‘Yes?’ The man’s voice was impatient.
‘Lambert?’ said Gorski. It would have been over-familiar to call him by his first name—he had only met the Strasbourg detective on a few occasions—but he would have felt obsequious addressing him as Inspector. In any case, whoever was on the other end of the line did not say a word. Instead, Gorski heard a muffled shout of: ‘Phil. Call for you.’ He must have placed his hand over the receiver.
A few moments later, Lambert came on the line. He sounded weary. Gorski wondered if it had been unwise to call.
‘Inspector,’—he couldn’t help himself—‘this is Georges Gorski.’
‘Ah, Georges, Saint-Louis.’
Gorski was pleased that he didn’t have to remind Lambert who he was.
‘So you cleared up the business with the missing waitress.’
‘It cleared itself up,’ said Gorski.
‘A case closed is a case closed,’ said Lambert.
There was a pause.
‘Is there something I can do for you?’
Gorski understood the inference contained in the question. It would never occur to Lambert that there might be something that Gorski could do for him.
‘Well, it’s probably nothing, a bit of a long shot, but I thought—’
Lambert interrupted. ‘Look, Georges, I’m a little pressed here, if you could cut to the chase.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Gorski. ‘I understand you’re in charge of the Marchal case.’
‘Yes.’
Gorski imagined him rolling his eyes impatiently. ‘That’s what I’m calling about.’
‘Oh?’ Lambert sounded a little more interested. ‘You got something for me? Because if you do, I’ll drive straight down to wherever Saint-Louis is and plant one on you.’
‘Well, as I say, it’s probably nothing, but I thought I should put it to you.’
‘Uh-huh.’ The irritation had crept back into his voice.
‘On the night of the murder, a lawyer named Bertrand Barthelme was driving south on the A35. He crashed a few kilometres north of Saint-Louis some time around ten thirty.’
‘And you’re telling me this, why?’ said Lambert.
‘Well, it struck me—’ Gorski began, suddenly aware of the flimsiness of what he was going to say. ‘It struck me that he might have been driving back from Strasbourg.’
‘He might have been. Him and ten thousand others. So what?’
‘Well, yes, of course, but the reason I thought he might have been involved, or that it might at least be worth mentioning, was that he had lied to his wife about his whereabouts that night and that—’
Lambert let out a weary sigh. ‘Sorry, Georges, I appreciate you calling, but I’ve got the press all over me here.’
‘Yes, of course, I just thought it would be remiss not let you know,’ said Gorski, but Lambert had already put the phone down.
Gorski found his mother asleep in the chair next to the fireplace. She raised her head at the sound of the closing door, blinking heavily. The room was stiflingly hot, from the convector heater that now occupied the hearth.
‘Is that you, Georges?’ she said, her voice fluttering. ‘Where’s Georges?’
Gorski placed the bag of shopping he had brought on the table by the window and sat down next to his mother.
‘I’m here, Maman’ he said, taking her hand. ‘You were sleeping.’
‘Your father is late for dinner,’ she said. ‘Everything will be ruined.’
Gorski did not bother to correct her. Such incidents had become more frequent of late. At first, he had put her comments down to dreams she had been having, but it had become clear there was more to it than that. He had gently suggested that his mother might see Dr Faubel, but she had insisted there was nothing wrong with her and would not hear of such a thing. In any case, Gorski feared that any diagnosis of mental decline would lead to the doctor suggesting that she should be cared for in a nursing home, something Mme Gorski would not countenance. I would like to die here in my own home, thank you, she would say cheerfully.
Gorski unpacked the shopping he had brought and prepared some tea. He took his time in the kitchenette. The time he spent with his mother was becoming less and less bearable. When he returned with the cups carefully laid out on the tray with a saucer of sliced lemon, his mother appeared to have fully returned to reality. He opened the window to let in a little air.
‘You look tired,’ she said. ‘Your skin is grey. Is Céline not looking after you properly?’
Gorski had not told her that Céline had left. Despite the fact that his mother had never liked her, he felt that she would be disappointed in him. In any case, there seemed little point upsetting her when, for all he knew, the situation might be temporary.
