Maigret's Dead Man (9 page)

‘Why not?'

‘Don't you know her?'

‘Never set eyes on her.'

‘You haven't
missed anything, chum. She would have been safe in a roomful of Senegalese. Lovely girl, of
course … That's right, Jules, isn't it?'

‘How old is she?'

‘I don't know as how you could put
any age on her. What do you reckon, Jules?'

‘I dunno. She's ageless. Maybe
thirty? Or perhaps fifty? It depends which side you look at her from. If it's the side
with the good eye, she's not too bad. But if it's the other one …'

‘She has a squint?'

‘And how! The man he asks if she's
got a squint! I tell you, she could look at the toes of your shoes and the top of the Eiffel
Tower without moving her head!'

‘Does Albert love her?'

‘Albert is a man who likes the easy life,
if you take my meaning. Look, your missus makes a good, I'd even say excellent, stew. But
I bet you're the one who gets up at six and trots off to Les Halles to buy whatever she
needs. Maybe you even give her a hand peeling the spuds. But an hour after, it's not her
who's doing all the washing up while you swan off to the races …

‘But that's how it works with Nine!
Albert lives the life of Riley! Not to mention that she must have had money of her
own.'

Why at this point did Lucas take a sideways look
at Maigret? Wasn't it rather as if the inspector's dead man had just been dragged
through the dirt?

The crane driver went on:

‘I dunno how she earned it, but with her
looks it couldn't have been by going on the game …'

Maigret did not flinch. There
was even a faint smile playing about his lips. He was not missing one word of what was being
said, and those words automatically conjured up images. The picture of Albert was being
completed piece by piece, and in the process Maigret appeared to lose none of his affection for
the man who was now clearly emerging.

‘What part of the country are you two from,
then?'

‘I'm from the Berry,' answered
Irma.

‘Me, I'm from the Cher,' said
Chevrier.

‘So it wasn't in your home towns that
you met Albert. He's from the north, or rather north-east … Isn't he from
Tourcoing, Jules?'

‘Roubaix.'

‘Same thing.'

Maigret broke into the conversation, which did
not seem the least surprising in a bar frequented by regulars.

‘Didn't he used to work somewhere
around Gare du Nord?'

‘Yes, in the Cadran. He was a waiter in the
same brasserie for ten or twelve years before setting up on his own here.'

It was no accident that Maigret had asked the
question. He knew that when northerners move to Paris, they seem to find it very hard to settle
far from their station. They form a colony more or less, centred around Rue de Maubeuge.

‘It couldn't have been there that he
met Nine.'

‘Whether it was there or somewhere else, he
certainly hit the jackpot. It wasn't on account of his winnings, of course. It was on
account of never having to worry about money ever again.'

‘Was she from the
Midi?'

‘And then some!'

‘You mean Marseilles?'

‘Toulouse! She had an accent you could cut
with a knife! Next to her, that announcer on Radio-Toulouse has just got a bit of a twang
… Right, let's have the bill … By the way, landlord, aren't we
forgetting our manners?'

Chevrier frowned, disconcerted. But Maigret
understood and it was he who replied:

‘He's right! When a bar gets a new
landlord, it's drinks on the house!'

There were only seven customers all that
lunchtime. One of them was a cellarman from Cess, middle-aged and with a surly manner, who ate
by himself in a corner and found fault with everything: with the cooking, which wasn't the
same, with his table, which wasn't his usual table, with the white wine he was given
instead of the red he was used to …

‘This place is going to turn into a dump
just like all the others,' he grumbled as he left. ‘It's always the
same.'

Chevrier was no longer enjoying himself as much
as he had that morning. Only Irma seemed to stay cheerful, juggling with the dishes and the
piles of plates, and she attacked the washing-up, humming a tune to herself.

At 1.30, only Maigret and Lucas were still in the
bar. There followed the quiet, slow period when they saw a customer only from time to time, a
passer-by who happened to be thirsty, or a couple of river men who were passing the time while
their boats were being loaded.

Maigret smoked his pipe quietly, paunch very much
in
evidence, for he had eaten a great deal, perhaps to please Irma. The sun
warmed one of his ears, and he wore an expression of utter contentment. Then all of a sudden the
sole of one shoe came down heavily on Lucas' toes.

