The Day of the Jackal

And now he stood in the hall waiting for Bouvier, and watching the chiefs of department file past him on their way out. Some nodded curtly and passed on; others ventured a sympathetic smile as they said good night. Almost the last to leave, while inside the conference room Bouvier conferred quietly with Max Ferret, was the aristocratic Colonel from the Elysee staff. Lebel had briefly caught his name, as the men round the table were introduced, as Saint-Clair de Villauban. He stopped in front of the small and roly-poly commissaire and eyed him with ill-concealed distaste.

«I hope, Commissaire, that you will be successful in your enquiries, and rapidly so,» he said. «We at the palace will be keeping a very close eye on your progress. In the event that you should fail to find this bandit, I can assure you that there will be… repercussions.»

He turned on his heel and stalked down the stairs towards the foyer. Lebel said nothing but blinked rapidly several times.

One of the factors in the make-up of Claude Lebel that had led to his successes when enquiring into crime over the previous twenty years since he had joined the police force of the Fourth Republic as a young detective in Normandy was his capacity to inspire people with the confidence to talk to him.

He lacked the imposing bulk of Bouvier, the traditional image of the authority of the law. Nor did he have the smartness with words that exemplified so many of the new breed of young detectives now coming into the force, who could bully and browbeat a witness into tears. He did not feel the lack.

He was aware that most crime in any society is either carried out against, or witnessed by, the little people, the shopkeeper, the sales assistant, the postman or the bank clerk. These people he could make talk to him, and he knew it.

It was partly because of his size; he was small, and resembled in many ways the cartoonist's image of a hen-pecked husband, which, although no one in the department knew it, was just what he was. His dress was dowdy, a crumpled suit and a mackintosh. His manner was mild, almost apologetic, and in his request of a witness for information it contrasted so sharply with the attitude the witness had experienced from his first interview with the law, that the witness tended to warm towards the detective as to a refuge from the roughness of the subordinates.

But there was something more. He had been head of the Homicide Division of the most powerful criminal police force in Europe. He had been ten years a detective with the Brigade Criminelle of the renowned Police Judiciaire of France. Behind the mildness and the seeming simplicity was a combination of shrewd brain and a dogged refusal to be ruffled or intimidated by anyone when he was carrying out a job. He had been threatened by some of the most vicious gang bosses of France, who had thought from the rapid blinking with which Lebel greeted such approaches that their warnings had been duly taken. Only later, from a prison cell, had they had the leisure to realise they had underestimated the soft brown eyes and the toothbrush moustache.

Twice he had been subjected to intimidation by wealthy and powerful figures, once when an industrialist had wished to see one of his junior employees charged with embezzlement on the basis of a cursory glance at the auditor's evidence, and once when a society blade had wished investigations into the death by drugs of a young actress to be dropped.

In the first case the enquiry into the affairs of the industrialist had resulted in certain other and far bigger discrepancies being unearthed which had nothing to do with the junior accountant, but which had caused the industrialist to wish he had departed for Switzerland while he had the chance. The second time the society host had ended up with a lengthy period as a guest of the state in which to regret he had ever bothered to head a vice ring from his Avenue Victor Hugo penthouse.

Claude Lebel's reaction to the remarks of Colonel Saint-Clair was to blink like a rebuked schoolboy and say nothing. But it did not subsequently in any way affect his conduct of the job with which he had been saddled.

As the last man filed out of the conference room Maurice Bouvier joined him. Max Fernet wished him luck, shook hands briefly and headed down the stairs. Bouvier clapped a ham-like hand on Lebel's shoulder.

«Eh, bien, mon pent Claude. So that's the way it is, hein? All right, it was me who suggested the PJ handle this business. It was the only thing to do. Those others would have talked round in circles for ever. Come, we'll talk in the car.»

He led the way downstairs and the pair of them climbed into the back of the Citroen that waited in the courtyard.