Pel And The Staghound

by Mark Hebden

  ‘Accosted?’

  ‘Lots of times. But I don’t go in for that sort of thing. I keep to myself.’

  ‘Anybody round here who knows you? Big?’

  ‘Nobody I’ve ever noticed. What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’ve got a few ideas,’ De Troquereau said. ‘I’d like to borrow a coat of yours and the crash helmet you use on your scooter. The one that looks like a deerstalker.’

  ‘Help yourself, chéri. I always think that one’s rather chic, don’t you? I bought it in London and it looks as if I’ve been shooting in Scotland.’

  Back into the city centre, De Troquereau headed for the nearest sports shop. During one of his father’s rare periods of prosperity, he’d spent a short period of his life at school in England and had learned a thing or two there.

  ‘I want to buy a box,’ he said. ‘A cricketer’s box.’

  The assistant gazed at him. ‘A cricketer’s box of what, Monsieur?’

  ‘It’s not a box of anything,’ De Troquereau explained. ‘They wear it in case they’re hit.’

  ‘On the head?’

  ‘No, in the balls.’

  The assistant’s eyebrows rose.

  ‘It protects them,’ De Troquereau explained. ‘A cricket ball’s hard and heavy. It could do you a lot of mischief.’

  The assistant looked supercilious. ‘I haven’t noticed a lot of cricket in this country, Monsieur. I doubt if they’re stocked anywhere. I suppose you couldn’t possibly mean a jockstrap, could you? Rugby players wear jockstraps.’ He managed a smile. ‘We had someone in once who was looking for a butterfly net. To trap butterflies. He was an Englishman. He wanted to pin them to a board and look at them. My colleague thought he wished to eat them.’

  De Troquereau settled for a jockstrap and headed back to the rooms he rented near the university. Searching in the kitchen cupboard, he found a small aluminium measure and decided it would do.

  When De Troq’ turned up the following morning at the site near the Place Frère Thurot, a few of the labourers asked him where he’d been but no one seemed very bothered. Casual labourers came and went and it wasn’t very odd for one of them to disappear for a while.

  He was surprised to see how much progress had been made. The site had been almost cleared now and in one corner they were marking out the foundations of the new building and concrete mixers had arrived. Only the last few piles of rubble had to be moved. Then he noticed, as the bulldozers started shifting the last of the collapsed walls and timbers, that a small door had emerged. It was in the wall of one of the neighbouring buildings and was strong and well-painted. With the rubbish piled in front, he hadn’t noticed it before.

  Interested, when he’d finished work he went to the site manager’s office to look at the plans. Where the rubbish had lain, there had originally been a small yard reached by an alley alongside what had been the ironmongers’. But this had gone now and the doorway had been exposed until the building surrounding the new courtyard could be erected.

  ‘What’s the door there?’ he asked.

  ‘Belongs to a shop in the Rue de la Liberté.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘It’s not marked and I haven’t been to look.’

  De Troq’ decided it was time someone did and, wandering round to the Rue de la Liberté in his lunch hour, he began counting off the shops. He couldn’t believe his eyes. The door could belong only to a boutique, to Merciers’, the jewellers, or to Zamenhofs’, the furriers, and it hardly seemed likely that the Duche gang would be interested in a boutique. Heading for the nearest bar, he paid for a jeton to ring the Hôtel de Police.

  That afternoon, Nosjean paid a visit to the shops in the Rue de la Liberté.

  ‘It’s Zamenhofs’,’ he reported on his return. ‘Normally, the rear door – this door – opens on to a small yard with a spiked wall and a locked gate reached by an alley that was alongside the ironmongers’ until the wall came down. Zamenhof died last year and his wife, who’s running it now, isn’t there at the moment. Her daughter’s been involved in a car accident in Paris and she’s up there looking after the grandchildren for a while. Nobody thought to mention to the police that the back entrance was going to be uncovered.’

  ‘We’d better arrange for someone to watch Zamenhofs’,’ Pel said briskly. ‘How do you think they’re going to do it?’

  ‘Well, Zamenhofs’ obviously think they’ve nothing to worry about because it’s got strong bolts and special locks.’

