by Mark Hebden
‘It fits very well, you’ll notice,’ Pel pointed out. ‘That’s why the trigger guard was sawn off, isn’t it? With the trigger guard still there it wouldn’t have worked because the trigger guard would have been in the way and jammed it. It was fortunate you had all the equipment you needed right here at your disposal. Vice. Hacksaw. Everything.’
Huppert’s face was grey.
‘Now,’ Pel said. ‘If you notice, that pistol’s now aiming directly at your left arm. If I were to press the pedal with my foot, the bullet would strike you exactly where the bullet struck you when you were wounded. You could work that pedal yourself from where you stand, couldn’t you?’
‘No.’ Huppert’s voice was only a whisper. ‘It can’t be done.’
‘I think it can.’ Giving Huppert a little push, Pel had him standing with his right foot where his left foot had previously been. ‘If you were to press that pedal now, though,’ he said, ‘the bullet would strike you – where?’
‘In the chest,’ Darcy said cheerfully. ‘It would kill you. Stone dead,’ he added.
‘No.’ Huppert’s eyes were like saucers and his voice came out in a croak. ‘It’s not possible.’
‘Try it.’
‘No.’
‘Then, I will.’
Pel reached out with his foot and stamped on the pedal. As the pressure worked the cable, the piece of plastic slotted over the trigger of the gun jerked. Huppert gave a yell and collapsed.
Pel looked down at him. ‘If that gun had been loaded,’ he pointed out, ‘you’d have been dead, wouldn’t you? But if you’d been standing where I first placed you, with both feet in the marks you’d made, and your hand on the mark on the bench you’d have been merely wounded in the arm, as you were. And as you staggered back – doubtless in some pain – your foot would come off the pedal and the pressure would be released. Meanwhile, as the breech returned, the cartridge would be ejected. It was neat. It suddenly occurred to you that what would work that old-fashioned tape recorder would also work a gun. You probably experimented with a rod down the barrel to make sure the bullet didn’t do too much damage. Your mistake, my friend, was in not shooting yourself with the same pistol you used to shoot your wife. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? You’d thought it all out and you knew you wouldn’t have time before the alarm was raised to fasten that pistol into this device and line it up safely so that it would only slightly wound you and not kill you. You had to do that beforehand because it needed time and care.’
Huppert stared at him, fascinated, and he went on smoothly. ‘Judging by the cartridge cases we found, you fired twice at yourself. The first one missed. Probably because you hadn’t the courage to stand in the proper place. But you made no mistake with the second. That must have taken courage. It must also have been painful. But I suppose it wasn’t so bad because it barely nicked your arm and you had the towel round your neck to wrap round it, didn’t you? It made things all right.’
Huppert was still on the floor, sobbing now. ‘It did,’ he moaned. ‘It did.’
‘Not quite,’ Pel said. ‘But nearly. You went to your wife and realised she was still alive. But you decided she was dying and unconscious and you came back out here. Even with one hand it was possible to unfasten the vice, tuck the pedal and cable under your arm and use your good hand to carry the tape recorder back to the office before telephoning the police.’ He looked at Connie Gruye. ‘And doubtless you were on hand in good time to fix it all up the next day before anybody noticed it had been dismantled. It doesn’t take long, we found.’
She gave him a bitter look and he bent over Huppert again. ‘Where did you get this pistol?’
‘This man came. With Viviane Simoneau. When she came to ask about my wife. I’d met him once in the bar and I knew he’d been in jail. I asked him. In a roundabout way. He said he knew of a consignment that had been stolen.’
‘And it was done because Madame Gruye told you to, wasn’t it? Because she wanted to control this firm. Because, although nobody believed it, she was your mistress and what she said went. You even got rid of the dog because she told you to. Isn’t that correct?’
‘Yes,’ Huppert’s moan was barely audible. ‘Yes.’
‘And she threw the guns in the canal for you, when you couldn’t do it yourself because of your arm?’
‘Yes. Yes. My wife had found she’d been helping herself to cash and wanted to get rid of her. We fixed it up together.’
