Maigret Gets Angry (9 page)

‘What do you know?'

‘First of all we need to get out of here,
young man. I promise you that you have nothing to fear.'

‘Where's my father? What have you
done with him?'

‘Your father is in his bedroom, in bed,
probably.'

‘It's not true!'

His voice was full of animosity. They were lying
to him. He was almost certain they were lying to him, as people had done all his life. This was
the obsessive fear that his voice revealed to Maigret, who was beginning to lose patience.

‘Your grandmother told me
everything.'

‘It's not true!'

‘It was she who came to fetch me and
who—'

And the boy, almost shouting:

‘She doesn't know anything! I'm
the only one who—'

‘Hush! Trust me, Georges-Henry. Come. When
you come out of here, we'll talk calmly.'

Would he let himself be cajoled? Otherwise
Maigret would have to go down into the hole, use force, seize him bodily and overpower him, and
he might fight back, scratch and bite like a panic-stricken young animal.

‘Shall I go down?' repeated Mimile,
who was growing restless and occasionally turned towards the door, afraid.

‘Listen, Georges-Henry. I'm from the
police.'

‘This has nothing to do with the police! I
hate the police! I hate the police!'

He broke off. An idea had just struck him and he
continued in a different voice:

‘Anyway, if you were the police you'd
have—'

He shrieked:

‘Leave me alone! Leave me alone! Go away!
You're lying! You know you're lying! Go and tell my father—'

Just then, from over by the door which had opened
noiselessly, a voice rang out:

‘I'm sorry to disturb you,
gentlemen.'

Maigret's torch lit up the shape of Ernest
Malik, who was standing there, very calmly, a big gun in his hand.

‘I believe, my poor Jules, that I would be
within my rights to shoot you, along with your friend.'

From down below, they could hear the boy's
teeth chattering.

Without betraying the least surprise, Maigret
turned slowly towards the newcomer and appeared not to notice the gun pointing at him.

‘Get the boy out of there,' he said
in his most natural voice, like a man who, having tried to complete a task and failed, was
asking another to try his hand.

‘Now listen, Maigret—' Malik
began.

‘Not now. Not here. Later, I'll
listen to anything you like.'

‘Do you admit that you have put yourself in
the wrong?'

‘I'm telling you to take care of the
child. You won't? Mimile, go down into the hole.'

Only then did Ernest Malik say sharply:

‘You can come out,
Georges-Henry.'

The boy did not move.

‘Do you hear me? Come out! Your punishment
has gone on long enough.'

Maigret shuddered. So that was what they would
have him believe? That this was a punishment?

‘That was hopeless, Ernest.'

And, leaning over the hole, he said in a calm,
gentle voice:

‘You can come now, Georges-Henry. You have
nothing more to fear. Not from your father or from anyone else.'

Mimile held out his hand and helped the young man to hoist himself
up through the trap door. Georges-Henry stood hunched, avoiding looking at his father, waiting
for the chance to run away.

And that, Maigret had foreseen. For he had
anticipated everything, even – and especially – Malik's bursting in on them.
And Mimile had been given precise instructions, so now all he had to do was act on them.

The four of them could not stand there in the old
kennel indefinitely, and Maigret was the first to walk towards the door, ignoring Malik, who
stood barring his path.

‘We'll be more comfortable talking
inside the house,' he murmured.

‘You insist on talking?'

Maigret shrugged. As he passed Mimile, he shot
him a look that meant: ‘Act with caution'.

For this was a delicate operation and one slip
could ruin everything. They exited one by one and Georges-Henry emerged last, careful to keep a
distance from his father. The four of them walked down the path and now it was Malik's
turn to display a certain anxiety. The night was pitch black. The moon hadn't risen yet.
Maigret had switched off his torch.

There was barely another hundred metres to go.
What was the boy waiting for? Had Maigret got it wrong?

Now it was as if no one dared speak, no one
wanted to take responsibility for what was about to happen.

Another sixty metres. In one minute, it would be
too late and Maigret felt like giving Georges-Henry a nudge to bring him back down to earth.

Twenty metres … ten metres … Maigret would have to
resign himself. What were the four of them going to do inside the house whose white façade
loomed in front of them?

