Unholy Ghost

by James Green

  Jimmy walked across the small entrance lobby to a chair and sat down. Nobody came in or went out. It wasn’t a busy place, fairly cheap, fairly central, fairly comfortable. It suited him, but it didn’t seem a busy place. While he was waiting he thought about his situation. ‘Gathering this information has almost certainly alerted other parties to our involvement in this matter.’ Well it had certainly done that. ‘We must act accordingly.’ Fine, but what was accordingly? Stick it out in Paris and carry on asking questions? But who was there to ask? The old nun knew nothing and neither, if he could be believed, did Joubert. And even if he did know more than he was telling how did you get it out of him? He wasn’t exactly someone you could take into a back alley to persuade, and anyway where was there a good, quiet back alley to use? He didn’t know the Paris all the tourists knew never mind the bits that the tourists didn’t want to know.

  Jimmy went over what he actually had and looked for something to act on, to follow up, preferably something away from Paris. He didn’t like the feeling that he was a sitting duck with someone watching him who probably knew all the best back alleys of Paris.

  The motorcycle rider walked in and crossed to the reception, pulled off his leather gauntlets, lifted his visor, and spoke to the man behind the desk. He had a stained fluorescent safety vest over his leather jacket with the right company name on the back. Jimmy went over to the desk. There was no way anyone could have slipped in a ringer so well turned out at such short notice, not even if they’d guessed at what he was going to do. The man at reception pointed a pen at Jimmy and the courier turned round. Jimmy held out the envelope.

  ‘By hand to the person it’s addressed to. Be sure and hand it over to him,’ he pointed to Joubert’s name, ‘or his secretary if he’s not there. Nobody else. Understand?’

  The face looked blank from out of the helmet. The rider shrugged and looked at the man behind the desk who said something rapidly in French.

  The rider turned back to Jimmy nodded and held out his hand.

  Jimmy held on to the envelope.

  ‘Does he understand? By hand to the name or his secretary, no one else?’

  ‘Of course, M’sieur. It has been explained.’

  Jimmy handed over the envelope. The rider took it, put it on the desk, and said something.

  Jimmy looked at the man behind the desk.

  ‘Payment, M’sieur.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, of course. How much?’

  The reception man told him. Jimmy pulled out his wallet and handed over the notes. The rider stuffed them into his jacket pocket and took out a notebook which he put on the desk beside the envelope. He wrote in the book, tore out a page, and held it out to Jimmy. Jimmy took the page and looked at it. It was his receipt headed with the name of the courier firm.

  ‘Thanks.’

  The rider put away his book, picked up the envelope and left. Outside stood a motorbike with a pannier. The rider opened the pannier, flipped the envelope in, closed it, then got on the bike and rode off. Jimmy stood in the doorway and watched him go. There was no way of telling if anyone was following him, the traffic was too busy, it swallowed up the bike as soon as it had pulled away from the hotel.

  Jimmy walked back across the lobby to the lift, went up to his room, sat on the bed, and made a call.

  ‘Is M. Joubert in? OK, this is Mr Costello. I’ve sent a package over by courier. You should have it soon. Tell M. Joubert it is to go straight back to Professor McBride. You understand? That’s right, at once using whatever way M. Joubert feels is quickest and safest. Good, thank you.’

  He put away his phone and looked around the room again. It was nearly half past one. He thought about a quick lunch but decided he’d have to give it a miss, he could grab something later. It was time to move. He got up and began packing. He always travelled light, one holdall which would be cabin luggage on a flight. He never carried anything which would have to go in the hold and make him hang about at the baggage carousels when the plane landed. It was a habit he’d got into.

  Once his packing was complete he went down to reception, settled his bill, then crossed the road to the Gare de l’Est where he got into a taxi at the rank outside the station. He told the driver Charles de Gaulle airport and sat back.

  The taxi pulled away and joined the traffic. Jimmy looked out of the window, not that he was looking for anything in particular. If they were following him he wouldn’t see them. He was just looking, saying goodbye. It hadn’t been a great start to the job but at least he had one piece of solid information worth following up. An old Nazi killed in his wheelchair outside his nursing home in Munich in 2006. It didn’t sound too promising but it was somewhere to start and it got him away from Paris and the searchers, whoever they were.

  The taxi was caught up in the traffic and moving in that stop-start way taxis do in big cities. The general traffic noise got joined somewhere behind them by a police or ambulance siren. At first the traffic around them ignored it but as it got closer drivers began to slow and then part to make way. A big black Citroen with a blue light on top pulled past them and then across the front of them and stopped. Both back doors opened, two men got out, and walked quickly to the taxi. One pulled the back door open, looked in and said something in French. The taxi driver turned and also started to talk. The second man shouted at the taxi driver who turned and shouted back. The man by the door spoke again to Jimmy. Jimmy didn’t know what he was saying but he guessed he was being invited to leave the taxi and join his new friends. The taxi driver and the second man from the Citroen were carrying on their shouted conversation. Vehicle windows were going down, heads were turning towards them. People on the pavements were stopping. A couple of oriental tourists were busy taking pictures. Paris in the spring and free street theatre.

