Pel and the Predators Read online

  ‘Motor car?’

  ‘That’s my view. It was also the pathologist’s view. So it then began to look like a hit-and-run. I now saw her depressed, lonely, wandering about in the dark. Perhaps she’d been drinking and was unaware of the approaching traffic.’

  ‘Let’s just say,’ Pel suggested mildly, ‘that she was knocked down. Without the trimmings. And that whoever did it panicked and put her in the sea, hoping you’d assume it was suicide.’

  Le Bihan grinned. ‘All right. No dramatics. That’s exactly what I thought. All the same, an unreported accident’s against the law and a hit-and-run killing can be manslaughter.’

  ‘There’s one other thing, too,’ Pet said. ‘Was she pregnant?’

  ‘Ah,’ Le Bihan said. ‘That occurred to me, too. Yes, she was. Three months.’

  ‘In which case,’ Pel pointed out, ‘it might even be murder.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  There was a long silence while Pel looked at Le Bihan. ‘You ever been on the stage?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Often thought I ought to have a go, though. Not very difficult, I imagine. just learning a few lines and prancing about in front of an audience.’

  ‘I was thinking chiefly of production,’ Pel said. ‘You have a dramatic way of presenting things.’

  Le Bihan applied a match to his pipe and began to blow out clouds of blue smoke. In self-defence Pel had to light a cigarette. It was a good excuse.

  ‘So,’ Le Bihan went on, ‘in the end we decided it was done by a car. Even perhaps by something else and disguised to look like a car.’

  ‘And,’ Pel said, ‘what we have now is rather more than just a suicide.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Le Bihan smiled. ‘Whichever way you look at it, there seems to have been some criminal intent, and we need to find who did it. For that we need to know who she is.’ He beamed at Pel and gestured with his pipe. ‘And that,’ he ended, ‘seems to be where you come in.’

  Three

  The first thing to do was to check with Missing Persons, and that seemed a good job for Sergeant Lagé. Lagé was an amiable, easygoing man who was always willing to do other people’s work – usually that of Misset who did as little as possible – so Pel sent him along to see what he could find out.

  Missing Persons were inclined to be cynical. It wasn’t that they were without hearts, just that, quite apart from those whose disappearances were linked with violence or crime, quite a lot of people chose to vanish for reasons of their own: Men who couldn’t stand their wives. Wives who couldn’t stand their husbands. Children who couldn’t stand their parents. Men whose girl friends had suddenly found themselves in an interesting condition and didn’t want to face the obligations. People with debts. People with too much responsibility. People who were sick. People who were too fit for their own good. It kept Missing Persons busy, and, saving their sympathy for anxious relatives, they hadn’t a lot to spare for other policemen.

  ‘Of course we’ve got her here,’ Lagé was told cheerfully. ‘Together with about ten million others. Disappearing from home’s the in thing this year. Got a name?’

  ‘Part of a name,’ Lagé said. ‘Lucie. L.U.C.I.E. We found it on a locket she was wearing round her neck.’

  ‘Where did you find her?’

  ‘In the sea.’

  The man behind the desk looked startled. ‘Name of God,’ he said. ‘It’s making inroads, isn’t it? I’ve heard of coastal erosion but I didn’t know it had got so far inland as Burgundy!’

  ‘Not here,’ Lagé explained. ‘In Brittany. She probably came from here.’

  Files were opened and the computer put to work. ‘We have quite a nice selection,’ Lagé was informed. ‘We have a Lucille Lecesne, for instance. Aged twelve. Disappeared from a farm near Longeau. It’s my view she got lost in the woods there and when they find her she’ll be dead. Then there’s a Marie-Luce Donet, but she’s fifty-four; and a Lucianne Charette, but she’s got jet-black hair and doesn’t sound much like your Lucie. We’ve also got a kid called Jean-Luc Rouher. On drugs. Aged twenty. Known as “Lucie” to his friends. I think he was one of those. Will he do?’

  Lagé gave a pained smile.

  ‘We’ve got some splendid Anne-Maries and one or two Jeannes. Even a Gabrielle or two. Or how about an Odette?’

  Lagé was beginning to show signs of irritation. ‘How about cutting out the funny bits?’ he suggested. ‘She has a scar on her eyebrow, the usual vaccination marks and the marks of a hypodermic on her arm.’

