by Mark Hebden
Pel glanced at his watch, surprised to see how late it was. He wasn’t sure they’d gained much – just the discovery of an alliance between two people, and there were plenty of those. Perhaps, however, he could use it, if he had to, to persuade Foussier to keep his nose out of police affairs. Apart from that, it didn’t seem to offer much. But nosey-parkering was always police business and tomorrow he’d see Judge Polverari for a warrant to search Nincic’s house. They were probably making progress. And, if nothing else, he’d got a dinner date with an attractive woman out of it.
It was so long since he’d taken a female out to dinner he wondered if he’d know what to do.
‘I’m going to bed,’ he announced cheerfully.
‘I’ll just finish watching my programme,’ Madame Routy suggested warily.
‘Do,’ Pel said.
‘I’ll keep the volume down!’
Pel shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.
As he vanished – to her astonishment whistling ‘Les Artilleurs de Metz’ – she stared after him, her eyes like the twin barrels of a shotgun. It took all the pleasure out of turning the volume control to its peak when he didn’t complain.
Sixteen
The following day was a Saint’s Day and most people were on holiday. Shops were closed, bars were full and people were enjoying the weather. And near St Miriam, two small boys, Jean-Paul Jarry and Pierre Blot, came over the hill from Premières, where they had been fishing in a dam built by a farmer. They had taken out of it half a dozen fat perch and they had a pretty shrewd idea that the farmer wouldn’t have wished them to, and they were in a hurry to get away with their spoil before he appeared.
They were taking a short cut across country towards the road to St Miriam where they lived, and they entered a belt of breast-high bracken which led down the slope to the road that ran along the valley where they had hidden their bicycles in the undergrowth.
‘They’re over here,’ Jean-Paul said.
‘No.’ Pierre shook his head and pointed. ‘This way.’
They stared about them. The road looked very much as it had before, yet somehow it looked different, and it dawned on them they’d returned to it at some point other than that from which they’d left it. And, unfortunately, in their eagerness to get at the farmer’s perch, they’d not taken sufficient notice of their whereabouts. They’d not counted the telegraph poles or noticed the curve of the land or the kilometre sign.
‘That bunch of trees was right in front of us,’ Pierre said.
‘No, it wasn’t. It was on our left.’
Putting down their rods and their fish, they plunged back into the bracken alongside the road and began to search. A quarter of an hour later they’d also lost their rods and their fish.
‘Why didn’t you notice where we put them?’ Pierre demanded.
‘Why didn’t you?’ Jean-Paul retorted. ‘What good are they, anyway, without the bikes?’
‘Let’s just have one more look. You go up there. I’ll go down here.’
As they moved their separate ways, Pierre Blot was growing worried. If the bicycles failed to turn up it would mean a long walk home and an admission that they’d been to Premières, where he’d been told more than once not to go. He was still pondering the problem when he heard a shout.
‘I’ve got the bikes!’
He turned and began to hurry back to where the other boy was, pushing as fast as he could through the bracken. The ground underfoot was uneven and several times he stumbled. Recovering, he pressed on. Finally he fell and a twig slashed him across the face as he went down. Rising, his eyes full of tears, exhausted now and a little overcome by the heat, he looked round to see what had tripped him. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a root. It seemed to be black and appeared to be made of plastic. Curious, he pushed the bracken aside.
For a long time, he stared silently, then he began to back away. His foot caught in the foliage and, though he sat down heavily, he hardly noticed. Scrambling to his feet, he ran to the edge of the road, shouting. The other boy appeared, holding a bicycle.
‘Have you found the rods?’
‘No!’
‘What’s all the fuss about then?’
‘We’d better get back to St Miriam.’
‘Without the rods? Don’t be silly.’
‘I’m not being silly. I’ve just found a man in the bushes up there.’
The holiday everybody was enjoying didn’t affect the police, of course. Holidays never did.
