Into The Fire (5 page)

As a result, the square is now crowded with three photographers and five specialist forensic investigators, plus the one person who needs to be here and nobody really wants: Maître Yves Ducat, the Prosecutor.

Ducat is the man from whom Picaut requires permission to investigate and to whom she must present her case, should she ever get that far.

If Garonne is a soft man in a hard man’s body, Prosecutor Ducat is his opposite: a man of granite, encased in pudgy flesh and a peg-toothed smile. Clean-shaven, with a bull’s nose and a low brow, he flashes his Neanderthal grin at everyone who passes through his office without favour or discrimination. Perpetrator and victim, prosecutor and defence; all and each are treated to a bear hug, a crushing press of his chubby cheek to theirs, a booming welcome.

Picaut fell for the false bonhomie once, and watched an almost-certain child abuser walk free on a point of law. Since then, she has treated him with extreme care and has never made any allegation she couldn’t back up with at least one piece of indisputable evidence.

He is there now, standing four square in front of the sodden remains of the Hôtel Carcassonne, picking his nose with assiduous attention. He shoves his hands in his pockets as Picaut walks up.

‘Body inside?’ he says.

‘According to the Fire Department, yes.’

He shakes his head, as if this is news. ‘So this is like but not like the others, yes?’

‘Yes. And no.’ Picaut phrases her report carefully. She is good at this, the summary of incidents, and she has had plenty of time to prepare. ‘There are differences to the previous fires, but there are also similarities. The body is the most obvious difference. We need first to establish if he died because he was caught in a fire that was lit for other reasons, or whether killing him was the point of the fire.

‘Beyond that, this fire is less contained than its three predecessors. It may have been less carefully lit; perhaps there was more accelerant, or it was spread more widely. This may be accidental, or it may point to a different perpetrator, but equally it may indicate that the increased damage is a deliberate escalation of the war currently being waged on Orléans.’

‘You have had the phone call?’

‘An hour after the fire was first reported. The same voice, heavily accented. He spoke for no more than twelve seconds. There was no chance of a trace.’

‘What did he say?’

Picaut opens her phone, thumbs across a screen or two, reads out the transcript Patrice sent her after it was over. ‘“
Ici L’armée du Prophète, Jaish al Islam
. This fire, too, is ours. The occupant, Madame Rivette, trades in sex. This is not allowed under the laws of Islam. She will do so no longer.”’

‘And Madame Rivette; she is mourning the loss of her brothel?’

‘She doesn’t exist.’

‘What?’

‘Exactly. This is the other major change in the pattern: we not only have a body in a bigger fire, we have less than perfect intelligence on the part of our arsonists. The Hôtel Carcassonne is owned by a Madame Foy and has been since the unfortunate death of her father-in-law last August. It is to be regretted that the hotel website has not been updated, but there is no doubt that she has been the owner for over half a year.’

‘Was it ever a brothel?’

‘If it was, it specialized in middle-aged, overweight foreigners who had sex only with each other and heard of it by word of mouth. If you suggest this in any way, Madame Foy will require that you do so in the presence of her brother who is also her lawyer and will take appropriate action in defence of his client’s reputation. Madame Foy is already aggrieved that she wasn’t mentioned by name in the Jaish al Islam phone call. She would sue them for that if she knew who they were.’

‘
Merde.
’ Ducat pinches his upper lip between thumb and forefinger. ‘They haven’t made mistakes before. Tell me it’s not a copycat.’

‘It’s not. Patrice checked the voice print: it’s identical. They may have their intelligence wrong, or they may be covering up a murder with a fire, but it’s the same group.’

‘We shall be grateful for small mercies. So who’s dead? A fat German?’

‘All we have so far is a white male in his forties, possibly American. We’ll know more when the duty pathologist has examined—’ And here he is: Éric Masson, the pathologist, with his customarily impeccable timing. He waves at Picaut then sees who she’s with and drops his smile and, after it, his hand.

Masson is one of the few people who don’t have to be nice to Ducat. He uses his privilege with a diffidence that does him credit. Walking over, he gives a small bow to Picaut, nods to the Prosecutor. ‘Maître, it seems my services may be required.’

