by Mark Hebden
Martinelle’s mouth curled. ‘I suppose you have names.’
‘I have one. Delphine Delacolonge. Her husband’s an uncle of the Crébert boy. That’s what makes it rather odd, don’t you think? Bit of a coincidence.’
Martinelle said nothing. He had stiffened and was licking his lips. ‘Don’t know the woman,’ he said. ‘Never met her.’
‘She says she knows you.’
Martinelle shrugged. ‘A lot of people know me,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t mean I know her.’
‘Never visited her flat?’
‘Never.’
‘I have reason to think you might have.’
Martinelle didn’t even blink. ‘Then you’d better think again,’ he said.
Thirteen
The newspapers were still having a field day and their headlines reflected the growing concern at the lack of progress. In the manner of most television commentators, Robert Démon concentrated less on concern than on criticism and even unearthed a number of terrorist sympathisers who appeared on his programme, hooded and masked and with their backs to the camera, to expound their opinions. His view seemed to be that in a country of free expression men should not only be allowed to plant bombs but that their friends should also be allowed to explain the reasons why over the air. His public increased enormously.
Free Burgundy, Free Brittany and Free Corsica were all brought into it in a way that made the men at police headquarters squirm, because they noticed that, while Démon appeared to show sympathy with terrorist attitudes, he had so far not uttered a single word of condolence for the families of the dead policemen.
Pel watched the broadcast with Darcy in the Bar Transvaal with a bitter look on his face. With people prepared to beat young policemen to death for kicks, Démon’s comments seemed at times almost like encouragement.
‘It’s no wonder the crime rate goes up and never goes down,’ Darcy growled. ‘The great sporting public’s more influenced by that rubbish than they are by the Church.’
During the following afternoon, however, something turned up which brought a little cheer. It wasn’t much but it had possibilities. Darcy appeared in Pel’s office with a small box which he opened on the table. It contained a few Marxist and anarchist pamphlets, two cartridge cases, a knife, a red badge showing a hammer and sickle, and a key bearing the number M138H.
‘Belonged to Assad Kino,’ he said. ‘Brought in by the parents of the Garthier girl. As you know, he had a room in their apartment for a while and he left this in their keeping. Asked them to look after it very carefully. Those were his words: Very carefully.’
‘Now why would he say that?’ Pel asked. ‘It looks harmless enough and it ought to be unimportant.’
They turned the box over once or twice. If things had turned out as they should have, it would have had a false bottom containing papers which would give the names of everybody involved in the killings and all the plans for the future, including the possible assassination of the President. Pel fingered it, half expecting a secret drawer to spring open. But, of course, it didn’t.
‘If it isn’t the box,’ he pointed out, ‘then it must be what was in it.’
There seemed nothing odd about the pamphlets, the cartridge cases, the knife or the badge.
‘So it must be the key,’ he said.
He picked it up. ‘It’s a Brouard,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘And Brouards are good locks. Special locks. Locks for doors that people don’t want opening.’ He looked up at Darcy. ‘Daniel, this is probably the key to a room that overlooks the Palais des Ducs. Some room from where they could get a shot at the President. Check it.’
By this time, Judge Polverari and Judge Brisard were working overtime preparing the dossiers on the people who’d been brought in. Despite the view of Pel and Judge Polverari, Brisard had also insisted on Kiczmyrczik being brought in for questioning, but he found he had bitten off more than he could chew. Kiczmyrczik was an old hand at dealing with juges d’instruction and he gave as good as he was handed out. When he didn’t feel like answering, he simply sat mute, and in the end Brisard ordered him to be held until they felt they could change his views.
It didn’t worry Kiczmyrczik in the slightest. He’d been in enough prisons during his career to regard them philosophically and there was probably quite as much comfort in them as in his spartan little apartment, while the food, according to Jaroslav Tyl, was probably better.
‘Anna’s a terrible cook,’ he told Darcy. ‘Her meals always look as if she’d picked them out of the pig bin.’