In the sergeants’ room, Misset was still studying the map of the city, certain now that the shopbreaker, Hyacinthe Baranquin, had an accomplice waiting with a car. Lagé, still heavily enmeshed in paperwork, was sorting out the hit-and-run at Gévrey. Krauss, his passage of arms with Pel the previous evening long since forgotten, was as usual enjoying the papers and waiting for his retirement. His pension was drawing nearer and with every day he spent a little more of his time dreaming of what he’d do with it. His house was paid for and he’d been careful to buy a new car so that it would see him safely through the next few years until he decided what to do. Sometimes he thought of being a keeper on one of the estates outside the city. Walking through the trees with a gun sounded fine. But he had an idea there was more to it than that and felt he’d better find out more before he made up his mind.
They were all busy following their own particular enquiries because, despite the additional work that had sprung from the Miollis and Treguy cases, the other minor events couldn’t ever be thrust aside. Despite the sorting out of facts and statements that involved Miollis and Treguy, in their spare time there were still the shopbreakers, the hit-and-runs, even Krauss’ newspapers.
Nosjean, looking a little tired, was holding a piece of wood round which he had tied a piece of string. He had set it on his desk and sat staring at it, frowning deeply.
If Jean-Marc Cortot hadn’t tied himself up, he thought, then who had? Cortot was an ex-seaman and no ex-seaman, according to Petty Officer Mathieu, would have tied the knots that had been found on his body. For a long time, it had been in Nosjean’s mind that perhaps Cortot, in a drug-inflamed ecstasy, had scourged himself – which would account for the scars on his back and arms – and had then tied himself up. There was no knowing what fantasies drugs worked on people. Perhaps he saw himself as a martyr. Perhaps even as the suffering Christ. Unfortunately, after several years in the Navy, it would still be instinctive for him to tie a seaman-like knot. Unless he wished it to be believed that he hadn’t tied the knots, and if that were the case, why should he wish such a thing?
The telephone went. Nosjean picked it up.
‘Inspector Pel?’
‘He’s still at home. He hasn’t come in yet.’
‘Then you’d better get him in, my friend. Fast. This is Auxonne. We were asked to keep an eye on the house of a guy called Fran Nincic.’
Nosjean sat up. ‘He’s turned up?’ he said.
‘Yes, he has. But not at the flat.’
Pel was just dipping his croissant into his coffee. He had been tired when he had gone to bed and full of wine and beer after the wait at Auxonne, but for once he had been happy enough to be unconcerned with the effect it might have on the ulcer he was convinced was developing in his stomach. Nor had he heard the television, because Madame Routy had decided it might be safer to keep the volume down, and he had slept like a log. Coming to the surface as if emerging from a well of treacle, the first thing he had remembered had been his dinner date.
Sitting with his croissant in his hand, his thoughts were so far away he swallowed without even noticing it the mixture of chicory and liquorice Madame Routy managed to distil from the most expensive coffee beans on the market. He had decided on the Hôtel de la Poste at St Seine l’Abbaye. It would probably cost him his spending money for a month, but it would be worth it. It was a pleasant drive for a summer evening, with an attractive courtyard where they could take their aperitifs if it was still hot. The only time Pel had been there p
reviously was when Polverari had taken him.
He wondered if he should hire a car. After all, his own might shed a wheel going down the hill from Darois. On the other hand, a hired car might seem too ostentatious, and if he were seen driving the old dropout Peugeot afterwards it would require some explaining away. For a moment he wondered if he could borrow Darcy’s, which was a handsome new Citroën, but he decided against it. The look he knew he’d see in Darcy’s eyes was enough to put him off. It would have to be the old car, he decided. Perhaps he could pay Didier something to give it a good clean up.
He had just put the last of the croissant into his mouth when the telephone rang. Didier answered it. He listened for a moment then handed it to Pel.
‘It’s them,’ he said in a conspiratorial whisper.
‘Who?’
