Pel and the Predators

by Mark Hebden

  ‘Who lives there now?’ Pel asked.

  ‘Some old boy,’ Darcy said. ‘Name of Stocklin. Charles-Louis Stocklin. Million years old. Worth a fortune. Bought it about ten years ago.’

  They tried the pictures of Dominique Pigny on the proprietor of the bar but he shook his head. ‘She never came here,’ he said. ‘I’d have remembered her if she had. I always remember the pretty ones.’

  The Curé had also never seen her, and she’d never been noticed in the shops. Since the shops consisted only of a butcher’s, a baker’s and a general store it wasn’t surprising. Anyone as enterprising as Dominique Pigny had been would surely have gone further afield for her purchases. As a last resort they tried the château.

  The man who opened the door was around forty, tall, strong, square-faced and blond with the look of a German. He wore a white jacket and, showing them in, disappeared down the hall calling ‘Bernadine.’

  ‘She runs the place,’ he said.

  The woman was tall and blonde like the man, well-built and good-looking with an excellent figure. Leading them into a panelled room flooded with sunshine that came through tall mullioned windows, she indicated chairs.

  ‘I’m Bernadine Guichet,’ she said. ‘I’m the housekeeper. My brother, Hubert, is the butler. Or at least that’s what he’s called. He’s really just a handyman. I do the cooking and the nursing and he does the lifting and the heavy chores. We look after Monsieur Stocklin between us. He’s bedridden these days.’

  ‘Isn’t it a hard job looking after an old man?’ Pel asked.

  She smiled. ‘It’s better than working in a hospital. We no longer have a family home to go to and this is a pleasant enough place to live. We thought it might be nice one day to open a home for old people.’

  Studying the pictures Pel offered, copies of those Madame Charnier had produced, her face betrayed no sign of recognition, either of the girl or the necklet.

  ‘Name of Pigny,’ Pel said. ‘Dominique Pigny.’

  ‘Nobody by that name ever worked here. Not while we’ve been here.’

  ‘And how long would that be?’

  ‘Two years. We came from the south.’

  ‘What other staff have you?’

  ‘My brother and I look after everything.’

  ‘In a place this size?’

  ‘There’s only Monsieur Stocklin. He doesn’t demand much.’

  Pel looked through the window. Below them, the valley, running alongside the river, stretched away to the north. It was reached by a path from the house.

  ‘What about Monsieur Stocklin?’ he asked. ‘Would he know her?’

  Bernadine Guichet gave a small tight smile. ‘I doubt it very much. He doesn’t read the newspapers and he stays all the time in his room. Hubert and I have an apartment close by so we can hear if he needs anything. Very little happens here – certainly nothing to attract a young girl. The only traffic’s from the village to Violette or to Mercourt and Mongy on the way to Langres. Otherwise just an occasional car.’

  ‘What outside staff do you have?’

  ‘One farm foreman – the farm’s further down the slope – and two men. We raise beef cattle which require little looking after. They used to grow potatoes and other crops but, with Monsieur Stocklin no longer able to take much interest, it was decided to cut everything to the simplest form and that part’s been closed down.’

  Pel was inclined to be silent on the way back. Old people bothered him because he had a feeling he was going to become an old person himself at any moment and had no wish to be neglected. His own father had obligingly dropped dead at the age of seventy-nine in the garden of his younger daughter in Châtillon, and though Pel had always been terrified of him because his temper was, if anything, worse than Pel’s, he had admired the manner of his going because it had been as neat and efficient as his life.

  ‘Old age’s a big problem,’ he said. ‘What do you do with old people?’

  Darcy shrugged. ‘Tie them to the railway line. Leave them in a refuse bin at the side of the motorway. Seal them up in the nose cone of a rocket and fire them into outer space.’

  ‘One day you’ll be old.’ Pel spoke with the bitterness of one already on the threshold.

  ‘Not me, Patron. I shall die of a heart attack while trying to grab a villain or bed a woman. Daniel Darcy, with his death-defying coronary.’

  To Pel, Darcy’s attitude was too flippant. ‘What about your father?’ he asked.

