by Andrew Wood
They turned north into Boulevard Saint-Michel and stopped fifty metres from the bridge that would take Marner onto the Île. He dismissed the driver, giving him instructions to deliver his uniform back to his office. Marner crossed the bridge and approached to within a hundred metres of the main entrance of the prefecture but saw no sign of watchers on the street. He ducked into a Bureau de Poste on the opposite side of the street from the prefecture and used his identity card to demand the use of a telephone at the reception desk. Lemele answered immediately, a hint of concern in her voice; she had been worried that he was not coming.
“I had to make a stop en-route in preparation. Everything is fine now and I’m in the Poste just across the street,” he reassured her. “I want you to leave by the front entrance in two minutes and turn north towards Pont au Change. As we did yesterday, I will be behind you trying to identify who is following. Do exactly the same as before; make some turns, keep at a slow pace but also make a few stops to look in shop windows and remember to keep to busy streets with plenty of people. Make your way towards Place de la République, which will give me time to evaluate what we are dealing with, then find a café and sit inside, away from the window. I will let you know what the next move is.”
Lemele confirmed that she understood and rang off. Marner moved to the window and looked along the street towards the entrance of the prefecture. When Lemele emerged, Marner saw nothing of note for thirty seconds and then suddenly a shadow detached itself from the inside of a doorway twenty metres further along, on the same side as the prefecture entrance. Lemele passed by, followed twenty seconds later by her tail, who was young – late-twenties perhaps, dressed in a plain grey suit with a matching colour hat pulled low on his head. The man walked on the opposite side of the street to Lemele, casually and at ease and Marner had the immediate sense of someone more professional and practiced at this game than el-Kalifa.
Marner counted to twenty and stepped out of the building, crossing the road immediately to be on the same side as Lemele and then picking up the same pace. This angle meant that Lemele would often be blocked from his view by the pedestrians between them, but it afforded him a good view of the tailing man on the other side of the street, there being little traffic on the road.
As they progressed and Marner relaxed into the pace, sure that he was not going to lose them, he began to look around for any other followers. Due to the large number of people now on the streets at the end of the working day, it was not until they had crossed the Seine and made two turns and one sudden stop by Lemele to look in a shop window that Marner spotted the second man. This one was on the same side of the street as him and Lemele, approximately mid-way between them and dressed in a light brown over-coat, despite the warm day.
Marner was already feeling the heat in his own over-coat, selected because it gave him the option of putting it on and taking it off intermittently to change his ‘look’, it being dark blue whereas his jacket was light grey. The same logic lay behind his purchase of two different hats. Anyone looking around for a tail on these busy streets would take in only his outward appearance, the style and the colour. With him working this operation alone, the ability to change appearance was invaluable, but this would only work a couple of times; eventually his two ‘looks’ would become familiar to anyone who was regularly checking for his presence.
Fortunately, he had so far not received a backward glance from either of Lemele’s followers. They were reasonably skilled at tailing, especially the first man in the grey outfit; the second in the overcoat was clumsy and had been thrown when Lemele had executed her window stop, halting suddenly when she did and so causing someone behind him to crash into his back. It was this that had drawn Marner’s attention and revealed him. Marner had to give Lemele credit: she was very cool and calm, no backward glances, not even to verify that he was truly there protecting her.
The group continued their progress, following Lemele’s meandering ramble through the markets of Les Halles, and then switching north-east towards République. Marner spotted no one else in front and so took the opportunity of enforced stops at busy junctions to check behind him. He had learned his skills from his partner in Berlin, an old time cop who made up in street savvy what he had lacked in investigational expertise. Marner satisfied himself that no was behind and could be reasonably certain these two were all that he needed to worry about.