‘The police. He said it was urgent.’ Didier looked almost as if he were conducting the enquiry himself.
His mouth full, Pel took the telephone.
‘This is Nosjean, Patron,’ the voice came. ‘They’ve found Nincic.’
‘What?’ Pieces of croissant flew as the word burst out. ‘Where?’
‘Near St Miriam.’
‘What was he doing there?’
‘He wasn’t doing anything, Patron. He was dead. They found him under some bracken at the side of the road.’
When Pel and Darcy arrived, the whole tribe were there – photographers, Doctor Minet, and Leguyader and his lab experts. They had erected a screen round the body and there were half a dozen cars pulled up by the side of the road. Two small boys, their rods still undiscovered, sat in one of the cars talking to a police sergeant.
‘Shot,’ Minet said. ‘Back of the head. By the look of it, the same gun that did for Treguy and Miollis.’
‘When?’
‘Hard to say exactly. He’s been here a long time. Fortnight ago, I reckon. Before Treguy, anyway.’
Pel sighed and went to talk to the small boys. Pierre Blot was still white-faced but thoroughly enjoying the attention. His mother was with him now, concerned that her child should be involved with murder. Pel didn’t consider himself very good at interrogating children but he did his best.
‘How did you come to find him?’ he asked.
Pierre Blot looked at his mother who gave him a little nudge. ‘I fell over him,’ he said.
‘You didn’t see him?’
‘Not at first.’
‘They’d been fishing in Monsieur Naudot’s dam,’ his mother explained. ‘They’d been told not to and they were afraid of what would happen.’
‘I thought at first he was asleep,’ the boy said. ‘Then I saw all the flies.’
‘You didn’t touch him? You didn’t disturb anything?’
‘No. I just ran to Jean-Paul and we got on the bikes and went to St Miriam. I told Mammy and she rang the police. I expect Pappy will give me a hiding when he finds out.’
His mother put her arms round him and pulled him to her. ‘I don’t think so, Pierrot,’ she said. ‘Not this time.’
Pel nodded his thanks. Darcy was waiting by the car.
‘There’s nothing much we can do here,’ Pel said. ‘Not until Minet’s finished and the Lab people have gone over the ground.’ He offered his cigarettes and went on slowly. ‘There’s one thing that’s clear,’ he said. ‘Whatever was going on, Nincic wasn’t the top man. Let’s get Nosjean searching the house. You and I’ll go and see that girl friend of Nincic’s.’
It didn’t take long to establish that Madeleine Duc wasn’t at the flat she was supposed to share with Edith Roux and they decided she must still be with her parents in Avallon.
‘We’ll find her,’ Pel said. ‘She said her father was a dentist and there can’t be all that many there called Duc.’
In the verdant valley of the Cure, Avallon, with its two beautiful churches with their pointed barrel arches, contained the coaching inn from which Napoleon, on his way back to Paris after his escape from Elba, had gone to meet Marshal Ney at Auxerre and so turned his head he had changed sides with scarcely a second thought. That day it looked full of browns and sienas in the sunshine.
Madeleine Duc’s home lay on the outskirts near the river. On one end of it, an addition had been built which they realised was a surgery. On the gate was a sign, Jean-Louis Duc, Chirurgien Dentiste.
The girl was surprised to see them, then fearful, knowing they could give away to her parents the fact that she was sharing a home not with a girl called Edith Roux, as they believed, but with a man called Fran Nincic. Clearly suspecting something, her mother insisted on sitting in the room as they questioned her and even sent a maid to fetch her husband.
Madeleine Duc looked a little like Pierre Blot, no longer poised and full of self-assurance, but frightened and, like Pierre Blot, a little worried about what would happen afterwards. Judging by the expression on the face of her father, she couldn’t expect half the understanding Pierre Blot had received. It didn’t take long to get out of her that, contrary to what she had first told them, she had not been with Nincic on the weekend of the 13th, when Miollis had been shot.