  Jimmy got out of the car and the man by the door immediately grabbed his arm. The other man stopped his conversation, came to the back, reached in, and took Jimmy’s holdall. All three headed for the Citroen. The driver was now out of his taxi and shouting loudly to everyone and no one. He certainly was pissed off and Jimmy didn’t need a translator to interpret. No one had paid him and he was letting everyone know what he thought of it.

  The men bundled Jimmy into the back of the Citroen and got in either side of him, the siren started again, and the car reversed and then pulled out into the traffic. The show was over and the traffic began to move again.

  Chapter Ten

  The siren was now silent and Jimmy sat quietly in the back of the car. He thought about it. The police picking him up was good and bad. It was good that they were coppers but it was bad that they had been watching him and saw him leave his hotel. It was good they didn’t mind anyone seeing them lift him but it was bad that it wasn’t a regular police car and they weren’t uniformed. It was good that he hadn’t done anything or really knew anything but it was bad that they must think he’d done something or thought he knew something. And there he stopped. He’d know soon enough when someone told him what it was all about, then he’d really know whether it was good or bad. He sat back and watched as the car muscled its way like every other vehicle through the Paris traffic.

  No one spoke and the car left central Paris, travelled on through the suburbs then through the outskirts until Jimmy noticed they had been following the signs for Charles de Gaulle Airport.

  Bloody hell, he thought, is that good or bad? It was good that it looked like he was getting a free ride to where he wanted to go, it was bad that the free ride was courtesy of the French police. Still, he’d already decided that whatever McBride had got him mixed up in wasn’t going to be easy or straightforward but, as it was the coppers who had lifted him, it shouldn’t be life-threatening, not at the moment. Not good, but definitely not so bad, and he looked out of the window as the car headed to the airport.

  ‘You are not desirable.’ Jimmy looked at the man speaking. He didn’t need to wear any badges for Jimmy to see he had the senior rank. It was partly the way he spoke and partly
the way he carried himself, but mostly it was the way the others called him ‘chief’. ‘You’re not a desirable person, Mr Costello.’

  Jimmy’s mind went back to another copper in Santander, an inspector, a good-looking blonde with long legs and soft skin. She had found him desirable, but she was dead.

  ‘No, I’m not at all desirable.’

  Jimmy sat in front of a plastic-topped office table. The ranking man stood beside the table looking down at him. Another officer stood behind him by the door and one was by the window flossing his teeth. The cops at the door and window were the ones who had picked him up in the Citroen.

  The room was modern and anonymous like everything you got in airports, clean and impersonal, somewhere to pass through. Outside the afternoon sun was shining but the blinds were closed and the light was on. The man by the table bent a little so as to be closer.

  ‘I want you to understand that when you leave it would be best to stay gone.’

  His English was good enough but heavily accented.

  ‘Better.’

  The man by the table pulled himself back upright and looked puzzled.

  ‘“Better?” What do you mean, “better”?’

  ‘Better I stay gone. You shouldn’t say best. You need at least three options to use best. Stay or go is only two. Better I stay gone.’

  The ranker looked at the other two and said something in French. Neither answered but the one with the floss shrugged his shoulders for both.

  Jimmy wondered why he was winding up this bloke. It wouldn’t help yet he still went ahead and did it. Why was that?

  The senior man went to the door and opened it and stood to one side.

  ‘The message is delivered. You are not wanted in France. Best you stay gone.’

  Jimmy didn’t move. He’d been given his cue to get up and leave. But he stayed in his chair.

  ‘An undesirable alien, is that what you mean? Am I being deported as an undesirable alien?’ The man waiting at the door said nothing. ‘Only you never took my passport. Usually they take away your passport if you’re getting deported, or so I’m told. I’ve never been deported myself so I’m not certain about it.’ The way the man looked at him changed. Jimmy stood up. He’d pushed it as far as it would go. ‘Is this official? Am I barred from re-entry?’

  The man still didn’t answer.

  Jimmy went to the door. The man from the car who was standing there picked up his holdall and held it out. Jimmy took it.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He went through the door then turned back to the senior man.

  ‘I take it this isn’t official then, that I’m not being deported, that I can come back if I …’

  But the man in charge wasn’t there any more. He’d gone back into the room and the door had closed.

  Jimmy walked down the corridor where over an hour ago he had arrived with his escorts. The one they called chief had kept him waiting to make a point – I can have you picked up, I can keep you as long as I like, I can do what I like with you. It was a good point, well made and well taken, but what had actually happened? Bugger all except telling him to leave. Why all that effort to finish up doing almost bugger all? And why no explanation, no paperwork, nothing except ‘sod off’?

  It wasn’t right, it wasn’t the way the police did things, even the French police. But they had to be police, who else could swan around central Paris in a car with a siren and requisition office-space in an international airport? Jimmy gave it up. What did it matter? He was leaving, which was exactly what he’d wanted in the first place.

  He walked on and eventually came out of a staff doorway into the main concourse where he looked around for the nearest flight information screen. There was an Air France flight to Munich due out in just under an hour. He went to the Air France desk, bought his ticket then went through security into the Departure lounge where he went to a bar, bought a beer, and sat down at a table. He took out his phone and made a call.

