by Mark Hebden
As Pel and Darcy regarded the remains of their meal with disgust, Annie was doing just as Darcy had suggested and was getting her bearings.
Her task was made more difficult because of continued snow. Bezay was to the north in an area of sharp hills and hidden valleys and the roads were blurred and the signs plastered with white. Since it had begun to seem that Guillet was indeed the driver of the car in question, Annie started her enquiries with a call on the owner of the circus that had employed him.
It was cold and the shabby little group of caravans stood outside the big top under the leaden skies, placarded by an elaborate notice proclaiming it in huge nineteenth-century curlicue letters to be Malmette’s Magnificent Circus.
She found the owner in the tent frustratedly trying to school an unwilling pony. The owner was a woman, Euphemia Malmette, as wide as she was high, with a foreign voice to rival Bardolle’s and a set of gold teeth that looked as if they’d come direct from the vaults of the Banque de France.
‘Move, you son of a pig,’ she was roaring at the circling animal. She gestured at Annie. ‘The stupid bastard jumps every time I crack the bloody whip,’ she complained. ‘It’s only for show and to make a nice noise but if the customers think I’m being cruel, it’s not much good, is it? I haven’t touched the sod yet.’
Annie introduced herself and explained her enquiry.
‘Oh, well,’ Euphemia Malmette said. ‘Circus folk are a bit different from other people, aren’t they? It’s the life they lead. The Guillets are smart and agile and do a good act. Pretending to be one man in two places at once. Identical twins, see. But I wouldn’t say they’re the straightest in the world. Quite a lot of ’em aren’t. Get on, you bugger,’ she yelled at the horse. It rolled its eyes and seemed to wince at the noise.
‘It’s easy to get away with something when you’re on the road,’ Euphemia Malmette went on. ‘You’re hard to catch up with. And those two are devoted to each other. Twins are like that. So are circus folk. We’re not part of the ordinary community – never have been. No settled home, see? We’re on the move all the time. Some do lift things occasionally. I bet Georges did. He’s a bit light-fingered. Had one or two things of mine. Will he go to jail?’
‘If he has a record he might,’ Annie said.
‘I think he has.’ Madame Malmette shrugged. ‘Oh, well. The circus will always use their act. He can come back when he’s paid his fine or done his stretch or whatever they give him. What we’ll do with François, his twin brother, when he turns up, though, I don’t know. He won’t settle easy. Circus folk are like that. It’s the life they lead.’
Annie found the proprietor of the bar at Bezay who, it turned out, was the man who claimed the car was his, sitting behind the zinc watching his wife do the work. He had a fractured jaw and was looking sorry for himself.
‘It’s not a bad fracture,’ he mumbled through the bandages. ‘He got me when I wasn’t looking. I’m glad the saucy little sod got a broken ankle.’
‘Did you break it?’ Annie asked.
‘No. I’d have been glad to, though. I was fond of that car. He drove up here as smooth as you like. Didn’t know it came from here, see. He did the ankle himself trying to jump over a table to get away. It overbalanced and down he went. Perhaps he was trying to do a death defying leap. They say he’s a tumbler or something in a circus and that’s what they do, isn’t it?’
‘Well, if it is,’ Annie said, ‘he obviously needs a bit of practice.’
She decided it might be a good idea to visit the hospital and have a talk with the accused man, but she arrived at an inopportune moment.
‘Give him a minute or two,’ the nurse said. ‘His twin brother, François, has just come in to see him.’
‘He’s turned up?’
‘Has he been missing? Anyway, he’s here and it’ll be lunch time in a few minutes. He’s also injured his foot and he’s on crutches. It’s sprained, he says, and his doctor’s put a tight bandage on it. He looks just like our Guillet. It’s amazing about twins, isn’t it? They not only look alike, they think alike, and even injure their ankles alike.’
‘It’s the life they lead,’ Annie said.
Growing impatient, she headed up the stairs to the second floor where Georges Guillet was in his single room. A soporific policeman was sitting on a chair outside. As she arrived, so did the meals trolley, pushed from the lift by a civilian worker, an elderly woman in a checked overall. And just at the same time, the man she assumed was François Guillet emerged from the room where his brother, Georges, was in bed.
