Murder on the Left Bank by Cara Black

Author:Cara Black
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime Fiction
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2018-04-09T15:20:02+00:00

Thursday Morning

Waiting outside on quai de la Rapée in front of the red-orange brick morgue, Aimée got a call from Serge, who told her to meet him at the side door—the staff entrance.

When she arrived, Serge’s brow was creased in worry.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“What’s right?” He glanced behind him. “I shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Can’t you copy the autopsy report and just—”

“You don’t understand. It’s under lock and key.”

“That’s not normal procedure. Why?”

“There’s something fishy; that’s why.” Serge took a deep breath. “I don’t like it. The pathologist who performed the autopsy is a friend of mine, but he’s gone to Rouen. We’ve only got a ten-minute window. Hurry.”

He thrust a packet containing a long white lab coat, a white cap, and white plastic boots at her. “Put this on, and let me do the talking.”

The white plastic boots came up to midcalf, like the kind the fishmongers wore at poissonneries. She pulled on the cap, buttoned the lab coat, and followed Serge.

They passed the cadaver room with its aluminum slabs, the refrigeration room, the toxicology lab and offices, making their way to the rear-bay double doors. Serge took a clipboard from the in slot, held it under his arm. Seconds later they’d exited to the body-receiving platform. Serge hopped down, and Aimée followed suit. He waved to the technicians, dressed just like Aimée, who were hosing down the concrete in the back.

Aimée stifled a shiver.

Serge jerked his thumb toward a blue van, the cadaver pickup vehicle, and Aimée got into the passenger seat.

With keys he pulled from his pocket, he started the van and shifted into first. He pressed a remote device that opened the metal gate, and they were driving over the Pont d’Austerlitz. The breeze from the Seine below couldn’t mask the pungent odors emanating from the gurney racks in the back. “Don’t tell me we’re on a pickup call,” she said.

“The walls have ears.”

The second time she’d heard that in two days.

“Look under the seat.”

Her fingers felt pâtisserie wrappers, a wad of chewed gum, then a manila envelope.

She opened it to find Marcus Gilet’s autopsy report.

“Why wasn’t this in his homicide file?” she asked.

“That’s the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

While Aimée scanned the report, Serge turned off Boulevard de l’Hôpital into the grounds of Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, the largest hospital in Paris, sprawling over a good chunk of the thirteenth arrondissement. He pulled up under a chestnut tree. Set the parking brake but kept the engine idling.

“Toxicology indicates he was clean, no drugs in his system,” said Aimée. The plastic boots were cutting into her calves. “But what’s this . . . Marfan?”

Serge checked his phone. “Keep reading. I copied as much as I could. Got the most important pages. I’ll explain after you look at the photos.”

Black-and-white photos of Marcus’s corpse provided gruesome viewing. The Y incision from his pelvic bone to his shoulders was stitched in rough black thread. The baby face she’d seen in the photo from the pâtisserie had taken on the gauntness of death. “Just a kid.

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