by Mark Hebden
The news of the assault was brought in by a middle-aged woman with a jaw like the prow of a battleship. To look at her you’d have assumed she might have been the guilty party; instead she turned out to be the mother of the victim.
‘Beaten up?’ Darcy said, studying her across his desk.
‘Beaten up.’ The reply came short, sharp and definite.
‘Badly?’
‘Badly.’
‘What are the injuries you complain of?’
‘Not me,’ the woman snapped. ‘My son.’
Darcy stared at her. Darcy’s stare normally sent women into a tizzy because Darcy was handsome, immaculate and forceful and he had the sort of teeth that shone in the sunshine like jewels in a Disney cartoon. Normally they won over admirers in droves. But not this one.
‘I’d better have the name,’ he said.
‘Julien Claude Roth.’
‘Address?’
‘Apartment 3, 7 Rue Philibert-Riou, Blaine.’
‘Where is he? In hospital?’
‘No, he’s at work.’
‘I thought he’d been beaten up.’
‘He was.’
‘So what’s he doing at work?’
‘He likes working. I’m making the complaint on his behalf.’
‘Why?’
‘He doesn’t want to.’
‘Why not?’
‘He just doesn’t.’ Madame Roth stared hostilely at Darcy. ‘I decided he should. So I came.’
‘So I see, madame.’ Darcy began to suspect that he was dealing with something that was going to prove pretty trivial. ‘What’s the nature of his injuries?’
‘Severe bruising to the head.’
‘Severe?’
‘Severe.’
‘Anything else? Any broken bones?’
‘No.’
‘No split lip? No black eyes?’
‘No.’
‘What was it? A fight?’
‘No. Just a beating up.’
‘Where?’
‘At France Sport, the sports shop in the Rue Général Leclerc.’
Darcy began to imagine people beating each other about the head with rowing machines or Indian clubs.
‘Who committed the offence? Do you know?’
‘Of course. It was Fernand Léon, the owner of the shop.’
This one, Darcy decided, was beginning to sound as if it would need the attention of a social worker, not a cop.
‘What with?’
‘What do you mean, what with?’
‘Well, what did Léon hit your son with?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Well, his hand.’
‘How often?’
‘Twice.’
‘Open or shut?’
‘What? The shop?’
‘No, madame. The hand.’
‘It was open.’
Darcy sat back. ‘Is that all?’
Madame Roth glared. ‘What do you mean, is that all?’
‘I expected a savage assault, madame, with your son struck with an offensive weapon, but it seems to have been just a scuffle.’
‘It was an unprovoked assault.’
Darcy drew a deep breath. ‘How old is your son, madame?’
‘Eighteen.’
‘Is he a big boy?’
‘Not very. He’s shy, too.’
‘So why was he assaulted?’
‘I expect Léon was drunk.’
‘Does he often get drunk?’
‘According to my son, no.’
‘Doesn’t your son know why he was attacked?’
‘He can’t explain it. He was just about to complete a sale when Léon set about him.’
Darcy changed step. ‘Where’s your son’s father, madame?’ he asked. ‘Why didn’t he come in?’
‘Because he ran off with another woman twelve years ago.’
‘Ah!’ There was a wealth of meaning in that ‘ah’.
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Nothing special,’ Darcy said, though of course it had and Darcy’s questions were never pointless because he was a good cop. ‘But I like to know the background.’ He placed his pen on the desk. ‘I’ll see it’s looked into. There certainly seems to have been an assault, and assault is always a chargeable offence, however slight it might be–’
‘It wasn’t slight. My son came home with his face red and bruised and with a cut on his cheek. There was blood on it.’
‘I see, madame.’ Darcy rose. ‘Leave it to me. We’ll deal with it.’
In Pel’s office he discussed it along with the other cases on the books.
‘Some sort of dispute with the owner of the shop,’ he said. ‘A couple of slaps.’
