by Mark Hebden
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘In this city?’
‘No. Not here.’
Well, Nosjean thought, he couldn’t search the whole of France without some sort of lead. He tried again with mounting desperation.
‘Don’t you see what he’s done to you? Landed you in jail – with the possibility of a long sentence.’ However, he didn’t believe this for a minute. Magistrates were as human as anybody else and they would doubtless read her a lecture, put her on probation as a first offender, tell her she’d been led on by a wicked, cruel man, and that they were giving her a chance to pull her life together.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I see that.’
‘Don’t you want a little of your own back?’
‘No.’
Nosjean could well believe it. He even wondered sometimes if she was as big a crook as her seducer and was keeping quiet because she feared the law of the underworld. But he found it a theory that was hard to accept.
‘Just a name,’ he urged.
‘I can’t give you one,’ she replied doggedly and Nosjean felt like screaming aloud in frustration.
Morell found his two boys without further difficulty. They lived within fifty metres of each other in the same street, a grubby thoroughfare called the Rue de Bruges. It was a narrow alley with shabby blocks of apartments, even shabbier with the icicles and the iron sky. There was no sign of them or their parents at their homes but neighbours told him of their whereabouts.
‘They’ll be with their grandmother,’ they said. ‘She lives near the Rue de Rouen.’
Despite the cold, there was a conference of aproned women in the street and between them they worked out the address. ‘Apartment 6a, Rue Alphonse Bordier, 17.’
The Rue Alphonse Bordier was another street like the Rue de Bruges. Narrow, ugly and devoid of hope. Morell wondered who Alphonse Bordier was. The builder? The builder’s son? Some French hero? Some half-baked politician? The French had always had a liking for calling streets after their heroes. After all, they could hardly call them after their swindlers, murderers, thieves. Rue Landru. Rue Stavinsky. Rue Robespierre. It wouldn’t work. Sometimes even the heroes turned out to be anything but heroes and then there had to be a hurried rechristening. Calling streets after people, he decided, carried an inbuilt problem.
Number 17 was a narrow-gutted house, and Apartment 6a was even worse. It consisted of two or three tiny rooms, had clearly once been part of a larger apartment and was as cold as a tomb despite the electric fire that was burning.
The two boys were there, with an old lady who looked about ninety. She sat huddled in a chair, holding a walking stick and staring with blank opaque eyes and no sign of interest at a television which was showing Pinocchio in full colour and volume. One of the boys, Loisel, was adjusting the set and, as he entered, Morell heard him ask, ‘Can you see that better, Grandmère?’ The old lady gave no indication of having heard. The other boy emerged from a tiny cubicle which did duty as a kitchen. He was holding a fork and Morell could smell cooking.
They looked at Morell with trepidation. ‘Are you the school inspector?’ Loisel asked.
‘No,’ Morell said. ‘I’m a cop.’
There was a long silence.
He showed them his identity card and looked about him. The television set was new and alongside it, connected up, was a video. It was showing ‘Play’ and what the old lady was looking at was obviously a recording of the film they’d made. Alongside was a pile of video cassettes.
‘That came from Sobelec, didn’t it?’ Morell asked.
Loisel nodded dutifully and Morell knew this was going to be easier than he had thought.
‘The video too?’ He probed gently.
Another dutiful nod.
‘And all the cassettes?’
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t think you could get away with them, did you?’
The two boys said nothing.
‘Why did you steal them? For the old lady?’
‘Well,’ Carrera said with sudden openness, ‘she can’t walk much and she lives alone. She’s my grandmother. She’s his too. We’re cousins. We thought We’d try to do something for her.’
‘Such as stealing a television?’
‘It was for her, not us.’
‘Couldn’t your parents have bought her one?’
‘I don’t think they could afford to.’
They told him a long story about both sets of parents having to work, one mother at the station bar, the other in the canteen at Métaux de Bourgogne. Both fathers had unimportant, ill paid jobs, one as a cook at the barracks, one as a labourer. Carrera did all the talking. A sharp-eyed boy of fifteen, he was obviously brighter than his cousin.