  ‘I read the dossier.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Not so good.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. My hotel room got turned over and I got picked up by the law.’

  ‘The law? What sort of law?’

  ‘I don’t know what sort, just plain-clothes coppers. I’m at the airport now, they’re bouncing me out.’

  ‘Good heavens, Mr Costello, what on earth have you been doing?’

  ‘Nothing. I went to the convent then the lawyer and did a bit of sight-seeing in between, that’s all.’ He paused wondering whether to go on. Then decided why not? ‘I assumed it was something you’d arranged.’

  ‘Me! Why would I arrange for such a thing to happen?’

  ‘Well who else is there who might have set it up, Joubert, the old nun, my hotel clerk? All I did was go to the convent, got sent to Joubert, took in some sights then picked up your dossier. Next thing I know, blam, my room’s turned over by somebody and then I’m bounced out of the country by the police.’ There was a silence. ‘You didn’t arrange it then?’

  ‘Mr Costello, I sent you to Paris to do a job. Even supposing I could do such a thing, why would I arrange for you to be ejected by the French police only days after your arrival when you’ve hardly had a chance to get started?’

  It was a silly question coming from her, why did she do anything? Jimmy ignored it.

  ‘Whoever tossed my room must have known I was coming, so did the police. They were both waiting. They must have been. Somebody tipped them off,’ he paused, ‘like they did in Santander.’

  There was silence for a moment. His point had got home, he could tell, because when she spoke again the sharpness that had been in her voice was gone and was replaced by concern.

  ‘I assure you it wasn’t me this time. Where is the dossier, was it taken from your room?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do the police have it?’

  ‘No. I read it in a café after I’d picked it up from Joubert’s office. As soon as I got back to the hotel and saw my room had been done I sent it back to him by motorcycle delivery with a message to get it safely off to you as quick as he could.’

  ‘I’ll check with M. Joubert.’ There was another silence. ‘Are you coming back to Rome?’

  ‘I can, but I thought I’d follow up on the bloke in the hit and run in Munich, Ma Colmar’s ex-lover. It gets me out of Paris and it’s all I’ve got so far. There’s nothing else.’

  Another silence.

  ‘I have something.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘A woman.’

  ‘What sort of woman?’

  ‘A woman who may be what you’re looking for.’

  Jimmy smiled to himself and shook his head. She was indeed a devious bastard.

  ‘You had her up your sleeve all along, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I was going to introduce her into the matter when I thought the time was right but as it is …’

  ‘As it is you’ll have to tell me the truth instead of giving me the usual run-around.’

  ‘Yes, unfortunately I can see no other way.’

  ‘So, do you want me to come back to Rome and give Young Hitler the elbow?’

  ‘Young Hitler?’

  ‘Ma Colmar’s SS lover-boy.’

  ‘No, follow that up. I doubt it will give us anything but my woman isn’t ready to be put into the picture yet, it’s too premature. Really, Mr Costello, I thought I might have been able to rely on you simply to do as you were told for a few days at least.’

  ‘Not get turned over and bounced out? No, well, if it’s any consolation, I wasn’t expecting it myself.’

  ‘No, I suppose you are not altogether to blame but please do try not to make any more …’

  She paused looking for the right words. Jimmy offered a suggestion.

  ‘Fuss?’

  ‘Any more complications. This is a delicate enough matter without you making it more so.’

  Jimmy was about to say something but thought better of it. J
ust get on with the job.

  ‘What about your woman?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I decide about that when you report in from Munich. I wanted all this to happen quietly in Paris but now …. Really, Mr Costello, you do complicate things sometimes.’

  ‘I know, I get knifed, beautiful blondes die because of me, and I get deported without reason. I guess I’m unlucky. I can see how it would all be a nuisance for you.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry, I can see that it probably isn’t altogether your fault. But please try to keep a low profile from now on. I am almost certain that I will need you to go back to Paris and that has now become a problem. Well, I will just have to deal with it. Get on with the Munich thing.’

  ‘If that’s what you want.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Can you get me the address of the care home? It’ll save a lot of time and nosing about.’

  ‘Yes. Call me when you arrive. I’ll have the address and anything else I can find which may be useful to you.’

  And she was gone.

  Jimmy put his phone away and took a drink of his beer. It didn’t taste of anything in particular, it was too cold. Devious she may be, but she was also efficient. He’d get his address and anything else she could dig up.

  He looked at his watch and then at the departure board. The plane would be boarding soon. Oh well, onwards and downwards. At least now he knew that at some point McBride was going to slip in a woman to claim the inheritance and this time he knew in advance. That was good. But he still didn’t know what it was really all about and he still didn’t know who had turned over his hotel room. It wasn’t the police, they weren’t shy about such things, they just kicked the door in and got on with it. They certainly wouldn’t have waited till the room was empty. He went over what he knew again and came to the conclusion that all in all he knew damn all. And that was bad.

  His flight number clicked over to ‘Boarding’. He took another sip from his beer and decided to leave it. He’d probably be airborne before it lost enough chill to see what it tasted like.