Twenty-one

Detective Desmoulins had never been to Mers-les-Bains. His occasional days out en famille as a child had been limited to the neighbouring town of Fort-Mahon-Plage, 30 km to the north. Given a fast turn of speed when his parents weren’t watching, its wide stretches of sand allowed him and his brother to get far beyond calling range before they could react. Since then his wife, Sandrine, had ventured the occasional wish to try somewhere different, like Mers, but pressure of work had never allowed it.

Right now, he was wishing he’d brought her with him; he could have left her to enjoy the beach while he did the detective bit around the neighbourhood home of Jean-Marie Gambon.

It soon proved to be a re-run of his visit to Le Vésinet, with few people willing to talk, most claiming they hadn’t seen anything worth mentioning and only a couple happy to dish any dirt on their neighbour, the former Director General of the Sûreté Nationale.

‘He’d been fooling around with that young housekeeper of his for a couple of years – even before his wife left him,’ said a Mme Challonnet. Her face twisted in disapproval at the idea and she nodded towards the Gambon house just along the road, where a uniformed officer was pacing up and down. ‘And him a senior policeman, once. Is that why he tried to hang himself – because of the shame?’

Sensing the absence of helpful information, Desmoulins asked a few more questions before moving on. Another neighbour suggested that Gambon was part of a secret cabal of politicians, senior cops and civil servants trying to overthrow the state from within.

‘It’s blatantly obvious to the rest of us.’ M. Medioni was a scarecrow of a man with liver spots and a nasal voice, and the shrewish look and narrow face of a zealot. ‘So why you lot haven’t been able to see it is beyond me. What the hell do we pay you for, tell me that?’

Desmoulins stepped back a pace from the powerful smell of brandy emanating from the man, feeling his willpower beginning to slip away. Many more interviews like this and he’d throw himself in the sea.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said quietly. ‘We know all right – and we’re keeping an eye on all of them.’ He touched the side of his nose with his forefinger.

‘Ah.’ Medioni’s eyes went wide and he brightened up considerably, his mad suspicions vindicated. ‘Of course. That’s good to know, officer. Excellent. I knew I was right.’

Desmoulins said, ‘But keep it to yourself, understood? We don’t want to tip our hand too early and ruin the chances of an arrest.’

‘Absolutely.’ Medioni frowned. ‘Sorry – you asked about something else.’

‘A yellow van. Have you seen one in the area in the past few days?’

‘Only the PTT van. It comes every day. Like clockwork.’

‘Are you sure it was the PTT that you saw every time?’

‘Absolutely. The driver is my niece’s boy, Allain, so I always watch out for him, to give him a wave.’

Three doors along, after ringing the bell, Desmoulins found himself confronted by an excited-looking individual in a bright yellow shirt and red trousers who virtually leapt out to greet him.

‘Have you got the papers?’ the man demanded, grabbing him by the arm. ‘Coulibay’s the name. Philippe Coulibay.’ He spelled it out. ‘Court papers … they should have been here by now.’

‘Sorry,’ said Desmoulins, gently prising the man’s fingers from his arm. ‘But I’m not here to deliver any court papers.’

‘What? Christ, when are they going to get here, eh? When?’ Coulibay slapped a hand against the side of his head in obvious frustration and stared wildly each way along the street. ‘I’m going through a bastard of a divorce,’ he muttered angrily, even though Desmoulins hadn’t asked. ‘Being fleeced, I am. Robbed. Mugged. She wants eighty per cent of everything. Eighty! I need to sign the final papers before she gets any other ideas and hires some crooked private detective to cook up more lies against me. The way things are going right now I might as well save everyone the effort and put a gun to my head, except she’d probably want the cost of the bullet, too.’

‘You need to calm down, M. Coulibay,’ Desmoulins advised him. ‘You’ll make yourself unwell. And, believe me, that’s no way to solve the problem. In any case,’ he added, ‘I believe the usual division in divorces is fifty-fifty.’

He made his escape while Coulibay was trying to think of an answer, and was fifty metres down the street when he heard someone puffing up behind him and turned to find the stick figure of M. Medioni trotting along the pavement.

‘Officer. Officer,’ he gasped nasally, and slowed to catch his breath. ‘Sorry – I was wrong earlier. I did see another yellow van the other day. I didn’t really give it a thought until you mentioned it just now, but I remember seeing it stop at Gambon’s house. I thought it was Allain, my niece’s boy, at first, but then I noticed it didn’t have the proper insignia on the side, like they’re supposed to. I was going to mention it to Allain, but it slipped my mind.’

Desmoulins felt a thrill run through him that he wasn’t about to let go. This was better than anything so far, supporting the sighting by Dupannet in Le Vésinet. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Slow down, sir. Deep breaths. Did you get a look at the driver or the registration?’ It was too much to hope for, he thought; around here they all seemed to be a bottle short of a full crate.

‘I did. Both.’ Medioni breathed deeply, then in a rush added, ‘The driver was a sallow individual, like those types who haven’t had a touch of sunshine in their lives. He had on a peaked cap but it wasn’t the official issue. He reminded me of a skinny version of … what’s that comedian who does the Don Camillo films?’

‘Fernandel?’ A vision of a big face and a wide smile full of teeth popped into Desmoulins’ head. God on a bicycle, he thought, he should be easy enough to find.

‘That’s him. Only skinnier and paler and not so many teeth.’ Medioni laughed. ‘Maybe he didn’t look so much like him at all, now I come to think of it. Anyway, I’m glad I remembered that detail. I bet it helps, doesn’t it?’

‘I think it might.’ Desmoulins kept his expression blank and wondered how on earth he was supposed to find a face that looked nothing like the actor comedian, except in Medioni’s insane imagination. ‘What about the registration?’

‘Sorry, that went right out of my head.’ He scowled. ‘I mean, I did see the registration, so you’d think I’d be able to call it to mind … but no. Sorry. It was a Paris number, though, I remember that much.’

Ten minutes later, after leaving a phone number for Medioni to call if he remembered anything else, followed by a phone call to the office with details of the second appearance of a yellow van, Desmoulins was on his way back to Amiens. It might turn out to be nothing, but he hoped and suspected not. Bigger cases had been solved because of more slender clues, and if whoever was delivering the letters had made a slip-up, it could all hinge on finding the vehicle.