Hopefully tomorrow.’ Raphaele was unconsciously rubbing his tummy again as he pulled the sheet back over the victim, a contented victim of love.

She couldn’t hold it against him. ‘What’s for supper tonight?’

‘Tuesday? Pizza.’

‘Enjoy it. Thanks. Bonsoir.’

 

***

She returned to her desk. On a humid evening at the far end of summer the skyline presented a washed-out skim-milk-bluish haze with traces of anaemic cloud, the weak pink sun floating low. She laid out all the paperwork from the day’s interviews and processes. Each item was entered with due consideration. Because each item mattered. Because she would rather spend time becoming absorbed in this than at home fighting her anger at choosing the wrong man.

Shhh…Focus! Be a shoemaker. Fix a shoe.

Parameters: No drifting. It seemed certain the man was killed close to where he was found along that stretch of shore. Fine. Another key would be the dynamics. The possibility that the victim was in pursuit of the perpetrator, and somehow the tables had been turned. The shooter had gained control of the victim’s gun. A shooter with an unsteady hand, an unsure shot, and a less-than-powerful throwing arm. And quite unaware of or blasé about forensic recovery techniques. An unsteady-handed shooter who panicked and threw the gun into the river. A pathetically short way. It pointed to a crime of passion of some kind.

Gratuitously breaking a picture frame over the skull of a man already dead supported that. In the context of murder, passion was anger. Anger out of control.

There were probably lots of delicate boys, objects of beauty who could not throw far. Or there were wives. Suspicious wives, and angry, tracking a philandering husband to a big surprise. Somehow the possibility of a woman as a central player in this dynamic made the notion of an unsteady-handed shooter more concrete. Inspector Nouvelle was always loath to stereotype, but it was an image she could see. A wife. A gay husband exposed. And killed. Heat of the moment, loss of reason, a furious heart.