Pel And The Staghound

By Mark Hebden

Violence, the mugging of gay men, and the disappearance of a wealthy local business man trouble Chief Inspector Pel, who is baited by superiors in Paris clamouring for more teamwork, technology, and sociologists. What remains is a harrowing question – has the business man been kidnapped or murdered? His family don’t seem to mind. Only Archer, his favourite staghound, is anxious for his missing master.

• Language: English
• Publisher: House of Stratus
• Release date: Nov 7, 2010
• ISBN: 9780755125333

Mark Hebden

John Harris, who also wrote under the pen names of 'Mark Hebden' and 'Max Hennessy', was born in 1916. He authored the best-selling and later filmed 'The Sea Shall Not Have Them', a story of survival and rescue from World War II which continues to be periodically screened on TV. He was a sailor, an airman, a journalist, a travel courier, a cartoonist and a history teacher. During the War Harris managed to serve with two air forces and two navies. After turning to full-time writing, he wrote adventure stories, war novels, political thrillers, and also created a sequence of crime novels around the quirky French Chief Inspector Pel, centred primarily in Burgundy, but occasionally Paris and elsewhere. Harris was unusually versatile and wide ranging as an author. Epics such as 'China Seas', which deals with human tragedy, war and revolution in an authentic historical setting, and the three trilogies written under the pseudonym Max Hennessy - one of which, the Kelly Maguire series commencing with 'Lion at Sea' is reckoned to be amongst the finest modern war-at-sea stories written - along with African adventure novels, wide-ranging crime, mysteries and historical fiction, all guarantee a whole library of diverse and entertaining reading full of dry wit and gripping prose.

Book preview

One

The wind came down from the hills to the north as if it had fangs and claws in it, whipping round the corners and snapping at the legs. It had been blowing straight from the arctic for several days now. Occasionally it shifted a little to the east, so that it came from North Russia. There wasn’t much choice. You could have it cold from the North Pole or cold from Siberia.

Standing with his shoulders hunched, his head down inside his collar, Sergeant Jean-Luc Nosjean bent over the body lying in the Passage Wallieux, an alley behind the Bar de la Descente. The neon light in the bar shone through a window on to a wall and reflected from the wall on to the body. It was that of a well-dressed man in his late thirties, his hair worn long, his moustache modern and drooping on either side of his mouth. He was lying on his back, his coat and jacket open. The front of his shirt was soppy with blood.

Nosjean looked at the policeman who had put in the call to headquarters.

‘Who found him?’

The policeman indicated a man standing in the shadows. He wore overalls and a peaked blue-denim cap.

‘Robert Labbé,’ the man said. ‘I work down at the railway depot in the Industrial Zone. I was just going on duty. We work funny hours.’

‘Not half so funny as the police,’ Nosjean said drily. ‘What happened?’

‘I was in a hurry. I almost fell over him.’ Labbé gestured at the curve of the Passage Wallieux. ‘I was coming from the Rue Charles de Juigne where I live, to pick up a bus on the main road. I was going to catch the 11.40.’

Nosjean thought quickly. ‘So, if you were going to catch the 11.40 it must have been about 11.35 when you found him.’

‘Eleven-thirty,’ Labbé corrected. ‘I like to be in good time. The bus gets me into the city just right to pick up another to the depot. I heard the clock at St Philibert’s chime the half-hour just as I got here.’

As Nosjean prowled about, studying the body from various angles, he heard a car brake to a stop and a few moments later Sergeant Misset appeared in the alley. He looked even colder than Nosjean and was twice as sour at having to turn out.

‘Mother of God,’ he said. ‘This is no night to be on the streets! I’ll be glad when Krauss’ replacement turns up.’

Nosjean didn’t reply. Krauss had been shot dead within a week or two of his retirement and it was something Nosjean preferred to ignore; there was always the possibility that next time it might be you.

The Lab men appeared soon afterwards; Leguyader, the Chief, looked as sour as Misset, but for an entirely different reason. It was part of Leguyader’s manner to be sour. Sarcasm and bitterness were part of his stock-in-trade but, unlike Misset, who was never much of a success as a policeman, Leguyader’s sourness sprang from arrogance because he did his job well. Prélat, the fingerprint man, was also nosing around with Grenier, of Photography.

