Pel and the Predators

by Mark Hebden

  They were silent as they drove back to the city. Pel’s mind was working swiftly. Where had Dominique Pigny come from? It was unlikely that she came from Mongy because in a place of that size Bardolle or Hilaire, both of whom seemed to have sharp eyes, would have spotted her before – and undoubtedly have found out her history.

  So, if she didn’t come from Mongy, where did she come from? Had she come in her companion’s car, if he had one? Or had they just met in Hilaire’s bar? Had she a car of her own? And if not, how had she reached Mongy? By bicycle? On foot? Had she had a lift? And if so, with whom?

  When they reached the Hôtel de Police it was late in the afternoon and as they pushed the door open the policeman on the desk looked up.

  ‘Someone in your office, Patron,’ he said. ‘Someone to see you.’

  To Pel’s surprise, sitting in his office was Didier Darras, looking uneasy and scared. Alongside him was a girl whom Pel assumed was Louise Bray. She was very young, barely into her teens, but she was slim and pretty and he found himself admiring the boy’s taste, but wondering nevertheless what had brought them. He’d got to know Didier well. He’d lightened many an hour when Madame Routy had weighed heavily on Pel’s shoulders, but, apart from expressing the ambition to be a policeman himself, he’d never asked to see the police at work.

  ‘Hello,’ Pel said. ‘What are you doing here? Did you enjoy the caves?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Didier jumped to his feet, surprisingly formal. ‘This is Louise. I’ve told you about her.’

  The girl managed a nervous smile. There was something about them that indicated anxiety and Pel wondered what it was all about. Had they been indulging in sex together and was the girl in the family way? It was far from impossible these days. He frowned, wondering if they’d come to him for advice, and decided it called for a cigarette.

  He waved to Didier to sit down, then taking out the cigarette, lit it slowly to give himself time to think. Shaking out the match and placing it carefully in the ash tray, he turned towards them. ‘You in trouble?’ he asked.

  They glanced at each other then Didier spoke. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

  ‘Then what–?’

  Didier sat up stiffly. ‘It was this afternoon—’

  ‘At Drax?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In the caves?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did something happen?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Pel paused. ‘Well, go on,’ he prompted. ‘What?’

  Didier looked again at the girl, then swallowed. ‘We found a body,’ he said. ‘A dead body.’

  Seven

  For a long time Pel was silent. After the initial reference to the ticket found on Dominique Pigny which indicated she’d been to the caves at Drax, he’d thought no more about the place. Now, suddenly, he began to wonder if there was a connection between her and this new body Didier had found.

  ‘Inform me,’ he said.

  Didier cleared his throat. ‘The main part of the caves,’ he said, ‘is easy to get into. But you have to pay, so we tried another part about a kilometre further on. You can get in for nothing there. It’s shallow, hard to get into, full of rocks, and no good to potholers because it doesn’t go far down, so nobody ever goes there.’

  Pel studied the boy, aware of how fond he had become of him over the years. The idea of him landing into danger worried him.

  ‘I had a torch,’ Didier went on.

  ‘I imagine you’d need one,’ Pel said dryly.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The boy was still surprisingly formal, not at all like the boy who argued with Pel over Scrabble and helped infuriate Madame Routy. More like a witness on a witness stand, in fact.

  The two of them were drinking Coca-Colas from the Bar Transvaal, both nervous and inclined to eye each other as if to draw confidence from each other’s presence. Cadet Martin, who had fetched the Coca-Colas, sat at the desk with his notebook. Nosjean – brought in because, since with Hilaire’s evidence, they appeared to have a murder on their hands already and it might be necessary for him to take over this new one – leaned on a set of files.

  Didier cleared his throat again. ‘She—’

  ‘She?’

  ‘It was a woman. She was under a slab of rock—’

  ‘Under a slab of rock? Buried?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Then how did you manage to find her?’

  ‘I moved the rock.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ Didier seemed startled at the question.