Pel sniffed. It didn’t sound much. Certainly not the usual mayhem inflicted on a civilised country by its uncivilised inhabitants. It could easily be handled by subordinates. Nobody was dead, and he and Darcy had to keep their programmes clear of trivialities in case the President of the Republic chose to appear in the area and someone tried to assassinate, kidnap or otherwise embarrass him. Darcy’s team could handle it.
‘What do you intend?’
Darcy shrugged. ‘Give it to one of the boys. If everybody’s busy, I’ll give it to Misset. He ought to be able to clear it up.’
Misset was the flaw in Pel’s team. Handsome but with fading looks, Misset moved with the speed of hardening cement and was constantly in trouble for dodging work.
As Darcy left, Pel looked at his watch. Four-fifty. He wondered if anyone would notice if he slipped off a little early.
He looked at the list on his desk to see what his team were up to and who was free. Jean-Luc Nosjean, the senior sergeant, was away with Claudie Darel, the only woman member of the team, winding up the remains of an art swindle inquiry that had occupied his attention on and off for months. De Troq’ was involved in what seemed to be a neat little fraud involving one of the city’s lawyers. De Troq’ had a title – Baron Charles Victor de Troquereau Tournay-Turenne – and the manner to go with it. His family were poverty-stricken but, being an Auvergnat, he still appeared to have a great deal more than most and they always used him on delicate cases involving prestige because his manner could quieten the most raging snob. Aimedieu. Brochard. Debray. Lacocq. Morell. Bardolle. All involved. Not much. Just a dozen or so cases apiece – nothing really to call them busy. Finally there was Didier Darras, Madame Routy’s nephew, the cadet who ran the office; Misset, who, with blank eyes and brain in neutral, was fit for little else but answering the telephone; and Lagé, who was contemplating a retirement which grew nearer every day. Not a bad bunch on the whole. Good, bad and indifferent. If anything big came up they’d all be in it and the days off they cherished above rubies would be gone with the wind.
He decided it was safe to go home but it had been a hot dusty day and he first slipped across the road for a beer.
The bar behind the Hôtel de Police was called the Bar Transvaal. It had been the Bar Transvaal as long as anyone could remember – perhaps since the Boer War – but, since apartheid had raised its ugly head, the landlord had felt it should be renamed the Bar du Palais des Ducs de Bourgogne after the splendid edifice nearby which had once belonged to the Dukes of Burgundy in the days when they had disputed the right to rule with the kings of France. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to persuade the brewery, which in addition to beer supplied him with the awnings and the umbrellas for the tables outside, that this was a good idea, and at that very moment one of their representatives was in the bar indignantly demanding an explanation.
‘What’s wrong with the old name?’ he was asking.
‘I’ve changed it,’ the landlord said.
‘So…’ The brewery representative had a nice line in sarcasm. ‘…because you fancied changing the name, you expect us to provide you with new awning?’
‘Well, it’s that apartheid,’ the landlord said. ‘People don’t agree with it.’
; The brewery man shrugged. ‘We don’t mind. South Africa’s not our country. So why should we shove our nose in? Do you realise how much those awnings cost? And with a name like that? Bar Transvaal. A nice tidy name. Twelve letters. One space. Bar du Palais des Ducs de Bourgogne. Twenty-nine letters. Six spaces. Letters are expensive. They’re sewn on separately, you know. Even the spaces cost money.’
As Pel stood at the bar, listening, he reached for his cigarettes. Just one last one, he thought, before he went home, so he could resist during the evening and not smell like an ashtray near his wife. If he stopped smoking, he thought, drinking would taste better. Come to that, he realised, if he stopped drinking, perhaps smoking would improve. And if he stopped both he’d live longer. On the other hand, life would be damned dull. Perhaps he should limit himself to one every two hours, though he could just imagine the temper he’d be in after an hour and a half.
