Pel and the Sepulchre Job

by Mark Hebden

  ‘Have you ever done this before? Removed the pictures from their frames?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why for her?’

  Leygues drew a deep breath. ‘You never saw her,’ he said. ‘You had to see her to understand.’

  ‘Did you ever see her outside the museum?’

  ‘What has that to do with it?’

  ‘It might explain why you gave permission.’

  Leygues drew in his breath again. ‘I am the director of a museum and art gallery,’ he said stiffly. ‘I don’t chase young girls who come to learn about art.’

  Nosjean didn’t believe him.

  From the portrait that he’d built up of Colette Esterhazy, it began to seem to Nosjean that Leygues’ decision to allow her to have pictures out of their frames was not all that unusual. There appeared to be a lot of people about who would happily have lain down and allowed Colette Esterhazy to walk up their backs in spiked heels. She had everything in her favour, but she had never, it seemed, taken advantage of it – save for apparently seducing Arthur Leygues and Marc Distaing into allowing her to walk away with two pictures worth a fortune.

  It only left her parents. The University supplied their address. She came from Beauvais and it meant a long journey. Nosjean did it on the Sunday and took Mijo Lehmann with him for the day out.

  Colette Esterhazy’s parents lived in a large house on the outskirts of the town. Her father was a lawyer and they lived in comfortable circumstances. He was a very good looking man and it was obvious that his wife had once been beautiful. They were gentle and welcoming and seemed devoted to each other so that it was clear Colette Esterhazy had inherited from them not only her good looks but also her happy nature.

  They were clearly horrified by what had happened. ‘She was always such a good girl,’ her mother said. ‘And so clever. She was good at her studies at school, and when she discovered she was good at art she made the switch to it easily. We thought she had a great future before her.’

  ‘We were worried, though,’ her father pointed out. ‘You read so much about artists, don’t you?’ He cleared his throat while his wife raised her eyebrows.

  You did indeed, Nosjean thought. ‘What about men?’ he asked. ‘I get the impression that she’s very beautiful. It would seem normal that men would chase her.’

  ‘Oh, they do,’ Madame Esterhazy said. ‘But it doesn’t seem to worry her. She’s always modest about herself. I don’t think she realises how beautiful she is. That’s why she’s always so nice, so kind. There isn’t an atom of selfishness in her.’

  Nosjean seemed to be investigating a paragon of virtue.

  ‘Did any of them come here?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, of course. There was Yvon Tisch. And George de Vannes. They were both very wealthy and we rather hoped…’ Madame Esterhazy shrugged. ‘But she seems set on a career in art and nothing came of either of them.’

  ‘Anybody who wasn’t local?’

  ‘One or two. But nobody more than once or twice. She doesn’t seem to be all that interested.’

  She must have been interested in someone, Nosjean decided. He couldn’t imagine a girl as beautiful, gifted, kind and naïve as this one was supposed to be thinking up a clever scheme to steal two valuable paintings without help. In which case, there must have been some man in the background, playing Svengali to her Trilby.

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘Some time ago now. She lives her own life. She’s old enough. And she has a high moral standard.’

  Not all that high, if what he’d heard was true, Nosjean thought. But perhaps it was high enough for the day and age. He was no one to talk himself. He had been living with Mijo Lehmann for some time now and his sisters – three of them, all older, all spinsters, all less attractive and less sophisticated – were still dropping strong hints that it was time they married and started producing a family.

  ‘You see,’ Madame Esterhazy said, ‘she wants to get on with her life. I sometimes ask if she doesn’t feel like settling down and marrying and she always says, “Not yet.” She feels marriage would stop her career dead. She thinks she can do well as an artist. In fact she’s been told so by one of her tutors at the University. He advised her to forget her degree and just get on with painting. But, having started on it, she feels that a degree would still be a good idea. It would be there, she says, in case anything happened, so that if for some reason she couldn’t paint she could always turn to reviewing, teaching or working for an art gallery. She’s a very sensible girl.’

  But also a girl who could easily be led, Nosjean decided. Perhaps she had felt she was doing someone a favour, being kind, helping a lame dog over a stile, doing good works. There were people like that. Perhaps she had thought it was of benefit to the less fortunate in the world to lift the two paintings. Perhaps she was going to give the proceeds to charity. There had been dafter things, he considered. But not many.

