‘In secret …’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you meet anyone?’
‘No! I avoided the main road and came in through the grounds … Just as I reached the front steps, the shot rang out … I’d like to see Else.’
‘Do you know that someone has tried to poison her?’
Maigret was completely unprepared for Andersen’s reaction to his words. The wounded man sat up all by himself, stared eagerly at the inspector and stammered, ‘Really?’
He seemed overjoyed, released from a nightmare.
‘Oh! I want to see her!’
Maigret went out into the hall to fetch Else, who was in her room, lying on the divan with empty eyes. Lucas was watching her sullenly.
‘Would you come with me?’
‘What did he say?’
She was still frightened, uncertain. After taking a few hesitant steps into the wounded man’s room, she rushed over and hugged him, talking to him in Danish.
A gloomy Lucas was watching Maigret out of the corner of his eye.
‘Can you figure any of this out?’
Instead of replying, the inspector shrugged and began issuing orders.
‘Make sure that the garage owner has not left Paris … Telephone the Préfecture, have them send out a surgeon first thing in the morning … Even tonight, if possible.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘No idea … As for the surveillance around the grounds: keep it up, but don’t expect anything.’
Maigret went downstairs, down the front steps, out to the main road, alone. The garage was closed, but the milky-white globes of the pumps were shining.
The light was on upstairs at the Michonnet villa. Behind the shade, the insurance agent’s silhouette was still in the same place.
The night was cool. A thin mist was drifting up from the fields, forming into waves about a metre above the ground. From over towards Arpajon came the increasingly loud sounds of an engine and clanking metal; five minutes later, a lorry pulled up at the garage, honking its horn.
A small door opened in the iron security shutter, revealing an electric light bulb burning inside the garage.
‘Twenty litres!’
The sleepy mechanic worked the pump; the driver stayed high up in his cab. The chief inspector walked over, his hands in his pockets, his pipe between his teeth.
‘Monsieur Oscar not back yet?’
‘What? You here? … Well, no! When he goes to Paris, he only comes back the next morning.’
A moment’s hesitation, then: ‘Say, Arthur, you’d best pick up your spare: it’s ready …’
And the mechanic fetched a wheel with its tyre from the garage, rolling it out and laboriously attaching it to the back of the lorry.
The vehicle drove off. Its red tail light dwindled into the distance. The mechanic yawned and sighed.
‘Still looking for the murderer? At this hour? … Well, me, if I could just snooze my fill, I swear I wouldn’t care one way or the other!’
A bell tower struck two o’clock. A train trailed sparks along the horizon.
‘You coming in? … Or not?’
And the man stretched, impatient to get back to sleep.
Maigret went inside, looked at the whitewashed walls, where red inner tubes and tyres of every brand, most of them in bad shape, were hanging from nails.
‘Tell me! What’s he going to do with the wheel you gave him?’
‘Huh? … Why, put it on his lorry, of course!’
‘You think so? … It’ll drive lopsided, his lorry, because that wheel hasn’t the same diameter as the others …’
The mechanic began to look worried.
‘Just a minute now … Maybe I mistook the wheel … Did I go and give him the one from old man Mathieu’s van?’
There was a loud explosion: Maigret had just shot at one of the inner tubes hanging on the wall. And along with the escaping air, small white paper packets came pouring out of the collapsing tube.
‘Don’t move, you little rat!’
For the mechanic, bent over, was about to run at him head first.
‘Watch it, or I’ll shoot.’
‘What do you want from me?’
‘Hands up! … Now!’
He stepped smartly over to Jojo, patted his pockets and confiscated a fully loaded revolver.
‘Go and lie down on your cot.’
Maigret pushed the door shut with his foot. One look at the mechanic’s freckled face was enough to tell him that the fellow would not give up easily.
‘Lie down.’
Glancing around, he saw no rope but spotted a coil of electric wire.
‘Your hands!’
Realizing that Maigret would have to put down his revolver, the mechanic tensed for action, but got punched right in the face. His nose bled. His lip swelled up. The man growled in rage. Then his hands were tied and soon his feet as well.
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-one.’
‘Released from where?’
Silence.
All Maigret had to do was make a fist.
‘The reformatory at Montpellier.’
‘That’s better! And do you know what’s in those little packets?’
The reply was a snarl: ‘Drugs!’
The mechanic was flexing his muscles, trying to snap the wire bonds.
‘What was in the spare tyre?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Then why did you give it to that driver rather than another?’
‘I’m not talking any more!’
‘Too bad for you!’
Five inner tubes were punctured one after another, but they did not all contain cocaine. Under a patch that had covered a long slit in one tube, Maigret found silverware stamped with the coronet of a marquis. Another tube held lace and some antique jewellery.
There were ten cars in the garage. Maigret tried to start each engine, but only one would work. So, armed with a monkey wrench backed up by a hammer, he got busy taking apart engines and cutting open petrol tanks.
