by Andrew Wood
“So what other cases are you working on?” asked Marner.
“The usual. Reports of missing persons. Most of which are entirely pointless because we all know why they’ve gone missing and where they’ve gone.”
Marner met her hostile, challenging gaze straight on for a moment and then looked down to his coffee, not wanting to alienate her, needing to know what she might be able to add to his rather dismal lack of hard information or progress of his own.
After a silence in which Lemele clearly felt she had won the point, she continued, “I only really put in the effort to investigate the genuine cases of missing women and children.”
“Genuine?”
“Yes. Those where there is no apparent reason for their disappearance, where the trail isn’t obviously going to end up at Drancy,” she snapped, referring to the internment camp in the northeast suburb of Paris that was being used to hold those who had been rounded up, pending deportation.
Marner nodded and looked away again, not really knowing what more to say on this subject. “So did you have any success in identifying our Frenchman?”
“Yes. That’s what I really wanted to tell you about. I checked with reports of missing persons. Didier Lemarchand; he was reported missing by his wife to the local commissariat in Sevres. The description matched so I went to visit his wife at their apartment this afternoon and confirmed the identity from a photo that she showed to me. She assured me that he had no links or activity to any type of crime or organisation. Lemarchand was just a baker’s assistant who worked hard and drank little. He didn’t do any heavy or manual work either, just helping to run a boulangerie, no lifting heavy sacks of flour or anything like that.”
“So no explanation of why he stank like someone who had fallen into a vat of liquor, had heavy bruising, and apparently died firing a gun at a German officer.”
“Precisely.”
Lemele confirmed that talking to residents around the crime scene had gleaned no further information. No one could recall seeing a man matching the description of Lemarchand, or anyone else of note. A few confirmed having heard the shots, but there was no agreement even on how many shots. “So Monsieur Lemarchand appears to be a dead end. But a very neat and tidy one for Inspector Thioly to close the case on,” finished Lemele. Seeing no response forthcoming from Marner, seeing confusion and distraction in his face, she interpreted this as the end of their case. “So I will return to my missing persons, and you can go back to whoever it is that you were chasing before Schull and Lemarchand died.”
Still seeing no further reaction from him, she tossed a few centimes onto the metal-topped table in payment for her coffee and made to leave. The clatter of the coins snapped Marner from his reverie. “Wait!” Keeping his voice low and his eyes on whatever had his attention to her left, he instructed her to go and get another cup of coffee from within the shop and, on her return, to take a quick look at the individual loitering in the doorway of the closed and shuttered shop thirty metres along the street. Lemele did as instructed; the sudden note of urgency and concern in his voice overcame her impulse to turn and look immediately, waiting instead until she emerged from the shop, requiring only a sideways glance to see the man waiting there. She sat back down and confirmed that she had not seen him before in her life. When Lemele enquired if he was certain that it was them who were the object of this stranger’s attention, Marner confirmed that he was fairly sure.
“I wonder who he is following and watching, me or you?” mused Marner, his standard sardonic humour creeping back into his voice and face now that he had adjusted to the shock. Yes, he admitted to himself, shock; his nationality, uniform and status in this long-occupied city had never given him pause to think that he was anything but safe. Lemele sat looking at him blankly, not sure what action or next move was expected of her now. She would also be concerned, maybe frightened by this new development. Marner considered for a moment, not sure whether to tell her of what he had learned regarding the visitors to Schull’s hotel room. The awareness flared momentarily in his mind that he wanted to tell her, wanted to keep her in the game, primarily because he enjoyed her company. Not because she was warm and friendly – anything but! Nevertheless, she did have a spark that he had rarely encountered, even more so in the civilians of this city who either flinched and turned from him and his uniform or fawned over him. He had found few that he desired to spend time with or seek the companionship of amongst the morons and thugs in his organisation, and none were female. But he forced himself to immediately lock that thought away, not wanting to examine it, especially not at this moment when he needed to be focussed.
So Marner spent the next few minutes bringing Lemele up to date with what he had learned from Schull’s hotel, although he did not feel it was necessary to tell her the reason for Schull being in Paris. Lemele clearly knew plenty about the Carlingue. “The worst scum, even worse than you Nazis. At least you can hide behind the façade that you are patriots to your country, but these gestapists are simply traitors to their own people.”
Marner rocked backed, jolted from the moment of what – protectiveness? – that he had felt towards Lemele, to this slap in the face. “Look. I’m a policeman, first and only. I was before the war and that is what I remain true to. This uniform and the rank and organisation were simply the obvious choice for the army to put me into, to best utilise my training and experience. I’m ‘Kripo’ – Kriminalpolizei.”
Again she responded with that flash and fire that he had observed when he had teased her here in this very spot the day before. “It doesn’t matter what label you claim,” she hissed, leaning forward in her seat, the better to hurl the words at him. “You wear the Nazi uniform and you are the occupier and oppressor of this city and country.” Leaving him with the clear impression that, if she were a cat and he a rodent, he would already be fatally wounded and twitching his residual heartbeats away under her claws, dead before the realisation that he had been struck had even reached his brain.
