“And saw nothing.”
“Exactement.” Garcia spread his hands. “No one coming in, no one going out.”
“How about extra cameras inside?”
“One. By Morrison’s grave. Where else would we put them? And from it, nothing.”
They sat in silence for a moment. “After Tuesday night’s raid,” Hugo began. “Who noticed—”
“No one at first, even though we cleared the cemetery first thing in the morning.”
“Cleared?”
“We put a couple of men inside at opening time, just to walk the grounds, to see and be seen. They even ran dogs through to make sure no one was in there overnight, hiding.”
“Good thinking.”
“Merci. Alas, nothing.”
Hugo was incredulous. “So they walked right past a smashed-open grave?”
“Yes and no. He’d pulled a tarpaulin from a nearby crypt that was being repainted. Draped it over Avril’s open grave.” He spread his hands again. “Simple camouflage.”
Hugo grunted. “So how’s he getting in?”
“No idea, but it shouldn’t happen again. This time we have men with dogs inside, all night long. They catch a sniff of someone, hear a footstep that shouldn’t be there, they will be released. And God help the salaud that they catch.” Garcia sat back. “But we can’t do that forever.”
“I don’t think you’ll need to. He’s hit twice in three days so he’s on some sort of schedule.” Hugo snapped his fingers. “A schedule, of course! That’s why he didn’t see them coming and just hide.”
“What are you talking about?”
“His schedule, the dark.” Hugo pointed at the sky. “I’m talking about the moon.”
“So he’s a werewolf now?” Garcia smiled. “I prefer the idea of him as a zombie. They move more slowly. A round man like myself could even catch one.”
“Or escape from one,” said Hugo, returning the smile. “But no. Quite the opposite. I think it’s possible he planned his raids to coincide with the new moon to ensure he’d be operating at the darkest possible time. Even if he gets spotted somehow, he just has to dive behind one of the seventy thousand monuments and you’ll never see him again.”
“Makes sense,” said Garcia, nodding slowly. He looked up. “You think he’ll hit again?”
“No idea,” said Hugo. “But if he does, it could well be tonight.” He stood and dropped change into the saucer on the table. “And you and I, my dear capitaine, are going to be there waiting for him.”
Hugo let himself into his apartment on Rue Jacob. He heard the water running in the bathroom attached to the spare room. A moment later, Tom walked into the living room with a towel wrapped around his waist. His hair was still wet and bags sat under his eyes, dark and wide as if a child had been given license with a black crayon.
“Surprised to see you wearing that,” Hugo said.
“I heard you come in. Didn’t want to give you a complex.” Tom wandered into the kitchen and leaned over the sink. He cleared his throat and spat into the drain.
“Nice,” said Hugo. “Couldn’t do that in the shower? Or not at all?”
“Fuck off.”
“Planning to, as it happens.”
Tom seemed to hear something in Hugo’s voice, raising bloodshot eyes to look at his friend. “Going where?”
“A cemetery.”
“Why?”
“To catch a bad guy. Want to come?”
“No thanks.” Tom spat again, but this time just for effect, Hugo thought. “Don’t feel too good. Not up to much right now.”
“You owe me for your little friend, by the way.”
“Oh. She was expensive?”
“Yes.”
“Well, don’t worry, she was worth it.”
“I’m surprised you remember.”
“I don’t. But any time I spend your money it’s definitely worth it.”
Hugo faced him, his tone serious. “Tom, you can’t be doing that. Not here. I’m head of security at the US Embassy. Which means prostitutes, even expensive ones, are not allowed.”
“Then we have a good system going. I fuck them, you pay them. Almost like it’s not prostitution at all.” Tom looked away, unable or unwilling to meet Hugo’s eye.
“No more, OK?” Hugo hesitated. “What are your plans, Tom?”
“For when? Tonight? This week? Or are you asking what I want to be when I grow up?”
“Are you working this case with me or not?”
Tom rubbed a hand over his face. “Yes. No. It’s complicated.”
“How so?”
“If it’s terrorism, I’m working the case, and if it’s not, I’m not. Problem is, no one seems to know yet.”
“It’s not terrorism, Tom.”
“Says you.”
“Says me.”
“Then fuck it, I don’t get paid and you get stuck with the bill for a hooker. How’s that?”
Hugo walked past him toward his own bedroom. “Sober up, Tom. Keep going like this and even if Amelia Earhart herself moves in next door, no one’s going to trust you to find her.”
“Prejudice against drunks?”
Hugo stopped in the doorway to his room and looked at his friend, rolls of fat bulging over the towel, his face that of a man twenty years older than he was. “At some point, Tom, it stops being a joke. At some point, you have to realize that you are a long way from where you should be.”
“And where the fuck is that?”
“Not for me to say. But you just turned down the chance to go out in the field, to hide out in the most famous cemetery in Paris and catch a killer red-handed.” Hugo shook his head. “Turned your back on an adventure. Never thought I’d live to see that day.”
Chapter Fourteen
Hugo looked up at the moon, a white sliver above their heads in the black night. He sat beside Capitaine Garcia on a wooden bench facing the rond point, the roundabout dominated by the statue of statesman Jean Casimir-Perier, near the center of the cemetery.
They’d walked into Père Lachaise at six that evening, using the Gambetta entrance on the northeast side just as the cemetery was closing, past the crowds of tourists who streamed along the wide cobbled boulevards toward the realm of the living. They spent the first half hour with five policemen and their dogs, the unit designated to roam the cemetery grounds that night, each dog and handler with his own sector, each pairing alert to movement in a place where three hundred thousand souls had been laid to rest.
Quietly, without fuss, Hugo and Garcia had spent that time touching the muzzles of the German Shepherds, letting the dogs sniff their hands and clothes to make sure their scent was familiar and couldn’t confuse the eager beasts, and making sure, too, that no teeth would find their way into the skin of the two men there to catch a killer.
When the leader of the canine squad nodded his satisfaction, they sat on the grass and waited as a shift of police bloodhounds and Labradors finished running through the cemetery, skipping over tombs like they were puddles, pausing only to sniff at the locked doors of the little stone houses that held the remains of the dead. No suspect was found, just three homeless people, flushed from their nighttime hiding spots and ushered out into the noisy, unsafe streets of Paris.
After getting the all-clear, Hugo and Garcia had headed into the heart of the cemetery, downhill to Chemin Molière, which turned into the paved Chemin du Bassin, then taking a hard left along Avenue de la Chapelle, which took them to where they now sat.
A policeman armed with a Heckler and Koch MP5 stood guard over Avril’s grave, but otherwise there was no precision to their staging point. In so large a place with so many potential targets precision wasn’t an option, so they had opted for a location that allowed them the greatest access to the whole of the cemetery. This was where they ended up, on a park bench at a roundabout, waiting for night to come and bring with it a man able to come here at will, unseen, a man who could seemingly flit across high walls and into these grounds as if he truly were a ghost.