‘Did you meet his wife?’
‘He came one day and introduced her. Dark hair, not very good-looking.’
‘Did she have a squint?’
‘Her eyes weren’t quite together, yes. But it wasn’t unpleasant. In some people it’s off-putting, but in others it doesn’t matter that much.’
‘Did you know her maiden name?’
‘No. I think I remember that she was related to him, a cousin, or something of the sort. They’d always known each other. Albert used to say: “Since you’ve got to come to it some time or other, better the devil you know.” He used to joke about everything. Seems he had no equal when it came to singing. There were customers who told me seriously that he was good enough to go on the halls.
‘Can I offer you another glass? As you see, down here it’s quiet, maybe too quiet, and one of these fine days I might well go back into the business. Unfortunately good staff like Albert don’t grow on trees. Do you know him? Is he making a go of his bar?’
Maigret chose not to tell them that Albert was dead, because he anticipated an hour of sighs and lamentations.
‘Do you know if he had any close friends?’
‘He was friends with everybody.’
‘Did anyone come to meet him after work, for example?’
‘No. He used to go to the races a lot. He managed things so that he’d often be free in the afternoon. But he wasn’t reckless. He never tried to borrow money from me. He used to bet within his means. If you see him, tell him from me that …’
Madame Loiseau, who hadn’t opened her mouth once since her husband had appeared, was still smiling the kind of smile that belongs on a wax head in the window of a hairdressing salon.
Another small one? Yes. Especially as the gin was good. Then off they went to join the raid on a street where nobody would be smiling at them.
6.
Two busloads of police had stopped in Rue de Rivoli on the corner of Rue Vieille-du-Temple, and for a moment the silver buttons of the uniformed men had caught the light of the streetlamps. These men had gone to take up their positions, cordoning off a certain number of streets where plainclothed inspectors of the Police Judiciaire were already stationed.
Then, behind the buses, the prison vans formed up in an orderly line. At the corner of Rue du Roi-de-Sicile, a senior police officer was staring at his watch.
In Rue Saint-Antoine, pedestrians, alarmed, turned and hurried away. Inside the area which had been surrounded, a few lighted windows could still be seen. Lights still burned over the doors of cheap hotels, as did the lamp outside the brothel in Rue des Rosiers.
The senior officer, his eyes still fixed on his watch, was counting down the final seconds. At his side, Maigret, in detached mood or perhaps feeling he was in the way, thrust his hands into his pockets and looked elsewhere.
Forty … Fifty … Sixty … Two loud blasts of a whistle, to which other whistles immediately responded. The men in uniform advanced through the streets like skirmishers while the inspectors marched into the disreputable hotels.
As always happens on these occasions, windows opened on all sides; white figures appeared in the gloom, looking alarmed or irritated. Already raised voices could be heard. Already, a policeman could be observed pushing a prostitute he had dug out of a hole in a corner. She was directing foul-mouthed abuse at him.
There was also the sound of the running footsteps of men trying to make a bolt for it as they ducked into dark alleyways, but in vain, for they merely ran into different police cordons.
‘Papers!’
Pocket torches were snapped on and lit suspect faces, greasy passports and identity cards. At the windows were some who had seen it all before and knew that they wouldn’t be getting back to sleep for a long time, and who watched the raid with interest, as if it were some kind of show.
Most of the prey were already under lock and key at the Préfecture. They hadn’t waited for the raid to happen. From the moment a man had been gunned down in their streets late that afternoon, they had sensed it was coming. And as soon as it was dark, shadows had flitted along walls, men carrying battered suitcases or oddly shaped bundles had run straight into the arms of Maigret’s men.
Among them were all sorts: an ex-con who had been banned from the area, pimps, forged identity cards, the unavoidable Poles, Italians whose papers were not in order …
All of them, trying to look unconcerned, were questioned roughly:
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘Moving house.’
‘Why?’
Those eyes, anxious or fierce, in the darkness.
‘I found a job.’
‘Where?’
Some said they were going to their sister’s in the north or somewhere near Toulouse.
‘Just get in!’
Prison van. A night in the cells, for an identity check. They were mostly sad cases, though few of them had clear consciences.
‘Not one Czech so far, sir!’ Maigret had been told.
He had remained at his post, smoking his pipe, grim-faced, watching the moving shadows and hearing shouts, hurried footsteps and occasionally the moist thud of a fist on a face.
It was in the cheap hotels that there was most resistance. Their owners and managers hastily got into trousers and skulked scowling in their offices, where almost all of them slept on camp beds. A few tried to offer drinks to the uniformed officers who stood guard in the hall outside while inspectors stamped up the stairs to the floors above.
