by James Green
‘No, but I have to trust you. I told you, I need you more than you need me.’
‘OK, you need me and maybe I’m prepared to stick with it for the time being.’ He finished what was left in his glass. ‘I will call you Jimmy, not because I trust you or want to be your friend, but to show you I am prepared to work with you. And you can call me Maillot.’
‘Maillot?’
‘It’s a nickname, it means shirt, sports shirt, you know, le maillot jaune, the yellow shirt that the leader of the Tour de France wears. I was a bicyclist, a good one. I wanted to be a professional.’
‘But you became a copper.’
Serge spread his hands.
‘Being good is not enough, to be a professional you have to be the best so, as you say, I became a copper, un flic. And now we work together and we try to trust each other. I call you Jimmy and you call me Maillot.’
Jimmy tried it inside his head but it wouldn’t work.
‘No, it would sound daft if I said it.’
Serge laughed.
‘Then make it Serge. But only if you don’t lie to me any more as you have just done. What was it that you so carefully did not tell me?’
The beers arrived. Jimmy took a drink. McBride had told him often enough that he couldn’t act. He shouldn’t have bloody well tried so he gave it up.
‘The claimant. It wasn’t a bluff. There’s a woman, right age, right name, born in Saigon.’
‘Did you find her or was she given to you?’
‘Given. My boss in Rome, the woman called McBride at the Collegio Principe. It was in a file in her desk.’
‘The woman who got shot?’
‘She was in intensive care, but she still managed to tell me to get on with the job. You should have seen her, she was …’ but he stopped. This bloke didn’t need to know about McBride, that was for him to worry about. ‘I went to her office and the picture was in a dossier with the name and the rest. That’s why I came back to Paris.’
Serge looked doubtfully at Jimmy.
‘I thought you said your boss was dying maybe.’
‘Sure, but she still got them to send for me so I guess it must be important, important enough for her to nearly croak herself to give me the message.’
Jimmy wasn’t acting any more so Serge believed him.
‘Could the lawyer you saw this morning, this Heppert, have been the one who ordered your boss shot?’
‘No.’
‘Why so certain?’
‘Because she knew nothing about her. Didn’t even know she was a woman, didn’t know she’d been shot, nothing.’
‘And the brothers, the ones she’s acting for? Could they be real claimants.’
‘No, absolutely not. She said that Colmar’s daughter and the musician were married when she was sixteen in a Baptist church in Florida in the fifties. Can you see that happening?’
‘Why not? Sixteen is young but in America in the fifties …’
‘It was nothing to do with her age, Thèrése Colmar’s musician was black. Can you see a black man and a sixteen-year-old white girl marrying in a southern American state ten years before the civil rights movement got going?’
Now Serge saw why not.
‘No, I can’t. But why make up a story that falls down straight away?’
‘Because Heppert didn’t know that the musician was black, which means whoever did the research didn’t do it properly. They needed someone who fitted the dates and had the right kind of paperwork and they came up with these blokes who, I guess, are both white. All they wanted was a couple of guys who would let themselves be used, probably not too bright, a couple of blokes who would settle for what would be, for them, a lot of money and keep their mouths shut when it was over. They needed the paperwork and the bodies to put before the authorities in Switzerland. Changing a name to Thèrése Colmar on a marriage licence in some obscure country church register wouldn’t be too difficult and the Chicago birth records could be genuine, probably are. The paperwork will say Thèrése Colmar married Henry Louis Budge and the birth certificates will show the two blokes Heppert has in tow are Mr and Mrs Budge’s little boys.’
‘But if someone challenged their claim? Could you prove that the musician was black?’
‘I don’t know. But it’s true, so if New York goes back and does its homework like they should have done first time round they’ll find out for themselves. And if the brothers are white and couldn’t pass for mixed race they daren’t go to a Swiss court and take the risk of the whole thing blowing up, especially after me turning up.’
Serge decided that Jimmy must have come as a nasty surprise to Nadine Heppert.
