A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(51)

DCI Le Gallez wanted to know, naturally, what interest a forensic scientist from London had in a murder enquiry on Guernsey, especially in an enquiry that was closed. “We’ve got our killer,” he said, arms across his chest and one leg slung over the corner of a table. He rested his weight—

which was considerable for a man so short—on the table’s edge and he flipped St. James’s card back and forth against the side of his hand. He looked curious rather than guarded.

St. James opted for complete honesty. The brother of the accused, understandably shaken by what had happened to his sister, had asked St. James for help after failing to stimulate the American embassy into acting on his sister’s behalf.

“The Americans have done their bit,” Le Gallez countered. “Don’t know what else this bloke’s expecting. He was one of the suspects as well, by the way. But then, they all were. Everyone at that party Brouard had. Night before he bought it. Half the island was there. And if that didn’t complicate the hell out of matters, nothing did, believe me.”

Le Gallez took the lead as if fully aware of where St. James intended to direct the conversation upon that remark about the party. He went on to say that interviews had been conducted with everyone who’d been at the Brouard house on the night before the murder, and nothing had come to light in the days since Guy Brouard’s death to alter the investigators’ initial suspicion: Anyone who’d ducked out of Le Reposoir as the Rivers had done on the morning of the killing was someone who bore looking into.

“All the other guests had alibis for the time of the killing?” St. James asked.

That wasn’t what he was implying, Le Gallez responded. But once the evidence was stacked up, what everyone else had been doing on the morning Guy Brouard met his death was germane to nothing related to the case. What they had against China River was damning, and Le Gallez seemed only too happy to list it. Their four scenes-of-crime officers had worked the location and their forensic pathologist had worked the body. The River woman had left a partial print at the scene—this was a footprint, half of it obscured by a broad blade of seaweed, admittedly, but grains that were the exact match of the coarse sand upon the beach had been imbedded in the soles of her shoes and those same shoes matched the partial print as well.

“She might have been there at some other time,” St. James said.

“Might have been. True. I know the story. Brouard gave them the run of the place when he wasn’t running them round it himself. But what he didn’t do was catch her hair in the zip of the track suit jacket he had on when he died. And I wouldn’t put money on him having wiped his head on her wrap, either.”

“What sort of wrap?”

“Black blanket affair. One button at the neck, no sleeves.”

“A cloak?”

“And his hair was on it, just where you’d expect to find it if you had to lock your arm round him to hold him still. Silly cow hadn’t thought to use a clothes brush on it.”

St. James said, “The means of the killing...It’s a bi t unusual, wouldn’t you say? The stone? His choking? If he didn’t swallow it himself by accident—”

Le Gallez said, “Not bloody likely.”

“—then someone would have had to thrust it down his throat. But how? When? In the midst of a struggle? Were there signs of a struggle?

On the beach? On his body? On the River woman when you brought her in?”

He shook his head. “No struggle. But there wouldn’t be the need for one. That’s why we were looking for a woman from the first.” He went to one of the tables and fetched a plastic container whose contents he dumped into his palm. He fingered through them, said, “Ah. This’ll do,” and produced a half-open roll of Polos. He thumbed one out, held it up for St. James to see, and said, “Stone in question’s just a bit larger than this. Hole in the centre to go on a key ring. Some carving round the sides as well. Now watch.” He popped the Polo into his mouth, tongued it into his cheek, and said, “You c’n pass more than germs when you French it, mate.”

St. James understood but was nonetheless doubtful. There was vast improbability implied in the investigator’s theory as far as he was concerned. He said, “But she would have had to do more than just pass the stone into his mouth. Yes. I do see it’s possible she could have got it onto his tongue if she was kissing him, but surely not down his throat. How would she have managed that?”

“Surprise,” Le Gallez countered. “She catches him off guard when the stone goes into his mouth. One hand on the back of his neck while they’re lip-locked and he’s in the right position. The other on his cheek and in the moment he pulls away from her because she’s passed him the stone, she’s caught him in the crook of her arm, bent him back, and her hand’s down his throat. So’s the stone, for that matter. And he’s done for.”

“You don’t mind my saying, that’s a bit unlikely,” St. James said. “Your prosecutors can’t possibly hope to convince...D’you have juries here?”

“Doesn’t matter. The stone’s not intended to convince a soul,” Le Gallez said. “It’s just a theory. May not even come up in court.”

“Why not?”

Le Gallez smiled thinly. “Because we’ve got a witness, Mr. St. James,”