The mechanic watched him with a mocking smile.
‘Can’t say we’re short on the goods!’ he sneered.
The tank in a four-horse-power car was crammed full of bearer bonds worth at least 300,000 francs.
‘Is this the haul from the break-in at that big savings and loan company?’
‘Could be!’
‘And these old coins?’
‘Dunno.’
There was more variety than in the back room of a second-hand shop. Everything imaginable: pearls, banknotes, American currency, official stamps and seals that must have been used to forge passports.
Maigret was unable to search everywhere, but when he tore open the worn-out cushions of a sedan, he found still more: silver florins, which convinced him that everything in that garage was more than met the eye.
A lorry swept past on the main road. Fifteen minutes later, another went by without stopping, and the inspector frowned.
He was beginning to see how the business was run. The garage was a no-account place along the main road, fifty kilometres from Paris, not far from some big provincial cities such as Chartres, Orléans, Le Mans, Châteaudun.
No neighbours, aside from those living in the Three Widows house and the Michonnet villa.
What could they see? A thousand cars going by every day. At least a hundred of them stopped at the petrol pumps. A few would go in for repairs. The garage sold or changed tyres and wheels. Cans of oil and drums of diesel oil came and went.
One detail was especially interesting. Big lorries headed for Paris drove by every evening, delivering vegetables to Les Halles. Later that night or in the
morning, they came back empty.
Empty? Weren’t they the ones ferrying stolen merchandise in the baskets and crates of produce?
The enterprise could well be a regular, even daily event. A single tyre, the one concealing cocaine, was enough to show the extent of the trafficking, because that drug shipment was worth over 200,000 francs.
What’s more, didn’t the garage repaint and disguise stolen cars? No witnesses! Monsieur Oscar in the doorway, hands in his pockets. Mechanics working with monkey wrenches or blowtorches. The five red-and-white petrol pumps providing an innocent front …
The butcher, the baker, the tourists: didn’t they stop by here like everyone else?
A bell rang in the distance. Maigret checked his watch. It was half past three.
‘Who’s your boss?’ he asked, without looking at his prisoner.
The man just smiled.
‘You know you’ll wind up talking … Is it Monsieur Oscar? What’s his real name?’
‘Oscar!’
The mechanic was practically giggling.
‘Did Monsieur Goldberg come here?’
‘Who’s that?’
‘You’d know better than I! The Belgian who was murdered …’
‘No kidding!’
‘Whose job was it to knock off the Danish fellow on the Compiègne road?’
‘Somebody got knocked off?’
No doubt about it: Maigret’s first impression was panning out. He was up against a well-organized professional gang. And he soon had more proof. He heard a car coming, then a screech of brakes as it stopped outside the iron shutter. The horn sounded urgently.
Maigret rushed to the door, but before he could open it, the car sped away so fast he could not even guess its model.
Clenching his fists, he went back to the mechanic.
‘How did you warn him off?’
‘Me?’
And the fellow chuckled, holding up his wrists in their wire bonds.
‘Talk!’
‘Must be that it smells fishy here and that driver’s got a good nose …’
Now Maigret was worried. He overturned the cot roughly, sending Jojo sprawling, and looked for a possible switch for a warning signal outside.
He found nothing under the bed, however. He left the man lying on the floor, went outside and saw the five pumps lit up as usual.
He was beginning to get really angry.
‘There’s no phone in the garage?’
‘Go and take a look!’
‘You do know you’ll talk in the end …’
‘I can’t hear you!’
There was nothing more to be got from Jojo, a perfect example of a confident, experienced criminal. For a quarter of an hour, Maigret walked up and down fifty metres of the main road, searching without success for some possible signal.
The upstairs light at the Michonnet villa had been turned off. Only the Three Widows house was still lit, and the presence of the policemen surrounding the property was discreetly felt.
A limousine barrelled past.
‘What kind of car does your boss have?’
To the east, dawn announced itself with a whitish haze that barely cleared the horizon.
Maigret studied the mechanic’s hands. They were not touching anything that might have sent a signal.
A current of cool air came in through the little door standing open in the corrugated iron shutter over the garage.
Hearing the sound of an engine, Maigret started to go out to the road, but just as he noticed the approach of an open four-seater touring car, which wasn’t doing more than thirty kilometres an hour and seemed about to pull in, the car exploded with gunfire.
Several men were shooting and bullets were rattling against the iron shutter.
Nothing could be seen except the glare of the headlights and the immobile shadows – heads, rather – just showing above the body of the car. Then came the roar of the accelerator …
Some broken windows … on the upper floor of the Three Widows house. The men in the car had kept shooting as they’d gone past.
Maigret had thrown himself flat on the ground and now stood up, his mouth dry, his pipe gone out.