‘Are you sure that this Heppert woman couldn’t have had your boss shot?’
‘Yeah, pretty sure, why?’
‘Because if you’re wrong I think you’ve given her a great reason to shoot you as well.’
Jimmy went over it again in his head.
‘No, she’s not behind any killing. She’s on the fiddle with this claim and it’s possible she may have got someone to organise a couple of street lads to give Joubert a tickling to get the dossier and get him off the case. But she’s not the one who put the gun on McBride. That’s linked to whoever had the old Nazi run down and that was in Munich in 2006. By the look of her she’d still have been at college maybe even still at school.’
‘Well I hope you’re right because if you’re wrong then it isn’t healthy to sit too near you. Now, if you’ve told me everything …?’
‘Everything, you’re up to date. Now it’s your turn to bring something to this party.’
‘Yes?’
‘Heppert knows I’m back and knows I’m going to make trouble. We have to assume others will know soon enough so I need to get going quickly which is where you come in. You’re the working copper in this town so how do I get inside this thing?’
Serge beckoned the waiter and ordered more beers. Jimmy hadn’t asked for another and Carpentier’s glass wasn’t anywhere near empty. He was doing what Jimmy would have done, giving himself some time to work things through. Carpentier waited until the waiter brought the beers.
‘OK, Jimmy. What we need to get on the inside of this is someone who can write a good story.’
Chapter Twenty-one
‘I’m not with you. What sort of story?’
‘That article you promised the old Nazi’s daughter. We get it written up by a journalist so that it makes her father look good, you know, hounded for doing what he saw as his duty. Hints of Jewish bully-boys against a brave old soldier. Anything that will sweeten the daughter. Then we get him to tell her that to make the article fireproof, to show everyone that her father was more sinned against than sinning, he will need to show that the income from his investments was absolutely legitimate. If she goes for it and gives him access to the right kind of paperwork we get to know where his money was coming from. She inherited so what he had she now has, she should have, or be able to get hold of, all the paperwork we need.’
‘Sounds good. Tell her the story right and she may very well drop. She didn’t strike me as any too bright and the chance of a bit of good publicity for a loyal servant of the Third Reich should be like catnip to a cat.’
Serge smiled, he was pleased with himself and Jimmy’s response. He went on.
‘And whoever killed the old man maybe did it so that they could deal with the daughter. If they wanted something and he wouldn’t play along.’
‘Knock him over and then approach the daughter.’
‘Yes. If that’s how it was then she’ll be able to say what it was she sold, what it was they got from her that they couldn’t get from her father. If our journalist can get that then we’ll really be on the inside.’
Serge sat back, still pleased with himself. He took a drink and waited for Jimmy’s response. Jimmy lifted his glass in salute and decided now was as good time as any to give the self-satisfied sod a little prod.
‘Well done. For someone who’
s new to this particular piece of action you’ve cottoned on very quickly. It’s almost as if you knew what to expect. That you’d already done some heavy thinking on it.’
Jimmy took a drink as the smile dropped from Carpentier’s face.
‘I’m a detective, I pick things up fast.’ He leaned slightly forward. ‘And if they’re not what I want I can drop them just as fast.’
Jimmy was pleased; he’d got him edgy which was how he wanted him.
‘Keep your shirt on, Maillot,’ Jimmy smiled in support of his little joke. Carpentier didn’t smile back. ‘All I meant was that, considering you’re new to this Colmar business, you think quick. But there’s a big hole in your idea.’
‘Hole?’
‘What does our journalist get out of it?’
Carpentier was still sulking but he managed an answer.
‘Money, what else? We pay him.’
‘No, money by itself wouldn’t do it, not if we want a good job done. We’ll want a real journalist and one who knows what to ask for and can make sense of the figures if he gets them. That’s going to limit the field and on top of that any really good journalist will want to get the whole story and that would mean another body poking their nose well in.’
‘So what do you suggest?’
