Pel And The Touch Of Pitch

by Mark Hebden

  Pel frowned. ‘What about these cars?’

  ‘The one from the other side of the square which took him away was a Citroën CX. The other two were a Peugeot 309 and a small Fiat.’

  ‘Witnesses?’

  ‘Caretaker of Barclay’s office. There’s a long hall and he was at the other end of it. All he saw was a scuffle. He’s an old man and didn’t hurry to get involved. He saw men, heard a lot of doors slamming and engines roaring, then there was nothing but Barclay’s Merc with the engine still running outside the door.’

  ‘Was he the only one?’

  ‘No. Two others. One of them, Jacqueline Duhamel, is a typist in the office of Mansoni-Littel, solicitors, opposite. She had a lot of typing to do last night, it seems – stuff on the dictaphone – but she had a date and got permission to come in early this morning instead. She’d just arrived and was adjusting her make-up with a hand mirror at the window of her office on the second floor where the light’s good. She saw the whole thing. She was so startled, she was a bit vague at first, but she’s bright and, after thinking about it, she was able to give a fairly clear description. She knows about cars too, it seems, and she recognised every one of them. Not that it’ll make a lot of difference. I suppose they were all stolen.’

  ‘And the other witness?’

  ‘An old touch who’s the concierge for Number 15, Rue Armand-Duvalier. She was heading for the bakers’ in the Rue Saint-Julien for a baguette for breakfast. She’d just reached the Rue Saint-Julien exit from the square when she saw Barclay’s Merc arrive. It came rather fast and she had to nip smartly on to the sidewalk, so she turned to tell Barclay what she thought of him and as she did so, she saw what happened. She’s seventy, though, knows nothing about cars and doesn’t think very fast. But her idea of what happened tallies with the description by Jacqueline Duhamel, so I think we’ve got it right.’

  ‘Who’s been informed?’

  ‘The Chief, of course. Forensic, in case they can pick anything up. Fingerprints, in case anything was left on Barclay’s car. Judge Polverari, who’s already on his way to the Place Saint-Julien. The Chief said he’d see you here. At the moment De Troq’s out there with Lacocq and Morell. Nosjean’s still busy with the art thing.’

  Pel frowned. ‘He insists Barclay’s picture was a fake,’ he remembered. ‘Think there’s any connection?’

  ‘Patron, artists don’t go in for kidnap. Neither do art dealers, critics or experts. Kidnap’s the work of people after money from a ransom, terrorists who want something from the government, or gangsters who’ve got something against the victim.’

  ‘Which is this?’

  Darcy shrugged. ‘Money for ransom, I reckon,’ he said. ‘Barclay’s a do-gooder and people don’t kidnap do-gooders. He’s known for his work for charity, for art galleries, museums, orphans and ex-soldiers. That sort of thing. And he’s popular and not involved in anything controversial. Who’d want to kidnap him for that? Terrorists? He’s only a junior minister. He has no influence with the President. It’s got to be for money. Kidnapping’s a growth industry these days.’

  ‘If it’s for money that means the gangs.’

  ‘Maurice Tagliatti or Pépé le Cornet?’

  ‘They’re not the only ones these days. There are a few others coming up, ambitious types who think those two are growing a bit long in the tooth. We’d better contact them to see if they know anything.’

  While they were talking, the Chief appeared. He was a large man with a red face, shoulders like a drayhorse and big fists which, in his youth, had helped to make him a champion boxer. He came in, in his usual fashion, flinging the door back and slamming it against the wall as though he were trying to tear it off its hinges.

  He didn’t speak but simply jerked his head in the direction of his office. Pel and Darcy followed and waited until the Chief had circled his office a couple of times, a little like a bull trying to decide which side of a china shop to attack, and then sat at his desk. Reaching down, he fished out three glasses and a brandy bottle. The red in his face deepened until he looked as if, gently blown on, he would burst into flames.

  ‘This seems to call for a drink to steady our nerves,’ he said. ‘Pouring it will give us time to adjust.’

  When they’d all drunk, he looked at Pel. Pel gestured at Darcy, who told him what he’d told Pel.

  ‘That’s all we know?’