‘Not much chance for me here,’ Prélat observed. ‘Got the weapon?’

‘Not yet,’ Nosjean said.

‘Who is he?’

Nosjean looked at Doctor Minet, who was bent over the body. The photographers were busy with lights and the Lab people were moving about with their noses to the ground.

‘If you’re looking for his identity, mon brave,’ Minet said, ‘you needn’t look any further. I have his papers here. His name is Duche. Edouard-Charles Duche, 19, Impasse St Mesmir.’

For a moment the name didn’t register, then Nosjean’s head jerked round. ‘Edouard-Charles Duche?’

‘The very same.’

Nosjean looked at Minet whose shoulders moved in a shrug. ‘I know what you’re thinking, mon brave,’ he said. ‘It’s no loss.’

Nosjean shrugged, too. Edouard-Charles Duche lived on fraud, bullying, threats, and theft, and was well known to the Brigade Criminelle of the Police Judiciaire. He had a record as long as your arm, was regularly involved in brawls, had the makings of a gang behind him, and had a younger brother, Philippe, who was a tractor driver at Bénois de l’Herbue, who, judging by the fact that he was also already known to the police as a troublemaker, had an ambition to follow in his brother’s footsteps. Edouard-Charles Duche had been a thorn in the side of the police for many years.

‘If I were you, mon brave,’ Leguyader said, ‘I should get in your car and drive straight to the home of Sammy Belec. 117, Rue Fayolle. A splendid place. Full of expensive furniture. His wife wears mink in winter and they own two colour televisions. One in the bedroom. I have black and white – an old black and white – and my wife wears wool.’

Nosjean listened quietly. He knew Sammy Belec well enough.

‘I can tell you all this,’ Leguyader went on, ‘because I’ve been over 117, Rue Fayolle. Last year, when he was involved in that business of wounding that kid from Lyons. We were looking for bloodstained clothing. Inevitably we didn’t find any. He was gunning for Duche, wasn’t he?’

‘As Duche was gunning for him,’ Nosjean agreed.

He looked about him. The alley was full of policemen and the road at the end was crowded with police cars, their lights flashing in the darkness. There was also a fringe of people from the bar, standing in the cold, watching, their faces pinched, their noses red.

‘I’ll go and see Belec,’ he said.

As he called in the Bar de la Descente, the policeman was just leaving with Labbé, the railwayman. The bar was a shabby place, drab, brown and cheerless, with a few men standing at the zinc. The proprietor looked up from behind the coffee machine and called his wife across to take over. Approaching Nosjean, he poured a tot of rum and placed it in front of him.

‘Better swallow that, mon brave,’ he suggested. ‘It’s cold enough to freeze the backside off a brass monkey.’

Nosjean nodded and placed a coin on the counter. The proprietor waved it away but Nosjean pushed it forward again. He was a careful and very honest detective, and while he didn’t mind having a coffee or a drink in bars where he trusted the proprietors, here in the Bar de la Descente it was different. The Bar de la Descente was the haunt of people like Duche and his friends and it was as well to tread warily.

‘Edouard-Charles Duche,’ he asked. ‘Was he in here?’

The proprietor nodded. ‘Half an hour ago,’ he said. ‘He came in, swallowed a rum, complained about the cold and left. Two minutes later, Robert Labbé – he’s another of my customers – comes through that door and says he’s just fallen over a body. A couple of us went with him and we found it was Duche. It was me who rang the police.’

‘Where was Duche going when he left here?’

‘He said he was going home. You can get there by the alley.’

‘I’d have thought someone like Duche would have been a little more careful about dark alleys.’

The proprietor shrugged. ‘It’s the cold,’ he said. ‘I expect he decided to chance it because it’s quicker.’

‘Why wasn’t he using his car? Did he come in often?’

‘Not all that often. He used the bars in the city chiefly. Bit more flashy. You should know better than me. He sometimes met one of his pals here though.’

