Pel and the Party Spirit

by Mark Hebden

  ‘Could they be the men who bought The Cat House?’ he asked.

  She was quick to catch on. She looked at Darcy and bent over the pictures again. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I thought they looked familiar. Of course they’re the men. I remember them well now. I wasn’t thinking of people of thirty years ago.’ Her finger rested on one of the faces. ‘He was the leader, I think. At least he seemed to give the orders. He had a big head.’

  ‘Name of Laurence Luzeau, otherwise known as Lulu Grande-Tête.’

  The finger moved. ‘This one drove the car.’

  ‘Peter the Painter. Pierre Pirioux. Involved with one or two getaways.’

  ‘And the others.’

  ‘Georges Four-Eyes. The spectacles, of course. Real name Georges Pulot. And Albert-Jean Sammonix. He doesn’t seem to have had a nickname.’

  She chuckled. ‘In the company he kept, he must have felt very deprived.’

  The fact that their quarry had all left the land of the living was disappointing, of course, and didn’t add to their hopes of recovering the missing coins. Lulu and his friends were clearly beyond their reach but they still had to find what had happened to the money. Somebody had it and it was their job to find out who.

  Their chances looked slender until Lagé came up with something. It came from a friend of a friend and he hurried to pass it on to Darcy who immediately took it to Pel, who was rooting in his drawers and stuffing his pockets with packets of cigarettes. Darcy recognised the symptoms. Pel was going somewhere and was taking precautions in case he ran out of cigarettes and the tabacs had closed.

  ‘Patron,’ he said. ‘I think we might be getting somewhere at last. Lagés found a relation of Lorick Lupin’s in Tonnay-Boutonne. She says Lupin went to live in San Francisco. We have an address. I think we should contact the San Francisco police department. According to all those films on TV, they’re pretty good. We should get them to find Lupin for us.’

  Pel looked up as he stuffed a notebook in his pocket. ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘Later. We’re going to be busy.’

  ‘Something else, Patron?’

  ‘Yes. Dunoisse rang up again. That missing girl at Treffort has been kidnapped. They’ve had a communication.’

  As they roared down the motorway in Darcy’s car, Pel sat in silence. He was in no way pleased to pick up yet another case – a kidnapping into the bargain – because he had plenty on his plate already. But a kidnapped girl couldn’t be ignored and the Chief had made the position plain.

  ‘When you were promoted Chief Inspector,’ he had pointed out, ‘the idea was that your skill and ability were to be available to anyone in the area of the Midi and the West who wanted them. You’re not just a detective, you’re a consultant. You’d better get on your way.’

  Pel was troubled – not because his workload had increased; that was normal enough. It was just that nothing was ever simple. The police were never allowed to complete one job before another turned up. Criminals, he considered bitterly, were an inconsiderate lot.

  Missing girls were two a penny, of course. Every cop knew that. They even asked for trouble. Girls these days weren’t satisfied with being girls and being pretty. They wanted to be liberated, and the Sixties had made them want to leave home. But this was a kidnap and a kidnap was a different kettle of fish. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help wondering if the girl had laid herself open to it.

  At Guinchay, they were met by Inspector Dunoisse. He was a large man growing too fat, with a mandarin moustache and spectacles.

  ‘Evariste Pel,’ he said, shaking hands warmly. ‘I remember you so well.’

  To his shame, Pel had no recollection of ever having met Dunoisse before, but he put on a good act of recollecting. ‘I remember you,’ he said. ‘That time when–’ He paused, and Dunoisse inevitably supplied the necessary details.

  ‘When we climbed the headmaster’s wall to his daughter’s bedroom.’

  Did we, by God, Pel thought. I must have been more of a devil than I thought.

  ‘Not that anything happened,’ Dunoisse went on. He was a cop, after all, and cops never admit to funny business. ‘We were too young at the time. It was just a dare.’

  He looked like going on all day and Pel caught Darcy’s eyes. Darcy was quick to catch on.

