Pel Under Pressure (Chief Inspector Pel)

by Mark Hebden

  ‘And the name? Did you see it?’

  The girl began to answer, then her eyes widened and she stared at them, her hand going slowly to her mouth.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ she said. ‘It was Miollis. Gilles Miollis.’

  While Pel was on his way back, Paris rang. Krauss took the message.

  ‘They don’t think any of their villains are working here, Patron,’ he said as Pel appeared. ‘They happen to be watching them because they’ve had a tip-off there’s a consignment of drugs on the way. They also said that of the jewellery you took from Madame Miollis three of the pieces were stolen. Two of them belonged to a woman in the Sixth Arrondissement and the third came from Chartres. Nothing’s known on the other pieces. They’ve also been in touch with the Police de l’Air et des Frontières and they think there’s been trafficking in false passports.’

  ‘They’d better bring in that heavy, Treguy,’ Pel said. ‘He was probably involved with Miollis.’

  ‘Unfortunately, Chief,’ Krauss said, ‘that’s not possible.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They said he’d disappeared. Sunk without trace. Dodged their men and vanished.’

  ‘Can’t they find him through the Miollis woman?’

  ‘No, Chief.’ Krauss shrugged. ‘She’s vanished, too.’

  The conference in Pel’s office was subdued. Nosjean had just been to see an ex-naval petty officer called Mathieu who lived in the city.

  ‘When I finished my time,’ he had said, ‘I came to live here. It’s about as far as you can get from the sea in Western Europe.’

  Nosjean had produced the photographs of Cortot. He looked very dead and very tied up.

  ‘There’s more rope on him than we used to tie up a cruiser,’ Mathieu had commented.

  ‘He was ex-Navy,’ Nosjean pointed out

  Mathieu had studied the pictures again. ‘Well, he didn’t tie those knots,’ he said. ‘Naval knots are designed so they’ll not jam or stick. Those look like an old woman’s knitting.’

  ‘But somebody tied the knots, Patron,’ Nosjean said.

  ‘Could he have got his drugs from Nincic?’ Pel asked.

  Nosjean considered. ‘Nincic’s not on any list, Patron. But he seems to know a lot of people who use drugs.’

  ‘Let’s have a watch put on his place,’ Pel said. ‘Get Auxonne to cover it. I want to know immediately he comes back. Then contact the lab where he works. If he turns up, tell them I want to know at once.’ He paused and extracted a cigarette from a packet on his desk. As he put it between his lips, Darcy leaned forward quickly with a lighter and the cigarette was glowing before Pel could have any doubts.

  ‘The faster you go at it, Patron,’ Darcy grinned, ‘the more painless it is.’

  Pel glared and turned back to Nosjean. ‘What about this drugs committee of Foussier’s? Do they know Nincic?’

  ‘No,’ Nosjean said. ‘I saw one of the members. A senior lecturer called Matille. I asked him what they’d discovered. He said nothing. He said they did a lot of talking but when it was all boiled down he didn’t think they’d achieved much.’

  ‘I’d better see Foussier myself.’

  Nosjean smiled. ‘I hope you’re lucky, Patron. The Chahu dame seems to think he’s made of uranium or something and somebody’s out to steal him. But I have her telephone number in my file. She wrote a note about Cortot and told me to ring if I wanted any more. Foussier doesn’t give interviews. He writes letters. He’s a compulsive letter writer. I have several.’

  ‘I’ve got one, too,’ Lagé agreed enthusiastically. ‘About the photographic society. He sent us a talk to read. He took a lot of trouble.’ He shot a triumphant glance at Nosjean. ‘It was all there: Lens. Shutter position. Light. Pose. Naturalism.’

  ‘What’s he mean by “naturalism”?’ Darcy asked. ‘Nudes? I’ve seen it outside the night spots in Paris. It’s another word for striptease.’

  ‘This isn’t.’ Lagé looked offended. ‘He meant normality of pose. Normality of lighting. Normality of expression. That sort of thing. I read it myself. It went down well. I got it from La Chahu.’

  Pel stared round at them. Lagé was glaring at Nosjean, who was looking faintly prim and self-important. Darcy was watching them, his eyes full of humour.

  ‘Who is this damned Chahu woman, anyway?’ Pel asked.

