The Day of the Jackal

Three hundred yards away another man leaned over his window sill in the summer night and gazed pensively at the bulk of the Police Judiciaire lying to the left of the spotlit spires of Notre Dame. He was clad in black trousers and walking shoes, with a polonecked silk sweater covering a white shirt and black bib. He smoked a king-size English filter cigarette, and the young face belied the shock of iron-grey hair above it.

As the two men looked towards each other unknowing above the waters of the Seine, the varied chimes of the churches of Paris ushered in August 22nd.

PART THREE. Anatomy of a kill

NINETEEN

CLAUDE LEBEL had a bad night. It was half past one, and he had barely got to sleep when Caron shook him awake.

«Chief, I'm sorry about this, but I've had an idea. This chap, the jackal. He's got a Danish passport, right?»

Lebel shook himself awake.

«Go on.»

«Well, he must have got it from somewhere. Either he had it forged or he stole it. But as carrying the passport has entailed a change of hair colouring, it looks as if he stole it.»

«Reasonable. Go on.»

«Well, apart from his reconnaissance trip to Paris in July, he has been based in London. So the chances are he stole it in one of those two cities. Now what would a Dane do when his passport was lost or stolen? He'd go to his consulate.»

Lebel struggled off the cot.

«Sometimes, my dear Lucien, I think you will go far. Get me Superintendent Thomas at his home, then the Danish Consul General in Paris. In that order.»

He spent another hour on the phone and persuaded both men to leave their beds and get back to their offices. Lebel went back to his cot at nearly three in the morning. At four he was woken by a call from the Prefecture de Police to say that over nine hundred and eighty hotel registration cards filled in by Danes staying in Paris hotels had been brought in by the collections at midnight and 2 am, and sorting of them into categories of «probable', «possible' and «others' had already started.

At six he was still awake and drinking coffee when the call came from the engineers at the DST, to whom he had given his instructions just after midnight. There had been a catch. He took a car and drove down through the early-morning streets to their headquarters with Caron beside him. In a basement communications laboratory they listened to a tape-recording.

It started with a loud click, then a series of whirrs as if someone was dialling seven figures. Then there was the long buzz of a telephone ringing, followed by another click as the receiver was lifted.

A husky voice said, «Alto?»

A woman's voice said, «i'ci Jacqueline.»

The man's voice replied, «Ici Valmy.»

The woman said quickly, «They know he's a Danish parson. They're checking through the night the hotel registration cards of all Danes in Paris, with card collections at midnight, two and four o'clock. Then they're going to visit every one.»

There was a pause, then the man's voice said, «Merci.»

He hung up, and the woman did the same.

Lebel stared at the slowly turning tape spool.

«You know the number she rang?»

Lebel asked the engineer.

«Yup. We can work it out from the length of the delay while the dialing disc spins back to zero. The number was MOLITOR 5901: «You have the address?»

The man passed him a slip of paper. Lebel glanced at it.

«Come on, Lucien. Let's go and pay a call on Monsieur Valmy.»

«What about the girl?»

«Oh, she'll have to be charged.»

The knock came at seven o'clock. The schoolmaster was brewing himself a cup of breakfast food on the gas-ring. With a frown he turned down the gas and crossed' the sitting room to open the door. Four men were facing him. He knew who they were and what they were without being told. The two in uniform looked as if they were going to lunge at him, but the short, mild-looking man gestured for them to remain where they were.

«We tapped the phone,» said the little man quietly. «You're Valmy.»

The schoolmaster gave no sign of emotion. He stepped back and let them enter the room.

«May I get dressed?» he asked.

«Yes, of course.»

It took him only a few minutes, as the two uniformed policemen stood over him, to draw on trousers and shirt, without bothering to remove his pyjamas. The younger man in plain clothes stood in the doorway. The older man wandered round the flat, inspecting the piles of books and papers.

«It'll take ages to sort through this little lot, Lucien,» he said, and the man in the doorway grunted.

«Not our department, thank God.»

«Are you ready?» the little man asked the schoolmaster.

«Yes.»

«Take him downstairs to the car.»