by Allan Massie
‘I think he sees himself as a man who goes his own way. At the same time my shooting has stirred him up. He disapproves of guns being fired at policemen.’
‘Naturally enough.’
‘Oh yes.’
Henri said, ‘Well, I was pleased to hear him say so, even if I fear he may be prevented from acting on his words. But there’s something I didn’t mention to him, chose not to indeed. I’d a visit last week from a young man who said he was a friend of Gaston. I wasn’t welcoming at first – you can guess why. But he was persistent, he wanted to know who was in charge of the case. When I told him it has been abandoned, or suspended, he said, “That’s awful, I should have come forward sooner, but you can understand why I didn’t.” He’s actually quite a respectable young man, a clerk in the Banque des Pyrenees, it seems. But whether he knows anything useful, that’s another matter.’
‘He gave you no indication?’
‘None, and I didn’t ask. But I said I would see what I could do. He lives with his mother – as I say, all quite respectable despite . . . ’
‘Then I imagine he’d rather I didn’t call on him at home or at the bank. I suppose you can get a message to him? So tell him to be in the Buffet de la Gare at seven o’clock tomorrow evening. That’s anonymous enough. I’m interested because as you will understand, I’m ready to catch at any straw.’
As he made his way home, he thought, I should have mentioned the possibility Edmond aired: that Pilar may not be dead. But I didn’t dare, I’m a moral coward.
XXI
May 21, 1940
Cortin was early, already seated on the wooden bench in the corridor outside the inspectors’ office when Lannes arrived. Nevertheless he let him wait a bit longer. He had woken with a blinding headache which three aspirin hadn’t yet dispelled. Also he felt stiff and old. It had been an impulse to have René call Cortin in, and he didn’t expect to get anything useful from him. Was it in fact because Cortin was a colleague of his brother-in-law that he had chosen to question him?
When at last he admitted him, the little man’s indignation had reached a high pitch. It was intolerable that he had been kept waiting. Didn’t the superintendent realize that he was himself of some importance, an official with essential work to do. In case the superintendent didn’t know, he must tell him that he was not the least valued member of the Mayor’s cabinet.
‘Stop it,’ Lannes said. ‘It doesn’t impress me in the least. We are both public officials, servants of the Republic, and it’s your duty to assist me in my inquiries. Do you know a man called Brune?’
‘Brune?’
‘Employed in the department of public works, I understand.’
‘Oh, that Brune, certainly, But what is this all about? I understood that you asked to see me on account of my car, which was stolen. I don’t understand what Brune has to do with it. You can’t suspect him of being the thief. He’s a most respectable man and a diligent official.’
‘We’ll come to your car later. I wanted your opinion of Brune. He’s a witness to a crime, you see. Only he’s proving difficult, what we call a reluctant witness. That’s to say, he refuses to tell us what he knows. Which is an offence, withholding relevant information from the police. I’m close to requesting that he be arrested and held as a material witness. That’s within my powers, you understand, whether he’s a diligent official or not.’
Lannes got up from his desk, crossed to the window and lit a cigarette. He stood there smoking, his back to Cortin, for some minutes, and was aware of uneasiness behind him.
‘You understand what I’m saying. It’s the duty of the citizen to co-operate with the police in the investigation of a crime.’
He resumed his seat.
‘You reported your car stolen. What time was that?’
‘When we returned from the cinema. We live in the suburbs, in Chiquet, and, because we have no garage, I park my car in a little cul-de-sac round the corner from our house. We travelled by bus, because I don’t like leaving the car unattended in the city centre. It’s our first car, you see, and naturally I am careful of it. Well, on our return, I recalled that I had left some papers in the car. So I went to retrieve them, only to discover it wasn’t there. I was alarmed of course, and telephoned at once to report it stolen. I telephoned from the café in the Place de la Rotonde because we have no telephone at home. There will be a record of the precise time of the call, I assume.’
‘No doubt, no doubt, Monsieur Cortin, but it’s very odd.’
‘Odd?’ Cortin said, ‘it’s outrageous, that’s what it is, outrageous that the police can’t protect private property.’
