Pel Under Pressure (Chief Inspector Pel)

by Mark Hebden

  Minet looked up. ‘Single shot. Small calibre. Somewhere around 7 mm. They placed it hard up against his head before they pulled the trigger. There’s scorching of the hair and skin. Under the circumstances, it could hardly be considered an accident.’

  Pel rubbed his nose, fought hard to avoid lighting a cigarette, failed miserably and offered one to Minet as a guilt offering. Minet lit the cigarette and drew in the smoke to kill the smell. With a rubber-gloved hand he reached into the boot of the Renault alongside the body.

  ‘There’s something here that might be of interest,’ he said. ‘A button. A very dirty leather button.’

  Pel wasn’t very interested. He read a lot of detective stories in which people always found buttons and matched them with the murderer’s clothing. The buttons he found usually came off a workman’s overalls and invariably had nothing whatever to do with what he was investigating. He fought for breath as he drew down the first lungfuls of smoke from his cigarette and gestured speechlessly at Misset who was standing behind him, smoking a cheroot he’d just bought at the bar at the end of the road to take away the appalling odour. It was so strong only the bite of tobacco seemed to kill it.

  ‘That’s what we used to do,’ ex-Sergeant Roches said approvingly. ‘In the desert. Cigarettes. We used to smoke them all the time. You could almost taste the smell.’

  Misset gave him a sour look and, fishing in his pocket, produced a small plastic bag. Minet dropped the button into it.

  ‘Get it down to the Lab,’ Pel said. ‘Tell ’em we want to know everything they can tell us about it.’

  ‘It probably fell off a suit the owner of the car was taking to the cleaner’s,’ Misset said. ‘The ones I find always seem to be.’

  Pel nodded, still fighting to stop coughing.

  ‘Who is he, Doc?’ he asked.

  Minet shrugged. ‘Nothing in his pockets to identify him. I expect we shall have an idea when we’ve examined his clothes.’

  ‘Is there nothing at all?’

  ‘No. Cheap clothes. That’s all. Off-the-peg stuff.’

  ‘Doesn’t tell us much. What would he look like? – when he didn’t look like this.’

  Minet shrugged. ‘Short. Thickset. Too fat. About forty. Blue eyes. That’s about all at the moment. Hands look as though he didn’t work very hard. They’re clean and soft, with no callouses. Hair, black – where he has any. There’s a mole on his cheek by his right eye and what looks like a scar lower down. Quite a good-sized scar.’

  ‘Made by what?’

  Minet looked up. ‘Would you like me to say it was done by a knife so we can identify him as a gangster or something?’

  Pel gestured. ‘It looks like an execution. The single bullet at the back of the head. Pockets emptied. No identity card. Nothing. Why shouldn’t he be a gangster?’

  ‘No reason at all.’ Minet smiled. ‘In fact, a gangster is exactly what he could be. That scar could easily have come from a knife. But a long time ago. And he looks as though he might well have lived off his wits because he was too fat and too soft. But that’s only a guess, mon vieux.’

  ‘It’ll do,’ Pel said. He had been jotting down in his notebook what Minet had been saying and now he turned to Darcy who was waiting nearby, smoking like the rest of them.

  ‘Where are the Press boys?’ he asked.

  ‘In the bar, Patron,’ Darcy said. ‘I saw them follow the judge.’

  ‘Get them. This is something we need the jackals on. Some woman might just have noticed her husband hasn’t been home for a few nights. He might turn out to be our friend here.’

  As Darcy began to move away, Emile Escaut decided to try again with someone else. He touched Nosjean’s arm.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘That’s my car. Think I can go now?’

  Darcy heard him and turned round. ‘You’re in a hurry to be off, my friend,’ he said sharply. ‘What’s worrying you?’

  Escaut shrugged. ‘It’s this appointment.’

  ‘I’ve told you once to hang on.’ Darcy took another look at him. ‘Come to that, haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’

  Escaut blew his nose on a large red handkerchief. ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ he said. ‘I don’t get around much.’

  Darcy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Where do you come from?’

  ‘Here. Near the barracks.’

  Darcy stared hard at him, his mind clicking away like a machine.

