The Intercom Conspiracy (20 page)

Although I was gasping for breath and shaking badly I managed
to fumble the key into the ignition and start up before they got to me. I drove off like a maniac.

It had been raining earlier and the streets were still wet. Turning onto the Pont de la Coulouvrenière, I skidded badly but managed to pull out of it. They closed up on me though and were about a hundred metres behind as we went up the Boulevard Fazy. I thought that I would try to lose them in the streets behind the Cornavin Station. Don’t ask me why. I realise now that, even if I had lost them in the way I had hoped, all they would have had to do was drive to my apartment and wait for me to show up there. At the time I just felt that I had to get away. I decided that a sudden left turn out of the Place de Montbrillant and across some oncoming traffic might do the trick.

It did. The trouble was that I picked a narrow street with a parked truck in it to turn into and I made the turn too suddenly and too fast. I entered the street with all four wheels sliding and at an angle of forty-five degrees. With a rear-engined car you don’t pull out of a skid by lifting your foot; you put on power to bring the back around and straighten up. If that truck hadn’t been parked there I might have made it. As it was I had no room to manoeuvre. I put my foot down and steered into the skid, but the rear end didn’t come round fast enough. I sideswiped the truck. Then, I’m told, the car mounted the kerb and hit a stone bollard outside the entrance to a porte-cochère. My head went through the windshield on impact, and I went out like a light.

That
was how I got in touch with the police.

COMMISSAIRE PAUL-EMIL VAUBAN

edited tape interview
^*

The accident to which you refer occurred at approximately 23.25 hours on Friday, December 16. The Cornavin quarter is within my jurisdiction.

Reports on traffic accidents and other incidents of concern to the police are normally made to the duty officer at the commissariat. A summary of the reports received by the night duty officer is brought to me here in my office on my arrival in the morning. In the case of a serious crime or the suspicion of one, I am, of course, notified by telephone at my home no matter what the hour; but for an apparently minor incident such as this I would not be disturbed.

However, when I saw the name Theodore Carter on the morning summary report of December 17, I at once called for further details of the case. I had, as you evidently know, had a previous encounter with this man, and it seemed to me that an early exchange of information between the judiciary branch and the Bureau for the Control of Foreign Residents might be advisable.

The most serious charges against him at that juncture were those of driving while drunk and dangerous driving. There were, reportedly, three witnesses to the accident, one of whom was nearly hit when the car left the road. A patrol car was at the railway station nearby at the time and arrived on the scene a minute and a half later.

The
agent
in charge called an ambulance from the
polyclinique
to attend to the driver, Carter, whom he described as smelling strongly of vomit and alcohol. Blood and urine tests taken shortly after Carter’s admission to the hospital showed alcohol concentrations
of 320 milligrams per 100 millilitres in the blood and 440 milligrams in the urine. He had without doubt been drinking heavily. His injuries, which consisted of bruises and multiple facial cuts caused by small fragments of the safety glass, appeared to be superficial. However, he had suffered a period of unconsciousness, and, in view of this, the hospital authorities thought it advisable to detain him there until they could be certain that the concussion would have no after-effects.

On regaining consciousness he had made a number of seemingly irrational statements about the cause of the accident. At first these were attributed to his state of intoxication. When he persisted in them later and then had to be forcibly restrained from leaving the hospital, the possibility of his having suffered serious brain damage was considered. The doctor in charge of the case decided to call in a specialist from the hospital’s neuropsychiatric department for consultation.

In the light of my own experience with Monsieur Carter this seemed to me at the time an appropriate decision. Tasked that I be kept informed of developments in the case.

By this time Carter’s daughter had been informed of the accident and that her father was in the hospital. She did not see him immediately on her arrival there, however, because by then he was asleep.

Later that morning Mlle Carter called on me at my office.

She is, as you are no doubt aware, an extremely personable young woman. It was with profound regret that I found myself unable to comply with her request that her father should be brought before a court that afternoon and released
sous caution
. She herself, she said, was prepared to furnish the bond.

I reminded her that the charges against her father were serious, that the court would not be in session until Monday morning and that, in any case, her father was now in the care of the hospital. I told her that decisions about further police action would have to await the psychiatrist’s report.

At that she became indignant. It was not an easy interview. The young today have no respect for authority. I tried as best
I could to explain the difficulties of my position. In doing so I mentioned, a little caustically perhaps, the fact that her father had attempted to excuse his violations of the traffic laws the night before by pleading that he was being hounded and pursued by agents of foreign intelligence services at the time.

‘And how do you know he wasn’t?’ she demanded brusquely.

As I did not consider that the question required a reply, I merely shrugged.

That seemed to enrage her. ‘Exactly. You don’t know. And now –’ she pointed a finger at me – ‘now he is also being hounded by you the police. I am ashamed.’

‘Mademoiselle …’ I began, but she was not prepared to listen to reason.

‘Yes, ashamed,’ she went on, ‘ashamed that I was fool enough to suggest that he should go to you for help.’

She then declared that she intended to consult a lawyer and left.

In retrospect I can only say that I acted throughout with strict propriety and in complete conformity with established police practices. The case was exceptional, as you know. With insufficient information at my disposal I could only conclude at that point that both Carter and his daughter were a little mad. I consider that the criticisms of my person and conduct subsequently voiced by Mlle Carter have been unfair to the point of scurrility and totally undeserved.

Attractive though she may be, Mlle Carter undoubtedly has in her something of her father’s character.

