Chapter Four

Detective Bonita waited on the forecourt of the Hotel Cote d’Or until Eduardo Carlos had driven away. He had told her that he suspected the old city abattoir might provide clues to at least one of the murders and she had agreed to allow him to go over there and take a look. Before getting out of the case, she had also suggested that he call his colleagues at the airport to get passenger lists for all flights to and from major European airports during the two weeks before Christmas. And, she had added as an afterthought, it would be a good idea for him to call Interpol, but she had stopped short of allowing him to lead the investigation. The victim was probably foreign and crime reporters were shadowing their every move. This case was too important and too public to be left in the hands of an agent as young and inexperienced as Eduardo Carlos, however smart he considered himself to be. Instead, she had insisted that he report his findings straight back to her: they would run the case together. He had shown no inclination to respond, but it was clear from the clenched fists, the rigid jaw and the dark frown, how disappointed and frustrated he was at her unwillingness to give him the responsibility he felt he was ready for. Too bad. He had a lot to prove before she would change her mind. Anyway, she wanted to seek the view of her own boss on this so, once Agent Demario was out of sight, she stepped into the twenty-seven storey hotel and dialled Captain Lourenço’s number.
The air inside the reception of the hotel had been dried, cooled and, she noted, waiting for the connection on her phone, very possibly perfumed. The fragrance was, she concluded, most likely emanating from a lavish floral centrepiece blooming extravagantly in the middle of an otherwise conventional marble and chrome lobby. Detective Bonita, who was wet from the rain and sticky from the humid conditions inside her car, edged around the white flowers to see a small delegation of three women and a man making their way towards her. She knew one of them must be the French Cônsul Geral Adjunto and it was quite apparent that they knew who she was. The conditioned atmosphere made her shiver. Soon the delegation was by her side, smiling and ready to make themselves known to her but it was too late: Captain Lourenço’s wife Liliane had already answered the phone. Detective Bonita waved to the party to wait for a moment, she would have to make the call. The diplomats glanced sideways and took a step back. They did not look pleased. Liliane, meanwhile, who had spent the entire holiday with her husband’s family in Rio de Janeiro, also sounded harassed; the kids couldn’t go out to play on the beach because of the rain, her mother-in-law’s empregada was in Bahia so they had to go out every day to eat and the nanny the agency had sent to help her was a sweet girl but completely useless.
‘Then there’s all this wretched shooting stuff going on. I can’t even let my kids out onto the balcony. They’re behaving like caged animals. But Happy New Year to you, Rita,’ she added. ‘I’d sooner be here than looking at a dead person fished from a river. I’ll get my husband.’
‘Rita?’ said Capt. Lourenço. ‘How’s it going?’
‘OK, sir. Well – not exactly brilliantly. The bad news is that we’ve doubled our body count. The good news is that I’m just about to see the French CGA to get an i.d. contact for one of the dead men but we have little to go on the other. Eduardo Carlos is following a lead but Missing Persons have no likely matches.’
‘So why are you phoning me?’
‘To keep you informed, sir, and to – ’
‘Informed about what? That you aren’t getting anywhere? Have you forgotten you’re on Cidade Alerta! at six tonight?’
‘No, sir.’
‘If this is ‘keeping me informed’ then don’t phone me again until you have something more concrete.’
Concealing her dismay that her boss should offer so little encouragement in such a difficult situation, Detective Bonita slipped her phone into her pocket, held out her hand to the only man in the diplomatic delegation and apologised for keeping him waiting, explaining quickly that she had forgotten all the French she had studied at school and hoped that his Excellency wouldn’t mind. The young man, it turned out, was the interpreter. The CGA introduced herself as Sylvie Paroles who, in her thirties, was the youngest of the three women. The next one to give her name was Mlle Marianne Marqué, who was Head of Customer Relations for the Côte d’Or group in South America. All three women spoke in perfectly serviceable Portuguese but had retained the interpreter in case, explained the older woman, a Mme Framboise, ‘things become technical’.
‘We all know Camille Bleu very well,’ Mme Framboise continued. ‘He has lived in Brazil for many years. We are very concerned about –’ she waved her arms around in the air ‘all this. He was very popular with all of us and the staff and visitors at this hotel. We cannot begin to imagine what has happened to him. But we will of course help in any way we can. In return we expect to be kept informed and, of course, to have all media enquiries directed straight to the office of Mlle Paroles in the Consulate.’
‘We don’t know for sure that the body we have in the morgue is Monsieur Bleu, Madame,’ said Detective Bonita, ‘until someone makes a formal identification. I was hoping that you might be able to give me the name of someone I could contact in his family?’
‘But that will be very distressing for his wife, will it not?’
‘Yes it will. But I have no choice.’

