by Mark Hebden
The descriptions they had were vague because the terrorists had been careful to keep their faces hidden, but it had been noticed by a number of witnesses that the wounded man had a mandarin moustache and a thick mop of hair, and that the woman who hurried behind was young, blonde and not very good-looking.
‘She was shapeless,’ one witness had said fastidiously. He was a smartly-dressed young man who clearly knew what the shape of a young woman ought to be and had probably run his hands over a few in his time.
Pel slept badly and the following morning he opened his eyes warily, as usual half-expecting the day to attack him. Nothing happened, however, except that the meal the night before had given him indigestion.
He popped a bismuth tablet into his mouth and regarded himself in the mirror. Nothing seemed to have dropped off him during the night, but he didn’t look any better than the previous day. He couldn’t see what Madame Faivre-Perret saw in him. If it had been up to him, he felt, he wouldn’t have given him house room.
Madame Routy handed him his breakfast in a sullen silence but he was in no mood to worry about her. He had no appetite, however, and did no more than drink a cup of coffee, then he climbed into his car and drove to the city. Claudie Darel, who was dozing in a chair by the telephone, looked up tiredly as he appeared.
‘Up all night?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Patron. But Régis Martin’s due in half an hour. I shall get some sleep then.’
There was nothing on his desk so he slipped across to the Bar Transvaal and joined the people at the zinc who were making a breakfast of coffee and croissants. On his return he called on the Chief to discuss things.
Darcy was waiting in his office when he reappeared. ‘Watch television last night?’ he asked.
Pel frowned. ‘There’s quite enough television in my house without me at it,’ he said.
‘You might have seen something that would interest you.’
‘Such as?’
‘Robert Démon’s programme – “France Asks.” He’s here in the city.’
‘I’ve heard of him. Doesn’t like the police. Inclined to stir things up, isn’t he? Where’s he staying?’
‘At the Central. I rang up. He’s still in bed.’
‘While our people stay up all night so he can sleep soundly.’
‘He had the bright idea of making a documentary,’ Darcy went on. ‘He found three actors from Paris who resembled our wanted men, dressed them up and got them to walk about looking like the suspects – standing in bars, leaning on walls and generally looking suspicious while his cameras worked them over.’
Pel shrugged. ‘Helps to jog memories,’ he said.
‘It also made it seem as if our lot were just hanging around waiting to be arrested and we were too dim to notice. It didn’t stop there either. He went on to deliver a diatribe against us.’ Darcy laid a sheet of paper on the desk. ‘Young Martin taped him and typed out the result. That’s it.’
Pel picked up the paper and, sitting down, was about to take a cigarette when he remembered he was trying to give them up.
As he thrust the thought away, however, Darcy lit two and offered him one. Sighing, Pel took it, dragged the smoke down to his socks and began to read.
There were the usual interviews with the relatives of the dead, who were trying to be helpful while still barely able to contain their grief, and he decided it was a sad commentary on the human race that people should want to see the manifestation of tragedy in the strained faces and wet eyes of bereaved mothers and wives.
Then the commentary changed.
‘Did the police err,’ Démon asked, ‘in not capturing these men earlier? Great dissatisfaction has been felt that they were allowed to escape. Did someone miss some clues? Was there carelessness? Was someone badly misinformed or did the police merely ignore warnings? Three men are dead and two more are wounded. Was the operation clumsily prepared? Why wasn’t the house properly surrounded? People living in the area of the Impasse Tarien have said that they knew there was something very odd going on. Why didn’t the police know? It’s being said that questions are to be asked in the House of Representatives and that the President has expressed his extreme dissatisfaction. And very rightly, too, because a woman was also killed and if the police had taken greater care she would be alive at this moment…’
Pel flung the paper down. ‘I notice he gives no names,’ he growled. ‘Who says questions are being asked in the House of Representatives? And who says the President’s dissatisfied? I’ve just come from the Chief and he’s not been complaining. Who is this damned man, Démon?’
