by Mark Hebden
As he knocked on the door, it was opened by a man with a face that looked as if he could well have been pushed down holes to chase rabbits. But he was small and he looked harmless. Misset liked harmless types.
‘Monsieur Ferry?’ he asked.
‘That’s right.’
‘First name?’
‘Aloïs. Why?’
‘There have been complaints about gardens being damaged in the city. We’re running a check. There’s talk of acid rain coming down. I expect it’s the English. They’re always at it. Or else it’s the fag end of Chernobyl.’
‘That was years ago.’
‘It’s been floating round in the upper hemisphere for a long time and the weather patterns have finally brought it this way.’ Misset thought this brilliant. ‘At least, that’s what they say.’
The little man stared at him through glasses as thick as the bottoms of wine bottles. ‘Who’re you?’
‘Misset’s my name.’
‘I mean, who do you represent?’
‘Er – the National Meteorological Department. I’ve been given this district. We just want to know if you’ve had any trouble with your garden.’
The little man gave a sly smile. ‘I never have trouble with my garden,’ he said.
‘You don’t?’
‘No. I never even look at it. Jouet next door says it’s full of weeds and the seeds blow into his garden.’
‘He thinks something’s killing his flowers.’
‘He’s a nut about his flowers.’
‘Yes, well – where do you work?’
‘Why?’
The little man was sufficiently aggressive in his replies to put Misset off his stride. He clearly wasn’t disturbed by Misset’s size.
‘It’s part of the questionnaire,’ he said.
‘I’m a truck driver,’ Ferry conceded. ‘I’m also a writer. Part time.’
‘Novels?’
‘Political pamphlets.’
‘Any special party?’
‘No. I don’t like any of them. All politicians are liars. I bet you’ve come from a political lot. It’s a poll, isn’t it? To see if I like the government or something?’
‘No, it’s not that.’
‘Well, I’m not interested. I don’t give opinions. And I don’t use my vote. Politicians are all hypocrites. I prefer to keep myself to myself.’
‘Do your writing at home?’
‘Yes. I’ve got a room upstairs.’ Ferry gestured and, stepping back to look, Misset saw a window over the sloping roof of the attached garage. It seemed to have paper plastered to the glass.
‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Photographic dark room?’
‘It’s a study and workroom. The paper on the window’s to stop that nosy con next door staring in. I spend a lot of time up there.’
‘Doesn’t your wife mind?’ Misset’s wife would have, he knew.
‘I haven’t got a wife,’ Ferry said. ‘She left me.’
Misset wasn’t surprised.
‘She said I never showed any interest in her. She believed in Women’s Lib, racial equality, health food, and all that. She took the children with her. I wasn’t sorry. I didn’t like them either. None of them.’
‘How many were there?’
‘Five. They were all against me.’
Misset ended up swapping woes with him.
The supermarket at Talant was the bête noire of Pel’s team. It was regularly broken into; once it had caught fire; once it had been the site of a gang fight. Policemen were always being called to sort it out. They had never been summoned there for a hold-up, however, so at least this time it was different.
When Pel arrived, it was to find the place in an uproar. Nosjean had arrived just ahead of him and was handling things. Two policemen from the Talant substation were also there, watched over by their sous-brigadier who announced that he’d sent for the dog-handler.
Pel didn’t think much of dogs as aids to police work. He’d once been bitten by one. ‘Why dogs?’ he asked. ‘The gang’s gone, hasn’t it?’
The sous-brigadier looked surprised. ‘Well, yes, sir,’ he said. ‘But we always have the dogs in. They might turn up a scent.’
A crowd had already gathered, all staring at the police cars. Crowds gathered automatically when anything happened. A dog depositing a turd on the pavement could bring a crowd, so could a man staring at a flat tyre on his car, a woman cuffing a difficult child. A girl adjusting her stocking could stop traffic. If the plague had arrived, a crowd would have assembled to see what it looked like.
