Maigret's Dead Man (14 page)

She was superb. Her nostrils flared. An
inscrutable smile
lingered on her full lips. She was not made of the same
stuff as these people around her nor even her men. They had chosen once and for all to live on
the margins. They were wild beasts, and the bleating of sheep touched off no spark of compassion
in them.

Where, in what lower depths, in what world of
poverty had their group been formed? They had all been hungry. It was very evident that once
they had pulled a job, all they thought about was eating, eating all day, eating and drinking,
sleeping, making love then eating again, oblivious both to their run-down surroundings in Rue du
Roi-de-Sicile and to their threadbare clothes, which were little better than rags.

They did not kill for money. To them, money was
merely something that enabled them to eat and drink without a care, in their little corner,
indifferent to the rest of humankind.

She was not even interested in her appearance.
The dresses found in her room were cheap frocks like the ones she had worn in her village back
home. She did not use face-powder or lipstick. She did not own expensive underwear. Given the
way they were and behaved, they would in earlier times or other climes have lived exactly the
same lives, naked, in forest or jungle.

‘Tell her that I'll be back and that
I ask her to reflect. She has a child now …'

He lowered his voice involuntarily as he said
these last words.

‘We'll leave you to it for
now,' he said to the nurse. ‘I shall send you a second inspector shortly. I'll
phone
Dr Boucard. It is Dr Boucard who is looking after her, isn't
it?'

‘He's the head of
department.'

‘If she can be moved, she will be probably
transferred to the Santé either this evening or tomorrow morning.'

Despite everything he had revealed to her about
her patient, she still regarded him with resentment.

‘Goodbye, mademoiselle. Come,
monsieur.'

In the corridor outside he had a few words with
Lucas, who knew nothing of recent developments.

The nurse who had escorted them up from the
ground floor stood waiting for them a little further along. Outside a door were five or six
vases full of fresh-cut flowers.

‘Whose are these?' he asked.

The nurse was young and blonde, and plump in her
uniform.

‘They're nobody's now. The lady
who was in the room has just this minute gone home. She left the flowers. She had lots of
friends.'

He spoke quietly to her. She said yes. She looked
surprised. But the Czech would have been even more surprised had he guessed what Maigret had
just done.

He had just said, in a slightly awkward
voice:

‘Would you put some of them in room
twenty-one?'

Because the room was bare and cold, because after
all there was a woman in it and a new-born child.

It was eleven thirty. In the long, dimly lit
corridor lined with the offices of the examining magistrates, a few men, handcuffed and tieless,
flanked by guards, were still sitting
on backless benches waiting for their
turn. There were women too, witnesses who were growing impatient. Monsieur Coméliau,
looking grimmer and more care-worn than ever, had been obliged to ask a colleague to lend him
additional chairs and had packed his clerk off to lunch. At Maigret's behest, the
commissioner of the Police Judiciaire was present. He was sitting in an armchair while the seat
generally reserved for suspects who were being interviewed was occupied by Detective Chief
Inspector Colombani of the Sûreté.

In theory, the Police Judiciaire has
responsibility for only Central and Greater Paris. But for the last five months, in conjunction
with other flying squads, Colombani had been leading an investigation into the case of the
‘Picardy Killers', as the newspapers had called them after the first crime had been
reported.

Early that morning, he had had a meeting with
Maigret and had given him everything he had on the case.

Early too, just before nine o'clock, one of
the inspectors assigned to Rue du Roi-de-Sicile had knocked on Maigret's door.

‘He's here,' he had said.

The man in question was the owner of the
Hôtel du Lion d'Or. He had thought things over during the night, or rather the last
part of the night. Gaunt, ill-shaven, his clothes creased, he had approached the inspector as he
paced up and down in the street outside.

‘I want to go to Quai des
Orfèvres,' he had said.

‘Go ahead.'

‘I'm scared.'

‘I'll walk with
you.'

