Century Rain Part 27

of it. "There's a Berlin connection: some kind of heavy-manufacturing contract and what looks like a sketch of a blueprint."

"For what?"

"Haven't figured that out yet, but whatever it is, there are three of them."

"I hope you got more detail than that."

"Three large aluminium castings," Floyd said. "Big, solid spheres."

"How big is big?"

"I might be misreading the sketch, but it looks to me as if these things are at least three metres in diameter."

"Big," Custine agreed.

"Looks like they're meant to be suspended from something, like a kind of gallows. One sphere gets s.h.i.+pped to Paris, another to Milan, while the third stays in Berlin."

"Perplexing," Custine said, stroking his moustache. "What would this American girl have been doing

involved with a contract like that?"

"Greta and I talked about that. We figured that maybe it wasn't her contract at all, but one that she was taking an interest in for some reason."

"Back to the spy theory, in other words."

"Sorry," Floyd said, "but all roads really do keep leading to Rome."

"Where are you going to take things now? Did the box offer any other leads?"

"We have the address and telephone number of the metalworks in Berlin."

"Have you called it yet?"

"No, but I plan on doing so as soon as I get back to the office."

"Be careful, Floyd. If there is an espionage connection, poking your nose into things might not be your

wisest move."

"And what do you think you've been doing all afternoon?"

"That's different," Custine said dismissively. "All I'm doing is trying to intercept a wireless

transmission."

"And no one would be able to tell that you're doing that?"

"Of course not," Custine answered, but not with complete confidence. "Look, I'll spend one more

morning on this. Then I'll put the wireless back exactly the way I found it and move on."

"I'm just saying-"

"I know. And I understand. I think we've both convinced ourselves that there's more to this than meets the eye, haven't we?"

"I guess Blanchard was right all along," Floyd said, standing and stretching his legs.

"Have you spoken to him again today?"

"Not yet, but I intend to. I figure I need to tell him that we're at least making a kind of progress."

"You mentioned another lead."

Floyd shuffled his feet awkwardly. "Look, don't think me a fool, but I've noticed that strange little girls keep showing up in this case. There was that girl we saw-"

"I know," Custine said, waving his hand. "And the girl that the tenant on the second floor mentioned, and the girl you saw standing outside. Peripheral details, Floyd: no more than that."

"How can you be certain?"

"I'm certain of nothing. But the one thing my years at the Quai taught me is that small children tend not to be prime suspects in murder cases."

"Maybe this isn't your usual homicide case," Floyd said.

"Are you seriously proposing that a child murdered Susan White?"

"If she was standing by the balcony rail," Floyd said, "it wouldn't have taken much of a shove to send

her over. You don't need much strength for that."

"If her position was that precarious to begin with, it's entirely possible that she just lost her balance."

"Andre, you know as well as I do that she was pushed."

"I'm merely playing devil's advocate, Floyd. Even if you can present a case to the Quai, the examining

magistrate will still have to be convinced before the police will take matters further." Custine took the paper upon which he had recorded the wireless transmissions and folded it twice before slipping it into his s.h.i.+rt pocket. "And there's another problem with your child-as-murderer hypothesis."

"Which is?"

"We know that whoever murdered Susan White sabotaged this wireless. Quite aside from the effort

required to pull off the backing panel, they would also have needed the strength to drag the wireless away from the wall and then slide it back again."

"You managed it on your own."

"I had plenty of time," Custine said. "There's also the small detail that I am not a child. I can't judge exactly how much effort was required, but I doubt that it was within the ability of a little girl."

"Then she had an adult accomplice."

"In which case," Custine said patiently, "we may as well a.s.sume that the adult accomplice was the murderer."

"I still think there's something significant about these children."

"Floyd, you know I have the utmost respect for you, but another valuable lesson I took away from my

time at the Quai-back when solving crimes was its chief activity, rather than hara.s.sing enemies of the state-is that it is just as important to ignore certain details in a case as it is to follow up on others."

"You're saying I'm barking up the wrong tree?"

"The wrong tree, the wrong copse, perhaps even the wrong area of forestation entirely."

"I'm reluctant to rule anything out."

"Good: rule nothing out. But don't be distracted by ridiculous theories, Floyd. Not when we already have concrete leads."

Floyd sighed, a moment of clarity intruding upon his thoughts. Custine was right, of course. Now and then, Floyd had a habit of pursuing blatantly unlikely lines of enquiry. Sometimes-even if all they were investigating was a minor case of spousal infidelity-they led to a critical breakthrough. More often than not, however, he needed a gentle reminder from Custine to return to the orthodox approach, and more often than not Custine's stolid, honed, scientific methods turned out to be exactly what the case required.

This, Floyd realised, was exactly one of those times.

"You're right," he said. "If only one of those strange kids had shown up, I guess I'd have thought nothing of it." "The central defect of the human mind," Custine said, "is its unfortunate habit of seeing patterns where none exist. Of course, that is also its chief a.s.set."

"But sometimes a very dangerous one."

Custine stood up, wiping his palms on his trousers. "Don't feel bad about it, Floyd. It happens to the best of us. And there's never any harm in asking questions." Custine gathered his tools, hat and coat and together they walked down two flights of stairs and knocked on Blanchard's door. Floyd delivered a sanitised version of events: yes, it seemed likely to him that Susan White had been murdered; it even seemed likely to him that she had been something other than an innocent American tourist.

"A spy?" Blanchard asked.

"Too soon to say," Floyd answered. "There are still leads we need to look into. But you'll hear from us as soon as we have something concrete."

"I spoke to one of the other tenants. It seems you have been asking questions about a little girl."

"Just ruling out any possible witnesses," Floyd said.

"What could a little girl possibly have to do with this?"

"Probably nothing at all," Custine interjected, before Floyd was tempted to expound his unlikely

theories to Blanchard.

"Very well," Blanchard said, eyeing the two of them. "I must emphasize how important it is to me that you find Susan's killer. I feel that she will not sleep soundly until the matter is resolved."

He said it as if he meant Susan White, but he was looking at the photograph of his dead wife.