‘But Émile didn’t?’
‘No. He didn’t send for the heavies either, like some of his colleagues. Not that it worked anyway, because Mazotti always bought them off in the end. His idea was to call in some dockers from Le Havre who were given the job of bringing Mazotti and his men into line …’
‘When was the last set-to?’
‘The night Mazotti died. He had gone to the Lotus around one in the morning with two of his regular sidekicks. Émile Boulay’s dockers threw them out. It turned violent.’
‘Was Émile there?’
‘He hid behind the bar because he can’t stand fighting … Afterwards Mazotti went to lick his wounds in a bar on Rue Fontaine, Chez Jo, which was sort of his headquarters. There were four or five of them drinking at the back. When they came out at three in the morning a car drove past, and Mazotti was shot five times while one of his men took a bullet in the shoulder. We haven’t found the car. No one’s talked. I’ve questioned most of the club owners … I’m still investigating.’
‘Where was Boulay at the time of the shooting?’
‘It’s not easy establishing facts in that world, as you know, chief … Apparently he was in the Train Bleu, but I don’t trust the witness statements that much.’
‘Émile didn’t kill Mazotti,’ the Italian repeated.
‘Did he carry a gun?’
‘An automatic, yes. He had a police permit. That wasn’t the gun Mazotti was killed with.’
Maigret sighed, then signalled to the waitress to fill their glasses as he had been dying to do for a while.
‘I wanted to bring you up to date, chief,’ Lucas explained, ‘and I thought you’d be interested in hearing what Antonio had to say.’
‘Everything I said was true.’
‘I’d called Émile in for questioning this morning,’ Lucas went on. ‘I admit it bothers me that he then went missing last night.’
‘What did you want to ask him?’
‘It was just routine. I was going to ask him the same questions one last time, to check his answers against those he gave me the first time round and the other witness statements.’
‘Did he seem scared either of the times he was in your office?’
‘No. Annoyed, more like … He couldn’t stand the thought of his name being in the papers. He kept saying that it would cause his business tremendous harm, that his clubs were quiet places, nothing ever went on in them, and that if he was associated with a settling of underworld scores, he’d never live it down.’
‘That’s true,’ Antonio agreed, making as if to stand up. ‘Do you need anything else from me? I should be getting back to my sisters and my mother. They’re in a terrible state …’
Moments later they heard the roar of the red car as it sped off in the direction of Pont-Neuf. Maigret slowly took a sip of his aperitif, glanced sidelong at Lucas and sighed:
‘Are you expected somewhere?’
‘No. I was planning to …’
‘Eat here?’
He nodded, making up Maigret’s mind for him.
‘In that case we’ll eat together. I’ll give my wife a call. You can order.’
‘Are you going to have the mackerel?’
‘And the veal liver en papillotes.’
The veal liver particularly caught his fancy, as well as the atmosphere of the bistro, which he hadn’t been into for weeks.
The case wasn’t particularly important, and Lucas hadn’t needed any help on it before this. No one outside the underworld cared about Mazotti’s death. Everyone knew that such score-settlings always ended up resolving themselves, even if just by more of the same.
The advantage to these cases was that the prosecutor’s office and examining magistrates didn’t hound the police. As one magistrate used to say:
‘That’s one less prison bill to pay …’
The two men had lunch and chatted. Maigret learned some more about Émile Boulay and ended up becoming interested in this strange little man.
The son of a Norman fisherman, Émile had got a job as a waiter with the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique – ‘Transat’ for short – when he turned sixteen. This had been before the war. He sailed on the Normandie and found himself in New York when the fighting started in France.
It was hard to fathom how such a puny little man had been admitted into the American marines. Nonetheless, he had fought the whole war in that branch of the forces before taking up a job on the Ile-de-France, this time as a head waiter.
‘You know, chief, almost all of them dream of going into business for themselves one day. Two years after he got married, Boulay bought a bar in Le Havre and wasted no time turning it into a dance club. Striptease was just starting to become popular in those days, and he seems to have immediately made a pretty serious pile.
‘By the time of the accident and his wife’s death, he was already planning to expand to Paris.’
‘Did he keep the club in Le Havre?’
‘He appointed a manager. One of his old shipmates from the Ile-de-France runs it for him. In Paris he bought the Lotus, which wasn’t as successful then as it is now. It was a bit of a dive, a tourist trap like all the others round Place Pigalle.’
‘Where did he meet Antonio’s sister?’
‘At the Lotus. She was working in the cloakroom. She was only eighteen.’
‘What was Antonio doing in those days?’
‘Working at the Renault factory in the body shop. He had come to France first, then sent for his mother and two sisters. They lived in Javel.’
‘So Émile basically seems to have married the whole family … Have you been to his place?’
‘No. I had a look around the Lotus and his other clubs but I didn’t think I needed to go to his apartment.’
‘Are you convinced he didn’t kill Mazotti?’
‘Why would he have? He was winning.’
‘He might have been afraid.’
‘No one in Montmartre thinks he did it.’
