Charles Bobet stood on the roadside next to his immobilised taxi, looked at his watch and swore. Half past one, time for lunch, and here he was stuck on a lonely stretch of road between Egletons and the hamlet of Lamazière. With a busted half-shaft. Merde and merde again. He could leave the car and try to walk to the next village, take a bus into Egletons and return in the evening with a repair truck. That alone would cost him a week’s earnings. But then again the car doors had no locks, and his fortune was tied up in the rattletrap taxi. Better not leave it for those thieving village kids to ransack. Better to be a little patient and wait until a lorry came along that could (for a consideration) tow him back to Egletons. He had had no lunch, but there was a bottle of wine in the glove compartment. Well, it was almost empty now. Crawling around under taxis was thirsty work. He climbed into the back of the car to wait. It was extremely hot on the roadside, and no lorries would be moving until the day had cooled a little. The peasants would be taking their siesta. He made himself comfortable and fell fast asleep.
‘What do you mean he’s not back yet? Where’s the bugger gone?’ roared Commissaire Valentin down the telephone. He was sitting in the commissariat at Egletons, ringing the house of the taxi-driver and speaking to his own policeman. The babble of the voice on the other end was apologetic. Valentin slammed the phone down. All morning and through the lunch-hour radio reports had come in from the squad cars manning the road blocks. No one remotely resembling a tall blond Englishman had left the twenty-kilometre-radius circle round Egletons. Now the sleepy market town was silent in the summer heat, dozing blissfully as if the two hundred policemen from Ussel and Clermont Ferrand had never descended upon it.
It was not until four o’clock that Ernestine got her way.
‘You must go up there again and wake Madame,’ she urged Louison. ‘It’s not natural for anyone to sleep right through the day.’
Old Louison, who could think of nothing better than to be able to do just that, and whose mouth tasted like a vulture’s crotch, disagreed, but knew there was no use in arguing with Ernestine when her mind was made up. He ascended the ladder again, this time more steadily than before, eased up the window and stepped inside. Ernestine watched from below.
After a few minutes the old man’s head came out of the window.
‘Ernestine,’ he called hoarsely, ‘Madame seems to be dead.’
He was about to climb back down again when Ernestine screamed at him to open the bedroom door from the inside. Together they peered over the edge of the coverlet at the eyes staring blankly at the pillow a few inches away from the face.
Ernestine took over.
‘Louison.’
‘Yes, my dear.’
‘Hurry down to the village and fetch Dr Mathieu. Hurry now.’
A few minutes later Louison was pedalling down the drive with all the force his frightened legs could muster. He found Dr Mathieu, who had tended the ills of the people of Haute Chalonnière for over forty years, asleep under the apricot tree at the bottom of his garden, and the old man agreed to come at once. It was past four-thirty when his car clattered into the courtyard of the château and fifteen minutes later when he straightened up from the bed and turned round on the two retainers who stood in the doorway.
‘Madame is dead. Her neck has been broken,’ he quavered. ‘We must fetch the constable.’
Gendarme Caillou was a methodical man. He knew how serious was the job of an officer of the law, and how important it was to get the facts straight. With much licking of his pencil he took statements from Ernestine, Louison and Dr Mathieu as they sat around the kitchen table.
‘There is no doubt,’ he said, when the doctor had signed his statement, ‘that murder has been done. The first suspect is evidently the blond Englishman who has been staying here, and who has disappeared in Madame’s car. I shall report the matter to headquarters in Egletons.’
And he cycled back down the hill.
Claude Lebel rang Commissaire Valentin from Paris at six-thirty.
‘Alors, Valentin?’
‘Nothing yet,’ replied Valentin. ‘We’ve had road blocks up on every road and track leading out of the area since mid-morning. He must be inside the circle somewhere, unless he moved far away after ditching the car. That thrice-damned taxi-driver who drove him out of Egletons on Friday morning has not turned up yet. I’ve got patrols scouring the roads around here for him … Hold it a minute, another report just coming in.’