  The man behind the desk shrugged. ‘Half of them have hypodermic marks on their arm. It’s one of the main reasons they go missing. And three quarters have scars along their eyebrows. Where they were hit by a swing as a kid. And they’ve all got vaccination marks. Anything else helpful?’

  ‘She was wearing a dress from Mirabelle’s.’

  ‘We don’t have files for Mirabelle’s? Perhaps you should ask them.’

  By this time Lagé was beginning to think it might be a good idea.

  As they had informed Le Bihan, however, Mirabelle’s kept no record of cash sale customers and they’d already been through their records of credit and cheque sales and could produce nothing further. Lagé did his best to describe the dead girl from the information he had but nobody could remember anything.

  Trying Narcotics, Lagé then tried to find out if the dead girl were known there, but the result was as uncertain as it had been with Missing Persons. Too little was known about her. They were getting nowhere fast.

  Since she’d been found in Concarneau’s area, Pel was even beginning by this time to take the view that it was Concarneau’s problem not his, especially since his department was busy enough as it was. De Troquereau, who’d been put on to Boyer’s missing ducks, had found nothing yet and the Chief was asking questions; the break-in at Talant was still unresolved; and nobody at Noray was talking about the wounding. Noray was a hill village and people in hill villages were inclined to keep their own council so that Misset, who was doing the enquiring and wasn’t the most energetic detective in the world, anyway, couldn’t have been said to be producing results. However, the death at Marvillers, as Pel had expected, had turned out to be a complicated form of suicide, which was a help, but it still left the assault at Germaine, the petrol theft at Loublanc and the terrorising of the Montchapet district to be sorted out. Le Bihan, he felt, could well search for his dead girl himself but unfortunately the Chief had promised his old friend in Brittany to do all he could.

  He was still almost inclined to push the whole thing aside when a thought occurred to him and he pulled forward the photographs Le Bihan had given him. Turning up the one of the necklet, he studied it for a while then rang for Lagé.

  ‘This name,’ he said. “Lucie.” Perhaps it isn’t the name of a girl.’

  Lagé looked puzzled. ‘Who else’s would it be on a locket, Patron? A man’s? The necklets men wear are longer and heavier than that. My wife gave me one once. She said she thought it would make me look sexy. All it did was fall in my beer every time I leaned forward.’

  Pel gestured. ‘When people have names engraved on jewellery for their wives or their girl friends,’ he pointed out, ‘they usually have it done in decorative lettering, and with some size. The bigger and more flowery the lettering, the more undying the love. Look at this.’

  Lagé leaned forward.

  ‘The letters are square Roman-type capitals and they’re so minute you can’t distinguish them without a magnifying glass. This has been enlarged about ten times. That doesn’t sound like a protestation of undying love. Could it be the name of the man who made it? Try Mercier’s, the jewellers. They’ll probably know.’

  Immediately Lagé hit the jackpot. Lagé liked to hit the jackpot occasionally. Though he wasn’t blessed with a lot of imagination and didn’t have brilliant hunches, he was good at making enquiries because he was always patient and didn’t mind taking trouble. Roger Mercier, who ran the family business, recognised the name at once.r />
  ‘Lucie was well-known,’ he said.

  ‘Was?’

  ‘Not any longer.’

  Lagé blinked. ‘Lucie What, then?’

  ‘Lucie nothing.’ Mercier shrugged. ‘Just Lucie. The jeweller, Aristide Lucie. He worked here. In this city. In the Rue de Berry.’ He began to fish into cupboards and produce dusty books. Laying them in front of Lagé, he explained. ‘Look, this is the mark of Tiffanys’, of New York: Here’s one of Froment-Meurice. Just his name, you see, engraved into his work. This one’s Fabergé, in Cyrillic script. Sometime they used their initials. Sometimes their name. Sometimes a monogram or a single letter. Sometimes you also find the city mark – Amsterdam. Paris. Toulouse. Lalique used his surname or his initials. So did Lucie. They were friends and contemporaries, of course, with Lalique perhaps the better. Lucie ran him a good second, though he operated for a much shorter time. I think he made these chains and lockets right up to the time the firm finally packed up.’

