by Mark Hebden
‘It’s got to be fast,’ he pointed out.
‘We’ll make it fast,’ Darcy promised grimly.
As they talked, the storm seemed to roll round again. The sky crackled with lightning and thunder shook the windows, then the rain came again, as if the skies had opened.
‘It’ll probably help us, Patron,’ Darcy observed. ‘Blur things a bit.’
There was a pause of a second or two then the covering fire started again. As it reached a peak of intensity, competing with the thunder for the attention, they pushed the ladders into position against the wall. They clearly hadn’t been seen because the heavy firing from the Rue Mozart was keeping heads down above them.
‘Let’s go,’ Pel said.
The lightly wounded man went first, climbing awkwardly with his bandaged arm. De Troq’ was behind him, pushing hard. Scrambling over the wall, he half dragged the wounded man to the ridge of the roof and pushed him over. There was a call from the other side.
‘We’ve got him!’
Scrambling back, De Troq’ reached down for the stretcher. Darcy and Aimedieu went up the ladders with the head, while the two uniformed men and Pel pushed from behind. Reaching down, De Troq’ eased it over the wall to the roof, as the two uniformed men scrambled up the ladders.
Drenched with rain, blinking water from his eyelids and spitting it from his lips, Pel scrambled after them. The uniformed men, De Troq’, Darcy, Aimedieu and Doctor Lacoste were still struggling up the slope of the roof with the stretcher and so far the terrorists seemed to be fully occupied with shooting at the house opposite, and they had gone unobserved. But, as they reached the peak of the roof where they were in full view, a uniformed man stuck his head up and asked if he could help.
‘Get back, you damn’ fool!’ Darcy snarled.
But it was too late. The shout had attracted attention and shots began to smash down on the wet and slippery tiles. Doctor Lacoste, astride the ridge directing operations, staggered and fell to his knees, and Pel saw there was a red weal across his forehead where a bullet had grazed his skull. As he sat down abruptly on the roof peak, a dazed look on his face, blood beginning to trickle over his eyes, Pel yelled.
‘Get him out of sight!’ he screamed.
Aimedieu began to scramble towards the doctor, but the tiles were wet and he slipped and cannoned against him, so that they both overbalanced and disappeared over the other side. Nosjean’s head popped up.
‘Stay where you are!’ Pel yelled, and, scrambling over the ridge, the bullets pecking at the tiles and the whine of ricochets in their ears, they got the stretcher to the ridge.
Then one of the uniformed men slipped and vanished and as Pel, Darcy, De Troq’ and the other uniformed man struggled to lift the stretcher over the angle of the roof, the handle jammed under the end of the ladder and they couldn’t swing it round. For what seemed ages they fought to get it clear.
‘Patron!’
Blinking away rainwater Pel realised Misset’s eyes were open.
‘Unstrap me,’ he whispered.
‘Don’t be a damn fool!’
‘Unstrap me, Patron, and I can roll over.’
For a moment, blinking in the hissing rain, the bullets whacking into the broken tiles, Pel, Darcy and De Troq’ stared at each other, then Pel made up his mind quickly.
‘Unstrap him,’ he agreed.
They started working on the straps with clumsy fingers and pushed Misset to the peak of the roof. Darcy and De Troq’ scrambled after him to help, while Pel pushed from behind until, abruptly, Misset vanished from sight, carrying Darcy and De Troq’ with him.
Giving the uniformed man a shove so that he also vanished from sight, Pel was just about to follow when a bullet struck the heel of his shoe. It felt as though his foot had been kicked from under him and he fell heavily and rolled back down the roof on the wrong side until he fetched up against the wall that rose from the backyard. Scrambling to his knees, he was about to set off up the roof again when a shot snatched at his sleeve and he flung himself down once more.
For a moment, he wondered where the bullet had come from, because up to that moment the shots from the besieged house had only been troublesome as they reached the peak of the roof. Then it dawned on him that the people in the house had realised the besiegers had left the kitchen and one of them had run down the stairs and was shooting from the kitchen doorway which was protected from the houses opposite by the wall and the garage. It seemed very much that he was stuck.