Five metres. Too late! Or rather it wasn't.
Georges-Henry proved himself cannier than Maigret himself, for he had banked on one thing: once
they reached the house, his father would have to go ahead to open the door.

At that exact moment he darted off and, a second
later, the rustle of grasses and branches could be heard in the thicket. Mimile had been quick
to spot the boy's move and set off in pursuit.

Malik barely lost a second, but it was a second
too long. His reflex was to aim his gun at the circus-man's silhouette. He would have
fired. But before he had time to squeeze the trigger, Maigret brought his fist down on his
forearm and the gun clattered to the ground.

‘And so we have it!' said Maigret
with satisfaction.

He did not deign to pick up the weapon, which he
kicked into the middle of the path. For his part, a sort of human pride prevented Ernest Malik
from going to retrieve it. What would be the point?

The game being played now between the two of them
could not in any way be affected by a gun.

For Maigret, it was quite an emotional moment.
Precisely because he had anticipated it. The night was so still that they could hear, already
some distance away, the footsteps of the two men running. Malik and he listened out. They could
clearly hear that Mimile was close on the boy's heels.

They
must have entered the neighbouring estate, still running, and from there they would probably
head down to the towpath.

‘And so we have it,' repeated Maigret
as the sound faded until it was barely audible. ‘Shall we go inside?'

Malik turned the key which he had inserted in the
lock earlier and stood aside. Then he switched on the light and they saw his wife standing in a
white bathrobe on the bend in the stairs.

She stared at the two of them, round-eyed in
amazement and at a loss for words, until her husband snapped irritably:

‘Go to bed!'

The two of them were in Malik's study and
Maigret, standing, began to fill his pipe, darting smug little glances at his adversary.
Meanwhile Malik paced up and down, his hands behind his back.

‘Aren't you planning to lodge a
complaint?' Maigret asked quietly. ‘It's the perfect opportunity. Your two
dogs poisoned. Climbing over the wall and trespassing. You could even claim there was a kidnap
attempt … After sunset to boot … That would carry a sentence of hard labour. Go on,
Ernest … The telephone is there, within reach. A call to the Corbeil gendarmerie and
they'll have to arrest me.

‘What's wrong? … What's
stopping you?'

Using a familiar tone no longer bothered him now,
quite the opposite, but it was not the chumminess Malik
had used on their first meeting. It was the contemptuous
familiarity that the former inspector used to employ with his ‘customers'.

‘Don't you want the whole world to
know that you were keeping your son locked up in a cellar? … First of all, it's your
right as a father. The right to punish. How many times, when I was little, was I threatened with
being locked in the cellar!'

‘Shut up, will you?'

Malik had planted himself in front of Maigret and
was staring at him intently, trying to fathom what lay behind his words.

‘What exactly do you know?'

‘Finally! The question I've been
waiting for.'

‘What do you know?' asked Malik
again, becoming impatient.

‘And you, what are you afraid of me
knowing?'

‘I have already asked you not to poke your
nose in my business.'

‘And I refused.'

‘For the second and last time, I'm
telling you—'

But Maigret was already shaking his head.

‘No … You see, that's
impossible now.'

‘You don't know anything.'

‘In that case, what are you afraid
of?'

‘You won't find out
anything.'

‘So I'm not a bother to you,
then.'

‘As for the boy, he won't talk. I
know you're relying on him.'

‘Is that all you have to say to me, Ernest?'

‘I'm asking you to think. I could
have killed you earlier, and I'm beginning to wish I had.'

‘You may well have been wrong not to. In a
few moments, when I leave here, you'll still have a chance to shoot me in the back.
It's true that now the boy is far away, and that there's someone with him. Come on!
I'm ready for bed. So, no telephone? No complaint? No gendarmerie? Understood?
Agreed?'

He headed for the door.

‘Good night, Ernest.'

As he was about to disappear into the hall, he
changed his mind and went back into the room, to say, with a solemn expression and a heavy
gaze:

‘You see, what I am going to discover is I
suspect so ugly, so vile, that I'm loath to continue.'

He left without looking round, slamming the door
hard behind him, and made his way to the gate, which was locked. The situation was absurd: here
he was in the grounds of the house with no one to let him out.

The light was still on in the study, but Malik
was not thinking about seeing his enemy off the premises.

