The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [37]
With that, he hung up. At least one of them was still there.
“Vera Monneray, 18 Quai de Bethune? A name and address?” McVey closed the open folder and stared at Lebrun. “That’s the entire file?”
Lebrun squashed out a cigarette and nodded. It was a little after six in the evening and they were in Lebrun’s cubicle of an office on the fourth floor of Police Headquarters.
“A ten-year-old kid writing a TV show could come up with more than that,” McVey said with an uncharacteristic edge to his voice. He’d spent a good part of midafternoon illegally in Paul Osborn’s hotel room going through his things and had come up with nothing but an array of dirty linen, traveler’s checks, vitamins, antihistamines, headache pills and condoms. With the exception of the condoms, he found nothing he didn’t have in his own hotel room. It wasn’t that he was against rubbers, it was just that he’d honestly had no interest in sex since his Judy had died four years earlier. All the years they were married he’d harbored sensational fantasies about making it with all kinds of women, nubile teenagers to middle-aged Avon ladies, and he’d met any number who were more than willing to lie down on the spot for a homicide detective, but he never had. Then when Judy had gone, none of it, not even the fantasies, seemed worth it. He was like a man who thought he was starving and then suddenly wasn’t hungry anymore.
Aside from the ticket stubs from the Ambassadors Theatre in London that had sent up Lebrun’s antennae in the first place, the only objects of even passing interest he’d turned up in Osborn’s belongings were-restaurant receipts, tucked in the pocket of his “daily reminder.” They were dated Friday, September 30, and Saturday, October 1. Friday was Geneva, Saturday, London. The receipts were for two. But that was all. So Osborn had taken someone to dinner in both those cities. So had a hundred thousand other people. He’d told Paris detectives he’d been alone in his hotel in London. They probably never asked him about dinner. Chiefly because they had no reason. Any more than McVey had reason now to connect him to the beheading murders.
Lebrun smiled at McVey’s painful dismay. “My friend, you forget you are in Paris.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, mon ami, that a ten-year-old kid writing a TV show . . .,” Lebrun paused just slightly for effect— “isn’t likely to be sleeping with the prime minister.”
McVey’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”
“Not kidding,” Lebrun said, lighting another cigarette.
“Does Osborn know?”
Lebrun shrugged.
McVey glowered at him. “So she’s out of bounds, right?”
“Oui.” Lebrun smiled a little. Veteran homicide detectives should know better than to be surprised at “l amour,” even if they were American. Or the ramifications of how hopelessly complicated it could get.
McVey stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to my hotel and then back to London. And if you have any more bright suspects, check them out yourself first, okay?”
“I seem to remember offering to do it this time,” Lebrun said with a grin. “You may recall that the idea to come to Paris was yours.”
“Next time talk me out of it.” McVey started for the door.
“McVey.” Lebrun reached over and stamped out his, cigarette. “I couldn’t reach you this afternoon.”
McVey said nothing. His methods of investigation were his own and they were not always entirely legal, nor did they always involve fellow officers—the Paris P.D., Interpol, the London Metropolitan Police and the LAPD included.
“I wish I had been able to,” Lebrun said.
“Why?” McVey said flatly, wondering if Lebrun knew and was testing him.
Pulling open his top desk drawer, Lebrun took out another manila folder. “We were in the middle of this,” he said, handing it to McVey. “We could have used your expertise.”
McVey eyed him for a moment, then opened it. What he saw were crime scene photographs of an extremely brutal murder. A man had been killed in what looked like an apartment. Separate photographs showed close-ups of his knees. Each had been destroyed by a single, and powerful, gunshot.