  ‘If Duche’s lot are interested they’re obviously thinking wrong. What about the site?’

  ‘There’s a bit of work still going on,’ De Troq’ said. ‘They’re going to start hacking out the holes for the foundations any time now.’

  ‘Well, whatever they’re up to, they won’t do it in daylight, surely. What about at night?’

  ‘There are things going on at night, too. There’s no night shift but there’s a motor going to supply electricity and work the pumps they use to keep the site clear of water, and a few men on duty.’

  ‘Let’s have Misset watching the place during the night.’

  ‘He’s going to love that,’ Darcy observed.

  ‘I expect he’ll get used to it,’ Pel said. ‘He might even stumble by accident on a date. We know where they’re going. It’s just a question of finding out when.’

  Seventeen

  It was De Troq’ who came up with the answer. When he appeared quietly in the Hôtel de Police by the rear entrance, he was wearing the heavy Canadienne and the yellow protective hat. His hands were grimy and his face was smudged with dirt.

  Pel pushed a bottle of beer across. ‘Inform me,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I think it’s tonight, Patron.’

  Pel sat up. ‘Why?’

  ‘We’ve cleared the site of rubble now. There’s nothing but flat earth. You can get a run at the door now, if you want to.’

  ‘Get a run at it?’ Pel’s eyebrows danced. ‘What do you think they’re going to do? Break it down with their shoulders? Or perhaps they’ve got a battering ram?’

  ‘Yes, Patron, they have.’

  Pel stared narrowly at the newest member of his team. De Troq’, he’d discovered, wasn’t a man to make stupid statements. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘The digger for the foundations arrived today,’ De Troq’ said. ‘It’s got a scoop about a metre wide and it’s made of reinforced steel. At speed, it could deliver a punch of around several thousand kilos. Darot and the driver are pretty friendly and I’ve seen them talking together a lot. This evening, when I left, I noticed the digger was parked away from the rest of the heavy machinery. They’ve left it directly facing Zamenhofs’ rear entrance – the door’s a wide one, a good metre and a half because they use it for deliveries – and I noticed the driver took a long time positioning it. He also left the scoop half down which isn’t usual. All it needs is starting up, slipping into gear and driving forward. The best door in the world wouldn’t stand up to that thing.’

  Pel glanced at Darcy and Nosjean.

  ‘Does that make sense?’ he asked.

  ‘It certainly does,’ Darcy said briskly. ‘Sammy probably intended to go at it another way, but Philippe Duc he’s got the better idea. What’s more, he’s a tractor driver himself and I dare bet he can put that scoop straight through that door in one go.’

  Pel nodded. ‘Get me the Chief,’ he said.

  That evening, Nosjean went to the Church of St Sulpice to find Odile Chenandier. She’d heard of the arrival of Claudie Darel in the sergeants’ room and been distinctly chilly of late. But Nosjean’s heart was truer than he thought and, despite the fact that he fell in love regularly with the Charlotte Ramplings, Mireille Mathieus and Catherine Deneuves he bumped into about the city, he still managed to remain faithful.

  He knew she’d have gone to confession. She liked to go at this time, light a candle and offer up a little prayer. Nosjean thought she was praying for her father who was doing life in prison, o
r for the spirit of her mother, whom her father had done away with. In fact, she’d long since forgotten both of them, because neither of them had been particularly kind to her, and her prayers almost entirely concerned Nosjean. Her confession was fairly straightforward because she was a straightforward girl whose only fault was an overpowering devotion to Nosjean.

  ‘I had wicked thoughts, Father,’ she explained.

  ‘Are you in love, child?’ the priest asked.

  ‘Yes, Father, and I’m afraid of my thoughts.’

  ‘Are they honest thoughts, child? Are they decent thoughts such as a pure young woman would think?’

  ‘Of course, Father. But sometimes I’m a little ashamed of them. I feel sometimes that I need a man in my life and he doesn’t seem to come.’

  ‘The Lord never intended the Via Crucis to be travelled with ease, child. Duty is bitter but the rewards are splendid. Be patient. You have nothing to fear.’

