Maigret's Dead Man Page 16

  He winked repeatedly at her but it did no good.

  ‘I know. I was surprised too. It must be something serious, something unexpected that’s cropped up. She says she wants to talk to us right away.’

  He put his head round the door so that he could fire off more faces at his wife. She had no idea what to make of this.

  ‘Well, really! This is a surprise and no mistake. As long as nothing serious has happened …’

  ‘Unless it’s something to do with the inheritance?’

  ‘What inheritance?’

  ‘Her uncle’s.’

  When he returned to his visitor, Colombani had a knowing smile on his face.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, old son. My wife’s aunt will be here in a moment. I’ve just got time to get dressed. I’m not kicking you out but I hope you understand …’

  The detective chief inspector of the Sûreté swallowed the contents of his glass, stood up and wiped his mouth.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I know what it’s like. Will you give me a ring if you hear anything?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘I have a feeling you’ll be phoning me quite soon. I’m even wondering if it’s worth me going back to Rue des Saussaies. No, I won’t! If you don’t object, I think I’ll wander over to Quai des Orfèvres.’

  ‘That’s fine! I’ll see you later.’

  Maigret almost pushed him out on to the landing. Then, the moment the door was closed, he hurried across the room and looked out of the window. To his left, further along the road than Lhoste & Pépin, there was the shop of a wine and coal merchant who hailed from Auvergne. It was painted yellow. He fixed his eyes on its door, beside which stood a green plant.

  ‘That was all a trick, wasn’t it?’ asked Madame Maigret.

  ‘Of course! I didn’t want Colombani to meet the people who will be coming up the stairs at any moment.’

  As he spoke, he happened to lay one hand on the window-ledge, just where Colombani had been standing a few moments earlier. It landed on paper, a newspaper. He glanced down at it and saw that it was folded open at the page carrying the personal small ads: one had been ringed in blue.

  ‘Of all the …’ he muttered through gritted teeth.

  Now there is a long-standing rivalry between the nationwide Sûreté and Paris’s Police Judiciaire, and joy is unconfined when someone from Rue des Saussaies pulls a fast one on a colleague from Quai des Orfèvres.

  Actually, Colombani had not taken a particularly savage revenge on Maigret for lying about the aunt. He had merely left behind a clear signal that he had understood.

  The advertisement which had appeared in every newspaper that morning and also at midday in the racing papers, said, with the usual abbreviations:

  Friends of Albert, indispensable for security contact Maigret urgent home address 132, Boulevard Richard-Lenoir. Absolute discretion guaranteed.

  It was them, they had just phoned from the Auvergnat’s shop across the way to make sure that the advert was not a hoax or a trap, and to hear Maigret repeat his guarantee and lastly to make sure the coast was clear.

  ‘I need you to go out and walk around for a while, Madame Maigret. Don’t hurry back. Wear your hat with the green feather.’

  ‘Why my hat with the green feather?’

  ‘Because soon it will be spring.’

  Maigret watched them from his window as they crossed the road, looking like two men on an important mission. But from this distance he was only able to recognize one of them.

  A few moments earlier, he had known absolutely nothing about the men who were on their way to see him, or about their background. He would only have bet that they too were followers of the turf.

  ‘Colombani is hanging around somewhere, watching them,’ he muttered.

  And once Colombani got the scent he was quite capable of blowing his cover. It was just the kind of sly practical joke that colleagues regularly played on each other.

  Especially as Colombani probably knew Jo the Boxer better than he did.

  He was short, thick-set, with a broken nose and scarred eyelids over light-blue eyes. He invariably wore dog-tooth-checked suits and loud ties. In the aperitif hour he was always to be found in one of the small bars on Avenue de Wagram. He had been hauled up before Maigret in his office at least a dozen times, always for different misdemeanours, and each time he had managed to get away with it.

  Was he really dangerous? He would have liked people to think so, for he deliberately cultivated his image as a ‘bruiser’. It was his affectation to look as if he were part of the criminal fraternity, but members of the criminal fraternity did not trust him and even regarded him with a certain contempt.

  Maigret opened the door for them and put out fresh glasses on the table. They entered looking awkward and remained suspicious despite the reassurances. Their eyes darted into every corner, and they were visibly nervous about the closed doors.

  ‘Nothing to be scared of here. There is no hidden stenographer, no dictaphones. Look here, this is my bedroom.’

  He showed them the unmade bed.

  ‘This is the bathroom, that’s the clothes cupboard, and here you have the kitchen, which Madame Maigret has just vacated in your honour.’

  The simmering soup smelled good, and an uncooked chicken already barded with strips of fat bacon sat on the table.

  ‘This door? It’s the last one, the spare bedroom we keep for friends. It hasn’t been aired. It smells musty for the very good reason that our friends never sleep here. It’s only used by my sister-in-law on two or three nights a year.

  ‘And now, to work!’

