Pel & The Pirates (Chief Inspector Pel) Page 8

  ‘His hands were gashed.’ Doctor Nicolas held up his own hands, casually, indifferently, as if he didn’t care very much whether it pleased or helped Pel or not. ‘He’d obviously tried to grab the knife. Some of the wounds were deep. Since there was also blood inside the car and on the steering wheel, it seemed to me that someone had attacked him and he’d fought them off and made a dash for his car to try to get to you for help. The wounds in the back were superficial – as if they’d jabbed at him as he ran, and missed. The wound in the chest, which was doubtless the last one, was delivered, I would say, as he turned desperately to fight off his attacker. That was the wound that killed him. It was an upward thrust and went in just below the ribs and reached the heart.’ He looked up. ‘Do you want it all down on paper?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bon Dieu de bon Dieu! That’s work!’

  Pel studied the doctor. He had the sort of face that looked like a car that had been reassembled after an accident. Nothing matched and he looked seedy, while his clothes hung from him like a sack, his trousers, when he stood up, in danger, it seemed, of falling round his ankles.

  ‘You seem to know your business,’ he observed. ‘Have you done this sort of thing before?’

  ‘Many times.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t get that many murders here.’

  ‘We don’t. And if we did they’d be simple bludgeoning. A wife hitting a husband with a bottle when he came home drunk. A husband hitting his wife with a shovel when she nagged. Men trying to brain each other with jack handles. Fights. That sort of thing. Nothing so neat as this.’

  ‘Then where did you do it?’

  ‘Marseilles. I often worked for the police there.’

  ‘Why did you come here?’

  Nicolas indicated the brandy and soda he was drinking. ‘That,’ he said.

  Pel eyed him for a moment. ‘But is a knife as odd as you suggest? This place isn’t far from Italy. Italians have a fondness for knives.’

  ‘So do southern Frenchmen.’ Nicolas gave a little cackle of laughter. ‘They also use sisal spikes. Knives are forbidden but there’s nothing to stop a man in a fight using one of those. They’re as deadly as a dagger.’

  ‘But on the whole they don’t use them?’ Nicolas shrugged. ‘The Vicomte keeps too sharp an eye on what goes on. If people cause trouble, they find their business fading. Nobody would come to their garage or their shop or their small holding.’

  ‘He runs it like that, does he?’

  The doctor gave Pel a glance under the brim of the battered straw hat. It was sly and boozy. ‘It’s as good a way of keeping order as I know,’ he said.

  Pel stared about him. The Place du Port, where they were sitting, was a concrete area as big as a football field. Around it were one or two boutique-type shops and the bars had a brash modernistic look that didn’t fit the island or its architecture. They had plastic signs over the doors and plastic palms on the terrasses, and the rows of red, blue and yellow plastic-seated chairs, each bar’s seating a different colour, were separated by alleyways to indicate territorial boundaries in a way that indicated a sort of organisation that was never, Pel felt sure, indigenous to the island. The seaward end of the square finished with a neat concrete wall with smart plastic benches, a flagpole, the harbourmaster’s office, and a number of excellent jetties sticking out into the bay. Alongside the jetties were several smart yachts.

  ‘The developers seem to have been hard at work here,’ Pel observed. ‘This is a pretty modern set-up for a backward island of no known fame.’

  Nicolas chuckled. ‘It is a bit,’ he agreed. ‘But it’ll be popular before long.’

  ‘Somebody trying to push the place?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Who paid for it?’

  ‘I don’t know. But when the smart yachts are moving up and down the Mediterranean in the summer and need to put in somewhere for the evening, they want somewhere where they can drink.’

  ‘They can’t eat,’ Pel said, thinking of Riccio’s.

  Nicolas gave his low cackling laugh. It sounded like water going down a drain. ‘Oh, they can in the summer. The hotel here in the Vieux Port puts on a splendid show. They also run a discotheque where everybody can have a jig together.’ Nicolas smiled. ‘You’d be surprised the sights we see here when the jet set arrive. You’d think they were dressed to go to the palace at Monaco or somewhere like that. And why not? This place’s a bit like Monte Carlo. During the day, they wear scruffy jeans and striped shirts – expensive scruffy jeans and expensive striped shirts, mind you – but at night in their glad rags they set out to show us what they can do when they try.’

