Pel Under Pressure (Chief Inspector Pel)

by Mark Hebden

  ‘My wife telephoned to tell me about this Treguy character,’ he said. ‘I decided it was just someone who was trying to be funny.’

  ‘Treguy worked for a Paris mob, Monsieur,’ Pel growled.‘The Paris mobs don’t go in for jokes.’

  Foussier gave a little shudder and ran his hand through his hair.

  ‘I’m still a bit unnerved. I suppose I ought to make a point in future of checking my car.’

  ‘I think that would be a good idea, Monsieur. How did you come to spot the bomb?’

  Foussier gestured. ‘I had just reached my car when I remembered something and took out my pen to make a note of it. My hands were full–’ he gestured at a number of books and a briefcase that stood on a table near the door ‘ – and I dropped the pen. It rolled half-under the car and it was as I was on my hands and knees trying to reach it that I remembered my wife’s telephone call. I looked under the car and there it was.’

  ‘I hope you’ll bear my warnings in mind in future, Monsieur. The Paris and Marseilles mobs aren’t to be tampered with. I’d advise you always to check your car. I’ve arranged for a police watch to be placed on you.’

  Foussier looked angry. ‘I don’t want a bodyguard!’

  Pel was growing angry, too, now. ‘Imagine what would happen if anything happened to you,’ he snapped. ‘A man engaged in all the activities you’re engaged in. A man working for the young. You’re well known, Monsieur. The newspapers would crucify us if we permitted anything to happen to you.’

  Foussier frowned. ‘Of course, of course! I realise. Nevertheless I have my duty to do.’

  As Pel opened his mouth to protest further, Foussier held up his hand and managed a twisted smile. ‘My lectures, I meant, Inspector. No more. I still have those. We can’t let assassins stop the world from turning, can we?’

  Grudgingly, Pel admitted that he was right and equally grudgingly Foussier agreed to a bodyguard for the time being, so that for a change they parted on slightly better terms.

  During the afternoon, Pel went out to Francheville to see Madame Foussier. It was an unsatisfactory interview because she clearly suspected the police of falling down on their job in not providing immediate protection for her husband, and was inclined to be hostile, while her talk with Treguy had been so brief as to provide no clues whatsoever to his whereabouts.

  By the time he returned to the city, Pel’s ill-temper had increased. Foussier, he decided, was becoming a pest. He couldn’t possibly be aware of the man-hours his stupidity was costing them. A man had been on and off the telephone to the Quai des Orfèvres ever since, and half the Paris force had been trying to contact Treguy’s boss, Pépé le Cornet, who had finally been tracked down near Etables in Brittany buying cattle for a farm he maintained near Chartres. He had been driving a Cadillac and had with him a girl of unparalleled beauty. Pel had listened sourly. All he had was a garden twelve metres long, a clapped-out Peugeot and Madame Routy.

  Pépé le Cornet’s reaction to the news that they were seeking Treguy had been that if Treguy was in Burgundy then he had better return to Paris – quick! Treguy had no business branching out on his own and if he were doing any threatening, he wasn’t doing it on behalf of Pépé le Cornet.

  ‘If he’s gone over to that lot in Marseilles–’ he had announced. He had left the sentence unfinished, because it looked very much as though Treguy had gone over to that lot in Marseilles.

  Another part of the Paris force was hunting through all the small hotels and boarding houses to find Madame Miollis, and the only thing that gave anybody any satisfaction at all was that at last they had a bodyguard on Foussier.

  It was as Pel brooded on the injustices of life that Krauss brought in a special edition of Le Bien Public.

  ‘They’ve got it in about Foussier,’ he said.

  He held out the paper to Pel. ‘BOMB ATTEMPT ON PROFESSOR,’ it announced. ‘RAYMOND FOUSSIER’S ESCAPE.’

  Pel waved the paper aside. Doubtless, he thought bitterly, France Soir and France Dimanche would produce a woman from somewhere before long, perhaps even a scandal. He almost hoped they would.

  As the door closed, he sat brooding again, staring at his blotter with its doodles of cigarettes. It seemed, he decided, that his neck of the woods was suddenly growing dangerous. Despite his job, he had always thought of Burgundy as a peaceful province. Even the ancient Gauls had professed a liking for its suave countryside and life-giving beverage, and the place had a continuing vitality all its own.

