Superintendent Thomas

Superintendent Thomas is a British detective whose work in London gives Claude Lebel a crucial partner beyond French jurisdiction. He does not identify The Jackal through a single dramatic revelation: his contribution is to mobilize consular records, passenger information, and competing accounts of lost passports, helping Lebel turn a vague description into a series of testable identities. Their collaboration shows the manhunt operating across borders, with Thomas supplying the records and leads that Lebel can connect to evidence inside France.

Identity and Function

Thomas is addressed by his rank as a superintendent and appears as a working police counterpart whom Lebel can reach directly, including at home. The evidence presents him as a British detective rather than as the head of a named agency. His role is practical and collaborative: he takes requests from Lebel, activates inquiries in London, and reports the results back to the French investigation.

The partnership is set against the scale of the French operation. Lebel has been given extraordinary authority and access to state resources, but the suspected assassin has moved through several countries and used identities that leave records in different systems. Thomas extends the investigation into London, where reports of stolen passports can be compared with travel dates and physical descriptions. The arrangement is not a transfer of the case to Britain; when Lebel tells him that The Jackal is inside France, he says the French will handle the pursuit there, while continuing to rely on Thomas for information gathered in Britain.

Establishing the Danish Identity

Lebel’s first targeted request to Thomas grows out of a deduction about the passport The Jackal may be carrying. The assassin’s use of the document has required a change in hair colouring, which makes theft seem more likely than forgery. Since The Jackal had been based in London apart from a reconnaissance visit to Paris, Lebel reasons that the passport may have been stolen in either city and asks Thomas to help check the relevant consular records.

Thomas’s reply supplies a specific lead. A Danish pastor, Per Jensen, reported on July 14 that his passport had disappeared from his room at a West End hotel. He suspected theft but had not filed a complaint, to the hotel manager’s relief. Jensen’s recorded description—six feet tall, blue-eyed, and grey-haired—fits the kind of identity the investigation is seeking. Lebel recognizes the match and immediately turns to the Paris police records, where hotel registration cards can be checked against the newly identified name.

The discovery illustrates how Thomas’s information works in conjunction with, rather than in place of, French records. A report made in London becomes useful when Lebel can compare it with the movements and registrations of a traveler in France. Earlier, as French archive searches identify Alexander Duggan’s entries and hotel stay, Lebel also tells Thomas that the suspect is inside France and thanks him for his assistance. Thomas is therefore part of an ongoing exchange, not merely a source consulted once.

Searching London’s Lost-Passport Reports

When Lebel suspects that The Jackal has moved to another false identity, Thomas responds by restarting the British inquiry. He summons the senior inspector who had worked on the investigation the previous week and directs him to contact London consulates for reports of foreign visitors’ passports lost or stolen since July 1. The search is narrowed by sex, race, and height: the inspector is told to set aside women, Black and Asian candidates, and shorter men, while treating men over five feet eight inches as possible matches. The instruction makes the investigation’s dependence on physical profiling explicit, even as the search tries to manage a large field of unrelated reports.

The consulates do not cooperate uniformly, and Thomas describes the work as difficult. By the evening report, eight foreign tourists remain whose lost passports could fit the broad physical description. He has also helped check airline bookings and ticket sales back to July 1. Those records show The Jackal buying a ticket in Brussels and flying to Copenhagen on July 18, then returning to England on the evening of August 6. The travel history allows the investigators to eliminate candidates whose passports were reported lost while the suspect was known to be elsewhere.

Thomas presents the remaining possibilities as alternatives, not certainties. A Norwegian candidate is tall and broad-shouldered, but his reported loss has a plausible explanation: he said his passport slipped from his pocket when he fell fully clothed into the Serpentine while boating with a girlfriend. Thomas also considers that candidate’s blond hair a reason for doubt, since The Jackal, exposed as Duggan, would be unlikely to resume the hair colour associated with that identity. The American candidate, Marty Schulberg, has a different account: he reported that a handgrip containing his passport was stolen while he was distracted in the main hall of London Airport.

Narrowing the Suspect List

Lebel chooses to pursue the American identity and asks Thomas to send Schulberg’s details so he can obtain a photograph from the Passport Office in Washington. Thomas’s report thus helps shift the investigation from the known Duggan identity to a new candidate whose stolen property could explain how The Jackal acquired another passport. The lead is consequential but still provisional: at this point, the photograph is expected, and the name has not yet been confirmed as the assassin’s.

Thomas’s importance lies in the methodical distinctions he brings to the search. The eight names are not treated as eight interchangeable suspects. Travel records exclude three; the Norwegian account is weighed against both its circumstances and the danger of returning to a recognizable appearance; Schulberg’s report is selected for further checking. The suspense arises in part from this accumulation of records, delays, and judgments. A passport can point toward a person, but it can also conceal one, and the investigators must test the story attached to each missing document.

Narrative Role

Thomas remains outside the French command structure and is not shown entering the French search itself. His contribution is nevertheless integral to Lebel’s pursuit: he can make inquiries in London, obtain consular reports, and reconstruct the movements of travelers from airline information. When consulates prove difficult to approach, he persists long enough to return with a finite list and the details needed to compare its members.

The novel gives this police work a collective, procedural shape. Lebel’s authority can direct the investigation, but it cannot make distant records arrive instantly or make every report self-explanatory. Thomas’s calls bring the external evidence into reach; Lebel’s reasoning connects it to the French archive and the suspect’s known movements. Their cooperation makes the search less a contest of isolated intuition than a relay of information across institutions, with each new identity forcing the investigators to revise what they thought they knew.