  Pel gestured at the harbour. ‘It’s still a big affair.’

  Nicolas shrugged. ‘It’s good for the island’s trade.’

  ‘Which, I suppose, is also the Vicomte’s trade?’

  ‘Put it that way if you like.’

  ‘I’m surprised the government allowed it. It might be excellent for the jet set but it hardly fits in with the natural surroundings. Where did they get permission?’

  ‘Usual place. The Ministry of Beaux Arts, I suppose. There’s always plenty of this, isn’t there?’ Doctor Nicolas held out his hand and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.

  ‘Bribes?’

  ‘It’s been known.’

  ‘Is the Vicomte involved in that sort of thing?’

  Nicolas smiled. ‘Shouldn’t think so. He’s no need to be. There are plenty of people here who’d be glad to sort out a little matter of that kind and present him with a fait accompli.’

  ‘Would he accept it?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Who’re we thinking of in particular?’

  ‘You won’t find them in the Vieux Port. The Vieux Port’s just islanders. People who’ve lived here for generations. You’ve got to look further afield than that.’

  ‘How much further afield?’

  ‘To the new developments. There are a few.

  There’s one behind Biz and one behind Le Havre du Sud and one on the other coast at Muriel. That’s a good one. A big one. They bought the land–’

  ‘Who from?’

  Nicolas shrugged. ‘It must have been the Vicomte. It’s his island. They laid down roads and dropped their plans in the offices of house agents on the mainland. Almost every plot was bought up at once.’

  ‘Did the Vicomte object?’

  ‘He sold the land. How could he?’

  ‘And who was behind this project?’

  ‘Type called Rambert. Raymond Rambert. He lives there. He fancies himself a bit, I think. House as big as the Elysée Palace. Tough. Always a woman there. Does his business on the telephone like the film people. Never face to face. Never anything on paper.’

  ‘Would he know Caceolari?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘Did you?’

  Dr Nicolas was toying with his empty glass now, dropping clear hints that he needed another. Pel gestured at the waiter and neither of them spoke until the fresh brandy had arrived. Nicolas swallowed half of it at a gulp.

  ‘What sort of man was he?’

  ‘Lazy.’ Nicolas gestured. ‘Half the time his taxi didn’t work.’

  ‘It didn’t when it picked us up from the boat.’

  ‘Exactly. There’s only one bus on the island. It runs from the Vieux Port here to Biz three times a week, and to Le Havre du Sud the other three days. On Sundays it doesn’t run at all. Caceolari’s was the only taxi and you’d therefore assume he’d do well. But he didn’t. There are no petrol pumps on the island and all cars have to be filled by hand from cans at the garage here.’ A limp hand waved. ‘At the other end of the town over there. I’ve seen holidaymakers with villas at Biz who’ve missed the bus after shopping here in the Vieux Port wait hours for Caceolari’s taxi to turn up. And when it has turned up, it’s had to coast down the hill because he’s run out of petrol. They’ve then waited another half hour while he fetched a can of
petrol from the garage and then, having filled it, they’ve had to push-start it because the battery was flat.’

  ‘You’d say he was inefficient?’

  Nicolas lit a cigarette. ‘Everybody’s inefficient here. The fishing fleet’s inefficient, and out of date. Caceolari’s taxi was out of date. Apart from the new one here in the Vieux Port the hotels are out of date. The police are out of date. The fire brigade’s out of date. I’m out of date. The only thing that isn’t out of date’s the Vicomte’s estate. That runs like clockwork.’

  ‘To the detriment of the rest of the place?’ Nicolas finished his brandy, and Pel gestured again at the waiter. For the first time Nicolas was talking freely.