‘Real name’s Degarron.’ Darcy said. ‘Jean Degarron. Also writes for Véracité. It’s a new journal. Considers its stories crusades and Démon its most crusading writer.’
Pel scowled. ‘I think we’d better keep an eye on Monsieur Démon,’ he observed.
Darcy shrugged. ‘It might be a good idea,’ he agreed, ‘because he’s sure as hell keeping an eye on us.’
Nine
It was Aimedieu who turned up the owner of the missing blue car that had done so much damage in the Rue Claude-Picard. He was a man called Jean-Jacques Hogue, whose name cropped up as the questioning around the bars intensified. It didn’t take long to find him and Aimedieu immediately decided that the safest thing to do with him was to take him down to the Hôtel de Police and let Pel get at him.
Hogue claimed he had sold the car in question the day before the shooting and there was nothing to prove he hadn’t, though his description of the new owner was surprisingly vague, considering he had just done business to the extent of several thousand francs with him.
‘He called himself Araba,’ he said. ‘Tall chap. Thin. Dark hair. Might have been North African. He said he’d heard the car was for sale and just turned up on the doorstep.’
‘Where did he live?’ Pel demanded.
‘He didn’t say.’
They checked on the car’s registration but either Hogue was lying or the new owner hadn’t registered it because the change of ownership hadn’t been reported and it seemed safer to keep Hogue at the Hôtel de Police as long as they could.
Another car of similar make and colour, with what they knew of the number of the wanted car superimposed, was televised and that evening a man called Ferry appeared at the Hôtel de Police, saying he remembered seeing a car like the one they were seeking being driven up a cul-de-sac in the industrial area of the city on Bastille Night.
‘It was going so damned fast,’ he said, ‘it scraped the wall as it went in. It set up a screech that made my hair stand on end.’
Aimedieu found the cul-de-sac without much trouble. At the end of it there was a row of rented garages, all of them shabby and clearly used from time to time as workshops. The doors were old and ill-fitting and Aimedieu went along them, peering through the broken glass panes and warped woodwork. At the end one he stopped. Through a break in the panelling he was able to make out in the beam of his torch a pale blue car whose registration number was obscured by a couple of tyres that were leaning against it. Since the tyres seemed to have been strategically placed to hide the number, Aimedieu decided to break in.
Forcing the lock, he moved the tyres and saw the car’s number was 9701-RD-75. It was the one they were seeking. Closing the doors, he headed round the corner for the nearest bar, and asked for the telephone.
Within minutes Prélat and the Fingerprint boys had arrived with the photographers and the other specialists. It didn’t take Aimedieu long to discover that the man who had rented the garage was Hogue whom they were still interviewing as the owner of the car.
‘Odd, isn’t it?’ Pel observed dryly to Hogue, ‘that it’s still in your garage if it’s been sold.’
There were fingerprints everywhere on the car, spare number plates, three recently fired 9 mm cartridge cases – which were soon shown to be from the same gun as the bullets found in the plaster, the dead policemen, Madame Lenotre and Madame Colbrun – overalls, and, abov
e all, nylon stockings which were always useful for making masks.
By this time, Hogue, who’d been found to have a record, had been answering questions for a whole day and he was still insisting he’d sold the car.
‘Don’t be a clot,’ Darcy said contemptuously. ‘Do you expect us to believe that?’
‘Yes,’ Hogue yelled. ‘It’s the truth! I don’t know anything about the shootings!’
‘You must be the only person in the city who doesn’t. Everybody else does. Are you deaf or something?’
‘Well, yes. A bit. Perhaps that’s why.’
‘Didn’t you read about it?’
‘I never read the papers.’
‘Where were you at the time?’
‘I was alone in this bar–’
‘Which bar?’
‘The Bar du Traffic. In the Rue Henri-Mauray. There was this tobacco salesman in there. I can prove it.’