There was a pause on the line and Lebel could hear Valentin conferring with someone who was speaking quickly. Then Valentin’s voice came back on the line.
‘Name of a dog, what’s going on round here? There’s been a murder.’
‘Where?’ asked Lebel with quickened interest.
‘At a château in the neighbourhood. The report has just come in from the village constable.’
‘Who’s the dead person?’
‘The owner of the château. A woman. Hold on a moment … The Baroness de la Chalonnière.’
Caron watched Lebel go pale.
‘Valentin, listen to me. It’s him. Has he got away from the château yet?’
There was another conference in the police station at Egletons.
‘Yes,’ said Valentin, ‘he drove away this morning in the Baroness’s car. A small Renault. The gardener discovered the body, but not until this afternoon. He thought she must have been sleeping. Then he climbed through the window and found her.’
‘Have you got the number and description of the car?’ asked Lebel.
‘Yes.’
‘Then put out a general alert. There’s no need for secrecy any more. It’s a straight murder hunt now. I’ll put out a nationwide alert for it, but try and pick up the trail near the scene of the crime if you can. Try to get his general direction of flight.’
‘Right, will do. Now we can really get started.’
Lebel hung up.
‘Dear God, I’m getting slow in my old age. The name of the Baroness de la Chalonnière was on the guest list at the Hôtel du Cerf the night the Jackal stayed there.’
The car was found in a back street in Tulle at 7.30 by a policeman on the beat. It was 7.45 before he was back in the police station at Tulle and 7.55 before Tulle had contacted Valentin. The Commissaire of Auvergne rang Lebel at 8.05.
‘About five hundred metres from the railway station,’ he told Lebel.
‘Have you got a railway timetable there?’
‘Yes, there should be one here somewhere.’
‘What was the time of the morning train to Paris from Tulle, and what time is it due at the Gare d’Austerlitz? Hurry, for God’s sake hurry.’
There was a murmured conversation at the Egletons end of the line.
‘Only two a day,’ said Valentin. ‘The morning train left at eleven-fifty and is due in Paris at … here we are, ten past eight …’
Lebel left the phone hanging and was halfway out of the office yelling at Caron to follow him.
The eight-ten express steamed majestically into the Gare d’Austerlitz precisely on time. It had hardly stopped when the doors down its gleaming length were flung open and the passengers were spilling on to the platform, some to be greeted by waiting relatives, others to stride towards the series of arches that led from the main hall into the taxi-rank. One of these was a tall grey-haired person in a dog collar. He was one of the first at the taxi-rank, and humped his three bags into the back of a Mercedes diesel.
The driver slammed the meter over and eased away from the entrance to slide down the incline towards the street. The forecourt had a semicircular driveway, with one gate for coming and one for going out. The taxi rolled down the slope towards the exit. Both driver and passenger became aware of a wailing sound rising over and above the clamour of passengers trying to attract the attention of taxi-drivers before their turn had arrived. As the taxi reached the level of the street and paused before entering the traffic, three squad cars and two Black Marias swept into the entrance an
d drew to a halt before the main arches leading to the station hall.
‘Huh, they’re busy tonight, the sods,’ said the taxi-driver. ‘Where to, Monsieur l’Abbé?’
The parson gave him the address of a small hotel on the Quai des Grands Augustins.
Claude Lebel was back in his office at nine o’clock, to find a message asking him to ring Commissaire Valentin at the commissariat in Tulle. He was through in five minutes. While Valentin talked, he took notes.
‘Have you fingerprinted the car?’ asked Lebel.
‘Of course, and the room at the château. Hundreds of sets, all matching.’
‘Get them up here as fast as you can.’
‘Right, will do. Do you want me to send the CRS man from Tulle railway station up as well?’
‘No, thanks, he can’t tell us more than he already has. Thanks for trying, Valentin. You can stand your boys down. He’s in our territory now. We’ll have to handle it from here.’