Darcy recited the names of the men and women they’d brought in. ‘Know any of them?’ he asked.
Tyl shook his head. ‘Not one. But old Kiczmyrczik’s a bit beyond this sort of thing these days, isn’t he? Eyes are going. If he tried shooting at the police he’d probably hit one of his pals.’
‘One of them did,’ Darcy said dryly.
Tyl looked repentant. ‘Yes, of course. I forgot that. If the Old Man had been active, I’d have said straight away, yes, he’s the type but–’ he shook his head ‘–the poor old bugger’s long past it. Still–’ he grinned ‘–with a week or two away from Anna’s cooking, he’ll probably come out a new man. You don’t know what you’re starting.’
Darcy smiled. ‘How come someone so lacking in idealism as you are is always hanging round Kiczmyrczik’s place?’
‘I keep an eye on the Old Man, that’s all. Soft-hearted.’
‘I’ve never come across a soft-hearted revolutionary before.’
‘We’re not all the hard-nosed kind.’ Tyl shrugged. ‘Perhaps I’m not really a true worker for the cause. Perhaps I just fancy a good socialist country with fair shares for all – with a little extra for me on the side. I should hate to see blood flowing in the gutters. Too squeamish. I’m not that kind of revolutionary.’ He grinned. ‘I’m the insidious kind. I talk a lot and keep out of the way and let the others get picked up by the police.’
‘It’s probably cleverer,’ Darcy agreed.
Tyl smiled. ‘It’s certainly safer,’ he said.
They were beginning to recover their spirits a little by this time. Goriot was recovering slowly, but it would be months before he was on duty again, though Dunn was home, pale with pain and clutching his bandaged arm. It was even becoming hard to remember Randolfi, Lemadre and Desouches, but perhaps this was an inbuilt defence mechanism.
With the excitement dwindling, so was the number of reports. But also, so was the time at their disposal before the President arrived. There were still a few nutcases – sad people who needed notoriety to liven their dull existence – who claimed to have shot one or more of the three policemen. One claimed to have shot the lot – even Charles-Bernard Crébert. An elderly medium, though not claiming such an honour, said she knew exactly who was responsible and would be prepared to give the police all the help she could, while a woman in Paris insisted that the dead men hadn’t been killed at all but had been flashed from earth by a death ray from Mars. Apart from the few they knew about, who confessed to every crime ever committed within the city boundaries, they had to check anything that sounded at all feasible.
They were all still at it flat out, working long days tramping the streets and asking questions. With the exception of Misset. Misset could always manage to dodge work and he had been itching ever since his trip to Paris to describe a voyage after dark through the Bois de Boulogne with a friend of his in the Paris force. It was the sort of story Misset always enjoyed.
‘Girls,’ he said. ‘Round the area off the Cascade. Dozens of them. All wearing fur coats.’
‘In summer?’
‘They’ve got nothing on underneath. Not a stitch. They stand on the corners and when a car comes along and its headlights fall on them, they open the coats. That’s how they get their customers. The police are always picking them up.’
By this time, they had learned the names of the two men Raffet had described. The detectives were still raiding the haunts of the shift
y, the perverted, the dishonest, the violent, and the mean-minded, brooking no hindrance or delay, and a few people had squealed under pressure. Names and addresses turned up, new descriptions became available – even finally the two names, Tom Kotchkoff and Kasimir Hays.
Paris had heard of them and came up, not only with the information that they were dangerous, but with sound descriptions – even the startling information that Kotchkoff was known to have scars on his knees.
‘You can forget that,’ Pel growled. ‘He won’t be walking about without his trousers.’
He was certain by now that the people they had in custody were no more than fringe members of the group. While they could be charged as accessories before or after the fact they couldn’t have been responsible for the murders.
‘Not one of them,’ he said. ‘Kotchkoff and Hays are the ones we’re looking for and they’re the ones who got Kino away. Let’s have another go at Hucbourg.’