  ‘At the moment, sir.’

  ‘Any theories?’

  ‘Terrorists?’ Darcy said. ‘Barclay’s not important enough. If terrorists had wanted to collar somebody, there are plenty with more influence than he has. It must be for money. I expect we’ll be getting a ransom demand before long. Or, at least, his family will.’

  ‘He doesn’t have a family,’ Pel said. ‘He’s a bachelor. Or that’s what I was told the other night.’

  The Chief’s head jerked round. ‘The other night?’

  ‘I was having a conducted tour – with about twenty-four other people – round his house at Courtois.’ As Pel explained the circumstances, the Chief frowned.

  ‘I think we’d better keep quiet about that,’ he suggested. ‘It would look bad if we admitted it. You know what the Press would make of it. ‘PJ officer was with kidnap victim.’ ‘Why didn’t he realise?’ ‘Are the police blind?’ We’ll let it lie for the time being. What do you know about him?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Pel said. ‘Except that he’s a crashing bore, collects paintings, and is given to ruining splendid old houses.’

  ‘Women?’

  ‘Just a girl friend.’

  ‘You’re sure she’s a girl friend? Was she good-looking?’

  ‘She was very good-looking.’

  The Chief frowned, poured them all another brandy and considered. ‘We’ll have to inform Paris, of course,’ he said. ‘The man’s the Deputy for the Yorinne district. A representative of the people. And with an election due. The fact that he was self-satisfied, given to ruining houses and a crashing bore has nothing to do with it. Most representatives of the people are self-satisfied crashing bores. But the man was a member of the government. We shall have to inform the DST.’

  The Direction de la Surveillance du Térritoire, who were responsible for security and the safety of the people’s representatives, were housed in Paris and, part of the country’s counter-espionage service, were in close contact with the West German Bundesnachrichtendienst, Scotland Yard in London, and the security forces of most other countries.

  ‘They’ll clutter the place up.’

  The Chief glanced quickly at Pel. He knew what he was thinking: Paris invariably got in the way of the provincial and city police organisations and he felt much the same about them as Pel. But there was no getting round it. The kidnapped man was a junior minister and might have had access to secrets which could be obtained from him by pressure.

  ‘I’ll attend to it,’ he said. ‘We can’t leave them in the dark. They know things we don’t and, if it comes to a siege or anything like that, they have sophisticated devices we shan’t get until the year 2000. There’s one thing: If we get him back, it’ll win a few sympathy votes from his constituents.’

  ‘And if we don’t,’ he added, ‘it’ll mean a by-election.’

  Jacqueline Duhamel was a pert little creature with black hair cut in a smooth bob and a figure that held Darcy’s eyes longer than it should. She immediately obviously recognised Darcy as a man with an interest in girls and responded by studying him. He was worth studying. He was handsome, with square white teeth like gravestones, and he was always dressed as if he were about to go to a levée at the Elysée Palace, with a tall white collar that sawed at his ears and an immaculate suit that made Pel’s look as if it had been cast off by a tramp.

  With the permission of Jacqueline Duhamel’s boss, they interviewed her alone in her office and one of the other girls brought in coffee.

  ‘You didn’t notice any of the car numbers?’ Pel asked.

  ‘No.’ Jacqueline Duhamel
shook her head. ‘It happened too quickly. But I did notice that the motorbike was red – they all seem to be red these days, don’t they? – red for danger, I suppose, and that the rider had a black visor so I couldn’t see his face.’

  ‘You saw none of the men from the cars?’

  ‘They all wore hats so that their faces were shaded, and I was above them so I couldn’t see them properly. They were all dressed in suits, too – so they’d look like businessmen waiting to go into the offices when they opened, I suppose. There are always a lot about around that time in this square because it’s full of solicitors’ offices.’

  ‘Nothing special about any of these men?’

  ‘Nothing I noticed. Grey and blue suits.’

  ‘The cars. What colour were they?’