Madame Gruye was staring at Huppert with eyes that were like stones. ‘You miserable worm,’ she snapped.
Pel gestured. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘You as well, Madame. We’ll need you, too. As an accessory before and after the fact.’
Twenty-Three
Nosjean was still brooding over the Selva murder. The connection between that shooting and the Huppert shooting obviously existed somehow, but it just didn’t make sense. It made even less sense when Nosjean appeared in the Hôtel de Police and found Huppert and Madame Gruye in the charge office being faced with the murder of Madame Huppert.
Darcy explained, and a lot of Nosjean’s questions were answered at once. And, as they were, he recalled something that had been said to him some days earlier. Returning to the sergeants’ room, he sat staring at the telephone for a long time. Eventually, he picked it up and dialled the number of the prison at Number 72, Rue d’Auxonne.
‘Dick Selva,’ he said. ‘Did you ever have any trouble with him while he was there?’
‘No. People like him are only too anxious to get out and start again. He behaved himself. He got remission for good behaviour. There was just the one incident.’
‘What incident was that?’
‘He got into a fight.’
‘Who with?’ Nosjean asked.
‘So,’ Pel was saying, ‘we don’t have a mad pistoleer careering round the city shooting at people. They were separate cases entirely. Huppert shot his wife because he was having an affaire with Connie Gruye who was egging him on because she’d worked at the place for years and wanted to be part of it. But suddenly there was no chance because Huppert’s wife had found her dipping her hand into the till and was all for getting rid of her.’
‘It takes some accepting,’ the Chief said.
But it was true all right. People murdered each other for all sorts of reasons. A woman they’d arrested recently had tried to hammer her husband’s head flat simply because he snored. A man had shot a workmate because he worked too hard and was considered a bad example. Another had shot his neighbour because they’d lived next door to each other for years and he’d grown tired of him. Because of a snore. Because a man worked too hard. Because someone lacked neighbourliness. It didn’t make it too hard to believe that Huppert had murdered his wife because Connie Gruye had told him to. Yet the firm she’d wanted to run wasn’t Metaux de Dijon or some other vast organisation. Just a miserable little outfit which brought in barely sufficient to keep its owner.
Pel shrugged. ‘We’ll just have to think again about Pouilly,’ he said.
Nosjean had just appeared. ‘There’s no need, Patron,’ he pointed out. ‘Not now. They are connected. In a way.’
Pel’s head turned and he swung his chair round.
‘It was Ballentou.’ Nosjean’s face was grim. ‘He had the best motive in the world. His daughter dead from drugs, and Selva a pusher, as he well knew. Selva might even have been the one who got her on to drugs.’
Pel didn’t blink. ‘And the 6.35 he used?’
‘From the same source as Huppert’s, Patron. Pépé le Cornet. Ballentou knew a consignment had been stolen, because we told him, so he went to Paris to arrange to get one. He knew where to go. But when Pépé learned Selva had been shot it didn’t take him long to put two and two together.’
‘He was taking a risk, mon brave.’
Nosjean shrugged. ‘I don’t think he cared much, Patron. After his family had gone. But the idea had been in his mind for some time, I think. Selva arrived at Number 72 w
hile he was in there and he was beaten up. Who by? By a man who was never in trouble in jail apart from that one incident – Ballentou.’
Pel sat back in his chair. ‘And the bombs he was scared of?’
‘He’d removed Selva. Selva was Pépé’s man. As soon as they’d cleared the De Mougy stuff and things were quiet again, I reckon Pat Boum was going to get rid of him. Nick must have known he’d shot Selva – in the same way, I suppose, that he must have known Huppert shot Madame Huppert. Because he knew where the guns had come from. He’d provided two of them and he guessed the other had come from the same source. I don’t suppose he was worried about Madame Huppert being shot, but he was worried about Selva, because Selva was Pépé’s man. That’s why they had that explosive. It was for Pat the Bang to use.’
‘And now?’
‘I’m going to bring him in.’
Pel nodded. He’d met Imogen Wathus and heard of Nosjean’s interest. ‘I don’t think you’ll find it easy, mon brave,’ he said.
