Pel and the Prowler

by Mark Hebden

  ‘So far, though,’ Pel said, ‘that hasn’t happened, has it?’

  Mahé shrugged. ‘Unfortunately,’ he agreed, ‘no.’

  ‘What caused all this rebelliousness? There must have been a reason. Was it a broken home?’

  Mahé’s shoulders moved. ‘Well, yes and no. His grandfather came from a wealthy family who’d always provided soldiers for the Belgian army. But he threw up his profession and, because he’d been trained for nothing else, was never able to make anything of his life. He drifted from one place to another, and his son, Hélin’s father, suffered accordingly. He married very young but left his wife and child and simply disappeared. The third generation – the child – Hélin – sank low enough, as I said, to get involved with the Police. It’s a miracle, in fact, that he pulled himself out of it and, though he’ll never be anybody’s favourite man, I suppose, at least, he won’t end up as a drain on society. His qualifications are good and they’ll be better still when he’s finished his exams. He’ll get a good job.’

  Pel frowned. There seemed to be something missing. ‘Hélin going wrong I can understand,’ he said. ‘His father going wrong I can understand also. But what about his grandfather, who seems to have started the rot? If his family had always been soldiers, why did he throw it all up? A mix-up of genes that produced a weakling?’

  Mahé smiled. ‘Much simpler than that, I suspect, though I suppose you’re partly right. Like a lot of Belgian soldiers after the collapse of Belgium he found himself swept along with the defeated regiments and ended up in Paris. As far as I can make out, he was embittered by the surrender. I think it was too much for him and, instead of joining the Resistance like the tougher-minded types, he just packed it all in. I suppose, to be surrounded by several thousand other troops who felt they’d been betrayed, must have been a soul-shaking experience. But then, it was for a lot of people in 1940, wasn’t it?’

  Twenty

  1940.

  It seemed an enormous stroke of luck. Did they at last have the meaning of ‘1940’? Did they, in fact, have the meaning of all the messages? Did ‘Stras-St D Nov 9’ refer not to their own city but to Paris? It had to, because nothing had been reported from the Boulevard de Strasbourg and the Ecole St Dominique. Not even now. They had almost willed something to happen but nothing had.

  Snatching a street guide to the capital from his shelf, Pel opened it hurriedly, flipping the pages over in such haste he crumpled them. Eventually, he found himself looking at the streets of the Tenth Arrondissement, the Buttes Chaumont, the Gare de l’Est and the Porte St Denis. He ran his finger across the page and, yelling for Darcy, indicated what he’d found.

  ‘Boulevard de Strasbourg-Boulevard St Denis,’ he said. ‘They meet near the Porte St Denis. That message about Stras-St D Nov 9 had nothing to do with the Boulevard de Strasbourg and the Ecole St Dominique in this city. I can’t think why it didn’t occur to us before because half the cities in Eastern France that are big enough to have one have a Boulevard de Strasbourg. It was the Boulevard de Strasbourg and the Boulevard St Denis in Paris in 1940 that it referred to.’

  Darcy looked puzzled. ‘So what happened there on November 9th, 1940?’

  It didn’t take long to find out. Nothing.

  Puzzled, because they’d been expecting a street riot, some sort of battle, a shooting at least, they checked with the library and the history department at the university, even finally with the archives of the Paris police at the Quai des Orfèvres who dug out their files and examined them for them. They all came up with the same answer. And they had it in detail. Nothing.

  By November 9th, 1940, the occupation of the capital was complete but there were no incidents because the occupying troops were behaving well, appearing as benefactors come to rid France of corrupt politicians rather than as conquerors, and all that was seen of the enemy were fresh-faced polite young soldiers armed with nothing more dangerous than cameras.

  The archivist was an elderly inspector who had taken part as a young policeman in the famous battle of the Préfecture against the Occupying Forces in 1944, the first organised resistance in the capital against the enemy, and he remembered everything vividly. ‘It was all propaganda in 1940, of course,’ he said. ‘To make the Occupation straightforward and easy. The Gestapo came later.’

