by Mark Hebden
‘With the election due,’ he pointed out, ‘any hint of scandal would be seized on by one side or the other, so we must walk warily, giving no one the opportunity to accuse us of bias.’
Or, Pel thought cynically, Lamiel would be replaced by someone more favourable – either to a returned government or to the opposition when they got in. Politicians had long memories and were a spiteful lot on the whole.
‘It’s obvious’, Lamiel was saying now, ‘that this is a case that’s going to take some breaking. For some reason best known to themselves, the kidnappers aren’t yet ready to claim responsibility.’ He gestured. ‘We’ve therefore produced photographs of known dissidents and had them printed in large numbers. We’d like your people to show them around. If anybody thinks he knows any of them, we’ll find them. They must be here somewhere. They wouldn’t pull off a job like this from a base in Paris. It’s too far away.’
‘Two hours in a fast car down the motorway,’ Pel observed.
Lamiel ignored the comment. ‘Terrorists’, he went on, ‘operate in small groups. I suspect they’ve snatched Barclay either for what he knows or because they think the government will pay to have him back. However, he’s also a businessman, so they could have snatched him for another reason. So, when we do hear from them, I don’t expect their demands to be moderate. It’ll be money, an exchange of hostages, or something like that. After all, two hundred representatives of more than twenty revolutionary organisations were present at a recent planning conference in Tripoli. Mustafa Murad, believed to be behind the Rome and Vienna airport bombings, was there. As was George Habash, of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, responsible for the hi-jackings of the Seventies, and Ahmed Jibril, of the PFLP General Command, who heads the anti-Arafat Palestinian rebels. Principal targets for the new campaign—’ Lamiel paused dramatically ‘—Israel and America, but European countries, chiefly France and Britain, were also discussed. Is Barclay a Jew, by the way?’
Lamiel spoke harshly as if he didn’t have much time for Jews, and the Chief responded sharply. ‘No,’ he snapped. ‘He isn’t a Jew.’
Lamiel nodded. ‘Then perhaps it isn’t the Jew-Arab thing,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it’s Italian. The Red Brigade. Or German. The remains of the Baader-Meinhof lot. It might even be for money because they have to fund their operations somehow. We even have a list of a few of our own people we might safely look at. Joseph Furet, for example, leader of the Groupe Revanche Française. It has a lot of support from Right Wing deputies, and we’ve discovered that Barclay once accused them of resembling Nazis and Furet threatened to remove him from the political scene. We shall have to look into him.’
He paused and gestured with a sheet of paper. ‘There’s also a group here round a man called Kiczmyrczik, a Pole, who I understand arrived in France forty years ago. His hatred then was for Russia. Nowadays it’s for anything and everything.’
‘He’s harmless,’ Darcy said. ‘He was investigated in 1982. There was nothing on him.’
Lamiel seemed to resent the interruption. ‘He has friends who visit him, I’m told.’
‘Jan Michelowski,’ Darcy said. ‘Stanislaus Wyspianski. Both Poles. And a man called Nadasy-Crasco, a Czech. They’re all geriatrics. They talk a lot but that’s all.’
‘I’ll decide that,’ Lamiel snapped.
He turned to the blackboard. ‘Finally,’ he said, ‘there are various freedom movements, and people like that don’t hesitate to use terrorism and kidnapping as weapons. After all, what is terrorism but a way of drawing attention to their cause? Their whole aim is to show that the State can’t protect its citizens. After all, if it can’t protect its known figureheads, it obviously can’t protect the rank and file.’
A screen was wheeled in and the lights dimmed. Immediately photographs began to flash on the screen, faces in crowds, faces in groups, faces alone; Arab faces, German, French, Irish and Italian faces. Names were rapped out like gunshots.
‘Those which have been circled are the people we’re interested in,’ Lamiel pointed out harshly. ‘Anybody recognise any of them?’
Nobody did.
‘We’ll have them passed out to your boys, of course,’ Lamiel went on. ‘We need a face. One would do, because we know who’re connected and one face would lead us to others. These people are all in the terrorist thing up to their necks.’