Hucbourg was looking distinctly unhappy as he was brought into the office.
‘I wasn’t there,’ he insisted at once.
‘You were one of the gang,’ Pel said. ‘So you’d better tell us who they were.’
Hucbourg seemed on the verge of tears but he bit his lip and turned his head away.
‘You realise that under Article 60 of the Penal Code you can be charged.’
‘I made no bombs. I never possessed a pistol. I never even held anybody else’s.’
‘You gave comfort to these men.’
‘No.’
‘You discussed revolution.’
‘Discussed. That’s all.’
‘Article 60 deals with accessories before and after the fact, those who – I quote – “by gifts, promises, threats, abuse of authority or power, machinations or culpable artifices, shall have provoked the act or given instructions for it to be committed.”’
‘I never suggested anything.’
‘You have proof, of course?’
Hucbourg hadn’t. He wasn’t a strong character and he soon admitted he knew Kotchkoff and Hays.
‘I only knew them as Le Rougeaud and La Belette. Rusty and Weasel. They always went about together.’
They tried the names on Raffet at his bar.
‘They sound like the ones I called Tom and the Ferret,’ he said. ‘They came in here, but they didn’t go about with the others much. They were always on their own and usually sat apart. They knew Kino though. I remember that.’
Pel studied the shabby bar. ‘I think we ought to have a watch put on this place,’ he said.
Raffet grinned. ‘Do you think I’m going to kill someone?’
‘No,’ Pel said. ‘But I think someone might be going to kill you.’
It was late when Pel left the Hôtel de Police for home. As he climbed into his car, he looked at his watch. All normal people with good sense and a degree of honesty were in their homes now, and probably in bed. He longed to pick up the telephone and ring Madame Faivre-Perret’s number. But, like everyone else, she, too, would be in bed by this time. The thought depressed him. One day, perhaps, he thought, he might even be in it with her.
When he reached home, be sat in his car for a while, staring at his house. It looked a wreck, while inside it seemed to be furnished entirely in brown. Even before he entered he could hear the television going but the minute he put his key in the lock it stopped. The silence was the sort of silence you get when you’re in an aeroplane and someone switches off the engine.
Madame Routy was just rising from the ‘confort anglais’, which was the only worthwhile chair in the house. She had a sour look on her face. ‘I’m off to bed,’ she said.
Pel watched her disappear, suddenly realising that not only he and Darcy and the rest of them were affected by the butchery in the Impasse Tarien; it had affected Madame Routy too, and she’d decided it was wiser not to get on the wrong side of him.
He poured himself a whisky and sat down in the ‘confort anglais’, a little startled by the discovery that for once, through no doing of his, he had the upper hand. He was still absorbed by the thought when the telephone rang. To his surprise it was Madame Faivre-Perret.
‘Geneviève!’
Her voice was gentle and consoling. ‘I took the liberty of telephoning the Hôtel de Police to see if you’d left. They told me you’d gone home. I thought you might like to know I haven’t forgotten you.’
Oh, wonderful woman! What on earth would they do without women? Where could man ever find the comfort and the solace that was needed in a world full of violence?
‘I’m very touched,’ Pel said.
‘How are things going?’
He knew she wasn’t really interested because he’d discovered long since that the harsh facts of crime appalled her and she preferred not to think about them. Which made the enquiry all the more warm.
‘Not very well,’ he admitted. ‘We move forward but not very quickly.’
‘You and I, Evariste, seem fated.’
That was what Pel had often thought.
‘How long will it be before it will be over?’
‘It could be a week, or a fortnight, or a month. Or forever.’ There was a shocked silence and he tried to explain. ‘The file on this thing will never be closed until we get the murderers but there’ll come a time when it will seem pointless to continue. The President’s due in ten days. It’ll die down a little then, I suppose – provided nothing happens.’
The silence continued, then Pel heard a faint sigh. ‘I’ll telephone you as soon as it seems possible,’ he said.