  He held out his drink to clink glasses with them. As he did so, he looked questioningly at the man who was with Jo.

  ‘This is Ferdinand,’ said the boxer.

  Maigret racked his brains but came up with nothing. The man was tall and thin, and his face with the huge nose and small, quick mouse eyes did not remind him of anyone or of any name.

  ‘He runs a garage not far from Porte de Maillot. Just a small one, of course.’

  It was odd to see the both of them standing there, unsure about whether they should sit, not because they felt intimidated, but as a precaution. Men like these never like to be too far from a door.

  ‘You seemed to be saying there’s some sort of danger.’

  ‘Actually two sorts of danger. First, that the Czechs will spot you, in which case I wouldn’t give much for your chances of survival.’

  Jo and Ferdinand eyed each other with surprise. They thought there must be some mistake.

  ‘What Czechs?’

  There had been no mention of any Czechs in the papers.

  ‘The Picardy gang.’

  This time, they understood and suddenly became more serious.

  ‘We never got on the wrong side of them.’

  ‘Maybe. But we’ll talk about that later. It would be so much better to chat if you were sitting down nice and cosy.’

  With his tough-man swagger, Jo settled into an armchair, but Ferdinand, who did not know Maigret, sat on the edge of his straight-backed seat.

  ‘The second danger …’ said Maigret, observing them while he lit his pipe. ‘Haven’t you noticed anything today?’

  ‘The place is swarming with cops … Oh sorry! …’

  ‘No offence taken. Not only is the place swarming with cops, as you say, but most of them are on the hunt, looking for a certain number of people, and in particular a couple of men who own a yellow car.’

  Ferdinand smiled.<
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  ‘I don’t think for one moment,’ said Maigret, ‘that it’ll still be yellow and have the same number plate. But let’s leave that for now. If Police Judiciaire inspectors had got to you first, I might have been able to get you off the hook. But did you see the man who just left?’

  Jo muttered: ‘Colombani.’

  ‘Did he spot you?’

  ‘We waited until he was safely on the bus.’

  ‘It means that Rue des Saussaies is also on the hunt. Fall into their hands and you wouldn’t have avoided coming up against Coméliau.’

  It was a name to conjure with, for both men knew, at least at second hand, the examining magistrate’s reputation for severity.

  ‘Whereas, by coming to see me, all friendly, as you have done, we can have a nice little chat.’

  ‘We know next to nothing.’

  ‘What you do know will be enough. You were friends of Albert?’

  ‘He was a decent sort.’

  ‘A joker, right?’

  ‘We met him at the races.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  That put both men in their context. Ferdinand’s garage was probably not open to the public very often. Perhaps he didn’t sell stolen vehicles, because it takes a sophisticated organization plus a lot of specialized equipment to dress them up. Moreover, these two were the sort who don’t much like getting their hands dirty. It was more likely that Ferdinand bought up old cars cheap, which he did up just enough to make them attractive to the easily duped.

  In bars, on race-courses, in hotel lobbies, it’s easy to meet gullible individuals who are always only too delighted to snap up an amazing bargain. Sometimes the deal is clinched by a confidential whisper to the effect that the car had been stolen from a star of the silver screen.

  ‘Were the two of you at Vincennes last Tuesday?’

  They had to look at each other again, not this time to align their stories, but to help them to remember.

  ‘Wait a sec. Listen, Ferdinand, wasn’t it last Tuesday you backed a winner, Semiramis?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then we were there.’

  ‘What about Albert?’

  ‘Ah, now I remember! That was the day there was a downpour during the third race. Albert was there. I saw him in the distance.’

  ‘You didn’t speak to him?’

  ‘No, because he wasn’t in the public enclosures but in the paddock. The both of us always stick to the public areas. He does too, normally, but that Tuesday he had his wife with him. It was their wedding anniversary or similar. He’d told me about it a few days before. He was even thinking about buying a cheapish car, and Ferdinand had said he’d look out for something for him, genuine, a nice little runner.’

  ‘After that?’

  ‘After what?’

  ‘What happened the next day?’

  They again exchanged uncertain looks, and Maigret had to put them back on the right track once more.

  ‘He phoned you at the garage on Wednesday at about five o’clock, didn’t he?’

  ‘No, at the Pélican, in Avenue de Wagram. We’re nearly always there at that time of day.’

  ‘Now, I want to know what he said exactly, word for word if possible. Which of you answered?’

  ‘Me,’ said Jo.

  ‘Think. Take your time.’

  ‘He seemed in a mighty hurry. Sounded flustered.’

  ‘I know …’

  ‘To begin with, I didn’t understand what it was all about. He jumbled everything up because he was going so fast, as if he was afraid we’d be cut off.’

  ‘I also know that. He phoned me four or five times that day …’

  ‘Oh.’

  Jo and Ferdinand gave up trying to understand.

  ‘So if he rang you, you must know …’ said Jo.