  ‘Bankrupt?’

  ‘Oh, no! His son, Georges, was called up for the army like everybody else in 1914 and was killed at Verdun. The only other son, Louis, died in the influenza epidemic in 1918. There was no one else with the skill or knowledge to carry on the business – only an unmarried daughter, Giselle, who had only just started to help in the business – so it just vanished. It doesn’t exist any more.’

  Lagé sighed. It didn’t help much.

  Mercier opened another book and showed more photographs. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘That’s one of your chains and lockets. They were rather a speciality of theirs. They made them between 1900 and 1925 when the firm packed up. It’s a long time ago, I’m afraid.’

  It provided another blank wall but Lagé wasn’t patient and hard-working for nothing. He went to the Maire’s office and started searching there. Assuming that, if she’d married at all, Giselle Lucie would surely have married somewhere between 1920 and 1930, eventually, in the records for 1922 he turned up a Marie-Joséphine Giselle Lucie, with an address in the city, who had married a man called Marcel Caous. It was a step forward, only a small one, but it was forward.

  He took the problem back to Roger Mercier who telephoned his father, who was retired, but came up with the information that he’d known a Marcel Caous in the same line of business as himself in Auxerre.

  ‘I don’t suppose you know them, do you?’ Lagé asked, feeling it was rather a long shot.

  ‘No.’ Roger Mercier smiled. ‘But, as it happens, I have heard of a Caous. Quite recently, as a matter of fact. She’s a girl at the university. My son’s there, doing law, and he’s been taking her around. I remember remarking on the name.’

  Lagé decided there and then that the next time he bought his wife a diamond tiara he’d buy it at Mercier’s just to show his appreciation.

  Lagé’s enquiries at the university revealed three girls with the surname Caous, which surprised everybody at the Hôtel de Police because no one could ever remember the name turning up before, and to find three at once seemed to suggest there was a secret hoard of them somewhere.

  Lagé took his discovery to Pel only to find that he was growing a little tired of Le Bihan’s dead girl, who seemed to be occupying far too much of his department’s time.

  ‘I’ve been in touch with two of the girls,’ Lagé said. ‘Both from the Avignay region. They seemed surprised that we’d never heard the name before. Apparently the countryside round there’s overrun with people called Caous.’

  ‘Well since we’ve never heard of them,’ Pel said, ‘they must be honest.’

  They’ve never heard of Lucies’, the jewellers.’

  ‘All square. We’ve never heard of them; they’ve never of Lucies’.’

  Lagé managed a smile. ‘There’s still one more – Patricia Caous. I haven’t been able to contact her yet. She lives at Tilly-le-Grand, up near Flagey. I’ve got the address and the telephone number but I got no reply. I asked the police there to try and they say the family’s away. Perhaps I should go there myself and enquire.’

  ‘It’s not the granddaughter we’re looking for,’ Pel said shortly. ‘It’s the grandmother.’

  ‘Yes, Patron.’ Lagé hesitated, wondering just what sort of temper Pel was in. ‘Is it urgent?’

  ‘Everything done by the Police Judiciaire is urgent,’ Pel said coldly. ‘But you needn’t panic. Had you hoped for a day out at Tilly?’

  Lagé had been hoping for a day out at Tilly. He’d seen a picture of Patricia Caous in a group photograph at the University and she had proved to be exceptionally pretty, and though Lagé was a happily married man who loved his wife, pretty girls were always pleasant to meet, while a day in the country was even pleasanter. ‘No, Patron,’ he lied. ‘Nothing like that.’

  Two days later, having been temporarily side-tracked over a small matter of a break-in at Lorgé and an assault case at Sousmontagne – nothing was ever straightforward in the police and you were never allowed to concentrate for long – he came back to Patricia Caous to find the family had returned. He appeared in Pel’s office, delighted with himself.

  ‘The girl at Tilly-le-Grand, Patron,’ he said. ‘I’ve contacted her at last. They’ve been in Italy. She says her great-grand-mother’s name before she was married was Giselle Lucie. The grandmother normally lives in Lyons, but at the moment she’s staying with her daughter, Madame Edouard Rambeau, the girl’s grandmother. Rambeau’s managing director of Métaux de Dijon. Address: Manoire de Ramy. I gather she’s pretty old. Shall I go to see her?’