‘We tell him a story of our own. We say we think Young Hitler stashed away money made during the war while he was here in Paris. That he had a private thing going whereby he seized shares, bonds, and financial stuff like that from wealthy French citizens in return for seeing their names didn’t appear on certain lists.’
‘Death camps?’
‘That sort of thing. That he stashed them in Switzerland and after the war lived comfortably off what he had taken. After all this time there can still be SS officers who are living off their ill-gotten gains.’
‘But he’s dead.’
‘All right, the families of officers, who the hell cares? The story will be that there’s still wartime loot, stolen from Paris citizens, in Swiss banks and it’s going into Germany to the relative of the high-ranking officer who stashed it.’
‘He was only a major.’
‘For God’s sake, it doesn’t matter.’
‘And what’s our interest?’
‘I’m working for a group who wants to get the stuff back and see that it goes to the families of the people it was stolen from.’
‘And me?’
Jimmy paused as if he was thinking about it.
‘You can beef up the French angle. The French angle is what makes it good. We could tell the journalist that there are high-placed people today who don’t want the whole thing raked up again, who want to forget the war and everything that happened during it.’
‘What people? We don’t know any …’
‘Tell him about your bloke upstairs, the one who passed down the order to have me bounced.’ Jimmy could tell Carpentier wasn’t expecting it and didn’t much like it. ‘Tell him that even in the police, right here in Paris, there may be people with pull who don’t want this particular SS officer looked at too closely, dead or alive.’
‘No. Anybody in the force today, even close to retirement, wouldn’t have been born at the time. It won’t work.’
‘If the money’s still coming out of Swiss banks maybe pay-offs are still being made to keep the whole thing quiet.’
Carpentier gave a dismissive laugh.
‘That’s ridiculous. You might get away with crap like that in Hollywood but not with a reporter, not today and certainly not in Paris.’
‘Why not? It doesn’t have to be true, it doesn’t even have to be believable. All it has to do is give the journalist the smell of a real story. There was an SS major and he was topped in Munich. There is a daughter and, if we’re right, there is or was stuff in Swiss banks. A solid citizen, a lawyer, has been beaten up and put in hospital. A college professor in Rome has been shot and damned near killed. And on top of all that I did get bounced out and you got told to do it. That should be enough to get a reporter on board, wouldn’t you say? If he doesn’t altogether swallow the story we tell him, so much the better. It all helps make him believe that there’s a real story in there somewhere and that a high-up in the Paris police is part of it.’
That was the pitch made, so Jimmy sat back and let Carpentier chew on it. He didn’t chew for long.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘If the Paris end is what gets us the journalist we can’t deliver. I’m a cop here and I couldn’t get anything about who gave the order. I said I tried, remember?’
‘We’ll get it.’
‘You sound sure.’
‘I am. Heppert wouldn’t have anyone gunned down in the street or run down by a lorry but she definitely fits the bill for slipping a copper enough money to get a couple of small favours. Once the journalist has got our Munich stuff, or even if he doesn’t get it, we can use him to squeeze Heppert. She won’t be a happy girl if a reporter starts to ask her questions about possible links to the mugging of a lawyer and an unofficial police action to kick someone out of the country. If I’m right and she was the one who put Joubert in hospital and the fix on me then I’m pretty sure she’ll sell her high-up police friend to save herself.’
‘And the journalist?’
‘We’ll sort him out when the time comes. Leave that to me. What do you think?’
Jimmy watched Carpentier.
The Heppert angle wasn’t so badly cobbled together. It made some sort of sense. But it would only convince someone primed to believe it, someone who already knew it was true. If Carpentier swallowed it that meant Heppert had indeed been behind getting him bounced out. It also meant that the copper she’d got to do the bouncing was sitting opposite him thinking over what to do.
‘This must be very important for you, Jimmy. To go to all this trouble I’d say it was more than just a job, that it was personal.’
He was playing for time again.