  ‘Yes, why did you move it? One doesn’t go around moving large slabs of rocks in underground caves for nothing. Especially if they’re big, and I imagine this was big if it was extensive enough to cover a dead woman.’

  Didier hesitated and looked at the girl.

  ‘Well, actually,’ he said, ‘there were two – large and flat like slate – overlapping each other. The piece I moved wasn’t all that heavy.’

  ‘Why did you move it? You haven’t explained why?’

  Didier blushed. ‘We’d been fooling about,’ he said. ‘Louise was scared of spiders and things and when I saw this big slab, I thought it probably had some more under it and that she’d grab me again.’

  ‘She grabbed you when she was frightened?’

  ‘Yes.’ Didier managed a ghost of his old grin. ‘I liked it. I put my arms round her to calm her.’

  The girl blushed and he continued. ‘When I saw this slab I thought she’d be particularly scared, so I could have my arms round her for a long time. I—’ he swallowed ‘—but when I lifted it I saw this foot. It looked old-fashioned.’

  ‘It was horrible,’ the girl said.

  ‘She’d been dead a long time,’ Didier went on earnestly. ‘I’d often wondered what it would be like to see a dead body but this one had been dead so long it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected.’

  ‘How do you know it had been dead a long time?’

  ‘Just that it was all – well, sort of – well, thin. Shrivelled.’

  ‘Starved?’

  ‘No. Just old.’

  Pel looked at Darcy. This was unexpected. The appearance of a body in the caves at Drax hadn’t startled him because of Dominique Pigny’s interest in the place but the discovery of an old body was a different matter entirely.

  ‘It was flattened,’ Didier was explaining. ‘Brown. It looked ancient. I didn’t see the face. I put the slab back.’

  ‘Did you see anything else?’

  ‘I didn’t look.’

  Pel’s voice grew sharper. ‘I thought it was your ambition to be a policeman.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Then start behaving like one. You must have seen more than that.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Didier sat up and his manner became brisk. ‘I saw a handbag.’

  ‘Near the body?’

  ‘Yes, sir. That was flat, too. Sort of squashed. The rock, I suppose.’

  ‘This body: How do you suppose it got there?’

  Didier swallowed. ‘I reckon it was put there, sir. The rocks couldn’t have killed her by falling on her because she’d have had to be lying down for that to happen. I don’t think they were heavy enough anyway.’

  ‘Good. Good. You’re using your brains now. Did the body look as though it had been placed there recently?’

  ‘It had been dead a long time.’

  ‘It could still have been placed there recently. Do you think it had?’

  ‘No, sir. There was mould on the shoe. And little marks in the earth – the sort that mice make – going underneath it.’

  ‘This is better,’ Pel was being deliberately enthusiastic and it was working well. The scared looks were going. ‘Then, if the body had been there for a long time, why do you think it hadn’t been noticed before?’

  Didier gestured. ‘You couldn’t see it. And nobody would have moved the slab. There were other smaller stones piled on top of it.’

  ‘Which you moved in the hope of finding spiders?’
/>
  ‘I—’ Didier blushed again ‘—I was showing off a bit.’

  ‘It’s a failing males have in the company of attractive females,’ Pel said and this time it was the girl who blushed. ‘So you moved these other stones?’

  ‘They’d been there a long time. You could tell by the moss. It had grown from one to the other across the gaps. I began tossing them aside and then I saw these two long flat ones. I said something about it being the grave of a missing heir of Philip the Bold and that they’d have surrounded it with treasure like the Egyptians did with their kings. Then – then—’ Didier’s voice, which had begun to rise as he described the excitement of the pretended search, fell again abruptly ‘—then I lifted the slab. There was a slot between two rocks and I saw this foot. That’s all. We stared at it for a bit.’

  ‘I didn’t scream,’ the girl said.

  ‘Good,’ Pel said. ‘Very good.’

  ‘No,’ Didier agreed. ‘We didn’t panic. I put the slab back just as I found it. I remembered what you’d said about being a detective. We didn’t touch anything. I just lowered it, that’s all. Then we came out and got on our bikes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you report it to the police at Drax?’

