‘They didn’t have a leader. When they’d start fighting, Maria would bawl them out and they’d stop.’
Then the hotelier had gone back to his squalid establishment, escorted once more by an inspector, to whom he clung fearfully in the street, his skin clammy with the sweat of terror. It is likely that he was even more malodorous than usual, because fear has a smell.
And now, Coméliau, in his starched detachable collar, dark tie and immaculate suit, had his eyes fixed on Maigret, who was sitting on the window-sill, with his back to the courtyard outside.
‘The woman hasn’t said anything and will go on refusing to talk,’ said the inspector as he puffed calmly on his pipe. ‘Since yesterday evening, we’ve had three wild animals on the loose in Paris, Serge Madok, Carl and the kid Pietr, who, despite his age, is unlikely to be some angelic choirboy. And that’s not including the man who paid them visits and is probably the brains behind the whole gang.’
‘I take it,’ broke in the examining magistrate, ‘that you have done the necessary?’
He would have dearly liked to catch Maigret out. Maigret had learned too much too quickly and too easily. While seeming to be focusing entirely on his dead man, on Li’l Albert, he had in fact smoked out a gang the police had been hunting without success for five months.
‘You can set your mind at rest on that score. All the mainline railway stations have been alerted. It won’t help, but it’s routine. Roads and frontiers are being watched. All by the book. Memos have been circulated, telegrams sent and phone calls made, and thousands of men have been mobilized, but …’
‘It’s all vital …’
‘Which is why it was done. We’re also keeping a watch on cheap hotels and boarding houses, especially those similar to the Lion d’Or. These men must be holed up somewhere.’
‘A newspaper proprietor who happens to be a friend of mine phoned me earlier to complain about you. It seems you are refusing to tell reporters anything about what’s going on.’
‘Perfectly correct. I think it would serve no purpose to inform the population of Paris that we are looking for several killers who are currently loose on the city streets.’
‘I agree with Maigret,’ said the commissioner of the Police Judiciaire.
‘I am not criticizing anybody, gentlemen. I am merely trying to form a view. You all have your own methods. Maigret in particular has his own methods, which are sometimes quite distinctive. He does not always seem keen to keep me informed even though ultimately I have full responsibility. At my request, the public prosecutor has just brought together the case of the Picardy gang and the investigation of the murder of Albert. I would like to know exactly where we are with it.’
‘We already know,’ intoned Maigret in a pointedly monotonous voice, ‘how the victims were chosen.’
‘Have you had witness statements from northern colleagues?’
‘We didn’t need them. Moers found plenty of fingerprints in the two rooms in Rue du Roi-de-Sicile. When the gang broke into the farmhouses, they wore rubber gloves and left no traces behind them. Whoever murdered Li’l Albert also wore gloves. But the men who lived at the Lion d’Or wore nothing on their hands. Criminal Records has come up with a match for just one of them.’
‘Which one?’
‘Carl. His full name is Carl Lipschitz. He was born in Bohemia and arrived in France legally five years ago on a perfectly valid passport. He was part of a group of agricultural labourers who were sent out to work on large farms in Picardy and Artois.’
‘For what reason were his details entered in the criminal files?’
‘Two years ago, he was accused of the rape and murder of an under-age girl at Saint-Aubin. At the time he was working on a farm in the village. Arrested as a result of the public outcry, he was released a month later because there was no evidence against him. Since then, there has been no trace of him. In all likelihood he came to Paris. We will make inquiries in the larger factories on the outskirts and I wouldn’t be surprised that he too worked for Citroën. An inspector is already on his way there.’
‘So that’s one of the men who has been identified.’
‘It’s not much, but you will note that he is the key to the entire case. Colombani was good enough to let me have his file, which I have examined carefully. I have here a map he drew. It is very accurate. I also read in one of his memos that no Czech people were now living in the villages where the crimes were committed. But since there were a few Poles in the area some people spoke of a “Polish gang”, thus throwing the blame for the massacre of the farmers on to them.’
‘Where is all this leading?’
‘When the group to which Carl belonged reached France, the men were sent to different places. He is the only one at that period who we have found to have been in the area located just south of Amiens. It was there that the three crimes were committed, all targeting rich, isolated farms and all involving elderly owners.’
‘And the two farmers?’
‘A little further to the east, near Saint-Quentin. I’m very confident that we’ll find that Carl had either a woman or a friend somewhere thereabouts. He could get there by bike. Three years later, when the gang was formed …’
‘Where do you think it was formed?’
‘That I don’t know, but as you’ll see we shall find most of them on or around Quai de Javel. Victor Poliensky was still working for Citroën only weeks before the first attack took place.’
‘You mentioned a leader.’