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘If it weren’t for the Vicomte the whole damn place would die under our feet. People in the south are always lazy. It’s the sun. It’s possible to live without money.’ He gestured at the youngsters arguing noisily on the sea wall. ‘That’s why they come here. They don’t get paid much but they can live like lords. They don’t need clothes. Food’s cheap. Drink’s cheap. In the summer the place’s full of them. All sleeping rough. On the beach. In boats. Sharing apartments. Twelve to a room. But they go away in the winter. The Vicomte’s freezers employ islanders and his export business employs a whole lot more. All year round. Frozen food, olives, cheese – island cheese. Olive oil, flowers. To the mainland for the Marseilles shops.

  ‘What about imports?’

  ‘Food, of course. Pasta from Italy. The people here have Italian backgrounds and they like pasta. Italian wine. It’s cheap. Fruit from southern Italy. Machinery of one sort or another.’

  ‘What’s “one sort or another”?’

  Nicolas gave his low chuckle. ‘Juke boxes. Pin tables. All the bars have them and youngsters don’t seem able to live without them. Coffee machines.’

  ‘Small ones?’

  ‘Rapido Minis. Rapidos are the same as Espressos or Gaggias really. Minis are smaller editions. The Vicomte brings them in. He buys them half-completed, adds the motors and the wiring in workshops he’s made in the stables at the back of the château and sells them complete on the mainland. Half the bars along the south coast have them. And half the houses have the miniature. I’ve got one myself in my surgery. You simply switch on and it starts working. He must be making a fortune from the fact that people have grown too lazy even to make a cup of coffee.’

  ‘How many do they need on an island this size?’

  ‘Not many.’ As Nicolas pushed his glass forward, the waiter filled it automatically, and Pel began to suspect the old doctor passed out every afternoon in the heat of the sun. ‘But Rochemare’s clever. He imports them via Corsica, which is close by. That way, he dodges a lot of the duties on them. We make our own laws here, you know. Like Monaco, San Marino and Andorra. And we’re not too hard on smugglers because there used to be a lot here. There still are, I suppose. Watches from Switzerland, whisky from Scotland. There used to be pirates, too. Perhaps there still are.’

  ‘Pirates?’

  ‘Pirates were people who took over islands where they lived out of reach of the law, spending their ill-gotten loot. We have a few here like that. They made their money on the mainland then came here to spend it.’

  Pel was silent for a while then he brought the subject back to Caceolari. ‘If Caceolari thought he was in grave danger, as he must have been when he was attacked, why did he try to get to the Villa des Roses? Why did he climb the hill out of the town and rattle through all those olive groves, knowing that every minute he delayed increased the risk of dying? He must have known that when he arrived he’d still have to get out of his car and scramble down that scree slope. Why didn’t he just go to the police station? It’s over there.’

  As Pel gestured at the drab flat-fronted building at the opposite side of the square, Nicolas’ boozy smile came again.

  ‘Perhaps there was a whole line of people barring his way,’ he suggested.

  Or else, Pel thought to himself, he didn’t expect to get much help from Beauregard.

  Eight

  It was Babin, the postman, who informed them cheerfully that a house near Biz had been burned to the ground during the night. He was off-duty and riding a blue two-stroke motor cycle. Stopping outside the Duponts’ house where Pel and his wife were sitting on the verandah drinking their coffee, he tossed a bundle of catalogues into the garage. Since the pile never grew larger, they assumed the Duponts sneaked in when they were out and removed them.

  ‘Thought I’d drop them in,’ he said. ‘We don’t work union rules on the island. Heard about the burning?’

  He explained what had happened. ‘Up on the cliffs,’ he said. ‘Overlooking the sea. One of those new conversions they did two years ago. I went out with the mail and there it was. Gone. Owners in Paris, of course. They’ll probably not find out for days. I noticed one or two round there looking for what they could get.’

  ‘One or two who?’

  ‘Neighbours. Islanders. Looting, you’d call it, I expect. I bet the garden tools have vanished. They probably vanished before they even set fire to the place.’

  ‘Is that what happens?’

  The postman shrugged. ‘I expect the owners have plenty of money.’

  ‘Perhaps they haven’t,’ Pel said. ‘Perhaps they’d saved up all their lives to build a holiday home here.’

  The postman grinned. ‘Not they. I know them. They come here for August and let the place in May, June, July and September to a British holiday firm. They’ve made what it cost them to buy and modernise it ten times over already.

