Nosjean and De Troq’ got back to the Hôtel de Police just as the press conference was about to start, and by that time, it had all been cleared up.
As they’d expected, Anna Ripka had insisted on a lawyer and to nobody’s surprise he appeared within half an hour and turned out to be a man of an Arab cast of countenance and of Libyan descent by the name of Sorudz Rassaud. It was to him that she attempted to pass the key and he was stopped as he left.
He was of less stern metal than Anna Ripka and, with his help, they had picked up at his flat three more men – one of them the missing Hamid Ben Afzul – all from North African countries, who though they firmly denied it, were clearly intending to use the store of arms and explosives hidden in the room near the station. Their aims were vague but they seemed to be hoping to influence through terrorism France’s attitude to Libya.
Faced with their evidence, Anna Ripka had also thrown in the sponge. The original intention had been to plant gelignite in a sewer near the station entrance and detonate it by remote control but, with the police alert, it had proved too difficult and, when they learned that the sewers were to be searched, they had decided to use the rocket launcher and placed the gelignite in the roof Another few corpses more or less were easy enough to accept.
As they got the last of it down on paper, Pel felt satisfied. He had no need to pull any punches with the press now. Despite the slanging they’d received, they’d done the job. Only just, but they had.
Stretching, Pel looked at the clock and dragged his jacket straight. It was the same jacket he had worn throughout the siege, battered, soaked, torn and wrinkled. His face was grey with fatigue.
‘I think I’d better go home and change,’ he said. ‘It’ll soon be time for the press boys.’
‘Why not stay as you are, Patron?’ Darcy suggested slowly. ‘Démon will be there, looking clean and pretty. Let him see what the men he criticises so much have to look like.’
‘It’s an idea, Daniel.’
‘It’s even worth developing,’ Darcy said. ‘I’ll get hold of all the boys who were involved and have them in, too, still covered with blood and snot. I’ll also get the type who was hit in the arm. A bit of bandage and a sling might make that smooth bastard think a bit.’
As they rose, Nosjean and De Troq’ appeared. They looked flushed and excited and Pel stopped and managed a smile.
‘Inform me,’ he said. ‘Were you right?’
‘Yes, Patron,’ Nosjean said. ‘We’ve got him. It was Delacolonge. He confessed. He said first that his car had been stolen on the night of the murder, then that it had been taken by the Strangler to carry the corpse of a Marseilles gangster who’d been shot, to be buried in the woods. He even showed us a letter to that effect, signed with his own name. Then he denied his confession and said he’d been on duty. The roster at the hospital said different. He was a failure at everything he did and, though he didn’t show it, he suffered from depressions and took tranquillisers. The capsules in the boy’s pocket came from him. He stole them from his sister and from the drugs cabinet at St Saviour’s.’
‘It seems to slot together,’ Pel observed mildly.
Nosjean nodded. ‘He knew how to treat depression, of course, because it was his job to accompany the doctors at St Saviour’s on their rounds and he knew all about diazepam. When the boy couldn’t talk to his father and found his mother’s black moods worse than his own, he went to Delacolonge.’
‘And Delacolonge’s a nut?’ Darcy asked.
‘He’s a nut all right. He’s never done anything successful in his life and that was the point of all those notes, for the demands that there should be more publicity about the case. He wanted to be noticed. He felt he’d committed the perfect crime and was furious when he found he’d been squeezed off the front page by the killings in the Impasse Tarien. We found the revolver he was holding when he took the picture of himself in the telephone booth. It doesn’t work. The firing pin’s missing. The head-shrinkers are having a session with him now. I think they’ll decide he isn’t fit to stand trial. The only thing in his mind was that his memoirs would be worth a fortune.’
Pel nodded his satisfaction. ‘One more club to hammer the press with,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and get it over.’
The lecture room was crowded with pressmen, and chairs and tables had been arranged on the raised dais. Permission had been granted to the television crews to assemble arc lights so they could get their pictures, and Démon was there, dominating the scene, smooth, confident and immaculate. As Pel took his seat, with him to make it fully official were the Chief, Judge Polverari and Judge Brisard.
The statement Darcy had prepared, giving all the facts, was handed out. It stated in neat columns just who’d been killed and just who’d been wounded. Alongside were the names of the dead terrorists – one of them shot accidentally by his friends – and of those under arrest. It was a formidable array, but the dead and injured on the side of terrorism were well outnumbered by the dead and injured on the side of law and order.
The details about the attempt to assassinate the President set up gasps among the unsuspecting journalists and one or two of them even began to edge towards the doors and the street where the telephones were.
‘Don’t hurry,’ the Chief advised. ‘They’ve been locked and you haven’t got all the facts yet.’
Pel gave them the facts, the weapons that had been found, the last arrests, the room overlooking the station, the rocket launcher. The pressmen wrote furiously.
‘So let’s have no martyrs,’ Pel said coldly. ‘This is why this conference has been called. These men are terrorists and they don’t hesitate to shoot – even, you’ll remember, at the Holy Father in Rome. There have been lots of demands for an investigation into the methods of the police who, in carrying out their duties, have even been subjected to a marked campaign to discredit them.’ He paused and looked over the journalists. ‘It’s conveniently overlooked by some of those critics,’ he went on slowly, ‘not only that policemen risk their lives so that the people who criticise them can sleep safely in their beds, but also that they’re assaulted by petrol bombs, nail bombs, blast bombs, hand grenades and a variety of other more sophisticated weapons. Do these critics who want an enquiry into police methods also wish an enquiry into the use of these things by terrorists?’
