Frederick Forsyth - The Day of the Jackal

«Huh, they're busy tonight, the sods,» said the taxi-driver. «Where to, Monsieur l'Abbe?»

The parson gave him the address of a small hotel on the Quai des Grands Augustins.

Claude Lebel was back in his office at nine o'clock, to find a message asking him to ring Commissaire Valentin at the commissariat in Tulle. He was through in five minutes. While Valentin talked, he took notes.

«Have you fingerprinted the car?» asked Lebel.

«Of course, and the room at the chateau. Hundreds of sets, all matching.»

«Get them up here as fast as you can.»

«Right, will do. Do you want me to send the CRS man from Tulle railway station up as well?»

«No, thanks, he can't tell us more than he already has. Thanks for trying, Valentin. You can stand your boys down. He's in our territory now. We'll have to handle it from here.»

«You're sure it is the Danish pastor?» asked Valentin. «It could be coincidence.»

«No,» said Lebel, «it's him all right. He's junked one of the suitcases, you'll probably find it somewhere between Haute Chalonniere and Tulle. Try the rivers and ravines. But the other three pieces of luggage match too closely. It's him all right.»

He hung up.

«A parson this time,» he said bitterly to Caron, «a Danish parson. Name unknown, the CRS man couldn't remember the name on the passport. The human element, always the human element. A taxi driver goes to sleep by the roadside, a gardener is too nervous to investigate his employer oversleeping by six hours, a policeman doesn't remember a name in a passport. One thing I can tell you, Lucien, this is my last case. I'm getting too old. Old and slow. Get my car ready, would you. Time for the evening roasting.»

The meeting at the Ministry was strained and tense. For forty minutes the group listened to a step by step account of the trail from the forest clearing to Egletons, the absence of the vital taxi-driver, the murder in the chateau, the tall grey Dane boarding the Paris express at Tulle.

«The long and the short of it,» said Saint-Clair icily, when he had finished, «is that the killer is now in Paris, with a new name and a new face. You seem to have failed once again, my dear commissaire.»

«Let us save the recriminations for later,» interposed the Minister. «How many Danes are there in Paris tonight?»

«Probably several hundreds, Monsieur Ie Ministre.»

«Can we check them?»

«Only in the morning, when the hotel registration cards come in to the Prefecture,» said Lebel.

«I will arrange to have every hotel visited at midnight, two o'clock and four o'clock,» proposed the Prefect of Police. «Under the heading of "profession" he will have to put "pastor" or the hotel clerk will be suspicious.»

The room brightened.

«He will probably wrap a scarf round his dog collar, or take it off, and register as "mister" whatever-his-name-is,» said Lebel. Several people glowered at him.

«At this point, gentlemen, there is only one thing left to do,» said the Minister. «I shall ask for another interview with the President and ask him to cancel all public appearances until this man is found and disposed of. In the meantime every Dane registering in Paris tonight will be checked personally first thing in the morning. I can rely on you for that, Commissaire? Monsieur Ie Prefet de Police?»

Lebel and Papon nodded.

«Then that is all, gentlemen.»

«The thing that sticks in my craw,» said Lebel to Caron later in their office, «is that they insist on thinking it's just his good luck and our stupidity. Well, he's had good luck, but he's also devilishly clever. And we've had bad luck, and we've made mistakes. I've made them. But there's another element. Twice we've missed him by hours. Once he gets out of Gap with a re-painted car in the nick of time. Now he leaves the chateau and kills his mistress into the bargain within hours of the Alfa Romeo being found. And each time it's the morning after I have told that meeting at the Ministry that we have him in the bag, and his capture can be expected within twelve hours. Lucien, my dear fellow, I think I'm going to use my limitless powers and organise a little wire-tapping.»

He was leaning against the window-ledge, looking out across the softly flowing Seine towards the Latin Quarter where the lights were bright and the sound of laughter floated over the floodlit water.

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.

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.