  ‘The Citroën that took him away was grey. They make a lot of grey ones. Monsieur Barclay’s Merc was grey. They do, too. The Peugeot was beige and the Fiat, which was smaller, was red. That was parked on the Rue Saint-Julien side of the door. The Peugeot was parked on the Rue Armand-Duvalier side. There was a good space between them, big enough for Monsieur Barclay’s car, but it was blocked by a Renault van that was parked between the other two cars but not against the pavement. There was a man in it in a white coat, looking at a list, as if he were delivering something.’

  Pel glanced at Darcy. ‘That’s the first we’ve heard of this van,’ he said.

  Jacqueline Duhamel smiled. ‘I’ve really only remembered it since Inspector Darcy saw me earlier. I’ve made a plan.’

  She laid a sheet of typing paper on the table between them, a neatly worked-out indication of the positions of all the cars involved.

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that the gap outside the door was left deliberately and the van was there to make sure nobody slipped into it because that’s where they wanted Monsieur Barclay’s car to be – between the other cars, so he couldn’t get away.’

  ‘You obviously use your eyes and your head,’ Darcy said and she blushed with pleasure. ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘Because when the motor cyclist started up and circled to go down the Rue Armand-Duvalier, the van started up too. I saw the driver drop his list quickly. He’d been looking back down the Rue Saint-Julien as if he were waiting, but when the motor cycle started up, he began jumping about in a hurry and the van moved off after the motor cyclist. Immediately. But as soon as Monsieur Barclay’s car appeared, the car at the other side of the square – the Citroën – started up, too, and as Monsieur Barclay slipped into place between the Peugeot and the Fiat outside the door, it crossed the square and stopped alongside him, so that he couldn’t get away.’

  ‘You’re sure about these cars?’

  ‘Yes. Certain. I’m thinking of buying a car, my first, so I look at them a lot. I expect what I’ll buy will be small – I couldn’t afford anything bigger – but it’s nice to look at the big ones now and then and daydream, isn’t it?’

  She gave a wide smile but Pel noticed that it was directed at Darcy not himself.

  The other two witnesses, the caretaker who had seen the scuffle by the doorway and the old woman heading for the confectioner’s, were able to add nothing.

  As they left, Pel gestured. ‘We’d better ask,’ he said, ‘if anyone’s seen these cars that were used or reported them stolen.’

  There was no need. The owner of the red Fiat, an indignant Algerian living near the Zone Industrielle, had telephoned with the news of the loss of his car before they returned to the Hôtel de Police. His car, he said – Number 741-BC-21 – had been stolen from the street outside the apartment where he lived. Even as Inspector Pomereu of Traffic passed the information on to Pel’s department, another telephone call came – from a doctor who had lost his Peugeot. It was beige, brand new, and fast. He offered its number and wanted to know what the hell the police were doing to allow the car of a busy doctor to be stolen from outside his house.

  ‘Was it locked?’ Pomereu asked.

  ‘Of course not. It was outside my house.’

  Pomereu didn’t argue but he allowed himself a small dry smile.

  The third car turned up late in the afternoon even before it had been reported missing. One of Pomereu’s men from Traffic noticed it parked badly, its rear end sticking out into the road, in the Rue Alphonse-Rémé. The driver of a small Renault was trying to park behind it but it was difficult because the Citroën was a big car and the projecting rear end was making it awkward to reverse into the only spare parking place in the street.

  ‘You’d think people would take the trouble to park properly, wouldn’t you?’ the owner of the Renault said bitterly to Pomereu’s man. ‘People like that should be fined for obstruction.’

  Pomereu’s man thought so, too, and decided to have a look at the Citroën. He had been on duty all day and hadn’t received anything beyond the briefest description of the stolen cars but he remembered one of them was a Citroën CX. This one looked as if it had been abandoned in a hurry and, while it might only have been taken by joyriders late at night, it might also have been used for something else.[1]

  He walked slowly round the Citroën. It appeared to be empty but there was a briefcase on the back shelf, which was unusual because stolen cars were usually rifled before they were left. Trying the driver’s door, he found it unlocked but there was no key in the ignition. The other doors were also unlocked and that seemed very suspicious. The briefcase contained papers and sales pamphlets referring to eletronic devices and computers and seemed quite important.

  His call brought Sergeant Bardolle to the scene within ten minutes. ‘It answers the description of a CX that was used to take away Barclay,’ he reported.

