by Mark Hebden
‘You ready?’ he asked the driver alongside him.
A grunt informed him the driver was prepared.
‘The cop’s there,’ Orega said, indicating a policeman on traffic duty near the van further down the road. ‘When they move, the cop’s going to go for them. They’ve been making themselves look suspicious and he’s watching them. And when he does go for them, that’s when I move. By the time he finds they’re doing no harm we’ll be gone. Ça va?’
‘OK.’
Jean-Pierre Orega tossed his cigarette through the window of the Citroën with a flourish, took off his glasses and patted his inside pocket for the reassuring feel of the Smith and Wesson five shot .38 that reposed there.
‘Just coming up to time,’ he said. ‘Stand by.’
As though at a signal, a puff of smoke came from the exhaust of the dark van down the road, and from the Citroën they saw a sudden surge of activity. People began to scatter and the policeman began to run.
‘Now!’ Jean-Pierre Orega dived from the car and into the jeweller’s. Within a minute he was back with two trays of rings.
‘Get going!’ he shouted and the car accelerated, flinging Orega back in the seat. The policeman down the street, who was just turning away from the van, saw the Citroën roar into the Rue Albert Premier and the jeweller’s assistants hurtle into the street screaming blue murder. He had gone for the wrong target. The van had turned out to be empty and, despite the suspicious behaviour of its crew, was apparently innocent of any crime.
All might have been well if only Jean-Pierre Orega had been as clever as he thought he was. But, because he had felt the police might be keeping a watch on the house he so grandiloquently called his headquarters, he had used the Parc de la Columbière to sort out the instructions for the hold-up. He ought to have known that five hard-faced men sitting in a circle on the little white-painted iron chairs in the park, gesturing and arguing in undertones, would attract attention.
And so it had.
Sergeants Nosjean and De Troquereau, sitting in a car watching the park for the man they believed to have been involved in the hot car deals at Genois, had noticed them at once. They had been discussing Claudie Darel, the only female member of Pel’s team. At one time both of them had pursued her, with De Troq’, being a baron, always slightly in the lead. As they talked, they noticed the five men on the chairs synchronising watches and apparently making plans.
‘Looks interesting,’ Nosjean observed.
When the men split up, the two policemen casually made a note of the numbers of the cars they used to drive away – just in case.
With the result that as soon as the information on the hold-up came through, Nosjean radioed the Hôtel de Police and Jean-Pierre Ortega and three of his friends, traced at once through their cars, were brought in within two hours.
Pel and Darcy had just returned from the Chief’s conference when Nosjean and De Troq’ appeared, grinning all over their faces. They hadn’t bothered to call out the troops. They had called for assistance from Morell and Debray, who were in another car near by, and made the arrests themselves, turning up at the Rue St Josephe while Inspector Turgot of Uniformed Branch, assisted by Detective Officer Aimedieu, Inspector Pomereu of Traffic, and a cloud of odds and ends were still arriving outside Merciers’.
Jean-Pierre Orega and his friends were already in the cells awaiting attention before the Hôtel de Police had properly digested the news of the robbery. They hadn’t even begun to divide up the loot. They had still been sitting around toasting their success, and couldn’t understand how the police had got on to them so quickly.
‘It’s an old dodge,’ Darcy said after congratulations had been handed round to all and sundry. ‘Draw the police attention away with a perfectly innocent vehicle and, while their eyes are on that, send in another one to do the job. It might have worked, too, but for Nosjean and De Troq’.’ He consulted the file in his hand. ‘Names: Jean-Pierre Orega. Calls himself a director. God knows what of. André Duchesne, van driver. Philippe Kerjean, bricklayer. Robert Bola, labourer.’ He read the names out slowly. ‘All known to us in various degrees. Kerjean and Bola were in the van. Duchesne was with Orega. Nosjean says there was another one, but he seems to be missing. There were five in the park. We’ve got four. One’s disappeared.’
‘Got his name?’ Pel asked.
‘No. And they’re not talking.’
