by Mark Hebden
‘With new knives,’ Du Toit said.
They turned. ‘What’s that?’
‘New knives,’ Du Toit insisted. ‘We decided in the Lab that the knives were new. Old ones tend to leave a sign that they’re old. Deposit. Rust. A variety of things. We decided these were new.’
‘New?’
‘They’d been bought just before they were used on Vienne – perhaps especially for the job.’
Well, that was also an idea worth looking into.
‘He fell to the ground,’ Cham went on. ‘But he didn’t die at once. No way. I reckon he must have taken an hour and a half to bleed to death. He must have been moaning with pain, begging for help.’
‘But there’s nothing to indicate they did anything to assist him,’ Du Toit said. ‘They must have stood watching him die.’
‘I think they went through his pockets,’ Cham said. ‘And took what was in his wallet and emptied the contents of the glove compartment of the car. I think they then tried to start the car to drive it away but it went into the pothole and, as they didn’t really know how to drive – something else that indicates young girls – in the end they abandoned it and walked back to the N6 and got their ride to Lyons.’
It was good solid thinking and the next move was to contact the Lyons police and ask them to keep a sharp look-out for two girls, both young, probably both pretty, who were on the move together. It was a slender chance but it was the only one they had. The other thing, the point raised by Du Toit, was to find where the knives that had been used came from. If they were new, they had recently been bought so Nosjean set his men searching round the hardware shops in towns adjoining the N6 for the one which had sold them.
In the meantime De Troq’s drug problem hadn’t gone away. Criminals, drug addicts and fools weren’t in the habit of consulting with the police on when they might put into operation one of their nefarious schemes, and within ten days it was clear that the junkies about the city weren’t going short. De Troq’, keeping an eye on the situation in between helping Nosjean with the Garcy killing, saw it plainly.
‘It’s still coming in, Patron,’ he told Pel. ‘And somebody’s pushing it. It seems to be time to see Marceau again.’
But Marceau was no help. His supplier had covered himself with anonymity and his information about his fixes came in a roundabout way.
‘I don’t know who’s taken the distribution over,’ he said.
‘Somebody has, though, hasn’t he?’ De Troq’ pointed out.
‘Yes. But I don’t know who.’
‘Who supplies you now?’
‘A type called Gorgeous.’
‘Who’s he? And where do I find him?’
Gorgeous turned out to be a good-looking, almost pretty, boy of about nineteen. He was dressed in pink trousers and a pale green shirt and, like Speedy Sam, he ran. But he wasn’t all that fast and when Brochard, who was again waiting in the wings, caught up with him, pushing in front of him the boy who had bought from him, he was lying on his face, with De Troq’ sitting on his head while he went through the pockets of his jacket.
De Troq’ looked up and held out his hand to Brochard. In it were several small packets containing white powder. ‘Got him red-handed,’ he said.
Gorgeous didn’t look half so sprightly as he sat in the chair by the desk in the interrogation room. The interrogation room was never a place to give confidence to wrongdoers. It was about as comfortable as the inside of a tank, with brown furniture, brown walls, brown linoleum. A policeman stood in the corner, watching.
De Troq’ arranged a notebook on the table before him and carefully sharpened his pencil, taking a great deal of time over it. Sitting at the other side of the table, despite his hostile expression, Gorgeous was plainly nervous.
De Troq’ studied him for a moment and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. Then he changed his mind and began to light a cigarette with the same care he had given to the pencil sharpening so that the boy was able to absorb the bare, brown-painted windowless room, the hard modern table and the lamp fixed to it with a clamp.
‘Name?’ De Troq’ said. ‘Better have it for the record.’
Gorgeous stared back at him defiantly. ‘I don’t have to give a name,’ he said.
De Troq’ looked at the policeman and gestured at the boy with his pencil. ‘Better tell him that he does,’ he said.
The policeman spoke to the boy, who looked at De Troq’ a little bewildered. ‘Why do I have to?’ he demanded.