Aware that he was losing control of the situation, conscious of the eyes still watching them, the unknown motives and intentions of their owner, Marner raised a placatory palm. “Put that aside for now. For the moment we have a common purpose: find the true murderer of one of your countrymen, and one of mine. We also have another common issue: our safety.”
He saw Lemele tremble visibly for a moment, but this was not fear; it was her quenching, mastering the adrenalin and anger that had flared and been only for him. But she subsided docilely back into her seat, crossed her arms and affected a nonchalant examination of her fingernails, displaying no awareness or concern for the watcher along the street.
Marner continued, “I want you to get up and walk slowly away. Don’t go directly back to the Prefecture, just wander for a few blocks, take random turns but keep to the busier streets. I’m going to follow you and I’ll be only thirty metres behind you, maximum. I want to work out which of us is the object of his attention, and to see if there is anyone else that we haven’t spotted yet. If I’m the subject of his interest, I’ll lead him elsewhere. When you’ve walked around a couple of blocks, go back to your office and carry on as normal.”
“And then what happens?”
“I’ll contact you in a few days to let you know how I’ve progressed. You can still help. We need photos of Carlingue members, they are the primary lead that we have. These are people who have mostly been in prison or at least arrested at some point in their lives, so there must be photos in the police system somewhere. But only do it if you are sure that it is safe to do so. Remember that they have informers everywhere and open cooperation with your police colleagues. If you feel even the slightest danger, if you’re concerned about your safety, then contact me via my office. I’m living at the Hotel Aurore on Rue Delacre in the 16th, you can call me there too in an emergency.”
If Lemele appreciated or even noticed the concern for her safety that had entered into the end of Marner’s discourse, she made no sign. Afte
r another barely perceptible tremble as she doused the last of the fire coursing through her veins, Lemele was up and moving away along the street. He was left marvelling once again at that single fluid motion, from sitting motionless to striding away that she had demonstrated here yesterday.
Chapter Seven
Trailing Lemele for a few minutes as she strolled leisurely through the busy commercial streets of the Saint Michel quarter, Marner wondered if their follower, who was maintaining a steady twenty metres behind Marner, was confused. Ultimately it did not matter; his objective was simply to identify which of them was of interest and it now seemed to be confirmed as him.
He waited until they had crossed the square around the small park at Cluny, enabling him to verify that there was no one else tracking parallel to them. Satisfied that any followers were his and his alone, he did what he always did in such situations. He charged it straight on.
Without warning Marner made an about turn and began walking directly towards the man who had been watching them at the café, who was visibly a complete amateur in the technique of tailing people. Visible, because their follower was clearly thrown into indecision by this abrupt change of direction. An experienced agent would have kept moving smoothly without interruption and deviated gradually away from Marner’s head-on collision course approach, or even have passed shoulder to shoulder, turning later to reverse course and pick up Marner’s trail again. However, this fool faltered and stopped, dithered on the spot for several moments making half steps and turns, before finally leaning back against the stone wall beside him and feigning to search in his coat pockets for something, a cigarette perhaps.
Marner kept looking straight ahead and walked a half step past the man before stopping and turning back to face him. Smiling, Marner raised his left hand up to eye level between them, holding in it his own expensive gold pen, a present from his father on his graduation from the police academy. Marner saw surprise and confusion in the man’s eyes, the focus shifting back and forth between Marner’s friendly smiling face, and this glittering bauble. The fool started to form a word, perhaps the start of a question, but never delivered more than the first syllable. Because down below Marner hammered his unseen right fist into the man’s solar plexus.
The body went down like a dead weight and hit the gritty concrete pavement with a thump that Marner felt resonate through his boots, leaving him smelling spice and garlic and rotting, badly cared for teeth in the air driven from the man’s lungs. Ignoring for a moment the body writhing at his feet, Marner looked up and down the street to verify what he had concluded before launching his attack: that this individual was alone, no one was coming to his aid. The only other people in sight, a middle aged woman and a young girl, perhaps a granddaughter, had seen the altercation. The woman scowled at him but immediately turned and walked rapidly away, tugging the confused girl by the arm.
Marner went to work, filing away details in his mind. The man was of North African origins, in his early twenties. Marner’s fist had gained the impression of a muscled torso and so it would probably be necessary to keep applying debilitating blows to keep his prey subdued. Rifling through pockets, Marner first encountered a heavy leather sap, apparently full of small solid balls, probably steel ball-bearings. Another pocket gave up a wallet holding a considerable amount of money in large denomination notes, but no identity papers.
He looked again up and down the street. Those few who entered and spotted the SS officer standing over the fallen man had all rapidly about-turned and fled away. Good. The man was now beginning to breath regularly, if still shallowly, but he had also stopped writhing and Marner decided that it was now time to bend down and land a well-aimed blow into the lower back with the appropriated sap. This sent him writhing away, trying to hug the wall to get away from the blows and the pain, foul brown teeth bared in a silent scream. Marner followed in, pushing his knee into the man’s lower back, pinning him hard and face-first against the wall. His questions barked close up into a grimy ear elicited nothing more than a squeal to be taken to Avenue Foch.