  ‘Je suis fier-e d’être Bourguignon.’ As the tune entered his head, Pel almost stood and saluted. After all, why not be proud? Molière had praised the place and its wines, and a certain Colonel Bisson, marching his men north after Napoleon’s Italian campaign, had even drawn them up outside the gates of Clos Vougeot and presented arms.

  Burgundy was something special and he didn’t like the idea of Marseilles or Paris gangsters muscling in. Burgundy was for Burgundians. They ought to be living happily in the old way with good honest crimes committed by good honest Burgundian criminals. They needed gangsters, do-gooders and gang feuds as they needed a hole in the head. It was already occupying three men eight hours a day to keep watch on Foussier’s house. One false move by him and the whole thing would fall apart just when it was beginning to knit together.

  His runaway thoughts slowed and he gave a sigh heavy enough to shift a windjammer. Nothing was knitting together, he realised. Nothing at all. It was just easy to blame somebody else.

  Heading home that evening in a state of depression, he had just taken off his jacket and lit what he tried to imagine was – but knew very well wasn’t – the last cigarette of the day, when Darcy phoned.

  ‘Patron?’ His voice sounded heavy with foreboding. ‘They’ve found Treguy.’

  ‘Already?’ Pel’s heart thumped. ‘Where?’

  ‘In a field near La Charité-sur-Brenne.’ Darcy paused. He sounded tired. ‘He’s dead.’

  Thirteen

  Sighing, Pel reached for his jacket and headed for his car. ‘What time will you be back?’ Madame Routy screeched from the kitchen where she was sweating over the cooker.

  ‘God knows,’ Pel said. ‘Probably never.’ Didier was sitting on the terrasse with his fishing rod. ‘Are we going fishing?’ he asked.

  Pel shook his head. ‘Alas, no, mon brave. There’s work to do.’

  ‘The murder?’

  ‘Not the murder. A murder. Another one.’

  ‘Honest?’ Didier’s eyes gleamed. ‘Can I come? Perhaps I could help.’

  ‘I doubt it, mon brave. And I suspect it will be a long, hard and difficult night.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘A Parisian gangster who’s been shoving his nose into our business down here.’

  ‘Is it a gang feud?’

  ‘That’s the way it looks.’

  ‘Maybe they bumped him off because he knew too much.’

  It hadn’t been Pel’s view but he had to admit it was a possibility.

  ‘They’re clever, you know, Monsieur Pel,’ Didier said. ‘It’s the clever ones you have to look for. Look at Landru.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Pel agreed. ‘Look at Landru. All those women he polished off.’

  He drove into the city, scowling. The place was becoming stiff with corpses. First Miollis. Now Treguy, to herald the start of a gang feud. Pépé le Cornet had made no bones concerning his feelings about Treguy having gone over to Tagliacci. And where in the name of God was Nincic? He still hadn’t turned up and the Path Lab where he worked was beginning to grow worried. Perhaps he was a corpse, too.

  Darcy, Leguyader and Doc. Minet were all waiting when Pel arrived. Standing to one side was a man in blue cotton trousers and a red checked shirt. He was smoking a pipe, carried a heavy dogwood stick and had the placid look of a countryman who knows he’s not involved.

  ‘Who’s he?’ Pel asked.

  ‘Robert Morvan, of La Charité. He found the body.’

  ‘Where is it?’
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  Darcy gestured towards an old Peugeot, as grey, ugly and ancient as Pel’s own, that stood behind the hedge, just inside the field. Watching them, a herd of black and white Friesian cows mooed a soft welcome.

  ‘They must have driven in there where they couldn’t be seen,’ Darcy said. ‘That’s where it happened.’

  Treguy was crouched in the rear seat, his face deep in the corner cushions, the wound in the back of the head.

  ‘Shot,’ Minet said. ‘Same gun as killed Miollis, I’d say.’

