by Mark Hebden
‘Fran Nincic?’
‘Do you know him, Madame?’ This seemed to be an unexpected bonus and helped to make up for the absence of Foussier himself.
‘Isn’t he the young man Marie-Anne Chahu took a fancy to?’
Darcy and Pel glanced at each other. Better and better.
‘Did she?’
‘I think so. She’s rather a greedy young woman. She has plenty of men but always seems to like more. She met him here. My husband gave a party. Most heads of departments do from time to time, you know. For people who’ve helped them. Monsieur Nincic was among the guests and Marie-Anne had been a great help in organising everything. She’s most efficient. I have to admit, of course, that there was something rather special about Monsieur Nincic.’
‘There was, Madame? What sort of thing?’
Madame Foussier gestured. ‘About the eyes. He was very male and very sure of it. Practical. Barbaric. I heard he was Hungarian.’
‘Yugoslav,’ Pel corrected. He paused. ‘This affair between him and Mademoiselle Chahu – did it go any further?’
She shrugged. ‘Probably. I don’t delve into the private affairs of my husband’s employees. I’m already too involved in his.’
‘Of course, Madame. This work for students your husband does must sometimes be a great trial to you.’
‘He was certainly quick to recruit me to give advice on drugs.’
‘To students?’
‘Good heavens, no! To the committee he heads. I’m not qualified to discuss cures. I can only advise on which drugs cause depression and which hallucinations. That sort of thing. I qualified as a doctor. I never practised, though, so I’m probably out of date. But my father was also a doctor and my brother works for Produits Pharmaceutiques de Lyon who, as you’ll doubtless know, make drugs.’ She gestured again. ‘Still, it’s not me they come to, it’s my husband. They’re always telephoning.’
‘Does he ever tell you about them?’
‘Never. He’s very discreet. He ought to have been a doctor. In fact, he nearly was. His father was a doctor, too, in Alsace, and at first his bent was in that direction and this was how we became acquainted.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector. We were talking about your students and their problems. My husband preserves the secrecy of their identity most meticulously. He’s very conscientious about it and it worries him a lot. It even depresses him a little, I think. He becomes preoccupied and distant and his thoughts are sometimes far away. He has so many things on his mind, of course, so many interests. He could have been a success at any one of half a dozen professions. This, of course, is why we have all this.’ She gestured at the elegant room they were sitting in. ‘He happens also to be clever with the stock market, too, you see.
‘His sister was also brilliant,’ she went on. ‘They were very much alike – even to look at. But in her case there was something missing, something unstable, and she couldn’t cope with her own brains. She married beneath her – a man who wasn’t even honest.’
‘Do other universities contact your husband?’
‘But, of course. They all have committees on drugs these days. My husband’s in constant contact with Professor Schutz, of Vienna, and Professor Liener, of Geneva. Von Hoffbaur, of Heidelberg, too, and Etain, of the Sorbonne.’ She smiled. ‘Perhaps I’d better write them down.’
She drew a piece of paper from a drawer. It was an old letter, Pel noticed, carefully cut to a useful size and clipped with others to make a jotting pad, and it occurred to him that perhaps some of Foussier’s wealth came from the hard-headed Alsatian habit of wasting nothing.
She began to write. ‘I’m sure my husband would be happy to give you a complete list, but perhaps these will help for the time being.’
Pel took the paper. Turning it over idly, he saw a name on it.
‘Ma chère Noëlle,’ he saw. ‘Je suis heureux de t’informer–’ then the paper had been cut.
‘That’s me, of course,’ she said. ‘My name was Noëlle Hérisson. My collection was known as the Hérisson collection originally. You’ve heard of my collection, I suppose. Would you like to see it?’
Pel couldn’t tell a delphinium from a daisy. Geraniums were easy because they were so bright they leapt out and snapped at you, but the rest were just flowers.