They had coffee in silence, and Maigret refused the calvados the owner offered him in his usual way. He had started with a couple of aperitifs but then only drunk a glass of Pouilly so felt pretty pleased with himself as he headed back to the Police Judiciaire with Lucas.
In his office he took off his jacket, loosened his tie and set about the administrative files. Nothing less than a complete reorganization of the police services was on the agenda, and he was expected to produce a report. He applied himself like a good student.
At times during the afternoon he found himself thinking about Émile Boulay and the little Montmartre empire the former Transat employee had built up, about the young Italian with the red sports car and the apartment on Rue Victor-Massé where the three women lived with the children.
Meanwhile Lucas rang round the hospitals, the police stations. He circulated Boulay’s description as well, but by six thirty nothing had come of his inquiries.
It was almost as hot that evening as it had been during the day. Maigret went for a walk with his wife and sat outside a café in Place de la République, nursing a glass of beer for almost an hour.
They talked mainly about their holidays. Many of the men passing by had their jackets over their arms; most of the women were wearing cotton print dresses.
The next day was a Thursday. Another glorious day. The daily reports made no mention of Émile Boulay; Lucas had no news either.
There was a violent but short-lived thunderstorm around eleven, after which steam seemed to be rising from the cobblestones. He went home for lunch, then returned to the office and the stack of files.
When it was time to leave Quai des Orfèvres there was still no news of the little man from Le Havre, and Lucas had spent a fruitless afternoon in Montmartre.
‘Boubée, or Mickey, as he’s known, who’s been a doorman at the Lotus for years, does seem to be the last person to have seen him alive, chief. He thinks he remembers Émile turning the corner of Rue Pigalle and Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lore
tte as if he was going to the Saint-Trop’, but he didn’t really take any notice … I’ll go back to Montmartre this evening when they’ll all be at work.’
Lucas drew another blank on Thursday evening. At nine o’clock the following morning Maigret paused as he was going through the last of the daily reports, then called him into his office.
‘He’s been found,’ he said, relighting his pipe.
‘Alive?’
‘Dead.’
‘In Montmartre? In the Seine?’
Maigret handed him a report from the twentieth arrondissement. It stated that a man’s dead body had been found at daybreak in Rue des Rondeaux, next to Père-Lachaise. The man was lying across the pavement, not far from the railway cutting. He was dressed in a dark blue suit, and his wallet contained a sum of money and an identity card in the name of Émile Boulay.
Lucas looked up, frowning.
‘I wonder …’ he began.
‘Go on reading.’
The inspector was even more surprised by what followed. The report specified that the body, which had been taken to the Forensic Institute, was in an advanced state of decomposition.
It was true that Rue des Rondeaux was a cul-de-sac and not very busy, but still, a body couldn’t have lain on the pavement there for two days, or even two hours, without being discovered.
‘What do you reckon?’
‘It’s strange …’
‘Have you read the whole thing?’
‘Not the end.’
Émile Boulay had disappeared on Tuesday night. Given the state of the body, it was likely that he had been killed that same night.
Two full days had elapsed since then, two swelteringly hot days.
It was hard to think why the murderer, or murderers, would have kept hold of the body all that time.
‘That’s even stranger!’ Lucas exclaimed, putting the report on the desk.
The strangest thing of all was the fact that, according to initial findings, the murder hadn’t been committed with a gun or a knife.
As far as could be discerned pending the autopsy, Émile Boulay had been strangled.
Despite their many years on the force, neither Maigret nor Lucas could remember a single underworld strangling.
Every neighbourhood of Paris, every social class, has its way of killing, so to speak, as it does its preferred method of committing suicide. There are streets where people throw themselves out of the window, others where they put their heads in charcoal or gas ovens, others where they take barbiturates.
Police similarly know the knifing neighbourhoods, the ones where coshes are used, the ones like Montmartre, say, where firearms predominate.
Not only had the little nightclub owner been strangled, but his murderer had then waited two days and three nights before disposing of his body.
Maigret was already opening the cupboard to get his jacket and hat.
‘Let’s go!’ he muttered.
At last he had an excuse to put aside his administrative chore for a moment.
On a beautiful June morning, cooled by a light breeze, the two men headed off to the Forensic Institute.
2.
The pink buildings of the Forensic Institute on Quai de la Rapée look more like a pharmaceuticals laboratory, say, than the old morgue under the great clock of the Palais de Justice.
Behind a window in a bright office, Maigret and Lucas found an employee who recognized them immediately and said with an eager smile, ‘This is about the fellow from Rue des Rondeaux, I assume?’
The electric clock above his head showed 10.05. Through the window they could see the barges on the other side of the Seine, moored off the warehouse docks of the Magasins Généraux.
‘There’s someone already waiting,’ the official continued chattily. ‘A relative apparently.’
‘Did he give his name?’
‘I’ll ask him for that when he’s identified the body and is ready to sign his statement.’
The man thought of the corpses in purely theoretical terms, as entries on filing cards.
‘Where is he?’
‘In the waiting room. You’ll have to bide your time too, Monsieur Maigret. Doctor Morel is in the middle of his work.’