  The big Parisian looked curiously shrunken in death and Pel studied him for a long time. It was a classic execution and Morvan, the farmer, could add nothing. He had walked across the fields from his house two kilometres away, checking fences and generally looking over his property, and had ended up by deciding to visit the cattle in case the heat was distressing them. Seeing the car in the field, he had decided it belonged to picnickers or to a young couple stirred to passion by the temperature, and had headed towards it to throw them out.

  ‘I found him instead,’ he said in a flat voice.

  ‘Better get a statement,’ Pel said to Darcy. ‘Then he can go. I expect he’s busy.’ He turned to Doc. Minet. ‘When was he killed?’

  Minet shrugged. ‘Hard to tell exactly in this heat. Twenty-four hours ago, I reckon.’

  ‘Soon after he telephoned Foussier’s home.’ Pel turned to Darcy. ‘Have Pépé le Cornet brought in. Find him. He’s somewhere. Have him arrested.’ He turned back to Minet. ‘Revenge motive, I imagine,’ he growled. ‘For transferring to Tagliacci and moving in on Pépé le Cornet’s operation. Something of that sort.’

  He lit a cigarette gloomily, wondering if the gangs had picked on the city because its airport was small and casual in its attitude to regulations. Pel had once flown to London and he had noticed there had been no security checks. The bar had been operated by the boy who weighed the baggage and the duty-free shop by the girl who handled the tickets, and there was nothing to stop passengers – or, for that matter, the people who’d come to see them off – buying duty-free goods and passing them into the city. There was doubtless also no one to check what was inside suitcases either, because customs vigilance was as casual as everything else and Tagliacci or Pépé le Cornet had probably noticed it too. Whatever else, the gangs were efficient. They had too much to lose.

  ‘Let’s have a watch kept on the airport,’ he said briskly. ‘The stuff might be coming in that way. What about fingerprints?’

  ‘Plenty on the car,’ Prélat, the fingerprint expert, said. ‘Mostly the dead man’s.’

  ‘No others?’

  Prélat shrugged. ‘There’ll be a few, I suppose. I’ll let you know if we identify them.’

  By the following Wednesday, Pel’s mood was murderous. The newspapers were having a ball. Two murders were enough to start them sending up rockets. France Soir was beginning to grow hysterical and even the normally staid Bien Public announced ‘Encore Un Cadavre! Une Exécution?’ as if they were stumbling across corpses all over the area.

  Pel gazed at the words, wishing he could consign Henriot, who covered the district, to everlasting torment. Alongside the story was the news that Foussier was being guarded, which brought to Pel’s mood the sweetness and light of a cat in a sack. The newspapers, he decided, were getting their perspectives all wrong because it was surely Foussier’s self-important interfering that had been the cause of both the bomb and Treguy’s death.

  There were pictures, too, of course. A new one of Foussier, dark-eyed, good-looking and romantic enough to set his female admirers swooning in droves. The one of Pel was not new. He obviously didn’t rate so highly and it had been taken at an enquiry in the uplands the winter before when he’d been half-frozen. He looked as if he were on his last legs and he wondered gloomily if Madame Faivre-Perret had noticed it. Since she didn’t ring up enquiring despairingly about his health, he could only assume she hadn’t. Or couldn’t have cared less.

  The attitude of the Quai des Orfèvres in Paris seemed one of indifference. They appeared to take the view that they were well rid of Treguy and the moves to apprehend the murderer at their end seemed to be mere formalities, as if they considered whoever had removed him had done the world a good turn. Just to cheer them all up a little more, they passed on the information that Treguy’s boss, Pépé le Cornet, had also now disappeared.

  ‘We think he might have come your way,’ they said.

  The news sent Pel’s spirits lower than ever.

  ‘Where are they hiding?’ he growled.

  ‘Well,’ Darcy said, ‘they won’t be staying at the Hôtel Central, Patron. That’s for sure.’

  ‘Warn everybody to keep their eyes open. Every town and village in the area. Especially the hill villages. They’re probably holed up in some old house. They’re like rats. They’ve got hideaways in every province in the Republic.’ Pel stared at his desk for a moment, his hands automatically fiddling with a pack of Gauloises. ‘And while you’re at it, contact Marseilles. Find out if any of their people have disappeared, too.’

