Five minutes later the hotel was deluged with uniformed police. They interviewed the staff, examined the bedroom, chased through the grounds. Lebel walked alone out into the drive and stared up at the surrounding hills. Caron joined him.
‘You think he’s really gone, chief?’ Lebel nodded.
‘He’s gone all right.’
‘But he was booked in for two days. Do you think the proprietor’s in this with him?’
‘No. He and the staff aren’t lying. He changed his mind some time this morning. And he left. The question now is where the hell has he gone, and does he suspect yet that we know who he is?’
‘But how could he? He couldn’t know that. It must be coincidence. It must be.’
‘My dear Lucien, let us hope so.’
‘All we’ve got to go on now, then, is the car number.’
‘Yes. That was my mistake. We should have put the alert out for the car. Get on to the police R/T to Lyons from one of the squad cars and make it an all-stations alert. Top priority. White Alfa Romeo, Italian, Number MI-61741. Approach with caution, occupant believed armed and dangerous. You know the drill. But one more thing, nobody is to mention it to the Press. Include in the message the instruction that the suspected man probably does not know he’s suspected, and I’ll skin anybody who lets him hear it on the radio or read it in the Press. I’m going to tell Commissaire Gaillard of Lyons to take over here. Then let’s get back to Paris.’
It was nearly six o’clock when the blue Alfa coasted into the town of Valence where the steel torrent of the Route Nationale Seven, the main road from Lyons to Marseilles and the highway carrying most of the traffic from Paris to the Côte d’Azur, thunders along the banks of the Rhône. The Alfa crossed the great road running south and took the bridge over the river towards the RN533 to St Péray on the western bank. Below the bridge the mighty river smouldered in the afternoon sunlight, ignored the puny steel insects scurrying southwards and rolled at its own leisurely but certain pace towards the waiting Mediterranean.
After St Péray, as dusk settled on the valley behind him, the Jackal gunned the little sports car higher and higher into the mountains of the Massif Central and the province of Auvergne. After Le Puy the going got steeper, the mountains higher and every town seemed to be a watering spa where the life-giving streams flowing out from the rocks of the massif had attracted those with aches and eczemas developed in the cities and made fortunes for the cunning Auvergnat peasants who had gone into the spa business with a will.
After Brioude the valley of the Allier river dropped behind, and the smell in the night air was of heather and drying hay in the upland pastures. He stopped to fill the tank at Issoire, then sped on through the casino town of Mont Doré and the spa of La Bourdoule. It was nearly midnight when he rounded the headwaters of the Dordogne, where it rises among the Auvergne rocks to flow south and west through half a dozen dams and spend itself into the Atlantic at Bordeaux.
From La Bourdoule he took the RN89 towards Ussel, the county town of Corrèze.
‘You are a fool, Monsieur le Commissaire, a fool. You had him within your grasp, and you let him slip.’ Saint-Clair had half-risen to his feet to make his point, and glared down the polished mahogany table at the top of Lebel’s head. The detective was studying the papers of his dossier, for all the world as if Saint-Clair did not exist.
He had decided that was the only way to treat the arrogant colonel from the Palace, and Saint-Clair for his part was not quite sure whether the bent head indicated an appropriate sense of shame or an insolent indifference. He preferred to believe it was the former. When he had finished and sank back into his seat, Claude Lebel looked up.
‘If you will look at the mimeographed report in front of you, my dear Colonel, you will observe that we did not have him in our hands,’ he observed mildly. ‘The report from Lyons that a man in the name of Duggan had registered the previous evening at a hotel in Gap did not reach the PJ until 12.15 today. We now know that the Jackal left the hotel abruptly at 11.05. Whatever measures had been taken, he still had an hour’s start.
‘Moreover, I cannot accept your strictures on the efficiency of the police forces of this country in general. I would remind you that the orders of the President are that this affair will be managed in secret. It was therefore not possible to put out an alert to every rural gendarmerie for a man named Duggan for it would have started a hullabaloo in the Press. The card registering Duggan at the Hôtel du Cerf was collected in the normal way at the normal time, and sent with due dispatch to Regional Headquarters at Lyons. Only there was it realised that Duggan was a wanted man. This delay was unavoidable, unless we wish to launch a nationwide hue-and-cry for the man, and that is outside my brief.
‘And, lastly, Duggan was registered at the hotel for two days. We do not know what made him change his mind at 11 am today and decide to move elsewhere.’
‘Probably your police gallivanting about the place,’ snapped Saint-Clair.
‘I have already made it plain, there was no gallivanting before 12.15 and the man was already seventy minutes gone,’ said Lebel.
‘All right, we have been unlucky, very unlucky,’ cut in the Minister. ‘However there is still the question of why no immediate search for the car was instituted. Commissaire?’
‘I agree it was a mistake, Minister, in the light of events. I had reason to believe the man was at the hotel and intended to spend the night there. If he had been motoring in the vicinity, and had been intercepted by a motor-patrol man for driving a wanted car, he would almost certainly have shot the unsuspecting policeman, and thus forewarned made his escape …’
‘Which is precisely what he has done,’ said Saint-Clair.
‘True, but we have no evidence to suggest that he has been forewarned, as he would have been if his car had been stopped by a single patrolman. It may well be he just decided to move on somewhere else. If so, and if he checks into another hotel tonight, he will be reported. Alternately, if his car is seen he will be reported.’
‘When did the alert for the white Alfa go out?’ asked the director of the PJ, Max Fernet.
‘I issued the instructions at 5.15 pm from the courtyard of the hotel,’ replied Lebel. ‘It should have reached all major road-patrol units by seven, and the police on duty in the main towns should be informed throughout the night as they check in for night duty. In view of the danger of this man, I have listed the car as stolen, with instructions that its presence be reported immediately to the Regional HQ, but that no approach should be made to the occupant by a lone policeman. If this meeting decides to change these orders, then I must ask that the responsibility for what may ensue be taken by this meeting.’
There was a long silence.
‘Regrettably, the life of a police officer cannot be allowed to stand in the way of protecting the President of France,’ murmured Colonel Rolland. There were signs of assent from round the table.
‘Perfectly true,’ assented Lebel. ‘Providing a single police officer can stop this man. But most town and country policemen, the ordinary men on the beat and the motor patrolmen, are not professional gunfighters. This Jackal is. If he is intercepted, shoots down one or two policemen, makes another getaway and disappears, we shall have two things to cope with: one will be a killer fully forewarned and perhaps able to adopt yet a new identity about which we know nothing, the other will be a nationwide headline story in every newspaper which we will not be able to play down. If the Jackal’s real reason for being in France remains a secret for forty-eight hours after the killing story breaks, I will be most surprised. The Press will know within days that he is after the President. If anyone here would like to explain that to the General, I will willingly retire from this investigation and hand it over.’
No one volunteered. The meeting broke up as usual around midnight. Within thirty minutes it had become Friday, August 16th.