  ‘Are you an islander?’

  ‘Born and bred.’

  ‘I thought you might be.’

  Babin waved, revved his engine and let in the clutch. The motor bike lifted on to its rear wheel as he shot off towards the harbour.

  ‘Very modern, this island,’ Pel commented dryly.

  They’d left it to Beauregard to see Madame Caceolari, the dead man’s widow, in the belief that, since she knew him, it might be easier. Interviewing the spouses of murder victims was never a job any policeman sought and, since Beauregard had so far done remarkably little, they’d decided it was a chore he might well undertake. Instead he informed them he’d been too busy.

  ‘Doing what?’ Pel snapped.

  Beauregard gestured. ‘You’d be surprised at the paperwork.’

  Every policeman knew it took longer to fill in the papers afterwards than to arrest a criminal, but so far nobody had been arrested and the island seemed a remarkably easy-going place, so there couldn’t have been a lot for Beauregard to do. But he was full of excuses, his attitude that of the only righteous man in a perfidious and dissolute world, so that Pel began to wonder if he’d been carrying on an affair with Madame Caceolari or something, and they decided to go themselves. Enough time had surely elapsed for her to collect herself and, with De Troq’ driving the Duponts’ car, they left Madame chattering happily in the kitchen to Nelly Biazz and headed towards the old town.

  Caceolari’s wife was a plump pale woman who looked as though she avoided the sun as much as possible. Like so many of the islanders, she looked more Italian than French and had obviously once been pretty. But too much pasta had put on flesh, and she had become heavy-footed, hollow-eyed and slow.

  She showed Pel and De Troq’ into a dark kitchen where she sat them at a table covered with American cloth in a hideous red and green squared pattern. It was old, frayed at the edges and marked with knife cuts which had gone black with age. The sink was piled with dirty crockery and the Butane gas cooker was thick with grease. As they sat down, she placed in front of them glasses that were thick and opaque enough to have been in the family for generations and become worn with use. Sloshing wine into them, she sat opposite and waited with her hands on the table for them to speak. Despite what Beauregard had said, she looked remarkably composed.

  After the formalities of sympathy and condolences, they got down to the questions.

&nb
sp; ‘My Paolo was a good man,’ she said. ‘But he was weak. He was lazy.’

  ‘Did he ever quarrel with anybody?’

  ‘He never quarrelled. Not even with me. It was frustrating. When I wanted to quarrel with him – and that was often because he made me angry – he simply refused.’

  ‘Then who’d want to kill him?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Had he any enemies you know of?’

  She shrugged again. ‘He was too lazy to make enemies. He needed strength. Strength.’ She clasped one of her hands into a fist and held it up. ‘Strength,’ she said again.

  ‘Can you explain, Madame?’

  ‘He didn’t like work. He wouldn’t repair his taxi. He preferred to sit in the sunshine and talk. Drink, too. Then, when someone wanted his taxi, it wouldn’t go and he lost the fare. Always I had to tell him to work on it. Always I had to remind him there was work to do, people to be fetched and carried, repairs to be made.’ She gestured to the kitchen. ‘Look at this. It needs painting. I need a new cooker. I need curtains. I need a new covering for the table. Did I get them? No. And I never will now. It’s a good job there are no children. I think he was too lazy even for that.’

  ‘He was out the night he was killed,’ Pel said. ‘Did you know he was out?’

  ‘He was never in. If he wasn’t drinking by the harbour, he was drinking at Biz. If he wasn’t at Biz, he was at Le Havre du Sud. Or with Magimel, who has a farm in the hills at Crêvecoeur. Or Lesage who runs the garage, or Rolland who has the forge, or Desplanques.’

  ‘And Desplanques?’

  ‘He runs the olive oil factory for the Vicomte.’

  ‘On the night he was killed he was at Mortcerf.’

  ‘With that woman? I thought so. It’s understandable.’

  ‘Understandable? Why?’

  ‘Because she’s a woman. She has pretty clothes, such as I don’t have. She has a better figure. She’s not worn out with work as I am. She has money. I haven’t. She offered him drink. I never did. He was always there. Every week he went.’