There, the reeking hotel cells sprang into teeming life. Knuckles sounded on a door:
‘Police!’
People in night clothes, men and women still half asleep, whey-faced, and all with that same anxious, sometimes haggard, look.
‘Papers!’
Barefooted they fetched them from under pillows or from drawers, sometimes having to rummage through ancient, old-fashioned trunks which had originated on the other side of Europe.
In the Hôtel du Lion d’Or, a naked man remained seated on his bed, swinging his legs, while the woman with him showed her prostitute’s registration card.
‘What about you?’
He looked at the inspector uncomprehendingly.
‘Passport!’
He still did not move. His body looked all the paler for being covered with very dark, very long hair. People from neighbouring rooms looked in and laughed.
‘Who is this man?’ the inspector asked the woman.
‘Don’t know.’
‘Didn’t he say anything to you?’
‘He doesn’t speak a word of French.’
‘Where did you pick him up?’
‘In the street.’
One for the Préfecture lock-up! His clothes were thrust into his hand and hand gestures were used to order him to put them on. It look him some time to understand what was expected of him. He kept protesting and turning to the woman, apparently asking her for something. His money back, possibly? Perhaps he had arrived in Paris no later than that same evening and now he would end his first night in the cells in Quai de l’Horloge.
‘Papers!’
Doors opened on to decaying rooms each exuding, in addition to the general fetid smell of the establishment, the particular odour of the transients who paid by the week or the night. Fifteen, maybe a score of people formed a group at the head of the line of prison vans. They were bundled inside them one by one, and some of the women, who knew the drill, joked with the policemen. One, for a laugh, made obscene gestures in their direction.
Some were in tears while some of the men clenched their fists, among them being a very blond adolescent with a shaved head who had no papers at all and had been found in possession of a revolver.
Both inside the hotels and out in the streets there was a preliminary triage. The screening proper would be done at the Préfecture, either during the night or the next morning.
‘Papers.’
The hotel-keepers were the most apprehensive because they might lose their licences, as none of them was fully compliant with the law. Under their roofs were clients who were not signed in.
‘As you know, inspector, my paperwork’s always been in order, but when someone turns up at midnight and you’re half asleep …’
An upstairs window of the Hôtel du Lion d’Or opened. The milky globe over its door was the one closest to Maigret. There was a blast of a police whistle. He stepped forwards and tilted his head back.
‘What is it?’
As it happened, the inspector on duty who looked down at him was very young. He stammered:
‘Detective Chief Inspector, I think you should come up.’
Closely followed by Lucas, Maigret started up the narrow staircase where they brushed against the wall and banister at the same time. The stairs creaked. All these buildings ought to have been knocked down decades, if not centuries ago, or rather burned down along with their colonies of fleas and lice from every country on earth.
It was on the second floor. A door was open. A low-watt light bulb with no shade and yellow filaments burned at the end of its flex. The room was empty. It contained two iron bedsteads, of which only one had been slept in. There was also a mattress on the floor, blankets made of coarse grey wool, a jacket on a chair, a primus stove and various foodstuffs and empty litre bottles on a table.
‘Through here, sir …’
The door communicating with the next room was open, and Maigret saw a woman lying on a bed, a face on a pillow and two brown, burning, magnificent eyes which glared at him fiercely.
‘What’s the problem?’ he asked.
Rarely had he seen such an expressive face. And never one so wild.
‘Take a closer look at her,’ stuttered the young officer. ‘I tried to make her get up. I talked to her but she couldn’t be bothered to answer. So I went closer to the bed and tried to shake her by the shoulders. Look at my hand. She bit me and drew blood.’
The woman did not smile when she saw the officer show his painful thumb. On the contrary, she screwed up her face as if she had suddenly been struck by a terrible pain.
Maigret, who was looking at the bed, frowned and growled:
‘She’s having a baby!’
He turned to Lucas.
‘Phone for an ambulance. Tell them to take her to the maternity ward. Then tell the owner to come up at once.’
The young officer was now all blushes and did not dare look at the bed. The search continued on the other storeys of the building. The floorboards shook.
‘Don’t want to say anything?’ Maigret asked the woman. ‘Don’t you understand French?’
She was still glaring at him. It was quite impossible to guess what she was thinking. The only emotion on her face was intense hatred.
She was young. She was probably not yet twenty-five, and her full cheeks were framed by long, glossy, black hair. The stairs became congested. The hotel-keeper came to an uncertain stop in the doorway.
‘Who’s this?’
‘She’s called Maria.’
‘Maria who?’
‘I don’t think she’s got another name.’