  There had, of course, been a few scuffles and a few arrests of embittered Parisians, but nothing very spectacular and even those demonstrations had been directed more against the politicians who had brought about the débâcle than against the enemy.

  ‘And on November 9th?’ Pel asked.

  ‘Nothing of any note whatsoever. Certainly not at the corner of the Boulevard de Strasbourg and the Boul’ St Denis.’

  It left them flattened and disappointed. They had expected something – if not of earth-shaking importance at least of sufficient moment to have been noticed.

  ‘So if it wasn’t anything of national importance,’ Pel said, ‘it must have been of importance to some individual.’

  ‘To the grandfather,’ Darcy said.

  They both knew whose grandfather he was thinking of but Hélin had an alibi for every killing and they still couldn’t see how they could connect him to all of them. Nevertheless, it set Pel thinking, and he realised that so far they had only half the picture. They had reports on everybody connected with the case but they had come from French Police files only and, remembering what Didier had said about not trusting foreigners, he laboriously began to check the background of every single male whose name had cropped up in the course of their enquiry, right back to childhood. Everybody. Even the men who had stumbled on the body of Gilbertine Guégan, one of whom had turned out to have been born a Czech. Since there were several other foreigners or people like Moussia whose parents had been foreigners until they had acquired French nationality, he invoked the International Radio Link for police enquiries. It involved several countries and it took time, but the answers slowly began to come back. It worried him that there was so much to go through and that he had to leave a lot of the reading to Nosjean, because he knew the Prowler was more than likely already watching his next victim.

  Some of the replies had to come a long way. Padiou’s came from Belgium, Aduraz’s from a town in Spain Pel had never heard of. Schwendermann’s came from Siegen. Bartelott’s came from Scotland Yard and as Pel studied it and saw his high-powered connections his eyebrows shot up. If they had to arrest Bartelott, he felt, it would probably result in war. Chatry was an Alsatian. Doucet, the boy who had abandoned Honorine Nauray in the Cours de Gaulle, was illegitimate, had never had any basic roots and had moved from one home to another all his life. Doctor Bréhard had also come from a broken home and had even been the victim of a tug-of-war between his parents, shuttling between Grenoble and Paris, once even to the United States. The most striking report of the lot was Hélin’s. He had been involved in a series of breakings and enterings in Belgium with an older man, and, at the age of fifteen, had finally been surprised with him by a policeman while on a roof. His companion had shot the policeman dead and been shot in his turn by the policeman’s partner, and Hélin had watched him fall thirty feet to be impaled on a set of railings in the street below. It was at this point that he had dropped his criminal activities and settled down to work.

  Pel sat studying the reports for a long time, his face thoughtful. Some of the replies he’d received hadn’t supplied everything he sought, and his requests had had to be repeated so that he was still waiting for their completion. Lighting a cigarette, he began to wonder why he’d ever bothered to get married because these days he hardly ever saw his wife. Doubtless, he thought gloomily, any day now she’d be asking him for her release.

  He pushed the piles of papers on his desk around for a while. The thing they needed was there somewhere, he felt certain. He had never believed in flashes of deduction. Police work wasn’t like that and the answers were always in the documents. Tomorrow he’d get De Troq’ or Nosjean to go through Goriot’s col
lection. While he was a good organiser, Goriot had never been noted for inspiration.

  He rubbed his eyes and stubbed out his cigarette. He had lost count of the number he had smoked that morning and his inside must be like the ashpan under a fireplace.

  While Pel was ploughing through the reports Darcy was prowling the city streets. Darcy liked to prowl the city occasionally, to get what he called the ‘feel of the place’.

  At lunchtime, suspecting Pel might have gone to the Bar Transvaal, he was on the point of heading there for a drink when he decided instead to try the Bar du Destin. As he turned away from the zinc with his beer, he saw Schwendermann peering myopically through his thick spectacles at a book. He looked up in surprise as Darcy appeared alongside him and, jumping to his feet, he jarred the table and just managed to catch his coffee before it slid to the floor.

  ‘A long way from the university,’ Darcy commented.

