‘I have a bridge party tonight. I’ll make it last for as long as I can. Phone me as soon as the raid is over.’
‘Very well, sir.’
‘When will you let me have your report?’
‘As soon as I have time to write it up. Probably not before tomorrow evening.’
‘How’s the bronchitis?’
‘What bronchitis?’
He had forgotten all about it.
Lucas walked into his office, holding a red card in his hand. Maigret could see what it was. It was a trade union membership card made out in the name of Victor Poliensky, a Czech national, an unskilled worker in the Citroën factories.
‘What’s the address, Lucas?’
‘132, Quai de Javel.’
‘Wait a moment. The address is vaguely familiar. I think it’s probably that insalubrious rooming house on the corner of the Quai and a street whose name I’ve forgotten. We raided it about two years ago. Check and see if they have a telephone.’
The property was located further along the Seine, not far from the dark mass of the factory buildings, a run-down nest of furnished rooms full to overflowing with newly arrived foreigners who often slept three to a room despite police regulations. What was surprising was that the place was run by a woman and that she was quite capable of holding her own against all her tenants. She even cooked for them.
‘Hello? Is that 132, Quai de Javel?’
A woman’s husky voice.
‘Is Poliensky there just now?’
She said nothing, taking her time before she answered.
‘I mean Victor …’
‘So? …’
‘Is he there?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘I’m a friend of his.’
‘You’re a cop, that’s what.’
‘Let’s suppose for argument’s sake that this is the police. Does Poliensky still live at this address? I needn’t add that anything you say will be checked.’
‘I know how you operate.’
‘Well?’
‘He hasn’t been here for more than six months.’
‘Where did he work?’
‘He worked for Citroën.’
‘Has he been in France for long?’
‘No idea.’
‘Did he speak French?’
‘No.’
‘How long did he live under your roof?’
‘About three months.’
‘Did he have any friends? Did he get visitors?’
‘No.’
‘Were his papers in order?’
‘Probably, because your hotel snoopers didn’t mention anything to me.’
‘Another question. Did he used to have his meals with you?’
‘Usually.’
‘Did he bother with women?’
‘Listen, you dirty-minded swine, do you think I’m interested in that sort of thing?’
He hung up. Turning to Lucas, he said:
‘Get on to Immigration.’
The Préfecture of Police had no record of the man in their files. This meant that the Czech was there illegally, like so many others, like the thousands who gravitate to the shadier parts of Paris. Most probably, like most of them, he had acquired a false identity card. There were many back-street operators in and around the Faubourg Saint-Antoine who supplied them for a set price.
‘Find out from Citroën!’
The photos of the dead man had arrived and he distributed them to the inspectors from the Vice Squad and the Hotel Agency.
He went upstairs himself to Records to check progress on the fingerprinting.
There were no matches.
‘Isn’t Moers here?’ he asked, putting his head round the laboratory door.
Moers ought not to have been there, because he had worked all night and through the day. But he didn’t need much sleep. He had no family, no known girlfriend and no passion except his laboratory.
‘Over here, chief!’
‘I’ve got another corpse for you. But first, come to my office.’
They went down together. Lucas had spoken to the accounts department at Citroën.
‘That old girl was right. He worked for them as an unskilled labourer for three months. He hasn’t been on their books for six months.’
‘Was he a good worker?’
‘Not many absences. But they employ so many people that they don’t know them individually. I asked if we came tomorrow and saw the foreman he worked under, would we get more information. It’s no good. With skilled workers, yes. But the unskilled labourers, who are almost all foreigners, come and go, and no one gets to know them. There are always a few hundred of them waiting at the gates hoping to be taken on. They may work for three days, three weeks or three months and then they are never seen again. They get moved from site to site as and when they’re needed.’
‘Anything in his pockets?’
On his desk was a battered wallet. The leather must once have been green. In addition to the union membership card, it had contained a photo of a young woman. Round, fresh face with heavy plaits piled over the top of her head. Very probably Czech, a country girl.
‘Two thousand-franc notes and three hundreds.’
‘That’s quite a lot,’ said Maigret.
A long flick-knife with a narrow blade as sharp as a razor.
‘Wouldn’t you say, Moers, that this knife might well have been the one that killed Albert?’
‘It’s possible, chief.’
The handkerchief was greenish too. Victor Poliensky must have liked green.
‘So you might think! It’s not a cheerful thought, but you never know what your tests will show.’
A packet of Caporal cigarettes and a German-made lighter. Some small change. No keys.
‘Are you sure, Lucas, that there weren’t any keys?’
‘Certain, sir.’
‘Did they remove all his clothes?’
‘Not yet. They’re waiting for Moers.’