At the junction of Gravilliers and Beaubourg the man in the grey suit made a backward glance directly towards Marner whilst checking to cross the road. Marner continued smoothly without hesitation, peering leisurely into a passing shop window as he walked, making no acknowledgement of the man’s glance, no connection. He was confident that he had not been spotted as being out of the ordinary, just another businessman on his way home. But he considered that he had used up his luck with the overcoat and so cast it and his first hat into an alleyway as he passed, donning the second hat, verifying that his pistol was secure in the inside pocket of the jacket. His only concern was that without the overcoat the bulge of the gun was immediately visible from a few yards; he should have picked a larger, looser size of jacket.
Marner was also regretting having specified a destination so far away to Lemele, but at the time he had not known how long it would take him to pick out the shadowers. He had had to walk a fair distance in an unseasonably warm overcoat and was sweating heavily; he did not lament the absence of the coat, but the act of throwing away something that had cost so much seemed utterly wasteful.
They were now passing from Rue des Gravilliers into Rue Pastorelle and the pedestrians suddenly thinned out. This was part of the Jewish quarter. Those few residents still living in these streets kept indoors, out of sight. Lemele seemed to hesitate, perhaps having realised her error, but she was also clearly intent on not looking or turning back. The problem was that they were close to the defined destination, with only limited options to get to République, all of them now on narrow cobbled and quiet streets like this one. Marner hoped that she would keep straight ahead until they were back onto the busier avenues, even though it meant deviating away from the direction of République, but she was the making the decisions and all of them had to follow.
Marner saw the man in the grey suit glance across at his partner and nod, the first sign that he had seen of any recognition or communication between the two. Suddenly they both increased their pace, accelerating instantly from the slow plodding that Lemele had dictated, to a fast lope that was almost running. Marner reacted immediately, but he was still only moving at the same pace that they were and therefore still a constant fifty metres behind them, whereas they were closing rapidly on the oblivious Lemele. He sensed the danger and wanted to break into a full run, but that would certainly draw attention to him in this street with few people, crowded by solid buildings that would cause his boot steps to thump and resound.
The men reached Lemele just as she was passing an archway opening into a yard on the right. She became aware of their presence at that moment, whirling around to face them as they drew level with her. They parted to pass, one on each side of her, scooped her up under her armpits and dragged her into the archway. Marner’s last view of her was an ‘O’ of surprise on her mouth, and a gasp of shock that echoed down the street towards him.
Chapter Eleven
Now he broke into a run, struggling desperately to wrestle the pistol from the inside pocket of his sweaty, rumpled, unfamiliar jacket, cursing as the edges of it caught in the too-tight pocket lining.
He arrived at the opening of the archway still moving at full speed, gasping and sucking for air. Such was his speed that he swerved through the archway opening in a smooth parabolic arc that caused him to glance off the interior wall as he raced through, jarring his left shoulder but without slowing his velocity or destabilising him. The darkened tunnel of the archway opened into a courtyard, barely wider than the arch but at least there was some daylight leaking into it from above. He passed doors on either side, some o
f solid wood, others with glass panels that showed only dark behind and so he allowed his legs to continue pounding forward unabated, almost a detached observer riding along atop his sprinting body. The courtyard was fifty metres long and he could see that it ended in large double gates that were closed. There was no possibility that they could have reached that far with Lemele, so he continued scanning the doors on each side as he thundered on, his boots sending loud ‘thwaps’ echoing off the walls around him.
Then he saw the door, fifteen metres ahead on the left side, being pushed the last few centimetres shut. Without breaking step he veered across to the wall on the right and then curved back towards the door. This allowed him to negotiate an arc without slowing, one that delivered him up to the door not quite head-on, but sufficiently square to let him leap, hurl his body, full speed, full weight, turning his right shoulder into the impact, yelling out to fully release the aggression and adrenaline into the motion.
