Pel and the Missing Persons

by Mark Hebden

  The same idea had finally occurred to the Chief so he changed the subject. ‘You know Judge Polverari’s on a long leave of absence. He’s not been well.’

  Pel nodded. He knew all right, because Judge Polverari, an old friend of his, had celebrated with him only two or three days before. Small, fat, good-natured and married to a wealthy wife, he had spotted Pel’s potential long since and had supplied him with good meals and brandy when he was just a poverty-stricken inspector in the days before he had met the Widow Faivre-Perret.

  Pel knew he would miss him. Juges d’instruction could be important. They could be a help or an impediment, according to their character. When anything happened, the police interviewed witnesses, took statements and passed the documents to the Procureur who decided whether there was or was not a case to answer and named an examining magistrate to build up a dossier. These juges d’instruction could summon witnesses and interrogate them, and according to temperament, could be a great help or a pain in the neck. Polverari had been good at his job and Pel could only hope whoever came as his relief would be as good.

  The Chief watched him. ‘I saw Philippe Duche in town,’ he observed quietly. To his surprise Pel showed no concern.

  ‘I know,’ he said calmly. ‘He’s out of gaol.’

  ‘He once wanted to kill you. For sending him down over that Zamenhoff robbery attempt.’

  ‘He doesn’t now,’ Pel said.

  The Chief raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh?’

  ‘He’s gone straight. He got married.’

  ‘Who’d have Philippe Duche?’

  ‘Woman called Solange Cardillac.’

  ‘I’ve heard of her.’

  ‘I expect so. She’s a prison visitor.’

  ‘And she married Duche?’ The Chief looked startled. And well he might, because Philippe Duche had inherited the Duche gang when his older brother, Edouard-Charles, had been murdered.

  Pel nodded. ‘He bought a truck and started in haulage. He’s got four now and doing all right. I think he’s discovered to his surprise that being honest’s easier than crime. He’s living at Benois de l’Herbue.’

  The Chief knew the place. It was just off the N74 on the lower side of the slope of the land. It was said that the right of the road was entirely conservative and the left entirely socialist and that it showed in the wine they produced.

  ‘It was the gang’s headquarters in the old days,’ Pel said. ‘He lived there with his mother but she died and his girl-friend married someone else while he was in gaol. He was all set to kill her when he came out, but fortunately he met Solange Cardillac.’

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘No longer young. But these days neither is Duche. She’s a bit of a saint. He goes to church now.’

  ‘Well, give him a chance. Keep out of his hair. See what happens. He’s less trouble to us this way. Who’s running his gang?’

  ‘Nobody. It vanished. We put most of them in Number 7, Rue d’Auxonne.’ Number 7, Rue d’Auxonne was the local gaol. ‘When they came out, two of them went south. Marseilles has them now. One went to Paris. One died in prison. The rest decided it wasn’t worth the candle.’

  The Chief beamed. Things seemed to be under control.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘We could do with more men,’ Pel said. ‘They’re all handling half a dozen cases at once.’

  The Chief pretended to be deaf. ‘By the way,’ he said. ‘I’m taking away Cadet Darras and Detective Officer Morell.’

  It was unexpected and brought Pel upright in his chair at once.

  ‘Why?’ he snapped.

  ‘Take it easy.’ The Chief held up a calming hand. ‘It’s only temporary. There’s been a complaint from Missing Persons Bureau. They say there are too many names on their computer. It’s a request to all areas to try to clear a few up.’

  Darcy gave Pel a weary look. The Chief was known for the blitzes he had from time to time: the traffic round the Porte Guillaume; drugs in bars; the crowds of youngsters who gathered in the station forecourt on skateboards, mopeds and motor bikes.

  ‘Missing persons,’ Pel observed, ‘include kids who don’t like their parents, parents who don’t like their kids, husbands who don’t like their wives, wives who don’t like their husbands, old people who are fed up, and schoolchildren who object to their teachers. Most of them prefer to stay missing.’