Talant supermarket was a modern building with a glass front showing its interior, and inside, on easels, hanging from the roof and plastered on the doors were large fluorescent notices for special offers, foods at low prices, and – a new thing – suggestions for good health! Cholesterol-free polyunsaturated sunflower margarine. Additive-free meat. Healthy hamburgers full of monosodium glutamate. Organically grown vegetables. Free-range eggs devoid of botulism, salmonella, listeria and all the other desperate diseases that had recently emerged. Wheatgerm bread. Pasteurised milk. Tuberculin-tested cream. Caffeine-exempted coffee. Low-fat biscuits made of oats, bran and sand. Where, Pel wondered, had all the Norman butter gone? The pâté de foie gras from Alsace? The cheese? Where, for that matter, courage in eating. Perhaps it was a Russian plot.
The French, he decided, had become a race of hypochondriacs. Still, he thought, perhaps they always had been. Pel certainly was. Dinner table talk these days was always about things that were good for migraines, the intestines, the liver, the kidneys, the bones, the blood. Even bottled water was good for you. Adverts regularly appeared in magazines showing a cartoon figure of a nude male, complete with family pride and joy, holding a bottle of clear spring water, a stream of urine cutting the air in a perfect arc and a balloon issuing from his mouth announcing ‘C’est bon pour la santé.’
As he pushed through the glass doors, the manager was in a state of panic at the way the police had closed the premises. ‘We’ve got to keep the place trading,’ he was wailing. ‘It’ll bring the takings down. The owners will want to know why.’
‘Won’t they be more interested to know what’s happened to the money from the till?’ one of the Talant policemen asked.
There had been only one cash desk working when the raid had taken place, and the girl who had been operating it was sitting in the manager’s office clutching a brandy. She was small and blonde and her jaw worked at a wad of chewing gum. Near her was another girl holding a glass of water and a packet of aspirin.
‘Which is the one who was robbed?’ Nosjean was asking.
‘That’s her,’ the manager said, pointing to the girl with the brandy. ‘Janine Ducassis. She’s a good girl. Due for promotion. Been with us three years. Very responsible. I’m Georges Blond, by the way.’ He indicated the girl with the glass of water and the aspirin packet. ‘This is my secretary, Pascal Dubois.’
Nosjean noted that, while Janine Ducassis looked efficient, Pascal Dubois looked both efficient and beautiful. She had a splendid figure and a mass of dark wavy hair. Nosjean never failed to notice such things.
He bent over Janine Ducassis and she stopped crying and looked up with interest, because Nosjean was good-looking with a beaky nose that made him look a bit like the picture of Napoleon on the bridge at Lodi.
‘All right, Janine,’ he said gently. ‘Tell us what happened.’
She blinked away her tears. ‘Well, there weren’t many in the store,’ she said. ‘The first rush had finished. We always get a few in first thing. Buying things to eat at work. Things like that. Then it goes quiet for a while and then the women come to buy for their midday meal. After that it goes quiet again. That’s when they came. The other girls had gone for coffee and I was on my own.’
‘At the cash desk?’
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps we’d better have you there now. So we can see things as you saw them. Think you can manage it?’
She could have managed anything for Nosjean. He was as good as Robert Redford. They trooped out to the cash desk and she sat down on the stool.
‘This is where you were?’
‘Right here.’
‘Anybody else near you?’
‘No. There were a few people in Paperware and Kitchen Goods. I saw them. But nobody round here.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, I saw this car draw up outside. There were only a few people about and they were all at the other end in Fruit and Vegetables. There weren’t more than three or four cars in the car park so this one was able to park right outside. Two men got out and another one stayed in the car. I thought they were workmen come to buy sandwiches. We sell them. Ham with lettuce. Cheese and lettuce. Ham and cheese with–’
‘Go on about the man,’ Pel interrupted.
The girl looked at him. She didn’t like the look of him, especially when he interrupted Nosjean.