  It didn’t take Leguyader long to decide with certainty that the weapon that had killed Treguy was the same one that had killed Miollis, but the search for it revealed no more than Prélat’s search for fingerprints. There were one or two dabs belonging to Madame Miollis but, since she’d been sleeping with Treguy, it was not hard to believe she could also have been in his car at some time. There were also one or two of Miollis’, which seemed to indicate that Treguy had been keeping on the right side of both halves of the family, and it was obvious that Miollis, being already dead, could hardly have killed Treguy.

  All the usual things had happened, of course. The staff of the civil half of the airport was strengthened and regulations were tightened to the extent that passengers started to complain. It was typical of the public, of course. Try to protect their lives and they immediately objected to having their comfort interfered with. Nevertheless, for the moment, the airport seemed to be airtight – including that part occupied by the Armée de l’Air.

  An appeal had also gone out for anyone in the district where Treguy had been found who might have seen someone acting strangely to come forward (since the area was almost as barren of life as the Sahara, nobody had); dozens of policemen had searched around the cow pats on hands and knees for clues (as usual, there was nothing to be found but those objects that indicated picnickers, tramps and lovers); and the Chief remained in a bad temper (most of which he directed at Pel). With the heat, the ground had been too hard to provide imprints either of car tyres or shoes while, just to improve matters, the cattle which had tramped the area had effectively destroyed anything that could have given an indication of what might have happened, and into the bargain had left evidence of their presence in the flat, brown, drying, fly-encrusted cakes which not only impeded the search but also added to the distaste and ill-temper of the policemen making it.

  Darcy’s request to Marseilles about their mobsters came back to them within a few hours and he appeared in Pel’s office with a grim expression.

  ‘Marseilles reports that everybody’s present and correct–’ he began.

  ‘That’s something,’ Pel said, relieved.

  ‘ – except Maurice Tagliacci.’

  ‘What’s his line? Do we know?’

  ‘Anything that brings in money. Prostitution, extortion–’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘And drugs. They think. They’re not certain, but they feel he’s in that racket, too.’

  ‘And he’s disappeared? Which way?’

  Darcy sighed. ‘This way, Patron. Again – they think. He runs a supermarket down there. It’s a cover-up, of course, for other things and enables him to get around the country, ostensibly buying for it. They think he’s in this area after wine.’

  ‘Contact all the warehouses and vineyards. See if he’s been seen around. And broadcast his name with Pépé le Cornet’s, in case he’s big enough to have a hideaway as well.’<
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  The conference in Pel’s office was gloomy. The leads seemed to have dried up and only Darcy still seemed ebullient. He was convinced somehow that the drugs Miollis had been working had some sort of source in the Joliet Building where Marie-Anne Chahu lived.

  The thought that Marie-Anne Chahu was Foussier’s mistress also intrigued Darcy. He was a man who didn’t like to let things alone, so when he went off duty the following evening, despite having worked a matter of eighteen hours without stopping, he snatched a beer and sandwich, and borrowed overalls and a box of tools from the carpenter who did odd jobs about the Hôtel de Police. Hanging about outside the Maison Joliet during the next few days, he was surprised at the number of students who appeared. Moving upstairs, deeply concerned with the carpet on the second floor, he noticed that they all seemed to be visiting Marie-Anne Chahu. Without fail, however, they stayed no more than a moment or two then headed back round the corner to the lift out of his vision.

  It puzzled him and, with the promise that there were pretty girls and even the legendary Chahu to be seen, he managed to rope Misset into the scheme. He couldn’t use Lagé or Nosjean because La Chahu appeared to know them both and Misset was by no means averse to being included.

  ‘You’re not studying her,’ Darcy warned him sharply. ‘You’re studying what goes on in the flat.’

  Misset was given a large wrench and a key for the radiators and the next time Marie-Anne Chahu received a visit, Misset knocked on the door and asked to see the central heating. His report was depressingly devoid of drama.

  ‘They just talked in the doorway for five minutes,’ he said. ‘I heard a bit of chat about examinations, then the kid collected a list which the Chahu dame took off a pile in the hall and handed to her.’

  ‘Get a look at it?’

  ‘I got a look at the pile. Examination dates and lists of questions. That’s all. I helped myself to one.’ Misset handed it over to Darcy. ‘Seems to be mostly in Russian.’