‘You’re sure it is the Danish pastor?’ asked Valentin. ‘It could be coincidence.’
‘No,’ said Lebel, ‘it’s him all right. He’s junked one of the suitcases, you’ll probably find it somewhere between Haute Chalonnière and Tulle. Try the rivers and ravines. But the other three pieces of luggage match too closely. It’s him all right.’
He hung up.
‘A parson this time,’ he said bitterly to Caron, ‘a Danish parson. Name unknown, the CRS man couldn’t remember the name on the passport. The human element, always the human element. A taxi-driver goes to sleep by the roadside, a gardener is too nervous to investigate his employer oversleeping by six hours, a policeman doesn’t remember a name in a passport. One thing I can tell you, Lucien, this is my last case. I’m getting too old. Old and slow. Get my car ready, would you. Time for the evening roasting.’
The meeting at the Ministry was strained and tense. For forty minutes the group listened to a step by step account of the trail from the forest clearing to Egletons, the absence of the vital taxi-driver, the murder in the château, the tall grey Dane boarding the Paris express at Tulle.
‘The long and the short of it,’ said Saint-Clair icily, when he had finished, ‘is that the killer is now in Paris, with a new name and a new face. You seem to have failed once again, my dear commissaire.’
‘Let us save the recriminations for later,’ interposed the Minister. ‘How many Danes are there in Paris tonight?’
‘Probably several hundreds, Monsieur le Ministre.’
‘Can we check them?’
‘Only in the morning, when the hotel registration cards come in to the Prefecture,’ said Lebel.
‘I will arrange to have every hotel visited at midnight, two o’clock and four o’clock,’ proposed the Prefect of Police. ‘Under the heading of “profession” he will have to put “pastor” or the hotel clerk will be suspicious.’
The room brightened.
‘He will probably wrap a scarf round his dog collar, or take it off, and register as “mister” whatever-his-name-is,’ said Lebel. Several people glowered at him.
‘At this point, gentlemen, there is only one thing left to do,’ said the Minister. ‘I shall ask for another interview with the President and ask him to cancel all public appearances until this man is found and disposed of. In the meantime every Dane registering in Paris tonight will be checked personally first thing in the morning. I can rely on you for that, Commissaire? Monsieur le Préfet de Police?’
Lebel and Papon nodded.
‘Then that is all, gentlemen.’
‘The thing that sticks in my craw,’ said Lebel to Caron later in their office, ‘is that they insist on thinking it’s just his good luck and our stupidity. Well, he’s had good luck, but he’s also devilishly clever. And we’ve had bad luck, and we’ve made mistakes. I’ve made them. But there’s another element. Twice we’ve missed him by hours. Once he get’s out of Gap with a re-painted car in the nick of time. Now he leaves the château and kills his mistress into the bargain within hours of the Alfa Romeo being found. And each time it’s the morning after I have told that meeting at the Ministry that we have him in the bag, and his capture can be expected within twelve hours. Lucien, my dear fellow, I think I’m going to use my limitless powers and organise a little wire-tapping.’
He was leaning against the window-ledge, looking out across the softly flowing Seine towards the Latin Quarter where the lights were bright and the sound of laughter floated over the floodlit water.
Three hundred yards away another man leaned over his window sill in the summer night and gazed pensively at the bulk of the Police Judiciaire lying to the left of the spotlit spires of Notre Dame. He was clad in black trousers and walking shoes, with a polo-necked silk sweater covering a white shirt and black bib. He smoked a king-size English filter cigarette, and the young face belied the shock of iron-grey hair above it.
As the two men looked towards each other unknowing above the waters of the Seine, the varied chimes of the churches of Paris ushered in August 22nd.
PART THREE
Anatomy of a kill
19
CLAUDE LEBEL HAD A bad night. It was half past one, and he had barely got to sleep when Caron shook him awake.
‘Chief, I’m sorry about this, but I’ve had an idea. This chap, the Jackal. He’s got a Danish passport, right?’