This is a politeness. He has already been inside; the smell of smoke on his clothes is a dead giveaway.

Ducat grunts by way of greeting. ‘Only one body?’

‘Only one that has been found so far.’

Ducat gives his peg-broad smile. ‘Collateral damage or deliberate target, either way he’s dead on our precinct. In view of which, this is now a murder inquiry under the investigation of Capitaine Picaut. I shall require the results of a full autopsy at your earliest convenience. You don’t have to be here, you know …’

They dance this duet at every single crime scene for which Masson is on call. Since 2010, no forensic pathologist in France has been required to visit the scene of the crime; the investigating officer should, in theory, be able to provide all the necessary detail.

Not being required to attend, of course, is different from not being permitted to do so and Éric Masson, who thinks the new legislation is bullshit – pardon the captain’s presence and no reflection on her competence, of course – wants to see the body in situ for himself. Picaut considers this wise and, this once, Ducat is in full agreement.

Still, it is their custom that the prosecutor points out the law and the pathologist acknowledges it. Masson repeats his bow. ‘With your permission, maître?’ And then to Picaut, ‘Shall we go?’

‘Lead on.’

Éric Masson, twice divorced by the age of thirty-five, is tall and thin and acidly crabby and Picaut likes him a lot. His marital catastrophes have etched fault-lines across his brow, but not yet stripped him of his humanity, his humour or, indeed, his hair, which grows thickly dark with a widow’s peak that flops over his right eye. Immaculate in a white paper suit, yellow hard hat and latex gloves, he leads the way to the burned-out building.

‘Is he making trouble?’ He nods back at Ducat.

‘No more than usual. What have you got?’

‘Male, Caucasian, good height, middle-aged. Exactly what the Fire Department said. The fire cooked him fairly comprehensively.’ He sends her a warning glance. ‘He’s not pretty.’

‘They never are. I’ll be fine. Really.’

‘Take this, then.’ He hands her a spare safety hat. The weight settles cold on her brow. She follows him, ducking under a fallen lintel held up by a jack, into the sodden, aching building.

Inside, the fire has rendered everything in shades of black and white; coloured only by flashes of blue sky that let in the morning in places where the roof has fallen away. They enter a hallway, walk past remnants of picture frames slewed on smoke-blackened walls. In one corner is a mess of melted plastic that was once the telephone. The air hangs thick and damp, scented with an unholy hybrid of wet dog and sodden wood with the first taste of burning flesh.

There was a time within living memory when the Fire Department moved dead bodies from their location to somewhere ‘safer’ in a fire-wrought building. Now they know better, and so Picaut follows the pathologist along a smaller hallway and left into a good-sized double bedroom with en-suite shower and views that are notionally north towards the cathedral, but in fact are of the street opposite, a landscape of pale stone and buff-painted wood.

With one long, sweeping look, she takes in what might be the blackened remnants of a woollen carpet, a broad bed, furniture with classic, cool French lines. The fire has destroyed everything in this room, but the withered, blackened skeletons left behind still speak of taste and discrimination on a limited budget. The Hôtel Carcassonne was not as cheap as its situation and exterior might suggest, but nor was it ostentatiously expensive.

A photographer steps back as they approach, leaving a space around the body. The smell of overcooked meat is strongest here. Breathing through her mouth, Picaut tastes it on her tongue.

The victim lies on the floor to the left of the bed. He is curled in a foetal position, knees and elbows tucked in, face behind fists. His body is a black hulk, impossible to see where his burned clothes end and his burned skin begins. His hair has vanished, leaving no clue as to its colour. His eyes have broken apart and all that was liquid is gone. Vacant sockets stare at the wall.

Never in human history has this been a good death. Six hundred years ago, the Maid of Orléans was fixed to a stake and burned. When she was dead, the executioner stripped her naked to prove to the crowd that she was a woman, then built up the fire and burned her to ashes, and then took those ashes and burned them again, to be sure nothing was left. On English orders, Frenchmen destroyed her. Turning her into a saint has done nothing to wash away the horror.