  Darcy kissed the tips of his fingers. ‘Half the sergeants’ room’s fallen for her, Patron,’ he said. ‘She’s beautiful. She has secrets.’

  ‘Perhaps I ought to know more about her.’

  Darcy gestured. ‘It shouldn’t be hard, Patron. You’ve got as good a source of information as anyone. A woman as beautiful as she’s said to be must go to a good hairdresser. The best in this district’s Nanette’s. You have a contact there.’

  Pel sniffed to show that Madame Faivre-Perret wasn’t a subject to be bandied round the sergeants’ room. All the same, he thought, it was time somebody really got past this Chahu woman. He looked at Lagé. Lagé seemed besotted by Foussier, but Lagé wasn’t one of the brightest acquisitions to Pel’s team. Nosjean? He was learning fast, but he was still a bit young – especially where women were concerned and to get to Foussier it seemed they had to get past La Chahu.

  He sniffed again, rubbed his nose, and looked at Darcy. Darcy had a way with women and always had had. When other men couldn’t get a thing out of them, Darcy had a gift for worming his way into their confidence – sometimes, Pel knew, even into their beds.

  ‘You’d better have a go at her, Darcy,’ he said.

  Ten

  The day Ramou, Hertot and Lorre appeared in Pel’s office, the morning was so hot the tar was melting in the streets, and a young American had been arrested for holding up traffic by trying to fry an egg to prove it was as hot as New York. Even without jackets, the men in the Hôtel de Police wilted in their clothes.

  The sky was like a bronze bowl and the girls looked heartbreakingly beautiful in their summer dresses, but by afternoon the heat had become oppressive enough to be wearisome and the air was charged with thunder. Walking became an effort and the three young men who were brought in by police car were hot, bored and inclined to try to be clever.

  They gave their names none too willingly and with a wealth of snide remarks to each other that Pel allowed to wash over him without appearing to hear. He sensed they were nervous and allowed them to enjoy themselves.

  ‘Home towns?’ he asked briskly.

  ‘Marseilles,’ Ramou said. ‘Notre Dame de la Garde area.’

  ‘Paris,’ Hertot added. ‘Montparnasse district.’

  ‘Orléans,’ Lorre ended. ‘The Tours road. My father keeps a bar on the outskirts of the city.’

  They were all at the University on grants, but Ramou’s grant appeared to be bigger than the grants of the other two because he was better dressed, had good shoes instead of down-at-heel sandals, and was full of self-importance.

  ‘Are you on drugs?’ Pel asked.

  ‘I’ve smoked pot,’ he admitted.

  ‘I’d advise you not to,’ Pel said.

  Ramou gestured contemptuously. ‘It’s harmless. It’s the law that’s stupid.’

  Pel sighed. Soft drugs led to medium drugs and medium drugs to hard drugs, but there were still a lot of enlightened people about who considered like Ramou that soft drugs were an asset to happiness. For the life of him, Pel could see no point in taking drugs at all – unless, like Evariste Clovis Désiré Pel with his cigarettes, you needed them for the maledictions and malfunctions of the body that were brought on by a job that was too demanding and far from overpaid.

  He gestured at Nosjean who made the three boys roll their sleeves up. There was a lot of giggling and shoving and pretending to do a striptease.

  ‘No signs of injections, Patron,’ Nosjean said, his face stiff with disapproval.

  ‘What were you looking for?’ Hertot asked.

  ‘Syringe marks,’ Ramou explained. ‘If you syringe hard enough you can blow up y
our arm like a football.’

  ‘Why not use a bicycle pump?’ Lorre asked.

  ‘Or the air pipe at a garage?’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Ramou said, ‘I always inject myself in the backside. Would you like me to take my trousers down?’

  Pel found them stupid and rather silly, anxious to show off to indicate their courage, manhood and virility. They all professed to be anarchists but managed, nevertheless, to argue about what kind of anarchy it was, and they all complained that France was demanding too much of them, giving them too little, and even expecting them to go into the army to do their military service when they’d finished their studies, something they all intended to avoid if possible. Pel, who would have died to defend Burgundy, even if not necessarily Paris, waved them out of his office, saddened and faintly disgusted by them.

  ‘They seem too half-baked to be murderers,’ he said to Nosjean.