He nodded to the policeman and set off down the corridor on his crutches. It was then that Annie noticed that he wore plaster and not bandages and it dawned on her that he wasn’t the man the nurse had noticed coming in on a visit but was the man she had come to see. The man she was looking at was Georges Guillet himself and the man lying in his bed was his brother François, ready, Annie had no doubt, to make a bolt for it as soon as the prisoner had walked out in his place. As they were twins, it wasn’t a difficult act to work. According to Madame Malmette, they did it at every performance of Malmette’s Magnificent Circus.
She yelled for help and started to run, backed up by the cop from outside the room who almost immediately went down to a swing from the crutch. Annie herself just missed a skull fracture.
Then the brother, François, his bandages half stripped off and agile as a performing monkey, appeared at a run from the room where the prisoner had been. The nurse was at the end of the corridor, screaming her head off, the cop lying unconscious at her feet. Annie was dazed from her near escape and the two brothers were bolting for the stairs, the one with his foot in plaster hoisted across the back of the other who was scuttling along trailing three metres of bandage. All Annie could think of doing was to grab the lunch trolley.
‘That’s the patients’ lunches!’ roared the auxiliary.
Ignoring her, Annie swung the trolley round, sending the covered plates balanced on top flying in all directions to spatter the walls with soup and fruit tart. With a good hard shove, she sent the conveyance, along with the dozen lunches it contained, flying along the corridor. It shot down the stairs with the noise of a pile-up on the N7. With it went the Guillet twins.
They didn’t lose their prisoner. In fact, they gained one, with a matching broken ankle.
‘It’s being twins,’ Annie told Pel.
‘The hospital’s demanding an apology,’ Darcy reported with a broad grin. ‘Probably even compensation. They say Annie’s thrown the whole place into confusion. She’s wrecked the meals trolley for the Auguste Beaumarchais Ward, ruined eighteen lunches, deprived the patients of their food, spattered the walls with soup and blackcurrant tart so that they’ll need redecorating, broken a visitor’s ankle, given the civilian helper hysterics and set the whole of the Auguste Beaumarchais Ward in an uproar from which it isn’t expected to recover in a hurry.’
‘Don’t see their problems,’ said Pel calmly. ‘A cop’s been knocked unconscious, and it’s our job to stop villains escaping. Besides, haven’t they picked up another customer? What are they complaining about? But what about the Lion of Belfort?’
‘She’s come out of it with nothing worse than a black eye. She showed brains and initiative. Courage, too. She’s quite a girl, isn’t she?’
‘I’d say she was a one man demolition squad. I suppose she deserves a commendation in her file,’ replied Pel drily.
‘Well,’ Darcy said, ‘it wasn’t a bad effort for her first week or two in a new job.’
Misset was all too quick to offer congratulations. ‘That’s quite a black eye you’ve got.’
But Annie wasn’t taken in by his smooth talk. ‘There’s one waiting for you, too,’ she pointed out, ‘if you try to lay a hand on me.’
Suddenly Morell was making progress. He had been going round all the shops in the city that sold videos and televisions on the understanding that if the culprits of the Sobelec theft had been boys, as he suspected, they
might have made a few enquiries beforehand. Including the major stores and the Nouvelles Galeries there were quite a number, but he struck gold eventually.
‘They came here,’ the manager of the radio and television department of the Nouvelles Galeries said. ‘It must have been them. There were two of them and they were asking a lot of questions about prices and so on. They seemed interested in the videos and the computers, and they were the right age.’
‘Have you a description?’
‘One had red hair. He was tall. In the way kids of sixteen are tall. All arms and legs and neck. No breadth. The other seemed to be the leader. He was shortish and slight and wore two earrings in his left ear. Why do they do it?’
‘Because they want to raise money,’ Morell said.
‘No, not steal. Wear earrings.’
‘Oh.’ Morell grinned. ‘Isn’t it supposed to stop headaches? Or stop you going cross-eyed?’
