Pel and the Missing Persons

by Mark Hebden

  ‘Who’s been doing all the talking?’

  ‘Goriot, for my money.’

  ‘We’ve no proof.’

  ‘No. Because Deputy Lax’s been opening his mouth, too. But then he always does. He thrives on things like this, even when they’re untrue. We’re not noted in France for electing good politicians. A man’s not usually given power because he’s the best. Usually it’s because he’s just better than the others. If Goriot’s been talking, he’s in trouble. The Chief won’t stand for disloyalty. Unfortunately rumours can’t go uninvestigated. But they will be investigated. The ballistic report on Gehrer’s car’s due any time – I’ve heard that Castéou’s almost finished – and that might surprise a few people. In the meantime–’

  ‘I’m off the Dupont case.’

  ‘I can’t let you touch it, Daniel.’

  Darcy’s face was grim as he turned to the door. ‘I’ll be seeing you, patron,’ he said.

  When Darcy left the Hôtel de Police, he made a point of moving among the haunts of his old girlfriends. There were several who worked in the city and he deliberately went there.

  He spent the rest of the day not knowing what to do. What had happened had come as a shock to him. He sat in the park and walked the streets and eventually to his surprise found himself in the Church of St-Michel et Tous les Anges. He didn’t consider himself a good church-goer and even now he didn’t pray, not even that things would come right. He simply sat and stared in front of him, trying not to think. After a while, he found the priest sitting beside him.

  ‘You have trouble, my boy?’

  Darcy shrugged.

  ‘The Lord never intended the Via Crucis to be paved with lobster mayonnaise.’

  Darcy turned quickly at the words and couldn’t help smiling.

  ‘Perhaps you would like to make a confession?’

  ‘I’ve nothing to confess, Father.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Well, by the standards of the Church, perhaps I have. But I’ve done nothing very bad. Do you believe that?’

  ‘The ability to distinguish truth from falsehood is not one of the powers granted by the Holy Ghost, my son. But the Church is more broadminded than you think.’

  ‘I’m a cop, Father,’ Darcy said suddenly. ‘I’ve been accused of taking bribes.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then it will come right in the end.’

  ‘I wish I could be sure.’

  ‘Well, the Lord teaches us not to count our chickens before they’re hatched, but I’m sure you have God’s right arm behind you, my son. Even so, God’s grace isn’t laid on like central heating. You will need to be patient.’

  The talk helped a little but it soon wore off, and when Darcy arrived at Angélique Courtoise’s flat that evening, he was in a bad temper again.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve been suspended from duty.’

  She put her arms round him. ‘Why?’

  ‘For taking bribes.’

  ‘What nonsense. Surely they believe you?’

  ‘Do they? Perhaps. Pel does, thank God. But others? You know how it gets around. What a nice flat you’ve got! Does your boy-friend get a lot of bribes? Do you believe me?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘That’s because love is blind. But it’s only blind because it’s easier than mistrusting.’

  She tried to brush his anger aside. ‘What are we doing tonight? Shall we try the cinema?’

  ‘Why not the usual? There’s nothing a young full-blooded girl enjoys more than the pleasures of the bed.’

  She looked at him, startled.

  ‘Virginity should be lost gloriously,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not a virgin! You, of all people, should know that.’

  ‘Yes. Virgins are collectors’ items these days.’

  She lost her temper. ‘Stop it, Daniel,’ she snapped. ‘Don’t talk like that. It’s flip. It’s hard. It’s childish. You’re not normally like this.’

  ‘Noted for my sense of humour? My laughter? Always in overdrive?’

  ‘Not like this, anyway. This is cruel. You do laugh. You make me laugh.’

  Suddenly there were tears in her eyes. ‘But you’re kind, Daniel. You’re always kind. You’re a policeman and you have to be tough, but you’re never mean.’

  ‘I’ve been mean today.’ Darcy frowned. ‘Normal men have their little fiddles. Use of office paper for private letters. Office telephone to contact their wives. Office car to see a girl friend. Not much. Only a little out of your way. But cops are different. You don’t have to be a hundred per cent honest. You have to be a hundred and twenty per cent. More, if possible. And you have to be seen to be. There’s a saying in France about the police: when a cop laughs at the cop-shop, all the cops laugh. It’s true, but it’s also true that sometimes they do the other thing.’