‘What about Sammy Belec? Did he come in?’

Again the shrug. ‘Now and again. It’s his beat, too, you know.’

‘Did they ever meet?’

‘Occasionally. I always expected a fight. Sour remarks and sour looks. You know the sort of thing. But it always stopped short of trouble.’

‘Any threats?’

‘Without fail.’ The proprietor studied Nosjean’s young, intense face for a moment. ‘Belec considered Duche was muscling in on his territory. He always said he’d put him in hospital. It looks as though he’s put him in the cemetery instead.’

‘What time did Duche come in?’

‘Just before eleven-thirty.’

‘You sure of that?’

‘Dead sure. The television programme was due to change. I pressed the button for the other channel and turned round to serve him.’

‘What time did he leave?’

‘Two minutes later. Eleven-thirty. Just as the programme changed. One rum. Swallowed at a gulp and gone. Eleven-thirty. Exactly. He didn’ t stop to talk or anything.’

‘How about your clock. Is it right?’

‘Dead right. It’s alongside the television there. If it’s out, which it never is, I’d put it right when we got the time signal.’

Nosjean checked his own watch. It was a gift from his parents who considered it important in his job that he should have an accurate timepiece. It coincided exactly with the clock and since it never lost a second he considered he had proof of the time of the incident.

He finished the rum, nodded and left. In the alley, Misset was still complaining about the weather but he’d rung the Hôtel de Police and contacted Sergeant Darcy, who was the senior sergeant in Inspector Pel’s team and had been brought into the office the moment the alarm had sounded.

‘He was wondering whether to call in the Patron,’ Misset said. ‘There’s been another attack in the Cours de Gaulle.’

‘Another queer?’

‘Yes. That type, Yves-Pol Aramis. You know him.’

‘I know him,’ Nosjean said. Everybody knew Yves-Pol Aramis. He ran a boutique near the Palace of the Dukes, paid all his debts, and kept to himself. He lived near the Parc de la Colombière and invariably rode home on a bright red scooter, usually with a brilliantly-coloured chiffon scarf floating behind, and a neat little crash helmet bought in London that was designed to look like a deerstalker.

‘I expect,’ Misset said, ‘that he was out looking for a boy- friend to take home.’

‘He doesn’t have boyfriends,’ Nosjean pointed out. ‘He minds his own business.’

Misset’s big shoulders moved. ‘Well, anyway, it seems his scooter broke down and he was walking home under the trees when our friend, Armoire à Glace, appeared and clobbered him.’

Armoire à Glace was the name they’d given to an unknown who was attacking the sad little men who hung about the Cours de Gaulle. In argot it meant ‘thug’ and the first victim had described his assailant as being as big as a wardrobe, so the name had stuck.

‘He’s got a black eye,’ Misset said, ‘a fat nose and a fractured cheekbone.’

‘That makes the fourth.’

‘They’re only pansies. His name’s really Dupont.’

‘Even pansies called Dupont are entitled to live without being beaten up,’ Nosjean said shortly.

Misset shrugged. Misset liked to think himself normal, manly and very sexy. It was Nosjean’s view that Misset might have been a better policeman, even a better husband, had he had a little of the sensitive intelligence of some of the unhappy unfortunates Nosjean met hanging about the city bars in pink trousers and chiffon scarves.

Walking briskly along the alley to the Impasse St Mesmir, he found Duche’s apartment without difficulty. Duche wasn’t married, he knew, but the girl who opened the door seemed to be very comfortably established there. She’d been crying.

‘You’ve come about Chariot?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Nosjean said. ‘How did you know?’

‘Somebody rang from the Bar de la Descente.’

Somebody would, Nosjean thought. There were always busybodies who liked to get in on the act when there was an accident or a crime.

‘I was just getting ready to go there. They said it was in the alley.’

‘Yes, it was.’ Nosjean said. ‘But I think if I were you, I’d stay here. Have you anyone who could stay with you?’

‘My sister lives in the next street.’

‘I should telephone her to come round.’