‘Who’s he?’ she asked Nosjean.
‘It’s all right,’ Nosjean pointed out. ‘He’s a policeman.’
She seemed satisfied. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘they came through that door there. They had on these Canadienne things. You know, those big checked coats workmen wear in winter. They had caps and dark glasses. They went through the turnstile, but instead of going down to Tinned Fruit and Speciality Foods where most people go, they just turned round and stopped in front of me. And then’ – she stared at Nosjean with big eyes and started to cry again – ‘this one pointed this gun at me.’
‘What sort of gun?’ Pel asked.
‘A gun sort of gun,’ she snapped.
She turned her back on Pel and looked at Nosjean. ‘It had a big barrel. Do they call them sawn-off shotguns? It had a big hole in the end. It must have had a big bullet in it.’
‘If it was a shotgun,’ Pel said, ‘it would have lead shot. A lot. You did right not to resist. It could have made a mess of you. That would have been a pity.’
‘Why?’
‘Pretty girl like you.’
She looked much more warmly at him.
‘This is Chief Inspector Pel,’ Nosjean introduced. ‘He’s my boss.’
‘Oh!’ The girl was obviously impressed.
‘Tell him what happened.’
‘Well, then I saw they both had – well – these gun things. One of them had his almost up my nostril,’ She was recovering rapidly. ‘The other held out a bag and told me to put the money in.’
‘What sort of bag?’
‘One of ours. Plastic. It says Supermarket Talant on it. In red letters. We give them to our customers. He held it out and said to open the till and put the money in. I didn’t argue. Would you have?’
‘No,’ Pel said.
‘So I put it in.’
‘How much was there?’
‘Well, we’d been open since eight o’clock so there–’
‘Six thousand, three hundred and twenty-four francs,’ the manager interrupted.
‘That’s not a lot.’
‘That’s not all. They opened the till on the next desk.’
‘The girl had left her key in it when she went to get her coffee,’ Pascal Dubois said.
‘It’s against the rules,’ the manager added. ‘She’ll have to go. Rules are important. What’s the good of having rules if–’
Ignoring him, Pel turned to Janine Ducassis. ‘And what were you doing while this happened?’
‘Well, I was sitting on my stool, with this gun up my nostril, wasn’t I? I heard one of them say, “The next till.” The key was in it so the one with the bag went round there and emptied it. Then I saw someone coming. They’d reached Health and Babycare. That’s usually the last call before they stop at Wines and Spirits on the way out. The man with the gun said, “Let’s go.” So they went. They went out of the door and got in the car and it drove off and I started screaming. I didn’t move while they were here.’
‘Very sensible,’ Pel said. ‘Or we might have had a murder on our hands. Did you catch the number of the car?’
‘No.’
‘What sort was it?’
‘It was grey.’
‘I mean, what make?’
‘I don’t know. It had four wheels. I know that.’
Pel turned to the manager. ‘Did you see it?’
The manager shrugged. ‘I saw nothing. I just heard the screaming and ran out. It had gone by then.’
‘Anybody else in here see it?’
‘I’ve asked. No.’
‘Any of those people outside see it?’
‘I asked them, too. They hadn’t arrived when it left.’
‘Just one old woman,’ Pascal Dubois put in. ‘Madame Folieux. A regular customer. She said she was driving in as it shot out.’
‘Did she notice anything about it?’
The manager struggled to produce a tired smile. ‘She said it was grey.’
‘We’ll ask her.’
‘She’s seventy-five. She’ll probably say it had four wheels.’
She probably would at that, Pel thought.
‘Have you checked the amount taken from the other till?’
‘Yes. Four thousand and seventy-four francs.’
‘Not a big haul,’ Pel said quietly to Nosjean.
