by Mark Hebden
Copyright & Information
Pel & The Picture of Innoncence
First published in 1988
Copyright: John Harris; House of Stratus 1988-2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The right of Mark Hebden (John Harris) to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
This edition published in 2011 by House of Stratus, an imprint of
Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,
Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.
Typeset by House of Stratus.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
EAN ISBN Edition
1842329030 9781842329030 Print
0755124871 9780755124879 Pdf
075512507X 9780755125074 Mobi/Kindle
0755125274 9780755125272 Epub
This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.
Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.
www.houseofstratus.com
About the Author
John Harris, wrote under his own name and also the pen names of Mark Hebden and Max Hennessy.
He was born in 1916 and educated at Rotherham Grammar School before becoming a journalist on the staff of the local paper. A short period freelancing preceded World War II, during which he served as a corporal attached to the South African Air Force. Moving to the Sheffield Telegraph after the war, he also became known as an accomplished writer and cartoonist. Other ‘part time’ careers followed.
He started writing novels in 1951 and in 1953 had considerable success when his best-selling The Sea Shall Not Have Them was filmed. He went on to write many more war and modern adventure novels under his own name, and also some authoritative non-fiction, such as Dunkirk. Using the name Max Hennessy, he wrote some very accomplished historical fiction and as Mark Hebden, the ‘Chief Inspector’ Pel novels which feature a quirky Burgundian policeman.
Harris was a sailor, an airman, a journalist, a travel courier, a cartoonist and a history teacher, who also managed to squeeze in over eighty books. A master of war and crime fiction, his enduring novels are versatile and entertaining.
Note
Though lovers of Burgundy might decide that they have recognised the city in these pages, in fact it is intended to be fictitious.
One
‘Why do people play boules?’
Chief Inspector Evariste Clovis Désiré Pel, of the Brigade Criminelle of the Police Justiciaire of the French Republic, considered the question. The small boy alongside him weighed in his hand the heavy steel balls they had been using and waited for a reply. But it was Pel’s day off and he didn’t relish having to think when he was supposed to be resting. However, Yves Pasquier lived next door, and the two of them were in the habit of meeting each morning by the hole in the hedge that separated their gardens and setting the world to rights. Yves Pasquier admired Pel because he was a policeman and Pel admired Yves Pasquier because he was determined to be a policeman. Yves Pasquier also had a pretty mother, and Pel knew he wasn’t going to be able to dodge the issue.
Why did people play boules, he wondered. Come to that, why did people play le foot, or chase girls, or fornicate, or for that matter smoke? Pel frowned. He knew why he smoked. It was because he couldn’t stop. He’d tried on many occasions, starting early in the morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, his determination strong, and ready for any sacrifice in the search for health and a happy old age. By lunch time, however, dull-eyed and shifty in demeanour, he was invariably seeking the Gauloises hidden at the back of the drawer in his desk for just such a failure of will.
The boy bent to the shaggy black mongrel at his feet. It looked like an elongated mophead and it was always difficult to tell which was the dangerous end. ‘Where did boules come from?’ he asked.
‘The Romans?’ Pel suggested hopefully. ‘Perhaps in those days they used them as weapons and hurled them at each other. After all, a bonk on the conk from a boule wouldn’t do you a lot of good, would it?’
The boy giggled. ‘Perhaps originally they were cannonballs. Would they know at the Hôtel de Police?’ To Yves Pasquier, police headquarters were the fount of all knowledge.
Pel’s view was different. Despite their extensive files, there was a lot they didn’t know at the Hôtel de Police and a great many things they would have liked to know. The origin of boules, however, was not among those subjects which normally held the attention of the men who occupied the place. Girls, yes. Beer, certainly. Crooks, occasionally. But boules – only in passing, after an evening at a bar or after a Sunday with the relations round for lunch. He was still wondering how to reply when the telephone went and a head was thrust through a window.
‘For you!’
