They now had two murders but still no description.
Pomereu and his men came in for a tremendous roasting from the Chief for failing to notice two young girls passing through their roadblocks and, while armed to the teeth and paying full attention to car boots, for taking on trust what backpacks and handbags contained.
‘We were looking for a couple of escaped convicts,’ Pomereu complained in a bleat to Darcy. ‘Not a couple of kids. It’s not our job to frighten young girls.’
Meanwhile, flushed with success, Nosjean stepped up the search for the shop which had sold the two knives which had done Vienne to death. Du Toit’ was still insisting the knives were new and that they were bought not long before the murder. ‘By a couple of women,’ he said. ‘They’d be young and wouldn’t look like two housewives, so they might be remembered.’
By now, in addition to the main enquiries as to the how, the where and the why, they had several sets of enquiries going – the origin of the hair-slide, the shop that had sold the knives, the people who might have seen their suspects hitch-hiking.
As their men tramped from street to street or hunched over telephones, Nosjean and De Troq’ began to look again at the female hitch-hikers who had so far been noticed along the N6. By checking and cross-checking carefully, they were slowly eliminating them when suddenly, unexpectedly, they hit pay dirt. One couple, described as very young, had a pattern about their hitch-hiking which seemed highly suspicious. They had picked up three rides to the north of where Vienne had been stabbed to death and in every case they had asked the driver if he was going to Lyons. Yet, although they had seemed to want to go to Lyons, in every case they had changed their minds and asked to be set down after only a few kilometres. Finally, they had picked up another ride somewhere just to the south of where Vienne had been found dead and this time, instead of asking to be set down, had ridden all the way into Lyons.
‘I think we’ve got them,’ Nosjean crowed.
‘I don’t think we have,’ De Troq’ pointed out. ‘We’ve found two girls. who might be the ones. But we have no names and addresses or descriptions, and they were obviously on their way somewhere. South, by the look of things. By this time, they’re probably on the Mediterranean. Probably the Baltic. Perhaps Italy. Perhaps China. Perhaps even Russia. It’s easy these days. They’ve probably picked up an airliner and emigrated to America.’
Nosjean pulled a face. It was a fair summary of the situation.
‘I think’, he said, ‘that we’d better have a word with these drivers and see what they have to say.’
The four drivers who had given lifts to the two girls were brought to the Hôtel de Police. They were a little nervous, unsure of themselves and not enjoying being involved in a murder enquiry. Like most people questioned over a serious crime, they found it hard to accept that they were merely witnesses and not suspects. However, they confirmed Cham’s theory that the girls were young and they all told much the same story.
The first was the tough-looking driver of a Nicolas wine lorry who had picked up two young girls south of Beaune. They had asked him if he was going to Lyons but beyond that they had not addressed a word to him except to answer questions he had put to them. After two or three kilometres, without discussing it with each other or with him, they had asked to be put down.
‘What were they like?’ De Troq’ asked.
Though his description was vague, the lorry driver’s conception of them indicated youth, long hair and prettiness.
‘Except that they didn’t look all that clean,’ he added.
‘How were they dressed?’ Nosjean demanded.
The driver hadn’t really noticed.
‘Provocatively?’
The word seemed to puzzle the lorry driver.
‘What sort of dresses?’
‘One had a blue skirt. One a red. I remember that. And long sloppy sweaters.’
‘These skirts: short or long?’
‘Long – I think.’
The girls had made no overtures to him of any kind, he said. ‘Some girls do,’ he added.
The second driver, a man called Monnier and the owner of a car, had picked them up at roughly the spot where the wine lorry had set them down. Monnier thought they were provocatively dressed. They were wearing very short skirts and had allowed them to ride up as they sat down.
‘Where were they in your car?’ Nosjean asked.
‘Rear seat.’
‘Both of them?’
‘Yes.’
‘Couldn’t that be dangerous these days?’
‘I suppose it could. But it wasn’t.’
‘And you could see their skirts had ridden up?’
‘In the mirror. I looked.’
‘Do you make a habit of looking?’
‘Yes.’ Monnier grinned. ‘I don’t think they were wearing anything underneath the skirts.’
‘You could tell that?’
‘Not for certain. But I thought so. I’m sure one of them hadn’t anything on underneath.’
His car had been giving trouble and he had had to stop after a kilometre or two to check the fan belt. When he returned to his seat, one of the girls had moved into the front passenger’s seat. When he had driven off, she had put her hand on his knee and moved it up to his thigh.
‘She said they were heading south but were short of money and anxious to earn some,’ he pointed out. ‘When I asked her what they intended to do to get it, she said they weren’t very worried how. I thought that if I’d suggested it, we could have driven off the road and I could have had a bit of nooky for a few francs.’
‘What did you say?’
‘What do you think? I told them I wasn’t interested. I’m not.’
Nosjean was inclined to doubt him. Any man who studied the rear mirror sufficiently to discover his passengers weren’t wearing underwear probably indulged himself on occasion with female hitch-hikers. There must have been some reason this time why he hadn’t.
‘Why not?’
‘I’m not that kind.’