But hadn't Victor been mown down in the
middle of a street crowded with people?

‘I'd rather we went by taxi.
I'll pay.'

When he walked into the office, Maigret had his
file open on the desk in front of him. The man had three convictions to his name.

‘Have you got those dates?'

‘I've been thinking about it, yes.
We'll have to see how it goes. The minute you promise me police protection
…'

He stank of cowardice and sickness. He made you
think of some contagious disease. Yet this was the man who had been arrested on two separate
occasions and charged with indecent assault.

‘The first time they went out I
didn't pay much attention, but the second time I took notice.'

‘The second time? You mean 21
November?'

‘How do you know that?'

‘Because I've been thinking about it
too and reading the papers.'

‘I had half a thought it was them, but I
didn't show I suspected anything.'

‘But they guessed anyway, didn't
they?'

‘I don't know. They gave me a
thousand-franc note.'

‘Yesterday you said it was five
hundred.'

‘I made a mistake. It was the next time,
when they got back, that Carl threatened me …'

‘Did they used to go off in a
car?'

‘I don't know. Either way, they
always left my place on foot.'

‘Did the visits from
the other man, the one whose name you don't know, occur just a few days before?'

‘Now that I think about it, I believe they
did.'

‘Did he sleep with Maria too?'

‘No.'

‘Now I want you, in your own time, to come
clean about something. Think back to your first two convictions.'

‘I was just young …'

‘That makes it even more disgusting. I know
you: Maria must have given you ideas …'

‘I never touched her!'

‘I bet you didn't! You were too
scared of the others.'

‘And of her too.'

‘Good! Now at least you're being
honest. Except that going up and opening their door from time to time wasn't enough, was
it?'

‘I made a hole in the wall. It's
true. I fixed it so that the room next door was occupied as little as possible.'

‘Who slept with her?'

‘They all did.'

‘Including the kid?'

‘Especially the kid.'

‘Yesterday you told me that he was probably
her brother.'

‘Because he looks like her. He was the most
in love with her. I saw him crying several times. When he was with her, he used to beg her
…'

‘To do what?'

‘I don't know. They never spoke
French. When one of the others was in her room, he would sometimes come
down and go out and get drunk all by himself in a small bar in Rue des Rosiers.'

‘Did they argue amongst
themselves?'

‘The men didn't like each
other.'

‘And you really don't know whose was
the shirt with blood on it that you saw being rinsed through in the wash-basin?'

‘I'm not sure. I saw Victor wearing
it. But they sometimes wore each other's clothes.'

‘In your opinion, of all of them who lived
in your hotel, which one was the leader?'

‘They didn't have a leader. When
they'd start fighting, Maria would bawl them out and they'd stop.'

Then the hotelier had gone back to his squalid
establishment, escorted once more by an inspector, to whom he clung fearfully in the street, his
skin clammy with the sweat of terror. It is likely that he was even more malodorous than usual,
because fear has a smell.

And now, Coméliau, in his starched
detachable collar, dark tie and immaculate suit, had his eyes fixed on Maigret, who was sitting
on the window-sill, with his back to the courtyard outside.

‘The woman hasn't said anything and
will go on refusing to talk,' said the inspector as he puffed calmly on his pipe.
‘Since yesterday evening, we've had three wild animals on the loose in Paris, Serge
Madok, Carl and the kid Pietr, who, despite his age, is unlikely to be some angelic choirboy.
And that's not including the man who paid them visits and is probably the brains behind
the whole gang.'

‘I take it,'
broke in the examining magistrate, ‘that you have done the necessary?'

He would have dearly liked to catch Maigret out.
Maigret had learned too much too quickly and too easily. While seeming to be focusing entirely
on his dead man, on Li'l Albert, he had in fact smoked out a gang the police had been
hunting without success for five months.

