The Night at the Crossroads (11 page)

The mechanic was flexing his muscles, trying to snap the wire bonds.

‘What was in the spare tyre?'

‘Don't know.'

‘Then why did you give it to that driver rather than another?'

‘I'm not talking any more!'

‘Too bad for you!'

Five inner tubes were punctured one after another, but they did not all contain cocaine. Under a patch that had covered a long slit in one tube, Maigret found silverware stamped with the coronet of a marquis. Another tube held lace and some
antique jewellery.

There were ten cars in the garage. Maigret tried to start each engine, but only one would work. So, armed with a monkey wrench backed up by a hammer, he got busy taking apart engines and cutting open petrol tanks.

The mechanic watched him with a mocking smile.

‘Can't say we're short on the goods!' he sneered.

The tank in a four-horse-power car was crammed full of bearer bonds worth at least 300,000 francs.

‘Is this the haul from the break-in at that big savings and loan company?'

‘Could be!'

‘And these old coins?'

‘Dunno.'

There was more variety than in the back room of a second-hand shop. Everything imaginable: pearls, banknotes, American currency, official stamps and seals that must have been used to forge passports.

Maigret was unable to search everywhere, but when he tore open the worn-out cushions of a sedan, he found still more: silver florins, which convinced him that everything in that garage was more than met the eye.

A lorry swept past on the main road. Fifteen minutes later, another went by without stopping, and the inspector frowned.

He was beginning to see how the business was run. The garage was a no-account place along the main road, fifty kilometres from Paris, not far from some big provincial cities such as Chartres, Orléans, Le Mans, Châteaudun.

No neighbours, aside from those living in the Three Widows house and the Michonnet villa.

What could they see? A thousand cars going by every day. At least a hundred of them stopped at the petrol pumps. A few would go in for repairs. The garage sold or changed tyres and wheels. Cans of oil and drums of diesel oil came and went.

One detail was especially interesting. Big lorries headed for Paris drove by every evening, delivering vegetables to Les Halles. Later that night or in the morning, they came back empty.

Empty? Weren't they the ones ferrying stolen merchandise in the baskets and crates of produce?

The enterprise could well be a regular, even daily event. A single tyre, the one concealing cocaine, was enough to show the extent of the trafficking, because that drug shipment was worth over 200,000
francs.

What's more, didn't the garage repaint and disguise stolen cars? No witnesses! Monsieur Oscar in the doorway, hands in his pockets. Mechanics working with monkey wrenches or blowtorches. The five red-and-white petrol pumps providing
an innocent front …

The butcher, the baker, the tourists: didn't they stop by here like everyone else?

A bell rang in the distance. Maigret checked his watch. It was half past three.

‘Who's your boss?' he asked, without looking at his prisoner.

The man just smiled.

‘You know you'll wind up talking … Is it Monsieur Oscar? What's his real name?'

‘Oscar!'

The mechanic was practically giggling.

‘Did Monsieur Goldberg come here?'

‘Who's that?'

‘You'd know better than I! The Belgian who was murdered …'

‘No kidding!'

‘Whose job was it to knock off the Danish fellow on the Compiègne road?'

‘Somebody got knocked off?'

No doubt about it: Maigret's first impression was
panning out. He was up against a well-organized professional gang. And he soon had more proof. He heard a car coming, then a screech of brakes as it
stopped outside the iron shutter. The horn sounded urgently.

Maigret rushed to the door, but before he could open it, the car sped away so fast he could not even guess its model.

Clenching his fists, he went back to the mechanic.

‘How did you warn him off?'

‘Me?'

And the fellow chuckled, holding up his wrists in their wire bonds.

‘Talk!'

‘Must be that it smells fishy here and that driver's got a good nose …'

Now Maigret was worried. He overturned the cot roughly, sending Jojo sprawling, and looked for a possible switch for a warning signal outside.

He found nothing under the bed, however. He left the man lying on the floor, went outside and saw the five pumps lit up as usual.

He was beginning to get really angry.

‘There's no phone in the garage?'

‘Go and take a look!'

‘You do know you'll talk in the end …'

‘I can't hear you!'

There was nothing more to be got from Jojo, a perfect example of a confident, experienced criminal. For a quarter of an hour, Maigret walked up and down fifty metres
of the main road, searching without
success for some possible signal.

The upstairs light at the Michonnet villa had been turned off. Only the Three Widows house was still lit, and the presence of the policemen surrounding the property was discreetly felt.

A limousine barrelled past.

‘What kind of car does your boss have?'

To the east, dawn announced itself with a whitish haze that barely cleared the horizon.

Maigret studied the mechanic's hands. They were not touching anything that might have sent a signal.

A current of cool air came in through the little door standing open in the corrugated iron shutter over the garage.

Hearing the sound of an engine, Maigret started to go out to the road, but just as he noticed the approach of an open four-seater touring car, which wasn't doing more than thirty kilometres an hour and seemed about to pull in, the car
exploded with gunfire.

Several men were shooting and bullets were rattling against the iron shutter.

Nothing could be seen except the glare of the headlights and the immobile shadows – heads, rather – just showing above the body of the car. Then came the roar of the accelerator …

Some broken windows … on the upper floor of the Three Widows house. The men in the car had kept shooting as they'd gone past.

Maigret had thrown himself flat on the ground and now stood up, his mouth dry, his pipe gone out.

He was certain: Monsieur Oscar had been driving the car that had just plunged back into the darkness.