They never did, of course. It was more than life was worth for people like Jean-Pierre Orega to split on a confederate.
‘Let’s try again,’ Pel said. ‘You take first bite.’
They had the van driver, Kerjean, in first but he continued to insist that he hadn’t been involved in any robbery. The van he’d been driving, he said, was just what it seemed to be – a van about its lawful business. They got nothing from him, not even the name of the fifth man who had been with them in the Parc de la Columbière.
‘I didn’t see no fifth man,’ Kerjean said.
‘He was there,’ Darcy snapped. ‘He was seen by two police officers. Sitting with you.’
‘There was a type sitting in a chair near by, but he wasn’t with us.’
‘So you were there?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you were planning the operation, weren’t you?’
‘What operation?’
‘Orega’s grab at Merciers.’
‘We weren’t in that!’ Kerjean was shrill with indignation. ‘We just happened to be in the van further down the street.’
‘What was all the fuss about then?’
‘What fuss?’
‘All that climbing in and out. Getting yourself seen.’
‘The van wouldn’t start.’
‘Why the disguises then? You look as if you were going to hold up the bank.’
Kerjean put on a big show of looking startled. ‘Bank? Me? They weren’t disguises. They were scarves. I pulled mine up over my mouth because it was cold. I’ve got thin blood.’
They knew Kerjean was lying but it was impossible to break him. He was clearly not going to admit to being part of Jean-Pierre Orega’s robbery. He even had a good chance of getting away with it when it came before the magistrates.
‘Somebody was behind it,’ Pel decided. ‘Orega couldn’t organise a refuse collection, and this was as elaborately staged as the Folies Bergère.’
Nevertheless Orega declined to incriminate anybody else. They could have offered a reward, even perhaps the Legion of Honour and dinner with Brigitte Bardot, but he wasn’t talking. He claimed he had set up the operation just for himself and Duchesne.
‘Kerjean and Bola were seen with you in the Parc de la Columbière. You were seen synchronising watches.’
Orega shook his head. ‘I remember looking at the time and thinking it was getting late.’
‘There was another man. A fifth man. Who was he?’
‘I never saw any fifth man. I didn’t even see these other two you keep going on about.’
They worked over the four of them for a long time but if there were an eleventh commandment designed especially for villains it was ‘Though shalt not split on thy friends’. ‘They were all in it,’ Darcy snarled. ‘They’re all well known. All except for the fifth man. Why was he there?’
Nosjean and De Troq’ hadn’t got the number of his car because he hadn’t had one. He had left with Orega. And for most of the time he had had his back to them so that their description was vague. Tall, thin, large nose, fair hair, wearing a red and green windcheater. That was the best they could manage. And now he seemed to have disappeared.
An identikit picture was put together and a police artist’s impression of the missing fifth man was soon available. Pel studied it carefully.
‘He must have been recruited to get rid of the loot,’ he said. ‘But, as the loot doesn’t seem to have reached him, he’s innocent until we can talk to him and find out if we can charge him with conspiracy.’
Pel and Darcy were coming away from givin
g the Chief the latest on the case when Claudie Darel appeared, to inform them that a young woman was in Pel’s office wishing to talk to him.
Immediately they discovered they had yet another case on their hands, this time even more serious than a hold-up. A murder, no less. The young woman was not much more than twenty, pretty, but with a knowing look about her. She sat in the chair Darcy held out by Pel’s desk, while Pel thought bitterly that the evil-doers who dwelt on the earth’s surface never gave much thought to the hard-worked police. They never managed to clear the board of one crime before another appeared. With just a little consideration, he felt, life could have been so much easier.
The girl had a worried look and they thought perhaps she was in shock. In fact, it was something else entirely.
‘To think we were going to do that,’ she said, ‘right alongside that.’
Pel eyed her for a moment, his expression unchanged. He had seen and heard enough during his career not to be startled by anything.