For a long time, he lay flat in the gutter that ran along the angle made by the sloping roof and the wall. He could hear Darcy’s voice coming from the builder’s yard.
‘Patron? You hit?’
‘I’m all right. They can’t get at me.’
‘We’ve got Misset inside the timber store and Lacoste’s plugging him up again because he opened his wound when he rolled down the roof. The ambulance’s on its way. The doc’s got a headache he’ll feel for a week. What about you, Patron?’
‘One of them’s in the kitchen now so anybody who puts his head over the peak of the roof’s a target. I’m all right, so long as I lie still.’
There was silence at the other side of the roof then, over the roar of the rain, Pel heard the sound of the ambulance arriving and eventually the siren as it moved off. He was soaked to the skin now, the rain pounding down on him and running off the roof to fill the gutter where he lay. It was like lying in a stream and he felt the water was running in through his trouser legs and out through the neck of his shirt. There were times, he decided, when it wasn’t much fun being a policeman. Saturated and cold, he tried to shift his position but a shot from the kitchen door made him throw himself flat again.
He was still thinking of Misset. What he had done wasn’t far short of heroic. There was more to men than one ever realised. It would bring a commendation inevitably and that it should go to Misset of all people was a source of wonderment to Pel. But that was the way it often was. Men who did their duty faithfully and well got nothing, while the fool who showed spontaneous courage got the awards. Perhaps he’d have to think again about Misset. One thing was certain, there’d be no demotion now. He’d still have to go before the Chief because the report on the shooting of Raffet had already gone in, but inevitably the Chief would go easy on him. A wound and a show of heroism did wonders. The reprimand would be a mild one and Misset would stay in Pel’s squad.
As he lay with the rain soaking through to his skin, Pel hoped Doctor Lacoste would get a commendation of some kind, too. Undoubtedly he deserved it. And Evariste Clovis Désiré Pel? What about him? Until a few weeks ago, Pel had considered his affairs were making very good progress, had even been considering buying a house with a garden at Plombières, and perhaps a dog so he could walk out in the evening, a true countryman, married to a woman of substance. Madame Faivre-Perret had favoured living in the house she owned at the top of the hill to the north of the city. Perhaps she knew Pel better than he knew himself and was aware that he’d soon tire of the country because the city was his life and his burden at the same time. First though – he jerked back to the present – he had to get out of this farcical predicament before he perished of cold, drowning, pneumonia or shotgun wounds, because he wouldn’t be much good to Madame Faivre-Perret dead or crippled.
Shivering, his nose within an inch of the rainswept tiles, he began to wonder how long it could go on. Probably all night and into the next day. He was just about to utter a groan of frustration when he found himself staring at the tiles under his nose. Of course! There was an escape route! He couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t thought of it before.
Working feverishly, his hands bleeding as they were torn by the nails in the roof, he began to work one of the tiles loose. It wasn’t easy and he was covered by black mud caused by the rainwater on the grime of years that lay beneath. Eventually, he got it free, and then a second. As he pushed it aside, he saw the tile next to it move under his nose and a second later it was pushed aside
and, through a hole in the laths and crumbling plaster beneath, he saw Nosjean’s face peering up at him.
‘Seems we both got the same idea at the same time, Patron,’ he said.
Slowly they made the hole bigger and – head-first because he didn’t dare lift himself above the low protecting wall – Pel squirmed through, tearing the sleeve of his jacket as he went. In the garage below, standing on the roof of a dust-covered vehicle which clearly hadn’t been used for years, Nosjean helped him down and five minutes later he was in the builder’s yard.
He was just trying to brush off the plaster and the dirt from his clothes when Darcy appeared alongside him, his face excited.
‘Patron,’ he said, ‘I think we’ve found the owner of the Brouard key! A woman called Tremolet just telephoned and young Martin radioed through. She says her mother has a top floor room she lets out cheaply to students. She’s deaf so she didn’t hear the broadcast and it was only because she and her daughter were discussing the room that it cropped up. The last tenant was a man called Trentignant who said he was a medical student, but he sounds as if he could have been Kino. He said he had a lot of valuable equipment – microscopes and so on – and could he put a new lock on the door because other students were in the habit of “borrowing” things and sometimes forgot to return them? It was fitted two months ago.’
