by Mark Hebden
‘Did you tell him in March that you intended to pay?’
‘We don’t do that.’ Aubineau shrugged. ‘We might find we have to change our minds, and once you have it down on paper you can’t back away from it. We pay at the last possible moment and only after giving plenty of time for the stolen car to turn up. We never say ahead we’re going to pay just in case we don’t have to.’
Nosjean was growing more and more puzzled. Dugaste’s brand-new car worried him because he couldn’t understand where he had found the money for it. What was more, he had a suspicion that before long Pelaut would be buying one and, after him, Orain. Then, when Aimedieu reported that he had found the source of the strange 500-franc notes was at Ferouelle, which was near Cloing where he’d been making enquiries, he suddenly wondered if the two were connected. Stolen cars – unexpected large-denomination notes. It was very possible. Ferouelle was the place where the Garage Moissin, where Dugaste and Orain had bought their replacement cars, was situated.
‘Ferouelle’s a funny place for a car repair depot, isn’t it?’ Nosjean said. ‘Up in the hills. Nowhere near anywhere. Most of the successful ones are here – in or around the city. Places tucked away out of sight get overlooked, I’ve found. Are they doing well enough to be chucking 500-franc notes about?’
Aimedieu frowned. ‘Since you mention it, it does seem a bit strange, doesn’t it? I don’t know of any repair depots stuck out in the wilds either. Perhaps I should do a bit more checking.’
Nosjean took the problem to Darcy and the two of them went to the Bar Transvaal for a beer to talk it over. Finding a corner out of the way where they couldn’t be heard, they discussed the case in undertones as they toyed with a sandwich.
‘There’s something fishy going on,’ Nosjean insisted. ‘I’m sure of it. I don’t know where it starts or how deep it goes but I bet it’s there.’
They confessed themselves baffled and Darcy gave Nosjean a sheepish look.
‘Better get it cleared up before the Old Man comes back,’ he said. ‘Or, at least, on the way to being cleared up. It’ll please him.’
Nosjean grinned. ‘I wonder what he’s up to,’ he said. ‘I bet he’s hating it.’
Ten
Nosjean wasn’t far wrong.
While Mexico City wasn’t exactly what Pel would have chosen as somewhere to lay his head, it was civilised or, at least, had civilised areas to it which could just be made acceptable to someone brought up in the culture of what he felt was the most civilised province of the most civilised nation in the world. Nevertheless, it still wasn’t what Pel would have chosen.
He didn’t like Mexico. He missed the greenness of France, the good wines, the good food, the bronze evening sunshine, the long straight roads through fertile fields. So far, what he had seen of Mexico indicated only poverty and harshness. The fact that it was a backward country struggling to haul itself up by its bootstraps missed him entirely.
In addition, he had realised that he was facing a major crisis. It looked now as if they were to stay in Mexico much longer than he had expected and, fully intending to be on his way home within a matter of a day or two, complete with criminals, he had gone at his Gauloise as if there were no tomorrow. Now he was counting them like a miser counting his gold.
Barribal was also constantly knocking on his door with information he had unearthed. His department had thoroughly checked the letters ‘ASS’ but had found nothing that might be relevant. They had covered everything from grain cleaning and sea-shell collections to a gay-lib group, and Pel had had to admit that Barribal had left no stone unturned. He had tried all that might be relevant and not one of them had heard of Professor Martin.
The following morning, dressed in a gaudy mixture of colours, his handsome face smiling, his splendid white teeth showing, he was outside the hotel with a large and expensive Mercedes car.
‘It is at your disposal, Don Evaristo,’ he announced.
With the assistance of Barribal’s police driver, they tossed their luggage into the boot with Barribal’s and set off out of the city. As they left, they went through the same drab areas of factories, garages and warehouses, then, as they began to leave the capital behind, the shabby ugly sprawl of buildings grew less compacted and they began to see small dusty patches surrounded by cactus. Tepozotlán was close to the eastern side of the main highway and Barribal turned off on to an unbelievably bumpy cobbled road. There was a splendid square in front of the church they had seen in the photographs and, opposite, a drab-looking fair complete with roundabouts and stalls and faded flags. They found the police station not far away where two policemen in dusty uniforms were lounging on a bench, and asked to see the sergeant in command.
