Century Rain Part 34

Belliard turned from the window, blowing a line of dust from his fingers. "Hara.s.s your colleague, Monsieur Floyd? Why on Earth would we want to do that?"

"Because it's what you've always done?"

The young man scratched the tip of his nose. He had a very slender face, nearly hairless, like one of the

dummies Floyd frequently saw in the windows of gentlemen's outfitters. Even his eyebrows appeared to have been pencilled in. "Funny you should mention your partner," the man said, "because it's Custine we were hoping to have a chat with."

"I know all about your 'little chats,'" Floyd said. "They usually involve a quick trip to the bottom of the stairs."

"You're much too cynical," Belliard said, chidingly. "It doesn't become you, Monsieur Floyd."

"I've grown into it like an old shoe."

"These are new times, a new Paris."

Floyd picked up a pencil and rolled it between his fingers. "I think I preferred the old one. It smelled better."

"Then maybe you should air out the place a little," Belliard said, opening the office window. A sudden stiff breeze blew through the room, sending papers flying on to the carpet and slamming shut the main and connecting doors. Belliard turned from the window and walked towards Floyd, making no effort to avoid the case notes and paperwork now littering the floor. "There. Better already. It wasn't the city that had a bad smell about it, it was your office."

"If you say so."

"Let's stop playing games, shall we?" Belliard moved back to the side of the desk directly opposite Floyd and planted the heels of his hands on the edge of it. He was looking Floyd straight in the eye. "There's been a murder in the Blanchard building."

"I know," Floyd said. "I'm the poor sap investigating it."

"Not that one. I mean the one that happened about three hours ago."

"I don't follow."

"Blanchard is dead. He was found on the pavement beneath his balcony, just like the unfortunate Mademoiselle White." Belliard looked at one of his men. "You know, perhaps there was something in that business after all."

Genuinely shocked despite the forewarning in Custine's message, Floyd found it difficult to form the words he wanted to say. "Blanchard's dead? Blanchard's actually been murdered?"

Belliard looked at him with pale, discriminating eyes, as if judging the exact degree by which Floyd was surprised. "Yes," he said, his thin, bloodless lips moving but the sound reaching Floyd delayed, as if travelling across a great divide. "And the unfortunate thing is that the last person seen in his presence was your a.s.sociate Custine. As a matter of fact, he was observed leaving the building in something of a rush."

"Custine didn't do it," Floyd said automatically.

"You sound astonis.h.i.+ngly sure of that. How could you possibly know that, unless the man himself has offered you an explanation or an alibi?"

"Because I know Custine. I know he wouldn't do something like that." Floyd's throat was suddenly dry. Without asking anyone's permission, he poured himself a sip of brandy and knocked it back.

"How can you be so certain? Do you have that much insight into his character?"

"I have all the insight I need," Floyd snapped, "and it wouldn't matter a d.a.m.n whether I did or not, because it still wouldn't make any sense. Blanchard took us on to solve his homicide case-why would one of us murder our own client?"

"Maybe there was always an ulterior motive," Belliard said. "Or perhaps the murder was completely impulsive: an act of sudden, blinding rage, entirely without premeditation."

"Not Custine," Floyd said. His eyes drifted to the telephone, where the slip of white paper was still jutting out visibly from underneath the base, in spite of his attempt to hide it. Belliard couldn't see it from his present angle, and might not make anything of it if he could, but if he did notice it...Floyd felt nausea flood through him like water through the Hoover Dam.

"No matter what he may have told you, Andre Custine was a violent man," Belliard said, almost sympathetically. "A man died in custody under his questioning. You knew that, didn't you? An innocent man, as it happened; not that his innocence would have been much consolation while Custine was breaking every finger on one of his hands."

"No!" Floyd said, aghast.

"I see from your expression that he didn't tell you. What a shame. All this might have been avoided, otherwise."

Feeling detached from himself, as if bobbing above his body like an invisible balloon, Floyd said, "What do you mean?"

"Simply that Blanchard might still be alive. Evidently, Custine lost it again." Belliard pursed his lips disapprovingly, as if being forced to listen to an off-colour joke. "There's no telling what might have set

him off."