Finding the Bar du Traffic, Aimedieu soon confirmed that the tobacco salesman had been there at the same time as Hogue but that the time didn’t coincide with the shootings. In addition, Hogue had not been alone but with two other men, and had been seen reading a newspaper containing the report of the murders and was looking distinctly ill-at-ease.
‘Charge him,’ Pel said as Aimedieu laid the facts before him.
At least they’d got one man and, when faced with it, Hogue admitted that he’d driven three men away after the shootings in the Impasse Tarien and that one of them had been injured.
‘Why you?’ Pel demanded. ‘Were you waiting?’
Hogue began to cry. ‘I’d waited every night for a week. They were up to something and I was there in case something went wrong and they had to make a quick getaway. They said nothing was going to happen for some time.’
‘But it did, didn’t it?’ Darcy pointed out. ‘It turned out a nasty business all round. Where did you drive these men?’
‘I dropped them in the Place Auty. They said they’d better change cars in case we’d been seen. They said they had another car there.’
‘What were their names?’
‘I don’t know. One of them came to see me and offered me money to do the driving. That’s all I know.’
‘We have a truth serum. Would you like a shot? They say it shrivels your balls a bit but it’s good for the truth.’
Hogue looked terrified. ‘I’m telling the truth!’ he yelled. ‘I swear it! Would I lie to you?’
‘I’m sure you would,’ Darcy said. ‘If it were worth it.’
It was impossible to shake Hogue. Since he’d been involved in more than one robbery, it began to look as if someone had heard of him and knew he was prepared to accept money to drive in incidents that weren’t quite honest. He continued to insist he’d done none of the shooting, however, and Mattigny, the man who’d seen the injured man helped away, studying him in a line-up of suspects, said quite firmly that he hadn’t been one of the men he’d seen. Finally, a bar owner remembered seeing him parked just down the street from his premises in the nearby Rue de Genève at the time. Though Hogue had certainly been involved in the getaway, it seemed he hadn’t been involved in the shootings.
‘What about the woman?’ Pel asked.
‘I didn’t see any woman,’ Hogue said. ‘There was no woman when they arrived at my car.’
‘Couldn’t you tell one of them was hurt?’
‘I thought he was drunk.’
They got descriptions. Hogue was frightened and this time the descriptions were better.
‘I heard their names,’ he said. ‘One was called Tom and one the Weasel. The other one – the one who seemed drunk – was called Dino or Léo or something like that.’
They were making progress. It was slow but it was progress, though time was steadily growing shorter. Over a week had gone by already and the President’s visit to the Palais des Ducs lay only eighteen days away. To be on the safe side, the Chief was already drawing up plans for protecting him, trying to think of every possible contingency from the moment he arrived within their area until the moment he left, and all the houses and apartments along the route from the station to the Palais des Ducs which he was to take on his arrival were being searched. Nobody was taking chances and even the sewers got a going over.
Meanwhile Judge Polverari was giving Hogue another questioning. They didn’t expect him to turn up much that they hadn’t turned up already. Pel spent the morning studying the reports still coming in like a shower of confetti, then at lunch time he slipped out to the Bar Transvaal for a sandwich and a beer. He was just finishing his second drink when the telephone rang. The proprietor lifted it, listened, then jerked his head at Pel.
‘It’s you,’ he said. ‘Better get back.’
Swallowing his beer, Pel hurried across the road. Darcy was in his room, tapping on a typewriter. As he saw Pel he tore the sheet out and handed it to him.
‘Typescript of a telephone conversation I’ve just had, Patron,’ he said.
‘What about?’
‘It was a doctor. At least, he said he was a doctor and he sounded like a doctor. But he wouldn’t give his name. He said he went on the night of the shootings to attend a wounded man. He was called to the door soon after midnight. There was a woman there who said her husband had been shot accidentally. She had a car waiting with a man at the wheel. The doc wasn’t sure where it was they went because they drove round and round a lot – he thought to confuse him – but it wasn’t in any area he knew and he thought it was right across the city. It was a two-storey house and it was in darkness. The woman took him upstairs where he found a man lying on a bed. He was in a bad way and the driver said he’d been shot in the back accidentally. The doc didn’t believe him. He made a cursory examination and came to the conclusion that there was a bullet lodged in the man’s chest touching the right ventricle. He suggested hospital at once.’