Pel was still knocking dirt from his clothes. ‘Where is this apartment?’
‘Alongside the station, overlooking the exit where the President will appear when he leaves the platform. God knows why. They can’t take a potshot at him from there with all the crowds and bodyguards there’ll be. I’m going down there now to take a look at the place.’
‘Does this Madame Tremolet have a key?’
‘No, Patron.’ Darcy grinned. ‘But we do. Kino’s.’
Filthy and in a vile temper, Pel appeared before the Chief. Brisard and Polverari were with him, together with a horde of pressmen, including Démon who stood with a microphone in his hand while one of his helpers sheltered him with an umbrella.
‘Good God,’ Brisard said. ‘What have you been up to?’
‘You might well ask,’ Pel snarled.
Polverari silently handed over a brandy flask and Pel took a grateful swig from it.
Sarrazin, the freelance, grabbed at Pel’s arm. ‘How about telling us what happened?’ he said.
Pel brushed him off. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘There are things to do.’
‘They want a truce,’ the Chief said. ‘They’ve put out a white sheet. They say there’s a woman in there and they want to get her out.’
‘So do I,’ Pel snapped. ‘She’s the one who shot Misset.’
Half an hour later, with the rain still pounding down, Anna Ripka appeared at the street entrance, holding a white towel. Aimedieu and De Troq’ were waiting on either side of the door, pressed against the walls where they couldn’t be seen from the upper windows, and, as she stumbled out, peering shortsightedly about her, they each grabbed an arm. As they hurried her away, she missed her footing but they didn’t stop and went on running towards the schoolroom where the headquarters had been set up, her feet dragging behind.
The press appeared as they forced their way through the crowd, camera flashes going off in their faces. Above the hubbub, Pel could hear Démon’s voice, slow, precise and damning.
‘…bundled roughly away. She looked exhausted but the police are showing no mercy today…’
‘His mother must have been frightened by a traffic cop,’ Aimedieu snarled.
Brushing the newspapermen aside, Pel pushed his way through the crowd. They still seemed determined to get themselves killed and it was all Nadauld’s men could do to keep them out of range. They seemed to regard the affair as a cross between a circus and a television drama, and certainly the cameras were taking it all in. Mounted on huge vans, they had pictured the arrest and doubtless within minutes it would be going out over the air with a breezy commentary from Démon.
As Pel reached the schoolroom, Darcy appeared. He was smiling.
‘Patron, I’ve been in that apartment! The damned place’s an arsenal. Two Armalite rifles, three 9 mm pistols, half a dozen Garands and a Russian-made rocket launcher. They aren’t going to take a potshot at the President. They’re going to fire a rocket. With one of those, they don’t have to worry about anyone getting in the way. It would polish the lot off.’
‘Why wasn’t it found?’ Pel snapped. ‘Everything along the President’s route was supposed to have been searched by the security boys.’
‘It was, Patron. The key was even left with the caretaker so it could be. But it wasn’t in the flat. It was all in the roof space. There’s a loft with a trapdoor in the bathroom. It was all up there. I’ve got two of Nadauld’s boys guarding it.’
‘Even the jelly? Was that there?’
‘What’s left of it. In a couple of drums part-connected to an alarm clock and tucked under the eaves. After they’d fired the rocket all they had to do was finish connecting the alarm clock, give themselves five minutes and run. It would have brought the wall and roof down on the crowds watching the uproar after the rocket and given them a chance to escape.’
‘They’d never have got away.’
Darcy’s face was grim. ‘Martyrdom’s part of the creed, Patron,’ he said. ‘Perhaps they didn’t want to.’
As the Ripka woman was brought before Pel, he glanced at Aimedieu.
‘Has she been searched?’
‘Not yet, Patron.’