  Schwendermann smiled. ‘Yes, sir. I am watching the architecture of the city. I have acquired many old books and it is interesting to see what iss done to buildings. Sometimes the end is chopped off or rebuilt. Mit others, it iss removed – vervollständigen – completely. And sometimes –’ Schwendermann’s eyes lit up ‘– sometimes you can even see where the old buildings were even after they have gone.’

  ‘Very interesting,’ Darcy said in a tone as flat as a smack across the chops.

  ‘How does your investigation go, sir? You have found the guilty one perhaps?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘You have not arrested Hélin?’

  Darcy was silent for a moment. ‘Should we have?’ he asked.

  ‘That iss up to you, sir. But have you not asked him? Where he iss when Marguerite iss murdered.’

  Darcy sipped at his drink. ‘Where is he supposed to have been?’ he asked.

  ‘He iss not where he said, I think, sir.’

  ‘You’ve heard something?’

  ‘At a lecture, sir. I hear his friend Hayn talking mit him. They think I don’t know but I have very acute listening. He say to Hayn he must keep his mouth shut.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Sir, I don’t know. But I think it iss to do with where he iss the night Marguerite iss killed.’

  ‘He was with his friends. They said so.’

  ‘But Hayn iss his friend and Hayn iss told to keep his mouth shut. I have wondered if I should tell you.’

  When Schwendermann had gone, Darcy stared at his beer for some time before deciding to look up Hélin.

  The house in the Rue Henri-Gauthier where Hélin and his friends lived looked exactly the same as Number 69, Rue Devoin even to layout, decoration and furnishing; spartan, bare, practical, and with little of value that could be damaged. It also seemed as full of music and the noise of young people arguing and, because no one heard him above the racket, no one appeared as he climbed the stairs to the room Hélin shared with his friends, Jenet and Detoc. It was empty. But Hayn, who occupied a separate room, was in and he stood up uncertainly as Darcy entered.

  The radio was going and Darcy strode across to it and switched it off.

  ‘Hé!’ Hayn came to life at once. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Police,’ Darcy said.

  ‘I guessed that much. From your manners. Where’s your pal?’

  ‘Which pal?’

  ‘Everybody knows the Police go round in pairs. So that if one can read perhaps the other will be able to write.’

  Darcy said nothing, balancing on his toes, his big hands hanging at his sides. He gave Hayn the sort of look the chairman of a charitable organisation might have given an obstreperous pauper. He was an easy-going man who liked to think he could keep an open mind, a mind as open, in fact, as the gates of Heaven were open to sinners; but there was one thing that annoyed him, and that was clever people like Hayn sneering at the Police.

  ‘That was a foolish thing to say, my friend,’ he said slowly. ‘Being rude puts you in bad straight away. You’ve heard of the traffic cop who used to warn motorists not to get him into a bad temper because it gave him indigestion and that made it tough for the people he came up against. I’m the same. I’m a malicious type who bears grudges.’

  Hayn suddenly looked nervous. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Where’s Hélin?’

  ‘If he’s not in his room, he’s out.’

  ‘How do you know? Did you hear him go?’

  Hayn jeered. ‘You must be joking.’ He held up his hand. ‘Listen!’ As he became silent the sound of all the radios in the building came flooding in together. ‘You think you’d hear anything with that lot going?’

  ‘So!’ Darcy gestured. ‘If he’s out, where is he?’

  ‘How do I know? Getting drunk with the others, I expect. Or with a bit of fluff. He’ll be needing a bit of light relief after all that questioning. He was there hours before they let him go. Why do you want him?’

  When Darcy explained, Hayn looked shifty. ‘You can’t pin Marguerite’s death on him,’ he said. ‘He was with us. All night.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘You calling me a liar?’

  Darcy smiled. With his strong white teeth, he looked as though, if he couldn’t subdue Hayn in any other way, he could at least bite him. ‘You ever been in jail?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘We have an excellent one here. Number 72, Rue d’Auxonne, we call it. It has other names. Some of them not very complimentary because it’s not all that comfortable.’ Darcy pushed at a pile of clothes and books on a chair so that they fell to the floor. ‘But they do at least make you keep the place cleaner than this pigsty.’