De Troq’ sat back, as if taken aback by the retort, and the boy seemed pleased his defiance had worked, because De Troq’ seemed on the defensive suddenly and it made him feel much more at ease.
As he leaned back, confident again, De Troq’ fiddled with his notebook once more then he rose from his seat and began to speak quietly with the policeman in the corner, several times indicating the boy. What he said was unimportant because the manoeuvre was designed simply to make the boy nervous.
The room was airless in the heat and the move succeeded. As the whispering went on, the boy’s face took on a pinched look. Several times, De Troq’ raised his voice deliberately, clearly talking about prison sentences, and he saw the boy shift restlessly in his seat. Smiling, he slapped the policeman’s shoulder, as though the boy’s fate were the last thing in the world he was interested in, and returned to the table. The boy had lost his defiance by this time and was watching him warily.
De Troq’ picked up his pen. ‘Name?’
The boy glanced at the policeman and swallowed. His voice emerged as a croak. ‘Douanet,’ he cleared his throat and his voice became firmer. ‘Philippe Douanet.’
‘Address?’
‘Apartment 6, 15 Rue Coudray.’
‘You at the University?’
‘No. I’m a carpenter.’
‘Employed?’
‘Not at the moment.’
‘Why not? Too tiring?’
‘I’m not just a carpenter,’ the boy snapped. ‘I’m a designer. I’ve been taking a course at the Technical College. But they don’t like people who’ve got brains.’
‘You a Communist?’
‘Why?’
‘Just a question.’
The boy gestured angrily. ‘No, I’m not interested in that lot. They’re nothing but political gangsters.’
‘Not these days. And they have the same problems in Russia with drugs we have here.’
De Troq’ wrote in his notebook, his face expressionless, as though the boy’s attitude was as common as measles.
‘How long have you been at the Tech?’
‘Seven terms.’
‘This one looks like being your last. Where did you get it?’
‘What?’
‘We know you’re pushing.’
The boy’s face was grey and sweating. ‘I can’t tell you. I don’t know. I was told to meet him in Moncey and I did.’
‘Description.’
‘It was dark.’
‘Name?’
‘I was told, but a lorry was passing and I didn’t catch it. In any case, I don’t find him he finds me.’
‘You pass it on to other students at the Tech?’ The boy looked worried. ‘I have done.’
‘You’d better give us the name.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Where did he get it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Where does he distribute?’
‘I don’t know that either. He just said he had several places. He said he got around a lot and his customers were all over the countryside.’
‘Where does he operate from?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Since you know so little I’d better turn you over to the police. They’ll get it out of you.’
‘No! Never! I daren’t.’
‘Was he tall?’
‘Medium.’
‘Dark?’
‘Medium.’
De Troq’ sat back. ‘I hope there are other types a
t the Tech who’ve met this type,’ he said. ‘Because if you’re lying we’d have to believe you were running the whole show. And a man in Marseilles was sent to prison the other week for twenty years for doing that. Did you know?’
The boy was silent and De Troq’ smiled. ‘Your intelligence work’s not very good, Gorgeous. Surely, you never thought you were going to make a killing out of this business.’
The boy writhed and said nothing.
‘I wonder if the people who suggested it to you set you up.’
‘Set me up?’
‘There’s a manoeuvre in war that’s known as a feint. It’s to mislead the opposition and draw his reserves, or provide the enemy with information it’s wished he should have. Usually, the poorest troops are used for feints, because then, when they get killed or taken prisoner, nothing’s lost. They’re considered expendable. I wonder if you were considered expendable, Philippe Douanet, known as Gorgeous. Someone to draw us off the big-timers. Because, for your efforts, you’re likely to go to prison for a very long time.’
