by Mark Hebden
As Pel put the telephone down thoughtfully, it rang again. This time it was Nosjean.
‘I’ve found the weapon that was used to hit Matajcek,’ he announced.
Pel sat up. ‘What is it?’
‘A spade, Patron. It has blood and hair on it. It was lying inside the stable, under some straw. I’ve got the photographers out and they’ve taken pictures. It’ll have to go to Fingerprints, so can I come in now and bring it with me?’
‘Do you need to come in?’
‘Wouldn’t mind a decent meal, Patron. There’s nothing up here and it’s cold. And the chickens keep wandering into the house. The old fool had let the wire come loose and there’s a hole big enough to drive a bus through. They’re good ones, too. Marans.’
‘How do you know?’
‘My father kept chickens. I know a bit about them. I’ve made arrangements for the Heutelets to keep an eye on the cattle. They’ll have to come indoors soon, anyway. The grass is already a bit sparse and it’s cold.’
‘How about milking?’
‘They’re bullocks,’ Nosjean said. ‘You don’t milk bullocks.’ Pel detected a note of sarcasm in his tone.
‘The Heutelets are going to shift the pigs to their place for the time being,’ Nosjean went on. ‘They say the best thing with the chickens is just to leave them to find their own food. There’s plenty of grain lying around and plenty of water. I’ve informed the Animal Rescue people.’
‘You’ve done well, Nosjean,’ Pel said.
‘Can I come in then, Patron?’
Nosjean sounded like a shorn lamb and Pel gave way. ‘Yes. I wouldn’t want you to catch cold and die. I’ll send a relief up. Get him to look around, too. Until he arrives you can carry on.’
‘What am I looking for, Patron?’ Nosjean sounded as if he’d been orphaned.
‘Think of drugs, for a start. It might be drugs. I’ll send out a sniffer dog with your relief.’
He had no sooner put the telephone down once more when it rang yet again. This time it was Judge Brisard. He sounded nasal and thick-voiced.
‘You got a cold, Judge?’ Pel asked cheerfully.
‘Yes,’ Brisard snapped.
Pel beamed at the telephone. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Best thing for a cold is a collar of garlic round your neck and a day or two in bed.’
Brisard put on a martyred tone. ‘There’s too much to do,’ he said, ‘for me to wallow in self-sympathy. I hear we’ve got a second murder now.’
‘Not a second murder,’ Pel corrected. ‘This is only an attempted murder. The man’s still alive.’
‘Well, there’s obviously someone around up there who needs bringing in, don’t you think, Inspector?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Got any suspects yet?’
‘Yes. But there’s no reason to bring any of them in at the moment.’
Brisard digested that one for a while. Pel could almost see his small eyes glittering as he looked for some way he could menace Pel. In the end, he appeared to decide he wasn’t going to get anywhere and had better save his big guns for later.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’ll expect to hear from you as soon as possible.’
Pel put the telephone down and scowled at it, hoping that Brisard’s cold would produce complications such as bronchitis, pains in the back and, if possible, congenital leprosy, so that Judge Polverari would be put on the case. He got on well with Judge Polverari, who was small and shrunken but was still a man who enjoyed his food. The few cases Pel had worked on with Polverari had turned out to be picnics because, if nothing else, Polverari insisted on eating regularly and at a good restaurant. And, because his wife had money, he invariably insisted on Pel joining him – at his expense.
Knowing Brisard would doubtless come back later with some trivial enquiry, he decided to get out of the office. Picking up Darcy, he went to see Leguyader.
Leguyader was made in the same mould as Pel, small, dark and fierce, and they had been enemies for years and were always likely to be, because they were both efficient, dedicated and short on good temper. His laboratory was enormous, with a squad of white-coated pathologists busy at the benches.
‘This tattoo mark on his right forearm,’ he said. ‘It looks to me as if he had it put on as a youth and spent the rest of his life trying to get it off.’
He indicated a jar in which there was a small square of skin in spirit and Pel studied it with a magnifying glass.
‘Could be anything,’ he said. ‘What about the bullets?’