  Didier shrugged. ‘I thought you’d know what to do better than some brigadier at Drax.’

  Pel nodded, touched that the boy had so much confidence in him. He paused and stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this raises a point. Are you prepared to take me back and show me exactly where this body is?’

  ‘No,’ the girl said at once.

  ‘I hardly expected that,’ Pel admitted. ‘I’ll have you taken home. In a police car. By Cadet Martin here. How’s that?’

  The girl looked at Martin. He was a good-looking youngster and the idea obviously appealed. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think I’d like to go home.’

  ‘And you, Didier? Are you prepared to go with me and show me the spot?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll go.’

  As the girl disappeared with Martin, Nosjean straightened up. ‘I’ll lay everything on, Patron,’ he said. ‘Photography. The Lab. Doc Minet. We’ll need lights, and I’ll telephone Drax to expect us.’

  As he left, Didier turned to Pel. ‘I’ll show you where it is,’ he offered. ‘But if it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay outside.’

  ‘Policemen need to have strong stomachs, mon brave.’

  ‘Yes.’ Didier’s smile was more like the old smile now. ‘But, I think I’ll wait until I’m a policeman.’

  It was dark when they arrived, but the Drax substation was waiting eagerly. Drax was a quiet place like Mongy and the policemen had the air of men who had waited all their lives for this very moment to show what they could do. The brigadier’s wife was looking after the telephone and every man had turned out and was waiting by the little cream Renault van they used.

  The caves were situated in a flat face of rock like a cliff just above the road to Langres. It was holed here and there as if by giant rabbits and at one end there was a group of huts – the pay booth, the refreshment booth and the gift and postcard shop – all closed until the tourist season got going in July. The owner of the land looked bewildered.

  ‘They telephoned that there was a body in one of my caves,’ he complained.

  The entrance Didier had found was on the high land above the road and to reach it they had to turn into a winding lane that curled up the hill to where there were steeply sloping fields, broken here and there with clumps of rocks and steep little valleys. There were more of the holes here but these were small and, in the dark, it was difficult to find the one Didier had entered.

  As they finally stopped at the entrance the farmer started complaining again. ‘I’ve never seen a body in there,’ he said.

  ‘How long is it since you were in there?’ Pel asked.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been in this one, to tell you the truth. The land here’s like a rabbit warren.’

  As they gathered by a narrow fissure between two rocks, Didier touched Pel’s arm. ‘I’d better come in with you,’ he offered.

  Pel put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’ Didier’s mouth was firm. ‘It’s all right with you here.’

  ‘A boy in a small moment becomes a man,’ Pel said sagely. ‘Very well. Lead the way, Nosjean. I’ll bring up the rear.’

  It was difficult to squeeze through the fissure but inside they found themselves in a cave as wide and long as a tennis court. The roof was low and the walls were streaked with green and yellow.

  ‘Over here.’ Didier led the way across the uneven floor and, in a smaller cave like a side chapel in a church, they saw the scattered rocks he had moved. He pointed to the far end of the cave.

  By the wall there were two long flat slabs of slatey stone which, as the boy had said, looked like a broken coffin lid. Nosjean and Pel leaned over them, studying them carefully for anything that might be of help, then Pel nodded.

  ‘Up with it, mon brave,’ he said.

  Placing his lamp on the floor, Nosjean reached for the slab. There was little to see but the brown flattened foot Didier had described. The body appeared to be covered by a large sack and only the foot and a leg protruded where it had rotted away. As Didier had said, beneath it small marks showed the tunnelling of tiny animals.

  Cautiously, Pel reached for the top of the sack. It was pulled away easily and, immediately, he saw a round object covered with a mould and a crushed straw hat with wilting artificial flowers, surprisingly unfaded despite the time which had obviously elapsed since it had been placed there. The round object was a skull with the remains of a human face still discernible, even a small well-shaped ear, on which a few strands of reddish hair were coiled. Beneath they could see nostrils, an open mouth, teeth, empty eye sockets and brown mummified flesh.