Suddenly Maigret felt very angry and immediately regretted it. He picked up a man’s shoe from under the foot of the bed.
‘What’s this?’ he cried throwing it at the hotel-keeper’s feet. ‘Doesn’t that have a name either? … Or this? … Or this? …’
He fished a jacket and a dirty shirt from the back of a cupboard, together with another shoe and a cap.
‘Or these?’
He went back into the room next door and pointed to two suitcases in a corner.
‘And that?’
A piece of cheese on greaseproof paper, glasses – four of them – plates on which there were still a few slices of salami.
‘Did everyone who lived here sign your register? Well? Speak up? And start by telling me how many of them there were.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Does this woman speak French?’
‘I don’t know … No … She just understands a few words.’
‘How long has she been here?’
‘I don’t know.’
He had a nasty bluish boil on his neck, a sickly look and thinning hair. He had not fastened his braces, so that his trousers kept slipping down his thighs, and he was obliged to hold them up with both hands.
‘When did all this start?’
Maigret pointed to the woman.
‘No one told me …’
‘You’re lying … And what about the others? Where are they?’
‘They’re probably gone.’
‘When?’
Maigret walked towards him, fists bunched. At that moment he’d got to the point where he could have hit the man …
‘They ran away immediately after that man was shot in the street, didn’t they? They were a lot smarter than all the others! They didn’t hang around waiting for the police cordon to be set up.’
No answer.
‘Take a look at this. You recognize him, don’t you?’
He thrust the photo of Victor Poliensky under his nose.’
‘Do you recognize him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he live in this room?’
‘Next door.’
‘With the others? … And which of them slept with the woman?’
‘I swear I don’t know. Maybe more than one of them …’
Lucas was back. Almost simultaneously there was the sound outside of an ambulance siren. The woman screamed with pain but bit her lip and glared defiantly at the men.
‘Listen, Lucas, I’m going to have to stay here for some time yet. I want you to go with her. Don’t leave her side, by which I mean that you’re not to stray from her ward in the hospital. As soon as I can I’ll try to dig out a Czech interpreter for you.’
Other tenants who were being led away and were walking glumly down the stairs bumped into the ambulance men, who were on their way up with a stretcher. In the dim light, there was something unearthly about the whole scene. It looked like a nightmare, a nightmare which was filled with the reek of dirt and sweat.
Maigret preferred to move into the other room while the ambulance men were taking care of the young woman.
‘Where will you take her?’ he asked Lucas.
‘Laennec. I had to phone round three hospitals before I found a bed for her.’
The hotel-keeper did not dare move but stared lugubriously at the floor.
‘Stay here! And close the door!’ Maigret barked at him when the field was clear. ‘Now, tell me everything.’
‘I don’t know much, I swear.’
‘Earlier on, an inspector came and showed you a photo. Is that right?’
‘It is.’
‘You said you didn’t know the man.’
‘Not quite. I said he wasn’t staying in the hotel.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He’s not in the register, nor the woman either. Somebody else is signed in for both rooms.’
‘Since when?’
‘About five month
s.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Serge Madok.’
‘Is he the leader?’
‘Leader of what?’
‘Let me give you a piece of advice. Don’t be stupid! Otherwise we’ll carry on this little chat elsewhere, and tomorrow morning this place will be closed down. Have you got that?’
‘I’ve always been above board …’
‘Except tonight. Tell me about Serge Madok. Is he Czech?’
‘That’s what it says on his papers. They all talk the same lingo. It’s not Polish. I’m used to Poles.’
‘Age?’
‘About thirty. At the start, he told me he worked in a factory.’
‘Did he really have a job?’
‘No.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because he was here all day.’
‘How about the others?’
‘The others likewise. There was only ever one who went out. Most often it was the woman who used to go down to the market in Rue Saint-Antoine.’
‘What did they do all day?’
‘Nothing. They slept, ate, drank, played cards … They were no trouble. Now and then, they’d start singing, but never at night, so there was nothing I could say.’
‘How many of them were there?’
‘Four men and Maria.’
‘And did the four men … with Maria?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You’re lying! Tell me!’
‘There was something going on all right, but what, I couldn’t exactly say. Sometimes they quarrelled, and I got the feeling it was about her. Several times I walked into the back room, and it wasn’t always the same man who was missing.’
‘What about the one in the photo, Victor Poliensky?’
‘I think so. It could have been him. In any case, he was in love.’
‘Which of them was the most important?’
‘I think it was the one they called Carl. I did hear them say his other name, but it’s such a mouthful that I could never pronounce it, and it didn’t stick in my mind.’
Maigret's Dead Man Page 11