  Reassured, she lit her candle and knelt before the Madonna. Just try, she asked, to make Jean-Luc Nosjean notice me occasionally. You’re a woman and I know you’ll understand.

  As she knelt, Nosjean knelt quietly alongside her. ‘In this light,’ he whispered, ‘you’re beautiful.’

  ‘Sssh.’ She sounded shocked. ‘Not in front of the Madonna.’ Then her head turned quickly. ‘Am I?’

  ‘I’m going to be busy tonight,’ Nosjean went on. ‘Things are coming to a head. It might be a day or two before I can see you again. I’ve got to be on the job late. I felt I ought to let you know. So you won’t worry.’

  It was consoling to think that he didn’t want her to worry, but it didn’t really make up for the fact that he’d be tramping round the dark night streets while she’d be sitting alone watching the television.

  There was a party atmosphere in the sergeants’ room as they prepared. Claudie Darel’s old lady whose husband had half drowned her in a bucket had come within an ace of being half-drowned again. This time, however, she’d lost her temper and hit him with a coal hammer. He was now in hospital with about twelve stitches in his scalp and a severe headache.

  Rodsky was laughing. ‘I told her she ought,’ he said. ‘I even suggested it to her and she obviously took me at my word. I told you, too,’ he said. ‘Serving them with a little of their own medicine’s better than all the talking I can give them.’

  Misset laughed as Rodsky left. ‘I like old Rodsky,’ he said. ‘He’s my type. Straightforward. No nonsense.’

  By the time the streets emptied, Lagé and Misset were established inside Zamenhofs’ with the manager. The lights were out and they had to make do with the street lights coming through the shop window.

  ‘Wouldn’t mind having one of these for my wife,’ Lagé said, gesturing at the furs.

  ‘I’d rather give it to a mistress,’ Misset said. ‘You get better returns.’ His eyes rolled. ‘Claudie Darel would look good in one of these. Especially with nothing underneath.’

  Lagé frowned. ‘You’d better watch what you say,’ he urged. ‘You know the rule about policewomen.’

  ‘Off-duty, of course,’ Misset grinned.

  Claudie Darel was in a room over the Bar de la Cloche, on the other side of the site, with a radio, while in a room at the back, Pel, Nosjean, Darcy and De Troq’ waited. Unmarked police cars were parked in neighbouring streets.

  Though only a small caretaker party of workmen was in evidence, the site was working, the power plant thumping away, the pumps clattering as they lifted water from the holes and deposited it in the roadway. The rest of the street was quiet.

  ‘Movement!’ Claudie’s voice came down the stairs and Darcy edged to the door and peered through the letter box.

  ‘Somebody coming,’ he said.

  ‘Two more,’ Claudie called. ‘There’s a car just appeared in the Rue Redoute. It’s turned towards the site.’

  ‘Here we go!’

  ‘No shooting, unless they shoot first,’ Pel instructed. ‘Warn Lagé.’

  Inside Zamenhofs’, Lagé was waiting near the door. ‘Better stand well back,’ he said.

  Pel studied the site. ‘It’s a pity we can’t arrest them before they start,’ he said. ‘It would save a lot of damage. But, if we did, some damned advocate would argue they were only drunk and fooling about. Besides, they might just be going in some other way.’

  A big Citroën had moved out of the Rue de la Liberté. Quietly, its engine barely audible, it bounced over the broken edge of the pavement on to the building site and edged forward. A man climbed out of it and moved to the digger. So far nobody seemed to have noticed, and above the clatter of the pumps and the thump of the power plant the sound of the digger’s engine starting was hardly noticed. Suddenly the digger lurched. The foreman ran from the site office, shouting, but a shadowy figure appeared from behind a Poclain and the two of them went down without a sound. The digger lurched again.

  ‘Right,’ Pel said. ‘Cars into position!’

  As Claudie spoke into the radio, the scoop of the digger crashed into Zamenhofs’ back door. As it backed off leaving the door a splintered wreck, three men ran forward from where they had been hiding in the shadows among the parked equipment.

