Clermont-Ferrand is presented as the capital of Auvergne and as a regional base of the French Judicial Police. Its importance to the manhunt is institutional and practical: Commissaire Valentin, based at the regional headquarters there, alerts Claude Lebel to a crucial vehicle discovery and helps mobilize police across the countryside near Ussel.

Regional headquarters and the first alert

News of the car’s discovery reaches Claude Lebel just before six in the evening from Commissaire Valentin of the Regional Headquarters of the French Judicial Police at Clermont-Ferrand. By then, staff at the pound in Ussel have noticed that the car’s paint is badly applied and that its number plates have been reversed. Scratching one wing exposes white paint beneath blue; the front plate, lying face up in the courtyard, shows the registration MI-61741. These physical details turn an apparently ordinary abandoned car into an urgent lead.

Valentin’s call makes Clermont-Ferrand the point from which that lead enters the regional police response. He tells Lebel that the situation is important even though he cannot explain it over the telephone, and Lebel instructs him to send as strong a team as possible to Ussel. The exchange links the headquarters at Clermont-Ferrand to a developing investigation without suggesting that the fugitive himself has been located there.

Coordinating the search near Ussel

Lebel directs Valentin to begin enquiries at the place where the car was found and to organize a square search around it. The requested inquiries are deliberately broad: police are to question farmers who use the road, village shops and cafés, hotels, farmhouses, and isolated woodcutter’s shacks. The man they seek is described as tall and blond, English-born but fluent in French, carrying three suitcases and a handgrip, with substantial cash and the appearance of someone who may have slept rough.

The search is also managed as a secrecy problem. Lebel orders that the press be kept away and offers a cover story about a possible dazed survivor of a car crash. If officers find the fugitive, they are not to approach him; they must surround him and hold him there. Those instructions make the regional operation a containment effort as much as a search, while preserving the possibility of bringing in a dangerous suspect without provoking an immediate confrontation.

At sunset, police vans from Clermont-Ferrand, reinforced by vehicles from Ussel, establish a headquarters in the square of the nearest hamlet. From a radio van, Valentin directs the squad cars spreading into neighboring villages. He chooses a five-mile radius and plans to work through the night, when residents are more likely to be at home. The terrain complicates that decision: twisting valleys and hillsides make it easier for officers to lose their way or miss a small, isolated shelter in the dark.

A regional link in the wider manhunt

The Clermont-Ferrand headquarters connects a small-town vehicle discovery to a coordinated search across rural roads and settlements. The operation depends on moving information between Lebel, Valentin, and officers on the ground: the altered paint and reversed plates identify the car as significant; the registration and location direct attention to the area around Ussel; and the search plan turns that clue into inquiries across a defined radius.

The car also sharpens the investigators’ theory of how the Jackal escaped notice. Lebel reasons that the paint may have been bought in Gap and that the car was already transformed when driven toward Ussel. If so, the Jackal had received a warning about the exposure of his Alexander Duggan identity and had moved quickly. Clermont-Ferrand’s role is not to resolve that question, but to provide the regional police connection through which the vehicle clue prompts an urgent, wide-ranging attempt to find him.