  ‘This missing girl,’ he said, before Dunoisse could enthuse any more. ‘No sign of her?’

  Dunoisse’s face changed. ‘None,’ he said. ‘We’d begun to accept that she was dead. Then we found her riding hat, lying on the grass on the route she took, but there was no sign of her in the area. There was always the possibility that she’d been concussed, of course, and drifted off somewhere, or that someone had found her unconscious and picked her up. We searched all the hospitals and every wood and copse where she might have wandered. But I had my doubts because there were tyre tracks in the dust in the lane a few metres from the bridle-path where she was in the habit of riding. Then this letter arrived, demanding a ransom. It was posted in Goillac. At least it’s got a Goillac postmark. They’re asking a ransom of five hundred thousand francs.’

  ‘Modest enough,’ Pel observed. ‘Perhaps they’re not very experienced.’

  Dunoisse nodded. ‘I was obviously right,’ he said. ‘I decided she must have been stopped where we found her hat, pulled off her horse and shoved into the car that made the tyre marks.’ He fished in his brief case and produced a plastic bag. Inside it was a sheet of paper.

  He passed it across to Pel. Glued letters cut from a magazine spelled out the message. Five hundred thousand francs, it read. We’ll be in touch. Urgent. No police. The last words were underlined in violet ink.

  ‘It arrived yesterday,’ Dunoisse said. ‘At her home.’

  ‘Somebody who was in a position to keep an eye on her movements?’

  ‘Could be. We’ve checked around, but, quite honestly, we’ve found no one who might want to do the family harm.’

  ‘Five hundred thousand francs could be quite an incentive. What do the parents say?’

  ‘They want to pay up. They want their daughter back.’

  ‘Well, you know the procedure. We don’t agree with that but we accept what they must be going through. We ought to watch them, though, so that if they try to deposit something we can watch who picks it up. What do we know about her?’

  ‘Name Sybille Junot. Eighteen. Good close family. Very ordinary. They came originally from Vonnas, near Orleans, and the girl was born there and went to school at the Lycée there. Then they had a bit of luck. The old boy, who was a builder’s merchant in a small way, owned some waste land and the developers wanted it. When he sold it, he found he was pretty wealthy and decided to retire. They did very well out of the deal. They were lucky.’

  ‘Not at the moment,’ Pel said grimly.

  ‘No.’ Dunoisse shook his head. ‘Not now. They took their time and rented a house and the girl finished her education at the Lycée at Guinchay. Then they bought a small farm at Treffort about twenty kilometres away. Just so they could have a couple of fields and a stable, because the girl was nuts about horses. There are quite a few establishments of that sort around here. Stud farms. Training stables. Privately owned places. The family didn’t get involved, though. They’ve lived a quiet life and they seem to be well liked. The girl rode a lot and fancied one day breeding horses. She went to a stable for several years before they got their money to learn about horses. How to look after them. The diseases they get. That sort of thing. She was good on a horse, too, and was a lightweight. Natural rider. The horse she was riding was a big animal but reasonably docile and unlikely to throw her.’

  ‘I think we’d better see the people who knew her and get a bit of confirmation before we see the parents. Someone without bias.’

  ‘The village priest? He knows her.’

  The priest, an old man with a deeply-lined, suffering face, confirmed what Dunoisse had said. He had known the family since they had arrived in the district and was prepared to vouch for them.
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  ‘A very devout family,’ he said. ‘Law-abiding, kind. They had no enemies. There was no envy at their good luck. The girl was popular. She’s pretty, slight, dainty, but good with horses.’

  ‘Could it be a cruel joke?’ Dunoisse asked.

  The priest’s shoulders moved. ‘I doubt it, my son. They were popular and very much liked.’

  The Junots were a couple in their fifties, both with the marks of years of hard work in their faces. The farm they had bought was small, as Dunoisse had said, with one or two outbuildings and a couple of large meadows alongside which had been wired off into smaller areas for horses. The tears had finished and they were calm but clearly under strain.