‘So,’ De Troq’ asked, ‘why do you pick up girls?’
After a while they got him to admit after all that it was his habit to pick up girls for what he might get from them. There were no moral reservations, but this time he had been suspicious and had thought the situation dangerous. He hadn’t liked the look of the two girls. He had watched them enough in the mirror to be able to give a description.
‘Pretty,’ he said. ‘Good legs. One had blonde hair – dyed, I thought. Thin lips. The other was similar, but dark. In fact, I thought they were sisters. But the second one had plucked eyebrows. Very thin. Like Marlene Dietrich used to wear.’
It was something to go on.
‘How old?’
‘Sixteen. About that.’
Nosjean and De Troq’ exchanged glances. Murderesses! Aged sixteen!
‘What happened?’
‘I told them I wasn’t interested in sex.’
‘But normally you were?’
Monnier grinned. ‘Who isn’t? But I said I’d still give them a ride to Lyons if the one in the front would stop stroking my thigh and the one in the back would close her legs and pull her skirt down. It was distracting. Soon afterwards they asked to be set down.’
‘We think these same girls had been picked up by a truck driver just north of where you met them. He said they weren’t provocatively dressed.’
‘They were when I picked them up. They looked like hippies.’
‘They wouldn’t change at the roadside, surely?’
‘Why not? They could put a mini skirt on under a longer wider skirt, then take off the first skirt.’
‘You know this?’
‘I’ve seen it done.’
‘Had they any luggage?’
‘Just two big cloth shoulder bags. The sort you can get everything in. They probably even just hitched up their skirts by turning the waistband over. A couple of turns and they’d become mini skirts.’
‘Could you see if they’d turned the waistbands over?’
‘No. They had these big sweaters on. Big and loose and coming down over their behinds.’
The third driver, a man called Rostane in his late fifties, was a spare desiccated man with grey hair and a straggling moustache. He had picked up the two girls in roughly the spot where Monnier had set them down. He was a writer and was working on a book about Rousseau and his thoughts had been far away.
‘Why did you pick them up then?’
‘I noticed them,’ he said. ‘My daughter hitch-hikes. I’ve warned her not to. She’s a student. But you know what youngsters are like. She thinks she’s safe. She trusts everybody.’
‘I hope you tell her not to.’
‘Yes, I do. I picked these two up because of what I’d warned my daughter about. I felt that if they were with me, no one else would be picking them up and they’d be safe. I thought they were two children.’
‘Children?’
‘Thirteen. About that.’
Thirteen! Nosjean and De Troq’ exchanged startled glances once more.
‘Did they make any advances to you?’
‘Advances?’
‘Sexual advances.’
Rostane hadn’t noticed anything, but he was a little naïve and when Nosjean pressed him it seemed the girls had made advances but he hadn’t noticed.
‘Well, they said they needed money and were willing to do anything to get some,’ he said.
‘Did they say what they would do?’
‘No. Not really.’ Rostane slapped his forehead. ‘My God,’ he said. ‘They were offering themselves sexually. I didn’t realise.’ His mouth hung open. ‘Me? Holy Mother of God! Me! They suggested we turn off the road and go into the woods. They said they needed a rest. I told them I was in a bit of a hurry but that they could use the back seat to sleep if they wished. Soon afterwards they asked to be set down.’
‘Where? Do you remember? Exactly.’
Rostane did. It turned out to be eight kilometres north of the turn-off to the glade where Vienne had been murdered.
The fourth and last driver, who had taken the girls all the way to Lyons from just south of where Vienne had been killed, agreed with the description of the girls as hippy types and that they wore mini skirts. He also confirmed the colour of their hair, and the thin lips of one, the thin eyebrows of the other.
‘I think they were up to something,’ he said. ‘I was glad to get rid of them. I don’t know what it was but they were managing to communicate with each other somehow. Not in words. But I noticed they made gestures to each other. I think it was some sort of secret sign language they’d developed.’
It seemed to be time to get all four drivers in together and let them argue it out. The move was very successful and ended in an argument where they swopped impressions that produced details.
‘They were big girls,’ the van driver said.
‘Tall?’
‘No. You know.’ Monnier made gestures in front of him with his hands. ‘Here. Big boobs. One of them, the older one, had blonde hair that looked dyed. The other had straight dark hair. They wore it long. Well below their shoulders. They were wearing mini skirts or skirts hitched up to look like mini skirts. Heavy sweaters. But no stockings, and not much else.’
‘They used a lot of bad language,’ the lorry driver offered.
‘What sort?’
‘You know. The sort a lot of youngsters use these days. They think it’s the thing to do. It is, I suppose, with smart-arsed kids.’
Nosjean interrupted the discussion. ‘Did either of these girls wear a slide in her hair?’ he asked.
There was an immediate dead silence then Monnier spoke.
‘They both did.’
‘You’re quite sure?’
‘Dead sure.’
What he said was confirmed by the lorry driver and the man who had taken them into Lyons, and Nosjean gestured at De Troq’, who fished in a drawer and brought out a plastic bag and laid it on the desk.
