by Mark Hebden
Genin grinned. ‘Because they paid me to,’ he said.
‘Who did?’
‘These people who hired me.’
‘Which people would that be?’
‘They said they were from Métaux de Dijon and that they had to pick up spare parts and would I fly them. Of course I would. A trip like that’s better than half-baked little flips round the countryside.’
‘What was the machinery?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Didn’t you hear it mentioned?’
‘No.’
‘Would it interest you’, Darcy asked, ‘to know I’ve been in touch with Métaux de Dijon and they say they had no machinery due that day from England. In fact they have no machines at all that would require any spare parts from England.’
Genin suddenly looked wary. ‘Well, that’s what I was told,’ he said.
‘Would it surprise you if I told you that what you flew in was probably contraband or stolen goods?’
Genin frowned. ‘Yes, it would.’
Darcy hadn’t failed to recall what Julien Claude Roth had told him about Léon’s visitors. One, he had said, had been tall, handsome and grey-haired and looked like the hero of one of the American soap operas that filled television time. Genin seemed to fit the description exactly.
‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘What were your instructions?’
Genin shrugged. ‘I was told to have the machine at Gatwick and to wait.’
‘And then?’
‘This van drew up.’
‘Which van?’
‘It was an airport laundry van. At least it had a sign on it that indicated it was.’
‘Go on.’
‘They unloaded the machinery from it.’
‘From a laundry van? Didn’t you query it?’
‘I was paid to fly,’ Genin said. ‘Not ask questions.’
Darcy smiled. ‘I’ve checked with Gatwick,’ he pointed out. ‘No Centre Est 350 left there that day. It couldn’t have been Gatwick.’
Genin began to hedge. ‘Well, when I say Gatwick, I don’t mean Gatwick exactly. Not the airport. I mean the area.’
‘Ah! What area would it be? Would it have been a private airfield?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which?’
‘Well, it wasn’t an airfield exactly. It was – well – just a field.’
‘Where?’
‘It was near Billingshurst. That’s a town just south of Gatwick.’
‘We’d be interested to know just which field.’
‘I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know England. I was given a pinpoint and a map reference and that was that.’
‘Are you suggesting that you couldn’t fly there again? Didn’t you mark it on your chart?’
‘Yes. In pencil. I rubbed it out afterwards. You always do.’
‘How about your log book? You’d have marked it in that, wouldn’t you?’
Genin was beginning to grow red in the face. ‘No,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact I didn’t. Not this time.’
‘Why not?’
Genin seemed to be in trouble now. ‘Well, they asked me not to. These types who arranged it.’
‘Did they say why?’
‘No.’
‘And you didn’t ask?’
‘I waited as I was told, then this van appeared.’
‘Didn’t they introduce themselves?’
‘They said they were from Métaux de Dijon, that’s all, and the van was unloaded. There were several boxes. They were put aboard and I was waved away.’
‘No manifests? No Customs documents? No papers of any kind?’
‘I supposed the types who put it aboard had that under control.’
‘Any of them fly with you?’
‘One. Tall, thin chap.’
It sounded as if it might have been Cavalin.
‘And you flew it to France?’
‘Yes.’
‘So go on. How did you take off? In the dark?’
‘These types with the van shone their headlights. There was a car as well.’
‘Isn’t that difficult?’
‘Not to me.’
‘You’re a good pilot?’
‘Fly with my eyes shut.’
‘You’ve done this take-off-in-the-dark stuff before?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean, why?’
‘It doesn’t sound very safe. So why do it? Were you carrying something you shouldn’t have been carrying? What about when you arrived here in France?’
‘It was unloaded. The guys disappeared and that was that.’
‘No documents again? Nothing to sign? Nothing at all?’
‘No.’
Darcy leaned forward slightly. ‘Know a type called Tagliatti?’ he said.
‘Never heard of him.’
‘I suggest you knew you were carrying something fishy.’
‘No.’
‘How much were you paid?’
‘The usual rate for the job.’