She gazed at him with huge eyes. She looked young and innocent and Nosjean wondered what sort of story Edouard-Charles Duche had told her about himself.

‘They killed him, didn’t they?’ she said.

‘Who killed him?’ It was usual to offer condolences at this stage in the proceedings but clearly this girl had accepted the possibilities in Duche’s life and had been expecting violence for some time.

She eyed Nosjean moistly. ‘Belec’s lot,’ she said.

‘How do you know?’

‘He said they’d try. He was always careful.’

But, thanks to the weather, Nosjean thought, not careful enough.

‘Had he had any threats?’ he asked.

‘More than one. He said he didn’t care. He said he was going to be bigger than Belec and could handle him and his lot any time.’

‘You’d better give me the names of the men he associated with.’

As he finished taking down the names and as many of the addresses as she knew, Nosjean looked up.

‘Did you know any of the names of Belec’s lot?’

‘Yes, I did,’ she said. ‘All of them. I used to go round with one of them – Roger Lepage. He was killed in that road accident at Vitry-le-François.’

Which, Nosjean remembered, had troubled both the Police Judiciaire and Traffic for some time because it hadn’t seemed quite what it ought to be and they’d come to the conclusion – though they’d never been able to prove it – that it hadn’t been an accident at all and might even have been the doing of Edouard-Charles Duche and his friends. He decided the girl wasn’t quite as innocent as she looked.

He finished writing and left. The wind seemed colder than ever and he was beginning to agree with Misset. It was no night to be out on the streets. The night before he’d been in the apartment of his girl, Odile Chenandier, enjoying a splendid Beaune with coq au vin. Odile Chenandier had long since decided she was going to marry Nosjean and the sergeants’ room at the Hôtel de Police had been taking bets on her for some time. She was warm-hearted, kind and loving, but she wasn’t beautiful in the accepted sense and Nosjean had a romantic attitude to women that caused him to fall heavily for anyone with any pretensions to beauty with whom he came into contact. Odile Chenandier had to keep her fingers crossed, endure them all and waylay Nosjean from time to time with good food and wine in the hope that one day he’d finally realise what he was missing.

Reaching the Rue Fayolle, he stopped at a bar and used the telephone on the counter to ring her up.

‘Thought I’d better warn you,’ he said when he heard her voice. ‘I might not make it tomorrow.’

‘Oh!’ Her voice was heavy with sorrow. ‘What happened?’

‘Something’s come up. It’ll be in the paper. We’re going to be busy.’

She didn’t complain and Nosjean left the bar feeling a heel. Women who never complained and took all the kicks troubled him as much as the ones with faces and figures like Catherine Deneuve or Charlotte Rampling.

Walking along the street, he found Number 117. The apartment block was of a higher class than Duche’s. There was a Mercedes outside and Belec was obviously careful enough to take precautions because there was a microphone and loudspeaker over the door so that Nosjean had to announce who he was. As he waited for the cordon to be pulled to let him in, he wondered why Duche had chosen to live so close to his arch enemy. Probably, he decided, to keep an eye on him. For a man with an ambition to be top, it was probably a good idea.

The apartment was bigger and better furnished than Duche’s, as though Belec was more comfortably established in the world of crime. They probably had to serve an apprenticeship, Nosjean thought, before they started making money at it.

The woman who opened the door to him was older than the girl in the Impasse St Mesmir and she had a look of security about her, despite the calculating eyes and blonde hair. She had clearly long since come to terms with living with a criminal.

‘Madame Belec?’ Nosjean asked.

‘Yes.’

‘I’d like to speak to your husband.’

‘You can’t.’

‘Is he at home?’

‘No.’

‘What about the Mercedes outside? Is that your husband’s?’ Nosjean couldn’t imagine it being anyone else’s.

She nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Why didn’t he take it with him?’

‘One of his friends picked him up.’

‘Why?’

‘They were eating in town and he didn’t want to be caught driving with drink in him.’

With his record, Nosjean decided, it was probably a good idea.

‘Know where he is now?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ You could hardly have called her helpful.

Nosjean drew a deep breath. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’d like to know.’