  Within a quarter of an hour the keys had been found in the gutter not far away and Prélat of Fingerprints was there with one of his men dusting it for dabs. There were plenty but they were the same as those they found on the briefcase, which had a name on the inside, Roland Ennaert, Apartment C, 15, Rue Souf.

  A quarter of an hour later, another of Pel’s men, Sergeant Brochard, was outside Apartment C. Roland Ennaert was a Belgian electronics engineer working at Groupe Electrogène Karzinski in the Industrial Zone, a slim handsome young man with pink cheeks and a mandarin moustache. He took a long time to answer the door and when he appeared he seemed to have just got out of bed, because his hair was on end, he was unshaven and he wore a shirt and trousers which appeared to have been donned in a hurry. On his feet were bedroom slippers.

  He listened politely to Brochard. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a Citroën CX with that number. I bought it last summer. Why?’

  ‘We have reason to believe your car was used in the kidnap of Deputy Claude Barclay. Perhaps you’ve heard it on the radio?’

  Ennaert frowned. ‘I saw it on the early television. But it can’t be my car. Mine’s still in the garage.’

  ‘Which is where, Monsieur?’

  ‘Round the back of the building. There are half a dozen lock-ups for the people with apartments.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s still there, Monsieur?’

  ‘Yes. I haven’t been out today – I have a long weekend – but I can see the garage from the kitchen window and the lock’s secure on the hasp.’

  ‘Would you mind accompanying me to the garage just to check, Monsieur?’

  ‘It seems stupid when I can see from the kitchen that the door’s still locked.’

  ‘Nevertheless, sir…’

  ‘Well, I – I’m a bit busy…’

  Just what he was busy at seemed to be indicated when a petulant female voice called from somewhere inside the apartment. ‘What’s keeping you, Rolot?’

  Ennaert looked at Brochard with a helpless you-see-what-the-situation-is expression.

  Brochard was unmoved. ‘I’m afraid I shall have to insist, sir.’

  Ennaert pulled a face and turned back into the apartment. There was a hasty whispered conversation before he reappeared. ‘This way,’ he said. ‘By the back door.’

 
; He led the way downstairs and along a corridor into an open space at the back of the block where a line of garages with red doors stood, all with large and expensive-looking locks on the hasps. As Ennaert fished for his keys, Brochard, who was considered in the sergeants’ room to be a bit of a humorist with a sense of mischief, put a hand on his arm. ‘Allow me, sir,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve got a key?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  Taking out a penknife, Brochard opened the device like a spike intended for cleaning pipes.

  ‘You’ll not get it open with that,’ Ennaert said confidently.

  Almost before he had finished speaking, Brochard had the lock unfastened. Ennaert stared.

  ‘Mother of God,’ he said. ‘That’s a lot of good, isn’t it? It cost a bomb, too!’

  ‘It is possible to get good locks, Monsieur,’ Brochard said cheerfully. ‘If you like, I can give you the name of one or two.’

  Panicking suddenly at the thought that his expensive lock could be opened so easily, Ennaert was dragging at the doors. Inside was a used tyre, an empty petrol can, a carton of pamphlets from his business, and a dead sparrow.

  ‘It’s gone,’ Ennaert said.

  Brochard smiled politely. ‘I thought it might have, Monsieur,’ he said.

  Already telephone messages were jamming the lines and telex messages were being delivered to security officers at airports and harbours. The city airfield was surrounded and police cars were receiving a constant flow of instructions.

  ‘It looks to me’, Pel said to Darcy, ‘as if it were a well-planned affair. I think we’ve got a job for Traffic. Get Pomereu in.’

  Pomereu entered warily, as if he suspected a lot of work was about to drop on him. Pel explained.

  ‘This kidnap,’ he said. ‘It was all over within half a minute. We’ve got all the vehicles but the van, so get your boys asking around. We want it.’ He turned to Darcy. ‘More important, we want the men who were driving them. They’d obviously worked the thing out carefully. They’d obviously watched Barclay’s movements. They might even have known them beforehand, which probably indicates a contact in one of those buildings in the square, perhaps in his own office.’