‘Whether it’s personal doesn’t matter a damn one way or the other. This Colmar thing isn’t any smash and grab, some slam-bang and have it away on your toes job. They waited until the Colmar woman died, then left it a few years before they topped the old guy in Munich. Then they left it again until they thought they could get the estate with little or no fuss. This is a very slow-burn operation. How big does a thing have to be to run on a time-scale like that and what sort of villains do you know who work that way?’
‘So what do you think kicked off this latest round of violence?’
Jimmy relaxed, Carpentier wanted to be on board. He’d guessed as much as soon as he found him waiting in his hotel room. Now he was sure, and now he knew why. Carpentier was hooked up to Heppert in whatever game she was playing.
‘The convent started it off. The nuns closing down and suddenly asking again who the real heir was. That’s when my boss got involved and that put me in the frame. The convent set everything going, Joubert, McBride, you bouncing me, everything. We need a way in and your idea about the journalist gives us our best chance. There has to be some sort of answer in what the old guy’s daughter sold or passed on. If you’re right and they killed him so they could deal with her she’ll have a record of what she sold and who she sold it to.’
‘You think the old Nazi had something worth killing him for?’
‘Yes, something he wouldn’t give up.’
‘What about the Colmar woman’s estate? Isn’t it more likely that’s what it’s all about, something the Colmar woman had?’
‘Perhaps, but we can’t get at that. My boss might have found a way. For all I know she’s already done it and knows what everybody is after. But she’s not going to be any help for quite a while so I’m stuck with what I can get at, which is the old guy’s stuff.’
‘So you think stick with the old Nazi’s daughter?’
‘Who else is there?’ He took a sip. ‘Unless you think we should go straight for Heppert.’
Carpentier picked up his glass and to
ok a sip.
‘No, not Heppert, not yet. Let’s see what we can get out of Munich.’
‘OK, Munich first it is.’
Now it was Jimmy’s turn to smile and be pleased with himself, because now he had Serge Carpentier and Nadine Heppert, which meant with or without Munich he was finally on the inside.
Chapter Twenty-two
Jimmy sat at one of the café’s pavement tables, looking over the river, keeping a cup of coffee company while it went cold. He had time to kill. There was nothing he could do except wait so he kept his coffee company and did nothing. The day was warm and sunny and the streets were busy as locals and tourists went about their business. It was Paris in the spring, like in the films or the brochures.
Serge had found them a journalist. They’d fixed a price and, as Jimmy had expected, it was the Paris police angle that he’d been most keen to follow up on, but he’d listened to what Jimmy wanted then gone away and written the outline of a good article. That is, he had written the outline of a lousy article saying what a good but misunderstood bloke Young Hitler had been. Jimmy thought it would soften up the daughter nicely. Now the journalist was in Munich trying to get the information they needed and all Jimmy could do was let the time pass. It wasn’t a great plan, it wasn’t even a very good plan, and it would probably get nowhere, but it had already done its main job, it had confirmed for him that Heppert and Carpentier were in this together and given Carpentier a reason to be alongside him. He thought again about the journalist. A keen, bright, young bloke who asked the right sort of questions but also knew when to stop asking. Jimmy guessed he’d have a rosy future in journalism, unless of course he hit a snag along the way. And that, thought Jimmy, was beginning to look like it might have already happened. The journalist had been gone three days and there was no report, nothing. That was too long not to hear anything at all. The whole thing was beginning to look like a bust. Either the daughter wouldn’t play or something else had gone wrong, and if that was how things stood, he’d need a new way of keeping Carpentier interested.
He looked down at his coffee; it had nothing to suggest. He’d pushed Carpentier as far as he could without actually saying out loud, ‘I know you and Heppert are tied up together in this’. He looked across the river and let his mind go over the ground but again he came up empty. He’d have to leave it alone until an opening came up, if one ever did. What else could he do? He’d asked himself that question regularly over the last couple of days and always come up with the same answer: nothing.