Before the chief inspector even had time to get out on to the road, a taxi raced up and slammed on its brakes in front of the petrol pumps. A man jumped out – and collided with Maigret.

‘Grandjean!' exclaimed the chief inspector.

‘Petrol, quick!'

The taxi driver was a nervous wreck, because he'd been speeding at over a hundred kilometres an hour in a car meant to do eighty at most.

Grandjean belonged to the highway patrol; there were two other inspectors in the taxi with him, and each man gripped a revolver in both fists.

The petrol tank was filled with feverish haste.

‘How far ahead are they?'

‘About five kilometres …'

The driver was waiting to take off again.

‘You stay here!' Maigret ordered Grandjean. ‘The other two will continue on without you.

‘Don't take any risks!' he advised them. ‘No matter what happens, we've got them. Tail them, that's all …'

The taxi set out. A sagging mudguard made a racket all down the road.

‘Let's hear it, Grandjean …'

And Maigret heard him out, all the while keeping an
eye on Jojo and the three houses and listening intently to the noises of the night.

‘It was Lucas who telephoned me, told me to watch the owner of this place, Monsieur Oscar … I began following him at Porte d'Orléans. They had a big dinner at L'Escargot, where they spoke to no one, then went on to
L'Ambigu … Until then, nothing to report. At midnight, they come out of the theatre and I see them head for the Chope Saint-Martin … You know the place; in the little dining room upstairs, there are always a few tough guys … So Monsieur Oscar walks in like
he owns the joint. The waiters welcome him, the proprietor shakes his hand, asks him how business is going …

‘As for the wife, her, she's right at home there too.

‘They sit down at a table where there were already three guys and a tart. I recognized one of the guys, he owns a bar somewhere around République. The second had a junkshop, Rue du Temple. As for the third guy, I don't know, but the
tart with him has got to be on record with Vice …

‘They start drinking champagne, having a gay old time. Then they order crayfish, onion soup, what have you, a real blowout, like those people get up to: yelling, slapping their thighs, belting out a little song now and then …

‘There was one jealous scene, because Monsieur Oscar was cuddling too close to the tart and his wife didn't care for her. That worked out in the end, thanks to a fresh bottle of champagne.

‘Time to time, the
patron
came over to have a drink with his customers and he even stood them a round. Then,
towards three o'clock, I think, the waiter arrived to say Monsieur
Oscar's wanted on the phone.

‘When he came back from the booth, he wasn't laughing any more. He gave me a dirty look, because I was the only one there they didn't know. He spoke in a low voice to the others … They were in some kind of mess! They
pulled the longest faces … The girl – I mean Monsieur Oscar's wife – had circles under her eyes and halfway down her cheeks and was drinking like mad to give herself some Dutch courage …

‘There was only one guy who left with the couple, the fellow I didn't know, some kind of Italian or Spaniard …

‘While they were saying goodnight and all that I got out ahead of them to the boulevard. I picked a taxi that didn't look too dilapidated and called two inspectors on duty over at Porte Saint-Denis.

‘You saw their car … Well! They started going like blazes at Boulevard Saint-Michel. They were whistled down at least ten times, never even looked back. We had real trouble following them. The taxi driver – a Russian – claimed I
was making him burn out his engine …'

‘They're the ones who were shooting?'

‘Yes!'

After hearing all the gunfire, Lucas had left the Three Widows house and now joined the inspector.

‘What's going on?' he asked.

‘How's the patient?'

‘Weaker. I think he'll make it till morning, though. The surgeon should arrive soon. But what happened here?'

Lucas took in the garage's iron shutter, scarred by
bullets, and the cot where the mechanic was still tied up with electric wire.

‘An organized gang, then, chief?'

‘And how!'

Maigret was unusually worried; it was the slight hunching of his shoulders that gave it away. His lips were clamped hard around the stem of his pipe.

‘Lucas, you organize the dragnet. Phone Arpajon, Étampes, Chartres, Orléans, Le Mans, Rambouillet … You'd best take a look at the map … I want every police station on alert! Get the roadblock chains up outside the
towns … We've got them, this bunch … What's Else Andersen doing?'

‘I don't know. I left her in her room. She's very depressed.'

‘You don't say!' barked Maigret with surprising sarcasm.

They were still standing out in the road.

‘Where should I call from?'

‘There's a phone in the hall of the garage owner's house. Start with Orléans, because they've probably gone through Étampes by now.'

A light came on in an isolated farmhouse surrounded by fields. The family was getting up. A lantern disappeared around the end of a wall, and then the windows of a stable lit up.

‘Five o'clock … They're beginning to milk the cows.'

Lucas went off to force open the door of Monsieur Oscar's house with a crowbar from the garage.

As for Grandjean, he followed Maigret around without really understanding what was happening.

‘The latest incidents are as clear as day,' grumbled the
inspector. ‘All we need to find out is what started it all …

‘Look! Up there is a citizen who sent for me specifically to show me that he couldn't walk. He's been sitting in the same place for hours, without moving a muscle, not one muscle …

‘Aha! Michonnet's windows are lit up, aren't they! And there I was, just now, looking for the signal! You can't understand the problem now … The traffic was going on by without stopping! But all that time, the
bedroom window
was completely dark
 …'

Maigret laughed like someone tickled pink.

And suddenly his colleague saw him pull a revolver from his pocket and aim it at an unbroken upstairs window, at the shadow of a head leaning back in an armchair.