  Eight

  Unlike Nosjean the bank investigators were getting nowhere fast. An estimated sixty seven million francs in old notes and jewels had disappeared from the Banque Crédit Rural and they hadn’t even started to produce any evidence.

  They had no names. Not one.

  To find out what the gang looked like, Pel tried mugshots of possible suspects on the staff and the customers who had been at the bank during the hold-up.

  ‘We couldn’t see,’ one of them said. ‘We were lying on our faces and they wore stocking masks.’

  ‘Could you see nothing at all?’ Darcy asked. ‘The smallest thing would help.’

  ‘One had long fair hair,’ one of the girl clerks offered helpfully. ‘It looked as if he washed it regularly. It was very fluffy and shiny.’

  After scrambling about in a tunnel from a sewer? Darcy found it hard to believe.

  But it was about all they got. There were references to marks that looked like scars, a pointed nose – but no one was sure because features were flattened by the nylon stockings the gang had worn over their faces. One seemed to be fair but under the nylon stocking he could well have been off-brown.

  Only old Bridier had seen them without their stocking masks and he wasn’t very helpful.

  ‘Were they wearing some other sort of masks when they came out of the manhole?’ Pel asked. They had to be, he decided. For occasions like this villains usually wore Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck faces or something of that sort. On the other hand you couldn’t climb out of a manhole wearing a protective hat and a Mickey Mouse mask without raising some sort of question. People didn’t usually hold parties down a sewer. But he also knew the general public were so unobservant that they might ignore anything, or if they didn’t ignore it, they wouldn’t report it.

  Old Bridier was vague and offhand and persisted in addressing half his remarks to the dog. ‘We knew a Pel once,’ he said. ‘Didn’t we, Tou-Tou? He was a policeman, too. He used to direct traffic on the corner where we lived.’

  Pel frowned. He didn’t like being equated with other policemen. He felt he was unique and he certainly didn’t direct traffic. He tried to push his questions but the old man was less than exact.

  ‘Normal height,’ he said cheerfully, enjoying the first excitement and interest he’d had for years. ‘Same as everybody else. Weren’t they, Tou-Tou? Or were they a bit taller?’

  The dog showed no interest either way.

  ‘Did you get a good look at them?’ Pel asked.

  ‘Oh, excellent,’ Bridier said. ‘I can describe them if you wish.’

  ‘I do wish,’ Pel said sharply. What in God’s name, he thought, did the old fool think he was asking questions for?

  ‘Well…’ Bridier paused to think. ‘One had a wide mouth, with deep lines on either side of his nose. As if he sneered a lot. That sort. That’s right, isn’t it, Tou-Tou? You saw him also. I remember that very dearly. One had…well…sort of slanting eyes. A bit like a Chinese. But he wasn’t a Chinese, was he, Tou-Tou? If you understand what I mean. They had very def
inite faces.’

  ‘Definite? In what way?’

  ‘Just definite. Tou-Tou would tell you.’

  ‘I’d rather you did,’ Pel said coldly.

  ‘Well,’ Bridier said huffily, ‘the third man who came out had a very red face. As if he drank a lot. Reddish complexion. That sort of thing. One had a dark skin. Arab. Something like that.’

  This was a new one. None of the hostages had mentioned a man with a dark skin.

  ‘Go on,’ Pel said. ‘Do you remember any more?’

  ‘One had hollow eyes. Very hollow. As if his eyes were sunk in his head. But, of course–’ Bridier laughed – ‘it might have been the shadow caused by the peak of his hat. One of them had a thin nose and wrinkles round his eyes. Very marked wrinkles. As if he laughed a lot. Or screwed up his eyes against the sun. I know about wrinkles. I’ve got them. They’re from spending a lot of time in Algeria when I was young. I used to help build dams. Everybody in Algeria had lines on their faces. Even the women. In fact–’ He saw Pel’s frown and hurried on. ‘Oh, yes, and one of them had a moustache.’