  ‘Carry on anyway.’

  ‘He said there were these three men following him and that he was scared, but he said he might have found a way of shaking them off.’

  ‘Did he say what this way was?’

  ‘No, but he seemed happy enough with his idea.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘He said, more or less: “It’s a really terrible business, but we might be able to make something of it.” Don’t forget, that you promised …’

  ‘I repeat my promise,’ said Maigret. ‘The pair of you will walk out of here as free as when you came in, and you won’t be bothered afterwards, whatever you tell me – provided, that is, you tell me everything.’

  ‘So you knew him as well as we did?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘Right! Never mind! Then Albert said: “Call round and see me tonight at eight. We’ll talk it over.”’

  ‘What did you think he meant by that?’

  ‘Wait a minute, he also had time to say something else before hanging up: “I’ll pack Nine off to the cinema.” Do you see? That meant that there was something serious in the wind …’

  ‘One moment. Had Albert ever worked with the both of you before?’

  ‘Never. What would he have done? You know what line of work we’re in. It’s not nine-to-five stuff. Albert was a steady sort, led a regular life.’

  ‘But that didn’t stop him thinking that he might make a bit out of what he had discovered.’

  ‘Maybe it didn’t, I don’t know. Wait. I’m trying to remember how he put it, but it’s gone. He mentioned the gang from the north.’

  ‘So you decided you’d meet him as arranged.’

  ‘Did we have any choice?’

  ‘Listen, Jo, stop playing the fool! For once there’s nothing riding on this for you, so you can be frank with me. You thought your pal Albert had got the goods on the Picardy gang. You knew, because you read it in the paper, that they’d got away with millions, and you were wondering if there wasn’t some way of getting your hands on a slice of it. Is that it?’

  ‘That’s what I thought Albert meant, yes.’

  ‘Good. We’re agreed on that. Next?’

  ‘We both went.’

  ‘And your car broke down on Quai Henri-IV, which leads me to think that the yellow Citroën wasn’t quite as brand new as it looked.’

  ‘We’d done it up to sell it. We hadn’t been banking on using it ourselves.’

  ‘So you reached Quai de Charenton a good half an hour late. The shutters were closed. You opened the door, which was not locked.’

  They looked at each other again, gloomily.

  ‘And you found your pal Albert, who had been killed with a knife.’

  ‘That’s the size of it.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘At first we thought he hadn’t croaked because the body was still warm.’

  ‘What next?’

  ‘We saw that the house had been searched. We remembered that Nine would soon be back from the pictures. There’s a cinema not far from there, in Charenton, just by the canal. So we went there.’

  ‘What were you thinking of doing?’

  ‘We didn’t know, really, I swear. We weren’t looking forward to it, either of us. To start with it’s no fun having to break news like that to a woman. And then we started wondering if anyone in the gang had spotted us. Ferdinand and me talked it over.’

  ‘And you decided to pack Nine off to the country?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is she very far away?’

  ‘She’s out down Corbeil way, staying at an inn by the Seine where we go fishing now and then. Ferdinand’s got a boat there.’

 
‘Didn’t she want to see Albert?’

  ‘We talked her out of it. When we drove along the riverbank again, later that night, there wasn’t anybody around the house. You could still see light under the door, because we never thought to switch it off.’

  ‘Why did you move the body?’

  ‘That was Ferdinand’s idea.’

  Maigret turned to Jo’s companion, who looked at the floor.

  ‘Why?’ repeated Maigret.

  ‘I can’t explain. I was in a state. When we were at the inn, we’d had a few drinks, to steady the nerves. I kept telling myself the neighbours must have seen the car and might even have had a good look at us. Also if it got out that it was Albert who was dead, they’d come looking for Nine, who wouldn’t be able to keep her mouth shut.’

  ‘So you laid a false trail.’

  ‘You could say that. The police aren’t as interested in following up on run-of-the-mill cases, when the crime seems straightforward, such as when, for example, a man is stabbed to death for his money …’

  ‘And was it also you who had the idea of making a slit in his raincoat?’

  ‘We had to, if we were going to make it look like he’d been killed on the streets.’

  ‘And also to rearrange his face for him?’

  ‘There was no choice. He couldn’t feel anything. That way we thought the case would be closed quickly, and we’d be kept out of it.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘That’s everything, I swear. Isn’t that right, Jo? The next day I resprayed the car, and changed the number plate.’

  It was evident they were now getting ready to leave.

  ‘Just a minute. Have you been sent anything since?’

  ‘Sent what?’

  ‘An envelope, with something in it.’

  ‘No.’

  It was plain to see that they were telling the truth. They had been genuinely surprised by the question.

  And, as Maigret asked it, he saw a possible solution to the problem which had been bothering him most for the last few days. It had been supplied by Ferdinand unwittingly, only minutes before. Hadn’t Albert told him over the phone that he had just found a way of getting the gang that was following him off his back?