by Mark Hebden
She got out of bed. De Rille was in the living-room pouring himself a whisky. As he raised it, she took it from his hand and swallowed it at a gulp. He shrugged and began to pour another. As he did so, Inspector Turgot appeared, followed by two of his men pushing in front of them Arthur Tassigny. With him was Pascal Dubois. They were both only half-clothed.
‘They came down the fire escape,’ Turgot said.
All four of them were drunk and now that the policemen could get a good look at them they saw they were all scared. Their latest prank had gone very wrong and they’d been trying to calm their nerves. There was an empty whisky bottle on its side on the kitchen floor.
De Rille made a weak effort at bluster. ‘What is this?’ he said. ‘You have nothing on us.’
‘We have a great deal on you,’ Nosjean said. ‘For instance, a wages snatch at St-Florent this morning.’
‘That’s nonsense. We have no firearms here beyond what you’ve already seen. Quite legitimate and fully licensed.’
He looked too nervous and ill at ease to convince Nosjean. ‘Search the place,’ he said.
The policemen went through the flat carefully but they turned nothing up. By this time, the four occupants, all dressed and drinking whisky, were sitting in armchairs and on the settee, beginning to look smug.
‘Nice place you have here,’ Nosjean said. ‘Ideal for two lively young couples. Two large double beds – king size are they? – plenty to drink, plenty of money. I noticed a plastic carrier bag marked “Talant Supermarket” hanging behind the pantry door.’
‘Pascal brings those,’ De Rille said easily. ‘She works there and keeps us supplied with food and drink. As staff, she gets it cheaply.’
In the main bedroom, De Troq’ was studying the bed. It was huge and seemed as large as the Parc des Princes. He tried it. It was solid and heavy and felt as if it weighed as much as a tank. He studied it for a while, then he went to the next bedroom. The bed there moved at his touch, sliding easily on castors across the thick pile carpet. De Troq’ gazed at it and pushed it a little further. A moment or two later he appeared in the door of the living-room, and gestured to Nosjean.
‘Come and look at this,’ he said.
‘Sawn-off shotguns wrapped in Canadiennes and stuffed under the floor,’ Nosjean told Pel when he appeared. ‘Together with the wages and a red wig. They’d cut a square out of the carpet and lifted four of the boards. There was no ammunition. Pascal Dubois tipped them off about the time Blond was drawing the wages. The fingerprint on the till at Talant could be Tassigny’s, and the driver was his sister wearing a red wig.’
It was almost morning by this time and De Rille, the two Tassignys and Pascal Dubois were sitting in cells.
‘They’d been doing it for a lark,’ Nosjean said. ‘De Rille had worked his way through a lot of his legacy, though there was still a bit left. But he began to grow worried that it wouldn’t last and they started this game. The Tassignys, who were always short of cash, fell in with it easily enough. Arthur Tassigny had been going around with Pascal Dubois for a long time – originally because she could get hold of cheap food and drink. They didn’t intend to go on with the game, but when the press got hold of it and started to build them up as folk-heroes, they began to enjoy it.’
Pel looked puzzled. ‘Why didn’t they bolt?’
Nosjean gave a contemptuous shrug. ‘Because they’re amateurs, patron. A professional would have thought of that.’ He was still angry with himself, feeling he should have worked it out earlier than he had. ‘They’re a lot of spoiled kids and all they can think of now is to blame each other for what happened. They thought it was just fun and the guns weren’t ever loaded. Fun! With poor old Boileau dead, with crushed ribs, a fractured skull, a broken leg, a broken neck and punctured lungs. Know what De Rille said when I charged them, patron?’
‘Inform me.’
‘“We never intended to hurt anyone.”’
Seventeen
About the time they were wrapping up the Tuaregs, Doc Cham was staring at the body in front of him on the slab. Duff Forbes Mackay was a strong man just beginning to run to fat. Cham already knew a little from what Lagé, who was standing near by trying not to watch the autopsy, had told him. According to the other members of the barge party he’d spoken to, Forbes had joined the group on the barge trip in the hope of finding a girl. It appeared he was lonely and itching to get married.