‘I can check with the bank.’
‘Look.’ Genin was suddenly very worried. ‘I didn’t know what was going on. I don’t ask questions. I just fly the aeroplane and do what I’m asked. I leave the paperwork to whoever it is who hires me.’
‘If what you carried was contraband or the loot from some robbery, you realise you could be charged with being an accessory before and after the fact? You were involved in the scheme, weren’t you?’
‘No!’
‘So what did these types who hired you say to you?’
‘Look.’ Genin was growing very nervous. ‘All right, I knew it was something fishy. But it wasn’t drugs.’
‘How do you know it wasn’t drugs? Have you handled drugs before?’
Genin began to look desperate. ‘No, I haven’t.’
‘Never?’
There was the briefest hesitation. ‘It wasn’t drugs,’ Genin said. ‘It was too heavy.’
‘As heavy as gold?’
Genin stared. ‘Is that what it was?’
‘It’s what we think it was. You, my friend, are up to your neck in a lot of funny things. Stolen bullion. Drugs.’
Genin suddenly took a swing at Darcy. It was clumsy and Darcy dodged the blow easily, kicked Genin on the knee and, as he shouted with pain, hit him in the stomach. As he bent double, Darcy clubbed him behind the head with his clenched fist. When Genin came round he looked a lot less like the hero of a TV thriller and his hands were handcuffed behind him.
‘I think we’ll go to the Hôtel de Police, my friend,’ Darcy said.
‘You’ll probably have more to tell us there.’
Faced with the evidence, Genin gave up. He identified the field where he’d landed and it was immediately passed to Goschen, who was acting as the French-speaking liaison between the Police Judiciaire and Murray at Scotland Yard.
‘It’s an enormous field,’ he reported. ‘It’s obviously been prepared. It might even have been used before for other things like drugs because hedges have been removed and the ground rolled flat. It’s as hard as iron, a good surface, and perfect for take-offs and landings so long as it’s dry.’
‘Which it would be. What about the farmer?’
‘Hasn’t been seen for a long time. Seems he had to go on an urgent visit to the States in early July just after the robbery. Took his wife and family and hasn’t been seen since. We’re trying to trace him but so far we’ve got nowhere. Probably deep in the heart of Texas. Got anything there that connects our man, Harding, with the theft?’
‘Nothing at the moment. Is he still around?’
‘Oh, he’s still around,’ Goschen said. ‘He’s the nerveless type. We’re keeping him under surveillance. We have a couple of men watching his place all the time. One of these days he’ll make a mistake and we’ll have him. It’s a pity your fly-boy didn’t talk.’
It was a pity, and doubtless by this time Harding and whoever had murdered Maurice
Tagliatti would know he hadn’t talked. However, Genin turned out to be a bonus. He was a small-time operator and he had a record – an old one, but a record nevertheless – for smuggling, in the days when it was done from North Africa by fast launch. Since then, it seemed, he had learned to fly, considering it swifter, safer and more profitable. Bardolle was sent to the house where he lived with a girl and, with a little help from the local cops, found heroin in a box at the back of a wardrobe. Genin named names and a few pushers were picked up.
They were able to charge him with flying contraband, with flying to France without having recourse to Customs, with landing contraband, with failing to file a flight path, with smuggling drugs, with possessing drugs and selling drugs, with possessing a gun without a licence, and finally – happy thought – with driving an uninsured car, something they’d discovered at the last minute.
Seventeen
It gave Pel enormous pleasure to be able to report to Goschen that they had picked up the pilot who had flown Murray’s gold to France.
‘Murray’ll come over at once to talk to him,’ Goschen said.
‘No, he won’t,’ Pel said in alarm. ‘It’ll get to our suspects and frighten them off.’
‘Murray’ll howl,’ Goschen warned.
‘Let him howl,’ Pel said. ‘If we get our men, you’ll get your men and probably your gold back, too. Give us a few days.’
‘I’ll try to persuade him.’
