Pel Under Pressure (Chief Inspector Pel)

by Mark Hebden

  Mortier grinned at him. ‘My parents were there. They’ll tell you. When I came back, he was lying on the floor, trussed up like a Sunday joint.’

  Nosjean wrote in his notebook and looked up. ‘How long had you known him?’

  ‘Ever since I came to the university here. Two years or so.

  ‘How did you meet him?’

  ‘Music society. Both keen on Debussy.’

  ‘Ah!’ Nosjean’s tastes still lay in the direction of pop, so he carefully dodged the subject. ‘Did you know he took drugs?’

  ‘I’d guessed,’ Mortier admitted. ‘I was getting worried, to tell the truth.’

  ‘Did you ever see him at it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you ever see any syringes? Anything like that?’

  ‘No. That’s the point. And you can’t accuse someone. He must have done it all in his bedroom.’

  ‘Did you ever notice anything strange about him?’

  ‘He seemed to sleep a lot. Sometimes he was irritable and lost his temper. At other times, though, he was perfectly easy to get on with.’

  ‘Have you ever taken drugs?’

  Mortier hesitated. ‘Well, everybody has a go at pot, don’t they?’

  ‘I don’t,’ Nosjean said stiffly.

  ‘Well, you’re a policeman. That’s different. You’re not under the same pressures.’

  Nosjean almost laughed out loud. He couldn’t think of anything more pressurised than the life of an underpaid, overworked policeman, usually running three or four enquiries at a time. At that moment, Nosjean was checking Cortot’s background, an assault at Chevannes and a break-in at Longvic, and was also involved in the new enquiry on the body found in the boot of the car in the Rue du Chapeau Rouge.

  He returned to his notebook. ‘Cortot,’ he said. ‘According to the doctor, he’d just had a fix. If he had, why did he end up dead? Why allow himself to be trussed up? That’s normally just the time when addicts don’t risk their lives this way. It’s the one time when they’re happy.’

  Mortier shrugged.

  ‘How long do you think he’d been at it?’

  ‘A few months, I think. Six? Perhaps more.’

  ‘Where did he come from?’

  ‘Audeux. His father was an insurance clerk.’ Mortier made it sound a very indifferent occupation. ‘Not much money. But no other children. Perhaps he was lonely. Perhaps that’s why he was glad to share the apartment. He moved in here last October when the new term started.’

  ‘So he must have got on to the stuff here at the university.’

  Mortier shrugged. ‘Well, Audeux is a small place. This is a city. Most cities have places where you can get things like that.’

  ‘Do they?’ Nosjean said, interested.

  ‘Well, don’t they?’

  ‘Do you know these places?’

  Mortier gestured. ‘No. But people get them, so they must exist.’

  ‘Did he show much interest in drugs?’

  ‘He once said he saw someone giving himself a fix in the washroom in the Faculté des Sciences.’

  It occurred to Nosjean that it might be a good idea for someone to keep an eye on the Faculté des Sciences. He made a note of it and looked up again. ‘He was twenty-six,’ he said. ‘That’s a bit old for a student, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Mortier agreed. ‘That’s usually the post-graduate age. But he’d been in the Navy, you see? Not his military service. He volunteered. I think he was running away from his home at the time. But when he got in, he hated it and deserted. He did time for it. Eventually he got out on medical grounds.’

  ‘I’d have thought if he was a lonely type he’d have enjoyed being with other men.’

  Mortier gestured. ‘He was a bit weak. They probably teased him.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No. We got on very well.’

  ‘Have you been in the Navy?’

  Mortier shuddered. ‘Not me.’

  ‘What else do you know about him?’

  ‘He was trained in electronics in the Navy and he’d decided to go in for it properly. I think he intended to go into computers. Something of that sort. There’s a lot of money in computers. Perhaps that’s what appealed. He’d never had much.’

  ‘What are you studying?’

  ‘Humanities.’

  Nosjean wasn’t sure what Humanities were, so he didn’t pursue the matter. ‘Know where he got these drugs?’ he asked.

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Know any of his friends?’