‘Suppose,’ the Chief said, ‘this is nothing like that?’
Lamiel turned and smiled. ‘It must be,’ he said. ‘What else could it be?’ He gestured at the screen. ‘Just one thing. If your men spot any of these characters, they must make no move. They’re to report to us. We don’t want them alerting, or they might kill in a panic. Remember what happened to Aldo Moro. On the other hand, we don’t want comments made in the House of Assembly about us treating these people gently.’
Lamiel was lecturing them as if he, not the Chief, ran the area. Pel listened silently as the harsh voice continued. It sounded like a football commentator’s voice on television – excited, working up a tension to thrill the viewers – or that of one of the TV pundits, the great men who persuaded people to appear on their chat shows and then proceeded to insult them with all sorts of unbelievable suggestions.
‘Have we checked for letter bombs?’ Lamiel asked. ‘There may be some. Poisoned sweets? We know of a group involved in the indoctrination of students, so we must check at the university.’
He speculated, theorised, offered opinions, showed outrage, asked for calmness, and produced veiled hints of worse to come.
Pel interrupted. ‘I’ve been making a few enquiries…’
‘Then—’ Lamiel swung round and stared at him ‘– I’d prefer that you stopped.’
It was entirely unexpected and came abruptly enough to be insulting. Lamiel made no attempt to soften the decision and Pel sat up, red-faced. ‘Why?’ he demanded.
‘We’ve been to Barclay’s home. We’ve questioned the man-servant.’
‘So have I.’
‘So we discovered.’ Lamiel gave Pel a sour look. ‘It would probably help if we didn’t duplicate.’
Pel’s face grew angry. Holy Mother of God, he was thinking, he had done all the obvious things, yet this gadget from Paris was accusing him of duplicating the things he had done long after Pel had finished with them! Afterwards, he decided, he’d have a few words to say.
He didn’t get the chance. Lamiel finished what he had to offer, nodded at Thomas, his deputy, and swept from the room. As Pel rose, the Chief touched him on the arm and jerked his head. In his office he offered him brandy. Pel stared at it warily. Brandy in the Chief’s office usually meant bad news. It was worse than he’d expected.
‘You’re off the case,’ the Chief said.
Pel glared, angry enough to bite the heads off nails. ‘I’ve already been making enquiries,’ he said.
‘Then you’d better stop. Lamiel doesn’t want you.’
‘Why not?’
The Chief sighed. He knew it was going to be difficult. It always was with Pel. He had a measure of sympathy for him but, after all, he felt, he’d asked for it in a way.
‘That business of you being at Barclay’s house,’ he said. ‘They think it looks bad.’
‘But I’d never met the damned man before that night!’
‘They won’t take anybody’s word on that. Neither will the media. So be careful what you say to the press. Remember they can do whatever they want with whatever you say and, what’s more, even if you reply, they always have the last word, because they’re the ones who control the last word.’
Pel was silent for a long time, his mind working briskly. ‘I’ll turn over the file at once,’ he said.
‘I knew you would,’ the Chief pointed out. ‘But Lamiel said they wouldn’t be needing it.’
Pel’s eyebrows shot up. ‘They’re that clever?’
‘They’ve got all the details.’
‘There are a few more I’ve found.’
The C
hief gestured. ‘Then, for God’s sake, keep them to yourself.’
‘Do I keep you informed?’
The Chief shied away like a startled foal. ‘I don’t want to know,’ he said. ‘If anybody asks me what’s going on, I want to be able to say I haven’t the foggiest. These boys are powerful and they keep their own counsel about what they’re up to. I’m not an ambitious man, probably not even a clever one. But I’ve kept my nose clean up to now and that’s how I want it until I retire. Let them work on their own if they want to. Give them the file up to today and put in a letter offering further help if they wish it. They won’t, of course, but it’ll cover you.’
‘What about Darcy?’
‘Darcy’s working with them, in charge of our own people.’
Pel shrugged. He knew where Darcy’s loyalties would lie.
‘Stick to the Arri case,’ the Chief advised. ‘That’s safe.’