He replied that he had been working too hard and stirred three spoonfuls of sugar into his mother’s cup. She smiled her thanks as he placed it on the occasional table next to her armchair. He sat in his father’s chair by the table and sipped his tea. The sweet lemon taste always transported him back to his childhood in the apartment. The room was entirely unaltered. Every surface was cluttered with knick-knacks culled over the years from his father’s pawnshop. He cast his eyes to the door, as if he too expected to see his father appear from below in his brown store-coat. His eyes alighted on the mezuzah on the doorpost, which he had passed so many times without noticing.
‘Maman,’ he said, ‘do you remember one evening when I was a little boy, two Americans called by?’
He and his mother generally confined themselves to small talk about Clémence or Mme Beck who now ran the florist’s downstairs and who often brought his mother a little soup or some leftover casserole. Until the night of the accident, the visit of the two Mormons had not crossed his mind for years. Mme Gorski did not, however, appear the least taken aback.
‘Oh, yes,’ she replied, as if the event had occurred only the previous week. ‘Nice young men. But curious. There were dressed identically. And the way they spoke French—’ She started to laugh. ‘I’m surprised you remember them. You were very young at the time.’
Gorski wanted to remind her of the words they had used: of the Jewish persuasion. He had not intended to bring up the incident, and if he did so now it was entirely on account of this phrase. Indeed, he was quite sure that this was the only reason he remembered the incident at all. No further reference had ever been made to the affiliation the Americans had alluded to. Was it his mother or father who was Jewish? Or was the little box by the door nothing more than an ornament, signifying no more than the English Toby jugs that bookended the mantelpiece? He had hoped to prompt his mother to say something on the subject, but it was clear that nothing was forthcoming. Perhaps she had simply forgotten the remark. Instead, he said only that it must have stuck in his mind because he had never seen an American before.
‘Oh, they were very American,’ she said with a little chuckle. ‘Homosexuals, of course.’
Gorski smiled. He was pleased that she was at least able to recall the incident.
Ten
The following day Raymond returned to Rue Saint-Fiacre. At dinner the previous evening he told his mother he had decided to return to school. In the morning, he ate breakfast as he always did, standing at the counter in the kitchen. When Thérèse went upstairs with his mother’s breakfast tray, Raymond, still chewing a mouthful of bread, opened the stone jar in which the housekeeping money was kept. He took two 100-franc notes and replaced the stopper. When Thérèse returned a few minutes later, his heart was beating quickly, but he forced himself to remain in the kitchen. He even passed some remarks about the weather. It was, of course, quite pointless to act in this nonchalant way. As soon as Thérèse set off to do her morning marketing, she would realise the money was gone. And if for no other reason than to establish her own innocence, she would immediately report the theft to his mother. Naturally she would not accuse Raymond outright. It would be enough to say that the money had gone.
Ray
mond’s act was not spontaneous. It had occurred to him as he rode the train back from Mulhouse the previous day. Perhaps even before that, at the very moment the philatelist had told him the price of the knife. He had resisted thinking through the consequences of the theft, knowing that this would act as a brake on his plan. As it was, he had found, somewhat to his surprise, that he had no difficulty behaving as if nothing was amiss. It even gave him a sort of pleasure to stand blithely talking to Thérèse with the banknotes nestling in the back pocket of his trousers.