"Don't you idiots get it?" Floyd said. "There was one homicide connected with the Susan White case and now there's been another. Don't go trying to pin this on Custine just because of his past, just because you and he have some unfinished business. You'll be going after the wrong man while the right man gets away with it again."

"A nice theory," Belliard said, "and I'd be tempted to give it the time of day if there wasn't one niggling

little detail out of place."

Floyd closed the telephone directory, trying to make the action seem as casual and automatic as possible.

"Which is?"

"If your man Custine is the innocent party here-just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong

time-then why was he in such a hurry to leave the scene of the crime?"

"I don't know," Floyd said. "You'll have to ask him that yourselves. No, actually, I do know: Custine was no fool. He'd have known exactly how you'd try to pin this on him, for old time's sake."

"Then you allow that he may have fled the scene?"

"I allow nothing," Floyd said.

"When was the last time you saw Custine?"

"This morning." Floyd noticed that one of the other officers was writing notes in a spiral-bound

notebook with a black marbled fountain pen. "I dropped him at the Blanchard place while I went off to

make some other enquiries."

"'Some other enquiries,'" Belliard repeated, a mocking note in his voice. "That does sound so very professional, when you put it like that. What was Custine supposed to be doing?"

Floyd shrugged: at this point he saw no need to lie. "There was something about the White case that bothered us. Custine needed to get a better look at the wireless set in her room."

"And that was the last time you saw him or heard from him?"

"I tried calling the Blanchard apartment not long before you arrived. No one picked up."

Belliard looked at Floyd with an amused glint in his eye. "That doesn't quite answer my question."

Floyd reminded himself that the last thing he should do was lose his temper with these Quai men, and forced himself to speak calmly and civilly, like a man with nothing to hide. "That was the last contact I had with Custine."

"Very well," Belliard said. "And was there any sign that Custine had been here in your absence? He's your a.s.sociate, so I presume he has his own key to your premises."

"There's no sign that he's been back."

"Nothing disturbed, nothing missing, no messages?"

"Nothing like that," Floyd said, as wearily as he dared. Belliard motioned for the other officer to snap shut his notebook. "We're done here, I think." He reached into his jacket and pulled out a business card. "Now it's my turn. We found one of your business cards on Blanchard's body, and another turned up with the witness who saw Custine fleeing the scene. By way of reciprocity, here's my card."

Floyd took it. "Any particular reason why I might need this?"

"Custine may try to contact you. It's not unusual, especially if someone's just gone on the run. He may need personal items, he may need funds. He may wish to put his side of the story to a friend."

"You'll be the first person I call if that happens."

"Make sure that I am." Belliard reached for his hat, then stopped himself. "I almost forgot: there's a

small favour I need to ask of you."

"I'm all ears."

"I need to use your telephone. We have a team still sweeping the crime scene and I'd like to call them

before I make my next move, just in case they've turned something up. There's a wireless in the car, but

it's a long walk downstairs and I won't be able to call through to Blanchard's apartment directly."

"Go right ahead," Floyd said, feeling his blood temperature drop about ten degrees. "I hope that counts as co-operating with your enquiries."

Belliard lifted the receiver from its cradle and started dialling. "Very much so. And don't let me walk out of here without signing you a chit for that horse."

The edge of Custine's letter glared at Floyd, peeking out from underneath the telephone like a flag of

surrender. If they found that note, Floyd thought, then he and Custine were both as good as dead. They would take Floyd down into the Quai and make life unpleasant for him until he gave them some lead that would bring them Custine. And if he died before they got it out of him, they'd simply make sure they had enough men on the job to cover all the possibilities. They had scented blood now: the chance to punish Custine for the way he had betrayed them all-in spirit if not in name-before his enforced retirement. It had been a long time coming, and they were not going to be in the most forgiving frame of mind.

Belliard started speaking, his French almost too rapid and clipped for Floyd to follow. It was French with a heavy seasoning of police jargon: almost another language in its own right. The inspector leaned against the table and began to drag the telephone towards him by fractions of an inch, gradually exposing more and more of the letter.