  ‘They could be contacts, Patron,’ Nosjean said earnestly. ‘After all, Ramou comes from Marseilles. So does this guy, Tagliacci, whoever he is, and so did Treguy, that heavy you bumped into in Paris. Hertot comes from Paris, for that matter, and that’s Pépé le Cornet’s district. However we try to push it aside, it’s a connection with the gangs, and obviously so was Miollis.’

  Pel was well aware of it, but the day was stiflingly hot and he was inclined to be lazy.

  ‘This Ramou one has money, too,’ Nosjean went on eagerly. ‘I’ve watched them. I’ve seen them in bars. He spends. The others don’t spend half as much. So where does he get it? He’s on a normal grant like the others, so he can’t have wealthy parents.’

  ‘He probably has a wealthy boss somewhere, though,’ Pel admitted.

  ‘Nincic, Patron?’

  ‘Perhaps. But even Nincic – if it is Nincic – can’t be operating alone. Drugs are too big a business and involve too many people.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s working for one of the Paris mobs or someone in Marseilles,’ Nosjean said. ‘Somebody’s using him – Tagliacci or Pépé le Cornet.’

  Pel shrugged. Sometime’s Nosjean’s eagerness wore him out.

  ‘We’ll wait,’ he said. ‘Perhaps Darcy’ll bring something back.’

  Certainly Darcy was trying hard.

  The girl thundering away at the electric typewriter in the outer office of Professor Foussier’s private suite wore a pale green dress that matched her eyes. Her figure was something to write home about and her legs were slender and shapely. Having listened to Nosjean and Lagé, not unnaturally Darcy jumped to the wrong conclusion.

  ‘You Mademoiselle Chahu?’ he asked.

  The girl smiled. ‘Not me,’ she said. ‘I’m Angélique Courtois. I’m the second string.’ She saw the look of disappointment on his face and grinned. ‘They always pull a face like that.’

  She had an easy manner and her smile was unforced. Darcy leaned forward.

  ‘You’re second string?’ he said. ‘The first string must be good.’

  She obviously enjoyed the flattery. Perhaps, Darcy reflected, La Chahu soaked up most of it and Angélique Courtois normally only got what was left over. She didn’t seem to mind, however, and he suspected she had a forthright, realistic nature that was well aware of her own faults and her own virtues.

  ‘I want to see Professor Foussier,’ he said.

  She grinned again. ‘The Professor never sees anyone except by appointment. He’s a busy man and insists people make arrangements ahead, so he can arrange his day.’

  ‘Very well,’ Darcy said. ‘Let’s make an appointment.’

  She grinned once more. ‘Unfortunately,’ she said, ‘he never allows anyone to make appointments for him but his personal assistant.’

  Darcy frowned. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘where’s his personal assistant?’

  Angélique Courtois giggled. ‘I’m afraid she’s not here today. She’s owed a day or two off. She’ll be at home, I expect. I would be if I weren’t holding the fort. In bed.’

  ‘I should think you don’t look too bad in bed,’ Darcy said.

  She looked up. She was young but she wasn’t all that innocent. She didn’t say anything but she didn’t blush either and her gaze didn’t falter. To Darcy it was the old green light. For Darcy the green light in a girl’s eye always shone as clear and bold and truthful as the light on the point at Cape Finisterre. His father had come from the north but his mother had come from Toulouse and, in spite of generations of northern Darcys standing in serried rows in the shadows behind him, his instincts had been most definitely inherited from his Gascon mother.

  And he knew the signs because he’d grown up learning them. He had, in fact, spent most of his life making up for his cowardice at the age of thirteen when he’d fled in terror from the hot eyes of the girl next door one warm summer evening at a Bastille Day fireworks display. Once his heart had stopped skidding about under his shirt, he realised he’d passed up something no male with a drop of red blood in his veins ought ever to forswear and he’d never missed a chance since. Now when a girl looked at him in invitation, with interest, or simply with approval, it registered in his mind like the symbol on a cash register. Ding.

  ‘Do you go out at nights?’ he asked.

  ‘Often,’ Angélique Courtois said.

  ‘Not just with girl friends, I hope.’