Raymond arrived in Rue Saint-Fiacre at half past nine. It was no busier than it been the previous day. As it was set back was from the town’s main thoroughfares, there was little reason for anyone who did not live there to pass along it. The philatelist’s shop was not yet open. In preparation for his day’s surveillance, Raymond had packed a notebook and pencil, half a baguette, his book and the cigarettes he had bought at the café at the end of the street. On one page of his notebook, he had sketched a map of the street, showing the positions of the various landmarks. On the adjoining page, he had drawn a diagram of the building, a rectangle divided four by two, each division representing an apartment. The previous evening, he had looked up the names he had been able to commit to memory in the telephone directory. There was no listing for Ziegler, but he was not even sure he had remembered the name correctly. He had found the other three: Abbas, Lenoir and Comte. He was not interested in Abbas. He could not imagine his father fraternising with anyone of Arab origin. France, he had always insisted, should be for the French. Raymond called the remaining numbers from the telephone in his father’s study. A man’s voice answered the first call with a curt ‘Yes?’ A child was crying in the background. Raymond said he had the wrong number and put down the receiver. In his notebook he summarised his findings next to the name Lenoir. His second call, listed as Comte, I. in the directory, was answered by a woman. Raymond spoke as firmly as he could:
‘May I speak with Monsieur Comte?’ he said.
There was a pause.
‘There is no Monsieur Comte,’ said the woman. ‘May I ask who’s calling?’ Her voice was neither youthful nor old. It had a bright, friendly tone, but there was a nervousness, a slight quaver there as well. Raymond paused for a few seconds. He could hear the sound of the woman’s breathing. Perhaps she was drawing on a cigarette.
She repeated her question.
Raymond returned the receiver to its trestle. A light sweat had broken out on his brow. He felt guilty, as though he had committed some minor act of violence. Next to the name Comte, he wrote: Single woman, middle-aged.
Raymond took up his vantage point in the archway opposite No.13. Somewhere in the building, he pictured Mlle Comte in her dressing gown, sitting by her kitchen table with a bowl of coffee, a cigarette burning in an ashtray. He supposed she was around forty. Perhaps a cat was rubbing itself against her legs. Maybe she was thinking about the disconcerting telephone call she had received the previous evening.
Around ten o’clock, the philatelist emerged from inside his shop. He was wearing carpet slippers and had a cigarette in his mouth. He must live in the apartment above. He proceeded to unlock the padlock that secured the metal shutter on the window. Raymond stepped back into the archway until he heard the shutter clatter open. He would wait a while before entering. If he wanted to haggle over the knife, his position would be weakened if it appeared that he had been eagerly waiting outside for the shop to open. It would be better if he gave the impression that he had only happened to be passing and it was neither here nor there to him whether he left with the knife.
Moments after he had lit his first cigarette—he had decided in advance that he would allow himself to smoke four—the door to No.13 opened and a man in his thirties hurried out. He looked harassed. His tie was not properly fastened and he was eating a croissant or pain au chocolat. He was carrying a briefcase. He got into a battered Renault and drove off. It seemed likely that this was the impatient M. Lenoir, who had answered the telephone the previous night. A few minutes later, a woman of a similar age emerged with two small children, the younger strapped into a pushchair. The elder child had a piece of bread in his hand. His anorak was hanging off one shoulder. They went off in the direction of the town centre. Raymond stepped back into the archway and wrote down his observations.
Nothing else happened for half an hour or so. Then a woman in her late twenties came out. She was dressed in a green belted raincoat. It was not raining, but she opened a transparent umbrella. Her hair was yellow-blonde and tousled. She too hurried off in the direction of town, her heels clacking on the pavement. As she passed, she glanced in Raymond’s direction, but her face showed no curiosity. Might this be the woman he had spoken to on the phone? Raymond did not think so. There was a confidence in her stride that did not fit with the hesitancy he had detected in Mlle Comte’s voice. Might either of these be the woman who once wrote her address on the scrap of paper that Raymond had now returned to his father’s desk? There was no way of knowing. Nevertheless, Raymond felt that he was making progress. Counting the old woman from the previous day, and assuming that none of those he had seen were named Abbas, he could now account for the occupants of more than half of the apartments.
