“Sadly, however, there is nothing very conclusive in the trajectory, Dominique. Marc Fraysse might have cowered as he raised his hands to protect himself, so that his killer was shooting slightly downwards.”
He turned back a page, to the preliminary description of the body as a whole.
Dominique peered at the report. “What are you looking for now?”
“To see what the pathologist says about the hands.” Almost as he said it, he found the relevant passage.
“Blood blowback on the backs of the hands and fingers,” Dominique said. She was still intimately acquainted with the details of the case. “Blood spatter blowing back from the entry wound was identified on the backs of his hands and fingers, as if he had his hands facing the shooter, raised to shield himself.”
Enzo read through the pathologist’s description for himself. “You said the pathologist still has the pics?”
“Yes.”
“Would there be any chance of acquiring them? Just for a quick look.”
“Sure. I’ll ask.”
He slipped the autopsy report into his satchel. “Did anyone look at his computer?”
“I believe someone from the police scientifique went through it. But it was never brought in for forensic examination.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess no one thought it was relevant. Forensics is not my area of expertise, and the powers that be seemed to think that Fraysse was just the victim of a random crime. In the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“You think he was murdered for his phone and his knife?”
“Personally, no. That never seemed to me like sufficient motive. But then some people don’t seem to need a motive to kill.” She laughed, a little self-consciously. “Not that I’m any great expert on that either. There aren’t very many murders committed around here.” She looked at him curiously. “What do you think?”
“I think the chances that it was a random killing are almost zero. No one would be waiting up that hill in the hope that someone might pass by with valuables to steal. Marc Fraysse took that route every day. Everyone knew that. So someone was waiting specifically for him. Whether they meant to kill him or not, that’s another matter. But kill him, they did.” He perched on the edge of Dominique’s desk and found her a willing and attentive audience. “The fact is that eighty percent of murder victims know their killer. Of those, sixteen percent are related to their killers. And half have a romantic or social relationship with them. It’s something you have to keep very much in mind when you’re looking at a murder.”
“I thought your specialty was forensic science. The evidence.”
“It is. But in the absence of evidence you have to look for motive, then try and put the two together to nail your killer. In this case, because of lack of evidence, or any other evidence to the contrary, your superiors seem to have been very keen to write off a celebrity murder they couldn’t solve by putting it down to a random killing. That kind of crime is almost impossible to resolve. It’s a face-saver.”
“So you think someone had a reason for wanting to kill him?”
“Or to threaten, or to harm him.”
“Do you have some idea who that might be?”
Enzo smiled and shook his head. “No, I don’t.”
“So where will you begin?”
Enzo gazed thoughtfully from the window, across the square toward the balustraded view of the valley below. “In his computer.”
Chapter Eight
He was not quite certain why he was reluctant to ask Elisabeth for permission to examine her late husband’s computer. But lurking somewhere at the back of his mind was the fear that perhaps she might refuse him, in which case a valuable line of investigation would be permanently closed off. Why he thought it was even remotely possible that she might do that was unclear to him. But he didn’t want to take the chance.
And so when he returned to the hotel he made sure that both Guy and Elisabeth were downstairs before he headed up, ostensibly, to his suite. Service staff were in all the rooms, making beds, cleaning bathrooms. Service carts stood about in the hallways, the sound of vacuum cleaners coming from several open doors. He slipped past his own rooms, nodding to a middle-aged lady in green and white who was taking toilet rolls from her cart to re- stock one of the bathrooms, and when she went back into the room, he turned the handle on the door of Guy’s study to slip quickly inside.
He closed the door behind him and stood, with his back against it, controlling his breathing for several moments. It occurred to him how ridiculous this was. Why hadn’t he just asked her? Still, he was here now. He crossed quickly to the bureau and rolled up the top. The MacBook Pro sat where he had last seen it, and he lifted the lid to press its power button. Its start-up chorus chimed loudly and he tensed, waiting nervously for it to boot up. When, eventually, the desktop loaded on to the screen, he sat down to look at it and take stock.
The first thing he checked was the Airport connection and was pleased to see that the computer was still connected wirelessly to the hotel’s wifi system. So he was online.
From the dock along the foot of the screen he selected the mailer and clicked on it to load. The in-box was, as he expected, empty. He checked for Sent mail. Also empty. Then scrolled down a long list of folders in the left- hand window. A complete archive of all Marc Fraysse’s emails, sent and received. There was an odd sense of prurience in going through a dead man’s private correspondence, but Enzo had no time to dwell on it. He scanned the titles of the folders. Many of them were simply people’s names. Jacques, Paul, Michel, Pierre. Others catalogued bills and invoices, correspondence with amazon. fr, exchanges between Fraysse and his website designer. There were folders filled with the emails that had passed back and forth between the chef and his various suppliers. Then one titled, RECIPES, which brought Enzo’s scrolling cursor to a halt. Had a three-star Michelin chef really exchanged emails with others about recipes? He clicked to open it. Apparently he had. They were sub-divided into folders: Boeuf, Agneau, Lapin, Cheval, Porc… Enzo’s cursor hesitated and hovered over the folder titled Cheval. It seemed inconceivable, somehow, that horsemeat would ever be served up to customers in a three-star restaurant. He opened the folder. Information across the top of the mailer told him that it contained nearly 600 messages. They had all been sent to a single address: ransou. jean@wanadoo. fr. None had been received in reply. Enzo double- clicked to open one, and was puzzled to be greeted by a series of apparently random letters and numbers:
PV: 18/12: 3e: 14: 150; 7e: 4: 130; 9e: 5,9,10: 200
D: 1re: 3,7,15: 125; 4e: 13: 175; 12e: 2,5,12: 150
L: 6e: 11: 200; 8e: 10: 125; 9e: 1,7,8: 150
There was no name and no signature. Enzo gazed at it uncomprehendingly, then checked the date that the email had been sent. 18th December, 2002. So the 18/12 was the date. He checked the time at which the email was sent. 2:14am. He opened the next mail down. More of the same.
MB: 19/12: 2e: 9: 175; 5e: 3,6,9: 150; 6e: 16: 200…
This one sent on December 19th at 2:53am. Enzo frowned. These were not recipes for horsemeat. He opened several in quick succession, all filled with the same mysterious code. He had no idea what the letters indicated. PV, D, L, MB, but another thought was beginning to coagulate in the stream of information uploading to his brain.
Quickly he checked to make sure that the computer was still connected to the printer. It was. He turned the printer on, and winced at the noise it made during start-up, praying that it was still in use and that the ink had not dried up completely. He selected two of the Cheval emails at random and chose Print. The old ink-jet printer whirred and clattered and churned out two print-outs, faded but legible. He folded them together and slipped them into his jacket pocket, then returned to the computer.
He felt as if he had been in the dead man’s study for an inordinately long time now, although in reality it had been no more than a few minutes. He pressed on. Scrolling rapidly through the Finder desktop, he clicked on the Home folder, which was named frayssemarc. Near the top of a column of folders was one named Documents. He opened it. It was filled with sub-folders whose headings seemed to indicate lists of recipes and ingredients. Opening