The door exploded inwards, shattering one side of it and ripping the door frame from the wall with a screaming and rendering of wood fibres. Marner, the door and one of the men inside crashed to the floor in a tangle of splintered timber and flailing limbs. Marner fired his pistol involuntarily as his arm took the jarring impact and then the gun went clattering away into the darkness. The hallway and wrestling figures were briefly illuminated by the flash of the discharge. He heard Lemele scream and prayed that she had not been in the trajectory of the stray bullet, but he had no time for distraction. He was up immediately onto his knees on what he assumed was the chest of whichever man had been behind the door. Marner threw his fists at what he could just make out as the shape of a head on the end of the torso. Two heavy blows out of three went home and he heard a satisfying grunt of pain, noting, however, that his right shoulder was very sore and limiting somewhat the power of his punches.
Lemele yelled again and peering into the gloom he could make out two figures wrestling a few metres along the hallway. Marner lunged to his feet and moved forward but immediately tripped and sprawled on the debris of the felled door. Instantly he was struck by a heavy blow to his forehead and stars flashed in his vision. He had been kicked and had seen enough from the shadows to know that it was the figure on the right who had kicked him.
He heard a crack and the man yelped in pain; evidently Lemele was not entirely helpless and was putting up a spirited resistance. Nevertheless, the next blow that he heard was heavier and he heard her whimper. He sucked in air, hauled himself up on his arms and dragged his knees and feet under him into a crouch. After taking a moment to test his sense of balance in his spinning head, he sprang upward like an animal, bellowing with rage.
The figure to the left, Lemele, was sliding down the wall as her legs buckled under her. As Marner reached the man he saw the silver glint of a gun being drawn from a jacket pocket and extended outward to aim. He grabbed out for the arm, grasping the wrist and pushing it up and away just as a shot was fired. This one was a big calibre revolver, deafening in the confined space and images of the gaping wounds in Schull’s body flashed in his mind.
The man jabbed at Marner’s throat with his free hand whilst still trying to work the pistol back around for another shot. Marner wrenched the hand from his throat, but now each of them had both arms occupied in this wrestling match and they pushed and heaved back and forth, bumping off the walls, Marner nearly tripping when his feet tangled in the legs of the unconscious Lemele.
Sensing the slight shift of weight of his opponent that signalled the coming knee strike towards his genitals, Marner managed to turn his hip and thigh to absorb the blow, which was numbing nonetheless. His opponent’s momentary lack of balance afforded Marner the opportunity to lean in closer to deliver his retaliatory head-butt. It hit directly home and he heard the man roar with pain as his nose cracked, Marner’s own head flaring again with stars at this new shock.
The man still had not regained his equilibrium after the attempted knee strike and Marner used his side-on position to press home his advantage by kicking his boot forward and under his opponent’s lower legs, pulling hard on the two flailing arms and thus tripping the man forwards and down onto his front. Marner stepped back and sideways to give the body sufficient space to fall under its own momentum, realising that he would have to release the right arm holding the gun, but counting on the final face-down position to render the man temporarily unable to bring the weapon to bear. The man was fast and agile, trying to bend and reform his knees to arrest his fall. Marner had done enough hand-to-hand fighting and wrestling to know that he only needed to keep pulling on the left arm, keep the body coming forwards. As soon as the man hit the floor, Marner immediately brought his knee down onto the neck to pin the man down. The right arm flapped out trying to bring the gun up and around the head to orientate it in any direction for a shot, but the movement was impeded by close proximity to the wall. He loosed off a shot anyway, possibly in rage or frustration, possibly hoping to startle Marner sufficiently that he might back off.
Unperturbed, Marner pounded his fist three, four times into the lower back which, thanks to Marner’s full weight on his knee in the back of the man’s neck, was relatively still and fully exposed. The man screamed in pain as the kidney blows hammered home and Marner was bucked up and off as the man curled into a foetal position, but he did at least release the gun to the floor. Marner quickly scooped it up and slammed the butt down with his maximum force into the side of the man’s skull, the crack sounding almost as loud as the gunshot. He felt the slight give as the butt went home and knew that his opponent’s skull had caved inwards, confirmed when the writhing, screaming body went instantly silent, still but for a residual twitching.