A man had just walked past on the pavement. He
had stared intently into the bar, paused uncertainly, then turned and was now approaching the
door.

He was of average height. He was not wearing a
hat or a cap. He had red hair, and there were reddish blotches on his face. His eyes were blue
and his lips fleshy.

He reached for the lever handle. He entered,
still hesitating. There was something loose-limbed about his bearing and an odd reticence in his
gestures.

His shoes were worn and had not been polished for
several days. His dark suit was shiny, his shirt of dubious cleanliness and his tie badly
knotted.

He was like a cat stepping warily into an
unfamiliar room, observing everything around it and alert to possible danger. He must have been
of less than average intelligence – village idiots often have eyes like his, which
expressed only low cunning and mistrust.

Was it that Maigret and Lucas had aroused his
curiosity? He was suspicious of them, sidled up to the bar without taking his eyes off them and
tapped the metal counter with a coin.

Chevrier emerged from the kitchen, where he was
eating his lunch in a corner.

‘What'll it be?'

The man hesitated again. He appeared to have a
bad cold. He growled something incomprehensible then gave
up trying to speak
and instead pointed at the bottle of cognac on a shelf.

It was straight into Chevrier's eyes that
he now looked. There was something here that he did not understand, something beyond his
comprehension.

With the toe of one shoe, Maigret unobtrusively
nudged Lucas' foot again.

The whole episode was brief, though it seemed
long. The man dug in his pockets for change with his left hand while with the right he raised
the glass to his lips and downed the contents in one gulp.

The strong spirit made him cough. His eyes
watered.

He tossed some coins on the counter and, with a
few very long, quick strides, was gone. Through the window, they could see him scurry off in the
direction of Quai de Bercy, pause and turn round.

‘Over to you,' said Maigret to Lucas.
‘But I'm afraid he'll lose you …'

Lucas hurried out.

‘Phone for a taxi!' Maigret called to
Chevrier, ‘and quick about it!'

Quai de Bercy was long and straight, without
sidestreets. Maybe in a car he would be in time to catch up with the man before he gave Lucas
the slip.

As the pace of the pursuit grew faster, Maigret
had a growing feeling that he had done it all before. It was something that occasionally
happened to him in dreams, the kind of dreams which even when he was a boy he had feared most.
He would be proceeding through some generally ambiguous surroundings and suddenly feel that he
had been there before, that he had already done the same things and spoken the same words. It
made his head spin, especially when he was aware that he was actually living through situations
he had already lived through once before.

He had already followed the course of this
manhunt, which now began on Quai de Charenton, from his office when Albert's panicky voice
had kept him abreast hour by hour of the progress of his growing fear. And now the tension was
mounting again. Along the whole length of Quai de Bercy, now almost deserted, the man who was
walking past the row of wrought-iron gates with long, springy strides would turn round from time
to time and then accelerate away when he invariably saw the stocky figure of Lucas.

Maigret, sitting next to the driver of his taxi,
followed at a distance and was struck by the difference between the two men! There was something
animal-like about the first man's walk and the way he kept looking over his shoulder.
Even when he started to run, his movements remained graceful.

Hot on his heels, Lucas, flabby, his paunch
sticking out a little as usual, made him think of those mongrel dogs which look like sausages
with legs but stay with the scent of the boar better than the most renowned breeds of
bloodhounds.

You would have backed the redhead over him every
time. Maigret too: when he saw that the man was making the most of the fact that there was no
one about on the Quai to forge ahead, he told the driver to go faster. But there was no need.
The odd thing was that Lucas did not look as if he was running. He retained his conventional air
of a respectable Parisian out for a stroll and just went waddling on.

When the stranger heard the sound of footsteps
behind him, when he half-turned his head and saw Maigret in a taxi drawing almost level with
him, he realized that there was nothing to be gained from getting out of breath and attracting
attention to himself and slowed to a more normal pace.

During the course of that afternoon, thousands of
people would pass them in the streets and public squares and, as had been the case with Albert,
not one of them would have any inkling of the drama which was being played out.

By the time they were crossing Pont
d'Austerlitz, the foreigner – in Maigret's mind, he was definitely a foreigner
– was beginning to look more anxious. He continued along Quai Henri-IV. He was getting
ready to make his
move, that much was clear from his manner. Then, just as
they reached the Saint-Paul district, with the taxi still following him, he took off again, this
time darting into the maze of narrow streets which stretches between Rue Saint-Antoine and the
embankment.