From anyone else this would have been an unbelievable request, but the fact that it had been made told Marner everything. This had to be one of the Carlingue thugs, certain in the knowledge that influential contacts within the Gestapo would reach out and rescue him from Foch. It also told him that that this man feared someone else far more than he did Marner. Leaving him with few options. He could not take his prisoner to Foch for formal interrogation, and if Marner took him elsewhere, well, the man was tough and would likely take a severe beating before yielding any information. Marner really wanted to get the hotel owner Pichon to take a look and confirm if this was one of the two who had visited Schull’s room. The dilemma for Marner was that, short of knocking the man unconscious and carrying him across Paris to Pichon’s hotel, there was no way of achieving that.
Marner took yet another look around the street; his luck was holding for the moment. He gave his detainee a half-blow to the side of the head with the sap, counting on it being sufficient to stun and disorientate for a few minutes, but not render him completely senseless or unconscious. Marner hauled the man up and half-carried, half-dragged him twenty metres back along the street and then into an alleyway between two buildings. This recess was a private access to the rear yards and was blocked halfway along by wire. Beyond the wire the hungry residents had constructed a meagre mini-garden in a desperate effort to grow some extra food in the centre of this war-rationed city. Crude boxes fashioned from wooden packing crates and pallets held damp soil, from which straggled a few pathetic shoots seeking what light filtered down through the high buildings. A dozen scrawny chickens stopped their scratching in the dirt spilling from the boxes to look up at this human intrusion.
Advancing as far as possible into the alley, Marner threw the man down onto the filthy damp cobbles. The chickens, as if sensing the approaching storm of violence, scattered into the dark recesses beyond the wire. Marner stepped back and withdrew his pistol, took a deep breath and then shot the man in the thigh. This caused him to jack-knife awake from his semi-conscious state, shrieking at the pain and clutching his leg, trying to cover the spurting blood. But his eyes were on Marner and Marner knew that the right message was filtering into his brain: Avenue Foch and friends were a long way away. More: this filthy, stinking alley way was quite possibly where he was going to die.
Marner stepped quickly forward and kicked the knee of the leg that he had just emptied a bullet into, careful to then retire back a few metres from what he knew was a desperate, cornered and still dangerous animal. He waited until the new surge of pain from the kick had subsided and then enunciated clearly and slowly: “The only thing remaining now, between this moment and your death sometime within the next hour in this filthy hole, is the question of how much pain I inflict on you before you die. So listen very carefully. Give me the answers that I want and I will make it instant and painless. Give me something extraordinary and maybe I’ll even call an ambulance for you. But the other alternative is....” Marner feigned another kick at the injured leg but the Carlingue thug was either too slow or in too much pain to flinch.
“They’ll kill me if I tell you anything,” hissed the man.
“You’re already dead anyway,” grinned Marner malevolently. “All I’m doing is offering you a quick exit, versus a slow painful one.”
This gained a moment of consideration from the thug, but he then pulled his lips backs in a grimace which could have been from the pain or a sneer and spat towards the boots of Marner.
Marner cocked his head and pursed his lips, like a parent who has given a child a special freedom, only to be disappointed that his trust and patience has been misplaced. Without warning he fired another shot, this time into the other thigh. Once again he waited patiently for a minute, for the shock to subside and then landed a kick to that leg also. Once again the Carlingue took the pain and snarled back, not a word uttered. Marner was aware that the sound of the shots would
have triggered calls to the police from those in the neighbouring houses. Time was running out.
Moments later a third shot rang out and then Marner emerged from the alley, blinking in the sudden light, holstered his pistol and strode away.
Chapter Eight
His first action on arriving at his office the following morning was to call Lemele. She gave only brief “no” responses to his questions regarding progress in her enquiries and whether she felt that she was being followed or watched. Realising that this was going to be another one-sided conversation, he switched track and told her that he needed to know if a body shot dead in an alley way off Rue Saint Jacques had been identified yet. Lemele agreed that she would make enquiries and let him know, asked if he knew the date and time that it had been discovered. Marner told her that maybe it had not even been found yet. He hung up quickly, grinning to himself, before she could register her confusion at his cryptic response.
Leaning back to stare out of his office window at the view of the tops of the trees on Foch, Marner contemplated what he knew. This amounted to almost nothing. He had the involvement of the Carlingue and now the mystery of the man who had followed him yesterday. Whoever it was, Carlingue or not, what most concerned Marner was the question of how they had picked up on him so quickly. As of yesterday afternoon he had been investigating this case for a little over twenty four hours and had spoken to very few people about it. His visit to the prefecture had been unannounced and he had only spoken to Lemele. One possibility was that they had still been watching the crime scene or Schull’s hotel and had followed him afterwards. Possibly someone within the SD, the Kriegsmarine or the French police had informed them of his involvement. Whoever ‘them’ was.
He was aware of the extent of the corruption and the web of illicit links between the German and French security organisations. To enjoy their favoured position and power, the Carlingue were kicking back a proportion of their profits into the Gestapo and police but, even so, to follow an SS officer spoke of boldness or recklessness.