‘You misunderstand me. What I find odd is the nature or circumstances of the crime which I am investigating, which is not the temporary theft of a car, but the attempted assassination of a policeman. Odd that the criminals should have gone to the trouble of stealing a car in Chiquet rather than in the city centre. You see my point? Your version of events is unsatisfactory. It makes me wonder if your car was indeed stolen, if perhaps it was borrowed with your knowledge. In which case of course you will be able to supply me with the name of the man or men to whom you lent it. Which is why I spoke to you first of your colleague Brune, and the possible consequences of a refusal to assist the police in their inquiries. Do I make myself clear?’
The little man pushed his chair back and stood up.
‘This is intolerable,’ he said, squeaking in his indignation. ‘Are you accusing me – a public official, an important member of the mayor’s cabinet – of being an accessory to an attempted murder – if that’s what it was? I don’t have to listen to you. On the contrary, I have every intention of lodging a complaint. Yes, that’s what I’ll do, lodge a complaint. You have no right to speak to me as you have, superintendent. Be assured, you haven’t heard the last of this.’
He paused, as if waiting for an apology. Lannes however merely smiled and said, ‘As you wish. I look forward to receiving official notification of your complaint. It will give my colleagues the opportunity, and the authority, to investigate you thoroughly.’
This time Cortin made no reply, but turned and left the room.
Lannes lit another cigarette and called for young René.
‘You’re right. There’s something fishy about that one. Find out what you can about him, family, acquaintances and so on. I don’t believe his car was stolen at all. We may at last be on the point of a breakthrough.’
Lannes turned on the wireless. There was a report that the British had re-taken Arras, then another that this was the beginning of the promised count-attack. Meanwhile General Weygand was meeting the King of the Belgians, to stiffen his army’s resistance, and form plans to take the Germans in the flank. ‘Morale is high,’ the announcer declared. ‘General Weygand’s assumption of command has instilled a spirit of optimism.’ But other reports spoke of refugees still streaming south. Lannes wondered how Schnyder was faring with Edmond de Grimaud. He wished he could remember clearly whether Edmond had indeed detained him outside the hotel. He couldn’t believe the suggestion that the shot had been aimed at Edmond rather than himself. That made no sense.
The Buffet de la Gare was crowded. A number of rail-employees in blue overalls were at the bar drinking beer or pastis. A couple of whores, both approaching middle-age, sat at a table, with glasses of white wine before them, while they waited, no doubt, for the train from Paris. Lannes knew them both by sight; he had come on them often in the waiting-room at headquarters. Half a dozen men were playing cards, and at another table two businessmen were talking, rapidly, earnestly, with gestures.
He recognized one of them a Jew called Simon, proprietor of a tannery. He looked anxious – well, he had reason enough, Lannes supposed. Then he spotted what must be the boy, at a table in the corner. He was reading a book and twisting a lock of dark hair round and round the index finger of his left hand. Lannes approached, pulled out a chair, and sat down.
‘You’re expecting me, I think.’<
br />
‘I am?’
‘Superintendent Lannes, and you’re Gaston’s young friend, yes?’
‘If you say so.’
The boy placed his book face-down on the table – it was a volume of Balzac, and he was half-way through. He was a pretty boy, slightly built, with a soft unformed face, olive complexion and dark-brown eyes.
‘I was surprised to get the message. Monsieur Chambolley told me the case had been abandoned.’
‘Set aside, let’s say. But I gather you have something to tell me.’
‘Have I? I don’t know. I’m not the sort that has much reason to trust the police.’
‘I understand that, but what I take you to mean doesn’t concern me. You’re not a minor, are you?’
‘No, I’m eighteen, I’m waiting my call-up. The way things are it looks like that may never happen. What do you think?’
Lannes spread his hands as if to say that the answer to the question was beyond him. He was struck by the boy’s air of self-possession.
‘My name’s Léon. Do you want me to tell you about me and Gaston?’
‘Only in so far as it might be relevant. You work in a bank. That’s correct?’