‘Who do I have?’
‘Who do you want?’
‘Darcy’s not available. Nosjean’s already fully occupied. Who else are they taking?’
The Chief sighed. ‘Officially, everybody. But we can keep one or two back for you.’
‘Right. If I need him, I’ll use Aimedieu. Otherwise, I’ll have Lagé and perhaps Claudie Darel. She’s bright. If necessary I can add young Didier Darras. He’s no fool.’
‘Will that be enough?’ the Chief asked.
Pel’s face was expressionless. ‘It’ll have to be, won’t it?’ he said.
Nine
Lamiel might have been slow to let people know what he was doing, but clearly he – or someone – wasn’t so slow about letting them know what Pel was not doing.
The press had the story the following day. It had even pushed the government’s fears for its majority off the front page.
Madame had brought home a copy of La Torche for Pel to see. It was one of the so-called crusading rags, loud-mouthed and large-headlined, enjoying what it called ‘hitting hard’ at wrong-doers. Many of their wrongdoers turned out to be not half so wrong as they made out and they were involved in a dozen libel actions a year. But headlines were headlines and people who read their accusations didn’t always manage to read the apologies they were forced to print.
It carried banner headlines. ‘Head Cop Taken off Kidnap Case.’ ‘Night-time Party With Missing Man.’
Pel flung it across the kitchen. Madame Routy picked it up and even had the grace, which surprised Pel, to look upset and say she was sorry.
‘Name of God,’ Pel snorted. ‘They make it sound like an orgy!’
‘It was my fault,’ his wife said unhappily. ‘I persuaded you to go. I know you didn’t want to.’
Pel patted her hand. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. He reached for the magazine again. ‘Let’s have another look at it.’
It looked no better at second glance. ‘Chief Inspector Evariste Clovis Désiré Pel’, it said – they’d even got his names – ‘until yesterday investigating the disappearance of the Deputy for Yorinne, has been removed from the case. He was recently a guest at the missing man’s home. There were numerous guests, some of them women, at a party which went on to almost midnight.’
‘Dancing about in our birthday suits, I suppose,’ Pel growled.
‘I’ll not have that magazine in the house again,’ Madame said.
‘It’s a good idea not to have any magazine in the house,’ Pel agreed. ‘Cancel the lot and buy an extra bottle of brandy with the money.’
Madame Routy was waiting at the front door as usual with Pel’s briefcase. For once she handled it gently instead of slamming it into his arms, and he realised with amazement that she thought more of him than he’d realised. Perhaps she always had, and just enjoyed a good fight. He promised himself he’d try not to be rude to her in future. He knew he’d never manage it – come to that, neither would she! – but it was nice to think about it.
Claudie Darel gave him what he took to be a sympathetic look as he entered his office. So did Didier Darras as he put the papers on the table in front of him.
‘There are a lot of stories about you, sir,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t mark them.’
‘Why not?’
‘I thought this time you might not want to see them.’
Pel managed a twisted smile. ‘To be a cop, mon brave,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to be tougher than that. You have to learn to take everything those idiots say about you without complaining.’
Somebody had obviously contacted the Chief to let him know Pel had arrived because almost immediately he slammed the door back as if trying to tear the wall down.
‘It’s what I expected,’ he said. ‘It’s a case of not being able to touch pitch without being defiled.’
Pel looked up. ‘Somebody been touching pitch?’ he asked mildly.
The Chief was disconcerted. ‘You know what I mean,’ he said. ‘You must have seen the story in La Torche.’
‘Quite a few people have hurried to bring it to my attention. However, I’m pleased to say an equal number have tried to hide it from me. It shows hope. Perhaps I’ll sue La Torche.’
‘You’d never win.’
‘No,’ Pel agreed. ‘But it’d be nice to tell them what I think of them. I think I’ll take the day off and go and see the editor. I’ll take my gun with me.’
‘For God’s sake…’ the Chief said, alarmed.