‘They don’t seem to go in for single big hauls,’ Nosjean agreed. ‘They seem to prefer to do a lot of small places like this where there isn’t a sophisticated security system. But they’re doing all right. This is the second this week. With today’s, they’ve netted forty thousand francs. That’s not bad business in anybody’s language. Especially since they don’t have any overheads. No rates. No taxes. Not even the cost of the cars they operate, because they’re all stolen.’ He looked at the girl. ‘Could you describe them?’
She shrugged. ‘I didn’t look at them much. I kept my eye on the gun, ready to duck.’
‘Have a try.’
‘Young.’
‘How young?’
‘Twenties. Both big. I couldn’t see much. They had on these heavy coats with the collars up, caps over their eyes and dark glasses. About all I could see were their noses.’
They ascertained that one of the men seemed to have a thin hooked nose and the other a short turned up one. Both were dark, and one Canadienne was reddish, the other brown and white. From what they could make out, the driver had been small and red-haired.
‘Anything else?’ Nosjean asked. ‘Voices for instance.’
‘They didn’t say much.’
‘Did they come from round here, do you think?’
‘I didn’t ask them. Would you with a gun up your nose?’
‘I mean, had they local accents?’
‘I didn’t notice.’
‘Touch anything?’
‘Well, they didn’t touch me. I might have moved if they had. All they did was stick this gun up my nose.’
‘I’m thinking of fingerprints.’
‘Oh!’ The girl smiled. ‘Well, they wore gloves.’
‘That doesn’t help us.’
‘Except when they opened the next till.’
‘What happened then?’
‘The one with the thin nose couldn’t scoop the money out with his glove on, so he took it off.’
‘And touched something?’
‘I don’t know. I only saw out of the corner of my eye. I had this gun up my nose, remember.’
Nosjean smiled. ‘I remember. We’ll have it checked.’
‘My nose?’
‘No. The till.’ Nosjean turned to the sous-brigadier from Talant and gestured at the next till. ‘Have that thing taped off. We don’t want anyone touching it.’ He turned to the girl. ‘Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.’
She beamed at him, fully recovered now and sorry to lose him. She even managed a smile at Pel.
Pascal Dubois offered them coffee. ‘Not from a machine,’ she smiled.
When they went outside to talk to the local policemen, the crowd had grown and n
ow included a few women who were complaining that they couldn’t get into the supermarket to do their shopping, a few children on their way home from school and one or two old men taking their morning constitutional with their dogs. They had just stepped through the doors when the dog handler arrived in a rush. His dog was an alsatian and, as soon as he opened the door of his van, it shot like a bullet from a gun in the direction of the crowd where it promptly set about a large poodle which was innocently cocking its leg up at a lamp-post.
The victim was promptly supported by a labrador and a collie which must have been friends, with a mongrel that looked like a shaggy rug dancing round on the outside seeking something to bite. Women screamed. The owners of the dogs swore and lashed out with walking sticks and dog leads.
‘Holy Mother of God,’ one of the local policemen said. ‘There’s blood everywhere.’
The dog handler managed to grab his dog and drag it away, snarling, to fling it into his van. ‘It always does this,’ he said bitterly. ‘I don’t know what to do with the damn thing.’
‘Try shooting it,’ Pel suggested.
With peace restored, the local men were questioned about the raiders.
Canadiennes? Brown and white checked? And red? They looked at each other and shrugged. They had seen no one about answering the descriptions and they knew of no one who might fit.
‘It’s the first decent description we’ve had,’ Nosjean said. ‘They always wear scarves covering their faces. Once ski masks. They seem to like to vary it a bit.’
As they talked, another police car arrived. The man who climbed out was Inspector Goriot. He was a tall man, with grey hair, handsome features and a statuesque appearance, which was one of the reasons Pel didn’t like him. In Pel’s book, anybody taller and better-looking than he was, was suspect. Anybody taller, better-looking, with influence and after Pel’s job was beyond the pale.
He shook hands reluctantly. Goriot stared round him as if he were discovering unexplored territory.
‘Got it sized up?’ he asked.
‘It’s a habit of mine,’ Pel said.