‘Best be off, then! On this occasion, I don’t have time to come with you. You’re going to have to spend a part of tonight again working. You’ll be dead beat.’
‘I can easily manage two nights on the trot. It won’t be the first time …’
Maigret asked to be put through to the Petit Albert.
‘Anything new, Émile?’
‘Nothing, sir. Much the same.’
‘Had many customers?’
‘Fewer than this morning. Some for an aperitif, but we’ve had hardly any takers for dinner.’
‘Is your wife still enjoying playing landladies?’
‘She’s in her element. She’s cleaned the bedroom from top to bottom, changed the sheets and we’ll be snug up there. What about the man with red hair?’
‘Dead.’
‘What?’
‘One of his low-life pals decided to put a bullet in his hide just because he thought he’d like to go home.’
He called in again at the inspectors’ room. He couldn’t afford to overlook anything.
‘Anything come up on the yellow Citroën?’
‘Nothing new. But there have been a few sightings of it around Barbès-Rochechouart.’
‘Really! We’ve got to follow up on that lead.’
And again for geographical reasons. The Barbès district lies next to Gare du Nord, and Albert had worked for a long time as a waiter in a brasserie somewhere near the station.
‘Hungry, Lucas?’ asked Maigret.
‘Not
particularly. I can wait.’
‘What about your wife?’
‘I can phone home.’
‘Right, I’ll just phone home too and then I’ll keep you with me.’
Even so, he was feeling rather tired and he didn’t much feel like working by himself, especially since the night to come promised to be exhausting.
They both stopped off at the Brasserie Dauphine for an aperitif. It always came as a surprise when they were deep in an investigation to observe that life around them continued normally, that people still went about their lawful occasions and joked and laughed. What did it matter to them if a Czech had been shot on the pavement of Rue du Roi-de-Sicile? It was worth just a short paragraph in the papers.
Then one fine day they would learn that the murderer had been arrested. No one, save those directly involved, knew that a raid was being organized in the most densely populated and most combustible parts of Paris. Could they pick out the plainclothes police officers posted on the corner of every street, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible?
A few tarts, maybe, lurking in recesses from which they emerged from time to time to clutch at the arm of a possible customer, would flinch as they recognized the tell-tale figure of a member of the Vice Squad. They immediately assumed that they would be spending part of the night in the cells of the Préfecture. They were used to it. It happened to them at least once a month. Provided they were clean, they would be released at about ten o’clock the next morning.
Nor did the people who ran rented accommodation like it when officers came at unusual hours to check their registers. Of course, everything was all in order. Everything was always in order.
A photo would be thrust under their noses. They would make a show of looking at it very carefully, even making a point of going off to fetch their glasses.
‘Do you know this man?’
‘Never saw him before.’
‘Do you have any Czechs staying here?’
‘Some Polish, Italians, an Armenian, but no Czechs.’
‘That’s it.’
Routine. Further out, at Barbès, one of the inspectors whose job was making inquiries exclusively about the yellow car, was questioning garage owners, mechanics, officers on the beat, shopkeepers, concierges.
Routine.
Chevrier and his wife were playing at running a café down on Quai de Charenton and would shortly, after putting up the shutters, sit and chat by the large stove before going upstairs to settle into the bed that had belonged to Li’l Albert and wall-eyed Nine.
She was someone else who had to be traced. She was not known to the Vice Squad. What could have become of her? Did she know that her husband was dead? If she knew, why had she not come forward to identify his body after his picture had appeared in the papers? Other people had been unable to recognize him. But surely she …?
Had the murderers abducted her? She hadn’t been in the yellow car when the corpse had been dumped in Place de la Concorde.
‘I bet,’ said Maigret, who had his own thoughts on the matter, ‘that we’ll find her one of these days in the country.’
It would be hard to overestimate the number of people who, when confronted by some unpleasant problem, suddenly feel an urge to breathe clean country air, usually in a quiet inn where the cooking is good and the wine light-red.
‘Shall we take a taxi?’
It would mean more trouble with the clerk in accounts, who always showed a disagreeable tendency to trim expenses claims and was only too ready to argue:
‘Do I go around in taxis?’
They hailed a cab rather than cross Pont-Neuf and wait for a bus.
‘The Cadran, in Rue de Maubeuge.’
A first-rate brasserie, the sort that Maigret liked best, yet to be modernized and with the classic frieze of mirrors round the walls, the dark-red bench-seat covered with imitation leather, white marble-topped tables and, at intervals, round nickel holders for the waiters’ damp-cloths. It smelled gloriously of beer and sauerkraut. There were just a few too many people, people in too much of a hurry, laden with luggage, drinking or eating too quickly, shouting impatiently for waiters, and all with one eye on the large luminous face of the station clock.
