Pel and the Bombers

by Mark Hebden

  Bounding into the room, Darcy pushed her roughly aside and snatched the papers from the flames. As she struggled to stop him, Pel pulled her away, screaming, then Aimedieu hoisted her to her feet and thrust her into a corner, where she burst out sobbing, crouching against the wall, her hands over her face.

  Darcy was staring at the papers he had rescued. ‘Pamphlets,’ he said. ‘Revolutionary pamphlets.’

  ‘For what?’

  Darcy looked puzzled. ‘Free Brittany. Free Gascony. Free Burgundy. They’re all different, Patron. There’s one here for the Friends of Libya, whoever they are, and another for Basque Freedom in France.’

  Moving cautiously upstairs, they found a bathroom and three bedrooms, two of which were empty. From the door of the third, they saw a man lying on the bed. He was quite clearly dead, his face grey, his eyes sunken, a mandarin moustache surrounding his pale lips. He seemed to be in his middle twenties, black-haired, handsome in a starved sort of way, and his face was calm as if he had died quite peacefully. The bedsheets were stiff with dried blood and on the table beside the bed was a cap containing a few loose cartridges.

  ‘Browning 9 mm,’ Darcy said. ‘Same as the ones that did for Randolfi and the others. There are a few rifle cartridges, too.’

  ‘Have a look at him, Lacoste,’ Pel said. ‘We’ll need to know he’s dead.’

  ‘He is dead all right.’

  ‘You said the woman was dead but she isn’t, is she?’

  The two doctors exchanged glances then bent over the man on the bed.

  ‘He’s dead,’ Garand said. ‘He’s been dead some time.’

  ‘Get the woman down to headquarters,’ Pel said to Darcy. ‘See if you can get anything from her. Names chiefly. And let’s have Doc Minet up here, together with Photography, the Lab and Fingerprints.’

  ‘Patron!’

  Aimedieu was indicating a jacket hanging on the door. Without removing it from the peg, he opened it out. There was a hole in the middle of the back, round which there was a dried stain of blood.

  ‘It’ll be his, I expect,’ Pel said. ‘Doc Minet will confirm it. Anything in the pockets?’

  ‘Cartridges. Browning. 9-mill. again. They look the same as the ones in the cap.’

  Pel turned to Lacoste. ‘Is he the man you were called to?’

  Lacoste nodded. ‘Yes. You will find a bullet wound in his back.’

  ‘Matching the one in the coat?’

  ‘They had his coat off when I arrived, but I imagine it is in the same place.’

  ‘Patron!’ Aimedieu, who was still sniffing round the room, had lifted a corner of the mattress. ‘There’s a pistol under here.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Browning 9-mill., 13-shot.’

  ‘Leave it. Leguyader and the Lab boys will want it and we’ll need photographs. It’s probably his.’

  ‘If it is,’ Lacoste said. ‘I do not think he put it there. He was in no state to think about hiding anything. As far as I can make out, he was pretty well unconscious when they got him home. Somebody else must have put it there.’

  It made sense.

  Aimedieu had come up with a few other finds, and was bending over a pile of papers, carefully fingering them by the corners. ‘There’s a lot of Communist literature here, Patron,’ he said. ‘Pamphlet here on how to make bombs and fuses, and a typed list of gun specifications. Things like that. There’s also a letter from that type, Hogue, we picked up. One or two from allied groups, too.’

  ‘We’ll look at them when the Lab’s seen them,’ Pel decided. ‘Any names?’

  ‘None I can see.’

  As they talked, Doc Minet appeared.

  ‘Let’s know all about him,’ Pel said, indicating the body on the bed. ‘These are Doctor Garand and Doctor Lacoste. They can probably tell you a lot.’

  Leguyader arrived shortly afterwards, followed immediately by Grenier, of Photography, and Prélat, of Fingerprints.

  ‘Names,’ Pel informed them. ‘We want names. This is the man who was helped from the Impasse Tarien, so I want his name. Knowing who he is will lead us to the others.’

  The girl looked strained and anguished as she was brought into Pel’s office. She was not an attractive girl, pale-haired, pale-eyed, pale-skinned, an anonymous sort of person who could well have been a sister to Brochard or Debray. She was hollow-eyed and wretched with weeping.

  ‘Name?’ Pel barked. He was totally devoid of sympathy.