There was a long silence during which the pressmen eyed the locked doors again, wondering if they could manage when the time came to be first out with their information, then a confused hubbub of questions rose from the body of the hall. Above them came the voice of Démon, clear, sharp and imperious.
‘Enquiries,’ he observed calmly, arrogantly certain that all the other journalists were behind him, ‘can produce the most extraordinary facts.’
Pel gestured at Darcy who began handing out bundles of pictures – of the men in custody, the dead men, the scenes inside the besieged house and the house where Kino had been found. Photography had worked fast and the newspapermen grabbed them eagerly.
Démon studied them. ‘The details you’ve given about this organisation you claim to have smashed,’ he said, his manner faintly disbelieving. ‘How were they acquired?’
‘The woman, Anna Ripka, talked.’
‘Was she persuaded?’
‘She didn’t have to be,’ Pel snapped. ‘It was all over and she knew it.’
There were few questions. The intelligent ones among the pressmen accepted that there had been a rebuke in Pel’s words because there had been a lot of irresponsible criticism. As Pel sat down the Chief rose.
‘It should be made clear,’ he said, ‘that the police cannot and will not permit terrorists to take control of the streets and that the police will always use firearms when there’s a grave threat to life. Inevitably, fatalities will occur occasionally but it should be remembered that the police would have no need for weapons if there were no violence.’
As he spoke, the newspapermen were busy writing, glancing occasionally at Démon. As the Chief sat down, Démon rose. He looked pink but still smooth and very confident, as if he relied on his reputation to carry him through.
‘I feel,’ he said, ‘that I must reply to the vague accusations which have been made against the press, sir. There’s a feeling among us that these complaints are uncalled for–’
‘Not with me,’ Sarrazin said sharply.
The interruption seemed to startle Démon but he pressed on. ‘I feel the finger has been pointed at us and that we should be able to reply, because we’re being accused of a lack of integrity–’
Sitting frozen-faced on the dais, Pel interrupted to indicate a loudspeaker which had been set up alongside him. ‘I think,’ he pointed out, ‘that before we accept any recrimination for what’s been said here, we should hear a tape made the other evening by one of my officers.’
He gestured at Claudie Darel who had slipped quietly into the room to stand near Darcy and he saw Démon’s jaw drop. As he nodded, she pressed the switch and Démon’s voice came from the loudspeaker, overlaid with crackling but quite clearly the voice that was known over the whole of France.
‘…It’s rubbish, of course. I know it’s rubbish, but it sells. It’s what people want… We all have to make our way in this world and I’m making mine very nicely, thank you…’
Sarrazin started scribbling furiously. Fiabon, who’d been sitting open-mouthed, saw him and started, too.
‘…It makes better viewing to see people helped away with blood all over them. Especially if they’re Flics. I’ve more than once persuaded kids to heave bottles at them to get a better story…’
As the voice came to a stop, Démon’s face went pale. ‘I demand an explanation,’ he said. ‘That tape was taken without my knowledge.’
‘I can hardly imagine,’ Pel said stonily, ‘that you would have said those things if you’d known they would be made public.’
‘I have a right–!’
Sarrazin looked up, his wrinkled face cynical. ‘I think, my friend,’ he growled, ‘that you’d be wiser to sit down and shut up.’
For a moment Démon stared round him, studying the hostile faces of the other journalists then, snatching up his coat, he turned and strode to the door. Finding it still locked, he was obliged to wait in humiliated embarrassment until someone let him out.
Pel was staring at Sarrazin, bewildered. Everybody seemed to be behaving in an extraordinary fashion today. First Doctor Lacoste and Misset being heroes. Now Sarrazin, his most ardent critic, appearing on his side. As the room began to empty, Brisard touched his shoulder.
‘Well done, Inspector,’ he said. ‘That was clever. I imagine that one’s been shut up for a long time.’
Pel stared after him as he hurried away. Good God, he thought. Brisard, too! The whole world was acting out of character! He stopped, warmed by the gesture, then signed to Darcy. ‘Come on, Daniel,’ he said. ‘Let’s wind up the paper work.’
‘Leave that to me, Patron,’ Darcy said. ‘That’s what I’m here for.’
Pel hesitated, then he nodded. ‘Very well,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll go home.’
‘Not just yet, Patron,’ Darcy said. ‘There’s someone in your office wants to see you.’
Pel’s head turned. ‘The Chief?’
‘No.’
‘Judge Polverari?’
‘No, Patron. Turned up just before the conference. I said you’d be rather a long time.’
‘I don’t want to see anyone just now,’ Pel snapped. ‘I’ve seen everybody I want to see today.’
Darcy didn’t move, blocking the doorway so that Pel couldn’t pass, and in the end he sighed and headed for his office. He still wore his ruined suit, his feet dragged and he felt stiff and weary, and was quite certain that he’d be in bed for the next six months before retiring prematurely, his health ruined.
As he pushed the door open, he saw Madame Faivre-Perret sitting by his desk. She wasn’t doing anything, just sitting quietly, waiting. Her mackintosh was soaked and her umbrella had dripped a pool of water at her feet.
As he entered, she rose, pale and anxious, and Pel stood in the doorway, touched and feeling a little like tears. ‘I’m in no state to be seen by anyone,’ he muttered. ‘I haven’t changed. I’m filthy.’
She smiled uncertainly. ‘Evariste,’ she said. ‘Do you think that matters?’