‘Walther-Mathurin .38. Ballistics have sent pictures.’ Leguyader passed them across. ‘They’ll be useful when you find the gun that did it.’
‘But not until. Go on.’
‘His undershirt was bought in Brussels. The store mark’s on the label.’
‘I didn’t know there was a label.’
‘Perhaps you didn’t look hard enough.’ Leguyader enjoyed baiting Pel. ‘It was hidden under a crust of dried blood. But it’s there all right. Vemelaers: That’s the name. They might remember him, but I doubt it, because it’s a supermarket and self-service. I checked. There’s also a laundry mark. A new one. Like the label, it was obscured by dried blood.’
‘Is it local?’
‘No.’ Leguyader pushed over a photograph. ‘That’s it. I expect you can get it checked.’
Pel frowned. ‘Doesn’t tell us much, does it?’ he said.
‘It tells us a bit.’ Leguyader wore an air of triumph. ‘Since most men have wives to do their laundering, I’d say your dead friend’s either single or was en route somewhere. And that he had a bit of cash. Otherwise, he’d have done what most people do in hotels: Washed his underwear himself and dried it out on the radiator.’
Pel turned. ‘Get it round the districts, Darcy. Fast.’ He stared at Leguyader. ‘What else?’
Leguyader looked smug. ‘Some people would be satisfied by this time.’
‘I’m greedy,’ Pel snapped. ‘And there is more. I can always tell. You’re dancing about like a poodle wanting to be let out.’
Leguyader scowled and lifted up the bloodstained undershirt from the top of his table. ‘Smell that,’ he said coldly.
Pel sniffed. The garment had lost all the odour of the man who’d worn it and the blood on it had dried to a cardboard stiffness. But there was an acrid smell about it that Pel caught at once.
‘Cigars,’ Leguyader pointed out.
Pel nodded. ‘Supports what Minet said,’ he agreed. ‘Teeth stained but not his lungs. Cigar smokers don’t inhale as a rule.’
Leguyader nodded. ‘Exactly. If we can identify the brand we might be able to identify him.’
Five
Sergeant Nosjean greeted the man with the sniffer dog as if he were an angel come down from heaven to rescue him from the pit of hell.
He was cold, wet and miserable, and his shoes, trousers, even his coat were smeared with the thick mud of the farmyard with its leavening of cowdung. He felt he stank like a polecat, he was hungry and had run out of cigarettes. In addition, he knew he ought to have rung his girlfriend to try to make things up between them but, since that must obviously have fallen through completely by now, he decided that perhaps he’d better fall back that evening – provided, of course, that he lived through the day – on the only girl who ever seemed to welcome him, Odile Chenandier.
As he climbed into his car, he thought of her with warmth. She was no raving beauty and inclined to be nervous – and since Nosjean had met her during an investigation into her father, she was also inclined to have a fixation about policemen.
The path through the trees from Matajcek’s farm towards the main road wound round the curve of the hill. In the distance through the haze that the rain had left behind. Nosjean could see the next rise across the valley, with another huge dark clump of woodland. Suddenly Nosjean knew he loved this corner of France, and resolved there and then to complain less, to try harder, to enjoy his work more. It was what he needed to feel fulfilled
. He’d start making the effort at once. How long it would last he couldn’t imagine. Not long, he suspected.
A hare shot across the path just ahead and a crow lifted from the edge of the road with an indignant raucous squawk. These woods were beautiful, he thought. Lonely, empty of human beings –
He slammed on the brakes as he saw a dark figure moving swiftly through the trees. Flinging open the door, he set off after it instinctively, brushing through the wet undergrowth that drenched his clothes. For a moment he thought he’d lost the figure ahead, then he saw it again, a ragged figure with flapping jacket and wild hair and beard. Drugs, Pel had said. This looked as much like a junkie as any he’d seen.
Then he realised that the other figure’s clothes were ragged less with neglect than with age. They looked as if they’d been snatched from a scarecrow, and it suddenly dawned on him that his quarry was much older than he’d thought. For an old man, however, he could certainly move, and it was only with difficulty that Nosjean drew nearer. The man in front seemed to know every twist and turn of the woods, every small opening that gave him a clear run through the trees. Stumbling after him, despite his youth Nosjean had difficulty keeping up with him, let alone catching him.