  ‘She was a good girl,’ Madame Junot said.

  ‘Boy friends?’ Pel asked.

  ‘The only thing she was interested in was horses.’

  No girl, Pel felt, was interested only in horses. ‘You’d better tell us what happened,’ he said.

  ‘She went off for a ride. It’s good riding country here. Plenty of space. That’s why we bought the place. She insisted she didn’t want just to hack about on bridle-paths. She wanted to ride properly. She set off on Arabe, as she did regularly. She has two horses – Arabe and Tunis – and she rode them alternately so they got plenty of exercise. She was usually away for two or three hours but she stuck more or less to the same route in case of accidents.’

  ‘That was for her mother,’ Junot said. ‘She grew up in the city and doesn’t understand horses and she felt that, so long as Sybille stuck to a reasonable route, if there was an accident we’d know where to look.’

  ‘Very wise, madame. Please go on.’

  ‘Arabe – he was her favourite – came home on his own. She’d been gone around five hours. That was a lot longer than normal and we were beginning to grow worried, then we saw Arabe standing at the gate. We went down to him. The reins were hanging loose and he kept getting his foot in them. There was no sign of Sybille.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘My son saddled up Tunis,’ Junot said. ‘A neighbour took Arabe. They went over the route she normally took. No sign of her. Then they sort of scouted around, looking in the copses, thinking she might perhaps have dismounted or felt ill and the horse had been frightened and run away.’

  ‘Did she, carry money with her when she went out?’

  ‘Only a little. For the telephone in case of accidents. That sort of thing.’

  ‘And the riding hat?’

  ‘We found it near the Chemin des Marguerites,’ Dunoisse said. ‘It was lying in thick grass and wasn’t at first noticeable. We found it as soon as we mounted a proper search.’

  ‘Any sign of a struggle?’

  ‘There might have been. Near where the tyre tracks were. But it’s hard to tell. Horses use it a lot. The dust had been stirred up.’

  ‘Could anyone have had any reason – to want to harm her?’ Pel asked. ‘Someone, for instance, who was jealous of your good fortune in coming into money?’

  Junot considered carefully then shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. The people round here seem to get on with us. There’s been no sign of unpleasantness.’

  ‘Young men: there might have been someone you didn’t know about.’

  ‘There might have been. But I doubt it. She wasn’t a secretive girl. She was always open.’

  ‘Nevertheless, young girls are sometimes a little shy about a boy they’ve fallen for.’

  ‘The only one I can think of is Jean-Philippe Chevilland at Haute Campagne, the farm next door. He teased her a bit about horses. I think they got on well together but I don’t think it was any more than friendship.’

  ‘Friendships develop.’

  ‘They just joked. He pulled her leg and said tractors did more work than horses these days. But he knew she was good with horses and he thought she’d make a go of breeding them and training them. He even helped her occasionally. Because they’d always had horses at Haute Campagne – farm horses, of course – and he knew a lot about them. I know she liked him but I think that’s all it was.’

  ‘I’ve spoken to the boy,’ Dunoisse said. ‘He was at the market at Treffort all day. I’ve spoken to a dozen people who can swear to seeing him. He’s pretty upset and helped in the search. It’s my impression that, even though she might not have been keen on him, he was certainly keen on her and wouldn’t wish to harm her. From what he said, they were growing pretty close.’

  Pel turned to Madame Junot. ‘Try to think of anything that might help. Anything she might have done or said which will give us a lead.’

  Madame Junot looked on the verge of tears suddenly. ‘She never did anything much,’ she said. ‘She was a quiet girl. She usually talked about horses. Occasionally Jean-Philippe came over from Haute Campagne and they talked together.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Not in her bedroom, Chief Inspector, if that’s what you’re thinking. They used to sit in the tack room where she kept her harness and saddles. They couldn’t get up to much there. It has a cobbled floor like the rest of the stables, and it contains wooden horses for the saddles to rest on, hooks in the wall, a few cupboards. And two stools. She used to sit in there writing her notes or polishing leather. She took horses seriously. There was nowhere there they could have got up to anything.’