DR MICHEL LORIOL
written statement
^†

On the morning of December 17 I was requested, in the absence of Dr Thomas, who heads our neuropsychiatric unit, to examine
a patient admitted through the
polyclinique
during the night. He had been involved in a traffic accident.

The patient was Theodore Carter.

I had a preliminary consultation with the house surgeon in charge and was given the case history, such as it was. The concussion had resulted from what appeared to have been a
contre-coup
injury. X-rays had established that there was no fracture. Blood pressure and pulse were satisfactory. Treatment had been confined to bed rest and intravenous injections of vitamin B
₆
to hasten the metabolism of the alcohol in the patient’s blood. He had slept for six hours and was now disintoxicated. Yet he was still, according to the house surgeon, talking in the same irrational way as that in which he had talked when he had been admitted to the hospital. His behaviour was aggressive. He had twice attempted to leave the hospital and had had to be restrained. As he was technically under police arrest he had been moved from the emergency ward to a room in the annex. He had also been denied access to his clothes.

I went to see him.

He was sitting up in bed – a pale, grey-haired man with cadaverous, unshaven cheeks and angry eyes. He had a bruise on the left cheekbone and four of the cuts on his face had dressings over them. He peered at me myopically when I entered.

‘Ah. The young Dr Kildare, I presume,’ he said in English. His tone was distinctly hostile.

I introduced myself and asked if he would prefer that we conducted our conversation in English.

He replied in French that if I were prepared to talk sense he did not care which language was used; otherwise he would prefer not to talk at all. It was not a good beginning.

I said I hoped that we could both talk sensibly.

‘Are you a psychiatrist?’ he asked.

‘I am a member of the hospital neuropsychiatric unit, yes.’ I began to examine him.

‘I think I should tell you,’ he said, ‘that I share André Gide’s view of psychiatry.’

‘Which view is that?’

‘He said that “know thyself” was a maxim as pernicious as it was ugly, because the person who studies himself arrests his own development.’

I smiled. ‘I know the passage you mean. He then went on to declare that a caterpillar that set out to know itself would never become a butterfly. Quite untrue, wouldn’t you say? A caterpillar can’t help but become a butterfly. The process has nothing to do with knowing.’

‘He was speaking figuratively of course,’ he said crossly. ‘Anyway, all I was trying to establish with you was that I am neither irrational nor deranged. The padded cell and the strait jacket will not be needed.’

‘I am relieved to hear that, Monsieur,’ I replied. ‘Neither is available at this hospital.’

After that he allowed me to complete my examination in silence. I discovered no residual signs of organic damage.

He peered at me a trifle anxiously as I straightened up. ‘Well, Doctor?’

‘How bad is your headache?’

‘Not too bad now. I’ve felt worse.’

‘Did you lose your glasses in the accident?’

‘I suppose so. They probably got smashed up when I did. I tried to send a message to my daughter asking her to bring me a spare pair. They’re an old prescription, but they’d be better than nothing. However, I doubt if the message was passed on,’ he added sourly. ‘That half-wit colleague of yours probably assumed that “glasses” was a code word and that what I was really asking her to do was smuggle in a hacksaw.’

‘She was here earlier, but you were asleep. I understand that she’ll be coming back. Would you like to tell me about the accident?’

He gave me a shrewd look. ‘You mean what led up to the accident, don’t you? That’s the story that’s causing all the fuss, isn’t it? That’s why
you’re
here.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘I should have kept my mouth shut.’

‘Let’s start with the accident itself,’ I said. ‘Do you remember it?’

He frowned. ‘Well no, I don’t. Not clearly. I remember making a sharp left turn, skidding and hitting a truck. After that … I’m not sure. Is that bad?’

‘Some loss of memory for events occurring immediately prior to a concussion is quite normal. Nothing to worry about. But you’ll have to stay in bed for a couple of days. With a concussion, even a mild one, it is never safe to take chances.’

‘Monday is press day,’ he said. ‘Can I be out of here by Monday?’

‘Possibly, but …’

‘Oh yes, of course. I’m under arrest, aren’t I?’

‘Had you had much to drink?’

‘I’d had quite a bit, I suppose, one way and another,’ he said reluctantly; ‘but I’d thrown up most of it.’

‘When was that?’

‘After I was gassed,’ he said. He was looking at me defiantly now.

I nodded. ‘Tell me about the gas.’

‘I went back to my office to get a file I’d left there. There was someone in the office who shouldn’t have been there. I have reason to believe that it was someone I knew, a man named Schneider. Anyway, he shone a light in my face and then squirted some sort of gas at me. It practically knocked me out and made me throw up.’

‘You say you have reason to believe that it was someone you knew. Aren’t you sure?’

‘It was dark. I didn’t see him. But I smelled him. He uses lavender water.’

‘Did the gas smell of lavender water?’

He drew in his breath and then exhaled impatiently. ‘Doctor, why don’t we just forget the whole tiling?’ he said. ‘Just tell them I’m hallucinating a bit because of the concussion and that I’ll be okay in a couple of days. Right?’

‘I couldn’t very well tell them that,’ I answered reasonably.

‘You see I don’t know that you are hallucinating, as you put it, do I?’

‘Well, you’re not believing a word I’m telling you, are you?’

‘What I believe isn’t important. It’s what you believe that I’m interested in.’ I went on before he had a chance to reply. ‘Do you smoke, Monsieur?’

‘Yes, I smoke, but they took away all my things. I haven’t got any cigarettes here. Why?’

I offered him a cigarette and he took one, but he gave me an amused look as he did so. ‘Oral gratification?’ he remarked with a lift of his eyebrows. ‘A breast symbol to reassure? Is that the idea, Doctor?’