Speak Softly My Love Read online

  Speak Softly My Love

  Louis Shalako

  Copyright 2014 Louis Shalako and Long Cool One Books

  Design: J. Thornton

  ISBN 978-1-927957-73-8

  The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places or events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  About Louis Shalako

  Chapter One

  It all started with a litre of milk. Or rather, the lack of one.

  He’d run out completely. It was only Thursday. Shopping day was Saturday. Madame Lefebvre had laid in a fair supply of groceries before heading off on her annual vacation with her sister in Orleans. He wasn’t short of food exactly, just milk. He wasn’t expecting to see her before Monday.

  Gilles didn’t drink much milk. He wasn’t a big fan of cereal, oatmeal and porridge and the like. His routine was to have at least two cups of coffee upon awakening. Lately the caseload was such that nothing much had been happening to disturb the even flow of his mornings.

  He should have left a note for the milkman, really, but he was unfamiliar with the routine of his own household. By the time he thought of it, it was too late.

  To have a little milk in the house might save him from a day that began badly. At work, they’d have him running his legs off all day long, with no chance of getting off his feet. Rushing out first thing, finding a familiar place and then queueing up for one miserable cup of coffee, and then finding a place to drink it, would not be his first choice. He wasn’t that sociable to begin with.

  Maintenon just felt like a walk.

  The milk was merely his excuse.

  It was good to walk alone sometimes.

  It was a fine clear night in early September. The moon was up but high clouds obscured it in some places. The dark sky to the north revealed stark glittering stars down low, in among the branches, the rooftops and the chimneys. He walked softly, preferring to hear other people first, which meant that he had an option.

  The park was coming up. Gilles wasn’t particularly worried, although the difference between night and day could be profound. This wasn’t such a bad neighbourhood. Not being a young man he had nothing to prove—as an older individual maybe a little something to fear. The statistics were clear enough.

  He was also armed and wasn’t afraid to use it, which made a big difference.

  The fragile, hence doubled-up paper bag tucked under his left arm, Gilles turned onto the grass and soft wet leaves halfway in between streetlights. It was a habitual cut-through. There weren’t too many people about. At this exact hour, most were either at home having dinner, or they had already gone out for supper, dinner, dancing or the show. Whatever. An entirely different crowd would be out later, when the more prosperous victims were coming home again. They would be mellow and off-guard, with full bellies and as often as not a skin-full of good wine aboard.

  It was very dark under the old oaks and beeches. There were shadows strewn everywhere and every which way. It was disorienting, luckily the ground was level underfoot. Benches and flowerbeds were easy enough to avoid. Flowerbeds were, with their thick black humus, even darker than the grass. They were topped by dormant shrubs and those stalks which were trimmed or clipped but not totally collapsed in the way certain perennials might do—horticulture being a bit of a foreign subject to Maintenon.

  When he stumbled across the body, Gilles fell forwards, almost going flat on his face. He dropped the bloody milk and put his hands out quickly in an effort to save himself from falling right into somebody’s wide-open mouth.

  “Merde!”

  Forgetting the bag, he was up in a jiffy.

  “Damnation.” There was something wet and sticky on his hands, after he touched the body again in the general centre of the body mass.

  It confirmed what he already knew.

  He was half bent over, trying to get a good look. The only thing he could properly see was that pale oval face, and the deeper black mass of the body. A dark suit blocked out the lighter coloured leaves, but it was darker than the wet green grass. It was a formless shape, a body nevertheless.

  The full, golden orb of the moon came out fully from behind the thin cloud layer and that’s when he got a good look at the fellow.

  “Merde.”

  He stood staring down at a slender male of indeterminate age, high thirties possibly. The man looked to be about average height. He was a handsome enough, clean shaven. It might have been a kind, a gentle face once, curiously unlined. Was that grey at the temples or a trick of the light? The eyes were wide open and staring, the hair tousled and lanky. The body was still warm, the blood still wet and he was a police officer.

  With a quick nod at nothing at all, Gilles left the milk, the cheese, the butter and the fresh baguettes where they lay.

  Turning, he sprinted back towards the light.

  The sooner he called this one in, the better. There was barely a chance, but that body was still warm.

  ***

  Inspector Gilles Maintenon lived in the city’s 14th arrondissement. A running man drew attention, and there were curious looks from an obviously-married pedestrian couple as he pelted back to the corner store where he had made his little purchases.

  Jamming coins in, he dialed an all too familiar number.

  “Who?” Dispatchers never wasted a second.

  “Inspector Gilles Maintenon. Hurry. The body’s still warm for Christ’s sakes.”

  “All right, Inspector. We have units on the way. You say this is in the Park Montsouris?”