It was Madame Routy, the housekeeper that Pel’s wife had taken on with Pel when she had married him. For years Pel and Madame Routy had lived in the same small house and when Pel had finally married, his bride – fortunately with the money to sustain her whims – had decided to take on Madame Routy, too. Pel had been convinced it was the biggest mistake of her life – almost as big as marrying Pel – but Madame Routy had been tamed. Pel had never been able to understand how, because he had never been able to get her to do a thing for him.
When he picked up the telephone, the voice at the other end of the line was that of Inspector Darcy, his second in command. Pel greeted him sourly. He didn’t appreciate being called to the telephone on his day off.
‘Well?’ he snapped.
He could have sworn he heard Darcy chuckle. Though always loyal, Darcy often found him amusing. After all – Pel had to admit it – he was inclined at times to be a little odd and in his old age fully expected to descend into eccentricity.
‘Thought you’d like to know, Patron,’ Darcy said. ‘Maurice Tagliatti’s around again.’
‘Who? Say that again.’
‘Maurice Tagliatti. Like me to spell it out?’
‘I know how to spell it. When did he arrive?’
‘June, Patron.’
‘That’s three months ago. Why didn’t we know?’
‘Because nobody told us. He’s been careful to keep a low profile. So low, his nostrils must have been dragging in the dust.’
‘It isn’t Maurice’s style to lie low. He must be up to something. Where is he?’
‘He’s got himself a nice little country hideaway. I thought I might go and find out what he’s up to.’
Pel frowned. Maurice Tagliatti had started as an apprentice in a nickel-plating plant in the city and had been in trouble with the police more than once before suddenly appearing to have amassed money. Nobody imagined he’d come by it honestly, but since then he had gone into property speculation, bought a chain of grocery stores, a string of vineyards and garages, and was now said to be worth a bomb. He had moved away some years before and was reputed nowadays to be involved with casinos, extortion, brothels and blackmail. You name it, he was at it. So if he were back in Burgundy, so was trouble.
Pel didn’t hesitate. ‘Pick me up on your way,’ he said.
Replacing the telephone, he returned to the garden to present his apologies. He did it gravely and with considerable concern. Yves Pasquier was only ten but Pel always treated small boys with great consideratio
n.
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me,’ he pointed out.
‘Been called out?’ Yves Pasquier asked.
‘Something’s come up.’
‘A crime?’
‘Not yet. But I suspect there might be one in the offing somewhere.’
‘Can I come? I’ll not get in the way.’
Pel wondered how Maurice Tagliatti would react to being interviewed by a small boy. ‘I think’, he said, ‘that you’d better grow a bit first.’
Yves Pasquier sighed. ‘I’ll put the boules away,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll slip in and have a slice of Madame Routy’s cake before I go home. Don’t forget to ask about the boules.’
Pel nodded solemnly. It had come as a surprise to find that Madame Routy was feeding the next-door offspring, especially since he had learned that the boy’s slice of cake was invariably two and sometimes even three. As Pel never ate cake and had never seen his wife eat cake, he could only assume that Madame Routy made the cakes especially for Yves Pasquier. Which seemed to indicate that in her old age that lump of agate he had always assumed she wore in place of a heart had changed texture and was now suddenly capable of feeling.
Pel’s wife was at her desk. It always pleased Pel to see his wife at her desk wearing her spectacles and with her account books open in front of her. She ran the most expensive hairdressing salon in the city and recently, assuming that her clients – being wealthy – would still have money to burn even after paying the exorbitant fees she charged, had opened the most exclusive boutique in the city to go with the most exclusive hairdressing salon. It was already making a fortune.
The thought pleased Pel. Even for a chief inspector, police pay didn’t make old age a sinecure, and ever since he’d been a young cop he had dreaded shuffling off his responsibilities for the last time to find himself facing a poverty-stricken retirement. Since all his working life he had been stuffing money into the bank like a hamster shoving food into its cheeks, poverty had always been a most unlikely fate but, such was his uncertainty, he liked to feel his wife’s money was there as a cushion in case he’d miscalculated.