‘They haven’t got a lot to spare,’ he insisted. ‘I’ve got four brothers. He’s got three sisters and two brothers. When we’re at school Grandmère’s on her own. It’s rotten being on your own when you don’t see and hear things so well. And she likes the pictures. It’s something moving. Anything’s better than looking at a blank wall all day. When she’s alone nothing moves. Nothing. It’s like being in a box. A cold box.’
Morell had to admit that what he said was true. He tried to be gentle.
‘Couldn’t you have managed to afford a black and white television?’
‘It’s not the same. That’s like old photos. Colour’s for real.’
‘So you stole the television for her?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the video games?’
‘They were for us. We thought we needed a bit of entertainment, too.’
‘Couldn’t the old lady live with one of the families?’
‘There isn’t room.’
Morell could well believe it. French families – all good Catholic families, for that matter – took their duties seriously and old people were never abandoned. But there were problems when the houses were small and the families big.
‘You were a bit clumsy, weren’t you?’ he said. ‘It didn’t take many enquiries to get your names. And what about the car? Where did you get that?’
‘It’s my father’s. Everybody was at work. They share cars to save money and it was his father’s turn to drive.’
‘You know you’re not. old enough to drive a car.’
‘I’ve driven it often.’ There was a trace of pride and defiance in the reply.
‘On the streets?’
‘At night.’
‘Where did you get the disabled badge?’
‘We copied it from one Eddie Detaigne lent us. His father lost a leg at work.’
‘Why not use Eddie Detaigne’s father’s badge?’
‘We thought of it but then we thought it might be a good idea to have one of our own.’
‘So you could do other jobs like this one?’
‘Yes.’ Carrera looked at Loisel. ‘But that stupid con dropped it somewhere.’
‘I know. I picked it up. It’s a pity you don’t use your skill for something better.’
They probably would, of course, given time, Morell thought. Forging bank notes, for instance.
‘It’s a good job you’ve been stopped, isn’t it?’ he went on. ‘That makes about four offences you’re guilty of already. Taking a car without consent of the owner. Driving a car without a licence and therefore without insurance. Improperly using a disabled person’s badge. Theft. You’re in a mess.’
‘Will they send us to prison?’
Morell decided that perhaps they wouldn’t under the circumstances, especially when he recited the story of the old lady they were trying to help. But it wouldn’t do to give them any false hopes. It was better they should shake in their shoes a little.
‘I wouldn’t like to say,’ he admitted. ‘The magistrates take a dim view of theft – and a dimmer view of false representation and driving a car without a licence. If you’d hit someone you’d have been in real trouble.’ The silence lengthened and Morell tried to stop himself feeling sorry for them. He fai
led. ‘All right, you’d better come with me. What are we going to do about the old lady?’
‘She’ll be all right,’ Loisel said. ‘We’ll give her some grub and this video’s nearly finished. We can put another one in if you can wait a bit and by the time that finishes the next door neighbour will be back. She’ll look in. She always does. She won’t be any trouble.’
But there were tears in the boys’ eyes.
Twelve
Nosjean hadn’t given up although he was somewhat depressed. He was determined to find the man behind Colette Esterhazy’s downfall and it became almost an obsession, to the point when Mijo Lehmann grew worried.
‘It’s nothing,’ he insisted.
‘Have you fallen for her or something?’
‘No.’ He kissed her. ‘It’s not that. It’s just that I can’t stand seeing someone put on a girl who’s decent, clever, kindly…’
‘And beautiful.’
Nosjean nodded. ‘That, too,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s obvious she’s not a villain. Everybody who’s ever met her thinks the world of her. She’s good natured, considerate…’
‘And beautiful.’ Mijo’s voice was growing tart.
‘Oh, God,’ Nosjean snapped, aware that it was their first quarrel. ‘Yes, that. But some sod’s had her sent to prison. He persuaded her to steal those pictures and, having got them, he sent her off to Toulouse to see a dealer, then, while she was out of the way, disappeared with them, leaving her to face the music.’