As Ballentou climbed into the police car, watched by Aimedieu, Imogen Wathus was beating Nosjean’s chest.
‘You lied to me!’ she was saying, heartbroken and despairing. ‘You only looked at me to get at him.’
‘No,’ Nosjean said. ‘That’s not true. I didn’t even know then.’
She didn’t believe him, of course, and tried to pull the police away as they thrust Ballentou into the car. She hadn’t believed it when Ballentou had admitted it. Not even when he’d explained how he’d watched Selva for days, and finally got into his car with him outside his flat before he could protest, and forced him with the 6.35 to drive out to Pouilly, where he’d forced him to turn out his pockets before opening the car door and, as Leguyader of Forensic had suggested, putting the gun to his head and blowing him out. He had driven the car away, checked what Selva had taken from his pockets and removed everything that might identify him, leaving only the things the police had found. He had then cleaned the car of fingerprints and left it in the car park at the supermarket, knowing it might be some time before it was noticed. He had hitched a lift home. He’d tried to hide Selva’s identity, he said, because he’d guessed the 6.35 might lead to him, and the method of his daughter’s dying would clinch the suspicion. He had gone to Paris to pick up the gun, and again later, pretending to visit the Prisoners’ Aid Society, to deflect suspicion.
Ballentou told the whole story in his usual quiet self-effacing manner, no excuses, no complaints, as ready as he always had been to accept what was coming to him. Imogen listened with scarcely a protest, but when it was all finished it made no difference. She still refused to believe it. She refused to believe it even when Ballentou produced the 6.35 whose number, sure enough, indicated it was part of the consignment from St Etienne.
It wasn’t that she disbelieved Ballentou; it was Nosjean she disbelieved. She just couldn’t accept that he hadn’t been using her, and her face was full of lost illusions.
‘You did it deliberately,’ she wailed. ‘I thought you meant what you said! But you didn’t! All you were doing was hoping to make an arrest!’
Nosjean sighed as he climbed into the car with Aimedieu and closed the door. There were no winners in police work, he reflected. Only a lot of losers.
The final episode of the tangled Huppert, Selva and Vocci cases came the following morning.
Misset arrived late. There was nothing unusual in that because Misset rarely arrived on time, but this morning he was heavy-footed, scowling and feeling as if he’d been orphaned. His wife wasn’t speaking to him and his children clearly didn’t think much of him, either. Now that Ada Vocci had gone, there didn’t seem to be much left. His car was still out of action and he trudged towards the Hôtel de Police feeling as if he’d been filleted.
As he passed through the front door, the man on the desk looked up. ‘The Patron’s asking for you,’ he said.
Misset scowled. ‘Tell him I’ve just been knocked down by a bus.’
He picked up the newspaper the man on the desk had been reading and immediately the headline caught his eye.
Russian Defects to West. Red Spy Net Bared by File.
Misset regarded it sadly. So there had been a spy! Chaput had been right after all!
But it hadn’t been Ada Vocci. The route had been roughly the same, but it hadn’t been Ada alone who had passed along it, and the Americans had got the file in the end. And it hadn’t even been a female spy but a good strong male colonel by the name Chaput had mentioned – Spolianski – and he had passed through the Iron Curtain between East and West by the simple expedient of walking nervelessly through one of the check-points with a forged pass and civilian clothes, and had promptly gone to ground in Holland until he could get the best price for the contents of the file which he’d sewn in separate sheets round the lining of his overcoat.
Misset sighed and was about to hand the paper back when another large headline sharing the top of the front page caught his attention. Occupied with the Russian defector, he hadn’t noticed it at first and it hit him like a clenched fist.
Counterfeit Money Arrest. Man Found With Fortune In Notes.
His eyes ran down the type. Gold-thread, Heinz Horstmann himself, had been picked up on the frontier with Switzerland at Basle with a white suitcase full of phoney dollars.
‘Thanks for the paper.’ The man at the desk waxed sarcastic and reached out.
Misset thrust his hand away, goggling at the print. ‘Hang on!’ he said. ‘Hang on!’