‘Please let me complete my train of thought. Before the murder of Li’l Albert, or more accurately before his body was found in Place de la Concorde – if I differentiate between the two events you will soon see why – the gang was then on to its fourth slaughter and feeling completely safe. No one knew what any of them looked like. Our only witness was a little girl who had seen a woman torturing her mother. She had seen hardly anything of the men, who in any case had worn black cloths over their faces.’
‘Did you find any of those black cloths in Rue du Roi-de-Sicile?’
‘No. So the gang all felt safe. Who would have thought of looking for the Picardy murderers in a low dive in the ghetto? Isn’t that right, Colombani?’
‘Absolutely right.’
‘Then suddenly Li’l Albert, feeling threatened by men who were following him around – as you will remember, when he phoned he said several times that they worked in relays – Li’l Albert, as I was saying, was knifed in the back in his own bar after calling on me to protect him. He had been intending to come to see me. That means he had information for me, and the others knew it. But here a question arises: why did they bother to move the body to Place de la Concorde?’
They looked at him in silence, each trying vainly to come up with an answer to this question, which Maigret had asked himself many times.
‘I refer again to Colombani’s file, which is remarkably detailed. For each of their raids on the farms, the gang used different vehicles, preferably stolen vans. Nearly all of them were taken from streets around Place Clichy but all inside the eighteenth arrondissement. That is why inquiries were concentrated on that particular area. It was also in that part of Paris, though slightly further out of town, that the vehicles were recovered the day after the raids.’
‘What do you conclude from that?’
‘That the gang does not own a car. A vehicle has to be parked somewhere and can be traced.’
‘Where does that leave the yellow car?’
‘The yellow car was not stolen. If it had been we would know because the owner would have reporte
d it, especially since it was almost brand-new.’
‘I understand,’ murmured the commissioner, while Monsieur Coméliau, who did not, scowled and looked annoyed.
‘I should have thought of it sooner. I did consider the possibility at one point but dismissed the idea because it seemed too complicated and I always proceed on the basis that the truth is always simple. The men who murdered Li’l Albert were not the men who dumped his body in Place de la Concorde.’
‘Who were they, then?’
‘That I don’t know, but we soon will.’
‘How?’
‘I have arranged for a personal ad to appear in the papers. Bear in mind that around five that afternoon, when he realized that we were unable to help him, Albert made a phone call, but not to us.’
‘You think he was asking friends to rescue him?’
‘Perhaps. But at least we do know that he arranged to meet somebody. And that somebody did not show up on time.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘You’re forgetting that the yellow car broke down on Quai Henri-IV and the repair took some time to make.’
‘So the two men it was bringing arrived too late?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Hold on a moment! I’m looking at the file too. According to your fortune-teller, the car was parked outside the Petit Albert between about eight thirty and nine. But the body was not left on the pavement in Place de la Concorde until one in the morning.’
‘Perhaps they came back, sir.’
‘For the victim of a crime they had not committed so that they could dump him somewhere else?’
‘Perhaps. I have no explanation. I’m merely stating that it’s possible.’
‘And what was happening meanwhile to Albert’s wife?’
‘Ah yes. Suppose they took her to a place of safety?’
‘Why wouldn’t they have killed her at the same time as they murdered her husband? She was probably as much in the know as him and in any case she had seen the murderers.’
‘Who can say she hadn’t gone out? When some kinds of men have certain kinds of business to transact, they prefer not having their wives around.’
‘You don’t think, detective chief inspector, that all of this is also keeping us away from the killers, who, as you pointed out, are currently at liberty in Paris?’
‘What,’ Maigret asked the examining magistrate, ‘put us on to them in the first place, sir?’
‘The body in Place de la Concorde, obviously.’
‘Then why should it not do so again? You see, I believe that once we have understood, it shouldn’t be hard to lay our hands on the whole gang. But first we have to understand.’
‘So you think they killed the ex-waiter because he knew too much?’
‘It’s likely. I’m trying to discover how he knew what he knew. When I have the answer, I shall also know what he knew.’
The commissioner nodded approvingly and smiled. He could feel the antagonism between the two men. Meanwhile Colombani was also anxious to put in a word.
‘Maybe the train …?’
He knew the file inside out. Maigret made an encouraging gesture.
‘What train are you talking about?’ asked Coméliau.
‘Since the most recent murders’ – it was Colombani who replied and Maigret encouraged him with a look – ‘we have had a small lead which we have deliberately not made public to avoid putting the gang on their guard. If you would look at the card numbered 5 which is attached to the file … The murders committed on 19 January took place in the home of the Rivals, unfortunately now deceased, as are their farm hand and maid. Their property is called Les Nonettes, probably because it was built on the ruins of an old nunnery. It is located some five kilometres from the village. There is a railway station in the village, Goderville, a halt for stopping trains. It’s on the main Paris–Brussels line. I needn’t point out that passengers coming from Paris are not frequent, because it would take hours to complete the journey by a train which stops at every small station. But on 19 January, at five in the afternoon, a man got out of the train with a return Paris–Goderville ticket.’