‘This one?’ he asked.
The three men looked at each other then Monnier nodded. ‘That one,’ he agreed.
Nosjean was thoughtful as De Troq’ showed the four men out.
‘These are the ones,’ he said as De Troq’ returned. ‘There are just too many descriptions that fit. Now we have to find out if they bought the knives en route. If they did we’re a step nearer. Young girls don’t normally carry butchers’ knives around with them so they must have bought them specially for the job, and they did that because they must have planned it some time before and at that time they hadn’t a gun and didn’t know where to lay their hands on one.’
They had continued to badger Lyons to keep a sharp look-out for their suspects and had been reasonably confident they would turn up, so it was with something of a shock that they learned that, yes, certainly, two girls answering their descriptions had been seen, but not in Lyons.
‘Where?’ Nosjean asked.
‘Near Villefranche. At one of the service stations on the northbound carriageway of the motorway.’
It brought a new angle. The girls they were seeking must have moved north again and were probably now back in their own area, so that God alone knew where they’d got to. They would have to start again, questioning motorists to see if they had been picked up, and alert the towns alongside the motorway to the north in case they were there.
‘They must have caught the radio appeal, too,’ De Troq’ said. ‘I expect they have a radio. Every kid over ten does these days. They doubtless decided they were better off somewhere else than Lyons.’
As they were talking, the telephone went. It was the man on the switchboard. ‘There’s a type on the line called Claude Fraslin,’ he said. ‘He says he bought a watch in a bar. He wondered if it was the one you’re interested in.’
‘Who did he buy it from?’
‘He says a girl.’
Nosjean snatched up the telephone, spoke briefly to the man at the other end of the line, then headed for where his car was parked. Two hours later, well to the north, he was sitting in the office of the manager of a brickworks. With them was Claude Fraslin, the brickworks foreman, a small thickset man with arms like the branches of a tree. He indicated the gold watch Nosjean was holding.
‘I bought it in a bar in Avallon,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean, why?’
‘Well, do you usually buy watches from someone in a bar?’
Fraslin looked indignant. ‘If you’re suggesting I knew it was stolen, you’re wrong. I was out with the wife and kids and I’d just lost my own watch. It had one of those metallic wrist straps and the catch must have come undone. We looked all over for it but it had probably been gone an hour before I noticed. Then we were sitting in this bar. The kids wanted a drink. Come to that, so did I, and this watch was offered to me. It’s a good one. You can see that. And it was cheap.’
‘Who offered?’
‘This girl.’
‘What did she look like?’
Fraslin couldn’t help – he’d been looking at the watch not the girl.
‘Was she on her own?’
‘No, there was another girl with her. A bit younger. She said she was her sister.’
‘So you bought the watch?’
‘I needed a watch.’
‘Did the girl give a name?’
‘No.’
‘You were taking a risk buying a watch from someone you didn’t know. It might not have been any good.’
Fraslin snorted. ‘I’m not that stupid,’ he said. ‘I listened to it. I could tell by listening that it was a good watch.’
‘It belonged to a murdered man.’
‘Holy Mother of God! I didn’t know. Does that mean I’ve lost the watch?’
‘I’m afraid so. It’s evidence. We shall have to keep it. Perhaps you can get it back later. I don’t know. This girl: did she say anything about herself?’
‘Did she do the murder?’
‘Perhaps. We’re not sure yet.’
‘She didn’t look old enough.’
‘You don’t have to be apprenticed. Did she say why she was selling the watch?’
‘She said it was her father’s and he’d just died. They needed the money to go to Paris and find work and they hadn’t the rail fare. It was my wife really.’
‘What was your wife?’
‘She persuaded me. She’s soft-hearted – especially for someone young who’s in trouble. She nudged me and said, “Go on, Claude. Buy it.” So I did.’
Madame Vienne identified the watch at once. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s my husband’s watch.’
‘You’re quite certain?’
‘I bought it for his birthday last year. He had a lot of appointments and he needed a good watch. Where did you find it?’
‘It was offered for sale in a bar in Avallon.’
‘Who by? The man who murdered him?’
Nosjean hesitated. ‘We think that the person who offered it was the person who killed him,’ he said.
Fraslin’s description of the two girls could only have been described as casual. But a visit to his wife brought better results, because, while he had been examining the watch, she had been studying the girls. Her description matched that of the drivers.
‘Aged between fifteen and nineteen,’ she said. ‘Long-haired. One dark. One fair. Artificial, I’d say. The kids all do it these days. The one with the fair hair, the older one, had thin lips; the other had plucked eyebrows. Very plucked. Like Marlene Dietrich. They both wore short skirts and sweaters and carried large cloth shoulder bags.’
Big enough, Nosjean decided, to carry butchers’ knives or Vienne’s gun.
He was thoughtful as he drove away. They would now have to put out a new appeal, asking if anyone had given their suspects a lift north and, if so, where to? It was quite possible that by this time they were in Paris and, if they were, the chances of finding them were almost nil. Girls who stood out like sore thumbs on a motorway would never be noticed among the teeming thousands on the streets of the capital.