  Crime was crime and if women were involved in it, they had to accept the consequences.

  ‘Huguette Debuillon,’ Darcy said, reading from his notebook. ‘Address, the house in the Rue Dubosc where we found her.’

  ‘Anything known?’

  ‘No, Patron.’

  ‘Has she talked?’

  ‘A little. It seems she’s a Communist, but I think that’s because her boy friend’s a Communist.’

  ‘And her boy friend?’

  ‘The dead man we found: Name of Assad Kino. Probably Algerian by birth. They were living together at the address where we found him.’

  ‘Go on. There’s more. I can tell by your expression.’

  Darcy permitted himself a small smile. ‘He comes from Marseilles.’

  ‘Of course.’ All dissidents seemed to come from Marseilles.

  ‘She’s local, though, Patron. Daughter of Edouard and Renée Garthier, of Rue Talant. She calls herself Debuillon–’

  ‘–because it’s the practice of all dissidents to use a false name.’ Pel waved his hand. ‘I know. From now on, though, we’ll call her by her real name – Huguette Garthier.’

  ‘Born and brought up in the Rue Talant. Perfectly straightforward family. I’ve checked up on them. Brother serving in the 119th Regiment of Infantry. Father ex-sergeant-major of an alpine battalion.’

  ‘And this one’s the odd one?’

  Darcy shrugged. ‘She doesn’t go with the rest of the family. Rebellious and not considered clever at school.’

  ‘It fits.’

  ‘Parents let’s rooms. The dead man was one of their boarders. He was always talking politics and wasn’t in the habit of working. She became his girl friend and six months ago went to live with him in the Rue Dubosc. She identifies one of his friends, Roger Hucbourg, believed to be Belgian, living in the Rue de Vignes. I’m having him brought in. Debray and Lagé radioed in to say he wasn’t there but he was expected back. They’ll collar him as soon as he turns up. She says she doesn’t know Kiczmyrczik and doesn’t appear ever to have been in his company.’

  ‘What about the man who was with her when they fetched Dr Lacoste? The man who drove the car.’

  ‘She says she doesn’t know him. He was one of the men who brought Kino home on the night of the 14th. She says she didn’t go out that night and wasn’t the one who was seen as they were dragging him away. The neighbours verify that she was in when he was brought home – drunk as they thought.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘After they dumped him on the bed, she insisted on a doctor and Lacoste was fetched, but after that night she didn’t see the others again and was left to look after him on her own. The others didn’t come near her.’

  ‘Which others? Doesn’t she know their names?’

  ‘She says not. She says she’d seen them when she’d been with Kino but, apart from Hucbourg, didn’t know who they were, beyond that they were Kino’s friends. I think she was involved, as she says, chiefly because she was in love with Kino, and that’s about all.’

  They tried to get more out of her but it was impossible and they finally had to accept that she was telling the truth. Hucbourg was in police custody by the afternoon, loudly protesting against his arrest and proclaiming his innocence.

  ‘Of what?’ Pel demanded. ‘You haven’t been accused of anything yet.’

  Small, frightened-looking, like the dead Kino decorated with a mandarin moustache, Hucbourg rolled his eyes. ‘Whatever it is you’re accusing me of,’ he said. ‘I’ve always trie
d to be straightforward and honest. I’ve never done anything wrong.’

  ‘Except fraud,’ Darcy pointed out, opening a file he held in his hand. ‘Last year. Fined. There was a case the year before, too, wasn’t there? You were allowed free on that as a first offender.’

  Hucbourg’s eyes rolled again, but he didn’t deny it.

  ‘Know Tadeuz Kiczmyrczik?’ Pel asked.

  Hucbourg’s eyes rolled again. ‘No.’

  ‘Anna Ripka?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Jean-Jacques Hogue?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Assad Kino?’

  Hucbourg’s head moved in a movement of negation.

  ‘Huguette Garthier, known as Huguette Debuillon?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She knows you. She says you’re a friend of Assad Kino, who was found dead this morning at an address in the Rue Dubosc. You read the newspapers?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then you’ll have read of the shootings and the explosion in the Impasse Tarien. Three policemen and a passer-by dead, two wounded. Kino’s believed to have been there and to have escaped with two other men. He was badly wounded and was taken to the Rue Dubosc. Were you one of the other men?’

  ‘No.’ Hucbourg’s answer was a mere whisper.