  ‘A few don’t,’ the Chief said mildly. ‘In 1986, for instance, it was discovered that quite a few missing geriatrics from a private hospital overlooking the sea near Brest were being bagged up like fresh groceries and dropped into the Atlantic weighted with stones. Five, I think it was. They were only discovered when one of them, rather carelessly weighted, turned up in the water just outside – knocking at the door, so to speak, and asking to be let back in.’ The Chief grinned. ‘We aren’t expecting anything quite so spectacular as that but we hope to sort out a few for their worried relatives. I’m making up a team. Two of headquarters staff, one of Nadauld’s men from Uniformed Branch, one of Pomereu’s from Traffic, and Morell and Cadet Darras from your department.’

  ‘Why two from me?’

  ‘One,’ the Chief corrected. ‘Cadet Darras is only used to run errands and fetch the beer and sandwiches.’

  ‘I’ve been doing some checking,’ the Chief went on. ‘We can’t expect to sort out missing children, wives and husbands because, as you say, some of them don’t want to be found. But we have thirteen missing old age pensioners. I think we ought to be able to find one or two. In fact, we’ve already found one. She’d gone to live with a cousin and forgot to tell her family. That’s the sort of thing we want to sort out.’

  Pel said nothing and the Chief went on cheerfully. ‘I’ll get the team making enquiries. It’ll please Central Records, ease the strain on the computer – if computers feel strain – and, above all, it’ll please me.’

  There was no more to be said. The Chief had made up his mind and he was the boss. Pel studied him carefully. He had a feeling he had something further up his sleeve and he was keeping it until last because he knew it wasn’t pleasant.

  The Chief sighed. He knew Pel had guessed there was more to come. The cunning little bugger, he thought, always did. He drew a deep breath.

  ‘How well did you know Inspector Goriot?’ he asked.

  ‘Too well,’ Pel said bluntly.

  ‘Get on all right with him?’

  ‘No. He had as many opinions as a caterpillar has legs.’

  ‘He was badly injured in that bombing business in the Impasse Tarien.’

  ‘Four dead,’ Pel said. ‘Three of them cops.’

  ‘He’s back.’

  ‘I hadn’t noticed he’d been away.’

  ‘Well, they made him co-ordinator for the area. Light duties until he recovered. He’s back in harness.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Working. With you. Under you,’ the Chief added hastily.

  ‘I expect his great-uncle, Senator Forton, pulled strings.’

  He didn’t miss a trick, the Chief thought. Because that was exactly what had happened. Goriot had had a word with his great-uncle, who had had a word with the Prefect who was selected by Central Government to see that the Maire, who was elected by the people to do what they wanted, did what Central Government wanted instead. The Prefect was important and could fix things. ‘Goriot will do as he’s told,’ he said.

  ‘He’d better,’ Pel said darkly. He didn’t like people who might usurp his authority – especially people who had great-uncles with influence. He had aiways considered Goriot pompous and not very bright, and to have him back after so long was enough to make a man worry rats. It completely cancelled the satisfaction that came from Philippe Duche’s turning over a new leaf. He sighed. Burgundy wasn’t what it was, he thought.

  ‘You’ll have to work with him,’ the Chief said.

  Pel made no promises.

  ‘He’s due for retirement soon.’

  So, Pel thought, am I
. He was, he considered, overworked, underpaid and unappreciated, and in his old age would have ended up in the poorhouse at Beaune but for the fact that he had contrived – he still didn’t know quite how – to marry a woman who not only had money but knew how to use it to make more money. She ran the best hairdresser’s salon in the city – the way they charged, it could only be the best – and now was branching out in other directions with a boutique next door, a sportswear shop and a children’s shop in the Rue de la Liberté. Pel often wondered what it would be like to be married to a millionairess, because every one of Madame’s enterprises seemed to be making money hand over fist and, into the bargain, she had recently once more come into money on the death of an aunt. She belonged to a family of ancients who, because she was the only youthful member, left her all their money when they died so that she increased her wealth without even trying.

  ‘I suppose he couldn’t take over these smash and grabs?’ the Chief asked.