He's going to see it any second now, Floyd thought, and he isn't going to be able to resist taking a look at it. It's what anyone would do, in the same circ.u.mstances.

He heard someone try the outer door but find it locked. A voice called out in thick peasant French. Belliard motioned for one of the officers to open the door, while he continued speaking. Floyd picked up s.n.a.t.c.hes of Belliard's side of the conversation: something about the wireless itself being smashed to pieces on the pavement, along with Blanchard. And it sounded as if it had been a violent death this time, with no attempt to make it look like anything other than murder.

The second officer reached the outer door and unlocked it. He opened it a crack and Floyd saw another officer standing there, a man who must have been waiting in the car downstairs. Floyd had a moment to register this scene and then the door was wrenched violently from the officer's hand as another gale suddenly tore through the apartment, s.n.a.t.c.hing into the air the few papers that hadn't already found their way to the floor. In that squall of flying paper, Floyd saw the note from Custine flutter out from under the telephone, across the room and out through the open window, like a moth on the wing.

Belliard concluded his call and returned the telephone to Floyd's desk. "Perhaps I shouldn't have opened that window after all," he said, looking down at the carpet of dishevelled papers. "It'll take you a month of Sundays to tidy up this lot."

"That's all right," Floyd said, wondering how obvious his relief was. "It was about time they had a good sort."

Belliard reached into his jacket and pulled out a book of chits. "How much for the horse?"

"Don't worry about it," Floyd said. "I was going to throw it out anyway."

After he had locked the door behind the Quai men, Floyd moved to the window, still open to the mid-afternoon city, and peeled aside the dusty slats of the blinds. He watched the black police sedan below grumble into life and move away. He looked up and down rue du Dragon, noting the positions and makes of the other vehicles parked there and paying particular attention to any that he did not recognise or that seemed out of place in the rundown backstreet, with its potholes and waterlogged drains. There, three shops up, was another dark sedan. He couldn't tell the model from the angle of his view, but it looked similar to the police car he had just seen depart-probably an unmarked police vehicle. Behind the oily gleam of the winds.h.i.+eld, he saw a man sitting patiently with his hands folded in his lap.

Floyd had to give them credit. Less then four hours had pa.s.sed since the murder, but the efficient boys from the Quai had already a.s.signed a crack team from the Crime Squad to it. Admittedly, they hadn't had to look very far for a lead-not the way Floyd and Custine had helpfully distributed business cards around the premises. But they had still organised a tail, and maybe more than one. Floyd had an idea of the way the Quai worked: if you thought there was one man putting you under surveillance, then there was probably a second or a third you had no idea about.

Floyd let the blinds flick back into place. He felt drained, as if he had just staggered to his feet after receiving a stomach punch. Everything had changed since he had walked into the office, laden down with groceries and rather fewer problems than he imagined he had. Why was it never good news that put problems into perspective? Why did it always take another set of problems?

He sat back down at his desk and tried to compose his thoughts. The basic details of the investigation remained unchanged, but now it was a double-homicide case, and the police had belatedly decided to take an interest. Or-more probably-they had latched on to Blanchard's death as a pretext for punis.h.i.+ng Custine. It still didn't look as though they had much interest in the first homicide.

But even though the letter was gone, Custine had still given him a vital clue. The typewriter hadn't been a typewriter at all, but a sophisticated piece of enciphering equipment. Several things suddenly made a lot more sense-and they all backed up the spy hypothesis.

Susan White had cooked her wireless to tune into coded transmissions. The dots and dashes had looked a lot like Morse, and maybe they were derived from it, but that was only the beginning of the encryption. Morse, as Floyd knew well from his days sailing out of Galveston, was just a way of sending the written word over the airwaves. Anyone with a Morse book could crack that kind of message even if they had no prior knowledge of the code, which was fine for parlour games, but nowhere near secure enough for spies. That was where the Enigma machine came in. The signals coming over the wireless set had already been scrambled by whoever sent them. White's smashed Enigma machine had been her means of unscrambling those messages back into something readable.

It meant that she was definitely a spy. No doubt about that now. It also meant there wasn't a hope in h.e.l.l of ever learning what was in those Morse transmissions.