  She smiled. ‘Oh, no. Nothing unnatural about me. I’m engaged to be married, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Congratulations. What does he do?’ Darcy always liked to know that. If they were all-in wrestlers, boxers, weight-lifters, anything that involved the use of muscles, Darcy moved with care.

  ‘He’s a librarian. He works for the Government.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘No. He’s in Mulhouse.’

  Darcy smiled. Mulhouse was a long way away, and librarians weren’t noted for being muscular.

  ‘How do you manage?’

  ‘He comes to see me once a month.’

  ‘That’s not enough to keep a girl happy,’ Darcy said. ‘How about coming out with me?’

  She gave him her telephone number without hesitation. ‘I’ll pick you up,’ he said. He glanced at the number. ‘Is this home? With Mammy and Pappy?’

  ‘Not likely. I’m a big girl. It’s a flat. In the Rue de la Fontaine. The top floor of a house owned by some people called Roblet. They’re friends of my parents. They’re supposed to keep an eye on me to make sure I don’t get up to mischief. I live on my own.’

  Darcy smiled. ‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘Now you’d better tell me where I can find La Chahu.’

  Marie-Anne Chahu lived in an apartment in a block called the Maison Joliet in the Place Wilson area. Darcy’s eyebrows lifted as he studied it. Foussier, he decided, must be paying his personal assistant a great deal of money, because this wasn’t the sort of place that normally contained secretaries’ apartments. This was a new building with a long green lawn, freshly planted trees and an underground garage and, instead of a concierge, a man in a plum-coloured suit sitting in an office just inside the main doorway who stopped Darcy as he pushed inside.

  ‘Who are you looking for, Monsieur?’ he asked.

  ‘Mademoiselle Chahu,’ Darcy said.

  ‘Friend of hers, sir?’ The man behind the glass had been told to be careful but discreet.

  Darcy produced his badge. It had the effect of knocking the smile off the other man’s face.

  ‘I don’t have to be,’ Darcy said. ‘Which is her apartment?’

  The man behind the glass wore a different face now. His sly features changed. ‘Number 27, Monsieur,’ he said briskly. ‘Second floor. But I’m afraid she’s just gone out for lunch.’

  And doubtless, Darcy thought, not to Le Snack, which was the bar across the road. People who lived in apartments such as these didn’t eat standing up at the zinc.

  ‘I’ll wait,’ he said, more and more intrigued.

  ‘There’s a chair over there, Monsieur.’

  Darcy smiled. ‘Outside,’ he added. �
�In my car. And don’t tell her I’m here.’

  Making himself comfortable outside, he lit a cigarette and opened a newspaper, sitting so he could watch everyone who came and went. The women who appeared through the door, he noticed, were all well dressed, in clothes that spoke not of the Nouvelles Galeries but of the small boutiques near the Place des Ducs, where the prices were twice as high and the goods twice as select.

  The sun was hot and Darcy was nodding when he saw a British Triumph 1500 sports car, blue, hooded and sleek, disappear into the underground car park. It was driven by a woman and he knew at once that it could only be Marie-Anne Chahu.

  Jumping from his car, he entered the building and took the lift to the second floor. As he left it, it slid silently down again and he saw it had gone to the basement. Walking quickly along the landing, he watched from the corner. After a while the lift returned. The woman who stepped out, he knew at once, was Marie-Anne Chahu. She wasn’t a girl any more, he noticed to his surprise, and was in her early thirties, but she was quite as beautiful as everybody said and Darcy couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t bumped into her before. A man with an instinctive nose for attractive females, he couldn’t understand how he’d missed her.

  She wore her hair up and a neat grey dress with white cuffs and collars, which Darcy’s practised eye told him was expensive. Since Angélique Courtois had also worn a neat dress, he assumed that Foussier liked his secretaries to be smart, efficient-looking and unobtrusive.

  Deciding that Nosjean and Lagé had been right about Marie-Anne Chahu, for a moment he wondered if he’d made arrangements to meet the wrong girl. But then he realised there was a cool look about this one also that suggested she knew exactly what she wanted out of life and was determined to get it. The Triumph alone seemed to indicate that.

  He watched her enter her apartment and gave her time to settle down before walking along the corridor and ringing the bell. The door was wrenched open at once and he was greeted by a smile that died at once as she saw Darcy. She had obviously been expecting someone.