Starting after this one, he decided, fishing for his cigarettes. As he did so, his eye fell on a pamphlet lying on the counter. STOP SMOKING, it said. NATURE’S WAY. NOT A NICOTINE SUBSTITUTE, A GENUINE HERBAL REMEDY.
Despite himself, he started reading it. After all, why not? His wife never complained, but he knew she lived in hopes that one day he’d give them up. Absolutely unique course, he read. Completely new approach. Murot’s Anti-Smoking/ Aversion Tablets. Once you commence a course you will be a non-smoker. If you are not 100 per cent delighted, your money will be refunded immediately.
He was just wondering if he ought to try it when the landlord leaned on the counter in front of him. He was smoking a cigarette, and stank like an incinerator. ‘It’s rubbish,’ he advised. ‘If you can’t stop without that, you’re not worth your cigarette money.’
Pel nodded sheepishly, shoving the pamphlet aside. ‘Of course,’ he said stoutly. ‘Nobody should need that.’
‘But there’s this government campaign to cut down smoking, the landlord went on, lighting a fresh cigarette from the old one. ‘So I leave the pamphlets around. They don’t do any harm. Nobody takes any notice of them, anyway.’
Pel did. He took notice of anything that might persuade him he was about to collapse with lung cancer. He patted his pocket where his cigarettes were. Firmly. The pamphlet had decided him. The pamphlet and the landlord between them. Only a fool couldn’t give up smoking. He’d stopped. Never mind one last one. From that minute. He suspected that the following day he’d be about as amenable as an atom bomb and his staff would suffer, but this time it was for keeps. He’d given up smoking before – for an hour or two anyway. This time, though, he meant it. This time he really would refrain. If he could refrain for the rest of the night – Holy Mother of God, what a thought! – he might be able to refrain tomorrow. And if he refrained tomorrow, there was no knowing to what delights of forbearance he might be led. He was just seeing himself free of guilt, a non-smoker, fit to be seen in the company of haloed non-smokers, E.C.D. Pel, reformer extraordinaire, when the telephone went.
The landlord snatched it up, listened, then held it out. ‘For you,’ he said.
It was Darcy. ‘Hold your hat on, Patron,’ he said and Pel knew that this was it – the big one that would involve everybody. Without thinking, his hand reached for the packet of Gauloises in his pocket.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘You’ll never guess.’
‘I don’t intend to. What’s happened?’
‘We’ve lost our best customer.’
‘For the love of God, we’re not playing guessing games. Spit it out!’
‘It’s Maurice.’
‘Tagliatti? What’s happened to him?’
‘He’s dead.’
Pel actually smiled. ‘Heart?’
Darcy laughed. ‘Sure. It stopped. A bullet or something stopped it.’
‘I don’t believe it! Who did it?’
‘That I don’t know yet. But it seems they got Maurice and the man who was driving him.’
‘Where?’
‘Near your house, Patron. Bottom of the hill that runs down from Lordy.’
Good God, Pel thought, they’d be killing each other in his back garden soon.
‘We’ve just had a message from the brigadier at Lordy,’ Darcy went on. ‘I’ve ordered cars and informed Forensic, Photography, Fingerprints, Doc Minet, the lot. And I’ve sent Lacocq, Debray and Aimedieu off. I’ll be waiting with the car as soon as you’re ready.’
As he put the telephone down, Pel stared at it for a second. Avoid strain, cures for smoking always said. Fat chance of that, he thought. Bang went his good resolution. He flipped out one of the cigarettes and put it to his mouth only to find to his surprise that there was one already there – alight.
Why, he wondered, did God have it in for him so? He’d obviously been doomed from the day of his birth. The world had been waiting in ambush for him. When he’d appeared there had been a brisk rubbing of hands all round and a great shout of ‘He’s arrived!’
He tossed the unlit cigarette on to the counter in a fury then, being Pel and a bit mean, he picked it up again, dusted it down and replaced it in the packet. Couldn’t waste things. Might make all the difference between poverty and luxury in his old age. No good Burgundian wasted things.
