by Mark Hebden
Mexico! In the name of God, Mexico!
Pel’s knowledge of Mexico was small and what he’d heard about it he didn’t like. It wasn’t long since he’d sat shocked and horrified at the television pictures of a devastated Mexico City, destroyed in one of the biggest earthquakes of recent years, and from what he’d read of the rest of the country it was a lawless place suffering from a tendency to battle, murder and sudden death. He was quite prepared to admit that his view was more than likely wrong but nothing he’d read of the place offered much encouragement.
It needed another point of view so he called in Darcy who immediately held out a packet of cigarettes. Pel eyed them with distaste.
‘Why do you tempt me, Daniel?’ he asked.
Darcy smiled, showing his splendid white teeth. ‘I enjoy the expressions that cross your face, patron,’ he said. ‘Greed, anguish, despair, doubt, concern – all of them – and finally relief. It’s a whole stage show in one. It’s better than Dallas on television.’
Pel gave him a sour look. He was well aware of his feelings about cigarettes. For years now he’d been trying to give them up. Once he’d managed it for a whole half-day. But that had been inspired and he’d never managed it since.
‘Mexico,’ he said. ‘Have you ever been there, Daniel?’
‘Never, worse luck.’
‘What’s it like? Do you know?’
Darcy’s handsome teeth flashed again. Darcy’s teeth could snap your head off if you moved too close. ‘It’s hot, patron,’ he said. ‘That is, when it isn’t too cold. It’s got a lot of desert. And where it isn’t desert it’s tropical. It’s a very difficult country, they say. They have revolutions there, don’t they?’
They’d better not, Pel thought. Not while he was there, anyway.
‘What about the people?’
‘They all look like bandits, I believe. I think, in fact, that up to not very long ago a lot of them were. You must have seen the films, patron.’
Pel hadn’t. ‘I mean,’ he said sourly, ‘what are the cops like?’
Darcy shrugged. ‘I’ve never met one, patron. I don’t suppose they’re as efficient as we are, but I expect they do their best.’
Breaking the news to Madame wasn’t as difficult as Pel had thought. He left the car – the new car she had persuaded him over his agonies at its cost to buy – in the drive. The front door was opened by Madame Routy with such promptness he suspected she had been waiting behind it for him.
‘What have you spoiled for supper tonight?’ he asked. It was a regular quip and it got a regular answer.
‘It wouldn’t matter,’ she responded. ‘You wouldn’t know what a good meal is.’
The niceties observed, they both continued on their way. Madame Pel was occupied with lists, because she’d just acquired new premises next to her beauty salon in the Rue de la Liberté and was about to open a boutique – an expensive one to attract the wealthy customers who came to her salon to have their hair styled.
She put the list down and listened carefully, as she always did. She was never too busy for Pel. She smiled at his mingled indignation, disgust and dismay.
‘You’ll be all right, Pel,’ she said.
‘It’s about 10,000 kilometres away!’
‘There are telephones. They’re not savages. I’ve made calls to France from Mexico City. I went there once to a conference. They have taxis and restaurants and hotels and buses just the same as we do. The place even looks a little like Paris because a lot of the older architecture’s French in style. After all, the French Army was in Mexico for a long time during the last century. They’ve even got an opera house like the one in Paris.’
‘Nothing from Burgundy?’
‘Probably only you.’ She smiled. ‘How long will you be away?’
‘Two days, I suppose. One day there, one day back.’
The smile came again, gentle and chiding. ‘I think it might take longer than that. It’s an eight-hour flight and you have to allow for jet lag. I should say a week.’
‘A week?’ Pel stared. It was worse than he’d realised. ‘Simply to pick up a villain?’
‘Are you going on your own?’