He turned out to be a long, lean, languid individual in a faded blue tunic, dusty shoes and a revolver hanging limply from the belt at his waist.
Barribal produced the picture they had of Professor Martin and a mug shot of Donck which had been prepared in Mexico City on his arrest. Overnight Barribal had had the photographic department reproduce them many times with the photograph of Jacqueline Hervé Pel had acquired from Navarro’s home, and they had a folder full of them in the car.
The sergeant had seen no one even faintly resembling any of them and it occurred to Pel that perhaps he didn’t ever bother to look.
‘It would be difficult not to see them here in Tepozotlán,’ the sergeant explained. ‘It is not very big.’
‘You will watch for them, nevertheless,’ Barribal instructed sternly. ‘If you see them you will contact police headquarters in Mexico City. Al instante! At once! You understand?’
The sergeant saluted and saw them to the door. The road to Tula turned east off the main highway and, for a large part, it was unmetalled so that they towed behind them an enormous cloud of yellow dust. Skinny cows, goats and horses watched them as they tried to graze where there was no grass, and occasionally they roared through poverty-stricken villages where the chickens screeched as they fled to safety.
It was a brown land, and here and there they caught glimpses of what it was like further north, harsh and unforgiving with an abrasive wind blowing into their faces. Most of the time, it was covered with low scrubby bush with occasional hedges of the maguey from which the Mexicans made their pulque. Pel stared at it gloomily. All the pictures he’d seen of Mexico had indicated a romantic land of flowers and exhilarating music and had shown nothing of the emptiness, the dust and the harsh wind. Nor, he thought bitterly, had it shown him the acres of rubbish, the cans, the bottles, the blowing paper, and the flags of torn plastic stuck on the cactus plants, that lay outside every town they passed. Mexico’s rubbish-clearance schemes seemed to consist of dumping everything in the desert and leaving it to take its chance in the wind.
Finally swinging off the road, they passed through a deep dip, turned right and began to climb again. At the top of the rise they came to an enormous flat-topped, man-made pyramid on which were about half a dozen colossal figures, blunt, square and ugly, that appeared to be carved out of solid blocks of stone. Surrounding it were the remains of square columns which appeared once to have supported the roof of a huge temple. Nearby were what appeared to be small covered chambers.
As the car stopped, a thin old man in jeans and a cowboy hat came out of an adobe dwelling and handed each of them a crumpled ticket and demanded the entrance fee. Barribal paid and De Troq’ produced the pictures they’d found on Martin’s film. The custodian shook his head. The pictures showed the site sure enough, he agreed, but he didn’t recognise Martin. The pictures of the girl aroused some interest, however. He was sure he’d seen her somewhere before.
‘Here?’ De Troq’ asked.
The old man shook his head and gestured towards the town in the valley below them. ‘There,’ he said. ‘There somewhere.’
The old man was unable to help them any further so Barribal insisted they see the site instead. ‘Now you’re here,’ he said, ‘why not? Tula is very popular with the Americans.�
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Pel allowed himself to be persuaded to climb to the flat top of the pyramid, but he hadn’t come to Mexico to see the relics of Mayan civilisation and soon lost interest. The town of Tula itself was similar to Tepozotlán, with cobbled streets, narrow alleys and high pavements. It smelled of food and drains and was busy with traffic – small cars, the pick-up trucks the Mexicans seemed to like, and large country buses, all of which seemed to have faulty exhausts so that they sounded like jets taking off every time they moved. But Pel was also not slow to notice that there were plenty of pretty girls about and that they looked as if they could be related to the girl in the pictures they had.
The officer in command of the police station looked not unlike the man at Tepozotlán. He knew no one in the photographs they offered.