‘Are you sure she wasn’t in on it?’
‘I’m sure.’
Mijo shrugged. ‘I wish I were,’ she said.
Even Mijo’s hostility didn’t make Nosjean let up. Muffled to the eyebrows, he made enquiries round the University, at Colette Esterhazy’s apartment, in the bars she might have visited, the little restaurant near her apartment where she sometimes ate. They all knew her – who wouldn’t, he thought, looking as she did. One or two of them had seen a man with her but none of them knew his name. The name ‘Patrick’ occurred more than once, though, and Nosjean realised with some small triumph that he had at least got part of an identification.
‘God,’ said Courtrand when Nosjean appeared. ‘Are you still at it?’
‘Investigations aren’t finished in a couple of days,’ Nosjean said stiffly. He explained what he was after and Courtrand frowned, not that pleased to be interrupted. There was a girl perched on a stool who was naked but didn’t seem at all perturbed to have Nosjean looking at her.
Courtrand stared at him angrily, then he gestured at the girl. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Put on. Go and make some coffee. And get the rum out. It’s cold in here. You’ll be needing a drop and so will I.’ He put down his palette and brushes and turned to Nosjean. ‘Well?’
‘Colette Esterhazy.’
‘Yes?’
‘I want the name of a man she lived with. The man who put her up to this con job. Do you know him?’
‘Of course I don’t.’
‘Did you ever see her with a man?’
‘No. Never. Well…’ Courtrand paused. ‘A guy once came to collect her when she’d been sitting for me late.’
‘Did she use his name?’
‘She called him Patrick. She introduced him. What was it?’ Courtrand beat his fist on his forehead. ‘She said he was a painter and I asked if I ought to have heard of him. She said I would in time.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘I’ve got it. Patrick Lourdais. I remember because I made a few enquiries about him. He’s small time. Makes no money at all. Tell you the truth, I didn’t like the look of him.’
‘Do you know where he lives?’
‘Haven’t the foggiest.’
‘Didn’t she tell you?’
‘You don’t usually give the address, date of birth, where they were born and why, when you introduce somebody.’
Nosjean left Courtrand’s studio as he was yelling, ‘All right. Take off. We’ve got to make up time and my brushes are getting cold.’
At least, Nosjean thought with greater optimism, he had a name now. But Patrick Lourdais was a common enough name and he wouldn’t be easy to find.
He began his new enquiries at the University but nobody had ever heard of Patrick Lourdais. He tried Colette Esterhazy’s old apartment, which was now occupied by another student, and drew another blank. He tried the bars and restaurants again. He got nowhere. It was, he decided, going to be a long job and one in which he could foresee increasing tensions between himself and Mijo.
He was surprised, therefore, when he discovered exactly where Patrick Lourdais was the very next day.
He was in Paris. And he was dead.
The story was in one of the rags Sarrazin, the freelance journalist, represented. ARTIST SHOT IN LOVE NEST, the headline shrieked. And there, just below, was the name of Patrick Lourdais.
Well, the first thing anybody might have thought, imagined Nosjean, was that Colette Esterhazy had done it. But she couldn’t have, could she? Because he hadn’t been dead long and she had been in 72, Rue d’Auxonne. The newspaper told a story of a man whose studio was regularly visited by women. That wasn’t abnormal for an artist, especially as Lourdais, like Courtrand, had specialised in painting them. But it seemed he was known in the neighbourhood behind Montmartre for his lifestyle and for the pretty girls he was involved with.
Nosjean presented himself to Pel. ‘Patron,’ he said, ‘I think we might be able to recover those two stolen pictures.’
‘Again?’ He replied cynically.
Nosjean flushed. He showed Pel the story in the newspaper and explained what he had learned. ‘That’s the type I’m after,’ he said. ‘I’d like to go to Paris and see the police there. I expect they’ve got the pictures.’
