Except…Hugo sat back and looked again at the list of her possessions. It was divided into two groups, those found on her body, which included her clothing, and those items retrieved from her stall by police after she was found. It was the latter that interested him. According to the list, there had been a receipt in a canvas bag showing that she'd bought two bottles of vodka at about noon. One was the regular, 750 cl bottle, the other much smaller, just a pint. In the canvas bag, buried at the bottom according to the notes, was the small bottle, three-quarters full. The larger one hadn't been found.
Hugo went to Garcia's desk, tore a piece of paper from a notepad, and borrowed a pen. He made a note of this finding and then turned to the information about Max. He knew that whatever he found would have to stand up to Capitaine Garcia's skepticism.
He found it quickly. The autopsy report noted severe bruising to his chest and back. He might have been hit by boats or driftwood, Hugo knew, assuming he'd fallen into the river alive. But he found what he was looking for in the toxicology report.
Hugo knew that the capitaine, like many cops, might skip over the numbers in the report, the micrograms of whichever substance was found in the blood, the digits showing oxygen levels and concentrations of the drug. But Hugo had done a stint in the lab. He was uncomfortable with relying on the technician's conclusions when he didn't understand the numbers themselves. What this report told him was that Max had ingested not only a large amount of cocaine, but cocaine of an extremely high grade. Not the kind you get on the street, even if you're a lawyer or stockbroker paying the big bucks. No, this was what you found at the wholesale end, not the retail end. And certainly not what you'd find in the hands of a hard-up bouquiniste.
Someone with access to pure cocaine, Hugo was sure, had held a gun to Max's head and made him ingest enough of the drug to kill him. Kill him unpleasantly, too. Such purity would have given him the briefest of highs before torturing his old body to death. First his muscles would be set on fire with tremors that quickly turned into convulsions, then his whole body would have started seizing, the old man wracked with pain before his system gave out entirely, the drug killing him suddenly with a massive heart attack or, if his heart was somehow strong enough to cope with the drug, shutting down his lungs, suffocating him to death.
Hugo calmed the anger rising inside him and turned to the third file. He had less to work with in the case of Pierre Desmarais. Another drowning, supposedly, but a quick look at the photographs made Hugo frown.
Did Garcia even look at these?
A large bruise was evident on the man's forehead and his chin was bloodied. It was hard to tell from the angle of the picture, but his jaw may even have been dislocated. The autopsy report, when it came in, would confirm that.
Hugo picked up the crime scene report and walked out of Garcia's office. He looked around until he found a secretary willing to meet his eye. “Is Capitaine Garcia returning, do you know?”
“Oui, monsieur, he said he was getting himself a sandwich and would be back.”
Right, thought Hugo, a sandwich. There's real police business for you. “Thanks,” he said, “I'll wait.”
He went back into Garcia's office, sat down, and dialed Ceci Roget. She picked up just as he was about to give up. They exchanged pleasantries, then Hugo took a deep breath. “Ceci, I have some bad news.”
“Oh no, is it Pierre?”
“Oui. I'm sorry, Ceci, he's dead.”
“Dead? You're sure?”
Hugo pictured the old man's bedraggled hair, his lifeless but open eyes. “I'm sure.”
“How?”
“That I don't know. The police are taking the position that he drowned but I'm hoping I can persuade them to look again, more closely.”
“Do you think it's Gravois?”
“I still don't know, Ceci, I wish I could answer that. The trouble is, other than their jobs, there's nothing tying him to these people, not directly.”
“I know. I know.” He heard the deep sigh. Then, “Oh, I talked to several more bouquinistes.”
“And?”
“More of the same. Offered money to give up their stalls. They got the same feeling I did, too, though none of them were threatened or hurt.”
“OK, thanks Ceci. Listen, you probably shouldn't call any more people. We don't want word to get back to Gravois.”
“Do you think I am in any danger?”
“Even if he is behind this,” Hugo said, “I wouldn't think so. You don't know anything and you did exactly what he wanted you to do. Keep your eyes open, though, and call the police if anything happens. But I think you should be safe if you stay in Bielle.”
They rang off, and fifteen minutes later Garcia arrived. He had two sandwiches, one of which he was most of the way through. The other he offered to Hugo. “Je m'excuse, Monsieur Marston. I was a little rude earlier. Too much to do and not enough help to do it. It's ham and brie. I hope you're not one of those vegetarian Americans.”
“No,” Hugo said. “I'm from Texas.”
Garcia grunted and sat behind his desk. He began to unwrap the remainder of his sandwich, and as he did so, he looked up at Hugo. “I should perhaps clarify my position on these deaths. I am far from convinced they were accidental, but I am equally unconvinced they are related. You must understand that to present a claim like that to my superiors would require a significant amount of proof, because they would then be obliged to devote many resources to solving the killings.” He looked at his sandwich, then back at Hugo. “So did you find anything?”
He's being careful to keep his voice neutral, Hugo thought. And he's not expecting me to find a damn thing.
“Actually, yes.” Hugo turned to the file on Francoise Benoit and picked up the possessions log. He passed it to Garcia and explained about the small bottle being found in the bag, while the larger one was missing.
“Oui.” Garcia nodded. “She was drinking down by the river, we assumed that. She could have dropped the large bottle in the water, we'd never find it.” He took a bite of sandwich and sat back to listen.
“Oui, c'est possible,” Hugo said. “But think about it this way. She has two bottles, one large and one small. Why? I think it was because she doesn't want people to know she's an alcoholic, capitaine. That's why she bought a small bottle, so she could drink without people noticing. It's a pretty classic ploy for alcoholics, and when I talked to her, she was chewing breath mints.”
“To hide the smell of alcohol.”
“Exactement.” Hugo had to be careful not to oversell the theory. After all, she'd admitted being an alcoholic to him, maybe she had to others. And yet the way she told him seemed like a confidence being shared. “It's entirely reasonable that she'd try to hide her drinking, particularly from her customers.”
Garcia grunted again and kept chewing.
“My point,” Hugo went on, “is that if she'd been down by the river's edge for a drink, she would have taken the little bottle. That's why, I think, she bought it. You can see from the report that she'd been drinking from it. I'm guessing she was planning to take the big bottle home.”
Garcia swallowed. “So where is the big one?”
“I don't know. Maybe someone walking past the stall saw it and took it. I don't know, but I don't think it matters. What matters is that she was by the Seine for some reason, but that reason wasn't to drink.”