Douanet’s face was white but he said nothing. De Troq’ continued coldly. ‘Because you were considered expendable, you’ll be the one who goes to jail. Not the man who’s running you. We don’t know who he is but he won’t be the one who suffers. Not the boss. Not the leader. Leaders never get sent to the front when there’s a war on, do they? It’s always fools like you. Leaders are never the ones who get their heads cracked.’ De Troq’ gestured at the policeman. ‘I’m going to leave you to the tender mercies of this gentleman.’ The policeman obligingly supplied a grimace that might have been a smile but looked more like a threat. ‘He’s good at his job. You’ll be taken to 72 Rue d’Auxonne – which is the delightful name we have here for the prison. I hope you’ll think about things. Later you might feel disposed to tell me more.
As De Troq’ rose to leave the interrogation room, the boy gave him a despairing betrayed look.
‘Never!’ he shouted.
‘Never’s a long time.’
‘I defy you!’
De Troq’ smiled. ‘Cross-examining you’s like whipping a puppy.’
‘I’ll never tell you anything!’
De Troq’ smiled again as he closed the door. He wasn’t so sure. But he hadn’t time to worry. Nosjean would be expecting him and he felt he could safely leave time and the bleak interior of a prison cell to work on Philippe Douanet.
As he waited for De Troq’ to return, Nosjean sat staring at the reports on the N6 murder. So far nothing had turned up from their enquiries. The Lyons police had come up with nothing and neither had the men searching for the shop which had sold the knives. Between them, Dr Cham, Du Toit and Labarres’, the hardware shop in the Rue de la Liberte’, had worked out what they considered a reasonably good description of the knives and Nosjean’s squad were wearing their feet out asking. Labarres’ had even produced photographs of a set of butchers’ knives they sold which fitted the bill and supplied measurements from the manufacturers, but so far nothing had appeared.
In the meantime, their suspects seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth. Where were they? Nobody had yet come forward claiming to have seen them. Then, staring at the list of Vienne’s belongings, wondering if there were anything there that might tell him more of the man and consequently more of the people who had killed him, Nosjean noticed a significant absence. There was no watch.
They had accepted that Vienne’s wallet had been rifled but no one had worried about the absence of a watch. Yet Vienne must have had a watch. He was a man who was constantly on the move from one firm to another and must have had appointments. Any man who had appointments had to have a watch.
Nosjean picked up the telephone and rang Doc Minet’s office. Cham answered. ‘Well,’ he agreed, ‘he must have had one. There was a white mark on his wrist where he’d worn one.’
Slamming down the internal telephone, Nosjean demanded the number of the local radio station and asked them to broadcast an appeal for anyone to come forward who had recently bought a watch from anywhere other than a jeweller’s. Once again, it wasn’t much. But it might give them a lead.
Eight
The following day there was an unexpected development and the balloon really went up.
A cop was shot.
His name was Jacques Burges and he was found alongside his little Renault van which was standing at the side of the road just outside Montcerf on the edge of the Forest of Grasigne. The engine had been switched off but the door was wide open. Jacques Burges lay alongside and two spent cartridge cases were found beside him. But they weren’t from Burges’ gun. That was still in his holster unused, so it seemed there hadn’t been a fight, and Burges’ left hand still gripped his notebook and his right hand his pencil. The notebook was up to date but the last entry was unfinished and told them nothing.
All it gave them was the date, the twelfth, and the time, 7.30 pm. It seemed that Officer Burges had had cause to stop someone for questioning and had just been on the point of writing down their particulars and their name when he’d been shot. He’d been hit twice, once in the heart and once in the face.
When a cop was killed there was always a lot of indignation in the Hôtel de Police. And it was always worse when the cop in question was young. Officer Burges was twenty-four and he had a wife and a small daughter, and Inspector Nadauld, who ran the Uniformed Branch and was his superior officer, returned from seeing his wife, looking shaken.
‘She’s expecting another,’ he announced. ‘And she’s an orphan without any family of her own, while Burges was an only child. His family took to the girl because they’d had a daughter who died. They died a year ago – a car accident – and now Burges is dead. God knows what she’ll do.’