The chase seemed to go on for ages, crashing through bushes, stumbling and slipping on steep banks. On one occasion, Nosjean went headlong down an unexpected dip to land asprawl a muddy puddle in the bottom. Picking himself up, panting, aware that his coat was ruined, he scrambled, cursing, up the other side.
When he’d decided that his lungs had given out and he was existing on something other than air, he saw what looked like an encampment ahead. There was a patched tent, and a lean-to made of wattles and branches and covered with sods. A fire was sending up a thin spiral of smoke into the air.
The wild figure in front had vanished and, suspecting a trap, Nosjcan’s hand went to his gun and he began to move more cautiously. Apart from a jumble of tin cans, old food, a water jar, and several empty wine bottles, the lean-to was empty. From the fire and cooking implements inside, it looked as if it were used solely for cooking.
Edging warily towards the tent, Nosjean paused before the door, wondering if, when he opened the flap, he’d get the blast of a shotgun in his face. He knew his quarry was inside because he could hear movements and heavy breathing.
Pulling out his gun, he put his hand on the flap and wrenched it back. To his surprise, there was no shotgun blast. Nothing at all. Warily, he poked his head round the canvas. At the back of the tent, cowering on a ragged bed of straw and old blankets, was a man. Nosjean stared. He’d been unable to believe that anybody could be dirtier than Matajcek or Matajcek’s house, but this man was.
He was thin, but he looked incredibly old so that Nosjean couldn’t understand how he’d managed to run so fast. Then he realised that all the wrinkles and creases on his face were emphasised by the black lining of dirt in them, and he wasn’t as old as he looked. He had extraordinarily blue eyes, however, and his mouth widened in a gap-toothed nervous smile. He was panting, his face pale and sweating, and he lifted a hand clad in a well-worn woollen glove to clutch his heaving chest.
‘I wondered when you’d come,’ he said.
‘He says his name’s Bique à Poux,’ Nosjean said. ‘And it certainly suits him, because that’s what he is – a fleabag. My car stinks like a dungheap. I thought you might like a word with him. After all, he lives in the woods, it seems, so he might have noticed something.’
‘That was good thinking,’ Pel said.
‘You should be careful, lad,’ Darcy added. ‘You’ll strain yourself.’
Nosjean gave Darcy a look that was supposed to be a mixture of disdain and contempt but succeeded only in indicating dudgeon. His telephone call from Orgny had brought Pel out hot-foot to Massu’s sub-station in the Mairie. He was a bit disappointed because he’d expected something worthwhile and all he’d got was some old tramp who lived rough and had done most of his life.
‘What’s his real name?’
‘He just says Bique à Poux. Massu thinks he’s German but he’s not sure. Seems he moves around a lot and at the moment he’s resident in our diocese. But he’s been seen as far north as Sémur and as far south as Lyon. I thought you might prefer him here at Orgny; while he’s hot, so to speak. It was a bit of a job to get him to come. He was quite prepared to cling to the tent pole until I sawed his arms off.’
‘What’s he do up there?’
Nosjean gestured at Massu.
‘He’s well-known,’ the sergeant joined in. ‘He’s been around a long time. He’s not quite all there and all the farmers know him. He keeps to the woods and only comes out at night. I’ve spotted him on the road after dark more than once when I’ve been driving past. He’s supposed to be harmless but I don’t know. The farmers seem to think so, though. He snares rabbits. They say he keeps ’em down.’
‘I’ll take him back when you’re finished, Patron,’ Nosjean said. ‘That was the only way I could persuade him to come without shooting him in the leg. I promised.’
‘All right,’ Pel agreed. ‘Better go and get something to eat.’
Pel stared after Nosjean as the door closed. ‘That boy’s brighter than he looks,’ he said. ‘One day he’ll make a good detective.’
‘Why not tell him, Patron?’ Darcy suggested gently. ‘It might encourage him.’