  ‘Still alive.’

  ‘Does he chase girls too?’

  Darcy grinned. ‘He’s worse than me.’

  When they reached the Hôtel de Police, Pel sent Cadet Martin out for a bottle of beer for him, and sat brooding over the photographs Madame Charnier had left with them. For some reason the dead girl bothered him. If nothing else, she must have had a personality, and it seemed strange that nobody had ever noticed her except her sister who had managed only to disapprove of her.

  Ringing for Cadet Martin, he handed him the pictures. ‘Have those copied,’ he said. ‘We’ll need them for the press. It’s the sort of story they thrive on.’

  Battle, murder and sudden death were like meat and drink to the newspapers these days and a story was hardly worth printing unless somebody had been killed or maimed. He could just see the headlines.

  Considering all things, he wasn’t too disappointed with the day as he climbed into his car and headed for his home in the Rue Martin-de-Noinville. They hadn’t discovered much but they’d had a pleasant afternoon out.

  His car was giving trouble again. It limped round the Place Wilson and down the Cours de Gaulle, smoke pouring from the exhaust. Near the Monument de la Victoire he was held up by traffic and a van driver alongside, pulling a face at the fumes, opened his window and leaned out.

  ‘Why don’t you use petrol, mon vieux?’ he asked. ‘Or else smokeless coal?’

  Pel scowled. It was no good, he thought. The car would have to go – it humiliated him too often – and he started doing sums in his head. For weeks he’d surreptitiously been looking at advertising material for new cars but every time he made up his mind what to buy, the accompanying price list made him change his mind.

  Madame Routy was sitting in a deckchair behind the house. Where she sat was known to Pel as the ‘terrasse’ but, in fact, it was nothing more than a narrow strip of concrete bordering a handkerchief lawn. The next door neighbour was in a deckchair on her own ‘terrasse’ and they were conducting their conversation in shouts.

  Pel glared at her. She ought, he felt, to have been leafing through cookery books in the kitchen in order to prepare some magnificent repast for his delectation. Instead, he supposed, it would be the usual casserole: three or four chunks of meat – chop-chop and into the dish; a few vegetables – chop-chop and after the meat. A shake of pepper and salt and that would be what Madame Routy blithely called preparing a meal. Madame Routy, he decided, was going to get a shock when he finally got Madame Faivre-Perret before the Maire for the marriage ceremony.

  ‘Fancy a game of boules?’

  Pel turned at the voice and beamed at the boy who stuck his head round the kitchen door. Didier Darras was Madame Routy’s nephew and usually turned up at Pel’s when his mother went to look after an ailing father-in-law.

  They shook hands gravely.

  ‘Grandfather ill again?’ Pel asked.

  Didier shrugged. ‘I think he likes being ill,’ he said. ‘He gets better food when Maman goes over there.’

  ‘When you come over here, mon vieux, I’ll bet you don’t get better food.’

  Didier grinned. He was growing into a sturdy strong boy. ‘We could always eat out,’ he said.

  Pel grinned back conspiratorially. Didier was the only ally he possessed against Madame Routy. He disliked her food and regarded television in much the same manner as Pel, and their chief delight was to disappear to play boules or go fishing just as she started cooking then forget to return so that she had to eat her disgusting dishes h
erself.

  ‘I would have imagined,’ Pel said, ‘that by this time you’d have learned to cook.’

  The boy’s shoulders moved. ‘You know such good restaurants,’ he grinned. ‘In any case, I’ve not come to stay. I’m going home to sleep. I’m not scared of being alone and Louise Bray next door says her parents are going out so I can go round there if I want.’ He paused, his face thoughtful. ‘People often marry the girl next door, don’t they?’

  It had been Pel’s experience that more often than not they didn’t, for the simple reason that they knew too much about them. ‘Are you thinking of getting married, mon brave?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, yes. Eventually. But not just yet. What about you? When are you getting married?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Aunt Routy says it’s getting near.’

  Nearer than you imagine, mon brave, Pel thought.