He was looking for an excuse when they heard a car arrive and Foussier appeared at a rush. He was tall for a Frenchman, tall enough even, Pel thought, for an American. No Frenchman had a right to be that tall – especially when Evariste Clovis Désiré Pel was on the short side. However, there was some satisfaction to be gained from the fact that Foussier was also overweight and that his stomach bulged, though he was still too good-looking by a long chalk, with his smile, flashing eyes and long greying hair, something that also caused considerable resentment to Pel, who considered he personally looked as if his face had been trodden on. What was more Foussier was also immaculately dressed, which made Pel feel like a plumber who’d come about a blocked lavatory.
‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ he said at once. ‘I’m always so busy I lose touch with time.’ He indicated chairs and began to empty his brief-case of maps, slide rules and dividers. ‘I’ve been flying,’ he went on. ‘I have a Centre-Est DR 220. It’s a two-seater trainer that can be used as a three-seater. I’ve been at it for fifteen years now. I love to get up there on my own. It rests my mind to do navigational problems.’
It exhausted Pel merely to work out how much he had left of his salary after he had deducted mortgage, insurance, pension, hire purchase, Madame Routy’s salary and a few other things.
Foussier gestured and flung back a lock of long grey hair. ‘I take it it’s about the drugs problem you wish to talk,’ the deep plummy voice said. ‘Of course there is a problem. There’s always a problem where there are young people but here it’s nothing like it is in Paris, Marseilles, Amsterdam, London or the United States. There, it’s become a menace.’
‘It’s growing here,’ Pel pointed out.
Foussier gestured. ‘But still hardly big enough yet to be important.
‘It’s always important when someone dies,’ Pel said. ‘And someone has.’
Foussier was nodding now, his expression concerned. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The Cortot boy, of course. He wasn’t exactly a tough character, though, was he?’
‘Did you know him?’ Darcy asked.
‘He came to me for advice. I told him he should take treatment.’
‘How much of a problem do you see exactly?’
Foussier toyed with a pen. ‘I know they experiment, of course. All young people experiment. In politics, in ideologies, in religion –’ he paused ‘ – in sex. And nowadays, with more freedom, it’s much easier.’
‘Did you know the ones who were experimenting?’
‘I could guess. But I have no proof. And I can’t accuse them. I might be wrong. One of the lecturers at the Sorbonne once did accuse one of his students. It landed him in a slander action. The pupil just had unnaturally bright eyes. I have to wait for them to come to me.’
‘Do they?’
‘Not often. But the excuse’s always the same. They want to live. As if they aren’t living? Here! At a university in one of the most beautiful cities in France! They don’t realise how fortunate they are. However, it seems now that someone else as well as myself has realised this need they feel, and started to trade on it. Unhappily, there are plenty of people in the world today like that.’
‘There are indeed,’ Pel agreed. ‘Have you ever heard, for instance, of a man called Tagliacci?’
‘Tagliacci?’ Foussier considered for a moment then shook his head. ‘Never.’
‘Pépé le Cornet?’
The heavy leonine head shook again. ‘Who’s he? He sounds like a gangster.’
‘He is a gangster.’
‘I thought he might be. The name has a ring. It seems to go with the sort of people I’m after. I’m already making enquiries.’
Pel sat up
sharply. ‘What sort of enquiries?’
Foussier smiled. ‘I’ve been in contact with one or two – ah – disreputable people I’ve heard of in Marseilles. I’m hoping to find out where these drugs are coming from.’
Pel shot an alarmed look at Darcy. ‘We’d prefer it if you didn’t,’ he said.
‘Oh?’ Foussier seemed offended. ‘Why not?’
‘It could tread on the toes of the police engaged in narcotics work. People making private enquiries have the habit of causing the pushers and the importers to lie low just when the police are wanting them in the open.’
Foussier gave him a look that was suddenly cold. ‘I have to do my duty,’ he said.
Pel returned the look with interest. He hated do-gooders who had to do their duty. Almost as much harm was done by them as was done by the do-badders.
‘There is another point, of course,’ he advised.
‘And that is?’
‘It could be highly dangerous.’
‘For whom?’