  Flattened by the weight of the stones the body reminded Pel vaguely of the corpse of a rabbit flattened on the N7.

  He looked up at Nosjean. ‘It’s some time since this was put here, mon brave,’ he said slowly. ‘I think this will be one for the historians.’

  Eight

  Long after Didier had been taken home, they were still at the caves.

  They had to move very carefully. The sack covering the body had come away easily, showing clothing beneath which was also friable and easily torn, but the skin of the corpse had proved rock hard and the limbs were stiff enough to resist any attempt to move them.

  When Photography, Leguyader of the Forensic Laboratory and Doc Minet had finished, a spade, borrowed from the owner of the caves, had been used to lever the body from its niche. It had remained as rigid as if made of concrete, crouched, its head twisted to one side; the skin of the face was brown, the remainder of the corpse a lighter yellow, the shape of the body, hips, buttocks and breasts of a woman quite discernible. The skin was marked here and there with holes made by maggots but the ears were shapely and the teeth were all present. The eyebrows, eyelashes and hair, apart from the one small coil over the upper ear, were missing.

  It wasn’t easy removing it from the cave because of the narrow entrance, but the body was hard enough and stiff enough for them to manoeuvre it in its plastic sack through the opening and lay it on a stretcher, before carrying it to the van which shot off, its headlights glaring in the darkness, towards the forensic laboratory.

  Watching it go and the policemen still laying out tapes, erecting lamps and taking measurements, Pel was puzzled. Not only did they have to find out who the dead woman was and how she came to be where she was, they also had to find out why Dominique Pigny had been to the caves. What had seemed at first to be merely a casual visit now seemed to assume some importance.

  Coron, the owner of the caves, could offer little light on the subject and he had no memory of any visitors around Ascension Day who might have been Dominique Pigny, who in any case wouldn’t have visited the cave where the mummified body had been found.

  ‘Any of th
e visitors show any special interest in their surroundings?’ Pel asked.

  ‘Just the usual “oohs” and “ahs”. We have special lighting effects. There’s one grotto we call the Virgin Mary’s Grotto. There’s a stalagmite that looks a bit like the Virgin and child. Actually, we chipped a bit off to make it look better but we keep that to ourselves.’

  ‘Can you think of any reason why anyone should be specially interested in these caves?’

  ‘They’re good caves. But there’s nothing you can steal except the floodlighting. And that would require a pantechnicon and a gang of electricians.’

  Pel rubbed his nose and sniffed. ‘Remember a girl in a red plastic mackintosh?’ he asked.

  Coron shrugged. ‘Red plastic mackintoshes are popular these days.’

  ‘Did anyone ask any unusual questions?’

  ‘Not that I remember. No, hang on a minute, there was something. Mostly they stand about looking like fish in a goldfish bowl and you wonder if they’re even interested, but this girl – well, she wasn’t really a girl any more – she asked if anybody had ever lost their way in the caves. I told her we were too well organised. Then she asked if anyone ever had in the past and if any bodies had ever been found. I said we didn’t go in for bodies. And I’ve been in most of the caves at times to store things or take shelter in a rainstorm.’

  ‘Do they usually ask if bodies have ever been found?’

  ‘Not usually. But this one did and she was very insistent. Went on and on about it.’

  ‘Which,’ Pel said thoughtfully, almost to himself, ‘seems to indicate that when Dominique Pigny came here she already knew of that body we found, but not where it was. What about potholers?’

  ‘We get a few. Just amateurs and kids. The caves don’t go down far enough.’

  ‘Any of them ever report anything strange?’

  ‘Such as what?’

  Pel’s eyes glowed. ‘Such as someone caught stuffing a body in a cave.’

  Leguyader, of the Forensic Lab, looked cheerfully at Pel, certain that this time they had come up with a beauty.