  ‘Stop it, Daniel.’

  ‘I’ll plead Article 64 of the penal code. “There is no crime or misdemeanour if the accused was in a state of dementia at the time of the act, or if he was driven to it by an irresistible impulse.” I’ll claim I was mad.’

  She was growing angry. ‘You’re talking nonsense.’

  ‘Perhaps I am. I’d better go.’

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘I think I do. I’m not fit to be with decent people and it’s better than skirmishing round each other like a couple of terriers, snapping at each other’s ankles.’

  As the door slammed, she stood staring at it, white-faced and sick-looking, and tears began to fill her eyes.

  Fifteen

  After a long period of quiet, the Tuaregs reappeared. They had lain low for so long, Nosjean and De Troq’ had come to the conclusion they had given up, that they had acquired all they needed, or grown scared, or simply bored. Nosjean and De Troq’ hadn’t forgotten them, but there had been nothing they could do. The alibis of De Rille and Tassigny seemed watertight and the surveillance of Janine Ducassis and the supermarket had produced nothing.

  Then, early in the morning, De Troq’ appeared on the other end of Nosjean’s telephone.

  ‘They’re back!’ he yelled.

  ‘Who’re back?’ Nosjean mumbled, cradling the telephone to avoid waking Mijo Lehmann.

  ‘The Tuaregs!’

  ‘What!’ Sitting up in bed, Nosjean threw off the clothes so hurriedly, Mijo Lehmann came to life, too.

  ‘When?’ he yelled.

  ‘Just now! It’s just come in. I took the call. All night garage on the N57. It does well because people from Metaux de Dijon going home after the late shift tend to fill their cars there. They got eight thousand-odd francs.’

  ‘Not much!’

  ‘It’ll pay for their petrol and a few drinks.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Big car drew up. Dirty. Looked like the sort of car a worker at Metaux de Dijon might use. Next minute the attendant was looking down the spout of a sawn-off shotgun.’

  Nosjean was busy trying to drag his clothes on with one hand and talk into the telephone with the other. Mijo Lehmann climbed out of bed after him and stood next to him, fastening the buttons on his shirt. ‘I thought it was to be a bank,’ Nosjean was saying.

  ‘Perhaps they’re just short of ready cash.’

  ‘Well, it sounds like the Tuaregs.’

  But, as it happened, this time it wasn’t. When Nosjean ran into the Hôtel de Police, De Troq’ met him, making wash-out signs with his hands.

  ‘Not the Tuaregs,’ he said. ‘Two sixteen-year-old kids. It’s a copycat job. They said they were excited by what the Tuaregs had been doing and thought they’d do the same.’

  ‘We’ve got them?’

  ‘Pomereu’s men have. They were making their getaway when they hit the kerb going round a corner into the estate at Chenove, and the front tyre burst. The car went out of control, went through a hedge and turned upside down. They’re lucky to be alive. Pomereu’s boys fished th
em out just before it burst into flames.’

  Nosjean drew a deep breath, feeling the adrenalin draining out of him.

  ‘We’ve got to nail these damned Tuaregs,’ he said. ‘If we don’t, every kid in the area’ll start doing it. All that damned nonsense in the papers making the Tuaregs sound like old-fashioned highwaymen! Romantic nonsense! They’re sophisticated, whoever they are. They’ve got brains. They know what they’re doing, and they’re experts. These kids aren’t. Someone will kill himself. The Tuaregs don’t go in for killing people.’

  ‘They might one day,’ De Troq’ said drily.

  He and Nosjean had their suspicions but there was really nothing very concrete about them and the whole scene seemed suddenly to have gone dead. Nobody was talking and nobody was doing anything. Claudie Darel and the other policewoman were still watching for the fawn Sierra. They’d spotted young De Rille several times, often with Dominique Tassigny de Bré beside him, but he seemed to be about his legitimate business. He seemed to frequent the bars near Garages Automobile Europe and twice they’d seen him outside with a Ferrari and a man who looked English discussing the car’s points.

