With the toe of one shoe, Maigret unobtrusively nudged Lucas’ foot again.
The whole episode was brief, though it seemed long. The man dug in his pockets for change with his left hand while with the right he raised the glass to his lips and downed the contents in one gulp.
The strong spirit made him cough. His eyes watered.
He tossed some coins on the counter and, with a few very long, quick strides, was gone. Through the window, they could see him scurry off in the direction of Quai de Bercy, pause and turn round.
‘Over to you,’ said Maigret to Lucas. ‘But I’m afraid he’ll lose you …’
Lucas hurried out.
‘Phone for a taxi!’ Maigret called to Chevrier, ‘and quick about it!’
Quai de Bercy was long and straight, without sidestreets. Maybe in a car he would be in time to catch up with the man before he gave Lucas the slip.
5.
As the pace of the pursuit grew faster, Maigret had a growing feeling that he had done it all before. It was something that occasionally happened to him in dreams, the kind of dreams which even when he was a boy he had feared most. He would be proceeding through some generally ambiguous surroundings and suddenly feel that he had been there before, that he had already done the same things and spoken the same words. It made his head spin, especially when he was aware that he was actually living through situations he had already lived through once before.
He had already followed the course of this manhunt, which now began on Quai de Charenton, from his office when Albert’s panicky voice had kept him abreast hour by hour of the progress of his growing fear. And now the tension was mounting again. Along the whole length of Quai de Bercy, now almost deserted, the man who was walking past the row of wrought-iron gates with long, springy strides would turn round from time to time and then accelerate away when he invariably saw the stocky figure of Lucas.
Maigret, sitting next to the driver of his taxi, followed at a distance and was struck by the difference between the two men! There was something animal-like about the first man’s walk and the way he kept looking over his shoulder. Even when he started to run, his movements remained graceful.
Hot on his heels, Lucas, flabby, his paunch sticking out a little as usual, made him think of those mongrel dogs which look like sausages with legs but stay with the scent of the boar better than the most renowned breeds of bloodhounds.
You would have backed the redhead over him every time. Maigret too: when he saw that the man was making the most of the fact that there was no one about on the Quai to forge ahead, he told the driver to go faster. But there was no need. The odd thing was that Lucas did not look as if he was running. He retained his conventional air of a respectable Parisian out for a stroll and just went waddling on.
When the stranger heard the sound of footsteps behind him, when he half-turned his head and saw Maigret in a taxi drawing almost level with him, he realized that there was nothing to be gained from getting out of breath and attracting attention to himself and slowed to a more normal pace.
During the course of that afternoon, thousands of people would pass them in the streets and public squares and, as had been the case with Albert, not one of them would have any inkling of the drama which was being played out.
By the time they were crossing Pont d’Austerlitz, the foreigner – in Maigret’s mind, he was definitely a foreigner – was beginning to look more anxious. He continued along Quai Henri-IV. He was getting ready to make his move, that much was clear from his manner. Then, just as they reached the Saint-Paul district, with the taxi still following him, he took off again, this time darting into the maze of narrow streets which stretches between Rue Saint-Antoine and the embankment.
Maigret almost lost him when a lorry blocked one of the alleyways.
Children playing on the pavement watched the two men run past. Maigret eventually caught up with them two streets further on. Lucas had barely raised a sweat and still looked very respectable in his buttoned-up overcoat. He even had the presence of mind to wink at Maigret as if to say:
‘Not to worry!’
He was not to know that the hunt, followed by Maigret from the front seat of a car without tiring himself out, would last for several hours. Nor that it would turn more relentless the longer it went on.
It was after the phone call that the man began to lose his confidence. He had walked into a small bar in Rue Saint-Antoine. Lucas had followed him in.
‘Is he going to arrest him?’ asked the taxi-driver, who knew Maigret.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
To his mind, a man who is being followed is a man who will be arrested sooner or later. What was the point of pursuing him like this, of inflicting such pointless cruelty? He was reacting the way the uninitiated do when a hunt passes by.
Paying no attention to Lucas, the stranger had asked for a phone token and shut himself away in the booth. Through the windows of the café, Lucas could be seen making the most of the enforced halt to sink a large glass of beer. The sight made Maigret feel thirsty.
The phone call was a long one: almost five minutes. Two or three times, Lucas became concerned. He went to the door of the phone booth and looked through the spy-hole to make sure that nothing had happened to his man.
Afterwards, they stood side by side at the counter, without speaking, as if they had never seen each other before. The man’s expression had changed. He looked around him apprehensively and seemed to be watching for the right moment, though he had probably realized that there would be no more right moments for him.