  “Yes, it’s off the path and away from the lights.”

  “All right then.” The dispatcher was calm and cool when Gilles could only wish. “You had better wait on the sidewalk.”

  “I’ll be on the Rue Gazan. Near the lake.” Pond might be a better word.

  The dispatcher was speaking into their microphone and he waited on the line.

  “Right. You live right near there, don’t you, Inspector?”

  “Yes, I went out for milk. I cut through the park on the way home. I’m calling in from the store.”

  “Very well, Inspector. We’ll have some people with you shortly.”

  Gilles hung up the phone. He was a little shaken. There was little else he could do. It wasn’t an insult, it was just coincidence. The odds against finding a body on your evening walk were astronomical. Quite frankly this was the first time it had ever happened to him and he hoped it would be the last.

  Let other people find the damned things.

  For crying out loud!

  It was distressing. It gave him a new perspective. Civilians found bodies all the time and the police were often quite cross when they muffed it up. They disturbed the body or left their own soda bottles, candy-wrappers, cigarette butts and footprints all over the place. The worst one in his recollection had been a cub journalist. He worked for some socialist weekly down south, and he was ju
st in Paris for the day or something. It was the seventh congress, the popular front. The freaking Communist International. For crying out loud. He’d found himself a body and then spent what seemed like hours photographing it before phoning it in to police. That one left a complete circle of footprints around the body, taking pictures from every angle and carefully bracketing his shots as he subsequently explained.

  Looking back, Gilles couldn’t quite recall, but he might have seen one or two on the front page.

  The guy might have made a few francs out of it.

  He looked at Madame Foubister, on duty most evenings in the small, slightly unkempt but always cheerful little store on the corner. He lived a few short blocks away and there was a kind of warmth, a kind of friendship or friendliness at least, that he had learned to appreciate since Ann’s passing. No doubt she, and the lady standing goggle-eyed with her, had heard every word, which meant the next customer and the next, and the one after that would also hear every word.

  “Ah, Monsieur? Is everything all right?”

  He repressed a sigh, there being nothing he could do about it. It was only human nature, and anything further would only add fuel to the fire.

  “Good evening, Madame. Thank you, there is nothing to be alarmed about.”

  She waved as he made his way out the door, brushing past more customers on their way in.

  ***

  Gilles made his way back to the point where he had first entered the park. He found a pool of light under a lamp-post. On the chill evening air, the cry of the sirens came from somewhere not too far away.

  He shook his head. Two young people were coming down the street from the northeast, a male and a female. Before they got to him, they turned. They were holding hands and giggling as they entered the park. His mouth opened. Bits of black verticality, they were too far away, and it was already too late. There were scattered lights in there and he watched them. Voices traveled across in front of him from left to right. Their shadows swept across like the second hand of a clock and he sighed deeply. He was pretty sure the body was right along there…

  A scream confirmed it. The girl was hysterical.

  The young man’s voice was high but loud, cursing and swearing and saying it was an abomination.

  He called out.

  “Please don’t disturb the body.”

  There was nothing but silence and then came the sound of voices. The girl was crying and the young man was holding her close as the pair came out of the darkness, seeking his authoritative voice. As soon as they saw him, a non-descript middle-aged man, standing a little too close to a dead man and seemingly somehow involved, the pair turned and bolted off to the southeast.

  “Excuse me—please.” The young man gave an angry look back, and putting their heads down, the pair ran off up the street.

  Innocent. That was his first impression, and first impressions are lasting ones. Neither one of them was wearing a coat. There was little doubt they were from the neighbourhood. Hopefully they could be located quickly, although they probably knew nothing. Just what they had seen, and no more.

  A loud engine and stabbing headlights careened around the corner and roared up the street from the north. A carload of uniformed gendarmes screeched to a halt right in front of him. The driver stayed in the car and the other three got out. The driver had the microphone up, lips moving and noises coming out. He was reporting their on-scene status.

  “Inspector Maintenon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sergeant Girard. I understand you have a discovered a body? A dead one?”

  “That’s the usual description, Sergeant.” Gilles lifted an arm like a tour guide. “Step right this way, please.”

  The officers snapped on their torches and followed him across the dewy grass. A moment later he was rewarded with the sight of his own footprints. Presumably. They were the only obvious ones along there. They should lead straight to the scene of the crime.

  Chapter Two

  Sergeant Girard and the two gendarmes went in front, lights poking ahead and off to right and left.

  Gilles was at the Sergeant’s heels. His hand was in his pocket, secure in the feel of the little MAB Model D, a 7.65 mm automatic. His instinct was that it wouldn’t be needed.

  It was just for moral support.