‘I don’t mean it,’ Pel pointed out. ‘But it would be nice, wouldn’t it, to see him dive for safety under his desk. They’re very good at dishing this stuff out, but they’re not so good at taking it. You know the saying: “Secure from warfare, they’re passionate for war.” And I know that one about if you eat with the Devil you should use a long spoon.’
‘I’m right behind you, Pel.’
Pel looked at the Chief, wondering if he was. Like everyone else, the Chief had to look after his own job and if it came to the crunch, also like everyone else, he’d probably back off. Pel wasn’t being disloyal, and he didn’t think the Chief was being disloyal. He was being realistic and he knew that was how the Chief would have to treat it, too.
‘What’s my position then?’ he asked.
‘No different. You haven’t been suspended. You’re just not handling the Barclay kidnapping, that’s all. Everything else stays as it was.’
‘Suppose I come up with something?’ Pel asked. ‘Because after this lot, Lamiel will get nothing from me.’
The Chief swallowed. Despite his shows of temper, he was a peace-loving man and he didn’t like vendettas. ‘Let me know,’ he said. ‘I’ll handle it.’
As the Chief left, the telephone went. To Pel’s surprise it was Sarrazin. He was just about to slam the instrument down again in disgust when Sarrazin, almost as if he guessed what he was about to do, shouted.
‘Chief!’ he said. ‘Hang on! It wasn’t any of us!’
Pel calmed. ‘Who was it?’
‘Type called Félix Ailon. Paris man.’
‘Where did he get the story?’
‘God knows, Patron. None of us have got it. I saw Henriot and Fiabon and Ducrot, of Paris Soir, and we’re all in trouble because we haven’t got it. Even if we had got it, we wouldn’t have written it like that.’
‘It’s nice to know. Where did Ailon get it?’
‘Some type from Paris. Know who it is?’
Pel knew what Sarrazin, despite the genuineness of the call, was doing now. He was trying to find out who the spokesman was so he could make contact himself.
‘No idea,’ he said.
‘Chief—’ Sarrazin’s voice became wheedling ‘—I suppose you couldn’t give us some real gen on what happened, could you?’
Pel studied the telephone for a moment, then quietly placed it in its cradle.
When he looked up, Judge Brisard was just closing the door behind him.
‘Come in,’ he snapped.
Brisard had a smug look of triumph on his face and Pel guessed he’d seen the story in La Torche and had come to th
e conclusion that what he’d been praying for, for years, had come to pass: Pel had got himself into trouble and was due to be kicked off the force. Pel could hardly blame him. He had been hoping for years that Brisard would be kicked off the Magistrature Debout, that part of the judicial system which supplied juges d’instruction.
‘You still on the Arri case?’ Brisard said.
‘I am.’
‘Have you found anyone yet who could be charged?’
‘We’ve only just identified the body. We’re trying to discover how he got to where he was found. You’re a little late in the field.’
‘Of course I am.’ Brisard’s eyes glowed with triumph. ‘Because when I arrived at Suchey the body had been removed. I didn’t see it.’
‘You’ve still plenty of time. He’s in the mortuary. He’s not going anywhere.’
‘I should have seen the body in situ.’
‘Then’, Pel snapped, ‘you should have taken notice of the message passed to your department by Inspector Darcy.’ He was in no mood to bandy words with an old enemy. At that moment, he was ready to do battle with anybody – the President of France, if necessary.
Brisard’s eyes gleamed. ‘I hear you’ve been taken off the Barclay kidnapping.’
‘You’ve heard correctly.’
‘I’m going to insist that you’re taken off this case, too. There have been too many occasions in the past when my department’s been ignored, too many times when things have happened and I’ve not been informed, too many witnesses questioned without me being present.’
‘You don’t have to be present. And if we had to wait for your department, we’d never make an arrest.’
‘I insist that…’
Pel rose to his full height. It wasn’t much and, with his balding dome and the spectacles on his forehead, he wasn’t a lot to look at. But in his anger he was something to beware of. And he detested Brisard – quite unashamedly, feeling that a good hearty detestation kept the adrenalin flowing. ‘You do not insist on anything in this office,’ he said.