  ‘No.’ Pel knew what was in Lagé’s mind but he felt like a day out of the office himself. ‘I’ll go.’

  The Manoire de Ramy was not a vast house but it was big. Standing in the middle of the village, it was surrounded by a large sloping garden filled with fine old trees and shrubberies and was a little dilapidated, though the dilapidation was not the dilapidation of neglect so much as over-use and, judging by the number of children’s bicycles, of over-use by children.

  ‘Mon Dieu, they’re not mine,’ Madame Rambeau said with a laugh. ‘Mine are grown up. I have one in America, one in Paris and one in Avallon. These come from Avallon.’

  Her mother, Madame Caous, appeared to have vanished from the face of the earth and excited children were sent in all directions shouting her name.

  ‘She doesn’t move very fast these days,’ Madame Rambeau pointed out. ‘But she gets around.’

  ‘I wouldn’t wish to tire her unnecessarily,’ Pel said. ‘Perhaps you’d like to be present while I talk to her.’

  Madame Rambeau laughed. ‘She’d be furious. To have her own little secret will make her day. She’ll tell us all about it later, of course – many times, I expect.’

  Madame Caous emerged eventually from the shrubbery, small, round, frail but with bright, humorous, alert eyes.

  ‘I’ve been taking a walk in the wood,’ she said mildly.

  Her daughter looked at her accusingly. ‘Doing what, Grandmère?’

  ‘Just doing my exercises. I like to do exercises. Exercises are good for the muscles.’ The old lady made a gesture or two with her arms which might or might not have been some sort of Swedish drill.

  ‘You’ve been smoking,’ her daughter accused. ‘You know the doctor says you shouldn’t.’

  ‘I never smoke,’ the old lady said firmly. ‘Well, just one after a meal, that’s all.’

  She had her own small apartment, a sunny corner on the ground floor of the house overlooking the garden, and she led Pel to it, chattering enthusiastically all the time.

  ‘I stay here two months at a time,’ she said. ‘Then I go to my son in Limoges for two months and then for two months my other son who’s in Bordeaux. It keeps me busy and a change is good for the mind. They give me this room so I can see my great-grandchildren. Do you have great-grandchildren, Monsieur Pol?’

  ‘Pel, Madame,’ Pel corrected. ‘I’m a bit young for great-grandchildren and in any case I’m not married.’

  ‘Oh
, you should be, you should be.’

  ‘I hope to be, Madame, before very long.’

  ‘I hope she’s nice.’ The old lady beamed. ‘You look such a kind man, Monsieur Pol. I like being with my descendants. It’s good for one’s morale. But it does have disadvantages. They’re all so strict with me about my diet and my smoking. Do you smoke, Monsieur Pol?’

  ‘Pel, Madame.’

  ‘Of course. Do you?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes.’

  ‘Have you tried to give it up?’

  ‘Without success, Madame.’

  ‘They say it causes bronchitis, thrombosis and other things.’

  Pel leaned forward. Perhaps he could learn something from this splendid old lady, who, despite her smoking, had already arrived at an age which he’d been convinced for years he would never reach.

  ‘What do you do about it?’ he asked.

  ‘I ignore it,’ she said unhelpfully. ‘I’m too old to worry. When we were young smoking was fashionable and everybody smoked. Showing off a little, I suppose, Monsieur Pol—’

  ‘Pel, Madame.’

  ‘Of course. So I’ve smoked all my life and I’m not going to give it up now. Would you like one? Nobody comes in here.’

  ‘What about your daughter? Won’t she mind?’

  ‘She’ll never know. I blow the smoke up the chimney. Draw your chair nearer.’

  For once Pel lit up with a feeling of reassurance. Madame Caous seemed remarkably fit despite her bad habits.

  For a moment or two, they happily blew smoke up the chimney then Madame Caous looked up, her eyes bright and interested. ‘Do you find it hard trying to give it up, Monsieur Pol?’

  ‘Madame, I find it agonising.’

  ‘They say you put on weight if you stop. I managed it once but it started me eating sweets and taking quick nips at the brandy. I decided I’d exchanged lung cancer for bad teeth and cirrhosis of the liver. Would you like a drink, Monsieur Pol?’