He put the telephone down slowly, poured himself another whisky and sat with it in his hand for a long time. The Chief was married. Goriot was married. Misset was married. He wondered how they managed. In Misset’s case, perhaps he didn’t, because it was obvious Misset’s marriage had become a burden to him. His eyes – and his hands – had begun to wander and there were a few of the secretaries in the Hôtel de Police, Pel had heard, who had had occasion to fend him off.
Lagé seemed happily married, however. Perhaps his success sprang from his perpetual good-temper and his everlasting willingness to do someone else’s work. Perhaps he’d developed a nice line in washing up.
Pel slept badly that night. He liked to think he slept badly most nights. When things were on his mind, he did sleep badly but, because he believed he needed his sleep, he usually went to bed far too early and, since he could manage – and had proved it often by still being on his feet when everybody else round him was wilting – on three or four hours a night, he was invariably expecting too much of himself.
Nosjean was waiting for him when he arrived at his office the following morning. He outlined everything he and De Troq’ had done. He then fished in his brief case and brought out a bundle of papers, all ruled and covered with unformed writing.
‘I don’t want reports,’ Pel said. ‘I’m too busy. If you have anything for me to see, let me have it on one sheet.’
‘It’s not a report, Patron,’ Nosjean said. ‘It’s a set of essays. School kids’ essays.’ He went on to explain what he’d done. ‘Most of them contain nothing at all. Just the usual things. A car with a flat tyre. A man with a red nose. A woman standing in a bedroom window undressing. He’s going to be a voyeur, that one. But there are two here – friends. Both of them knew Charles-Bernard Crébert. They say they saw him getting into a car just after dark by the Porte Guillaume, the evening he died.’
Pel leaned forward. ‘Go on, mon brave.’
‘I asked them what sort of car. They couldn’t be certain – Peugeot. Renault. British Ford. German Volkswagen – only that it was a small hatchback. It was some distance away, but they knew it was Crébert because he was wearing a red, white and blue jersey. The one he was wearing when he was found.’
‘Did they see who was with him?’
‘Whoever was inside the car was in shadow.’
‘Did they notice the number or the colour of the car?’
‘Not the number.
They said the colour was grey or fawn.’
‘Are they sure about that?’
‘They each confirmed the other, and neither of them knew what the other had written until I told them. Moreover, they didn’t discuss seeing Crébert get into the car at the time, because they both knew him and they knew he sometimes went off with that uncle of his. It didn’t even occur to them that it was odd until they were asked to write an essay about anything odd they’d seen and then they only considered it odd because the boy had been found dead.’
‘What about the uncle?’
‘Renault,’ Nosjean said. ‘Bright red. Like mine. There’s no way it could be considered grey or fawn.’
‘Where was he? Have you checked?’
‘Yes, Chief. He was at his sister’s. She said he was there. Her husband was away and he went to cheer her up. They’re very close. It was his night off-duty and she telephoned his wife who said she’d send him round.’
‘Everybody’s very concerned with Madame Crébert.’
‘I think Madame Delacolonge is more concerned with Madame Delacolonge.’ Nosjean smiled. ‘Martinelle was probably with her. The nights her husband was out she often had a visitor.’
‘Was he there that night?’
‘That’s something I haven’t been able to establish yet.’
‘Is he married?’
‘Yes.’
‘Interested in boys?’
‘He runs a gymnasium for them. And he’s served in the East. A lot of men who served out there picked up the habit of pederasty.’
Pel frowned. ‘I think you’d better check up on his car.’
‘I have, Patron. Silver Volkswagen. Could look grey.’
‘What about the man himself? Any reason to suspect he was connected with Kiczmyczik or any of the others?’
‘None at all, Patron. In fact, I think now it was pure coincidence that young Crébert was murdered at Vieilly on the night of the shootings here.’
The following day, Judge Brisard had the Créberts brought in for questioning.