Her mother stared at her. ‘Were you in the habit of going away with him, Madie?’
The girl frowned. ‘Sometimes.’
‘You never told us.’
‘I didn’t have to.’
‘Nice girls of your age don’t go off on holiday with men of thirty. There’s only one thing they want.’
‘For the love of God – ’ the tormented girl burst out ‘ – he’d got it already. I’d been living with him, hadn’t I? There was no reason why I shouldn’t go off with him.’
‘Did you go as his wife?’
‘Of course I did! It didn’t matter. People don’t fuss about that sort of thing these days.’
‘We do.’
Pel waited until the quarrel simmered down before continuing.
The girl sighed. ‘I went to Edith’s. She’s the girl I was sharing with.’
‘Was supposed to be sharing with,’ her mother interrupted.
The girl ignored her, and kept her eyes fixed on Pel. ‘Nino wanted to go off on his own,’ she said. ‘On business or something. He often had to. I didn’t argue. He always came back.’
‘More’s the pity,’ her mother commented.
The girl whirled round. ‘Stop saying things like that! What do you know about love?’
‘I’ve been married to your father for twenty-five years.’
‘That doesn’t mean a thing!’
They were glaring at each other and Pel had to slip his next words through a gap in the bitterness.
‘That story you told me,’ he persisted gently. ‘About meeting a group of Austrians. What did he do with the parcel he was given? Did he post it?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘When?’
‘Later, I suppose.’
‘Not that day?’
‘No. Perhaps the next day. I don’t know.’
‘Where did he keep it?’
‘In the boot of the car. That’s where he put it.’
‘Locked?’
‘I think so.’
‘A parcel of photos? Why not on the seat?’ Pel paused. ‘You know why I came to see you, don’t you?’ he said quietly. ‘I have good reason to believe that your friend, Fran Nincic, was involved in drug-peddling.’
The girl said nothing and her father jumped in quickly.
‘You pick up with some funny types, I must say,’ he growled. ‘I never did think much of you going to university. It was your mother’s idea, not mine.
‘Blame me, of course,’ the mother snapped.
Pel caught Darcy’s eye on him. It was easy to see what the girl meant when she’d said there had been no love.
‘Did you know he was involved with drugs?’ he asked.
The girl nodded, not lifting her eyes.
‘Madeleine!’ Her mother looked horrified.
‘Was he on drugs himself?’ Pel asked.
‘No. N
ever. He hated them. He said they were too dangerous.’
‘But not too dangerous to sell to youngsters.’ The cynicism of drug pedlars was something that always shocked Pel. ‘When did he acquire that house of his?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. About two to three years ago, I think.’
‘That’s when Foussier says drugs first started appearing in the area,’ Darcy put in. ‘Did you know his friends?’
She sighed and a tear trickled down her cheek. ‘No. He kept them apart. He said our life was separate and private.’
‘Did he have a gun?’
‘Yes. He kept it in the glove pocket of his car. It was a Belgian automatic. It was only a small one.’
‘Even small guns can kill,’ Pel snapped. ‘Did you ever hear his friends on the telephone?’
‘No. Well, once. Just before he left the last time. Perhaps it was business.’
‘What was being said?’
‘I don’t know. I heard him say “I did the job. I want a bigger share if I’m going to do jobs like that.” I think he was selling a car for someone. He said something about getting rid of one.’
While Pel and Darcy were interrogating Madeleine Duc in Avallon, Nosjean and Krauss were going through Nincic’s flat in Auxonne. The source of the bone button found alongside Miollis in the boot of the car in the Rue du Chapeau Rouge turned up at once – a mud-stained grey jacket with jaeger green collar, cuffs and pocket flaps.
‘Austrian,’ Nosjean said. ‘Minus one button.’
‘It must have been Nincic then who did for Miollis,’ Krauss said. ‘He lost the button as he hoisted him into the car. At least, that’s settled.’