‘De Troq’s going. To do the talking. He’s a linguist. He’s also a baron and has the grand manner, and it’s necessary to impress people. Make them realise the French police force contains men of dignity. I thought the Paris lot might do the trip. You know what they’re like up there. They pick all the best jobs for themselves and leave us the trips to dreary places like Belgium and Holland and England. But, no, this time, they said it was our case and we’d got to handle it. I expect they’ve got something better lined up for themselves. Bali or Java or somewhere like that.’
‘Why is your man in Mexico?’
Pel, who was stuffing papers into his briefcase, looked up, startled. The question was unexpected.
‘Why?’
‘Yes, why Mexico?’
‘To get away from the murder charge in France.’
‘Nothing else?’ Madame frowned. ‘Well, why not Australia? It’s further away. Why not the United States? It must be easy to get lost in the United States. Why not New Orleans? Or Quebec? They speak French there. Or why not Brazil? They’re not known to be sympathetic to extradition. I seem to remember reading about the British having some problem over some man they were after. And didn’t you say Navarro had a Mexican background?’
Pel looked at his wife with affection. She followed all his cases with great interest and she never missed a trick.
And she had quite a point. Why Mexico? Pel considered. Well, Mexico was a long way away, which was one good reason. And it was inaccessible, parts of it, so he understood, very inaccessible. And he’d heard the Mexicans in the past hadn’t been over co-operative, because they hadn’t had a lot of love for France since the French invasion in the last century.
He frowned. Had their guess been right? Navarro did have a Mexican background. Had he, as they’d thought, found something there worth having and was that the reason why he and Donck had quarrelled violently enough for Navarro to end up dead? And was that why Donck had bolted to Mexico rather than one of the other countries he might have chosen? Was he after it now? It was a thought worth investigating.
Pel kissed his wife. ‘Genevieve de mon coeur,’ he said. ‘You are a splendid business woman.’ Splendid enough, he thought privately, to have removed from Evariste Clovis Désiré Pel the terror of a penniless old age. ‘You run the best hairdressing salon and beauty parlour in the city. And I know you have a gift for selling because I haven’t failed to notice the things you are about to display in your new boutique. But I think, nevertheless, that you missed your vocation. You would have made a good detective.’
He was pleased to see the delight on her face.
Six
What Madame had said provided a very interesting idea.
Sufficiently interesting, in fact, to occupy Pel’s mind for the next two days while the documents were prepared and the case he had to offer to the Mexican authorities was set out precisely and clearly. His wife offered advice from her own experience of Mexico City.
‘It’s warm,’ she said. ‘But it’s very high and can be cold at night, especially this early in the year. I’ll make sure to pack a warm sweater for you. You can have the one I knitted.’
Pel smiled to show his thanks, but it was a false smile because he was wondering if it were possible to drop a knitted garment out of the window of an aeroplane over the Atlantic. Madame believed her duty as a wife was not only to provide a good home, good food and good companionship for her husband, but – despite her occupation with business and her ability to acquire through that business vast wealth and the finest sweaters money could buy – also to knit for him. Unfortunately, however, for all her skill with finance, Madame was no knitter and the results of her efforts usually found their way, after one wearing, to the back of Pel’s wardrobe and there left until they could decently be forgotten.
&n
bsp; ‘That will be splendid,’ Pel said, lying through his teeth.
Because he was going to be away from her side for the first time since their marriage for more than a day or so, he took her for a drink in the Bar du Destin, one of his favourite haunts, and then to a meal in the Relais St Armand where they had first met. Pel had been making one of his periodical attempts to give up smoking at the time and the little gadget he was employing to roll his own had so amused Madame, recently a widow, that she had burst out laughing. There wasn’t much Pel’s inability to stop smoking had done for him, but at least it had brought him Madame.
‘Do you remember,’ his wife said as Pel snatched his thoughts back to the present, ‘that the first time we came in here, we were sitting over there? You were eating an andouillette.’
‘A weakness of mine.’
‘And when you tried to roll a cigarette, I offered you one of mine. I smoked in those days.’
‘I still do,’ Pel sighed. ‘You thought I was trying to give up because I was an athlete.’