‘For you. Marseilles is a tricky place. There are always clashes there. Corsicans, Algerians, local heavies, the Foreign Legion. They’re always at each other’s throats. It’s like Chicago.’
Foussier shrugged. ‘That’s a risk I have to take. I’ve undertaken this work and I must carry it to its proper conclusion. I’m not afraid.’
He sounded pompous and Pel wasn’t sure whether he was trying to impress them or himself.
‘If I didn’t take risks,’ he was saying now, ‘the whole thing would be quite pointless. I’m sure you see that.’
‘No, Monsieur,’ Pel snapped. ‘I don’t! Men involved with drugs are unemotional people. They must be or they wouldn’t be able to make money out of the destruction of young lives.’
There was a distinct trace of hostility in the air as Foussier replied. ‘I’m sure if I were to put to them the damage they’re doing–’
Pel interrupted sharply. ‘If you find out what they’re doing and let them know you’re aware of it,’ he snapped, ‘I can well imagine their next step would be to eliminate you.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Marseilles Bay,’ Pel said, ‘must he full of blocks of concrete containing people who thought they knew how to stop drug pedlars. The safest way’s to leave it with us. We have the organisation and, if necessary, the weapons. Amateurs can only damage our prospects and put themselves in unbelievable danger.’
The interview came to an abrupt and unexpected end. What had promised to be a useful and informative interview had ended up in acrimony and bad feeling. As they were shown out and headed for the car, Darcy was scowling.
‘The trouble with him,’ he said, ‘is that he’s too clever by half and it would serve the bastard right if the boys from Marseilles did strap a bit of railway line to his feet and dropped him in the sea off Hyères.’
Twelve
When Pel told Polverari about Foussier’s intentions, the judge sighed. ‘It’s always the same,’ he said. ‘Once they’re hooked on doing good, they stay hooked. I suppose we’d better keep an eye on him, though, in case someone decides to do him in.’
‘With those sort of friends,’ Pel growled, ‘we don’t need enemies. We have enough on our slates without looking after people who persist in shoving their long snouts in where they’re not wanted.’
Polverari shrugged. ‘Nevertheless–’ he gestured ‘ – I’ll have a word with the Chief.’
Pel returned to his office, feeling overworked and martyred. It made his day, and for a while he sat thinking, scratching with his pencil at his blotter as his mind roved over the Miollis business. After a while he came to life and, to his disgust, he found all his doodles were of cigarettes.
He tossed the pencil aside, still brooding heavily on the witlessness of do-gooders and particularly Professor Foussier. Anybody who thought they could sort out the Marseilles gangs with good intentions had another think coming, he decided. You didn’t go after that lot with appeals for mercy. You went after them with a gun. Two guns, in fact. More, if possible. A tank if you had one. Nobody dealing in drug trafficking ever took chances and anyone who thought he could start a conversation with them was likely to end up with a bullet in the head. Like Miollis.
Apart from himself, everybody else was out of the office stuffing themselves with beer and sandwiches at the Bar Transvaal. As the sun passed its zenith they began to return and he could hear Lagé and Misset talking next door and Krauss going on again about his retirement. He listened sourly. He was feeling exhausted. The Chief was in a bad temper and wasn’t inclined to give Foussier the bodyguard that Polverari had suggested, considering like Pel that he was shoving his nose in where it wasn’t wanted, and it had required all Pel’s tact to bring him round. Depressed by the day and the heat, he was just about to light another cigarette to bolster up his despair about being unable to stop smoking when the telephone rang. To his surprise it was Madame Foussier.
‘Inspector–’ she sounded agitated ‘ – I think you’d better come out here at once! A man telephoned a little while ago and asked for my husband. Fortunately he was out and I was suspicious because he didn’t sound at all like the people he associates with.’
Pel was sitting up now, alert at once. Reaching for a cigarette, he stuck it in his mouth only to realise there was one already there. Disgusted at his weakness, he flung them both across the room. ‘Did he give you a name, Madame?’ he asked.
‘Yes, he did, Inspector. Treguy.’