‘I knew there was something wrong,’ she went on in a rush. She touched her bosom. ‘I felt it – here. I knew there was somebody in the bushes. I felt it all the time.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. I just did.’
‘Did you see anybody else there? Any men?’
‘Just the one who was with me. He seemed to have six pairs of hands and I was fighting them all off. I landed him one on the jaw. That stopped his gallop.’
Pel glanced at Darcy. They had guessed what the girl had been up to in the woods and now she had made it plain.
‘And what happened?’
‘I let out a yell. Something about “There’s a foot in it!” I’d thought the shoe was just one somebody had lost. But when it wouldn’t move, I knew why. I was scared, believe me.’
‘Of course you were. So your boyfriend went off to tell the police?’
‘No, he didn’t. I did. He was all for getting in the car and going home and forgetting all about it. But in the end he said he would. Then I found he hadn’t done anything at all, so I thought I’d better do it. I’m a bit late but here I am.’
‘We’re grateful,’ Pel said. ‘We’d better have your name.’
‘Vera Vixen.’
‘Mademoiselle?’
‘Madame. Not that it matters. My husband walked out on me a year ago. I’m free to do as I please.’
‘And the man you were with?’
‘Do I have to tell you?’
‘At this point it’s not important. Why didn’t he come and inform us?’
Vera Vixen gave what was remarkably like a snort of disgust. ‘Because he’s married,’ she said. ‘And, because, in spite of his big talk, he’s as yellow as they come. He was scared stiff.’ She smiled maliciously. ‘Actually, his name’s Robert Flandres, if you really want to know, and he lives in Louze and he works at Electronics Bourguignons, where I work. I don’t see why he shouldn’t be in it, too. Will his name be in the paper?’
An hour later Vera Vixen peered through the rear window of the police car at the small group of men standing near the patch of undergrowth. One of them was on his knees poking at the soil. Another car stood alongside the one in which she sat and, even as she watched, yet another drew up and Grenier, the police photographer, climbed out. Within five minutes several other cars, summoned by radio, had arrived, together with a van from which screens and orange-coloured tape and metal stanchions were produced. Hands were shaken and, as she watched, the group of men were blocked from her view by plastic sheets.
‘Any indication who she is?’ Pel was asking.
Leguyader, the head of the Forensic Laboratory at the Medico-Legal Institute, looked up. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing.’
‘Let’s have a description.’
Doctor Minet, the police surgeon, sniffed. ‘One hundred and sixty centimetres. Female. White. Blond hair going grey but dyed. Fortyish, I’d say. Mature. One of the fingers has been nibbled by some wild animal – perhaps a weasel or a rat.’
To Vera Vixen the men among the trees seemed to be doing a lot of talking when she felt they should be rushing about arresting people. She was disappointed when she was driven back to the city, so she decided to take the rest of the day off and go into the office the following morning, claiming she’d been working with the police for hours. She’d have plenty to tell her colleagues. She would also, she decided, ask to be allowed to work with somebody other than Robert Flandres.
Pel watched the car go, then turned his attention back to the shallow hollow in the ground and its grisly contents. Now that the body had been disturbed, the smell of putrefaction was marked and the air was loud with the sound of flies. They bent again over the grave – Pel, Leguyader and his assistant, and Doctor Minet and Doctor Cham.
‘When?’ Pel asked.
The body was in a fragile state and they were pulling away the soil with gloved hands. ‘Five to six weeks,’ Cham said. He indicated turves they had removed. They’d been laid over the body in a hurry and some had been upside-down. The grass on them had turned yellow and was withering. ‘Rough estimate, of course. Shallow burial. Done in a hurry, I’d say.’
‘Clothing tell us anything?’
‘I get the impression of quality,’ Leguyader said. ‘But, somehow, not a lot of money. I’ll tell you more when we get them to the laboratory and examine them in more detail.’
‘Not sexual,’ Doc Minet added. ‘Her underclothes haven’t been disarranged. The back of the skull’s stove in.’
‘What with?’