The hat went round the Hôtel de Police and all the police stations and substations in smaller towns and villages. The response was enormous because every cop in or out of uniform knew that next time it might well be himself and his family would be as dependent on help as Madame Burges was.
The Press came out with their usual headlines. POLICEMAN BUTCHERED. It wasn’t hard to work out how they arrived at them. Look at the files. It had happened before and was all there from last time. When the cops did anything wrong they were ‘flics’, when they were beaten up or shot they were always ‘policemen’. The Press knew how to behave, and their stories brought in more subscriptions from charitably minded citizens for the fund for Madame Burges.
The Chief was tight-mouthed all day after the killing and Judge Polverari, who was handling the case, looked heavily depressed. Judge Brisard made one of his pompous speeches at the Chief’s conference. He was an ardent churchgoer and liked to expound at times when he could find anybody to listen.
‘We must give him a good funeral,’ he said. ‘It’ll be expected of us. After all, it was for the glory of France. Young Burges did his job and insisted on doing it, come what may. He chose duty.’
‘He was shot when he wasn’t looking,’ Pel snapped.
‘He died bravely and nobly nevertheless.’
Pel snorted. A lot of nonsense was talked about dying, and people regularly pontificated about going to Heaven. War memorials went on about the glorious dead and on the television Indians shot cowboys who died nobly – as if nobility were some sort of consolation for no longer being able to see or hear or feel.
‘There’s no glory in dying,’ he growled at Brisard. ‘If you want to know what being dead’s like you should wear a blindfold, stuff your ears with ear-plugs, sew up your mouth, then lock yourself in a dark room and throw the key away. That’s what being dead’s like. Burges would never have chosen that.’
As Pel stamped out of the room, slamming the door behind him, Judge Brisard went pink and, glancing at the Chief, announced that there were things he had to do and departed hurriedly.
For a while Pel sat in his room fuming, his face red. He smoked two cigarettes in quick succession. Judge Brisard, he decided, had the brains of a parrot, and
a mouth full of parroted clichés. Policemen didn’t go round thinking of the glory of God – not even much of the conception of duty. Mostly they found themselves trapped by circumstances – facing a gun for no other reason than that they just happened to have been on the spot when the gun was produced. After that they behaved according to their personalities. The bold and the brave sometimes had a go – and ended up dead. The sensible either ducked or tried to talk their way out of it.
Smoke was still coming out of his ears as the first of the black camions carrying policemen set off to fan out from the spot where Burges had been found. Within an hour the Forest of Grasigne was full of cops armed with sub-machine guns, their faces tense, their eyes narrow. There had been a prison break at Auxerre and two men had got free, both of them in for robbery with violence, and it was assumed they had acquired a gun and been responsible, and no one was taking any chances. Since the Forest of Grasigne was as big as Paris and wild enough to contain boar, no one really expected to find what they were looking for, but they were all nervous in case they did.
Searching was a job for Uniformed Branch, though, and Pel’s men confined themselves to facts in the hope of getting an identity. Everybody was called in and the enquiry at Puyceldome was dropped for the time being. A dead cop was more important than a thirty-year-old corpse, and Pel deployed his men wherever they might be most useful. The Chief decided to ask for help in the shape of extra men from neighbouring areas.
‘We can’t allow them to get away with it,’ he said. ‘Apart from poor Burges, it’s a matter of principle. Burges represented the law and we have to show the law can’t be defied or defiled.’
A lot of motorists were put to some inconvenience as their vehicles were halted and searched. Road blocks had been set up and everybody who passed through, on foot, on bicycles, or in four-wheeled vehicles, was questioned. There was nobody who resembled the men from Auxerre, however, and, in fact, it was with some surprise that they heard that evening that the two escapees from Auxerre had given themselves up at Avallon. They immediately swore they knew nothing about Burges and they had to be believed because they had been heading in quite the opposite direction.