rock and soil fragments at their end. Looks like you could be reprising a variation on your privet-finding exploits from the St André case when Map knows more. Any thoughts on that at the moment?’
‘It’s a very mixed environment around here. Not much exposed soil, though.’
‘And that’s true of the far end of the players’ car park?’
‘To which dark place, Samira made her unexplained detour? Well, there’s vegetation, certainly. Trees, several varieties of shrubs, but no rocks of the size our good doctor referred to either lying on the surface or half-embedded. I gather we’re in for sunshine and showers tomorrow but our enemy here is how unusually dry the weather has been for mid-March. Thus we have no useful tyre tracks or footprints to go on. There’s a broken lower branch and a slight degree of grass compaction where someone may have stood at some stage – and we have a frankly bonkers number of photos of it – but that’s all.’
Darac ran a hand through his hair. ‘Have you found anything that made your forensic radar beep even a little?’
‘It’s what we haven’t found that’s beeping loudest – Samira’s car. Once we have located that, the picture will sharpen immensely.’
‘We’ll need you again shortly, R.O. but Bonbon? You’re back on.’
‘Couple of points. First – and this is only indirectly concerned with Julien – but Dilip has a strong if pat alibi for the night of the murder. One Candice Valle, a girlfriend was with him from about 8 pm to breakfast time the following day. Candice works in outpatients at St Roch and I rang one of our mates at Foch to nip across the road to interview her. With all the usual riders in such situations, she independently came up with an account that tallies.’
‘OK,’ Darac said. And second?’
‘Yes, I can verify Julien’s death-threat story. Not the implicit one made during the encounter with the postcard-wielding heavy outside his room, but the explicit threats Dilip made to him after being kicked in the bollocks.’
‘Interesting.’ Aside from committing an assault, one gone unreported by Dilip, Darac noted, Julien had just passed another test, hadn’t he? ‘You must have spread your net wide, Bonbon – to verify something I imagine you had no idea had happened until I mentioned it just now.’
‘Ah, but I did know. After a largely fruitless session with the defensive-aggressive Dilip, I thought it worth having a word with his neighbours. I sensed immediately that a couple of them were concealing something and after a lot of not so idle chatter and buttering up, I got my new best friends to spill. That’s what took me so long. Two nights ago, they heard a right ding-dong going on in the corridor, went to investigate and actually witnessed the threats. The young man on the receiving end fits Julien’s description and Dilip used his surname a couple of times into the bargain. And here’s something. Vis-à-vis the account you’ve just given us of the Indian heavy who showed up at Julien’s door the day after, a significant part of Dilip’s verbal threat – and both neighbours report hearing it – was that he used the words “I’ll see to it.” If that doesn’t suggest Dilip is well used to employing a third party to do his dirty work for him, I don’t know what does.’
‘Slipping people a few euros to do this and that for him? Fits the picture. Although it was innocent work, think Eric Cauvin’s car-watching role at the Stade, for instance. Of course, we don’t know what would have happened had Julien opened his door to the heavy Dilip does appear to have sent. But that’s good work, Bonbon.’