  The telephone rang. It was Claudie Darel speaking from the office next door. ‘Patron, Aimedieu’s been on the telephone. He’s been going over Hucbourg’s rooms. He says there’s a painting on the wall, signed by someone called La Dette. There were addresses in a notebook in a drawer. One was the Garthier girl’s – her home address, her parents’ address. One was the dead man’s in Marseilles. There was another belonging to Bernadette Vaxsialades of the Rue Vesolis. She could be La Dette.’

  By evening they had four of them in custody – Jean-Jacques Hogue, the driver; Huguette Debuillon, née Garthier; Roger Hucbourg, and Bernadette Vaxsialades.

  The Vaxsialades girl was another like Huguette Garthier, drably dressed with blonde hair which was now a streaky brown.

  ‘Which is the right colour?’ Pel asked.

  ‘Blonde,’ she said sullenly.

  ‘Who dyed it brown?’

  ‘I did. Two days ago.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was afraid.’

  ‘What of? Were you a friend of Assad Kino?’

  ‘I lived with him for a while. I thought they might think I killed him.’

  ‘Were you the one who was following him when he was helped away from the Impasse Tarien? There was a girl shouting “Go away, go away”. Was that you?’

  She nodded silently.

  ‘Why did you shout that?’

  ‘I didn’t want anyone to follow us.’

  ‘Why didn’t you stay with Kino when he was taken to the Rue Dubosc?’

  ‘He’s not my man any more. He’s Huguette Garthier’s.’

  ‘Who’s your man?’

  She stared at Pel with lacklustre eyes and didn’t answer.

  ‘Was it Hucbourg?’

  ‘That idiot!’

  ‘Why is he an idiot?’

  ‘Because he’s always afraid.’

  ‘Then who is your man?’

  Again she didn’t answer.

  ‘We shall find out,’ Pel said.

  She lifted her head and glared at him. ‘Then find out,’ she snapped.

  In Leguyader’s laboratory, Pel stood staring with Doctor Minet at the articles found in the rooms at the Rue Dubosc. There was a suitcase, a suit of clothing, marked with dried blood, a few coins, a few books and pamphlets, all of a revolutionary nature, seventeen assorted cartridges, and one Browning 9 millimetre, 13-shot pistol.

  ‘Not his,’ Leguyader said. ‘The fingerprints on it don’t match.’

  ‘What about the bullets in it?’

  ‘I was coming to that,’ Leguyader said. He picked up a plastic envelope and, using a pair of tweezers, removed from it a small round-nosed bullet. ‘That,’ he explained, ‘is what Doc Minet took from his chest.’

  ‘It entered his back,’ Minet said, ‘touched a rib and moved upwards towards the heart. In touching the rib, it expanded and did a great deal of damage. He slowly bled to death. The girl made a great effort to staunch the bleeding but it didn’t work. He literally slowly drained.’

  Pel indicated the small piece of misshaped metal. ‘And the pistol it came from?’

  Leguyader moved forward another plastic bag containing the pistol they had found under the mattress. ‘It came from this. That’s the weapon that shot him. It’s not his, as I’ve said, but it is one of the weapons that did the shooting at the Impasse Tarien. Bullets we took out of Randolfi, Desouches and the others came from this weapon. Whoever handled that weapon shot Randolfi and the others.’

  ‘And him?’ Pel said, indicating the clothes.

  ‘Accident, as we thought,’ Doc Minet said. ‘He was hit in the scuffle and they put the pistol under the mattress hoping we’d think he’d shot himself.’ He gave a twisted smile. ‘Unfortunately, it’s a bit difficult to shoot yourself in the middle of the back. I expect his friends thought that if they left him at the Impasse Tarien we’d pick him up and he’d give them away, so they grabbed him and rushed him to where Hogue was waiting with the car and he was taken finally to the Rue Dubosc.’

  Pel was silent for a moment, then he gestured at the clothing. ‘Does it tell us anything?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ Leguyader said. ‘Bought in Brussels. Date, uncertain. Price, cheap. Shoes, French, also cheap. Everything about this gentleman was cheap. He seems to be a North African – Tunisian, Algerian, Moroccan, Libyan, something like that – and he was clearly living a hand-to-mouth existence. He’s undernourished. Probably here illegally.’

  Pel opened the suitcase. It contained a set of dirty underclothes, a pair of socks and a dirty shirt.