‘Do we have a description of this man?’
‘Sketchy. Youngish. Well dressed.’
The examining magistrate was also keen to make a discovery of his own:
‘Did he have a foreign accent?’
‘He didn’t say anything. He passed through the village on the main road and was not seen again. On the other hand, the following morning at a few minutes past six, he took the train back to Paris from another out-of-the-way station, Moucher, twenty-one kilometres to the south. He did not use a taxi. He wasn’t driven anywhere by any of the locals. It’s hard to believe he would have spent the night tramping around just for the fun of it. His way must of necessity have taken him somewhere in the vicinity of Les Nonettes.’
Maigret had closed his eyes, overcome by a wave of exhaustion against which he fought with difficulty. He even fell half asleep standing up and he had let his pipe go out.
‘When this information was passed to us,’ continued Colombani, ‘we went to the Compagnie du Nord and asked for the ticket. It’s their practice for all tickets surrendered at stations to be kept for a certain period.’
‘But you didn’t recover it?’
‘It wasn’t handed in at Gare du Nord. This means that a traveller either got out on the wrong side on to the track or else that he lost himself in the crowd of passengers getting off at a suburban station and was able to make his way out without being seen, which is not difficult.’
‘Is that what you were getting at, Maigret?’
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Maigret.
‘And what conclusion do you draw from it?’
‘I don’t know. Li’l Albert could have been on the same train. Or maybe he just happened to have been at the station.’
He shook his head and went on:
‘But I don’t think so, otherwise they’d have started hounding him much sooner.’
‘Which means?’
‘Nothing. Yet he must have had some piece of tangible evidence in his possession, since the gang went to the trouble of searching his house from top to bottom after killing him. It’s complicated. There’s also the fact that Victor came back to the bar and snooped around.’
‘So it’s unlikely they found what they were looking for?’
‘If they had, they’d hardly have sent the moron of the gang back to get it. No, I’d swear Victor went there on his own initiative, without the others knowing. If you want proof, there’s the fact that they shot him in cold blood when they discovered that the police were on his tail and that he would lead us directly to them. Excuse me, gentlemen. My apologies, commissioner, I’m exhausted.’
He turned to Colombani.
‘Shall I see you at five?’
‘If you like.’
He seemed so limp, so weary, so irresolute that Monsieur Coméliau felt a twinge of guilt and murmured:
‘Even so, you have produced some impressive results.’
And when Maigret had left the room:
‘He’s too old for sleepless nights. But why does he insist on doing everything himself?’
However he would have been very surprised if he had seen Maigret, just as he was about to step into a taxi, hesitate over the address and after a moment say:
‘Quai de Charenton. I’ll tell you where when we’re there.’
Victor’s visit to the Petit Albert bothered him. All the way there
, he kept picturing him, tall, taking those catlike strides, with Lucas right behind him.
‘What’ll you have, sir?’
‘Anything you like.’
Chevrier had entered fully into the spirit of his role. His wife must have been a good cook, for there were about twenty customers there.
‘I’m going upstairs. Would you ask Irma to come up?’
She followed him up the stairs, wiping her hands on her apron. He looked all round the bedroom, which, with the windows wide opened, now smelled good and clean.
‘Where did you put all the things that were lying around?’
He had made an inventory of them with Moers. But at that stage he had been looking for what the murderers had left behind. Now he was wondering about something else, something more specific: what had Victor personally come to retrieve?
‘I pushed everything into the top drawer of the chest.’
Combs, a box containing hair pins, seashells inscribed with the name of a beach in Normandy, a free giveaway paper-knife, a broken propelling pencil, the usual oddments which clutter up houses.
‘It’s all here?’
‘Even a half-opened packet of cigarettes and an old, broken pipe. Are we going to be here much longer?’
‘I don’t know. Are you getting tired of being here?’
‘Me, no. But some of the customers get a bit too fresh, and my husband is beginning to get rattled. It won’t be long before he punches somebody on the nose …’
He was still rummaging through the drawer and fished out a small German-made harmonica, which had seen a lot of use. To Irma’s great surprise, he slipped it into his pocket.
‘Is that all?’ she asked.
‘That’s it.’
A few minutes later, from downstairs, he was phoning Monsieur Loiseau, who was taken aback by his question.
‘Tell me: did Albert play the harmonica?’
‘Not to my knowledge. He used to sing, but I never heard him play any instrument.’
Maigret's Dead Man Page 14