He didn’t entirely, because Murray was on the telephone within an hour and it took all Pel’s diplomacy, all his command of Rosbif, all the uses of the Entente Cordiale, to put him off. Murray finally subsided into a grumbling murmur with threats to contact the Foreign Office, Interpol, and the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, but he gave way in the end.
It was very satisfactory from a competitive point of view but, since Genin had suddenly realised that he had said too much about drugs and that it might be to his advantage to say a lot less about gold and had clammed up again, on that subject they were now facing a blank wall once more.
They had Genin’s admission that he had flown the gold to France but since Maurice Tagliatti, who had masterminded it, was dead, it looked very much as if they were going to have to start all over again. They still hadn’t got the gold and, with Maurice no longer among the living, they were finding it wasn’t going to be easy and were just trying to work out the best way to go about tricking someone like Cavalin or Ourdabi into giving something away when Morell telephoned.
It was a few days since he had appeared at the Pasquiers’ house and, with his good manners and fresh angelic face, he had won Madame Pasquier’s heart. Like Brochard, he was rapidly putting on weight and he had gained an admirer for life in the small boy he was guarding.
‘Patron,’ he announced cautiously, ‘I think the house is being watched.’
‘Why do you think that?’ Pel asked.
‘I’ve noticed a black Citroën moving up and down the lane in the last day or so. I think it could be some of Maurice’s people casing the joint.’
‘I think so, too,’ Pel agreed. ‘Can you see the men inside?’
‘No, Patron. Not from the house.’
‘Anybody made a move?’
‘No, Patron. But I bet they see me taking the boy to school and know who I am and what I’m doing.’
‘What about the boy?’
‘He does exactly as he’s told and keeps his mouth shut. But I think every kid in the school’s guessed something’s going on. I’ve seen them nudging each other when we arrive and leave, and the headmaster looks a bit like a terrorist who’s been sold a home-made bomb – he isn’t sure whether it’s going to blow up in his face or not.’
The following day Madame Pel took the day off to work in the garden. She was considering creating a small plot in the English manner. Pel might have liked an English garden but, since English gardens went with English weather, he preferred what he’d got. However, wearing a faded straw hat and humming one of the old tunes she liked so much, Madame busied herself near the gate.
Sur le pont de Nantes
Un bal y est donné.
La Belle Hélène
Bien y aller…
Her eyes bright and alert, she hardly moved during the whole day, despite the unexpected heat, which, in a sudden burst of enthusiasm before the winter set in, soared up into the eighties.
But that evening she sat with Pel in the salon looking at photographs he had brought from the Hôtel de Police. She always enjoyed what she called her ‘police work’. It never amounted to much but she was shrewd, with sharp eyes, and it made her feel she was sharing her husband’s life.
‘That one,’ she said, pointing. ‘He was in the car when it came past this morning. And that one was driving it this afternoon. I noticed that they paused as they passed the Pasquiers’ drive to take a good look.’
Pel poured her a weak whisky and water, then poured another, not so weak, for himself.
‘Peneau,’ he said. ‘And Devreux. But Peneau and Devreux don’t make plans. They’re just heavies.’
The following morning Murray telephoned again from London. As Goschen had warned, he was howling, but he was a good policeman and, like all good policemen, he had decided it might be worth waiting if they could produce a bigger haul of villains than expected and even more worthwhile if they could recover the gold. In the end he became quite friendly.
‘By the way,’ he said. ‘Harding. We’ve still got his phone tapped. And we picked up a fragment of conversation. It isn’t much because they’re pretty cagey but it seems to concern some chap called Pasquier. Do you know anyone called Pasquier?’
‘Yes,’ Pel said. ‘I do.’
‘It was a very oblique sort of conversation but they seem pretty concerned about him.’
‘Who were they speaking to?’
‘The Lordy number. This chap called Ourdabi. They talked all round the subject without saying anything but we get the impression that Pasquier could be a problem to them. Could that be so?’
‘Yes, it could.’
‘They seemed afraid it would lead to them. Think it’s worth talking to this Pasquier?’