‘I’m going out,’ he said.
Madame Pel looked up, her spectacles on the end of her nose. ‘A job?’
‘Daniel rang. Tagliatti’s appeared in the area.’
‘Tagliatti? Tagliatti? Isn’t he the one who—?’
‘Yes, he is.’ Whatever crime Pel’s wife had in mind, Tagliatti would have been behind it. He drove large and expensive American cars, lived like a millionaire, and ran a string of girls of surpassing beauty – all, to Pel’s everlasting surprise, apparently thinking the world of him.
The only thing Pel could consider in his favour was that, although brought up in Burgundy, he had taken himself south to the sun. It was one of the few blots on the landscape of Pel’s beloved province that Tagliatti had originated there. He was not one of Burgundy’s most distinguished sons and Pel could feel nothing but gratitude to him for shifting his sphere of operations.
‘Where is he?’ he asked as he slipped into the passenger seat of Darcy’s car.
‘At his country estate.’
Pel’s eyebrows rose. ‘I didn’t know he had one.’
‘He bought that place that used to belong to the Mangy de Lordy family.’
‘What happened to them?’
‘Most of what they possessed went down their throats and ended up in the till at the local bar. They had to sell up.’
‘And Maurice?’
‘He’s given himself a title.’
‘God Almighty!’
‘He doesn’t aim that high. Just Chevalier de Lordy. It’s unofficial, of course, but since he owns the Lordy estates, and they constitute practically the whole of the village of Lordy, I suppose he has a certain amount of right on his side.’
Pel gestured back towards his house. ‘Lordy’s not far from here,’ he said indignantly.
Darcy grinned. ‘You’ll be able to have him in for drinks, Patron.’
Maurice Tagliatti was no longer young but he was still dark, Italianate and dressed in a way that made Pel feel like the man who’d come to mend the lavatory.
He was in the garden when they arrived, inspecting his roses, accompanied by a girl who might easily have been a rejuvenated Brigitte Bardot. They were surrounded by a group of dark-visaged, smart-suited men who were clearly his advisers, bodyguards and probably accountants. Why, Pel wondered, did people like Maurice Tagliatti always surround themselves with men who looked like bouncers in a night club? In the drive behind them was the big black Cadillac Maurice liked to use. It probably, Pel decided, made him feel like Al Capone or something from the New York Mafia.
Tagliatti himself wore a lightweight blue suit with a red handkerchief in the breast pocket, and a wide-brimmed white hat. He beamed at the policemen and held out his hand. ‘Inspector Pel,’ he said.
Pel glared. ‘Chief Inspector,’ he corrected.
Tagliatti’s smile widened and he gestured at the men behind him. ‘You know the boys?’
‘I expect they’re on our computer,’ Pel growled.
Tagliatti laughed. ‘Always one for a joke, aren’t you, Chief?’ He indicated the girl. ‘My secretary, Vlada Preradovic.’
The girl gave them a sullen look that might have meant anything and Tagliatti gestured again, this time at a tall man standing beside him, thin-faced, handsome and expensively dressed without Tagliatti’s bad taste. ‘That’s Georges Cavalin. He’s my manager.’
Cavalin greeted Pel with a refined accent. The son of some proud father and mother, Pel thought, who had doubtless spent money on his education but hadn’t been able to handle him.
Tagliatti was gesturing dismissively at the others: ‘Bernard Guérin. David Ourdabi.’ He gave up after two.
They were all typical heavies, broad-shouldered, in their thirties, but Ourdabi was younger, hard-eyed and, like Tagliatti, looked Italian. He was leaning against the wall, cleaning his nails with a nail file and trying to look like Humphrey Bogart. He nodded at Pel who stared back at him hostilely. He didn’t like people who tried to look like Humphrey Bogart. Sometimes they behaved like Humphrey Bogart.