The possibility of suicide had crossed Cham’s mind. But nobody’s going to stab himself in the groin as a means of killing himself, he thought. There were much easier ways.
‘Stab wound,’ he said aloud for the shorthand writer behind him. ‘But relatively shallow. Femoral vein’s been severed but the artery underneath’s untouched. And what’s this–?’
Bending, Cham peered closer, then with a pair of tweezers he removed something from the wound and showed it to Lagé.
‘Glass,’ he said. ‘A sliver of glass. That’s a funny thing to stab yourself with.’
Placing the splinter of glass in a kidney dish, Cham turned to Lagé to find him with a scowl on his face and his thumb in his mouth like a child. He was cursing under his breath. He indicated the dead man’s clothing he’d been searching and, moving carefully, he extricated from the left trouser pocket a dagger-like shard. ‘Glass,’ he said. ‘More glass.’
Cham and Lagé stared at each other for a moment, then Lagé poked cautiously about in the trousers to produce several more dangerously sharp shards of glass. One of them had a label adhering to it marked with three stars and the name ‘Barnez Frères’.
‘Brandy,’ Lagé said. ‘Cheap brandy.’
Pel listened to what they had to say.
‘Off you go, Lagé,’ he said. ‘Check the épiceries and bars round the barge port.’
Lagé was back within an hour.
‘He bought the bottle at the Épicerie de la Porte,’ he announced. ‘It’s a hundred metres from the barge. Yachtsmen and people on barges passing through use it for their food and drink. The owner – name of Gaffard – says a big man with a funny accent appeared late at night and persuaded him to sell him a half bottle of brandy. Gaffard wasn’t open but he was standing at the door smoking a cigarette when the man came along and talked him into it.’
‘They’d made up their quarrel,’ Pel said. ‘And when Duart produced his bottle of whisky, Mackay felt he ought to show the same conciliatory spirit, so he went out to produce a bottle of something, too. Was he drunk?’
‘Gaffard said he was. He said very drunk. He stuck the bottle in his trouser pocket and set off back to the barge port.’
‘And as he lurched back on board,’ Pel said, ‘having already drunk more than was good for him, he slipped. Perhaps he just banged against the rail of the gangplank. Either way, the bottle was broken, and one of the shards pierced his groin.’
‘Judging by the amount he had in him,’ Cham said, ‘he’d have been numb with intoxication. He probably didn’t realise how badly hurt he was. As he tried to open the cabin door he smeared blood on it and that blood found its way on to Duart’s shirt when he came looking for him.’
‘And, having collapsed on to his bunk, being drunk, he just passed out and bled to death.’
It seemed to be another one wrapped up.
But it wasn’t quite. There was a little more to come.
The ballistics report when it came also brought a surprise. Castéou had taken his time but he was in no doubts.
‘One bullet,’ he said. ‘One only.’
They all looked at each other. They had been expecting perhaps a mad machine-gunner, but here it was – one bullet only, and that had to be the bullet the sentry Girard had admitted firing.
‘Bullets do strange things,’ Castéou said as he explained his findings. ‘For example, when a bullet travelling at high speed suddenly strikes a firm resisting object, though the tip of the bullet is checked, the rest of it continues at its original speed, so that the rear end can sometimes pa
ss over the body of the bullet like a glove that turns inside out as it’s drawn off the fingers. At the same time there’s a reverse effect at the point of entrance which gives the appearance of an exit hole.’
There was dead silence. Castéou’s audience included the Chief, the Procureur, Castéou’s wife who was conducting the case, Colonel Le Thiel from the airfield and two of his officers, and all the policemen who had been involved.
Only Darcy wasn’t present. The Chief was still trying to set up an investigation because the constant reports that had been coming in couldn’t be ignored. The Chief knew Darcy well, but anything to do with the police, no matter what, was always political in the end and with Councillor Lax asking questions in the council chamber, he had to do something about it.