Maigret almost lost him when a lorry blocked one
of the alleyways.

Children playing on the pavement watched the two
men run past. Maigret eventually caught up with them two streets further on. Lucas had barely
raised a sweat and still looked very respectable in his buttoned-up overcoat. He even had the
presence of mind to wink at Maigret as if to say:

‘Not to worry!'

He was not to know that the hunt, followed by
Maigret from the front seat of a car without tiring himself out, would last for several hours.
Nor that it would turn more relentless the longer it went on.

It was after the phone call that the man began to
lose his confidence. He had walked into a small bar in Rue Saint-Antoine. Lucas had followed him
in.

‘Is he going to arrest him?' asked
the taxi-driver, who knew Maigret.

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

To his mind, a man who is being followed is a man
who will be arrested sooner or later. What was the point of pursuing him like this, of
inflicting such pointless cruelty? He was reacting the way the uninitiated do when a hunt passes
by.

Paying no attention to
Lucas, the stranger had asked for a phone token and shut himself away in the booth. Through the
windows of the café, Lucas could be seen making the most of the enforced halt to sink a
large glass of beer. The sight made Maigret feel thirsty.

The phone call was a long one: almost five
minutes. Two or three times, Lucas became concerned. He went to the door of the phone booth and
looked through the spy-hole to make sure that nothing had happened to his man.

Afterwards, they stood side by side at the
counter, without speaking, as if they had never seen each other before. The man's
expression had changed. He looked around him apprehensively and seemed to be watching for the
right moment, though he had probably realized that there would be no more right moments for
him.

After some time, he paid and left. He headed off
towards Place de la Bastille, completed almost a full circuit of the square, walked briefly
along Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, just a few minutes from Maigret's apartment, but turned
right along Rue de la Roquette. It was not long before he was lost. It was patently obvious that
he did not know the area. Two or three more times he had thoughts about making a run for it. But
there were too many people about or perhaps he would catch sight of a policeman's peaked
képi at the next junction.

At this point, he began to drink. He went into
bars, not to phone, but to gulp down a glass of cheap cognac. Lucas had decided not to follow
him inside any more.

In one of these bars, a man spoke to him. He
stared at
him without answering, like a man who has been addressed in a
language he doesn't understand.

Maigret could now see why from the very start,
from the moment the man had walked into the Petit Albert, he had sensed that there was something
foreign about him. It wasn't so much that the cut of his clothes or his cast of features
was not French. It was rather the cautious behaviour of someone who is not at home in his
surroundings, who does not understand and cannot make himself understood.

There was sunshine in the streets. It was very
mild. Concierges in the Picpus district, like concierges in small provincial towns, had put a
chair outside their front door.

What a merry dance they were led before they
reached Boulevard Voltaire and finally Place de la République, where the man finally
regained his bearings!

He went down the steps into the Métro. Was
he still hoping to shake Lucas off? If he did, he must have realized that his stratagem would
not work, for Maigret saw the pair coming back up through the exit.

Rue Réaumur … Another detour …
Rue de Turbigo … Then along Rue Chapon to Rue Beaubourg.

‘This is his patch,' thought
Maigret.

It was palpable. Just from the way the stranger
looked about him, it was obvious he recognized every shop. He was at home. Perhaps he lived in
one of the many run-down hotels?

He kept hesitating, stopping at street corners.
Something was preventing him doing what he wanted to do. In this way he progressed as far as Rue
de Rivoli, which marked the limit of that area of impoverished streets.

He did not cross it. Going
along Rue des Archives, he went back into the ghetto and was soon walking along Rue des
Rosiers.

‘He doesn't want us to know where he
lives!'

But why not? And whom had he phoned? Had he asked
one of his cronies for help? What could he expect from that quarter?

‘I'm really sorry for the poor
devil,' breathed the taxi-driver. ‘Are you sure he's a crook?'

No! Not even a petty crook! But there was no
choice but to follow him. It was his only chance of getting a new lead on Albert's
murder.