Tagliatti indicated the house behind him. ‘Like my new home?’ he asked.
The house wasn’t big enough to be called a château, though without doubt Maurice would call it a château. It was what might be categorised as a manoir, large, square, roomy, covered with ivy and with that aura of grande famille that Pel so much admired.
‘Why did you buy it, Maurice?’
Tagliatti looked surprised at the question. ‘Prestige,’ he said. ‘The wish to be somebody. It’s good, prestige. Good for the image. Makes people admire you. Good for tick at the grocer’s. Haven’t you ever wanted a big house, Chief Inspector?’
Pel had always wanted a big house but he wouldn’t have dreamed of admitting it to Maurice Tagliatti. ‘More to it than that, I think,’ he said. ‘What are you up to here?’
Tagliatti smiled. ‘What I’m doing here is nothing to do with the police.’
‘It has a lot to do with us.’
‘I don’t have to tell you.’
‘No. But I can always arrange to take you in to the Hôtel de Police and question you there. We’ve had a nice comfortable cell at Number 72 waiting for you for a long time.’
Tagliatti’s mouth tightened. Numbered 72, Rue d’Auxonne was the charming name by which the local prison was known. ‘You have nothing on me,’ he growled.
‘I’ve not the slightest doubt’, Pel pointed out, ‘that I could find something.’
Tagliatti considered the point and obviously decided Pel was right. ‘I’m buying wine,’ he said. ‘I have a chain of stores in the south. They need supplying.’
Pel gave him a frozen look. ‘Nothing else?’ he asked.
Tagliatti shrugged his plump shoulders. ‘Visiting old friends. Why are you here?’
‘Same as you. Visiting old friends. Letting them know we’re aw
are they’re around.’
They sparred for a little while longer but, though they made it plain to Tagliatti that they were prepared to deploy the whole of the Police Judiciaire if necessary to stop whatever it was he was contemplating, in the end the interview was not very satisfactory. Tagliatti was always a match for them and they had nothing on him whatsoever. He certainly appeared to be buying wine. He produced bills from the vineyards and there was no reason to dispute them, so that they left unsatisfied and with Pel in a bad temper.
He knew that Tagliatti was in the vicinity for a good reason. His interests these days were mostly around Marseilles, which was the crossroads for most of the villainy in France, so he wouldn’t have come to Burgundy for no reason at all, especially since the wine he claimed he needed for his supermarkets could all have been bought by his henchmen. Tagliatti had a whole army of assistants these days, everything from strong-arm men to crooked accountants and lawyers with, in between, perfectly honest little men who did his business without being aware of what went on behind the façade they provided.
‘The picture of innocence,’ Pel observed as they climbed back into the car. ‘He’s not here for nothing,’
‘That was my view,’ Darcy agreed.
‘Oh, well,’ Pel said. ‘At least, he’ll know we have our beady eye on him. It might make him careful. It might even make him decide it could be wiser to leave empty-handed.’
‘It could also make him all the more determined to take what he came for,’ Darcy said.
As it happened, they were both wrong.
It started a few weeks later. Things were quiet except for the usual frauds, swindles, wife beatings, extortions, threats, attacks with offensive weapons, run of the mill rapes, and what have you, so that the news of a new assault was nothing to get worked up about. This time, it was in a sports outfitters. Among the footballs and rugby balls, among the tracksuits and running pumps, among the static bicycles and rowing machines. A shop assistant appeared to have been beaten up, and Darcy had never come across such a thing before. Most people who went in for sport were so busy wearing themselves out trying to become gold medal winners they hadn’t any energy left to attack anyone. Sitting back with a brandy, his arm round a girl, he had often watched them on television arriving at the finishing posts black in the face and with their eyes sticking out like hat pegs in a restaurant cloakroom, and had always wondered why they did it. He had never heard of an athlete going in for crime and had always assumed they were too dedicated – or too exhausted – to make a habit of it.