  No further indication had come in about which bank was to be the Tuaregs’ next target, but Louis the Limp was still certain that it was to be a bank.

  ‘How do you know?’ Nosjean demanded.

  ‘I picked it up.’

  ‘Where?’

  Louis the Limp gave Nosjean a disgusted look and didn’t bother to answer. You didn’t ask informers where they picked up their information.

  ‘How do you know it’s a bank?’ Nosjean persisted.

  ‘I don’t. This type told me, that’s all.’

  ‘Where did the information come from?’

  ‘These types were heard talking and banks were mentioned.’

  ‘They might have been thinking of drawing out their savings.’

  ‘That wasn’t the impression.’

  ‘Who was it who was talking?’

  ‘That wasn’t passed on.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Scared.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘It was felt there might be a shotgun in the earhole and the trigger pulled.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like the Tuaregs. Are you sure it isn’t all made up to raise a bit of cash?’

  ‘This one doesn’t make things up,’ Louis the Limp said. ‘But a lot of information drifts by.’

  ‘What’s he do?’

  ‘He isn’t a he. He’s a she.’

  ‘So what does she do?’

  ‘She works a switchboard.’

  Nosjean decided Louis the Limp’s informant was a girl-friend but since he was known to have a lot of girl-friends – not only in the city but in the countryside around and, come to that, in a few other towns and areas of countryside, too – it didn’t help much. Louis refused to give any more information and even seemed indignant that Nosjean wouldn’t believe him.

  ‘What we need,’ Nosjean said as he discussed it with De Troq’ over a beer in the Bar Transvaal, ‘is a flying squad. Two or three cars with radios and several men on tap ready to get away at once as soon as we hear something.’

  Pel took the same view as Nosjean: that they needed to catch the Tuaregs quickly because copycat robberies might turn into bloody affairs with someone killed. Guns in the hands of sixteen-year-olds could be messy.

  ‘I’ll let the Chief know what’s in the wind,’ he said. ‘Inform Pomereu of Traffic, and Turgot, Nadauld’s successor. They’ll also need to know. What back-up do you want?’

  ‘Just the cars, patron.’

  ‘Arms?’

  ‘Nothing special. The Tuaregs don’t seem to go in for violence in spite of the shotguns they use. We think they’re spoiled kids who’ve been used to money who’ve found they’re a bit short and thought up this way of earning some. I expect they regard it as a bit of a prank. But we’ll take no risks.’

  ‘You’d better not,’ Pel said.

  Pomereu provided cars and Turgot provided men. With the flying squad formed, all they now needed was the time and place.

  ‘Just the name of the bank Louis the Limp said they were going to do,’ Nosjean said.

  Watching from a stationer’s opposite where Janine Ducassis lived, Claudie Darel continued the surveillance. There had been nothing to indicate that the girl from the supermarket was involved in any way in the robberies. Her route home seemed normal enough. Occasionally, she stopped to buy food but always she went to her home in the Arsenal area of the city, a district of small houses and flats; the young men who appeared outside later, when investigated, seemed to have no connection whatsoever with the Tuaregs.

  Then one night they noticed Janine Ducassis was giving Pascal Dubois, the manager’s secretary, a lift, and that Pascal Dubois descended from the little Fiat outside an expensive-looking house in the Rue des Alouettes near the Parc de la Colombière, one of the best districts in the city. She didn’t re-emerge and Janine Ducassis continued on to her home in Arsenal.

  It didn’t take long to discover that Pascal Dubois’ car was having a service at Garages Automobile Europe where De Rille worked from time to time, and the following evening, when the supermarket closed, there were two cars available. Claudie had arranged for the other policewoman to bring her own car and while she followed Janine Ducassis to her home at Arsenal, Claudie followed Pascal Dubois. This time she drove herself home and her car wasn’t a Fiat Panda. It was a Ford Escort, much bigger and better-looking than Janine Ducassis’ miniature vehicle.