‘If he hasn’t sold them,’ Pel said drily. ‘Judging by this story, he might well have. You need money for the sort of life he lived.’
‘Patron,’ Nosjean urged, ‘you can’t get rid of pictures like those in a hurry. They’re too well known. They’re worth a lot of money.’
Pel gave his reluctant consent. He felt a little bitter. He couldn’t see why Nosjean and Morell should have all the luck while the bank hold-up produced so few results. It was an unfair world, he thought.
Nosjean drove the chilly distance over the winter roads to Paris to interview the police of the 18th Arrondissement where Lourdais had had his studio behind the Butte de Montmartre. The countryside looked like the Arctic and Paris was a stark silhouette.
The police weren’t able to help much. They did what they could, however, and told him what they knew.
‘Shot at close range,’ a detective called Regnard explained. ‘Belgian .38 pistol.’
Pictures were produced. They showed a man lying on his back with a bullet wound in the right temple.
‘He didn’t do it himself,’ Regnard said. ‘There were no powder marks worth noticing on his face. The pistol was in his hand. We think it was put there but the only fingerprints on it were his. Classic suicide arrangement but it wasn’t suicide. It was murder. Someone came up here. Someone he probably knew because there was no sign of a struggle. We think they sat talking and there were indications they had a drink together. Cigarette ends. Dirty glasses. Fingerprints. But none we know. As though they had discussed business.’
Perhaps they did, Nosjean thought. Business concerning two valuable pictures.
‘But then, we think,’ Regnard went on, ‘the visitor produced a pistol and shot him. Do you know why? Because if you do, we’d like to know too. We’re checking other artists and all the shady dealers but we’re not getting anywhere.’
Nosjean had no idea why Lourdais was dead, but he guessed it was connected with the stolen pictures.
Regnard had seen no paintings such as Nosjean described and didn’t even know who Douanier Rousseau and Gustave Paot were. However, he took him to the sealed studio and allowed him to look round. There were plenty of paintings about, almost all of them women, one that he recognised as Colette Esterhazy. Ha
ving learned a little about art from Mijo, Nosjean didn’t consider them very good. He went through every canvas but there was no Scene Near Enghien, no Paot.
The studio had a decadent look about it. It was grubby and the nude paintings verged on the pornographic. He wasn’t quite sure what to do. He didn’t fancy going back to Pel and telling him he was unsuccessful once more. He decided to try Colette Esterhazy again. She might know of some place where Lourdais might have hidden the pictures.
She had read of Lourdais’ death in the newspaper she was allowed. ‘He was shot, wasn’t he?’ she said as Nosjean stripped off coat and scarf and gloves.
‘Yes. Belgian .38. Did you have such a pistol?’
‘I didn’t do it.’
‘You couldn’t have. But somebody might have found your pistol and used that.’
‘I never had a pistol.’ But despite the flat negatives of her answers Colette Esterhazy seemed suddenly willing to talk. Around her in the cell were portraits of other prisoners and one or two that Nosjean recognised as being prison visitors. There was also one of Distaing, the gardien at the Musée des Arts Modernes. She had obviously been filling her time.
‘They’re saying the magistrates might not be too hard on me.’ Colette spoke tentatively.
‘What will you do when you’re free?’ asked Nosjean gently, trying to encourage her to think more positively.
‘Go south. I want to paint for a while. Then I’ll come back and finish my degree. They’ve told me I’ll be allowed to.’ At once a certain light came into her eyes and with a shock he realised that this was perhaps how some of the major Impressionists had seen their vocation – in the south. She was a real painter, he thought, maybe she’ll be of major importance in the future and when this was all behind her. Suddenly he had the odd feeling of being privileged to be in her company. Then she reached out impulsively and took his hand. ‘Everybody’s being so kind. I’ve been talking to them, you see.’
‘I wish you’d talk to me,’ said Nosjean with irony but he knew that the breakthrough had come.
‘I will now he’s dead.’ Nosjean felt a sense of shock. ‘Well, he is dead, isn’t he? There’s no need to remain silent about him any more.’