  ‘We’re coming over here next week,’ Didier went on. ‘Me and Louise. There’s no school and we thought we’d cycle to Drax and have a look at the caves.’

  ‘Take care,’ Pel advised. ‘The caves at Drax need to be approached with trepidation. Potholers regularly risk their necks trying to reach the bowels of the earth there and equally regularly the police are called on to fish them out when they get stuck.’

  Didier gestured. ‘We’re not exploring,’ he said. ‘And the first hundred yards are quite safe. And this is a good time to go. There’s never anybody there until August.’

  The following morning, Pel appeared at the Hôtel de Police with a smug expression on his face. With the aid of Didier Darras, he had defeated Madame Routy once again. They had not only failed to turn up to eat the meal she had prepared, but had later played Scrabble in the kitchen with such gusto she had complained she couldn’t hear the television. Considering that it was shuddering on its stand, they had had to assume she was stone deaf. It was a victory as resounding as Austerlitz.

  He found Claudie Darel in his office. She looked white and unhappy and her expression put him on the alert at once.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Patron, I think you’ve had a letter bomb. Régis Martin and I were going through the mail and we came across this parcel about the size of a book. When I started to open it I saw wires.’

  ‘Where is it now?’

  ‘Still on the desk. I came in here to warn you. Régis is guarding the door until we’ve had it checked. The army’s sending an explosives expert from the barracks.’

  Cadet Martin was standing in the doorway of the office he shared with Claudie, looking a little pale but full of determination. ‘It very nearly got us, Patron,’ he said.

  Pel approached the desk carefully, his head down like a dog sniffing for a scent. The parcel was on the desk, one end half-opened. Without touching it, he peered at it. What Claudie had said was true. There were wires.

  When the explosives people arrived, they removed it carefully and defused it.

  ‘Pretty simple,’ the army sergeant said. ‘Plastic torch case. Battery taking up half the space, the other half filled with explosive. It could blind you or blow your hand off.’ He looked up at Darcy and Pel. ‘Got any enemies who’d like to do that to you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Darcy snapped. ‘Philippe Duche.’

  When the soldiers had taken away the defused bomb, Darcy sat down at the opposite side of Pel’s desk and pushed across a packet of cigarettes.

  Pel took one. ‘Perhaps under the circumstances,’ he agreed.

  Darcy lit it for him. ‘This is a new one, Patron.’

  Pel shrugged. ‘The world these days is ready-made for crackpots.’

  ‘Philippe Duche isn’t a crackpot, Patron.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of Philippe Duche,’ Pel snorted.

  ‘I am. You’ll be no good to us without eyes and hands. Leave it to me, Patron. I’ll get the bastard. I know his haunts. Can you manage without me?’

  Pel smiled. ‘I doubt it, Daniel. But I’ll try, and things are quiet at the moment.’

  Darcy frowned. ‘I’ll use Lacocq and Morell. We can’t have tinpot little villains trying to remove cops just because they happened to catch the bastards doing something dishonest and sent them for a well-deserved rest behind bars.’ He gestured indignantly. ‘The nerve of the bastard! He tries to take over a city and then, when he’s caught, he resents it. Just forget it, Patron. I’ll make it my job.’

  As Darcy bustled off, his face angry, Pel sat for a moment in silence. Darcy was right, of course. They couldn’t let villains go around committing mayhem for revenge and getting away with it. Curiously, it wasn’t for himself that he was angry, but at the thought of what might have happened to Claudie Darel, who was young and pretty and had all her life before her.

  As he came to life and began to paw through the papers on his desk, he came across the typed sheets containing the information Madame Charnier had given him. He frowned at them. Death was never easy, even when it wasn’t your own, and Dominique Pigny had been unceremoniously dumped in the sea by someone who had killed her – accidentally, with a car; or somewhat less accidentally because he’d made her pregnant. Probably a man who came, in Madame Charnier’s words, from ‘somewhere in the north-west,’ which doubtless meant Brittany and more than likely somewhere round Beg Meil where she’d been found.