A mid-morning stillness fell over the street. This seemed as good a time as any to enter the building and make a note of the remaining names on the mailboxes. If questioned, he had decided that he would simply ask if a M. Dupont lived in the building. Perhaps he would pat his satchel to suggest that he had a delivery to make. He walked purposefully across the road, his notebook and pen in his hand. Despite his cover story, Raymond felt the same nervousness as he had when he entered the building the day before. He was still reluctant to turn on the light, though if his presence were as innocent as he pretended, why would he not do so? If questioned, he could hardly say that he had not seen the switch: it was right next to the mailboxes. He pressed the glowing button. To his relief, nothing happened. He set to work, scribbling down the remaining names on a blank page: Ziegler (he had been correct), Jacquemin, Duval and Klein. When he had finished, he found that he had the courage to progress as far as the apartment doors on the ground floor. On the door to the right was a plaque with the name Abbas engraved in an ornate script. A heavy bar secured the door to the apartment to the left. Raymond stepped outside and drew breath. He strode along Rue Saint-Fiacre, then doubled back along the almost identical parallel street and returned to his post in the archway. He was becoming quite familiar with this little patch of Mulhouse. He rewarded himself for his endeavours with a cigarette.
Just after half past eleven, a woman of around sixty emerged from the philatelist’s. Raymond had not seen her enter the shop. She must be the stamp dealer’s wife. She returned twenty minutes later with a baguette under her arm and went back inside. Raymond decided it was time to make his purchase, but when he approached the shop a sign had been hung on the inside of the door: Closed for lunch. The door, however, had not been locked. Raymond gently pushed it open, tinkling the bell. He stepped inside the empty shop and stood listening for sounds of movement above. He heard footsteps on the floorboards. A door, which must have led to the apartment, opened and the proprietor called down the stairs: ‘Is anyone there? We’re closed.’ Raymond held his breath. His eyes were fixed on the knife, which was still sitting on the pile of battered suitcases towards the back of the shop.
The philatelist’s voice came again. ‘Is someone there?’
Did he always leave the door open during lunch or had it been an oversight? Perhaps both he and his wife thought the other had locked the door. Or perhaps they were the sort of trusting people who imagined that a Closed sign was sufficient deterrent to thieves. In any case, footsteps could be heard making their way down the stairs. Without further thought, Raymond stepped lightly towards the back of the shop, grabbed the knife and pushed it into his satchel. He bolted out of the shop. He ran into the courtyard behind the archway and pressed himself to the wall. He f
elt dizzy, almost nauseous. He lowered himself onto his haunches. What had possessed him to do such a thing? He had never, until that morning, stolen so much as a bag of sweets. The philatelist was sure to notice that the knife was gone and remember that the previous day a young man had enquired about it. Raymond could not say how long he remained squatting with his back pressed against the wall. He tried to assess his position. Anyone who happened to look out from the apartments surrounding the courtyard would think his behaviour highly suspicious. Perhaps someone had already seen him and called the police. The philatelist, too, might have called the police. Raymond tried to think clearly. Whatever happened, nobody had seen him take the knife. As long as he was not caught with it on his person, he could deny everything. Glancing round to check that he was not being observed, he took the knife from his satchel and secreted it among some weeds sprouting from the foot of a drainpipe. Then he straightened up and, with as much nonchalance as he could muster, made his way back through the archway.
He craned his head slowly into the street. The philatelist was nowhere to be seen. No police sirens could be heard. As he emerged onto the pavement, he pretended to adjust his flies, as if he had stepped into the alleyway to relieve himself. Then he walked briskly in the direction of the town centre. He took the first left turn and, only when he was sure he was not being observed, doubled back to the end of Rue Saint-Fiacre. He lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking. He exhaled a long stream of smoke. What an imbecilic thing to do! If he had stopped to think for even a fraction of a second, he would never have had the nerve. But he had done it, and he had not been caught. He felt exhilarated. It was not so much that he had stolen the knife, which he could in any case have purchased. An opportunity had presented itself and rather than be crippled by indecision, he had grasped it.
He need only wait long enough to be sure that the police had not been called before retrieving the knife from its hiding place. The shopkeeper had probably not even noticed that it was gone. Abandoning his self-imposed limit, he lit another cigarette. He had 200 francs in his pocket. He could buy as many packets of cigarettes as he liked. He had, for the time being, quite forgotten the real purpose of his mission in Rue Saint-Fiacre.
The Accident on the A35 Page 10