  ‘Take him down to the office, Nosjean,’ he suggested quietly. ‘And stay with him. He’s just too keen to get away and I have a feeling he might have something to tell me.’

  ‘Look–’ Escaut bleated ‘ – I’ve done nothing.’

  ‘I never said you had,’ Darcy said blandly. ‘But you’re a witness, aren’t you? You found the stiff.’

  ‘Not me! It was the other guy!’

  ‘You were the one who wanted to shift the car, aren’t you? How do we know you didn’t put it there? Find the other one, Nosjean, and take them both down. The Old Man’ll want to talk to them. While you’re there, you can dig up the owner of the car.’

  The owner of the Renault, a printer called Légeard, was soon turned up. He was understandably annoyed.

  ‘Yes, it’s my car,’ he admitted. ‘It was stolen while I was in Auxonne with my wife. Dieu, the uproar when we had to come back by bus! She has bad legs.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Darcy said.

  ‘Not as sorry as I was. She’s not as bad as she makes out. Mind you, they’re bad all right. It costs me a fortune in taxis.’ Légeard paused. ‘And what about the smell?’

  Darcy shrugged. ‘We’ll do our best to get rid of it,’ he said. ‘I expect the Lab people will spray it with something. They don’t fancy it much themselves.’

  ‘When will I get it back?’

  ‘As soon as possible.’

  ‘What happens about it? Do I get a new car?’

  Darcy smiled. ‘Not from us, you don’t.’

  Légeard looked hurt. ‘My wife’ll never go out in that one again,’ he said. ‘Not after this. She’s already having a nervous breakdown all over the house.’

  ‘Once the Lab’s finished with it,’ Darcy said, ‘you’ll never notice. You ever wear a jacket with leather buttons, by the way?’

  ‘Leather what?’

  ‘Buttons.’

  ‘I had one with leather patches on the elbows once.’ Légeard frowned. ‘What about the blood? I distinctly saw blood on the rubber mat in the boot.’

  ‘You can get a new rubber mat. It’s a standard pattern.’

  ‘Who pays for it? Me?’

  ‘I don’t think we shall, Monsieur.’

  ‘See what I mean? I’m losing on this all round, aren’t I? The insurance company would have paid up if the car hadn’t turned up. As it is, they only pay for damage after the first few hundred francs, and as there’s only the rubber mat I suppose I’ll have to foot the bill.’

  Ex-Sergeant Aristide Roches was none too pleased either.

  ‘Look, mon brave,’ he said to Darcy. ‘I’m supposed to work for Bellecins’, the demolition people. They don’t pay me for not working.’

  ‘I think they will this time,’ Darcy said.

  ‘Can you guarantee that, my friend? They’re capitalists. They watch their money.’

  ‘So do I,’ Darcy said. ‘Always.’

  ‘I’m on the bulldozer.’ Roches reached out to accept the cigarette Darcy offered. ‘I used to drive tanks with Leclerc. That’s how I started on bulldozers. After the war. How much longer am I going to be kept here?’

  ‘Just till the inspector’s had a word with you.’

  ‘I didn’t do it, you know.’

  ‘Nobody’s said you did.’

  ‘I only found it. That kid didn’t know what it was. Probably thought it was somebody with a bad case of body odour. I knew straight away.’

  ‘That probably makes you an expert witness.’ Darcy was growing a little bored.

  ‘It does?’ Roches looked more cheer
ful. ‘Does that mean I’ll have to get up in court and tell them?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  Roches thought for a while. ‘Don’t they pay expert witnesses?’ he asked.

  Darcy smiled. ‘If they have technical knowledge,’ he said. ‘All you’ve got seems to be a keen sense of smell.’

  Emile Escaut was the most annoyed of all. He was a busy young man. Doing nothing occupied a great deal of his time and he objected to waiting at police headquarters to answer questions.

  ‘Why did you fetch the police?’ Darcy asked.

  ‘I didn’t. I only wanted to get in my car and drive away.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘My place. It’s in the Rue de Maroc.’

  Darcy studied him carefully. ‘Share it with anybody?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Do I have to say?’

  ‘It might be a good idea.’

  Escaut eyed Darcy for a while. ‘It’s a girl,’ he said eventually.