Lebel shook himself awake.
‘Go on.’
‘Well, he must have got it from somewhere. Either he had it forged or he stole it. But as carrying the passport has entailed a change of hair colouring, it looks as if he stole it.’
‘Reasonable. Go on.’
‘Well, apart from his reconnaissance trip to Paris in July, he has been based in London. So the chances are he stole it in one of those two cities. Now what would a Dane do when his passport was lost or stolen? He’d go to his consulate.’
Lebel struggled off the cot.
‘Sometimes, my dear Lucien, I think you will go far. Get me Superintendent Thomas at his home, then the Danish Consul-General in Paris. In that order.’
He spent another hour on the phone and persuaded both men to leave their beds and get back to their offices. Lebel went back to his cot at nearly three in the morning. At four he was woken by a call from the Préfecture de Police to say that over nine hundred and eighty hotel registration cards filled in by Danes staying in Paris hotels had been brought in by the collections at midnight and 2 am, and sorting of them into categories of ‘probable’, ‘possible’ and ‘others’ had already started.
At six he was still awake and drinking coffee when the call came from the engineers at the DST, to whom he had given his instructions just after midnight. There had been a catch. He took a car and drove down through the early-morning streets to their headquarters with Caron beside him. In a basement communications laboratory they listened to a tape-recording.
It started with a loud click, then a series of whirrs as if someone was dialling seven figures. Then there was the long buzz of a telephone ringing, followed by another click as the receiver was lifted.
A husky voice said, ‘Allo?’
A woman’s voice said, ‘Ici Jacqueline.’
The man’s voice replied, ‘Ici Valmy.’
The woman said quickly, ‘They know he’s a Danish parson. They’re checking through the night the hotel registration cards of all Danes in Paris, with card collections at midnight, two and four o’clock. Then they’re going to visit every one.’
There was a pause, then the man’s voice said, ‘Merci.’ He hung up, and the woman did the same.
Lebel stared at the slowly turning tape spool.
‘You know the number she rang?’ Lebel asked the engineer.
‘Yup. We can work it out from the length of the delay while the dialing disc spins back to zero. The number was MOLITOR 5901.’
‘You have the address?’
The man passed him a slip of paper. Lebel glanced at it.
‘Come on, Lucien. Let’s go a
nd pay a call on Monsieur Valmy.’
‘What about the girl?’
‘Oh, she’ll have to be charged.’
The knock came at seven o’clock. The schoolmaster was brewing himself a cup of breakfast food on the gas-ring. With a frown he turned down the gas and crossed the sitting room to open the door. Four men were facing him. He knew who they were and what they were without being told. The two in uniform looked as if they were going to lunge at him, but the short, mild-looking man gestured for them to remain where they were.
‘We tapped the phone,’ said the little man quietly. ‘You’re Valmy.’
The schoolmaster gave no sign of emotion. He stepped back and let them enter the room.
‘May I get dressed?’ he asked.
‘Yes, of course.’
It took him only a few minutes, as the two uniformed policemen stood over him, to draw on trousers and shirt, without bothering to remove his pyjamas. The younger man in plain clothes stood in the doorway. The older man wandered round the flat, inspecting the piles of books and papers.
‘It’ll take ages to sort through this little lot, Lucien,’ he said, and the man in the doorway grunted.
‘Not our department, thank God.’
‘Are you ready?’ the little man asked the schoolmaster.
‘Yes.’
‘Take him downstairs to the car.’
The Commissaire remained when the other four had left, riffling through the papers on which the schoolmaster had apparently been working the night before. But they were all ordinary school examination papers being corrected. Apparently the man worked from his flat; he would have to stay in the flat all day to remain on the end of the telephone in case the Jackal called. It was ten past seven when the telephone rang. Lebel watched it for several seconds. Then his hand reached out and picked it up.
‘Allo?’
The voice on the other end was flat, toneless.
‘Ici Chacal.’
Lebel thought furiously.