  ‘Just the few I saw him with.’

  ‘Can you give names?’

  Mortier shrugged. ‘Achille Lorre. He’s at the Faculté de Médecine. Jean-Pierre Ramou. He’s French Literature. Paul-Edouard Hertot. He’s Sociology.’

  ‘All different subjects!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did they have in common then?’

  Mortier shrugged. ‘Nothing that I know of.’

  ‘Unless,’ Nosjean said, ‘it was drugs.’

  Six

  Polverari and Pel arrived in Paris at midday. Depositing their luggage at their hotel, they used the same taxi to collect a plainclothes detective and a uniformed man from the Quai des Orfèvres and took them to the Maison Robiquet.

  The Rue Réauot, with its battered walls and narrow corners, was a billstickers’ paradise. There were advertisements for night clubs and discos and political parties, even a red Communist poster – still gaudy after several months of exposure – ‘Homage to the Heroes of the Commune of 1871. Service at the Wall of Père Lachaise. Sunday 11.30. Beneath, someone had written ‘Down with the politicians – even Communists.’ Beneath this again, someone else had scrawled ‘Save oil. Burn tourists.’ The capital seemed to be fit and well.

  The caretaker of the Maison Robiquet was an elderly man with one leg who lived in a small room off the hall that smelled like a dog’s basket.

  ‘Miollis?’ He jerked his stick upwards. ‘Top floor.’

  The stairs were dark and illuminated by minutière bulbs apparently adjusted to switch off before their time, so that they had to grope their way upwards for most of the way in semi-darkness. As they went, they passed dog-eared cards drawing-pinned to doors: Alphonse Doré, Plombier. Théodore de Ramy, Assurance de la Ville. Odette Brevsky, Corsetière. They were on parade like a procession of failures. The Maison Robiquet looked the sort of place where failures found themselves and they seemed to go with Gilles Miollis and his trivial attempts at crime.

  The top floor was lit by a dirty skylight and on the door this time the card said Gilles Miollis, Affaires de l’Arrondissement. It was an imposing title for an unsuccessful shyster, Pel decided, but, he supposed, living with Alphonse Doré, Théodore de Ramy and Odette Brevsky, Miollis’ pride had obliged him to call himself something, and he could hardly have a card with ‘Small-time Crook’ on it.

  The bell didn’t appear to work, so they hammered on the door. When she opened it, Madame Miollis looked in even worse shape than when she’d been in Pel’s office. She hadn’t done her hair and didn’t appear to have washed, so that her make-up from the day before was smeared.

  ‘What do you want?’ she demanded. ‘I’ve told you all I know.’

  ‘We need to search your husband’s effects,’ Pel said.

  The look on her face showed her concern. ‘You can’t,’ she said.

  ‘I think we can,’ Polverari pointed out. ‘We have a search warrant.’

  She opened the door unwillingly. The apartment was as untidy as she was herself. The search was careful but, apart from a few small items of jewellery which Madame Miollis claimed were hers but which Polverari insisted on taking away for checking, there was nothing incriminating and nothing to indicate what Gilles Miollis had been up to in Burgundy.

  ‘Did your husband ever go to Marseilles?’ Pel asked.

  ‘Occasionally.’

  ‘On business?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Was he ever connected
with the Paris gangs?’

  Her answer was oblique. ‘He was scared stiff of them.’

  ‘How about Marseilles? Did he ever operate down there?’

  ‘No. We once went there for a holiday, and he started working the Vieux Port, but one of the louches – the heavies – came up to him and took him into a bar.’

  ‘Whose heavies?’ Pel asked.

  ‘He said he was from Maurice Tagliacci.’

  Pel made a note of the name. ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  ‘There was a discussion.’

  Pel glanced at Polverari. It was a notable understatement. They could just imagine the big man leaning over Miollis, all smiles but making it quite clear that anybody who got ideas above his station was likely to aggravate the men who controlled the prostitutes, casinos and big business crime from Marseilles to Nice. It was something the tourists never saw on their summer holidays.

  ‘Go on,’ Pel said.