  ‘Probably all he possessed,’ Leguyader said. ‘In the habit of carrying his food around in it, too, it seems. There are crumbs in there as well.’

  Two days later they had another stroke of luck. Fingerprints identified a set of dabs found in the Rue Dubosc as belonging to one Hamid Ben Afzul, a Tunisian with a record who was living near the Industrial Zone.

  ‘Another foreigner,’ Pel said. Like many Frenchmen, he tended to dislike foreigners because he was firmly convinced there were too many of them in France.

  The Tunisian was missing but in his room were sheets of written music on which was found another name, Claude Raffet, who turned out to be a café pianist who ran a bar in the Chenove district. He was thin and pale-faced as if he were a night bird, but he had no dissident connections and had a good alibi for the night of the shootings, to say nothing of an excellent reference from the bar owner who employed him. He was helpful from the start.

  ‘I knew them all,’ he said. ‘They came in my bar and they always sat together, even if they came in separately. There were two girls–’

  ‘Huguette Garthier and Bernadette Vaxsialades?’

  ‘Sounds like them. They were addressed as Huguette and La Dette. They often paid because they seemed to be working and the men weren’t.’

  ‘How many of them were there altogether?’

  ‘I never saw them all together.’

  ‘Well, work it out.’

  Borrowing a pencil, Raffet wrote the names down on the back of an envelope.

  ‘They aren’t their real names,’ he said. ‘Just what I called them.’

  After a lot of thought and adding up of ticks, he looked up. ‘Eight,’ he said. ‘There were eight of them. At least, I think so. Perhaps nine.’

  Pel produced pictures of the ones who’d already been brought in and Raffet studied them carefully. ‘There were two others,’ he said. ‘One a type with red hair. They called him Tom. The other was a little guy. Bit like a ferret. There was also perhaps another woman. A mousy type.’

  ‘They’re all mousy types,’ Darcy growled. Darcy was renowned for his taste in women.

  Half an hour with a f
ile containing pictures of known dissidents who lived in their diocese brought little that was fresh. The group they were investigating, it seemed, was a new one, intensely secretive, but amateur enough to have made enough blunders for almost all of them to have been roped in.

  ‘This Ben Afzul?’ Pel tried. ‘The one who borrowed the music–’

  ‘He was a bit of a musician. Played the guitar. He was trying to learn our music.’ Raffet gestured. ‘That is, European music, as distinct from North African music. You know what that’s like. All half-notes and semi-tones. Never seems to end up where it sets out to go. He thought he might make a living if he could learn ours. I loaned him a few sheets of music.’

  ‘What were they up to?’

  ‘No good, I should think,’ Raffet admitted. ‘People who’re within the law don’t sit in tight groups whispering. They speak up. They laugh. This lot never laughed. Sometimes there’d be three of them. Sometimes six. I never saw the lot of them together.’

  ‘Do you know Tadeuz Kiczmyrczik?’

  ‘I’ve heard of him. I heard them mention him, too.’

  ‘Did he ever turn up? Tall, shock of grey hair. Deeply-lined face.’

  ‘Never noticed him.’

  ‘Anna Ripka. Know her? She’s Kiczmyrczik’s woman.’

  ‘I don’t know her. On the other hand–’ Raffet gestured ‘–how could I? The place’s full late at night. There’s a lot of smoke. You’re busy. I could easily have missed someone. The bar’s L-shaped and you can’t see round the corner. There are a couple of pin tables there, too. They seemed to like that corner. Perhaps the noise drowned what they were saying.’

  Progress was still slow and time was beginning to run out. There weren’t many days left to the President’s visit and Pel was sure that the death of Kino and the arrest of the others would not have stopped what had been planned. Men prepared to murder for political ends were invariably ruthless and they would have made contingency plans for others to take over, if necessary, what they were intending – which, again, was something they hadn’t yet found out.

  They checked the houses around the Palais des Ducs where the President was to appear but turned up nothing, so they leaned once more on Hogue, Hucbourg and the two girls. They were all a little vague and Pel guessed they weren’t the main participants, merely the helpers who prepared the scene while the perpetrators of what was in the wind could lie low. They knew Andoche, the student who had offered the police the support of the Free Burgundy movement and, while he clearly wasn’t involved in the affair in the Impasse Tarien, they provided enough on him to involve him in a few other uproars.