He was certain: Monsieur Oscar had been driving the car that had just plunged back into the darkness.
8. Missing Persons
Before the chief inspector even had time to get out on to the road, a taxi raced up and slammed on its brakes in front of the petrol pumps. A man jumped out – and collided with Maigret.
‘Grandjean!’ exclaimed the chief inspector.
‘Petrol, quick!’
The taxi driver was a nervous wreck, because he’d been speeding at over a hundred kilometres an hour in a car meant to do eighty at most.
Grandjean belonged to the highway patrol; there were two other inspectors in the taxi with him, and each man gripped a revolver in both fists.
The petrol tank was filled with feverish haste.
‘How far ahead are they?’
‘About five kilometres …’
The driver was waiting to take off again.
‘You stay here!’ Maigret ordered Grandjean. ‘The other two will continue on without you.
‘Don’t take any risks!’ he advised them. ‘No matter what happens, we’ve got them. Tail them, that’s all …’
The taxi set out. A sagging mudguard made a racket all down the road.
‘Let’s hear it, Grandjean …’
And Maigret heard him out, all the while keeping an eye on Jojo and the three houses and listening intently to the noises of the night.
‘It was Lucas who telephoned me, told me to watch the owner of this place, Monsieur Oscar … I began following him at Porte d’Orléans. They had a big dinner at L’Escargot, where they spoke to no one, then went on to L’Ambigu … Until then, nothing to report. At midnight, they come out of the theatre and I see them head for the Chope Saint-Martin … You know the place; in the little dining room upstairs, there are always a few tough guys … So Monsieur Oscar walks in like he owns the joint. The waiters welcome him, the proprietor shakes his hand, asks him how business is going …
‘As for the wife, her, she’s right at home there too.
‘They sit down at a table where there were already three guys and a tart. I recognized one of the guys, he owns a bar somewhere around République. The second had a junkshop, Rue du Temple. As for the third guy, I don’t know, but the tart with him has got to be on record with Vice …
‘They start drinking champagne, having a gay old time. Then they order crayfish, onion soup, what have you, a real blowout, like those people get up to: yelling, slapping their thighs, belting out a little song now and then …
‘There was one jealous scene, because Monsieur Oscar was cuddling too close to the tart and his wife didn’t care for her. That worked out in the end, thanks to a fresh bottle of champagne.
‘Time to time, the patron came over to have a drink with his customers and he even stood them a round. Then, towards three o’clock, I think, the waiter arrived to say Monsieur Oscar’s wanted on the phone.
‘When he came back from the booth, he wasn’t laughing any more. He gave me a dirty look, because I was the only one there they didn’t know. He spoke in a low voice to the others … They were in some kind of mess! They pulled the longest faces … The girl – I mean Monsieur Oscar’s wife – had circles under her eyes and halfway down her cheeks and was drinking like mad to give herself some Dutch courage …
‘There was only one guy who left with the couple, the fellow I didn’t know, some kind of Italian or Spaniard …
‘While they were saying goodnight and all that I got out ahead of them to the boulevard. I picked a taxi that didn’t look too dilapidated and called two inspectors on duty over at Porte
Saint-Denis.
‘You saw their car … Well! They started going like blazes at Boulevard Saint-Michel. They were whistled down at least ten times, never even looked back. We had real trouble following them. The taxi driver – a Russian – claimed I was making him burn out his engine …’
‘They’re the ones who were shooting?’
‘Yes!’
After hearing all the gunfire, Lucas had left the Three Widows house and now joined the inspector.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘How’s the patient?’
‘Weaker. I think he’ll make it till morning, though. The surgeon should arrive soon. But what happened here?’
Lucas took in the garage’s iron shutter, scarred by bullets, and the cot where the mechanic was still tied up with electric wire.
‘An organized gang, then, chief?’
‘And how!’
Maigret was unusually worried; it was the slight hunching of his shoulders that gave it away. His lips were clamped hard around the stem of his pipe.
‘Lucas, you organize the dragnet. Phone Arpajon, Étampes, Chartres, Orléans, Le Mans, Rambouillet … You’d best take a look at the map … I want every police station on alert! Get the roadblock chains up outside the towns … We’ve got them, this bunch … What’s Else Andersen doing?’
‘I don’t know. I left her in her room. She’s very depressed.’
‘You don’t say!’ barked Maigret with surprising sarcasm.
They were still standing out in the road.
‘Where should I call from?’
‘There’s a phone in the hall of the garage owner’s house. Start with Orléans, because they’ve probably gone through Étampes by now.’
A light came on in an isolated farmhouse surrounded by fields. The family was getting up. A lantern disappeared around the end of a wall, and then the windows of a stable lit up.
‘Five o’clock … They’re beginning to milk the cows.’
Lucas went off to force open the door of Monsieur Oscar’s house with a crowbar from the garage.
The Night at the Crossroads Page 8