After some time, he paid and left. He headed off towards Place de la Bastille, completed almost a full circuit of the square, walked briefly along Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, just a few minutes from Maigret’s apartment, but turned right along Rue de la Roquette. It was not long before he was lost. It was patently obvious that he did not know the area. Two or three more times he had thoughts about making a run for it. But there were too many people about or perhaps he would catch sight of a policeman’s peaked képi at the next junction.
At this point, he began to drink. He went into bars, not to phone, but to gulp down a glass of cheap cognac. Lucas had decided not to follow him inside any more.
In one of these bars, a man spoke to him. He stared at him without answering, like a man who has been addressed in a language he doesn’t understand.
Maigret could now see why from the very start, from the moment the man had walked into the Petit Albert, he had sensed that there was something foreign about him. It wasn’t so much that the cut of his clothes or his cast of features was not French. It was rather the cautious behaviour of someone who is not at home in his surroundings, who does not understand and cannot make himself understood.
There was sunshine in the streets. It was very mild. Concierges in the Picpus district, like concierges in small provincial towns, had put a chair outside their front door.
What a merry dance they were led before they reached Boulevard Voltaire and finally Place de la République, where the man finally regained his bearings!
He went down the steps into the Métro. Was he still hoping to shake Lucas off? If he did, he must have realized that his stratagem would not work, for Maigret saw the pair coming back up through the exit.
Rue Réaumur … Another detour … Rue de Turbigo … Then along Rue Chapon to Rue Beaubourg.
‘This is his patch,’ thought Maigret.
It was palpable. Just from the way the stranger looked about him, it was obvious he recognized every shop. He was at home. Perhaps he lived in
one of the many run-down hotels?
He kept hesitating, stopping at street corners. Something was preventing him doing what he wanted to do. In this way he progressed as far as Rue de Rivoli, which marked the limit of that area of impoverished streets.
He did not cross it. Going along Rue des Archives, he went back into the ghetto and was soon walking along Rue des Rosiers.
‘He doesn’t want us to know where he lives!’
But why not? And whom had he phoned? Had he asked one of his cronies for help? What could he expect from that quarter?
‘I’m really sorry for the poor devil,’ breathed the taxi-driver. ‘Are you sure he’s a crook?’
No! Not even a petty crook! But there was no choice but to follow him. It was his only chance of getting a new lead on Albert’s murder.
The man was sweating profusely. His nose was running. From time to time he would take a large green handkerchief from his pocket. And he was continuing to drink steadily, moving away from a central core formed by Rue du Roi-de-Sicile, Rue des Étouffes and Rue de la Verrerie, a hub around which he went on circling without ever venturing inside it.
He would move away and then, irresistibly drawn to it, would come back again. He slowed, became more uncertain. He would turn to face Lucas. Then he looked around for the taxi and glared at it. Who knows? If the cab had not been following him so closely, perhaps he would have tried to get Lucas off his back by luring him into an alley and dealing with him.
When it started to get dark, the streets began to bustle with activity. Sauntering crowds filled the pavements and streets lined with low, gloomy houses. As soon as the first signs of spring appear, the inhabitants of this part of Paris begin to live outside. The doors of shops and the windows of houses were open. The reek of dirt and poverty caught in the throat, and sometimes a woman would throw her slops out into the road.
Lucas must have been at the end of his tether, though he did not show it. Maigret thought that he should take the first opportunity to have him relieved. He felt rather ashamed of tagging along in a taxi, the way visitors follow a fox-hunt in cars.
There were junctions which they had crossed four or five times. Suddenly, the man hit on a new tactic. He slipped into the gloomy passage of a house. Lucas stopped at the door. Maigret signalled him to follow.
‘Be careful!’ he called from his seat in the car.
A few moments later, both men emerged. It was obvious that the stranger had gone into the first house he had come to, hoping he could lose his police tail.
He repeated the same manoeuvre. The second time, Lucas found him sitting at the top of the stairs.
Shortly before six, they were back on the corner of Rue du Roi-de-Sicile and Rue Vieille-du-Temple, in what looked and felt like a thieves’ kitchen. The stranger paused again. Then he darted out into the street, which was filled with poor people. Lights in frosted-glass globes hung outside several of the hotels. The shops were narrow-fronted, and alleyways led to mysterious courtyards.
He did not get far. He had covered about six metres and then a shot rang out, a dry sound, no louder than a tyre bursting. The activity in the street took a few moments to subside, as if slowed in its reactions by its collective momentum. The taxi had stopped of its own accord, as if in amazement.
Then there was the sound of running footsteps. Lucas leaped forward. There was a second shot.
The swirling crowds made it impossible to see anything. Maigret did not know if the inspector had been hit. He had got out of the cab and was rushing towards the wounded foreigner.
He was on the pavement, sitting up. He wasn’t dead. He was supporting himself on one hand and holding his chest with the other. He raised his head and looked up reproachfully at Maigret.