Castéou paused. ‘When a bullet leaves the barrel of a rifle it travels at a speed of about seven hundred and fifty metres per second and is spinning at between two and three thousand revolutions per second. At short ranges – between two and three hundred metres – it can have a degree of wobble before it settles down and spins properly, so that a bullet fired into soft clay doesn’t simply pass through it; it produces a cavity many times its own diameter and often smashes into fragments, so that it looks as if it were an explosive or a dumdum bullet. It’s the same when one strikes a human body at the same range. It has the same explosive effects.’
They shifted uneasily in their chairs and Pel saw Goriot’s face grow dark as all his theories were destroyed.
‘It would have been very different if Gehrer’s car had been a standard model with a solid top,’ Castéou went on. ‘In that case, the break-up of the bullet would have occurred outside. But Sergeant Gehrer’s Volkswagen had a soft top which presented no obstruction and the bullet went through it to strike Nadauld on the jaw.’
A screen had been set up behind him and photographs were flashed on to it to illustrate what he was saying. ‘The appearance of the entrance wound in Inspector Nadauld’s head,’ he continued, ‘indicated that the bullet was intact when it struck. It appears merely to have touched the jawbone but its velocity and spin caused complete fragmentation of the bone. Among the pieces found were some from the bullet which itself disintegrated after striking Nadauld’s chin.’
Heads turned as they looked at each other.
‘The jawbone’s not a very solid structure,’ Castéou pointed out. ‘But it’s solid enough to cause a high-speed projectile with a low-range wobble to break up. That’s what happened. It hit the inspector on the chin. There was a clean-cut entrance wound on the right side of the lower jaw and a lacerated exit-wound on the left. The second wound was nine centimetres long and ran from the level of the chin to the lobe of the ear. It had the appearance of bursting outwards. The lower jaw was smashed to fragments.’
Castéou paused to let what he had said sink in. ‘When Sergeant Gehrer’s car was examined, not one but a number of bullet marks were found. There were two holes in the windscreen, each of them looking as though it had been made by an individual bullet. The interior of the car had also been pierced and there were several other marks that seemed to have been made by bullets. On the upper rim of the windscreen frame there was a dent about three centimetres in length where metal had been deposited. This appeared to have been made by another bullet. More fragments of lead and nickel and fragments of human tissue and bone were found in and around the windscreen, on the facia board, on the front passenger seat and on the hood. A portion of the bullet, consisting of the aluminium tip and the cupro-nickel jacket, was found on the rear seat. All this gave the impression that a number of shots had been fired. From the windscreen alone, it seemed that two or three bullets had struck the car. But all the witnesses insist that only one shot was fired and only one cartridge case was found.’
A picture of Gehrer’s car was flashed on the screen. Inside it were four men. ‘I set up a reconstruction of the scene with the actual vehicle and with passengers, on the spot where it happened,’ Castéou said. ‘I’m confident no more than one bullet entered the car. One bullet. It hit Nadauld’s jaw. As it disintegrated, fragments were driven through Nadauld’s cheek, causing the lacerated wound, and some of them, with human tissue adhering to them, flew in different directions to produce the damage to the windscreen and the injuries to the other passengers. The largest fragment – the bullet tip on the back seat – fitted the dent on the frame of the windscreen exactly. After leaving Nadauld’s jaw it had struck the frame and ricocheted to the back seat without touching any of the other passengers.’
Castéou paused and glanced at his listeners. ‘Only one bullet was fired,’ he repeated. ‘The bullet fired by the sentry, the bullet that hit Nadauld.’
So that was that.
There never had been a mad machine-gunner and no attempt to take over the airfield. The only bullet that had been fired had been fired by a drunken conscript.
As Castéou finished, Goriot pushed his chair back with a scrape and left the room. His brows were down and his expression was full of anger and frustration.
‘So the killing appears to be manslaughter,’ the Chief said as the meeting broke up.
‘It was probably even an accident,’ Colonel Le Thiel agreed. ‘Girard swears he didn’t intend to kill anybody. He thought he was doing his duty and he had certainly been drinking. But he hadn’t expected to be on duty and wouldn’t have been but for the explosion. He’ll be handed over to the law in the ordinary way. Although he’s subject to service discipline, he can’t escape by pleading he’s exempt, as his lawyer’s suggesting.’