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘You could find yourself in there, my friend. Under Section 60 or 63 of the Penal Code. One deals with accessories to crime, the other with non-assistance to a person in danger. I’m sure we could make one of them fit and they can carry heavy sentences. You fancy that?’

  Hayn began to look worried and Darcy pressed. ‘Now, think again. Where was Hélin the night Marguerite de Wibaux was murdered?’

  ‘With us.’

  ‘Would you be prepared to swear that in court? You’d better be, because perjury can carry a heavy sentence, too.’

  Hayn hesitated and tried to evade giving an answer, which seemed to suggest he had a reason for evading it and Darcy leaned harder. In the end, he admitted that Hélin had not been with him and the other two on the night of Marguerite de Wibaux’s death.

  ‘He left just before it must have happened,’ he said.

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think he went to see that lecturer he was rolling – Doctor Sirat.’

  ‘But he wasn’t with you?’

  ‘No.’

  It was late afternoon and Pel was deep in the reports again when Darcy appeared.

  ‘Chief,’ he said. ‘Hélin. Those pals of his who said he was with them the night Marguerite de Wibaux was murdered were lying. Schwendermann put me on to it. He heard Hélin talking. At some lecture. I saw Hayn and he admitted it. He said Hélin left them about half an hour before the De Wibaux girl was killed.’

  ‘What about Hélin? What does he say?’

  ‘I didn’t see him. He wasn’t in. I’ve arranged to have him picked up. Hayn said he thought he was with that woman he mentioned at the time – the one who went to the States – Doctor Sirat. And he could have been. But if he was, why didn’t he mention it when we talked about it?’

  ‘Keeping her name out of it?’

  ‘He didn’t keep her name out of it when we were wondering if he’d done for Bernadette Hamon. And we know there could be a connection with those messages. “Paris.” “1940.” His grandfather was there. We know that. Perhaps he was involved in some sort of incident on the Boulevard de Strasbourg on November 9th that year. Nothing big enough to be reported but something that was important enough to him. Something that would make his grandson want to call us the cursed French.
A fight with a Frenchman? Perhaps a wounding? Something like that. Hélin’s a Belgian, Patron, and there was a lot of bitterness in those days and a lot of blame being bandied around – us, the Belgians, the Dutch, the British.’

  Pel pushed aside the files he’d been studying. ‘There may be something in it,’ he agreed. ‘It might be worth looking into. I think we should bring him in and let Judge Brisard have another go at him. Find him, Daniel. Wherever he is.’

  They were still discussing it when Nosjean appeared. He was excited. ‘Chief, we might have a lead!’

  Pel stared at Darcy. After weeks of nothing, they were suddenly being swamped by leads.

  ‘We’ve just got one.’

  Nosjean looked blank and they explained. Nosjean brushed Darcy’s story aside.

  ‘This is a better one, Patron,’ he said. ‘I’ve turned up a brooch.’

  ‘I’m not interested in brooches,’ Pel snapped.

  ‘You’ll be interested in this one, Patron. I found it in an antique shop in Ferry-le-Grand. You remember I was enquiring at all the antique dealers over the Abrillards’ belongings. This type – a guy called Treville – was very helpful, and when I heard about Bayetto buying an antique cigar case over there I wondered if it was from him. It was, and I thought I’d return the favour by telling him to contact the police in Chaumont in case they’d found it among Bayetto’s belongings. They had, and Treville was so pleased he promptly came back with some more information – that he’d found this brooch among things he’d recently acquired. It came in while he’d been off ill for a day or two and his assistant hadn’t noticed anything special about it. Treville spotted it as soon as he returned to work.’

  Pel glared. ‘For God’s sake, Nosjean, come to the point! And that business is over, anyway! Remaud’s free! Let it ride!’

  ‘Patron –’ Nosjean was not to be put off ‘ – it’s nothing to do with Remaud. Take a look at it.’