It was the real dope on Ada at last. All those stories about her husband and her father had been just a lot of hogwash. It wasn’t an Italian businessman’s profits at all. It wasn’t even a Polish patriot’s gleanings from the Russians. It was a great wad of excellent counterfeit dollars she’d picked up somewhere at the other side of the Iron Curtain. Even the Russians had crooks, it seemed. No wonder she wasn’t eager to have too many people know too much about her. No wonder she’d never dared claim political asylum. No wonder she’d disappeared. She must have had an instinct for it. And poor old Gold-thread, trying to make a quick dollar, had swiped the case and got landed. And, with Counterfeit Currency in Paris crowing because Gold-thread was in jail, Ada was in the clear. Apart from Misset, there was no one now who knew the truth about her.
Given another day or two, she’d be somewhere like Brazil. And, name of God, Misset thought, his mind revolving nostalgically round the big bed in the Hôtel Centrale, good luck to her!
As he put the newspaper down, the man at the desk snatched it up. ‘They’re still wanting to see you,’ he pointed out acidly.
‘Too late,’ Misset said cheerfully. ‘I’ve just taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Who’s “they”?’
‘That cop. The type from Paris.’
The news wiped the smile off Misset’s face at once. ‘Is he back? What’s he want?’
‘I expect they’re waiting to demote you.’
For a moment, Misset wondered if he should bolt. He could always say he’d been delayed clearing something up. But they’d catch up with him in the end.
He dragged himself upstairs. Briand was waiting in Pel’s room. Pel himself appeared from Darcy’s office a moment later, his face full of unrelenting dislike.
Briand rose and looked at Misset. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Sergeant Misset!’
Misset decided they’d found out what he’d been up to with Ada Vocci, and that the following week he’d be back in uniform coping with the traffic round the Porte Guillaume.
But Briand kicked off with enthusiasm. ‘You’ll have heard that a man has been arrested at Basle by the Swiss police?’
Misset answered warily, giving nothing away. ‘I read something about it.’
Briand beamed. ‘It’s the money I told you about. We’ve discovered now where it comes from. We’ve got the full story.’
Misset waited and Briand gestured.
‘It’s part of a stock of counterfeit dollars made in Warsaw some years ago,’ he explained. �
�It was originally intended to disrupt the Western economy. During the last bout when the Russians and the Western bloc were at each other’s throats. But the idea was abandoned with the thawing of relations and, when a large proportion of it was stolen, the Russians passed the information across. At the moment they’re anxious not to give offence. It won’t last long, of course, but there you are.’
‘And where did I come in?’ Misset asked cautiously.
Briand gestured cheerfully. ‘Didn’t you sort it out? The Polish woman who arrived here was an official of their Treasury Department, it seems, and handled deals of this sort for their government. She has several passports and speaks several languages perfectly. Horstmann was an associate who helped her get the money out and they’d split up to get it over the frontier. Unfortunately, a large proportion of it’s already been cashed and disappeared. That’s been lost and will have to be stood by the taxpayer and the Gnomes of Zurich. She knew what to do because she was based at the bank that held the counterfeit notes.’
Good old Ada, Misset thought nostalgically. Always a game little bird.
‘As for you–’ Briand went on ‘–you can give us some of the information we need. Her name was–’ Briand leaned over and passed over a piece of paper apologetically ‘–it’s spelled A.D.E.L.I.N.A W.O.J.C.I.E.C.H.O.W.S.K.I.’
‘Holy Mother of God,’ Misset breathed. Nobody who could look like Ada could without her clothes on could possibly be called Adelina Wojciechowski.
Briand smiled. ‘We must celebrate. It’s thanks to you they bolted, I suppose.’
‘Yes.’ Misset wasn’t slow to take advantage of Briand’s mistake. ‘I kept having a drink with her. I soon saw what was going on. She said she was a widow.’
‘She was unmarried,’ Briand said. ‘It’s a pity we didn’t pick her up, of course, particularly as she’d also got a lot of industrial diamonds she’d smuggled out.’