  They strode into the darkness, following his route in from the sidewalk as well as Gilles could recall. The park was fairly large. He’d been seeking the silence, the air—the smell of wet grass and dead leaves and the precious topsoil, the lifeblood of the nation as a late president had once called it in the fatuous, pompous way that politicians had.

  He reached up and grabbed a shoulder. Girard was slightly taller and much heavier than Gilles. The warmth and the animal male sweat smell was reassuring. Any self-respecting killer would have been long gone by now. Gilles was entertaining the notion that he might have surprised them in the act—either shortly after the act of murder, or perhaps right in the middle of the act of disposing of the body. He hadn’t seen any sacks, blankets or shovels. That’s not to say they weren’t out there in the darkness somewhere. His heart was doing a little trip-hammer beat and he wasn’t used to this kind of exertion. Not at his age and not for one of his constitution. Maintenon had settled into a kind of physical mediocrity with the coming of late middle-age. There was the hint, the slight burn of anger as well, lurking there under the surface. This had always been a weak point, that passion. Gilles had been looking for a nice, quiet, solitary night at home.

  He sure as hell wasn’t going to get it now.

  “It was right around here somewhere.”

  His jaw dropped slightly.

  “Point the light over there—”

  Something light-coloured was there.

  The beam caught it and the young gendarme looked over at Gilles as they all hovered there in a line.

  “That’s the milk—” And the cheese. The butter.

  “You’re lucky it didn’t break, Inspector.” It was a strangely unconscious remark.

  He let it pass.

  Reaching over, Gilles took the flash from the nearest man, who to be completely honest didn’t look like he was even shaving yet.

  “What’s up, Inspector?” The gruff sergeant was as genuinely puzzled as Maintenon.

  “That’s my bag—my milk…my bread. What in the hell…?”

  Gilles pointed the light at the ground. They all saw it. There were fresh tracks still embedded in the thick grass, lush and green although the trees were denuded, bare branches overhead pale and ghostly in the night when lit from below. The moon had gone behind clouds again.

  “There.” There was a long depression, the grass flattened in a characteristic way, an oblong shape in the right place.

  “Nobody move.”

  They sure as hell weren’t going to contradict Sergeant Girard.

  Gilles shook his head in amazement.

  There was a long moment as he swung the beam off into the darkness. It was difficult to be sure, but he saw what might be drag marks and more footprints, faint and indistinct. The dew was uneven, and it had been a pretty dry week so far.

  “Ah. With all due respect, Inspector…”

  Maintenon could have sworn the sergeant growled, low and deep in his throat, but he bit off anything further. The boy stopped abruptly. He had been about to go on.

  Gilles looked over at the youngster.

  “Young man.”

  “Ah, yes, sir?”

  Gilles held his left palm upward, and pointed the hot glare of the light down.

  There were quick intakes of breath at the sight of brown, dried blood on his palms and his cuffs.

  “Sir. I withdraw my comment.”

  Gilles nodded.

  That seemed sensible enough.

  “Sergeant.”

  “Yes, Inspector?”

  “I want a photographer, and more men. A lot more. Throw a cordon around the area. Stop and question anyone you see.”

  The s
ergeant nodded.

  “Antoine. Call it in.” The boy turned and pelted off, hopefully staying on their own tracks and not making a fresh set.

  His heavy steps would be plain enough, being most recently made. It was unavoidable.

  “Sir?”

  Gilles looked at the other gendarme.

  “Stay here. Don’t let anyone come near.” He looked up at Girard. “There were some young people, they came into the park. They were right about here when the girl screamed.”

  Standing where he was, he used the light and tried to find their footsteps. There was a paved walkway right there and bare dirt where traffic had worn down the grass. There was a line of disturbances in the leaves, bleached a lighter colour on top but darker on the bottom.

  The sergeant, who seemed the quick sort that Gilles had always admired as a young man himself, nodded and pulled out his notebook. Some of them old boys made their immediate superiors, supposedly better-educated and with allegedly advanced training, look rather sick.

  Gilles shoved the light in his pocket. He lifted his hat and ran a hand through what would have been hair once.

  Girard took out a pen and fell into a habitual pose of which he was supremely unaware.

  “Right, sir. Perhaps you’d better start at the beginning.”

  “That’s pretty much it—I tripped on a body. It can’t be more than five or ten minutes ago. And it’s not here now.”

  Going right by the book, the sergeant looked at his watch, and out of reflex Gilles Maintenon did as well.

  “Yes, it must have been about eight, eight-fifteen. Right about then.” They needed more men.

  There were more sirens on the evening breeze, and it occurred to Gilles that the young people in question had probably gone for the nearest phone, which would be helpful. Hopefully they had left a name, or maybe they would stay on the line.