The corridor had white walls and light-coloured tiles. The waiting room was equally bright, with its two benches and varnished wooden chairs, its large table that was only lacking a stack of magazines to complete the impression that you were at the dentist. The glossy walls were bare. Maigret had often wondered what sort of paintings or prints they could have put on them.
Antonio was sitting in one of the chairs, chin in hands. He was still a handsome young man, but his face was a bit puffy, as if he hadn’t had enough sleep, his cheeks unshaven.
He stood up when the policemen came in.
‘Have you seen him?’ he asked.
‘Not yet.’
‘Nor have I. I’ve been waiting for over half an hour. That was definitely Émile’s identity card they showed me though.’
‘Who did?’
‘An inspector with an odd name … Hang on … Mornique? Bornique?’
‘Bornique, yes …’
Maigret and Lucas exchanged a look. Bornique from the twentieth arrondissement. They might have guessed. There were a few of his sort in local stations – not only inspectors but chief inspectors – who were the Police Judiciaire’s sworn rivals and made it a point of honour to arrive at crime scenes before them.
Maigret had only learned that the body had been found from the daily reports, and the officers of the twentieth had been anything but idle since their discovery. Avoiding these excesses of zeal was precisely why he had been working for the past few weeks on a reorganization of the force.
‘Do you think the doc’s going to be much longer? The women are frantic.’
‘Did Bornique go and tell them?’
‘This morning. It wasn’t even eight o’clock. They’d just got up and were seeing to the kids.
‘ “Which of you is Marina Boulay?” he asked.
‘Then he handed my sister an identity card.
‘ “This is your husband’s, is it? Do you recognize his photograph? When did you last see him?”
‘You can imagine the scene. Ada immediately rang me at home. I was asleep. I didn’t stop to have breakfast or make a cup of coffee. A few minutes later, I was in Rue Victor-Massé being treated as a suspect by the inspector, more or less.
‘ “Hey, who are you?”
‘ “The brother-in-law.”
‘ “Of this lady?”
‘ “No. Of her husband.” ’
Antonio was very tense.
‘I had a huge argument about my identifying the body rather than my sister. She insisted on coming. I didn’t think it would be a pretty sight so I made her stay at home.’
He nervously lit a cigarette.
‘Didn’t the inspector come with you?’
‘No. Apparently he’s got something else to do. He told me that the clerk here would give me a form to fill out and sign.’
After a pause he added:
‘You see, I was right to be worried. A couple of days ago you didn’t seem to believe me. Where is Rue des Rondeaux?’
‘Beside Père-Lachaise cemetery.’
‘I don’t know it around there. What’s it like?’
A door opened. Doctor Morel, who was wearing a white coat and cap, with a surgical mask under his chin, looked round for Maigret.
‘I was told you were waiting for me, Maigret. Would you follow me?’
He showed them into a room where the only light came through frosted glass panes. The walls were lined with metal cabinets of the sort you find in government offices, except that they were of an unusual size. A body covered with a sheet lay on a gurney.
‘Best if his brother-in-law identifies him first,’ said Maigret.
The sheet was pulled back from the face in the customary way. The dead man had almost a centimetre’s growth of beard, which was red
dish in colour, like his hair. His skin was a shade of blue and the scar on his left cheek that Antonio had talked about at the Brasserie Dauphine was clearly visible.
Under the sheet his body looked slight and thin.
‘Is that definitely him?’
‘Of course it is.’
Sensing the Italian felt nauseous, Maigret sent him to the office with Lucas to complete the paperwork.
‘Shall we put him away?’ asked the doctor, signalling to a man in a grey coat who had already opened one of the drawers. ‘Will you come with me, Maigret?’
He took him into an office with a wash-basin and, as he talked, disinfected his hands and face, took off his white coat and looked like an ordinary man again.
‘I imagine you’d like some preliminary findings before you get my report? As usual we’ll have to do some analyses which will take several days. What I can tell now is that the body shows no sign of wounds. The man was strangled, or, more precisely …’
Morel searched for the right word, as if he wasn’t too sure of himself.
‘This isn’t official, right? I shan’t be so categorical in my report … If I had to piece together the murder on the basis of the post-mortem, I’d say that the victim was attacked from behind, that someone put their arm round his neck and pulled back so violently that a cervical vertebra snapped. The effect is similar to what you’d call whiplash.’
‘So he was standing up, was he?’
‘Yes, or possibly seated. I’m inclined to think that he was standing up and that he wasn’t expecting to be attacked. There was no real struggle. He didn’t put up any sort of fight. I carefully examined his nails and didn’t find any strands of wool, which would indicate that he had grabbed hold of the attacker’s clothes, or blood, or hair. There are no scratches on his hands either. Who is he?’
‘A nightclub owner. Do you have any idea of the date of his death?’
‘It’s been at least two full days, three at the most, since the man died. Again off the record, I can’t vouch for this, but I’d be inclined to add that, in my opinion, the body wasn’t out in the open during that time. You’ll have an initial report this evening.’
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