Marner did not hear the other man behind him, his ears were still ringing from the blows to his head and the reports of the gunshots in the confined space, but he saw the shifting of a shadow on the floor beside him. Pivoting on his crouching legs, he turned and fired the gun in one smooth motion, his target silhouetted in the doorway and thus an easy target. The recoil and Marner’s poor balance meant that he tumbled backwards, but all danger was now over and he rested a moment, gasping lungfuls of air that was rank with the smell of cordite and sweat.
----
After maybe thirty seconds, Marner hauled himself to his feet, the world lurching along with his stomach, his head pounding and too many aches from all over his body to count. Possibly he had a concussion, but there was no time to be wasted. He stepped over the dead body and moved to Lemele, who thankfully was breathing. Gently he lifted her to her feet, his shoulder protesting under her weight, relatively slight as she was, his head throbbing again at this new surge of blood. This caused Lemele to stir and revive a little, such that she was able to half stagger under his support. They negotiated the obstacles of the two bodies and the wreckage of the door and emerged into the courtyard. He gently lowered Lemele into a sitting position against the wall; she regained a little more consciousness, sufficient to remember what had been happening to her when she had lost it and she began flailing and pummelling blindly at Marner in panic.
“Relax! Stop! – It’s me, Marner. They are dead; you’re not in any danger now.”
Lemele stilled and looked around blinking. She let out a muffled cry as she spotted the head of the man that Marner had shot protruding from the doorway, a puddle of blood expanding under it.
“Are you hurt? Wounded?” demanded Marner, who could see a couple of scrapes on one cheek, a large red swelling high on the other that was going to be a very vivid bruise, and a black and bloody welt in her scalp line that must have been from a bullet that grazed her.
“I’m okay. Okay. I am!” this last an assertion more to herself than to him.
“Good. I’m going to tidy up here – find my gun and see what identification these two have on them.”
Lemele nodded and Marner moved to search through the pockets of the bodies. The first, the man in the brown coat who had been shot was Caucasian and late thirti
es, maybe early forties. Marner had to take care when searching through the inner pockets to avoid the blood from the chest wound. Inside the corridor he located his pistol and also Lemele’s bag. The body in the grey suit revealed nothing in his pockets except a wad of money, which he pocketed – it was becoming a habit, he thought.
He emerged and found her now standing upright and leaning against the wall, supporting herself with one hand whilst gingerly exploring the swelling on her cheek with the other. “Does the name ‘Georges Aubert’ mean anything to you?” he asked.
Lemele shook her head. Marner gestured to her to come take a look at the body in the doorway. “According to his identification, he is a sergeant in the Sureté, your own police force. Are you sure that you don’t recognise the name or his face?”
Lemele studied the dead man’s face again; a look of surprise was fixed in his dead eyes and open mouth, his head neatly framed by the congealing pool of blood. “No, I don’t know him at all.”
A sudden noise above made him look up and he saw a head duck back inside a window that was then slammed shut. There was no point in hiding things away now, the police would arrive soon. “Come on, we need to go,” he insisted and took her arm to lead her away.
“Wait, no!” she protested, wrenching her wrist from his grip and taking a step backwards for good measure. “We should call the police and wait for them to arrive. We’ve done nothing wrong, it’s me who was followed and attacked and it is our duty to report this.”
“Do you really think so?” challenged Marner, only hearing the sarcasm in his voice, only realising that he had advanced a step towards her when she backed away from him with a look of alarm in her eyes. Deep breath, calm voice, he counselled himself and then he continued in his best tone for frightened old ladies, “At this moment there’s no one that you – we! – can trust. We have an unsolved homicide and the Carlingue mixed up in it somewhere. If they are involved, then their tentacles of corruption reach not just into your police force, but the Gestapo too. These are people who are not afraid of you, or of me. Your own colleagues will not protect you. He,” pointing at the body of Georges Aubert, “is proof of that.”