Picaut closes her eyes. ‘Tell me he died of smoke inhalation …’

‘Possibly.’ Masson is kneeling, careful to keep his white suit white. Already, Picaut’s is smudged and smeared. He has second thoughts; truth is his touchstone. ‘Actually, no, but for what it’s worth, I don’t think he was conscious.’ He takes a step back, leaving her to study the body.

He has given her a clue but she likes to think she didn’t need it; after nearly two years of tuition, she can see almost all that he sees.

She points just above the dead man’s left eye. ‘Fractured skull?’

‘Good.’ He lectured once to students at Harvard, and the habit has never left him. Now, he pulls a Bic from an inside pocket and uses it as an extension of his finger, sweeping it in an arc from the eye socket up and out towards the temple. Viewed from a particular angle, it is possible that the blackened skin in this area might be slightly depressed. ‘I’d put good money that there’s a fracture under here. If he was hit hard enough to break the bone, he’ll have been dazed, at the very least.’

Not an accident, then, but still possible that he is, as Ducat said, collateral damage; an unfortunate who disturbed the fire setters in their act of arson, the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Picaut stands up and a photographer steps in and leans over the body. Three bright-white flashes light the room. In their wake, both Picaut and Masson take their own images with their phones. They’re not for use in court, but they’ll be uploaded on to a computer back at the lab and case notes will be built around them.

‘So who was he?’ she asks.

‘No idea.’ Masson sweeps his pen in a wider arc that takes in the fried mess of the bed, the burned remnants of the dressing table, the wardrobe that has fallen in on itself … and the absolute absence of anything to mark the man on the floor: no clothes hanging over chairs, no suitcase lying open. ‘No passport, no credit card, no mobile phone; nothing. The room’s been cleared out.’

So, not collateral damage. ‘Fuck.’ Picaut stares down at the charred remains of her maybe-American visitor and counts the ways in which her life has just become more complex.

Éric Masson’s quiet smile greets her as she looks up again. ‘I think this is what they pay you for.’

‘And they pay you to get me DNA and a dental imprint in record time.’ They are friends; the words lack any sting. ‘I can’t find out why he was murdered until I know who he was.’

‘Give me two hours.’

Picaut sinks down to her hands and knees, peers under the bed. ‘He had a mobile phone. He was seen speaking on it at dinner. It must be here somewhere.’

It isn’t. Later in the day, a fingertip search by the forensic team finds fragments of plastic and some parts of a battery ground into the carpet as if the whole thing has been crushed underfoot, but of the phone there is no sign. Nor is there any particular sign of who has been here, or why, although Martin Evard of the Fire Department tells her that, as in the previous fires, all the surfaces in the room were soaked with gasoline before it was set alight.

Picaut follows the stretcher bearing the charred remains out into the small square in front of the building. Her car is covered in a fine layer of soot and ash. She is the same. Every time she runs her hands through her hair, they come away grimier.

It is four minutes past seven. She weighs risk and counter-risk and decides that being (and looking and feeling) clean matters more than being at her desk ten minutes ahead of time. Pocketing her car keys, she sets out to walk three blocks west towards the apartment she once shared with Luc; the place she still notionally calls home.

On the way, she prepares in her head the report she will email to Ducat, the prosecutor, and the broader-ranging, more speculative one she will present to her team when they gather in her office later.

She has had less than three hours’ sleep.

TOMAS RUSTBEARD’S FIRST
chance to kill the Maid comes on the second day of the assault on Jargeau, just over a month after the disaster at Orléans.

The army is camped in the suburbs, preparing for another day of fighting. The king has been prevaricating or they would have been here a month ago. His advisers are divided. The Maid, to whom all now look for advice, has spent the past month persuading him to let her march his army against the English garrisons of the Loire valley.

The king, not surprisingly, is somewhat reluctant to let a woman lead his troops; it’s not a good precedent. Also, his religious advisers are divided between those who think she is a gift from God and can do anything, and those, most notably the Archbishop of Rheims, the king’s spiritual adviser, who think she is a charlatan at best, the devil incarnate at worst, and should be sewn in a leather sack and thrown in the river forthwith.