Morell knew he must now go to the College of Art to find out if they had a student who was tall and gangling with red hair, or one who was short and slight and wore two earrings in his left ear to stop him going cross-eyed. Unfortunately they hadn’t.
Morell sighed for he realised he would now have to visit every senior school in the area and talk to the art masters. Morell didn’t fancy the idea, especially with the snow that persisted in lying about like somebody’s dirty linen.
There were several schools within easy reach of the Nouvelles Galeries, more still if you went into the districts round the city, and it meant visiting them all.
Morell finally found what he was looking for at the Lycée St Julien.
‘Yes, we have boys well capable of manufacturing disabled stickers,’ the art master agreed. ‘They’re not very difficult – just that wheelchair logo and a bit of lettering. All they’d have to do would be get the right colour paper.’ He smiled indulgently. ‘They probably got it here, even. We carry all colours. With a bit of care I could do it myself and I’m only a teacher of drawing without the cunning of these young bastards.’
‘I’m looking for two of them,’ Morell said. ‘One tall and gangling with red hair. One dark, shorter and wearing two earrings in his left ear.’
‘Guy Loisel,’ the art master said immediately. ‘And René Carrera. Loisel’s the tall one. Carrera’s been forbidden to wear the earrings at school. He’s too big for his boots and too old for his years. They’re always together. They’re cousins. Have they been up to something?’
‘You bet your life they have,’ Morell said. ‘Stealing.’
The art master whistled. ‘I wouldn’t put it past them,’ he admitted. ‘They’re a bit of a trial and they’re always in trouble. Bad homes, I suppose. The sad thing is that both of them have ability and if they’d only try they’d both get decent jobs. But they never will. It’s their background. They come from the Arsenal area.’
‘Are they at school now?’
‘I’m afraid not. They often aren’t. This time they haven’t been for several days.’
Morell wasn’t surprised. ‘I’d better have their addresses,’ he said with a sigh. More legwork, he thought.
Ten
Pel had a small stroke of luck the following day when a man walking his dog found a protective helmet in a ditch outside Messigny. It was in the grass by the side of the road leading north out of the city towards the Plateau de Langres, made of tough plastic, with fittings inside to hold it in place on the head, and was coloured orange.
The finder remembered reading somewhere that the men who had robbed the Crédit Rural bank had climbed out of a manhole wearing orange protective helmets. Duty clashed with self-interest but in the end duty won and he took the helmet he had found to the police at Fontaine.
The sous-brigadier in charge of the substation recognised its significance at once and ran him in his little cream van down to the Hôtel de Police. There were no fingerprints but it was a minuscule step forward, and Pel needed cheering up.
‘It seems’, Pel said, ‘to indicate that it was abandoned as they bolted out of the city.’
‘And’, Darcy added, ‘that we know at last which way they bolted – north towards Chatillon or Langres.’
Darcy arranged for the local radio station to mention the trophy on their evening news and the following day another orange helmet was brought in. A tractor driver had found it on the edge of one of the fields he was working and had thought it suited him so well he had been wearing it for several days.
‘Where did you find it?’ Pel asked.
‘Where I work.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘In the fields round Baignay-les-Jeufs.’
Again there were no fingerprints, which indicated that the bank robbers had continued to be careful, and no more protective helmets turned up in spite of the fact that all substations were told to keep their eyes open. The local radio station mentioned the helmets two or three times then dropped them as being no longer of news value. Pel wasn’t surprised. You could blow up bridges over the Seine in Paris and it would hold the attention for a day or two until something else happened then it would be forgotten.
‘At least,’ he said, ‘it indicates they ran for the high ground. It’s lonely up there round Baignay and Messigny. They’ve probably got some hide-out arranged where they’ve hidden the loot.’