  There seemed a possible lead. They had the identity kit man with them and he worked out six pictures. They were none of them very satisfactory because old Bridier, though he could remember the particular features he had mentioned, couldn’t remember anything else. Perhaps the dog could, Pel thought bitterly. He’d have to ask Leguyader if there were any way of finding out.

  He looked angrily at what they’d produced. A man with a wide mouth and deep lines running down on either side of his nose. As if he sneered a lot. One with a red face. One like an Arab. One with hollow or deeply set eyes. One with a thin nose. One moustache. They all seemed to have at least one very clear and distinct feature that ought easily to be noticed. Almost too easily noticed. Pel wondered, in fact, if old Bridier had made them up. Witnesses such as Bridier often did for the kudos and excitement it gave them. When they’d checked back with the hostages none of them could remember a man with dark skin. Perhaps old Bridier had been tired and bored. He had soon wearied under the questioning, so perhaps he’d offered the descriptions to stop them badgering him.

  Most people, Pel thought, when you asked for a description, went blank. Old Bridier had gone blank. The people in the bank had gone blank. They seemed to have been there most of the day with their eyes shut. They remembered that the gang had all worn overalls, stocking masks and rubber gloves of the type housewives used for washing up, in gaudy pink, yellow or blue, but there wasn’t anything else they remembered: no twisted fingers, no limps, no down-at-heel shoes, no coloured socks. Out of the lot of them, only one had noticed that one of the gang had fair hair and he’d worn it long and appeared to wash it regularly. And even that was surely doubtful. It was the same old story. You could have stood the young Brigitte Bardot in front of the average citizen and asked for a description and got an answer something like, ‘Well, she’s got a face. With real eyes.’ To most people, other people’s faces were as blank as puddings.

  As they returned to headquarters they passed the Hôtel Central – and decided in their frustration that they needed a drink in its hallowed precincts instead of in the crowded and smoky Bar Transvaal which was the bar the police used behind headquarters.

  The Hôtel Central was the most prestigious hotel in the city, as was obvious from the number of American tourists who used it, and the Hôtel Central tried to make them feel at home. It had a Texas Bar, where they served drinks so cold they made your teeth ache, a New York Grill and a Manhattan Cocktail Lounge. The dining room was known throughout the city as Le Hamburger from its habit of including even that delicacy among its courses. The French were all for making the Americans feel at home but they sometimes felt that in this case the management let their enthusiasm run away with them especially in winter when there were few tourists about and the people who ate and drank there were mostly French.

  Pel and Darcy were met by the manager, a tall, well fleshed individual who gave them a gracious smile. Despite the smile, he didn’t really like seeing the police. They had helped him more than once but it made no difference. Police about the place could give it a bad name.

  Because of the cold, Pel ordered a whisky. He even asked Darcy if he’d like one, too, and was shaken when he said he would. Darcy didn’t normally drink spirits during the day and he’d expected him to say no.

  They began to discuss the case which was becoming increasingly bizarre and extremely frustrating for, although every corner of the bank had been dusted down, there was no sign of any fingerprints.

  ‘They didn’t have to crack the safe. They had the keys. They got them from Gilbaud,’ said Darcy sourly.

  Gradually it was becoming clearer what had happened. ‘It looks as if this bunch were very thorough providing for any contingency,’ said Pel. The gang had guessed just where the police would place their guarded perimeter round the bank and had made sure that their escape would emerge behind the police backs.

  ‘Could we have an informer, in the Hôtel de Police?’ Darcy asked desperately. They looked at each other, both immediately thinking of Misset. But, they decided, even Misset wouldn’t do that. They’d suspected him more than once of passing on snippets of information to the press. But they couldn’t imagine even he would pass on information as important as this to a gang of criminals, a gang moreover who had surely been responsible for Robert Meluc’s death, and the death of the old man in the bank who had died of a heart attack after being coshed. Besides, for once Misset had shown intelligence over the street guide, and had acted promptly if not quite in time. Regrettably Pel knew they didn’t have a suspect.