‘Certainly, and that’s where I first met him. He came to my counter to ask about getting foreign currency, which is not something I deal with as it happens. He said he was planning to go to Spain.’
‘When was this?’
‘I can’t say exactly. Sometime last autumn, October perhaps, after war broke out anyway. I remember that because my first impression was that he was intending to get out, escape the war. But I could see he was interested in me, liked the look of me. You can always tell. So it wasn’t exactly a surprise that, when I went out for lunch, there he was in the street. He pretended to be surprised to see me, which I knew he wasn’t, and invited me to accompany him to a brasserie. That’s how it started. I liked him, you know. He was interesting and he made me laugh. It wasn’t just. You know what, though there was that too. I’m not ashamed to admit it. Perhaps you think I should be?’
For the first time he looked Lannes in the face, and smiled. Defiantly? Mockingly? Lannes wasn’t sure.
‘That’s no business of mine,’ he said, ‘I’ve no opinion on the matter’, though in truth the idea of Gaston in bed with the boy disgusted him, as it does most men.
The waiter came over and Lannes ordered two beers – ‘If that’s all right with you?’
‘Fine,’ Léon said. ‘Are you sure you really are a policeman. You don’t seem like one.’
‘We come in different shapes. Go on.’
‘He was lonely, you know, and not very happy. I found him sympathetic. He was really interested in me, not just for you know what. For example, he got me reading. Balzac’ – he tapped the book – ‘I’d never read anything like that before. Now I can’t stop, it’s wonderful. Then I discovered that he knew my aunt.’
‘That didn’t embarrass you?’
‘Well, it did at first, but I was sure he wouldn’t make anything of it. Though I’m equally sure it wouldn’t have mattered. She’s a countess by the way, though she’s my mother’s sister, and we’re not rich, my mother works as an assistant in a dress shop in the rue Château d’Eau, which is convenient because my grandfather keeps a tabac in the rue Toulouse-Lautrec, just behind the Place Gambetta.’
‘So you’re Jewish.’
‘I’m not ashamed of that either.’
‘Why should you be?’
‘You know my grandfather then?’
‘Your aunt Miriam anyway.’
‘He doesn’t know about me, what I am. In any case he’s ill, very ill, dying I think. As for my mother, nor does she and she’d be shocked, I think. But Aunt Miriam does, or at least suspects, though of course we’ve never talked about it. I just know she does. This isn’t what I expected to talk to you about. As for being Jewish, yes, certainly, seeing that my mother is, but we don’t practise, don’t attend the synagogue, and besides, my father, who died six years ago, was a Gascon of the Gascons, as he used to say, and also, as it happens, a Protestant. There: now you know my family history.’
The waiter brought two glasses of beer. The boy took a swig and licked the foam off his upper lip.
‘It’s quite fun, you know, leading a double life, being one thing at home and in the bank, and another elsewhere. Besides, I was good for Gaston. I stopped him cruising the bars and picking up sailors. I think he really loved me, a bit anyway.’
It was probably true, Lannes thought, and, as for the boy himself, he gave the impression of having at least had a liking for Gaston, couldn’t be more than that, surely.
‘Is it true he was mutilated?’
‘Who told you that?’
‘One of my mates. Only the other night. It made me shiver all over and then I was sick. That’s really why I went to speak to his brother. But is it true? It wasn’t in the papers.’
Lannes hesitated. There were tears in the boy’s eyes and a tremble in his voice. He deserved the truth.
‘That’s horrible, that’s really vile.’
‘Yes,’ Lannes said, ‘horrible. I wonder how your mate heard of it.’
Something that should be followed up, though it was probably scarcely worthwhile to do so. These things always get out and are noised abroad. It was surprising, really, that this boy, this Léon, hadn’t got to hear of it sooner – and his reaction to Lannes’ confirmation of the report suggested that he wasn’t lying when he said he had learned of it only recently from his friend.
The train from Paris was announced. The two prostitutes got up, smoothed their dresses and went out towards the platform. The businessman Lannes didn’t recognize shook hands with the proprietor of the tannery, tucked his briefcase under his arm, and left the buffet. Lannes wondered if Schnyder was on the train; no, too soon surely, unless, arriving in Paris, he had found that Edmond has skipped their meeting. Even if he had, would Schnyder have turned round straightaway?