‘Assault and culpable homicide,’ the Chief said. ‘That’ll be the verdict when he comes before the court. Coupled with a recommendation for lenience. He’ll serve a few months’ imprisonment and be discharged. Since he’s a conscript, I doubt if he’ll consider it severe.’
‘You could almost say it wasn’t intended.’
Pel looked up. ‘The bomb was,’ he said drily.
Pel was silent the next day, sitting in his office studying his blotter. Darcy had always known that when he was in that sort of mood it was best not to disturb him. Aimedieu – who was trying to do Darcy’s job because Darcy wasn’t there and Nosjean, who was next senior after Darcy, was still involved with the paperwork caused by the Tuaregs – didn’t understand his methods so well and kept interrupting. In the end, Pel threw the List of French Advocates and Lawyers at him.
Cadet Darras, sitting in the office next door, grinned. ‘He always does that,’ he said. ‘He’s not a bad shot either.’
Then, from his office, Pel was suddenly involved in a flurry of telephone calls. The man on the switchboard grew hot under the collar at the demands being made on him.
‘What’s happened?’ he demanded. ‘Has war broken out?’
Pel was in touch with Records. ‘Siméon,’ he was saying. ‘Adenne Siméon. You might as well also check on one or two other types too, while you’re at it. I’ll give you the names and what I know about them.’
For a long time as he put the telephone down, he sat staring at his blotter. They had appeared to be on the point of a breakthrough. Dupont’s old briefs had set them off on a new track, and they had solved an old mystery and recovered a little of the loot from a wages snatch. Yet there was something wrong. Things didn’t fit.
Did Dupont go to Lugny because he knew Siméon was there? It didn’t seem so. So did he simply arrive by chance and, having arrived, recognise him? It didn’t add up. They had found the money from the wages snatch in which Siméon had been involved in Marseilles in 1959. It had been hidden originally in the attic at the home of Siméon’s mother. After three years in gaol, which, thanks to the skill of his advocate, Dupont, was all Siméon had suffered, he had retrieved it and banked it in the city. There wasn’t a lot left by this time, though it was clear how Siméon had managed to live in comfort in Lugny over the years.
There were still things that didn’t seem correct, however. Blackmailers didn’t usually steal things. Blackmail was bl
ackmail. Burglary was burglary. Robbery with violence was robbery with violence. They didn’t mix and a man who went in for one didn’t usually go in for any of the others. And how was Dupont killed? If he wasn’t hit by a car, what was he hit with? And where was it? No weapon had yet been found. And who burgled the house at St-Alban? It was opened with a key. But the house in Dôle wasn’t touched and, if a key was available for the house at St-Alban, there must surely have been one on the same key-ring for the house in Dôle, and surely the incriminating briefs would have been removed and destroyed.
So was Dupont murdered simply for his money? He was in the habit of carrying a lot with him. Could Madeleine Bas Jaunes be in it, too? Could she have put the three old rogues up to it? Did Dupont talk to her about what he possessed? Could they have caught him in bed with her, dragged him out and done for him there? Then tried to dress him because they had to get rid of him, but in their hurry made a mess of it and got the buttons in the wrong holes? Per paused. And, he thought, Mailly-les-Temps was a hell of a long way from Lugny for two or three old men to carry a body.
In the absence of Darcy, he called Aimedieu and Lagé in and tossed his questions at them.
‘Could he have staggered part of the way from Madeleine Bas Jaunes’, patron?’ Lagé asked. ‘Losing one of his shoes en route?’
Pel sighed. ‘She said he didn’t visit her that night. I think that whoever hit him, thought they’d killed him, and they left him somewhere they thought was safe and went to his house to see what they could find. Perhaps both houses. But when they returned, he’d disappeared. He wasn’t dead. He’d staggered off. But when they found him again he was dead. So they put him on the motorway.’
‘Without his underclothes and socks and with his clothes all wrong?’
Pel nodded. ‘And without his pyjamas. Where did they go to? And why didn’t they remove the briefs? I’d like to talk to this Madame François who ran the hospice before the Sullys. She must have known of him. When she turns up she might be able to add a little light.’