  ‘She lives near the Église St-Paul,’ Claudie reported. ‘So she must have relations or a boyfriend at the place in the Rue des Alouettes. It’s a block of flats.’

  It didn’t take long to acquire the name of the owner of the block. It didn’t mean a thing. It belonged to a man called Bagnolle.

  The following night, after Pascal Dubois had driven from the supermarket to the flat she owned near the Église St-Paul, Claudie watched for a while from her car, then, just as she was about to pack up and go home, she saw Pascal Dubois re-emerge, climb into her car and drive off. She stopped outside the house in the Rue des Alouettes and went inside.

  ‘There’s someone there who’s important to her,’ she told Nosjean.

  ‘There probably is,’ Nosjean agreed. ‘Find out who.’

  They finally seemed to have a link connecting the robbery at Talant to the two bright young men they were watching.

  De Rille’s girlfriend seemed to be the sister of his good friend, Tassigny, while Pascal Dubois, who worked at Talant and doubtless knew all the procedures there, seemed to be in the habit of having her car serviced at the garage which De Rille had made his headquarters. Finally, Pascal Dubois, though she lived near the Église St-Paul, was in the habit of regularly visiting a flat in the Rue des Alouettes. Nosjean and De Troq’ had already guessed whose it was.

  De Troq’, as stubborn as Darcy and as dogged as Lagé, came in with something else. He had been prowling round Morbihaux, feeling that somehow he might pick up something. He did.

  He almost fell into the sergeants’ room.

  ‘That boat,’ he said.

  ‘Which boat?’

  ‘That boat they used – De Rille and Dominique Tassigny.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘They said they used it. They didn’t. It wasn’t there that day.’

  ‘What?’ Nosjean jumped up. ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘I bumped into the owner. He said he’d found out who’d had it and it was all right. It wasn’t De Rille and Dominique Tassigny. It was a boy called Mouchotte. Georges Mouchotte. He was with a girl called Santez. Anna Santez. And they were up to the same thing De Rille said he was up to with Dominique Tassigny. But if they were using the boat, De Rille couldn’t have been.’

  ‘Have you checked?’

  ‘The Santez girl’s mother confirms it. She’d suspected what they were up to and she was waiting. The Santez girl got a good hiding. She’s
only sixteen. The boy’s nineteen. Madame Santez thought they were a bit young for that sort of thing.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘De Rille knew the boat was available and that people borrowed it and the owner didn’t mind. It was a quick and ready alibi. Unfortunately, they didn’t make enquiries. If they had they’d have found the boat wasn’t there when they said it was. Ought we to pick them up?’

  Nosjean frowned, worried. ‘It’s purely circumstantial and they’ll employ the best counsel there is. Daddy’s got the money. They’d get off. I’d rather catch them at it. Let’s wait. They may have a go at Louis the Limp’s bank.’

  Like Nosjean and De Troq’, Misset also hadn’t given up. He also didn’t seem to be making much progress and he would happily have written ‘No police action required’ on his report, but he had a suspicion that somewhere, somehow, he was missing something. He tried Jouet again, the man who was claiming his garden was being ruined.

  ‘It’s sodium chlorate,’ Jouet said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The stuff Ferry’s throwing on my lawn.’

  ‘Have you seen him throwing it on?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So how do you know?’

  ‘When I’m not here, my wife watches.’

  ‘And has she seen him?’

  ‘No. I think he does it at night when we’re asleep.’

  ‘It seems a lot of trouble to go to. Especially when you say you haven’t quarrelled. How do you know this stuff you found in your garden’s this sodium whatever-it-is?’

  ‘I found some crystals and had them tested.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I’ve got a friend who works at Metallurgie Bourguignonne. They have a laboratory.’

  ‘And he decided they were this sodium thing?’

  ‘No. I told him that. He just checked.’

  ‘So, in fact, he didn’t know it was this sodium thing until you told him?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘That’s leading the witness.’

  ‘I’m not a lawyer. I thought it was weedkiller and I wanted to know, that’s all.’

  Misset ran out of ideas again. He couldn’t just go to the man next door and say ‘You’re scattering weedkiller on your neighbour’s lawn’. He had to have a bit more proof.