All the same, he wondered as he reached for his coat, how in the name of God had that lighted cigarette found its way into his mouth?
Two
The car was a big Peugeot and it was angled into the side of the road, its front wheel dropped into a deep ditch. When it rained in that part of the world, it came down hard and heavy and most of the roads in the hills had ditches along their verges to allow it to run away; Pel had always been in fear of dropping a wheel in as he rounded corners. It was being studied by Lacocq, Debray and Aimedieu, who were standing in a pool of bronze-yellow sunshine that slanted through the trees and thick undergrowth and speckled the road with bright moving spots.
Two policemen from Lordy, one a brigadier, with a small white Renault van, were erecting a barrier and, even as Darcy’s car braked to a halt, another van arrived with two more policemen, followed almost immediately by more cars and vans containing the men from Photography, Forensic, Scene of Crime and Traffic.
Not far away, eyed hostilely by the policemen from Lordy, was a group of spectators, and Pel wondered for the hundredth time in his career where they came from. This was a country road yet within minutes there were people standing about with their mouths open. If there were a murder on a desert island they’d turn up. It was a French habit. A man changing a wheel on his car. A girl hitching up her stocking. A dog trying to mount a bitch. They all produced crowds, drinking it all in.
‘Who reported it?’
The brigadier indicated a long-haired boy in a red shirt wearing ear-muffs round his neck. Just beyond, parked under the trees where Pel hadn’t noticed it, was an ancient tractor.
‘Gilles Roblais,’ the brigadier said. ‘From the farm up the hill. He’s the son. I’ve got a statement. He was on his way down. He went to the farm to telephone then came back to wait for us.’
‘Did he see anyone?’
‘Nothing but what we’re seeing now. Just the car and the bodies. At first I thought there was only one, but then we found the other.’
The brigadier moved gingerly towards the stalled car. It was well and truly riddled with bullets. ‘Twenty-seven holes,’ he pointed out.
‘I counted them. I found six of the bullets. I haven’t touched them. I reckon there are around twelve in the bodies. It’s hard to say. There’s so much blood.’
The other policeman gestured. ‘There are cartridge cases in the road. One or two in the grass. They’re all marked.’
The man who had been driving the car hung half out of the door. He had been hit several times in the head, neck and throat and, despite the blood, Pel managed to recognise him as one of the men who had surrounded Maurice Tagliatti.
‘Got his name?’
The brigadier produced a driving licence spattered with blo
od. ‘It fell out of his pocket,’ he said. ‘He’s Benjamen Bozon, burnisher. Address in Marseilles.’
Pel studied the car. The front portion where the driver sat was shattered by the bullets, but there seemed to be no holes in the rear portion where a passenger would have been sitting.
‘I thought Maurice Tagliatti was one of them,’ he said. ‘Where, is he?’
The policeman gestured and then Pel noticed a line of blood, drops on the road. They led to a small copse containing a low stone hut once used by foresters but allowed to fall into disrepair. Its walls bulged and the roof seemed to have been scattered for yards around, with scraps of wood and broken beams. In the middle of it, half covered with tiles and pieces of brick and timber, lay what was left of Maurice Tagliatti.
The policeman gestured. Among the ruins, they saw two guns, a Walther 7.65 and a Beretta 9 mm. Scattered around were cartridge cases. The policeman gestured again. Some distance away in a half-circle of trampled grass were more cartridge cases.
‘What happened?’
‘I think he was hit but managed to escape from the car and got to this place and held off whoever it was who was trying to kill him. They did for him, though. With that.’
The policeman stirred the grass with his foot so that they saw the ring and pin from a hand grenade. ‘I think’, he said, ‘that when they couldn’t get near him, they tossed that in the doorway. It finished him.’
‘It would,’ Darcy said gravely.
‘It is Maurice Tagliatti, isn’t it?’ the brigadier said.
‘Yes,’ Darcy said. ‘That’s Maurice all right.’