  Darcy nodded. ‘I thought it might be,’ he smiled. ‘Who?’

  ‘Just a girl.’

  ‘Why are you so anxious to keep her name quiet? Nobody gets very worked up about that sort of thing these days.’

  ‘Well – ’ Escaut shrugged ‘ – she doesn’t want her father to know. It’s normal enough, isn’t it? He’s against it.’

  ‘Lots of fathers are. On the other hand, a lot of them have got used to the scene. Is it just you he’s not keen on?’

  ‘He doesn’t think I earn enough.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I think I do.’

  ‘What do you do, anyway?’

  ‘I’m an artist.’

  Darcy’s eyebrows lifted. ‘You don’t meet many of those. Make much at it?’

  ‘I’m only just starting.’

  ‘Got a studio?’

  ‘Near the École Commerciale. Top floor of the Lamy Building.’

  Darcy smiled. ‘That place’s about due for demolition, isn’t it? If they don’t pull it down soon, in fact, it’ll fall down. Take care it doesn’t happen while you’re in it.’ He paused. ‘This girl of yours. What does she do?’

  ‘She’s a student. Faculté de Lettres.’

  ‘How old?’

  Escaut scowled. ‘Old enough,’ he said.

  Darcy refused to let go, worrying him like a dog with a rat. ‘Where’s she from?’ he asked.

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Then why is she sharing a flat with you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Kids at the university who live here usually live at home.’

  ‘She’s different. She’s got a bit of money.’ Escaut paused. ‘The flat’s hers really.’

  ‘Is it now?’ Darcy smiled. ‘That’s not what you said at first. Why isn’t she living at home?’

  ‘She wanted to be free. Parental ties, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Do her parents know she’s sharing it with you?’

  ‘Er – well, no. They think she’s sharing it with a girl.’

  ‘Don’t they ever come and see her?’

  ‘Yes. But she always insists they phone ahead. Then I move out until they’ve gone.’

  Darcy eyed him coldly. It was a pity, he thought, that investigating the dead man they’d found would necessitate seeing Emile Escaut again. He had decided he didn’t like Emile Escaut very much.

  Three

  The next day’s newspapers carried the story. Le Bien Public was decently sedate and gave it with the facts and the dead man’s description. France Soir dressed it up, sparing no details and managing to suggest it was the result of a crime passionelle. France Dimanche would do even better at the weekend, without doubt.

  Pel stared at the description. ‘Forty, blue eyes, black hair, short, sturdy, plump, his hands showed he was not a labouring type. Mole on right cheek. Old scar lower down. Appendicitis scar on lower torso.’

  Doctor Minet had worked all night over the corpse, and his report as usual was clear, concise and as short as possible. He set the time of death as four days before, stating that the advanced decomposition was due to the heat. Cause of death: one bullet in the brain. He didn’t put it quite as simply as that, but that was exactly what he meant. Somebody had placed a gun hard up against the dead man’s head and pulled the trigger.

  Reaching for his jacket, Pel headed for the laboratory. It was a sterile place of long white benches and tall green cabinets, lit by fluorescent tubes. The cabinets contained lists of laundry marks, pistol types, tyres, poisons, soils, glass, foliage, wools, cottons, bones. You mention it, the laboratory probably had it. It enabled Leguyader, who was in charge, a small fierce-looking man, as bad-tempered as Pel himself, to hand out his opinions on what was brought to him. He wasn’t often wrong.

  He wasn’t very often co-operative either. He wasn’t now.

  ‘I gave you my opinion yesterday,’ he said. ‘That’s as far as I’m prepared to go at the moment. I haven’t finished. What’s the hurry? The man won’t run away.’

  ‘The man who shot him might,’ Pel snapped.

  Leguyader refused to be budged. ‘I’ll be finished by this evening,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the report home and you can ring me there. I shall enjoy having my meal interrupted.’

  Pel left the office gloomily, driving the ancient Peugeot he owned and wondering when he’d be able to afford a new one. Battling his way through the screeching, honking scrum round the Place Wilson, he concentrated on getting home without the car letting him down. Pel was a naturally pessimistic soul and was always convinced it would conk out and jam the traffic near the Rue de la Liberté where everybody would laugh at him. The engine already seemed to be knocking badly and there was a smell of burning somewhere, and he was hoping against hope he wouldn’t suffer the humiliation of seeing it go up in smoke.