  ‘No,’ Pel said. He paused. ‘I could put him on to the type who thinks his garden’s being damaged by the man next door. Misset should be able to give him a few tips.’

  Since Misset was the one man in his team Pel didn’t trust, it was no compliment.

  Pel left the conference feeling worse than when he had entered. His cold seemed to have increased and his head ached. He wished he were a sewage inspector. As he stalked back to his office, his eyes were feverishly bright.

  ‘Let up, patron,’ Darcy advised.

  ‘Shut up,’ Pel snarled.

  ‘Yes, patron.’ Darcy used the most pained voice he could produce and Pel immediately felt guilty. Darcy was as modern as a rocket to the moon, and when his profile and personality were in top gear, could collect girls as if they were wasps round a honeypot. It made Pel sick with envy.

  ‘Not your fault,’ he managed to growl.

  They ate lunch together at a small restaurant near the university. The steaks were tough enough to sole your boots with, the wine tasted like paint-stripper, and the waitress had so much mascara on her eyelashes, they seemed in danger of dropping off into the hors-d’oeuvres.

  When they returned to the Hôtel de Police, Claudie Darel was waiting. She looked like a grave Mireille Mathieu. ‘Bad news, patron,’ she said.

  Pel’s eyebrows rose. ‘The government’s fallen? War’s broken out? We’ve been invaded by Mars?’

  ‘Worse,’ she said. ‘The Tuaregs again. The supermarket at Talant.’

  Pel sighed. What with the Tuaregs, Goriot and the Missing Persons Bureau, it was more than a man could stand. He finally gave up. Where not smoking was concerned, he gave up easily.

  ‘You carry on with the paperwork,’ he said to Darcy. ‘I’ll go. But first I’d like a cigarette. I threw all mine away.’

  Darcy handed over his packet. ‘I thought you’d given them up,’ he said mildly.

  Pel lit the cigarette and dragged smoke down to his socks. ‘I’ve started again.’

  ‘How long was it?’

  Pel gave vent to a triple grandsire peal of coughing. As he recovered, feeling better, he looked at his watch. ‘Two days, eight hours, fourteen minutes and a few seconds. It was a good try.’

  ‘It didn’t last long.’

  ‘I didn’t expect it to.’

  ‘Won’t Geneviève mind?’

  ‘I don’t suppose so. She didn’t expect it to last long either.’

  Two

  Sergeant Josephe Misset leaned on the zinc of the Bar de la Petite Alsacienne in the suburb of Couchy. He was supposed to be watching a house in the street that ran at right angles away from where he stood. It was about as exciting as watching paint dry. A man called Raymond Jouet had been complaining that his next door neighbour, one Aloïs Ferry, was deliberately ruining his garden. Misset had talked to Jouet and certainly the garden looked as though something had attacked it.

  ‘I think he’s putting something on it,’ Jouet had said. ‘They use things to get rid of grass in crazy paving, don’t they? Perhaps he’s scattering it on my garden.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Have you quarrelled?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you seen him scattering anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s trying to do you a favour. Getting rid of the weeds for you.’

  Jouet had given Misset a look that would have shrivelled an elephant.

  ‘Well,’ Misset had said, ‘what proof have you? You haven’t quarrelled with him. So why should he do this to you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘He’s a funny type.’

  ‘What do you mean by “a funny type”?’

  ‘Well, he keeps himself to himself.’

  Misset had often wished he could keep himself to himself – especially when his wife was on at him. Women, he felt, got married to have a house-trained pet. Men started as husbands but gradually got themselves moulded until they were something else entirely and, when they were finally thoroughly mouldy, the wives decided they didn’t like what they’d made and started looking elsewhere. Not that Madame Misset looked elsewhere. Sometimes Misset wished she would. But she was determined to hang on to him, in spite of the fact that she didn’t trust him. She didn’t understand him, he felt. She never had. His spirit, he considered, was a wild, free one that couldn’t be fastened down; though Misset felt sometimes he had a nail through one foot into the floor. Even the kids didn’t understand him. They always took his wife’s side. It would be nice, he thought nostalgically, if he could stuff the lot of them – the family dog, too, for that matter, because even that took sides – into the nose cone of a rocket and fire them off into outer space. They’d look fine on Mars wondering what had happened. He didn’t think they’d get on with the Martians any better than they did with him.