It was hot and dusty, and Barribal suggested a drink and a meal. In a square surrounded by jacarandas in full purple bloom over a pink bandstand, they found a little restaurant next to a funeral parlour displaying blue-painted coffins covered against the dust with stretched plastic. The landlord of the restaurant spoke some English and, as a long shot, De Troq’ tried the pictures on him as he brought them a mess of beans, minced meat and tortillas. To their surprise, his eyebrows shot up and he almost dropped the food.
‘You know them?’ Barribal said.
The landlord slapped the plates down, then the bottle of wine and waved his hand.
‘Dios mio, sí!’ He gestured wildly at the pictures of Donck and Jacqueline Hervé. ‘Not those two. That one.’
‘Which one?’
He pointed at the picture of Professor Martin. ‘He came here. In here.’ He pointed at the floor between his feet. ‘He had a meal. She served him.’
‘Who did?’
‘That one.’ The proprietor’s hand was flapping at the picture of the unknown girl. ‘She served him.’
Their long shot had brought a bonus.
‘Here?’ De Troq’ asked.
‘Yes! Yes!’ The landlord gestured excitedly. ‘Here! She work for me. That is Pilar Hernandez. She is not a good girl. She –’ he gestured at his knees ‘ – the skirts. Too short, señores. La blusa – the blouse –’ his hand flapped near his chest ‘ – too low. She is too fond of the men.’
‘And she served this man?’
‘Yes, your honour. They talk much. I hear them laughing. Then he go away. The next day she does not come to work and when I go to her home, she is not there. She has disappear.’
‘With this man?’
The landlord shrugged. ‘Quién sabe? How do we know? I never see her since. Her parents are worried. But not too worried because she has disappear before. Once to Mexico City. Also with a man.’
‘This man?’
‘No, señor. That was Salazar Gómez, who keeps the store by the main road. He is a goat, that one, and he has nine children.’
They seemed to have struck gold.
‘She lives here then?’ Pel asked.
‘Sí, señor. Though whether she is here now, I don’ know. Perhaps she has go off again with the man in the picture. She is mad, that one. Always talking about films. Some man she go off with give her an extra’s part in a film he is making near Durango and after that she thinks she is going to be a film star. But he leave her flat and she come back.’
Once more Pel jabbed a finger at the picture of Martin. ‘What about this one?’
‘He was here, señor. On the 17th. I remember. It is my wife’s day off and she doesn’t work that day so that Pilar serve him his meal. They talk a lot. I hear them laughing. I don’ mind. He is the only customer and he buy a large bottle of wine. Later he go and the next day she doesn’t appear. I tell you.’
‘Do her family live in Tula?’
‘Sí señor. Calle Vicenza, numero – momento, señor, I have the number in the kitchen.’ The landlord shot off and came back with a large number seven written on a piece of torn card. ‘Numero siete. It is behind the Franciscan church.’
They finished their meal in a hurry. It was so heavily spiced, to Pel it was like eating fire.
The Calle Vicenza was a narrow winding street behind a market where Indian women crouched with a dozen beans on a piece of newspaper, hoping for a sale. It was noisy, scruffy and littered with fragments of old vegetables, but there were a few surprisingly modern shops. As the Mercedes slowed to a stop, a lorry was delivering carboys of what looked like acid.
‘Water,’ Barribal said. ‘You have to buy it. When God created the world, He left Mexico until last and, after six days of hard labour and looking forward to a Sunday with His feet up, He allowed His hand to slip. He forgot the water. There is never enough.’
The Hernandez house was a flat-fronted, flat-roofed, terraced dwelling with its green-painted plank door opening directly on to the street because there was no pavement. When they told the owner what they were seeking, he gestured to them to enter.
‘La casa a Usted,’ he said. ‘The house is yours.’
The room they entered was empty of furniture but full of pictures in small frames – madonnas, crucifixes, and photographs of men in uniform. Through another door they could see a small sun-bright yard.