‘I’ve talked to him already.’
‘Who is he? One of this Tagliatti’s lot?’
‘No. He doesn’t belong to the Tagliatti outfit.’
‘Who then? A cop?’
‘No,’ Pel said. ‘He’s not a cop either. He’s a little boy. Aged ten.’
Putting down the telephone, Pel yelled for Darcy.
‘Daniel,’ he said. ‘We have to get the boy away! It’s obvious someone’s going to try to get at him. That La Torche story’s put them on to him.’
‘Do they read French newspapers in England, Patron?’
‘I doubt it. But they do in France. And there are such things as telephones.’
As they made plans, Morell telephoned again. ‘No sign of them in the lane today, Patron,’ he said. ‘But I think they’re on the hill opposite. I borrowed Pasquier’s binoculars and I can see a car up there and a couple of figures. I also saw the sun glinting on the binoculars they’re using. I think they’ve been sizing this place up and they know now what they have to do and they’re just waiting their chance to do it. I reckon if I took a day off they’d be in here like a shot. I stayed awake all last night.’
As he put down the telephone, Pel was silent for a moment, suddenly realising that what had happened might provide the breakthrough they had been seeking. Reaching for a pad of paper, he began hurriedly making notes.
‘I think’, he said, looking up at Darcy over his spectacles, ‘that we might provoke our friends into making a move.’
That afternoon, there was a heavy rainstorm to let them know that autumn had really and truly arrived and it turned the ground into a quagmire. It stopped quite quickly, but when Morell’s car returned from the village school it sent water flying from a big puddle that had collected outside the Pasquiers’ house. Morell and the boy ran through the
storm to the front door but the sun was out again ten minutes later as a figure wearing Morell’s coat and the cap he affected left the house, climbed into his car and drove away. For once the house appeared to be unguarded.
A little while later, Henri Pasquier’s car arrived and the driver went into the house, then Pasquier’s wife appeared dressed in a bright pink dress and wearing a blue wide-brimmed hat. Going to the garage, she opened the doors, climbed into her own car and drove off through the big puddle by the front door. The car returned some time later and the same pink dress and wide-brimmed hat were seen heading into the house.
At the substation at Leu, Madame Pasquier, wearing different clothes now, was listening nervously to Pel. Alongside her was her husband, still wearing Morell’s coat and clutching Morell’s cap in his hand. Between them was Yves Pasquier. Using the door from the kitchen, he had climbed into the rear of Madame Pasquier’s car in the garage, where he had been covered with a blanket, then his mother had returned to the kitchen and left the house by the front door, ostentatious in her pink dress and blue hat so she would be seen, and had entered the garage from the front to drive off with him still concealed. She had been firmly convinced that her son had been responsible for the La Torche story.
Trying to reassure her, Pel outlined his plans. ‘I want you to take your son to your sister’s,’ he said. ‘And stay there. They’ll be thinking Morell’s gone off duty because they saw him apparently drive away, leaving the house unguarded. So we think they’ll try to get into the house tonight and make their attempt to snatch the boy. But he won’t be there. Morell will, though, dressed in your husband’s clothes, together with another of my officers dressed in yours.’
Out at Leu, still wearing Madame Pasquier’s pink dress, Claudie Darel turned on the lights inside the Pasquier house, remaining in front of one of the open windows for some time so she could be seen. Despite the hour, she didn’t close the shutters and, wearing Pasquier’s dark suit, Morell moved ostentatiously about, even appearing for a brief moment in the garden.
Soon afterwards, Madame Pel got out her car and took away Madame Routy, wearing a red coat and head scarf against the chilly evening, to spend the night with her sister. Depositing her on her sister’s doorstep, she then drove to the Hôtel de Police where De Troq’, being small and slight, was waiting with a wig and a coat similar in colour to Madame Routy’s. Half an hour later the car reappeared outside Pel’s house. Pel met them in the hall and indicated the hole in the hedge where he was in the habit of meeting Yves Pasquier.