  However, with Madame Charnier disappearing to Brittany to identify her sister’s body, their part in the affair seemed to be ended. They had shown efficiency, nose-to-the-grindstone and eye-on-the-ball and, since whatever had happened appeared to have happened in Brittany, it seemed now to be entirely Inspector Le Bihan’s business. At least the press wouldn’t be clamouring at his door.

  But, as with Darcy and Nosjean, that was where Pel was wrong, too.

  Six

  The bomb had shaken the Hôtel de Police a little. Despite the resentment about their existence that was felt in some circles, they weren’t in the habit of receiving explosives in their mail.

  Pel himself was under no delusions. He wasn’t treating Philippe Duche’s threat lightly. ‘But I can hardly lock myself in,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Fair enough, Patron,’ Darcy agreed. ‘But I think you should start looking under your car when you go to it in the morning. And make sure your doors and windows are locked and close the shutters at night.’

  Uniformed Branch was already putting on a big search of the city and its environs. Barns, store sheds and old houses were being checked and policemen were asking questions wherever they would be most useful. So far, however, nothing had been turned up to indicate that Philippe Duche hadn’t sunk without trace.

  ‘He’s gone into the hills,’ Inspector Nadauld, of Uniformed Branch, decided.

  ‘More likely to Paris,’ was the opinion of Inspector Pomereu, of Traffic, who had been manning road blocks and searching cars. ‘They all go to Paris. You could hide an army in Paris.’

  Darcy’s view was that Philippe Duche was still in the city. He was a single-minded individual, and if he’d said he was going to get Pel, then he’d undoubtedly try.

  His first move was to have all the apartments and offices overlooking the Hôtel de Police checked to make sure their occupants were good citizens and not friends or associates of Philippe Duche, and to make sure that Pel’s home couldn’t be overlooked from neighbouring houses or from the bank of the railway line which ran nearby. Then he arranged with Uniformed Branch to keep an eye on the place. Finally he made enquiries in Benois de l’Herbue, a narrow-gutted village south of the city just off the N74, where Philippe Duche had been born and grown up. He hadn’t been seen there recently but Darcy guessed he’d been there, visiting his father who kept a small bar just off the main square. The Duche family carried a lot of weight in Benois de l’Herbue and people weren’t prepared to say anything, but Darcy was quick to notice the fleetingly scared looks on their faces as they answered his questions. Moving quietly, making no fuss, it didn’t take him long to learn that Duche was in the Montchapet district of the
city. He nodded quietly, lit a cigarette and climbed back into his car. Darcy was a lively young man, modern as a spacecraft and, when it came to girls, just as efficient, but he was a good policeman, too. Girls didn’t interfere with his work when he was on a job and he was in deadly earnest at that moment. At times, he felt like sinking a hatchet into Pel’s skull but he knew he was a good policeman and, since there weren’t many like him, he deserved to be looked after.

  For the rest of Pel’s team life followed the usual pattern of enquiry and arrest – or of enquiry and non-arrest. The break-in at the supermarket at Talant had been sorted out with a brisk reminder to the management that it was about time they put a new set of locks on their doors. The wounding at Noray was still a mystery – though doubtless the result of jealousy over a girl – but the terrorists of the Montchapet district had turned out to be nothing more than a gang of unruly fourteen-year-olds. The department was making headway and they were just congratulating themselves that in the statistics for the year the column indicating the number of crimes solved would show a no-worse-than-average rate when the balance was tipped again by a woman called Argoud from Roumy who was brought in for severely wounding her husband with a brass candlestick by hitting him over the head while he lay asleep in bed, and Misset, who had taken the call from the neighbours, was at that moment searching for the man’s mistress. Misset felt he knew something about these things, because he’d fancied a mistress or two himself for ages. Since Madame Argoud was refusing to talk and had sat in sullen silence throughout the whole questioning, Misset could only assume that this was because she was refusing to name the other woman. There had to be another woman, he felt. There always was.

  With the Argoud woman safely in the hands of the juge d’instruction, he had returned to the case at Noray but he didn’t seem to be trying very hard and Pel suspected that, with Noray a long way from the eyes of a superior officer and Lagé doing all the hard work, Misset was probably enjoying himself.