Treguy! So he’d turned up again! Pel slapped the desk in his anger, and, ignoring the two cigarettes on the floor, reached for another. And that fool, Foussier, had been so certain nobody would be interested in him!
‘Madame,’ he said quickly. ‘I would advise you to lock the doors and, if you know where your husband is, to get in touch with him at once. I suspect this man might be dangerous. We’ve already been involved with him once.’
The voice at the other end of the line grew unexpectedly sharp. ‘Then, if you knew of him, Inspector, and thought he was dangerous, why didn’t you do something to stop him bothering my husband?’
Pel glared at the telephone. He got control of his anger. ‘We did,’ he said. ‘I have already warned your husband.’
‘I think you should have done more than that. What he needs is a bodyguard.’
‘Madame, he’s got one!’
‘I’ve seen none.’
In a fury, Pel contacted the uniformed branch and was informed that the Chief had instructed that the bodyguard was to start that afternoon.
‘It had better start at once,’ Pel snapped. Slamming down the telephone, he ran to the Chief’s office. The Chief’s bad temper hadn’t diminished.
‘Damn this Foussier!’ he snarled. ‘If he’s tangling with the Marseilles lot he’s handling a time bomb. Why did you tell the Quai des Orfèvres to let this Treguy go, anyway? I expect we’d better get them on to it. But I’m due to see Senator Forton. You fix it, Pel.’
Pel’s authority wasn’t quite as powerful as the Chief’s and it was another hour before anything started happening. And another hour after that when the telephone rang in Pel’s office to tell him they were just too late.
‘Foussier’s just telephoned in,’ he was told. ‘He’s found a bomb attached to his car.’
‘What! Where?’
‘He’s at the University.’
‘Hold him! Who’s handling the bomb?’
‘Inspector Goriot. It’s at the Faculté des Langues Modernes. They’ve cleared the place and called in the army. There’s also a Madame Foussier on the telephone, she’d like a word with you. She says her husband’s been on to her and insists on keeping it quiet.
‘Tell her from me–’ Pel’s voice rose angrily ‘ – that we can’t keep it quiet! We asked him to be careful and he refused! I shall arrive eventually with my cohorts of minions and I’m afraid her husband will just have to lump it!’
When Pel reached the Faculty of Modern Languages
the army bomb-disposal unit from the barracks had already made the bomb safe.
There were crowds on the sidewalks, marshalled by the police, and hundreds of cars piling up, honking madly, the traffic police gesturing furiously at them, their faces savage. Students, many of them regarding the affair as a great joke, were watching from the opposite side of the road, resisting as hard as they could the efforts to move them on. There were police trucks and cars everywhere and more arriving all the time, together with two or three army trucks from the barracks in the Avenue du Drapeau, which at least was handy and had despatched its representatives at once.
A young sous-lieutenant, who didn’t look old enough to have left school, was talking with Inspector Goriot.
‘Bit crude,’ he was saying. ‘Looked as if it had been hurriedly put together.’
‘Everybody’s at it these days,’ Goriot said gloomily. ‘Kids blowing up their girl friends because they won’t come across; husbands blowing up their mothers-in-law because they nag. It’s not surprising though, is it? After all, everybody knows how to do it and you can buy the stuff at any gardening shop. Even the kids’ comics tell them the ingredients.’
‘This isn’t kids’ comic stuff,’ Pel snarled. ‘Nor someone blowing up his mother-in-law. Where was it fixed?’
‘Connected to the exhaust. With a detonating device that would set it off when the engine started. It would have exploded the petrol tank and at the very least given him some nasty burns. I think it was activated here. It wouldn’t be a minute’s job to get under a car and connect it.’
‘Here?’ Pel glared. ‘Where everybody can see?’
Goriot sighed. ‘There’s a garage down the road,’ he said. ‘The officials of the University are always having them look at their cars if they’ve given trouble on the way in. There are always people in overalls looking into engines. Nobody would take any notice.’
They found Foussier waiting inside the entrance hall. He was surrounded by students and university officials, all looking a little scared and excited. Foussier seemed calm but a little nervous.