The owner of the Cadran, who stood by the till, looking dignified, keeping a watchful eye on everything that was going on, was also cast in traditional mould, being short, portly and bald and wearing a loose-fitting suit and spotless fine leather shoes.
‘Two sauerkrauts, two beers and the landlord, please.’
‘You wish to speak to Monsieur Jean?’
‘Yes.’
An ex-café waiter or maybe a retired restaurant head waiter who had managed finally to set up on his own?
‘Gentlemen …’
‘I would like some information, Monsieur Jean. You used to have working here a waiter called Albert Rochain. He was known as Li’l Albert, I believe.’
‘I’ve heard the name,’
‘You never knew him?’
‘It was only three years ago that I bought the business. The woman who was on the till at the time, she knew Albert.’
‘Are you saying that she doesn’t work here any more?’
‘She died last December. She’d spent more than forty years behind that till.’
He gestured towards the polished wood cash-desk, behind which a woman of about thirty, with blonde hair, was enthroned.
‘What about the waiters?’
‘There was one, also getting on a bit, Ernest, but he has retired since then. Went back to his part of the world, which was somewhere in the Dordogne, I believe.’
Monsieur Jean remained standing in front of the two men, who went on eating their sauerkraut, but never missed anything that happened around him.
‘Jules! … Table twenty-four …’
From there he flashed a smile at a customer who was on her way out.
‘François! Help Madame with her luggage!’
‘Is the former proprietor still alive?’
‘He’s fitter than you and me.’
‘Do you know where I could find him?’
‘At his house, of course. He calls in here to see me from time to time. He’s bored. He talks about going back into business.’
‘Can you let me have his address?’
‘Police?’ asked Monsieur Jean directly.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret.’
‘Sorry! I don’t know his number. But I can help – he’s asked me to lunch two or three times. Are you familiar with Joinville? Do you know the Ile d’Amour, just beyond the bridge? He doesn’t live on the island itself but in a house directly opposite the tip. There’s a boat-house in front of it. You won’t have any trouble finding it.’
It was half past eight when the taxi drew up outside the house. A plaque of white marble with copperplate lettering read: ‘Le Nid’. It showed an exotic bird, or something purporting to be an exotic bird, perched on a nest.
‘He must have gone to no end of trouble to think of that!’ observed Maigret with a smile.
The former owner of the Cadran was actually called Loiseau, Désiré Loiseau.
‘He’ll be from the north, you’ll see, and he’ll offer us a glass of very old gin.’
And so it proved. First they encountered a small, dumpy woman, very blonde and very pink, who had to be seen close up before the fine lines under the thick layer of powder became visible.
‘Monsieur Loiseau!’ she called. ‘Someone to see you! …’
She was Madame L
oiseau. She showed them into the drawing room, which smelled of polish.
Loiseau was fat too, but also tall and broad, taller and broader than Maigret, though that did not prevent him from being as light on his feet as a dancer.
‘Do sit down. You too, monsieur …?’
‘Inspector Lucas.’
‘Really? I knew someone at school who was also called Lucas. I don’t suppose you’re Belgian, inspector? I am. It hardly needs saying! No, it’s true! I don’t mind admitting it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Sweetheart, why don’t you get us a drink …’
The small glass of gin duly appeared.
‘Albert? Of course I remember him. He was a northerner. Actually I seem to think his mother was Belgian too. I was sorry to see him go. You understand, what matters most in our business is keeping cheerful. People who go to a café prefer to see smiling faces. I recall one waiter, for example, a very willing sort, who had I don’t know how many kids. He used to lean over customers who’d ordered soda water or a glass of Vichy or anything non-alcoholic and say in a confidential whisper: “Have you got an ulcer too?” He lived and breathed his ulcer. He talked of nothing else. I had to give him his marching orders because people used to get up and sit somewhere else when they saw him coming towards their table.
‘Albert was the very opposite. Always ready for a laugh. He used to hum to himself. The way he wore his cap made him look like a juggler, as if he was always enjoying himself, and he had this way of singing out: “The weather’s good today!”’
‘And he left you to set up on his own account?’
‘Somewhere out towards Charenton, yes.’
‘Had he been left money?’
‘I don’t think so. He talked to me about it. I think it’s just that he got married.’
‘Was that about the time he left you?’
‘Yes. Shortly before.’
‘Were you invited to the wedding?’
‘I would have been if it had been held in Paris, because when I was in business all my employees were like family. But they went off and tied the knot somewhere far out in the sticks, I’ve forgotten where exactly.’
‘Do you think you could remember?’
‘No chance. I don’t mind telling you, as far as I’m concerned, anywhere south of the Loire is the Midi.’
Maigret's Dead Man Page 10