13h10
Monsieur Camille Bleu, it would emerge, had lived in Brazil in exceptionally complicated circumstances. Detective Bonita had been able to walk to the apartment of his family which, on Rua Peixoto Gomide, was just around the corner from the hotel. But the rain continued, the drains couldn’t cope and the pavements were submerged so that when she arrived, her feet were so wet she had no choice but to remove her trainers and was embarrassed to reveal a sock with a hole and chipped aubergine paint on her big toenail. Camille Bleu’s wife, who, Detective Bonita reckoned, was about the same age as the man in the mortuary, laughed nervously and immediately produced the most luxurious, soft leather slippers the policewoman had ever seen. Mme Bleu also insisted that she join her for some soup, cheese and French bread.
‘Not the pão frances you Brazilians like to buy in the padarias here but a proper baguette with beurre demi-sel and camembert.’ The tone of Mme Bleu’s voice had darkened but it would slip over Detective Bonita like a blunt knife down the side of a tomato. She watched impassively as Mme Bleu moved around her kitchen. The older woman’s skin was flawless and pale, her figure might be the envy of a woman of any age and her short white hair was as soft as that of a child. But it was her eyes – the colour of a luminous blue sky – the sort of sky that had not been glimpsed in São Paulo for months – that pulled into focus an image of extraordinary beauty. Detective Bonita wondered how Camille Bleu’s wife would react to the news that her husband of – what? – forty years had been found in pieces in a river. She allowed a few moments to lapse whilst she prepared herself mentally to try and form the difficult questions she knew she had to ask in a way that would make them sound less banal. But how she would do this she wasn’t sure. Sensing that something was wrong, Mme Bleu said: ‘You’re here about Camille, aren’t you?’ Detective Bonita nodded. Mme Bleu sighed.
‘Sylvie Paroles has already visited me. I know my husband is dead. He moved out on October 29th. last year - a Sunday. But he continued to phone me every day, even after he –’ Mme Bleu’s carefully assembled outer layers were beginning to crack. ‘I was sure he would come back.’ Mme Bleu was shaking her head. ‘Then the calls stopped. That’s how I know he’s dead.’
‘When did you last see M. Bleu, Madame?’ Detective Bonita found some security in the dull dependability of the questions she had started – and would continue – to ask.
‘Days before his last call. More than a week even. He came round to collect his dress suit and to ask me to –’ Detective Bonita had her notepad in front of her next to her plate of bread and cheese. She was starving but how could she eat at a time like this?
‘His dress suit –’ asked Detective Bonita through a mouthful of baguette. ‘Was it Yves St Laurent?’ Mme Bleu nodded. ‘It was a little tight round the waist. He wanted it to be altered.’
‘Do you remember the day he made the very last phone call?’
‘Of course. Thursday December 21st.’ The day he disappeared, thought Detective Bonita.
‘What time was it?’
‘Late in the afternoon. He didn’t say much because he was in a rush to get to a meeting. There were plans to open a third Côte d’Or in São Paulo. I think that’s what the meeting was about.’
‘Did he say where he was when he phoned?’
‘No. But I knew he was in his office in the Hotel. He always phoned from there because it wouldn’t cost him anything and no one could trace the call.’
‘And why did he phone you?’ Mme Bleu pushed her knife through the chalky skin of the cheese and scraped it off the paper.
‘To check that I would accompany him to the Côte d’Or Christmas Ball in Rio de Janeiro. To make sure that Marianne Marqué had delivered my airline ticket and to tell me that someone would go to meet me at the airport. ‘Someone’ he said. But it would not be him. It would not be my husband.’ Mme Bleu slumped slightly against the table.
‘And did you go? To the Ball I mean?’
‘Non, ma fille. I said I was going to go. But I stayed here. I couldn’t face a party. I couldn’t face the staff. I couldn’t face any of it.’ She started to sob quietly. Detective Bonita paused and bit into the bread.
‘Did you stay here alone?’
‘Oui. Oh – except my empregada was here. Not with me. I was alone in that sense. She was in her room.’
‘Is she here now?’
‘No. She is in Bahia with her family.’
‘Do you have her phone number?’
‘I gave her a mobile. If it’s switched on, this is the number.’ Mme Bleu stood to get an address book then scribbled the number on a piece of paper. ‘Why do you need to speak to her?’
‘I need to speak to everyone connected to Monsieur Bleu, Madame. Do you have children?’
‘Yes, and most of them have children now. I haven’t told them about any of this. My eldest son is married to a Brazilian. They live in Rio. I was supposed to stay with them over Christmas. But I don’t much like my daughter-in-law’s family and, with Rio being so dangerous at the moment I telephoned to say I would prefer to stay here.’
‘You’ve been most helpful Madame. I appreciate this is a very difficult time for you and I have only two more questions: I need to know where M. Bleu went to live after here and also I wondered if you could give me the name of his secretary?’
‘Camille’s secretary was Marianne Marqué and she will be able to answer the first question.’

14h30
After the post-mortem identification of her husband, Mme Bleu was taken back to her apartment by a pleasant military police woman who offered to stay with her until she felt strong enough to phone her son and request that he spend some time in São Paulo so that she would not have to spend any time by herself. Detective Bonita phoned Eduardo Carlos, who was still sulking, but who had ‘some crucial information’ which he was bursting to tell her.
‘Did you get the passenger lists from the airlines?’ she asked.
‘'No boss. They don't keep passenger lists. But I spoke to immigration - they're sending information on travellers coming into Sao Paulo during the period we're interested in. They say it's a huge quantity of information and they're not sure what it will show us. But look - I need you to see what I have discovered here. I need Scene of Crime Officers and the pathologist and – ’
‘What about the flights going out, Eduardo?’ said Detective Bonita
‘Pardon me? Why would I need to check those? The man with no face was killed here and dumped here in São Paulo – he couldn’t have taken a flight anywhere.’ Detective Bonita sighed.
‘Then why hasn’t he been reported missing?’
‘Because he’s maybe from England – or from somewhere – and no one knew he was coming here?’
‘So he arrived anonymously, was shot in the head and had his face removed? Not impossible. But unlikely. Have you checked this with Interpol?’ she paused to allow her subordinate to respond. When he didn’t she said: ‘Whilst you’re getting round to calling Interpol, as I asked you to, Eduardo, I think you should consider the possibility that the people who know this man might think he has taken a flight out of Brazil. The only other alternative is that they are the ones who killed him.’