‘Get Claudie Darel on the job.’
Ten minutes later, Claudie appeared. ‘Not much, Patron. A few coins in her pockets, a fifty-franc note, and this.’ She held up a key. ‘It’s a Brouard, Patron, Number M138H. It’s the twin of the one in Kino’s box. They always supply two. This is the other. I think she’s hoping to slip it to someone. I think that’s why she gave herself up. After all, she’s doing no good holed up in Number Ninety-Seven.’
‘I think you’re right,’ Pel said. ‘Well, she doesn’t know we’ve already found their weapons, so give her everything back and watch who appears. Pick him up as she tries to hand it over.’
They were still conferring in the schoolroom, their ears full of the sound of the rain, the murmur of the crowd and the muttering of tired policemen, when a shout lifted heads.
‘The place’s on fire!’
There was a wail from the crowd that gave way to what sounded like a sigh as they realised they had reached the grand finale of the drama. Hurrying outside, Pel saw a wisp of smoke curling out of the upper windows of Number Ninety-Seven.
That the men inside the house had not given up, however, was proved a moment later as the fire brigade arrived and began to run out their equipment. A shot rang out and the fireman leading the rush stopped dead and stared with surprise at the spray of water that leapt from his hose. As the police began to push the firemen back, it almost led to a fist fight.
‘We’re here to put a fire out!’ the fire officer yelled.
‘And we’re here to stop you getting killed doing it,’ Nadauld yelled back.
As the fireman hesitated, the smoke increased. The rain had stopped again and a squally wind began to get up, swirling the smoke away.
‘With a little pressure now,’ Brisard said, ‘they’re bound to surrender.’
Pel scowled at him. It might be better for everybody, he thought, if Brisard kept his mouth shut.
Occasional shots still came from the house and every time the firemen tried to move forward, they were driven back. Eventually the Chief intervened.
‘Let it burn,’ he ordered. ‘Save the houses on either side. We’re having no one else hurt.’
The firing had died down completely when a figure appeared on a second floor balcony. He was a slightly built man with red hair in long locks over his face. There was a gasp from the crowd.
‘Kotchkoff,’ Darcy said.
‘He’s going to jump,’ one of the firemen gasped and a ladder was edged
forward. But the man on the balcony had no wish to be helped. As he lifted his hand and pointed a pistol, Darcy raised his own gun and fired quickly, twice. The first shot kicked red brick dust from the wall. The second one hit Kotchkoff in the chest and sent him staggering back. For a moment he stood spreadeagled against the wall then he took a few staggering steps forward until he came up against the balcony rail where he wilted, slowly bending forward as if making a bow, before overbalancing and crashing into the street. Two uniformed men ran forward, grabbed his arms and dragged him away.
The roof of Number Ninety-Seven was alight now, the flames roaring through the windows. As they watched, the roof collapsed and they had just come to the conclusion that there could no longer be anyone alive inside when they heard a flurry of shots from the back of the house. Hurrying round to the Rue Mozart, Pel found a policeman just coming out of the builder’s yard to look for him.
‘We’ve got the last one, sir,’ he burst out.
It was Tyl. He was lying on his back, a bullet wound in his shoulder, a great weal on his head, a pair of broken glasses by his side.
‘He came up the ladders, over the roof and started shooting,’ Nosjean explained. ‘Lagé shot him in the shoulder and he fell off the roof. But he was still firing as he got to his feet. De Troq’ brought him down with a piece of timber. He’s not badly hurt.’
‘Then, mon brave,’ Pel said slowly, ‘you’d better get the handcuffs on him before he does anyone any more damage.’
Twenty
The barricades were coming down and the crowds had disappeared except for the last few soaked and dogged watchers determined to wrest the last ounce of drama from the siege. Firemen and police stood in groups clearing up the last details. Misset was in hospital but the wounded uniformed man and Doctor Lacoste had been allowed to go home. The dead had been carted away and were now lying silent and still at the mortuary where they’d been joined by a last unexpected victim; as the firemen had entered the burnt-out house, a wall had collapsed and buried one of them.