‘Do you know this man well?’
‘I know him, but I wouldn’t say I know him well.’
‘Then how do you know what he’s capable of?’
‘Well, I don’t,’ replied Tom, baffled. ‘But he’s just a messenger boy.’
‘Professor, some of the most notorious murderers in history had menial jobs. The Yorkshire Ripper in the UK was just a delivery driver, Harold Fritzl in Belgium was just an electrician, Jeffrey Dahmer in your own country killed at least seventeen people and he just worked in a chocolate factory. I could go on.’
‘Okay, okay. I get the point. But Ajay’s not a serial killer.’
‘We will follow up any leads we have,’ replied the inspector. ‘Most of the time they turn out to be nothing more than an over-zealous do-gooder playing detective, or a vindictive colleague trying to exact revenge on a workmate. But we have to take them all seriously.’
‘But Ajay was liked by everybody,’ Tom protested.
‘Obviously not, otherwise we wouldn’t have had the tip-off. Do you know where we can find Anjit? Only he hasn’t shown up for work yet, and the officer I sent to his room reported there was no answer.’
CHAPTER 17
Frederick had returned his call and they arranged to meet just after lunch. He didn’t know if he was getting paranoid or not, but he thought he could detect a note of tension in Frederick’s voice. Perhaps the police have already spoken to him about Ajay’s disappearance? he wondered.
Tom spent the rest of the morning trying to avoid the inspector. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help the police with their enquiries; he just wanted a chance to speak with Ajay first. He wasn’t prepared to accept that he was such a bad judge of character.
Just before lunch, he decided to check on Ajay’s apartment for himself, in case he was hiding there and too frightened to answer the door to the police. He may be holed up, ready to make his last stand, as Inspector Gervaux would have it. He thought it prudent to grab his jacket on the way past his own apartment, just in case he had any more problems getting back into the office.
As Tom made his way down the corridor, he noticed that the door to his apartment was slightly ajar. He could have sworn he’d pulled it to and heard the lock click before he’d left in the morning. He wasn’t a citizen’s arrest type of person, so figured his best course of action would be to make as much noise as possible to give any intruder a chance of running away, then leave it to the police to track him down later.
He stood a few feet away from the door to allow safe passage for any fleeing criminals and started up an imaginary conversation on his phone. ‘No, I’m not in my office. I’m just going back to my apartment to pick my jacket up. Yes, I’m there now. No, I won’t be too long. I’ll see you shortly.’
He held his breath and inched closer, trying to hear any movement coming from inside his apartment. Nothing. He knocked on the door.
‘Hello, is there anybody in there?’ He didn’t know what he’d do if somebody answered him. ‘Yes, I’m just robbing your apartment. I won’t be too much longer.’ As it happened, there was no reply. Tom breathed a sigh of relief and pushed the door open with his foot. Still nothing. He peered cautiously into the room.
There was no sign of a burglar, but there was evidence that somebody had been there. The apartment had been ransacked. He stood in the entrance, surveying the carnage. The large orange sofa was tipped over; its fabric had been slashed and stuffing spilled out onto the floor, like entrails. The unit housing the TV and CD player lay on top of it, its contents smashed beyond recognition, their constituent parts scattered across the floor. The small table, upon which the laptop computer was placed, had been tossed across the other side of the room, but Tom couldn’t see the laptop anywhere.
He made his way into the kitchen, picking his way around the debris. He could feel a cold breeze on his cheek — the patio doors leading to the quadrangle were wide open. He thought perhaps he had disturbed them, after all. The kitchen was in a similar state as the lounge. All the cupboards had been unceremoniously emptied onto the floor, which was now covered by a carpet of glass and china. Drawers had been pulled out, their contents tipped onto the kitchen work surface before being discarded. He didn’t need to go into the bedroom to know that it would have received the same treatment.
He dialled the main CERN number from the mobile he was still clenching in his hand and asked to be put through to Inspector Gervaux. He had to wait several minutes before he heard the heavy French accent on the other end.
‘Hello, Inspector Gervaux. How may I help you?’
‘Inspector? Hi, it’s Tom Halligan. I think I’ve been burgled.’
‘And you say the only thing missing is your laptop?’
Inspector Gervaux was jotting down everything that Tom was telling him in his notebook. It had taken him less than ten minutes to get to the apartment. He had with him a short, broad-shouldered gentleman with a squat neck and a heavy mono-brow arranged in a constant frown over close-set eyes. He had a round face with black, short-cropped hair. A badly-stitched scar ran from one side of his mouth to just below his cheek. If Tom hadn’t known better, he would have sworn he was looking at somebody who came from the wrong side of the law. He was introduced as Sergeant Lavelle.
‘As far as I can tell,’ replied Tom. ‘But, as you can see, it’s difficult to work out what’s here, let alone what’s gone.’
The three men were standing in what was left of Tom’s bedroom. His mattress and duvet had been shredded, covering everything in a layer of snowy-white downy feathers. His clothes were strewn across the floor, the pockets of his jackets and trousers ripped open.
‘Do you have any idea who could be responsible for this?’ the inspector asked.
‘No, I don’t. Perhaps it was an opportunist thief,’ Tom suggested.
‘It doesn’t look like a regular burglary. It appears more like they were looking for something.’ It was the first time Sergeant Lavelle had spoken. Even when he was first introduced to Tom, he had simply nodded a greeting. His voice was gravelly, with a mix of French and German accents.
‘But what?’ Tom tried to rack his brains. ‘I don’t have anything of value.’
‘What was on the laptop?’ Inspector Gervaux enquired.
‘Nothing of mine. I haven’t even had time to log on since I arrived.’
‘Was it a new laptop?’ Sergeant Lavelle interjected.
‘As I said, I hadn’t really had a chance to use it,’ replied Tom. ‘But, going by everything else, it was probably a hand-me-down.’
‘Pardon?’ the two men said in unison.
‘It probably belonged to my predecessor,’ Tom explained.
‘Ah yes, Professor Morantz.’ Inspector Gervaux closed his notebook and pocketed it. ‘I will send our forensics team in to see if they can find any fingerprints or DNA. But, I must advise you, if they were professionals it’s very unlikely that we will find anything. If you remember something that could help us, please give me a call.’ He handed his card to Tom.
He watched the two men leave, then turned his focus back to his bedroom. It was clearly uninhabitable. He gathered a pile of underwear, socks, T-shirts and a pair of trainers from the floor, grabbed the American Airlines complimentary wash bag from his bathroom and stuffed them into his flight bag, which he located in the living room; there really wasn’t anything else worth salvaging. He put on a sweater, gave one last perfunctory glance around and left the apartment without locking it, then made his way to the canteen.