Scale the back wall? Maigret did not think he was
agile enough to do so alone. Find the path that would take him to the Amorelles' garden,
where the gate might not be locked?

He shrugged and headed over to the
gardeners' cottage, and tapped on the door.

‘What is it?' came a sleepy voice
from inside.

‘A friend of Monsieur Malik's who
needs someone to unlock the gate for him.'

He
heard the old gardener moving around as he put on his trousers and hunted around for his clogs.
The door opened a fraction.

‘How come you are in the gardens? Where are
the dogs?'

‘I think they're asleep,'
muttered Maigret. ‘Unless they're dead.'

‘What about Monsieur Malik?'

‘He's in his study.'

‘But he has the key to the gate.'

‘Maybe. But he's so preoccupied that
it didn't even occur to him.'

The gardener walked ahead of him, grumbling,
turning round from time to time to dart an inquisitive look at this nocturnal visitor. When
Maigret hastened his step, the man shuddered, as if he were expecting to be hit from behind.

‘Thank you, my good man.'

He returned serenely to L'Ange. He had to
throw pebbles at Raymonde's window to wake her and ask her to open the door.

‘What time is it? I wasn't expecting
you back tonight. Earlier I heard people running along the little path. Wasn't that
you?'

He poured himself a drink and went to bed. At
eight o'clock the next morning, freshly shaven and carrying his suitcase, he boarded the
train for Paris. At half past nine, having drunk a coffee and eaten croissants in a little
café, he walked into Quai des Orfèvres.

Lucas was conferring in his superior's
office. Maigret sat down at his old desk, next to the open window, and an
Amorelle and Campois tug happened to be passing on the Seine,
giving two loud siren blasts before disappearing under the Pont de la Cité.

At ten o'clock, Lucas came in, holding a
sheaf of papers, which he set down on a corner of the desk.

‘You're in town, chief? I thought you
were back in Orsenne.'

‘Has there been a telephone call for me
this morning?'

‘Not yet. Are you expecting one?'

‘You need to inform the switchboard. Tell
them to put the call directly through to me, or, if I'm not here, to take a
message.'

He didn't want to appear anxious, but he
smoked one pipe after another.

‘Carry on with your work as if I
weren't here.'

‘Nothing exciting this morning. A stabbing
in Rue Delambre.'

The daily routine. He knew it so well. He had
removed his jacket, as in the old days when he was at home here. He wandered in and out of the
various offices, shook hands, caught snatches of an interrogation or a telephone
conversation.

‘Don't mind me, boys.'

At half past eleven, he went down for a beer with
Torrence.

‘By the way, there's something
I'd like you to find out for me. Still on the subject of Ernest Malik. I want to know if
he's a gambler. Or if he was in the past, when he was young. It must be possible to find
someone who knew him twenty or twenty-five years ago.'

‘I will, chief.'

At a quarter to twelve, there was still nothing,
and Maigret's shoulders grew more stooped, his gait more hesitant.

‘I think I've been a complete
idiot!' he even said to Lucas, who was dealing with routine business.

Each time the telephone rang in the office, he
picked it up himself. At last, a few seconds before midday, someone was asking for Maigret.

‘Maigret speaking … Where are you?
… Where is he?'

‘In Ivry, boss. I'll be quick,
because I'm worried he'll take advantage. I don't know the name of the street.
I didn't get a chance to see it. A little hotel. It's a three-storey building and
the ground floor is painted brown. It's called A Ma Bourgogne. There's a gas works
right opposite.'

‘What's he doing?'

‘I have no idea. I think he's
sleeping. I'd better go.'

Maigret went and stood in front of a map of Paris
and the suburbs.

‘Do you know a gas works in Ivry,
Lucas?'

‘I think I get where it is, it's just
past the station.'

A few minutes later, Maigret, sitting in an
open-topped taxi, was heading towards the smoke of Ivry. He had to comb the streets for a while
until he found a gas works and eventually spotted a seedy hotel whose ground floor was painted
dark brown.

‘Shall I wait for you?' asked the
driver.

‘I think that would be a good
idea.'

Maigret walked into the restaurant area where
workers, nearly all foreigners, were eating at the marble tables. A
powerful smell of stew and cheap red wine assailed his throat. A
sturdy girl in black and white wove among the tables, carrying an impossible number of small,
grey ceramic dishes.