  They always, he decided, seemed to be in his hair, which was why Misset spent all his time on duty – at least, so he told his wife. Most of it, in fact, he spent standing at the zinc in bars, just as he was doing now. There had been a time when he had chased girls. But they didn’t seem to notice him any more. He wondered if it was the dark glasses that put them off. He had started wearing them when his eyes had begun to go, trying to look as though he were a danger to his fellow men and a devil with women. It didn’t seem to work. Nobody seemed to feel threatened and women preferred younger, slimmer men. Once Misset had been good-looking; now he was just fat from too much beer-drinking and too much dodging work.

  ‘Does he mess about with chemicals?’ he asked.

  ‘Not to my knowledge,’ Jouet said.

  ‘Why would he want to ruin your garden?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Does he do any gardening?’

  ‘Never. His place’s a pigsty.’

  ‘And yours isn’t?’

  ‘I take a lot of trouble with my garden.’

  Misset often wished someone would take a lot of trouble with his garden. Gardening wasn’t something that roused in him a deep emotion. He could just as easily look at a bare patch of scrubby lawn as a bright green sward surrounded by flowers. He never sat in the garden, except on a summer evening with a beer when his wife and family were out visiting, and he couldn’t rouse any enthusiasm for working in it.

  He stared at Jouet. He seemed to have run out of questions. He couldn’t think what to ask next. He’d been given the job chiefly because everybody else was engaged elsewhere and there was no one else. Normally Misset’s job was handling the telephone but occasionally when the cases piled up he was sent out to do his stint – usually on piffling enquiries like this one. It didn’t worry Misset. There had been a time when he had hoped to hold the Chief’s job or that of Commissioner for Paris, but he had perpetrated too many mistakes and he knew he’d never make it now.

  He finished his beer but was reluctant to leave the bar. It was run by a barmaid with blond hair and a bust like two buns bursting out of a bag. Miss
et found it hard to keep his eyes off them. As he stepped into the sunshine he spotted a big Citroën parked in the street. Alongside it were two men. Misset recognised them at once: one was Councillor Auguste Lax, who represented the area on the Communal Council. He was a harsh-voiced, abrasive character who spent most of his time attacking people more able than himself. Known as “The Rasp” for his voice as well as for his tactics, he was far from popular in the Council Chamber, where he was known for always going over the top in his criticisms.

  The other man was Senator Forton. Misset knew Senator Forton well. He was Inspector Goriot’s great-uncle, and until Goriot had been injured in a bombing affair in the city that had made the storming of the Bastille look like a Saturday night fight outside a bar, he had benefited greatly from Senator Forton’s patronage. Senator Forton liked to interfere, and Goriot had always been willing to supply him with information. It had once resulted in Misset’s being hauled up before the Chief for neglecting his duty. He hadn’t neglected his duty – well, a little bit, he conceded – but a villain they’d had under surveillance had managed to make an escape while Misset had been eyeing a girl. It had reached Senator Forton’s ears and he had asked questions of the Chief who had taken it out on Pel, who had gone for Darcy, who had bawled out Misset, whose only option, being as low in rank as he could be for the job he was doing, was to kick the cat when he got home. Misset had no love for Senator Forton, or for that matter Inspector Goriot or Councillor Lax. It was always easy to be wise sitting on the sidelines – a bit like football commentators indicating what a player should have done when he’d been more concerned with being up to his neck in flying boots and pounding heels. It was time, Misset decided, to move from the bar. He didn’t expect either Forton or Lax to remember him, but they might if they saw him hanging about.

  Walking to the house next to Jouet’s, he studied it from the roadway. It was small and detached and looked exactly like Jouet’s. It had an attached garage with a roof that sloped towards Jouet’s property, which was only the width of the path that ran alongside the garage away from it. In the drive was the owner’s car. It was a blue Peugeot of not very recent vintage and was patched with rust.