Both Pilar Hernandez’s parents were good-looking which, they supposed, was why their daughter was beautiful, but they had no idea where she was because she was always disappearing and reappearing without explanation.
‘She learn English,’ her mother said in careful precise words. ‘That is trouble. She is also too pretty. Too many men want her.’
‘She is film mad,’ she went on. ‘Always she talk about becoming a film star.’
She jerked aside a curtain to reveal a small alcove with a single iron bedstead in it, covered with a threadbare blanket and faded coverlet. The walls were plastered with pictures of film stars. Most of them were Mexicans Pel had never heard of but there were a few Americans – even one French one – that he recognised.
The woman fished under the bed and produced a pile of magazines which she tossed down with a gesture. Las Películas, Pel noticed, and Las Estrellas de Cine. Even he could translate those. Films. Film stars.
Señora Hernandez sighed. ‘Always she talk about it,’ she said. ‘She is beautiful, of course. But she have no chance. She cannot act.’
She had never seen Martin, whose photographs she studied through a magnifying glass, so they had to assume that Pilar Hernandez had never brought him home.
Outside again, they debated whether to try any further. Barribal was in favour of getting the local police on the job but Pel had not been impressed by the Mexican local police and suggested trying San Miguel instead, because quite obviously Martin had been there – and judging by the order of the pictures on the reel they had found – after he’d been to Tula.
‘OK, it is easy from here,’ Barribal said. ‘We take the road out of Tula to the main highway and then head north past Querétaro to San Miguel. A few minutes. No more.’
Unfortunately it wasn’t as easy as they’d expected. Barribal’s map failed to agree with the signs and the signs were loose in their sockets and often pointed the wrong way, so that eventually they found themselves in Querétaro. There was some sort of procession taking place and the police were out in force closing streets to the traffic so that they went round in circles for half an hour before Barribal lost his temper and made a police sergeant remove barriers so they could pass.
By this time Pel was sunk in gloom, certain he was on a wild goose chase and more than ever convinced that he ought never to have come to Mexico. As they stopped for lunch at a restaurant alongside the road, built and operated in American style, he spread the photographs they had taken from Martin’s reel in front of them on the table.
‘The girl’s interest in the case is nothing,’ he said, heavily. ‘She’s obviously just some little tart Martin picked up and used to enjoy himself. They’re probably tucked away somewhere now in a hotel. The pictures he took of the remains at Tula also have no significance whatsoever. She simply
took him there to have a look at them.’
‘But why did he go to Tula anyway, patron?’ De Troq’ said. ‘It’s off the main road. Why go there?’
‘Not to look at the Mayan remains.’
‘They did, though, patron.’
‘I think she wanted to. He picked her up. That’s what she was – a pick-up. He fancied her in the restaurant and arranged to meet her the next day, and then, or soon after, they went to the Mayan remains. He wanted to see them – not because there was anything there for him but because they just happened to be there. She’d probably never seen them.’
‘She lived in Tula, patron.’
‘All the more reason why she’d never seen them. Have you ever been up the Eiffel Tower in Paris?’
‘No.’
‘Have you ever been in the Ducal Palace at home?’
‘On duty. An enquiry. That’s all.’
‘The last thing anyone ever looks at is what’s under their nose. She’d probably lived in Tula all her life and never bothered to visit the place until Martin turned up. She was feeling full of beans and he fancied looking at the remains, so she suggested it. But it isn’t the Mayan remains he was interested in. If they had been, there’d have been better photographs. He knew how to use a camera but he never seemed to focus on the antiquities.’ Pel spread the pictures out for them to see. ‘Just the girl. The Mayan remains just happened to be there. No, it was something else.’
He stared at the photographs again, eventually concentrating on the pictures of the strange wooden houses. One of them had curtains blowing through the window and there was what appeared to be a well in the centre of the street, and what seemed to be a saloon, but, apart from the row of men sleeping in the sun, there was no sign of life.
‘You know what these remind me of,’ he said. ‘Films of the Wild West. Built of wood, flat-fronted with boardwalks.’