He said, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t say it wasn’t like that. Now, do you feel you can tell me just why you wanted to see me?’
Léon took a cigarette from the packet of maize-paper Gitanes that lay on the table by his book, tapped it on his thumb-nail before lighting it with a wax match.
‘I don’t know that I know anything of value,’ he said. ‘I may be wasting your time. But thinking about it, well, it seemed strange to me. Do you have any suspects?’
‘I can’t answer that,’ Lannes said.
The boy rolled his cigarette round between his thumb and first two fingers.
‘All right then,’ he said. ‘It didn’t seem significant at the time. It’s only since that I’ve wondered. It was one night we were in a café in the Cours du Marne – it’s called La Chope aux Capucines – I’m sure you know it. Gaston liked it because it was quiet and dark in the evenings, if you sat at the back which was what he preferred. He’d been in Bordeaux for a couple of days and he was leaving later by the last train to Bergerac. We’d spent the evening together – I don’t need to tell you about that – and we were both relaxed and at ease. You could say we were happy. We’d come to eat something and drink a glass of wine. As I remember, not that it’s important, he had only an omelette, a cheese omelette, I think, and I had andouillettes and frites – you can see I’m not a good Jew, I don’t mind eating pork products. Then it sounds silly, melodramatic, but he went as white as a sheet and started sweating. Then he said we must change places so that he was sitting with his back to the door. Obviously there was someone he didn’t want to be seen by, in company with me, I thought at first, which rather annoyed me, but then I saw that he was scared, not embarrassed. He lost his appetite, just picked at his omelette when it arrived, and ordered a large brandy. I resumed our conversation about Balzac, but he wasn’t listening. Instead he said, “That couple at the table in the window, they’re still there, are they?” Well, then I looked at them for the first time and I recognized one of them.’
Lannes had curbed his impatience while the boy spoke. He knew how it was often necessary to let a witness tell the story in his own way, however rambling that might be; and, besides, the details contributed to his picture of Gaston in the last weeks or days of his life, out of his depth, alarmed by the darkness into which his search for the truth about Pilar was leading him.
‘Yes?’ he said again.
‘I’ve never met him,’ Léon said, ‘but he’s a vicomte and, what’s more, he’s my aunt’s stepson, which is absurd because he’s at least fifteen years older than she is. She’s got no time for him, and, from what she says, he couldn’t frighten anyone. Nasty but feeble and as much spirit as a wet dishcloth, that’s her opinion. So it must have been the other man, his companion who gave Gaston the shivers.’
‘Can you describe him?’
‘Well, you’ll understand that I didn’t care to look too closely at him in case this attracted his attention and he recognized Gaston who obviously wanted to avoid him. So all I can say is that he was short and stocky and his hair was light-coloured, not blond, but sort of fairish, cut short, I think. What did strike me is that he was wearing a heavy overcoat, even though, as you may know, la Chope aux Capucins is kept very warm.’
‘You’d never seen him before?’
‘No, certainly not. Nor since of course.’
‘But you’d recognize him if you saw him again?’
‘I’m pretty sure I would, because Gaston asked me more than once if they were looking at us. So I had to check to see. We sat on till it seemed as if Gaston would miss his train, but then they left and in fact there was plenty of time for us to walk to the station, which is after all only ten minutes away. Nevertheless Gaston got the barman to call a taxi – in case the men were out in the street still, and, when it arrived, he pretended to be lame, so that the driver wouldn’t make a fuss about being called for such a short journey. And he insisted I accompany him to the station and see him safely on to the train, which of course I was quite happy to do. He was still agitated. He didn’t even embrace me before getting on to the train. And that was the last time I saw him. I don’t know if this is of any use to you. It’s not much, I realize. Only I thought you should know that Gaston really did seem to be frightened by the sight of this man, though all he said when I asked him was that he’d had an embarrassing encounter with him years ago. I knew that was a lie.’