  ‘The type who worked it out wasn’t necessarily a serving cop,’ Pel suggested hopefully. ‘A retired cop? A cop who was kicked out? A cop who was bent and was retired a little early? Do we know anyone like that? A man like that would be able to work out from a Blay guide the sort of deviation that we’d fix up round the Crédit Rural – especially if he’d worked in Traffic and especially if he knew the city. I could work out roughly which roads Pomereu would seal off and which ones he’d use to keep the traffic moving. So could you. Some cop who’d had experience – even some years ago.’

  ‘It’s an idea, Patron. It’s worth going into.’

  Pel spread the diagram Minet had found in Meluc’s wallet alongside Pomereu’s plan and placed their glasses on the corners. For the most part it matched.

  ‘Just a few places where they guessed wrong,’ he pointed out. ‘This little bit here. And this one – the Rue de Soissons. And they’ve gone a bit wrong round the Rue Danton. But in the main they’ve got it right and the mistakes made no difference. Rue de l’Arquebuse. Boulevard de Sévigné. Rue de la Liberté. Rue Bossuet. Rue Monge. It wasn’t a bad guess.’

  ‘What are these crosses?’ Darcy asked. ‘Four round the perimeter. And two at the end of the tail.’

  ‘Six crosses altogether,’ Pel pointed out. ‘Six in the gang. The two at the end of the tail are obviously where they emerged at the Place Nozay. Bars where they watched the manhole for a while? The others? Routes they marked off for the getaway. The one at the end of the Rue Bossuet indicates access to the Rue du Drapeau and the north. The one on Sévigné the route to the RN5 and the west, the other two routes south to the RN74 and the RN996. They’ve got it all worked out.’

  ‘But which did they take?’

  ‘Perhaps they’d been watching those spots to see which was best. Let’s check. Get the troops out asking questions. Let’s find out if anybody we know or would like to know lives round there. And let’s have Lage go through all our files to see if he can find an ex-cop with a record. Because if he can, he’s probably our man and will lead us to the other five.’

  ‘Or twenty five,’ Darcy pointed out drily. ‘We don’t know how big this gang is. These six might only be the active members. I wonder if any of them ever worked with Albert Spaggiarsi.’

  Albert Spaggiarsi was an anarchist who in 1976 had masterminded a spectac
ular sixty million franc robbery of the Société Générale bank in Nice, also by tunnelling through a sewer.

  ‘It’s possible,’ Pel admitted. ‘Let’s ask. I reckon it took Spaggiarsi’s lot a bit longer, though. They did it over the weekend and even tapped the electricity and cooked a meal in the vault while they were emptying it. But Spaggiarsi did it the hard way. They had to get into the vault because they didn’t have the keys. Ours went in through the stationery store, which doesn’t have reinforced walls. Nothing on that floor does. Only the vault’s reinforced, and they got into that because they’d got the keys by threatening to do for Gilbaud’s family. And while we were making threatening noises at the front on the surface they got out at the back below ground and disappeared in Meluc’s van.’

  When they reached the Hôtel de Police they called on Leguyader at the Forensic Lab. He had dabbled his fingers in some powder they had found scattered round the washroom at the bank and sniffed them, his nose wrinkling like a dog at a rabbit hole. He had at least one answer they wanted. He wasn’t everybody’s favourite but they had to admit his findings often contributed to the success of a case because, if nothing else, he knew his job.

  ‘Talcum powder,’ he announced. ‘That’s what it is. I got some of my wife’s and compared it. Made from magnesium silicate. Often tinted faintly pink. This was. It’s a cheap brand, I’d say. It can be bought at any perfumery or the Nouvelles Galeries.’

  ‘Any indication of why it’s there?’

  Leguyader smiled triumphantly. ‘None at all,’ he said.

  Back to square one. They’d established that the powder they’d found was the same stuff mothers sprinkled on their babies’ bottoms after a bath but not why a gang of bank robbers had tossed it about during a bank raid.

  It was quite obvious by this time that the police had been well and truly fooled. They had been led to believe they were facing a dangerous situation where there might well be murders, even that they might be facing terrorists who were robbing the bank to raise funds for one of their assassination attempts. But no assassinations were expected – not even of tax inspectors who were the only people apart from top politicians whom anyone would want to bump off without good reason – and in fact, they’d been facing nothing but a good old-fashioned robbery, planned with considerable cunning.