  Pel wasn’t so sure. While he had no wish to denigrate anyone who was innocent, he had found that young people could get up to things practically anywhere if they wished to.

  ‘There’s the spare stall, Mother,’ Junot said. ‘It’s full of straw for her horses.’

  Madame Junot had stopped dead, as if the same thought had occurred to her as had occurred to her husband and to Pel, then she nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘There was the spare stall. But surely–’ She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘So–’ Pel paused. ‘Let’s forget that. There’s nothing else she did or said that was unusual?’

  ‘No. Only–’ Madame Junot paused. ‘She mentioned she’d met an old school friend. Or not exactly a friend. Someone she knew at school. That’s what she said. Is it important?’

  ‘It depends on who the school friend was.’

  ‘It was a girl.’

  Remembering Nosjean’s case of the two murderous girls on the N6 who had also killed a cop, Pel wasn’t sure that being a girl made much difference these days. He had learned to deal with perverts, petty thieves, crooks of all shapes and sizes, all the rubbish of human life, but the idea of young girls who could kill arbitrarily was something new to him and had to do with drugs, pornographic videos and the general violence of the age, and was something else entirely.

  ‘I think we ought to try to find this friend of hers,’ he said.

  ‘What did she tell you about her?’

  ‘She said she’d met her while riding.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘It was a day or two before she disappeared.’

  ‘And this friend. Was she riding too?’

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  ‘Did she say where they met?’

  ‘No. She had various rides. One of an hour. One of two hours. One longer. According to how much she wanted to exercise the horse. We knew them all and I made her stick to them because she liked riding alone and you never know, do you? She always told us which route she was taking.’

  ‘And this Chemin des Marguerites?’

  ‘It isn’t far away and she always had to pass or return by it whichever way she went.’

  ‘Did she mention the name of this school friend she met?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Describe her?’

  ‘No. All she said was that she’d met this friend she’d remembered from school.’

  ‘What school would that be?’

  ‘I think she must have meant the Lycée at Guinchay. But it might not have been, because she was at the Lycée at Vonnas bef
ore we came to live here. She said she remembered her because she was older and you always remember the older pupils, don’t you, because they’re the ones who do things for the school. You never seem to remember the ones younger than you because they’re not really noticeable at that age.’

  As they left, Junot laid his hand on Pel’s arm.

  ‘I feel I ought to warn you, Chief Inspector,’ he said. ‘If we have to, we shall pay up. We consider our daughter’s life more important than catching a few criminals.’

  Pel didn’t argue. He could see the point. But he had no intention of just leaving the thing alone.

  ‘Get a list of all girls who could have been at those Lycées at the time she was there, Daniel,’ he said. ‘Particularly those who were ahead of her. They’re bound to have the records still. She hasn’t left school all that long, and at the very least, this friend she met might have seen someone hanging about.’

  Fifteen

  Puyceldome was looking at its best when Didier arrived. The sun on the ancient stones glowed pink and made the place look like an ancient dowager done up for a ball – all its scars and all its wear and tear showing, but, in the sunshine, as if it had all been well glossed over to leave only a general impression of pure beauty.

  He had ridden there on his scooter, enjoying the sunshine and the scenery and the breeze, and found himself looking forward to seeing Bernadette Buffel again. His message for Aimedieu was important.

  Aimedieu’s guardianship of the town had been extended for the time being. He had been on the point of being withdrawn but the discoveries Claudie and Darcy had made had put a different complexion on things. The kidnapping at Treffort was holding the attention of Pel and Darcy, however, and Didier had brought instructions that Aimedieu, who had interviewed everybody he could think of, was to start all over again. This time he was to concentrate not on who had or might have worked on the Cat Tower, but on anyone who had been seen handling or talking about unusual coins, or anyone who had appeared to have come into wealth rather suddenly.