‘You can set your mind at rest on that
score. All the mainline railway stations have been alerted. It won't help, but it's
routine. Roads and frontiers are being watched. All by the book. Memos have been circulated,
telegrams sent and phone calls made, and thousands of men have been mobilized, but
…'

‘It's all vital …'

‘Which is why it was done. We're also
keeping a watch on cheap hotels and boarding houses, especially those similar to the
Lion d'Or
.
These men must be holed up somewhere.'

‘A newspaper proprietor who happens to be a
friend of mine phoned me earlier to complain about you. It seems you are refusing to tell
reporters anything about what's going on.'

‘Perfectly correct. I think it would serve
no purpose to inform the population of Paris that we are looking for several killers who are
currently loose on the city streets.'

‘I agree with Maigret,' said the
commissioner of the Police Judiciaire.

‘I am not criticizing anybody, gentlemen. I
am merely trying to form a view. You all have your own methods. Maigret in particular has his
own methods, which are sometimes quite distinctive. He does not always seem
keen to keep me informed even though ultimately I have full responsibility. At my request,
the public prosecutor has just brought together the case of the Picardy gang and the
investigation of the murder of Albert. I would like to know exactly where we are with
it.'

‘We already know,' intoned Maigret in
a pointedly monotonous voice, ‘how the victims were chosen.'

‘Have you had witness statements from
northern colleagues?'

‘We didn't need them. Moers found
plenty of fingerprints in the two rooms in Rue du Roi-de-Sicile. When the gang broke into the
farmhouses, they wore rubber gloves and left no traces behind them. Whoever murdered Li'l
Albert also wore gloves. But the men who lived at the Lion d'Or wore nothing on their
hands. Criminal Records has come up with a match for just one of them.'

‘Which one?'

‘Carl. His full name is Carl Lipschitz. He
was born in Bohemia and arrived in France legally five years ago on a perfectly valid passport.
He was part of a group of agricultural labourers who were sent out to work on large farms in
Picardy and Artois.'

‘For what reason were his details entered
in the criminal files?'

‘Two years ago, he was accused of the rape
and murder of an under-age girl at Saint-Aubin. At the time he was working on a farm in the
village. Arrested as a result of the public outcry, he was released a month later because there
was no evidence against him. Since then, there has been no trace of him. In all likelihood he
came to Paris.
We will make inquiries in the larger factories on the
outskirts and I wouldn't be surprised that he too worked for Citroën. An inspector is
already on his way there.'

‘So that's one of the men who has
been identified.'

‘It's not much, but you will note
that he is the key to the entire case. Colombani was good enough to let me have his file, which
I have examined carefully. I have here a map he drew. It is very accurate. I also read in one of
his memos that no Czech people were now living in the villages where the crimes were committed.
But since there were a few Poles in the area some people spoke of a “Polish gang”,
thus throwing the blame for the massacre of the farmers on to them.'

‘Where is all this leading?'

‘When the group to which Carl belonged
reached France, the men were sent to different places. He is the only one at that period who we
have found to have been in the area located just south of Amiens. It was there that the three
crimes were committed, all targeting rich, isolated farms and all involving elderly
owners.'

‘And the two farmers?'

‘A little further to the east, near
Saint-Quentin. I'm very confident that we'll find that Carl had either a woman or a
friend somewhere thereabouts. He could get there by bike. Three years later, when the gang was
formed …'

‘Where do you think it was
formed?'

‘That I don't know, but as
you'll see we shall find most of them on or around Quai de Javel. Victor Poliensky was
still working for Citroën only weeks before the first attack took place.'

‘You mentioned a
leader.'

‘Please let me complete my train of
thought. Before the murder of Li'l Albert, or more accurately before his body was found in
Place de la Concorde – if I differentiate between the two events you will soon see why
– the gang was then on to its fourth slaughter and feeling completely safe. No one knew
what any of them looked like. Our only witness was a little girl who had seen a woman torturing
her mother. She had seen hardly anything of the men, who in any case had worn black cloths over
their faces.'