‘A little flattery,’ she admitted.
‘I took to haunting the place after that,’ Pel said. ‘In the hope of meeting you again.’
‘So did I.’
‘You did? Why?’
‘Because you intrigued me.’
Pel smiled. He didn’t often smile and it made him look bilious. But the romantic thought that theirs had been an instant romance – the across-a-crowded-room sort of thing – pleased him, because in his hearts of hearts Pel was an incurable romantic.
‘I shall miss you, Pel.’
‘And I you.’
‘Do be careful. Don’t get wet. And remember it’s cold at night so if you have to go out put something warm on.’
‘I’ll also remember to say “please” and “thank you”.’ They both laughed and she put her arm through his and hugged it, so that he got a whiff of her perfume. Good God, he realised, we’re behaving like a couple of lovesick youngsters! But it was a thought that ought to sustain him during his long absence in Mexico. A week! Holy Mother of God, it was a lifetime!
In fact, it was to turn out longer than that.
Getting Pel away was like launching an expedition to the Antarctic.
He had been walking around for two days looking like Napoleon receiving the news of his defeat at Waterloo, and on the day of his departure he awoke feeling like a martyr – and looking a bit like one, too. Like some wines, he considered, he didn’t travel well.
The night before, he had carefully laid out the suit he kept for when he met the President of France or the Queen of England, put out enough shirts and underwear to fit out a regiment, and alongside the file of papers and documents he was taking, made another pile of notebooks, pencils and ballpoints and the assorted cures for the various ailments he considered he suffered from.
Finally, he built on the bed a stack of packets of Gauloises as big as the Great Pyramid of Cheops. He had still been at it when Madame, wondering what had happened to him, had appeared alongside him.
She smiled, removed half his shirts and underwear, found something lightweight in case it was hot and something warm for the cold evenings, discarded half the notebooks, pens and pencils on the grounds that they had shops in Mexico where he could buy them, and swept away the largest part of the Gauloises.
‘I shall need those,’ Pel said in alarm.
‘No, you won’t.’ It was the iron hand in the velvet glove, Pel thought. It happened in the end with all marriages. ‘All you need is enough to get you to the airport. You can buy them there in the duty-free shop and they’ll be much cheaper, too. Leave these for when you come home.’
The following morning, De Troq’ collected him in the great roadster he drove – slimline mudguards, a strap over the bonnet and headlamps like the eyes of a prehistoric monster. Despite being poverty stricken, De Troq’ seemed to have more of the good things of life than most people.
Yves Pasquier from next door was there to see them off.
‘Maman says you’re going away.’
‘Well –’ Pel wondered how he’d heard and how much his affairs were discussed over coffee up and down Leu ‘ – not for long.’
‘You’re coming back?’ The boy sounded disappointed.
‘So I hope.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Mexico.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Across the sea. Near America.’
‘Do they have guns in Mexico?’
‘Without doubt.’
‘You could bring me one back.’
The request was made without blinking and without subterfuge. Clearly Yves Pasquier was in the habit of receiving gifts from people who went abroad.
‘Do they chew gum as well?’ he asked.
‘Probably.’
‘Perhaps you could ask them if they know how to separate it from string and marbles.’
Madame smiled. ‘You could bring him something back,’ she murmured. ‘It would cement the friendship.’
As they stowed the luggage in the car, Pel noticed that, while his own suitcase was unmanageably large, De Troq’s seemed to consist only of a small canvas holdall.
‘Have you been to Mexico before?’ he asked.
‘Not exactly, patron.’
‘What do you mean “Not exactly”?’
‘Well, my father has. So has my grandfather and my great-grandfather. So it’s a special pleasure to be able to do the same.’
‘Your family’s connected with Mexico, I hear.’
‘We have an interest. My great-great-grandfather, the General, was there during the intervention. He was commanding the 137th Regiment of the Line.’
‘I don’t suppose your great-great-grandfather kept any notes about Mexico, did he?’