It was obvious that one of the gang had tossed his helmet away in a spirit of joie de vivre, of something accomplished, something done, and a second had followed suit. Then one of the others had realised that an orange protective helmet was a clue and no more had been cast aside. If it indicated the direction they’d taken as they’d fled from the scene of the crime, it didn’t indicate much more. Every cop in the triangle north of the city between Chatillon and Langres was told to keep his eyes open but the items on the radio news not only had the effect of alerting people to be on the lookout, they also warned the gang. Pel knew there’d be no more protective helmets leading in a straight line to the hide-out.
Pel and Darcy then began to check the staff at Crédit Rural again, but, as Gilbaud, the manager, had said, none of them had been noticed particularly looking around the stationery store. The most likely suspect seemed to be the junior clerk, who was the dogsbody, runner of errands and the one who was always sent to the store cupboard to replenish forms, carbons and paper. He was a fat, pink boy who blushed every time they spoke to him and they ruled him out at once.
With the snow, Pel decided to leave for home in reasonable time. The roads were dreadful and the sky was still heavy with cloud. When he arrived, Yves Pasquier from next door was sitting at the kitchen table in front of a plate littered with crumbs.
‘I’ve come for my slice of cake,’ he said, with his mouth full. ‘It’s late and I almost forgot.’
It had surprised Pel to discover that Madame Routy had a soft spot for the boy. Somewhere in that agate organ she called a heart there were clearly portions that still had warmth in them. She regularly baked cakes of surprising quality and since neither Pel nor his wife ate cake, he could only assume she did it for no other reason than to give it away in doorstep slices to Yves Pasquier.
‘Cake’s bad for you,’ he said.
He put on his severe expression but in fact he was always pleased to see Yves Pasquier. Although the typists and newly joined cops at the Hôtel de Police considered him a walking Reign of Terror, he had a surprisingly soft spot for small boys.
‘I think it’s going to snow again,’ Yves said, swallowing the last large piece of cake with effort. ‘Snow stops everything.’
Pel nodded. Even his circulation, he thought.
‘Have you caught those bank robbers yet?’
‘Not yet.’
‘You will.’
Pel wished he had Yves Pasquier’s faith.
The conversation took a turn towards the bizarre. ‘I’m going to be a frog,’ Yves said.
Pel’s eyebrows rose. ‘And be kissed by a princess so that you turn into a prince?’
‘Is it a play?’ Pel asked.
‘I think so. At school. I’m not sure. I don’t really know what’s going on.’
Neither, thought Pel, remembering his own early days at school, had he.
‘It’s for the end of term. They’re going to paint my face green and yellow. It’s about animals having a party. I’d rather be a knight or a pirate or something from outer space.’ An indignant note crept in. ‘Why do lady teachers always make you dress up as animals?’
It was something Pel remembered with disgust from his own childhood. ‘Domination,’ he replied. ‘Or maybe they get tired of looking at you.’
‘Antoine Gilbert’s mother’s got rats,’ Yves said.
‘In the play?’
‘No. At home.’
‘White rats?’
‘I think they’re ordinary brown ones.’
‘Who’s Antoine Gilbert?’
‘He’s my friend. Have you got many friends, Monsieur Pel?’
‘No.’ Pel considered it a triumph of skill and management.
‘Don’t you like people?’
It was a difficult question and Pel didn’t want to be accused of corrupting minors. He tried to be honest. ‘Not much,’ he said. ‘Just Madame Pel. And you.’
Yves smiled proudly. ‘Antoine’s going to be a fox,’ he said. ‘He sits in front of me at school. He passes bits of paper with answers on them to me. Under the seat. I give him sweets.’
Criminality, Pel decided, was spreading. The world was full of crooks and shysters. Even the village school.
He tried to be polite. ‘How’s she got rats?’
‘She feeds the birds.’
‘You should never feed birds in the country,’ Pel said solemnly. ‘You should make them work for a living. There’s plenty around for them. They’ve only got to look for it.’
‘She likes birds. She’s into being Green. She’s soppy about them. That’s why she feeds them. Then the rats come. We once had rats. Before we came to live here. We had chickens and kept the chicken feed in a hut. It had a wooden floor and the rats came through the holes in the planking for it. When Pappy pulled the hut down there were rats’ nests all over.’