‘It’s easy enough. Follow your nose back to the Hôtel de Police. He’s there. They’ve just arrested him. He was on the telephone just now telling me to get his lawyer down there.’

Nosjean was startled. For once, it seemed, Misset must have shown some initiative and, instead of grumbling about having to work at nights, had discovered something and nailed Belec. It seemed to be time to go back to the Hôtel de Police.

The sergeants’ room was littered with beer bottles, coffee cups and paper, and the ancient typewriters which were unloaded on the sergeants when they were no longer fit for anyone else to use stood silent. It smelled of stale cigarette smoke and looked shabbier than normal because the cleaning women didn’t come in until first thing in the morning.

Nosjean stared about him. It was certainly not an office that might be used by a successful young executive, and he suddenly wondered why he’d become a policeman. He could only put it down to the fact that he felt, as he’d always felt, that he had a vocation. He’d wanted to be a policeman even when he was at school and, despite the pleas of his parents and his three adoring elder sisters, all of whom could see a bright future for him in one of the professions, he’d chosen instead to pound the beat until he could get on to plain clothes work. It was only when he’d reached the rank of sergeant and managed to distinguish himself in a variety of small ways that their protests had been stilled. Now they saw him as a sort of minor James Bond and took to buying him quartz watches and warm clothes.

He tossed his notebook on to his desk, noting as he did so the cigarette burns placed there by Misset who had a habit of sitting on it to discuss his woes or the latest attractive secretary downstairs.

Sergeant Lagé was bent over the next desk talking to Alain Rodsky, the social worker from the Ministry of Welfare. Rodsky operated with the police and at that moment was engaged on the case of a seventy-five-year-old man who had tried to drown his wife by stuffing her head in a bucket because, he claimed, she was making eyes at the manager of the local supermarket.

‘Perhaps the best thing,’ Rodsky was saying cheerfully, ‘would be to have them all put down – murderers, pimps, prostitutes, queers, nuts. We could easily do without them.’ He gave Lagé a rueful defeated look. ‘But we’re stuck with them, aren’t we, and, since we’re stuck with them, we have to deal with them in the best way we know how. A smack on the back, a word of good cheer, a punch on the nose. There are dozens of ways of sorting them out, I suppose.’

Lagé, who had been brought in to give a hand, shrugged. Like Rodsky, he was a big burly man, and again like Rodsky, he was always cheerful and never complained at having to work, even when it was Misset’s work – which it often was.

‘Psychology’s become important in police work,’ he said.

Rodsky smiled. ‘Sure. It helps you recognise that there are no longer any criminals, just disturbed people. What do you think, Nosjean?’

Nosjean shrugged. ‘It substitutes understanding for condemnation.’

Rodsky grinned. ‘Until one of them kicks you in your wedding tackle. Then you find it hard to accept them as being put-upon. Most psychiatrists are in need of a bit of psychiatry themselves, anyway.’ He gave his infectious grin again. ‘I sometimes think when I’m hauled out on a cold night that it’s a pity we don’t retaliate. When we’re attacked we ought to hit back. If they deal out obscenities, then perhaps obscenities flung in their faces might shock them; if they start slinging blows, a good hard bonk on the conk might make them see sense. Most policemen seem to think so, anyway. I was once done by a poof I was trying to help. He sent me to hospital with a knife wound along the forearm that required ten stitches. And I used to be a boxer, too, and can handle myself.’

Sergeant Daniel Darcy was sitting in Pel’s office, and he looked up as Nosjean entered. He was a strong-faced, good-looking man with large white teeth which he enjoyed using to smile with.

‘I hear you’ve got him,’ Nosjean said.

‘Who?’

‘The type who did it.’

‘No, we haven’t.’

Nosjean frowned. ‘She said you had. She said you’d got him down here.’

‘Who said?’

‘His wife.’

‘We don’t even know who it is?’

‘Well, I – ’ Nosjean stopped. ‘Who’re we talking about?’

‘Our fine feathered friend, Armoire à Glace. You know whom he got this time?’

Nosjean