  Madame Miollis shrugged. ‘We left the following day. I didn’t want to tangle with that lot. Not after what happened in the Bar du Téléphone in 1978. Nine dead and one wounded – mown down by sub-machine guns. When they do anything down there, they do it big.’

  Pel nodded. Gilles Miollis appeared to have been a very cautious operator.

  ‘Did your husband have a passport?’ he asked.

  Madame Miollis stared. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  She crossed to an ancient dresser of enormous proportions – how it had been carried up the stairs Pel couldn’t imagine – opened a drawer and rooted about, tossing out old socks, papers and notebooks.

  ‘It’s missing,’ she said. ‘He always kept it in here. Perhaps he sold it.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Because–’ she stopped dead.

  ‘Well?’

  She gestured hopelessly. ‘You can get a lot of money for a passport, can’t you? They change the photograph.’

  ‘Do they?’ Pel was bland. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Well–’ she gestured and Pel suspected that Miollis had done a bit of passport selling among his other activities ‘ – I’ve read it. In the newspapers.’

  ‘You don’t want to believe all the papers say,’ Pel pointed out. ‘Did he have it with him when he last left home?’

  ‘How do I know? I never knew whether he was going abroad or going to the moon. He didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Could you tell when he’d been abroad?’

  ‘Once he brought me back a watch from Switzerland.’

  Pel exchanged a glance with Polverari.

  ‘That all?’

  ‘Cigarettes. They were cheap, I suppose.’

  As she began to stuff the papers and notebooks back into the drawer, Pel stepped forward. ‘We’d better have those, Madame,’ he said. ‘We might need to examine them.’

  Drawing Polverari to one side, he spoke quietly. ‘I think perhaps we should bring in sniffer dogs. You don’t get killed for the sort of stuff Miollis was normally mixed up with. And he appears to have crossed the frontier more than once.’

  While they talked, there was a bang on the door and Madame Miollis turned, her face worried. Pel crossed to the hall and turned the handle. On the landing outside a tall heavy man with dark eyebrows like Mephistopheles was leaning on the wall, smoking. As he saw Pel, he bounded upright, his face dark and angry.

  ‘Who in God’s name are you?’ he demanded.

  He pushed the door open then, seeing the policemen and Polverari, he immediately swung round and began to bolt down the stairs.

  ‘Get him!’ Pel screeched.

  The uniformed man barged past to clatter down the stairs, with Pel stumbling after him. The big man was younger and was gaining on them fast until he reached the first landing, where he happened to bump into Théodore de Ramy, Assurance de la Ville, who was just coming up. Théodore de Ramy was in his seventies, weighed about as much as a feather duster, and was hardly the man to put up a fight but, because of his age, he carried a walking stick and, as he was brushed aside, it was this that got between the tall man’s legs.

  He took a nosedive down the stairs on his head just as the uniformed policeman fell over Théodore de Ramy’s skinny legs and went down after him. By the grace of God the policeman landed on top and when Pel arrived, the panting policeman was just dragging the big man to his feet, while Théodore de Ramy lay on his back on the landing above, shrieking blue murder and claiming he’d been attacked.

  ‘Bring him upstairs,’ Pel snapped.

  The big man with the eyebrows was pushed and shoved and walloped up the stairs by the policeman who was out of breath, and in a bad temper because he had a bruise on his knee and had lost a button off his jacket. When the big man decided to turn and chance it, the policeman’s gun was jabbed hard in his ribs.

  ‘Shove him inside,’ Pel said. ‘Then go down and quieten that old lunatic on the first landing and send someone for help. You’d better leave me your gun, while you’re at it, too. This little beauty’s bigger than me and he doesn’t look very pleased.’

  As the policeman vanished, Pel balanced the gun in his hand and made the tall man turn with his face to the wall.

  ‘Alors,’ he said. ‘Just keep your hands up and think pure thoughts. We will now conduct an enquiry. We’re police. Who are you?’

  There was a long silence then the big man decided it might be safer to answer. ‘Treguy,’ he said. ‘Jacques Treguy.’