  His house looked desperately in need of paint and he realised he would eventually have to dig into his savings and get somebody to paint it. Without doubt it would bankrupt him, and he wondered if he could get one of his men to do it for him in his spare time. After all, everybody seemed to be doing two jobs these days – especially policemen, who seemed the most underpaid of all the world’s workers. He sometimes wondered even if he might delay his own financial end by getting a job as a doorman at the Hôtel de la Cloche. He studied the house again. Perhaps he could get Krauss to do the job after he’d retired. He’d have time on his hands then and probably be glad of the money. Pel sighed. On the other hand, of course, like most of the things Krauss did, it would be slapdash and the whole lot would probably drop off at Pel’s feet at the first sign of bad weather.

  Madame Routy, his housekeeper, had the television going. It sounded like the Battle of Waterloo, or at the very least as if she had the whole neighbourhood in there arguing with her. Having a television, Pel decided, was like living the whole of your life with ten thousand other people. There always appeared to be someone having a fight or an argument in the salon, smashing up a car or making love to someone else’s wife. Pel wished he could make love to someone else’s wife.

  Madame Routy greeted him ungraciously. ‘I’ve got cutlets for dinner,’ she said, making no attempt to rise. ‘I’ll do them when this has finished.’

  Pel spent half his life waiting for something to finish. Madame Routy’s day consisted of things on the television that weren’t quite finished.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Pel said, making up his mind on the instant. ‘I’ve got to go back. I’ll eat out.’

  She gave him a suspicious look. Ever since Pel had put his best suit on some time before to interview the Baronne de Mougy in the course of duty, she’d suspected him of having a mistress.

  He changed into his next-to-best suit. On Pel it looked as if it had been cut by a cross-eyed tinker with one arm. He could never understand it. While Darcy always looked immaculate, Pel looked as if he’d been dragged from under a bus. Perhaps it was because he only had a disgruntled housekeeper while Darcy had a
dozen or so adoring females all willing to slave and press and sponge.

  Climbing back into his car, he drove to the city centre. He didn’t particularly like eating alone but eating alone was better than eating with Madame Routy and the television. The Bar du Destin was almost as dark as a cinema, which was one reason why Pel liked it. Nobody recognised him except the owner. It was scattered about with tired plants among the pernod bottles and was full at that moment of young male students from the university with long hair, tight pants and dark glasses, all stroking the knees of young female students with long hair, tight pants and dark glasses. It was sometimes hard to differentiate. By the bar, a small fat man in high belly-holding trousers was describing the affair in the Rue du Chapeau Rouge. ‘I was there,’ he said. ‘The police were running round like a lot of cockerels with their heads chopped off.’

  Pel directed a glare at him over his coup de blanc.

  ‘Probably some student lark,’ the little man went on. ‘That lot would shove up a barricade if the President wanted to go to the lavatory.’ He turned to Pel. ‘It was laughable,’ he said. ‘There must have been two dozen cops standing about, all doing nothing. There’ll be a few heads rolling at the Hôtel de Police for this, you see. They were at their beautiful French best, they really were, bullying everybody just to show how efficient they are. You should have been there.’

  Pel emptied his glass. ‘I was,’ he said.

  ‘Well, wasn’t it a shambles?’

  ‘No,’ Pel snapped. ‘It wasn’t.’

  ‘Well, they closed up both ends of the street, didn’t they? Those people demolishing that house couldn’t get on with their job, could they? It was ridiculous.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ Pel said.

  The little man had been on the point of sinking his drink when Pel’s hostility finally seeped through. He turned aggressively. ‘Who do you think you are, anyway?’ he said.

  Pel couldn’t resist it. ‘Evariste Pel,’ he said. ‘Inspector, Criminal Brigade, Police Judiciaire. I was in charge of the investigation.’

  As he left the bar, the students had stopped pawing each other and the little man was standing with his jaw dropped open. The landlord was grinning all over his face.