‘Iron bar. Wooden pole. Stake. Car jack. Sledge-hammer.’ It pleased Minet to be sarcastic. ‘Something like that. Hard and heavy. I think–’ he paused, ‘I think she was dragged in here some time after she was killed. One of the shoes is missing. I suspect she was killed then left for a while, because whoever did it was in a panic and wanted to get away. But then he – or she, of course – came back and tried to hide her. There are marks on her cheek as if she’s been dragged along the ground. The flies had been at her by then, of course. She’s literally crawling with maggots now. We’ll need to give her a bath in disinfectant to kill them before we can examine her.’
There wasn’t much else they could do before the reports from Doc Minet and the laboratory arrived but, in the meantime, everybody who could be spared was searching the area carefully. The other shoe was not found, nor was a handbag or any of its contents.
‘Probably taken deliberately to hide her identity,’ Darcy suggested. ‘Unlike men, women don’t carry their identity about their person. You’ve only to remove a woman’s handbag and she immediately becomes anonymous because that’s where her identity lives.’
‘It could be that the handbag was in her car,’ Pel said. ‘Or his car, the car of whoever did it – and when he or she fled in a panic it went with them. If she had it with her, of course. After all, why would a woman want a handbag in the Forêt de Diviot? If it was there, then I don’t suppose it exists any more. It’ll have been burned or buried or something. Nothing on the shoe?’
‘Prélat, of Fingerprints, shook his head. ‘Nothing, patron. Shoes don’t usually show much. They’re Bally shoes and you can buy them anywhere. No fingerprints. There very often aren’t. You’ve probably noticed women slip shoes on by putting their toes in, then pulling them into place with a finger tucked inside the heel. Whichever way it was done, there are no prints.’
So that was that and they had to possess their souls in patience because Missing Persons had had no one reported missing in the last two months who fitted the description they had.
‘On the other hand,’ Darcy pointed out, ‘she was probably a runaway wife and didn’t want to be found.’
‘She wouldn’t be walking, though, would she?’ Pel said. ‘Not in those shoes. So how did she get there? It’s ten kilometres from Vieilles Etuves and twenty from St-Siméon. And it’s not the sort of place where women go walking alone. She must have driven there – in which case, where’s her car? Or been driven
there – in which case, who was the driver? And where is he now? And why did he do her in? Which brings us back to the original question: who is she?’
Three
Doctor Cham, who was Doc Minet’s assistant, appeared in Pel’s office. With him was Leguyader, of Forensic. They had been working together, which was always a sound and sensible idea but didn’t happen very often with peace and harmony. Leguyader was as difficult to handle as Pel himself and always delighted in turning up something that would throw a spanner in the works. Working in close co-operation with someone as young, modern and stubborn as Cham seemed to calm him down a little.
Cham was holding a large brown envelope containing the report he and Doc Minet had compiled. He was a tall young man with glasses and a long neck with a protruding Adam’s apple. He wasn’t much to look at but they’d discovered he had a quick perceptive brain and they’d all decided he was just the man to take Doc Minet’s place when the old man finally retired.
‘There’s no sign,’ he reported, ‘that she had recently had sex, and she certainly wasn’t pregnant.’
Well, if nothing else, that meant she hadn’t been murdered because she was carrying an unwanted child.
Leguyader was hopping about like a dog wanting to be let out and Pel recognised the sign. He had something to say he considered important. Perhaps he’d got it from the Encyclopédie Larousse which, it was believed, he perused every evening for something new with which to dazzle the Philistines at the Hôtel de Police.
‘We’ve done a preliminary examination of the clothing,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t disturbed and it’s all French—’
‘Shouldn’t it be?’
‘No,’ Leguyader snapped. ‘Not necessarily. In fact – if you’ll allow me to finish – there was, as I was about to say, one exception, a cotton and acrylic sweater. It’s marked St Michael.’
‘They’re calling sweaters after saints?’ Pel knew very well what St Michael meant but he could never resist putting Leguyader off his stroke with an interruption.