  ‘And what do you want here?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘And that’s why you came, eh?’ the plain clothes man from the Quai d’Orfèvres asked. ‘For no reason at all.’

  Treguy gestured. ‘I’m just a friend of Madame Miollis,’ he said. ‘And – of course – Monsieur Miollis. I was just passing.’

  ‘To offer condolences?’

  Treguy was quick to take advantage of the suggestion. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘I heard about him. We were good friends.’

  ‘Then you’ll know what his line of business was?’ Pel said.

  ‘Line of business? Gilles?’ Treguy laughed. ‘He hadn’t got a line of business.’

  ‘What did he live on then?’

  ‘This and that.’

  The same old story, Pel thought. Nobody seemed able to pin down exactly what Miollis did.

  ‘Did you know he had a criminal record?’

  Treguy hesitated. ‘Well – yes, I did.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Have I what?’

  ‘A criminal record.’

  Treguy’s face darkened. ‘What is this? Are you starting to investigate me now?’

  ‘Who said we were investigating anybody? We’re trying to clear up a death. Have you a criminal record?’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘Then why did you bolt when you saw the police?’

  ‘I didn’t bolt.’ Treguy paused, his eyebrows working. ‘I – I suddenly remembered I’d got an appointment.’

  Polverari laughed out loud. ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘that’s the best I’ve heard in many years of dealing with people like you. You’d better tell the truth.’

  Treguy frowned. ‘I’ve been in trouble once or twice.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Do I have to say?’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘I got involved with the police over a bit of – well, I did time. I was only a kid in those days.’

  ‘Did you ever work with Miollis?’

  ‘Not likely.’

  ‘Why “not likely”?’

  ‘He wouldn’t know his arse from his elbow.’

  Pel looked at Treguy. He was smartly dressed with a good suit and neat shoes. ‘Meaning that you do?’ he said. ‘He was just a small-timer who wasn’t very good, while you were in the big time?’

  Treguy scowled. ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘That’s what you seemed to mean.’ Pel peered up at him. ‘We’ll check up on you, my friend.’

 
Treguy exchanged glances with Madame Miollis and Pel waited, his eyes questioning.

  ‘We’re just friends, that’s all,’ Madame Miollis said.

  Pel watched them with interest. ‘Where were you in the last few days?’ he asked. ‘Can you account for where you’ve been?’

  Treguy thought. ‘Yes, I can,’ he said. ‘No trouble.’

  As they talked, the uniformed man returned with two others. The screeching on the bottom floor had come to a stop so they assumed that Théodore de Ramy, Assurance de la Ville, had been sorted out, dusted down and polished within an inch of his life.

  ‘We’ve got a policewoman in there,’ the uniformed man said. ‘She’s making coffee. I think he’d be quite happy to be knocked over every day of his life if she could come to mop his brow afterwards. He was getting a bit frisky when I left and she’ll probably have to hit him over the head with the saucepan.

  The tracker dog arrived soon afterwards. It got to work at once, moving excitedly about the apartment, its nose probing the corners, its interest centred chiefly on the wardrobe in Madame Miollis’ bedroom. As they opened the door, it jerked forward, its head among the clothes.

  ‘Get that lot out!’

  As they laid the clothes on the bed, Madame Miollis began to cry.

  ‘It was nothing to do with me!’ she wailed.

  In the empty wardrobe, the dog was concerned with a corner away from the light and, probing under the wallpaper that lined the bottom, they found a small carefully fitted flap that looked as if it had been cut out with a fretsaw. The dog handler pulled out a penknife.

  ‘The usual,’ he said.

  He lifted out the slotted square of wood with his knife, and putting his hand inside, produced a small flat tin. Opening it, he sniffed.

  ‘This is what he kept it in,’ he announced. ‘It’s heroin. But not much. Just a little.’

  Pel turned to Madame Miollis whose tears had completed the ruin of her make-up. ‘Was your husband a drug pusher?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

  The plainclothes man glared at her. ‘Then why are you crying, Madame?’

  ‘Because you’re making my home a tip.’

  Considering how it had looked before, Pel felt she hadn’t much to complain about.