  At the other end of the site, the labourers on night shift had turned, startled at the crash, only to find themselves facing a man with a stocking mask and a shotgun. As they stiffened, another group of men moved forward but, as they did so, the lights of a car waiting in the Rue Redoute came on. Its engine roared and its springs twanged as it bounced across the pavement on to the site. Brakes squealing, it stopped in front of the digger. As the man with the shotgun turned to see what was happening, a Walther-Mathurin .38 was stuck against his throat and Darcy’s voice grated in his ear.

  ‘Drop it, my friend,’ he said, and the shotgun splashed into one of the puddles thrown out by the pump.

  The driver of the Citroën found himself looking down the muzzle of another gun while the digger driver was climbing down slowly, his hands in the air. The men who had disappeared beyond the wrecked door into Zamenhofs’ had also obviously discovered something had gone wrong. Misset could be heard yelling, a gun fired, and two of the men burst out again, dragging the third man with them. They headed for the Citroën, but, seeing the driver with his hands against the car, his head down, his feet wide apart, being searched by a policeman for weapons, they dropped the injured man and bolted. As they did so, a police car swung across the end of the street and men poured from it. Swinging round desperately, they headed past the site, only for another car to slip into position and block their escape.

  In three minutes, they had every one of them.

  ‘Philippe Duche.’ Pel’s smile was at its oiliest as he confronted them. ‘Taking over from big brother. I’d have thought you’d have learned a lesson from what happened to him.’

  Duche spat.

  ‘Ten of them, Patron,’ Darcy reported. ‘And Claudie says Goriot’s picked up the digger driver at his home. It looks like a nice haul.’

  Eighteen

  With the whole of the Duche gang now with Sammy Belec at 72, Rue d’Auxonne to await their appearance before the magistrates, there was time to breathe, and it was not unreasonable to think of wives, girlfriends and dinner dates.

  With nothing moving in the Rensselaer case and Fabre still undergoing questioning by Judge Polverari, it seemed to Pel a good day to get down to some paperwork. Not only would it help to clear his desk, leave him free for the evening and enable him to get away early, it would also permit him to work himself up into a pleasurable state of anticipation.

  With Nosjean it was different. Odile Chenandier, he decided, would have to wait just a little longer. He was still worried. They had the reason now quite clearly why Sammy Belec might have wished to remove Edouard-Charles Duche from the scene but he still couldn’t fathom just how it had been done. There was still something that was wrong. It all fitted together too well when it shouldn’t have.

  He was just on the point of g
oing to lunch, when the uniformed branch telephoned.

  ‘We’ve got your murder weapon,’ they said. ‘Like to see it?’

  It was a flick knife with an edge like a razor and it had been found under the bushes of a front garden in the Avenue Victor Hugo. Prélat had it on his bench under his microscope.

  ‘No fingerprints,’ he said. ‘Somebody was obviously wise to the possibilities and gave it a good wiping.’ Prélat’s fingers touched the hilt. ‘There’s blood there, though, and I’ve no doubt Leguyader will find it was Duche’s.’

  It set Nosjean thinking. How was it, he wondered, that the knife that killed Duche happened to be found in a garden in the Avenue Victor Hugo? About a kilometre or so from where the stabbing had taken place. And, for that matter, a kilometre or so from where Sammy Belec had attacked Roger Tachenay near the Porte Guillaume. It surely indicated, as he’d always thought, that the two incidents were connected.

  It wasn’t enough on its own, though. A good advocate – and Sammy could always find the money for a good advocate – would make nonsense of it. It was too circumstantial by far. Besides, there was still that something he’d felt all along was wrong – something he felt he ought to have noticed. It bothered Nosjean and left him feeling as if he’d not dressed properly or omitted to shave, something quite simple that he’d overlooked.

  Speaking about Armoire à Glace, Rodsky had commented that his timing had been perfect. So was Sammy’s. Too perfect. And he’d never seemed very bothered about being sent to jail on a charge of assault. Yet the times Nosjean had been given seemed correct and he’d been unable to break them down.

  Then he remembered something Darcy had told him about Pel and headed for the Zone Industrielle to seek out Labbé once more.

  ‘You again?’ Labbé said.

  Nosjean smiled briefly and got down to brass tacks. ‘That night you found the body,’ he said. ‘You said when you went to catch the bus you were early.’