Chapter Twenty-Six
They stepped out into the grey and gold light of a spring evening. There was a faint glimmer in the sky to the west and, across the river, dying rays were caught up and given a last flicker of life by the open windows of high attic rooms, still hot from the day. But a mist was already beginning to curl up from the Seine and Joe shivered.
‘Now I know you won’t want to hear me say this,’ Bonnefoye began cheerfully, ‘because I’m quite aware you’re all fired to go and stick your newly acquired weapon into the black heart of Set, but there are two people we must see first. Fourier and Sir George. Any preference?’
‘As we’re on the spot – Fourier. Let’s start with him, shall we?’
‘I’d prefer it. I have to report back on the fracas in the boulevard just now. He’ll be waiting to see me. Seems to be taking more of an interest. He grudgingly gave me ten blokes to mount the raid, after all! Feel up to the stairs, then, do you?’
Police headquarters was busy. Fourier, they were told, was busy but he had asked to see them as soon as they arrived. The Chief Inspector appeared not to have left his desk or changed his clothes since Joe had last seen him on the morning after the murder. A closer look, however, revealed a different pattern of coffee stains on his shirt front.
Juggling papers and cards, the Chief Inspector demonstrated his busy-ness and asked them to take a seat. The enquiry, he informed them, was progressing. His sergeant dashed in with a sheet of foolscap. Fourier was instantly absorbed by what he read there and, taking out his pen, made a few alterations and additions to the text.
‘The copy,’ he announced. ‘The copy, as we call it, for the press. I have it. Anything vital missing? Not having had your report yet, Bonnefoye, I’m working in the dark. What do you think?’
He began to read out the salient points. ‘Now then . . . Brigandage in Bohemia. Here we go. Guaranteed to get them going, a reference to brigandage . . . Officers working under the direction of Commissaire Casimir Fourier . . . dramatic shootout . . . three gangsters dead . . . no bystanders hurt . . . police squad remain on the alert and ensuring public safety in this erstwhile peaceable quartier . . . Well? What are you thinking?’
‘Can’t argue with the facts, sir,’ said Bonnefoye. ‘It will do as a preliminary account.’
‘Had you thought, Fourier, you might insert something on the lines of: The peace of Mount Parnassus was shattered last night when . . .’
‘Good. Good.’ He scratched in the insertion. ‘Now. Next. Take a look at this line-up, will you? You requested it, I believe. Anything there you like the look of?’
He passed them a hand of six Bertillon identity cards. They shuffled ugly face after ugly face complete with cranial measurements and descriptions of distinguishing features. Three had accompanying fingerprint records stuck along the bottom of the card. All the men were aged between twenty and forty and all had a scar on the right jaw.
They spotted him at the same moment.
‘That’s him!’ said Joe.
‘Gotcha!’ said Bonnefoye.
He handed one of the cards to Fourier. ‘Everything we need to know about our knifeman. Vincent Viviani. You’ll find, sir, he’s known in his milieu as Vévé. Ex-Zouave. Scar as reported by Miss Watkins. He works for the outfit who run, or have been running until this evening, the premises in the boulevard du Montparnasse. And – icing on the cake! – some genius in the ID department bothered to take his prints when he was last a guest here, evidently. Sir, if you can get someone to check the fingerprints from the box at the theatre, you’ll find a sticky one to the left of the exit. Fixed in pomade from the dead man’s hair. We think it will correspond with the prints recorded here.’
Fourier exchanged a glance with Joe. It trembled on the edge of enthusiasm.
‘Though, of course, we need to take the man into custody in order to make a comparison,’ Bonnefoye said carefully.
‘You’re telling me you haven’t got him yet? I would expect him to be standing in manacles outside the door by now,’ grumbled Fourier.
‘We’ve been busy tracking down, not this underling, vicious killer though he be, but the mastermind who has set the whole organization in operation,’ said Joe. ‘Bonnefoye, will you tell him?’
Bonnefoye’s account was succinct, sure and surgically precise. It just managed not to be sarcastic.
‘And now I’m to understand that, though you have an identity for the killer, he’s beyond our reach? Another bloody diplomat! Buggers! Corral the lot in their embassies and you’d reduce the crime in the city by half! I sometimes think they send their rogues and scallywags over to us to get rid of them. Now what the hell do we do? Can’t touch him. He can sit in there as long as he likes, drinking tea. And when he’s ready, he can jump in the back of an embassy car, pull a rug over his head and scuttle off back where he came from on the next plane.’