The man was sweating profusely. His nose was
running. From time to time he would take a large green handkerchief from his pocket. And he was
continuing to drink steadily, moving away from a central core formed by Rue du Roi-de-Sicile,
Rue des Étouffes and Rue de la Verrerie, a hub around which he went on circling without
ever venturing inside it.

He would move away and then, irresistibly drawn
to it, would come back again. He slowed, became more uncertain. He would turn to face Lucas.
Then he looked around for the taxi and glared at it. Who knows? If the cab had not been
following him so closely, perhaps he would have tried to get Lucas off his back by luring him
into an alley and dealing with him.

When it started to get dark, the streets began to
bustle with activity. Sauntering crowds filled the pavements and streets lined with low, gloomy
houses. As soon as the first signs of spring appear, the inhabitants of this part of Paris
begin to live outside. The doors of shops and the windows of houses were
open. The reek of dirt and poverty caught in the throat, and sometimes a woman would throw her
slops out into the road.

Lucas must have been at the end of his tether,
though he did not show it. Maigret thought that he should take the first opportunity to have him
relieved. He felt rather ashamed of tagging along in a taxi, the way visitors follow a fox-hunt
in cars.

There were junctions which they had crossed four
or five times. Suddenly, the man hit on a new tactic. He slipped into the gloomy passage of a
house. Lucas stopped at the door. Maigret signalled him to follow.

‘Be careful!' he called from his seat
in the car.

A few moments later, both men emerged. It was
obvious that the stranger had gone into the first house he had come to, hoping he could lose his
police tail.

He repeated the same manoeuvre. The second time,
Lucas found him sitting at the top of the stairs.

Shortly before six, they were back on the corner
of Rue du Roi-de-Sicile and Rue Vieille-du-Temple, in what looked and felt like a thieves'
kitchen. The stranger paused again. Then he darted out into the street, which was filled with
poor people. Lights in frosted-glass globes hung outside several of the hotels. The shops were
narrow-fronted, and alleyways led to mysterious courtyards.

He did not get far. He had covered about six
metres and then a shot rang out, a dry sound, no louder than a tyre bursting. The activity in
the street took a few moments to subside, as if slowed in its reactions by its collective
momentum. The taxi had stopped of its own accord, as if in amazement.

Then there was the sound of running footsteps.
Lucas leaped forward. There was a second shot.

The swirling crowds made it impossible to see
anything. Maigret did not know if the inspector had been hit. He had got out of the cab and was
rushing towards the wounded foreigner.

He was on the pavement, sitting up. He
wasn't dead. He was supporting himself on one hand and holding his chest with the other.
He raised his head and looked up reproachfully at Maigret.

Then a shadow fell across those blue eyes. A
woman said:

‘It's a crying shame!'

The man's torso swayed and fell at an angle
across the pavement.

He was dead.

Lucas returned empty-handed but unharmed. The
second shot had missed him. The assailant had tried to fire a third time, but his gun must have
jammed. Lucas had not got much of a look at him.

‘I wouldn't be able to recognize
him,' he said. ‘But I think he had dark hair.'

Without seeming to, the crowd had helped the
murderer to escape by, as it were, accidentally getting in the way. At no time had Lucas found
his path unimpeded.

And now people surrounded them, hostile, even
threatening. In those mean streets it did not take them long to sniff out plain-clothed
policemen.

But a uniformed officer
arrived and pushed the gawping crowd back.

‘Get an ambulance,' Maigret growled
to him, ‘but first use your whistle and get two or three of your colleagues
here.'

Leaving nothing to chance, he murmured orders to
Lucas, whom he left at the scene with the officers. He took another look at the dead man. He
would have liked to search his pockets at once, but he felt oddly reluctant at the thought of
doing it in full view of all those curious bystanders. It would be too pointed, too professional
an action and would be construed here as desecration or even as a provocation.

‘Be careful,' he told Lucas in a bare
whisper. ‘There are bound to be more of them around …'

He was only a stone's throw from Quai des
Orfèvres, and the taxi dropped him there. He climbed straight up to the
commissioner's office and knocked, without first waiting to be announced.

‘Another murder,' he said.
‘This one was shot right under our noses, like a rabbit, in the middle of a
street.'

‘Do you have a name?'

‘Lucas will be here in a few minutes, as
soon as the body has been taken away. Can you let me have twenty or so men? There's an
entire neighbourhood which I want to close off.'