Then a shadow fell across those blue eyes. A woman said:
‘It’s a crying shame!’
The man’s torso swayed and fell at an angle across the pavement.
He was dead.
Lucas returned empty-handed but unharmed. The second shot had missed him. The assailant had tried to fire a third time, but his gun must have jammed. Lucas had not got much of a look at him.
‘I wouldn’t be able to recognize him,’ he said. ‘But I think he had dark hair.’
Without seeming to, the crowd had helped the murderer to escape by, as it were, accidentally getting in the way. At no time had Lucas found his path unimpeded.
And now people surrounded them, hostile, even threatening. In those mean streets it did not take them long to sniff out plain-clothed policemen.
But a uniformed officer arrived and pushed the gawping crowd back.
‘Get an ambulance,’ Maigret growled to him, ‘but first use your whistle and get two or three of your colleagues here.’
Leaving nothing to chance, he murmured orders to Lucas, whom he left at the scene with the officers. He took another look at the dead man. He would have liked to search his pockets at once, but he felt oddly reluctant at the thought of doing it in full view of all those curious bystanders. It would be too pointed, too professional an action and would be construed here as desecration or even as a provocation.
‘Be careful,’ he told Lucas in a bare whisper. ‘There are bound to be more of them around …’
He was only a stone’s throw from Quai des Orfèvres, and the taxi dropped him there. He climbed straight up to the commissioner’s office and knocked, without first waiting to be announced.
‘Another murder,’ he said. ‘This one was shot right under our noses, like a rabbit, in the middle of a street.’
‘Do you have a name?’
‘Lucas will be here in a few minutes, as soon as the body has been taken away. Can you let me have twenty or so men? There’s an entire neighbourhood which I want to close off.’
‘Which neighbourhood?’
‘Roi-de-Sicile.’
It was the turn of the commissioner of the Police Judiciaire to scowl. Maigret went straight to the office where the inspectors were based, picked out several and gave them their orders.
Then he went off to find the detective chief inspector who headed up the Vice Squad.
‘Could you let me have on temporary secondment an inspector who knows Rue du Roi-de-Sicile, Rue des Rosiers and the streets round about like the back of his hand? There must be a fair number of girls on the game thereabouts.’
‘Too many.’
‘In half an hour or so, he’ll be given a photo.’
‘Another stiff?’
‘Unfortunately, yes. But this time his face wasn’t rearranged for him.’
‘I see.’
‘There must be several of them hiding up around there. Take care. They’re killers.’
Next he went down to the Hotel Agency. He asked for more or less the same favour.
Speed was of the essence. He checked to make sure that the inspectors had left to begin patrolling in and around the neighbourhood. Then he phoned forensics.
‘Have you got those photos?’
‘You can send someone round for them in a few minutes. The body has arrived. We’re working on it.’
He had a feeling that there was something he was forgetting. He remained where he was, ready to be off, scratching his head, and suddenly the face of Coméliau, the examining magistrate, sprang in to his mind.
And a good job it did!
‘Hello! Good evening, sir. It’s Maigret.’
‘Ah, Detective Chief Inspector! And how are you getting on with the man you reckoned ran a small bar?’
‘Actually he did run a small café, si
r.’
‘Have you identified him?’
‘Identified him one hundred per cent.’
‘Are you making progress with your investigation?’
‘We’ve already managed to come up with a second corpse.’
He pictured the examining magistrate suddenly straightening up at the other end of the line.
‘What did you say?’
‘We’ve got another body. But this time, it’s a member of the opposing group.’
‘You mean it was the police who killed him?’
‘No. This other lot took care of it themselves.’
‘What “other lot” are you talking about?’
‘His cronies, probably.’
‘Have they been arrested?’
‘Not yet.’
He lowered his voice.
‘I’m afraid, sir, that it’s going to be a long and difficult investigation. This is a very nasty business. They are killers, you know.’
‘Am I to conclude that if they hadn’t killed anybody there wouldn’t have been a case to investigate?’
‘You misunderstand me. They kill, in cold blood, to defend themselves. That’s quite rare, you know, despite what the general public believes. They won’t hesitate to gun down one of their own.’
‘Why?’
‘Probably because his cover was blown and might have led us to them. Also, it’s a dangerous neighbourhood, one of the most dangerous in the whole of Paris. It’s full of foreigners with no or false papers.’
‘What are you proposing to do?’
‘I’ll follow procedure, because I have to, because I am personally accountable. We’ll stage a raid tonight, but it won’t come up with anything.’
‘I hope at any rate that it won’t result in further casualties.’
‘I hope so too.’
‘What time are you proposing to go ahead with it?’
‘Usual time. About two in the morning.’
Maigret's Dead Man Page 9