Pel pulled up a chair and sat down, not interrupting.
‘Both the man and the woman said no, he couldn’t go to hospital. When the doctor asked why, they said the friend who’d used the gun hadn’t a licence. He’d been cleaning it and it had gone off by accident. The doctor said that if the woman would come to his surgery, he’d give her drugs and insisted again that the man ought to go to hospital. Again they said no. While he was there the woman was burning papers and bloodstained sheets and towels. When the doctor asked why, she said she thought the man was going to die and, since she lived there, she’d be accused of murder. The pill-roller got away as soon as he could. They drove him back into the city – again going through all the back streets – until they finally dropped him near the Porte Guillaume. He took a taxi home from there.’
‘Did he get the car number?’
‘He says not.’
‘They never do. All the same–’ Pel leaned forward ‘–this is a break. Are you bringing him in?’
‘Patron, I haven’t got his name.’
Pel jerked back in his seat. ‘You’ve got every other damned thing!’ he snapped. ‘Why not his name?’
‘He wouldn’t give it.’
‘Couldn’t you have interrupted him long enough to insist?’
‘I tried, Patron, but he wasn’t playing. In fact, I’d just persuaded him when he said “There’s somebody coming. I’ll have to go,” and hung up.’
‘Why didn’t he telephone us immediately?’
‘I think he’s scared stiff. He said he’d read about the shootings and the explosion and thought the man was a terrorist and that was why he didn’t want to go to hospital. He was afraid that if he put the police on to them, they’d come after him to silence him, or get at his family.’
‘Couldn’t you trace the call?’
‘Martin tried but it was too late.’
Pel slammed his hand down on the desk. ‘Had he no idea where it happened?’
‘He said he thought the Montchapet area. And that would make sense because there are a lot of old houses and a lot of foreigners living there. We’ve had
trouble there before.’
‘Did he give a description?’
‘He just said two-storey houses. Very old. He also noticed that there were unopened packets of bandage – broad bandage. The woman had made some attempt to bandage the man and because he was bleeding badly had given up and used the towels and sheets he saw.’
Pel frowned. ‘We’ve got to find this damned doctor,’ he said. He stared at his desk, his mind whirring. ‘Any accent we could trace? North? South? Anything to go on?’
‘Yes, Patron. He didn’t seem able to sound his r’s.’
‘Then, in the name of God, let’s find a doctor in the city who can’t sound his r’s.’
‘We’re already trying, Patron,’ Darcy said gently. ‘Claudie’s telephoning the medical centres to see if they know anyone. Martin’s telephoning the hospitals. After that, they’re going through the whole medical list. We’ll find him.’
‘Right. Good. In the meantime, get on to Uniformed Branch and Traffic. Get the cars prowling round the Montchapet district. They’re looking for a street with old two-storeyed houses. If they find one they’ve to ask at all the pharmacists in the district if anyone bought bandage and, if so, get a description. They can also ask if anyone saw an injured man brought home. If he was as bad as this damned doctor says he was then he wouldn’t be easy to conceal.’
Ten
The break came late in the afternoon. Nobody knew a doctor who couldn’t sound his r’s properly but then a nurse at the Ste Chantal Hospital mentioned that a certain Doctor Alexandre Lacoste had been accidentally hit in the mouth while in the hospital’s recreation block and had since found it difficult to enunciate.
‘Get the car, Darcy,’ Pel snapped. ‘Bring him in.’
Dr Lacoste was short, slight and dark and, despite his name, was an Algerian by birth. He had been in France for seven years and there was a large plaster over his upper lip. He looked terrified.