Pel looked as if Darcy were suggesting he should make an indecent suggestion to Nosjean. Face-to-face praise wasn’t part of his stock-in-trade.
Bique à Poux was sitting on the bench in the cell. He stank to high heaven and he looked terrified. His pale face still shone with sweat and as Pel stepped closer to him, he noticed a bruise over his right eye.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
The old man shrank away from him and looked at Massu, then back at Pel.
‘Nosjean didn’t do this,’ Pel said sharply to the sergeant. ‘Did you?’
The policeman’s big shoulders moved. ‘The damn sausage-eater tried to nip off.’
Pel looked hard at Massu. ‘Sausage-eater?’
‘He’s a German.’
‘And you don’t like Germans?’
‘Why should I? The bastards invaded France three times in seventy years and they probably would again if we gave them a chance.’
Pel sniffed. ‘Perhaps that’s France’s fault,’ he said. ‘We’ve never been noted for electing politicians who put country before party politics. It’s over now, anyway, and you weren’t around for any of their visits.’
‘I was for the last one.’ Massu grinned. ‘I was a kid in Dijon.’ Pel gave him a cold look and glanced at Bique à Poux. ‘You’re strong enough to hold ten of him,’ he said. ‘With one hand tied behind your back. You’re too free with your fists, Massu.’
He turned to the old man. Bique à Poux watched him warily out of the corner of his eyes.
‘How long have you been up near Vaucheretard?’ Pel asked. Watery blue eyes flickered between him and Massu. ‘The young man said he’d take me back,’ Bique à Poux whined. As he spoke he was clutching at his chest with his gloved hand.
‘You all right?’ Pel asked.
The old man nodded. He was all right, he said. Just a pain. A small pain he got occasionally, probably rheumatism. He looked at Pel. When could he go back, he asked. He didn’t like being indoors, because the stuffy atmosphere gave him the grippe.
Pel tried to make himself smile reassuringly. It didn’t come naturally and was hard work. ‘Well, we’ll get you back as soon as you’ve answered a few questions,’ he said.
The old man’s eyes rolled. ‘I’ve nothing to tell you.’
‘You never know,’ Pel argued. ‘For instance, how about Wednesday night? Where were you?’
‘Was that the night of the murder at the calvary?’
He didn’t look like a man who read newspapers a lot and Pel leaned closer. ‘How did you learn about that?’ he asked.
‘I hear people talk.’
<
br /> ‘How?’
‘In the woods. Men pass. They’re talking. I’m listening. I know what goes on.’
Pel glanced at Massu. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was the night of the murder. Where were you?’
The old man’s eyes rolled again. ‘I was in my tent.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course I’m sure.’
‘Have you been on Monsieur Piot’s land recently?’
The old man’s head shook violently.
‘It’s only next door.’
‘No. I didn’t do it.’
‘Didn’t do what?’
‘Steal the chickens.’
‘What chickens?’
‘This rash of robbed henhouses,’ Massu growled. The words came like a rumble of thunder. ‘I thought it might be him and asked him about it.’
‘When?’
‘About a week ago. I saw him on the road between Savoie St Juste and Orgny.’
Pel turned to the old man. ‘So you do go occasionally towards Orgny?’
Bique à Poux nodded. ‘Yes. I buy wine.’
‘It’s a long walk,’ Pel said. ‘Twenty kilometres by the road. It’s only seven or eight across Monsieur Piot’s land. Do you mean you never go across the land?’
‘Of course he does,’ Massu said.
‘I’m conducting this enquiry,’ Pel snapped. ‘Keep your mouth shut.’ He turned again to Bique à Poux. ‘How long have you been on Matajcek’s land?’
‘Since the summer. That’s all. I didn’t do any harm.’
‘Did he know you were there?’
The old man was silent and Massu’s voice came in a growl. ‘Of course he didn’t,’ he said.
‘I told you to keep your mouth shut.’
‘Well, he’ll never tell you the truth.’
‘Leave me to decide that.’ Pel hadn’t turned his head and now he gestured at the old man.
‘Where were you living before you went on to Matajcek’s land?’ he asked.