‘He kept a diary, patron.’
Pel sniffed. ‘It would have been useful if you’d brought it with you.’
De Troq’ smiled his faint superior smile. ‘I did, patron.’
It was a bright sunny day and France was looking at its best. Because he was leaving it, to Pel, as they crossed the hills towards Paris, the fields looked greener than ever, the trees and hedgerows more lush, the vistas wider.
Inevitably, he managed to get lost among the by-ways of Charles de Gaulle Airport which, at the best of times, was like being in a space city, but De Troq’ managed in the end to get him aboard the aircraft. Settling back for the take-off, De Troq’ took out a book – Letters of Madame de Sévigné, Pel noticed with envy; why couldn’t he read intelligent things like that? As the machine began to move, De Troq’ noticed that Pel’s knuckles were white as he clutched the arm of his seat. It wasn’t the take-off, though. He’d realised he’d forgotten to buy his duty-free Gauloises.
Over the Atlantic Pel recovered a little as he remembered that he had managed to rescue some of the packets Madame had swept aside and stuff them into odd corners of his suitcase. ‘Do you think I’ll have enough?’ he asked. ‘I wouldn’t like to run out of them.’
De Troq’ smiled. ‘You can have some of mine,’ he offered. ‘I’m not much of a smoker.’
‘I wish I weren’t.’ Nevertheless, Pel felt relieved, deciding that what he had might now see him through the two or three days he expected to be in Mexico.
He shuffled restlessly in his seat. He was never very good at sitting still. ‘What do we do now?’ he asked.
De Troq’ smiled. Pel’s sergeants all admired him in their different ways and were prepared to put up with a lot. ‘You can eat, patron,’ he advised. ‘That can occupy some time, so don’t rush it. You can watch a film. Usually they’re pretty grim. I always have a couple of large whiskies and go to sleep.’
‘You’ve flown the Atlantic before?’
‘Once or twice,’ De Troq’ said casually. ‘Relatives in Louisiana.’
There obviously was something to being a baron, Pel decided. True to his word, De Troq’ went to sleep. But being in an aircraft to Pel was like being inside a giant
vacuum cleaner and he couldn’t relax. He lit a cigarette and eventually tried to sleep. It didn’t work, so he listened to music on the headphones. But that involved holding the earpiece in so tight he felt it would set up a disease of the inner ear, so he watched the film instead. As De Troq’ had warned, however, it was dreadful, so again he tried sleeping. To his surprise he woke up three hours later to find the whisky had worked as De Troq’ had said it would and that they were actually beginning their descent to Mexico City.
Getting through customs wasn’t difficult because of De Troq’s ability to speak Spanish. They ordered a hire car because it was felt it might be necessary and they were driven with their luggage to the car park where they were introduced to a large grey and rather battered American Dodge. The hire-service operator showed them round it and tried the starter. There was a whirr and nothing else, so he climbed out, kicked the car, and tried it again. This time the engine started.
‘Always,’ he explained, ‘it is necessary to make the kick.’
The operator disappeared and De Troq’ climbed into the driving-seat, something Pel firmly backed away from. He wasn’t the best of drivers and, when his mind was busy, was known, much to the fury of passing lorry drivers, to drive in the centre of the road, so that the idea of driving in a foreign country terrified him. De Troq’ seemed to suffer from no such inhibitions and was just about to let in the clutch when a white car with a red band round it and the word Policía on the side, appeared and screeched to a halt alongside them. The driver, tall and running to fat, leapt out and opened the rear door.
The man who climbed out was lean with a brown handsome face and a nose as thin and curved as a sabre. He was dressed in a dark suit, with bright yellow cowboy boots, a pink tie and a hat such as Pel had seen worn in Dallas.
‘Don Evaristo Pel,’ he said. ‘Jefe de Policía Francesa?’
It was all beyond Pel but De Troq’ nodded. ‘Sí.’