Spook's Gold

by Andrew Wood

  Pushing his head further out of the window, just the minimum necessary to be able to fully survey his planned route, he could see that there was worse. Between the buildings was a stone buttress, which he presumed was the external protrusion of the main supporting wall. This would necessitate a manoeuvre to step around it; not difficult in itself, but not easy if one hand were occupied carrying a bag. So at best they would get dirty, at worst it would be slippery, and to achieve it silently without attracting the attention of the soldiers below would be rather difficult. Lemele’s heeled shoes would be an additional hazard.

  “No way,” exclaimed Lemele; she had slipped her head out of the window beside Marner and immediately surmised what he was planning.

  Marner turned. “So what do you suggest? We’re trapped in here like rats in...” But Lemele had already turned away and was bringing a wooden chair to the centre of the room.

  “Try using your head instead of your brawn for once,” she retorted, before stepping up onto the chair and reaching up to push against the attic hatch in the ceiling.

  “Ahhh!” he murmured approvingly.

  Lemele shoved and then had to pound her hand against the hatch to get it to budge upwards, causing him to dash to quickly close the window. She succeeded in pushing the hatch up and aside, but was at full stretch. However, when she reached up to grasp the hatch frame and tried to pull herself up she had insufficient strength to do so, was left hanging there with her legs kicking and whirling whilst Marner chuckled.

  “Shut up and help me down!” she snapped, and he stepped forward to grab her flailing ankles and direct them back towards the chair. “Okay, now this time, give me a boost up,” she instructed. He duly formed a sling with his hands, Lemele put one instep in and up she went nearly to waist level, sufficient to place her hands on either side of the hatch opening and so lift fully up on her arms. As she rose and locked out her elbows, a dull thud indicated that her head had found the upper limit of the roof space, or at least a beam. Again Marner set to laughing and she kicked out with her legs, not intending to hit him, just to show her displeasure that he was finding such amusement in her discomfort. “Go try the ledge if you like!” came Lemele’s muffled voice as her legs lifted up and away and disappeared into the gaping black square of the hatch. “But at least I’m doing something to get us out of the mess that you’ve got us into.”

  “Me?” laughed Marner, enjoying this moment of companionable jesting and mockery after the recent stress. “What did I do?”

  “Find me a lamp or something, I can’t see a thing up here,” was the reply.

  The drawers and surfaces yielded nothing that would be of use, not even matches. Then he had the idea to move the small bedside table alongside the chair that Lemele had used, and to place upon it the standard lamp that was in the corner. Fortunately the room was tiny and the wire on the lamp was sufficiently long to permit this. The lamp head was still well below the level of the hatch, but shone more or less directly up into the void. He heard Lemele grunt her approval.

  He went back to the window and looked out while he listened to Lemele’s breathing and scuffling as she moved around above. At one point she squealed. Her head reappeared in the space above. “As I hoped, the roof space is open so we can crawl through and get into the adjacent building.”

  “How did you even know that it would be feasible?” he asked, openly impressed at this ingenuity.

  “I look for missing people. I’ve become very familiar with all of the possible places where they hide.”

  Stepping up onto the chair, he pulled himself up sufficiently to be able to peer over the edge of the hatch. Although he was blocking the illumination from the lamp below, as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness he could see that the wall that divided the buildings did not actually extend fully up to the roof. Instead, there was a wide central upright, with beams suspended from this to the edges of the building to support the central roof section and the steeply sloping sides of the mansard roof that they had seen from the window. But the point was that they could crawl either side of the central support and into the roof space of the building next door to the hotel.

  Marner dropped back down to the chair, passed their bags up through the hatch and then stepped back up. He had sufficient height to be able to push his arms up through the hatch to their elbows, and by spreading and flattening his forearms he could get enough leverage to get his body moving upwards into the gap, but not fully. “Help me!” he grunted to Lemele and she crawled quickly over to him, grabbed handfuls of the back of his jacket close to the armpits, and pulled. He came slowly upwards, but it was not easy due to the fact that the limited space prevented Lemele from rising up to gain a better position, so she was largely pulling him into her body.

  Suddenly there was a rending of stitches as a seam in his expensive jacket let go. His legs flailed in alarm and knocked the lamp, which was sent tumbling across the room. Lemele let go with the hand that was holding the unravelling stitching and made a panic grab further into the middle of his back. This succeeded in arresting his backwards movement. She took a moment to reposition her legs and once again he was making upwards progress into the space. There was an awkward moment when the protruding butt of the pistol that was still in his waistband jammed under and outside the hatchway. He was obliged to roll sideways to ease his hips back to allow the gun butt to come around the edge. Finally folded over the hatchway at the waist, he rearranged his arms to heave himself up into the space. As he did so, his head connected with a hard and sharp edge. “Oh, did that hurt?” Lemele enquired sarcastically in response to his curses.

  Now that he was in the roof space and no longer obstructing the hatch opening, it was confirmed that his flailing legs had dispensed with their illumination. “You clumsy buffoon, you’ve knocked the light over.”

  “I’ll go back down,” he muttered, but she told him not to bother, that they had sufficient orientation to know which direction to set off in. Now that he was up there and his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, he could see that there were tiny slits of light scattered here and there from gaps in the roof slates.

  Lemele set off on hands and knees but stopped almost immediately to free her bag from some obstruction or catch. In the silence he heard a scratching sound. “What’s that?”

  “It seems that we may not be the only rats trapped in this building,” she stated, her matter of fact voice showing that she was not concerned. Marner, however, could feel a rising panic. “Come on, get moving!” he urged, prompted by his desire to get out of this black dusty tunnel, away from unseen scuttling things and his mounting sense of claustrophobic panic.

  Lemele moved away again, heaving her bag out in front of her as she went and he followed, keeping a respectful distance from her shoe heels. As they approached closer to the buttress of the roof support the gaps in the tiles became fewer and the weak lighting that they afforded faded out to leave them almost entirely in darkness. Marner’s right hand was reaching forward when it landed on something soft and warm that suddenly darted away from under his palm. He yelped in horror and yanked back his hand, leaving him poorly balanced on his other rearward supporting hand and knees, which resulted in him toppling forward before he could react. His forehead bumped into something soft.

  “For goodness sake, behave yourself back there!” implored Lemele. Sheepishly he realised that it had been her leg under his hand, and now this was her bottom.

  This time he waited a beat, just enough to assure that he would not be banging into her posterior again, before he shuffled forward once more. The gap was negotiated with no problems and as the level of light rose once more, he could see that Lemele seemed to have accelerated away, worrying less about making noise now that they were in another building.

  Lemele began groping around. “I’m trying to find a hatch that will get us back down,” she whispered. “It’s impossible to see, so I will have to feel around for one. Wait there while I look.”

&n
bsp; Marner flopped onto his side and tried to calm his ragged breathing. The musty air was thick with dust that had not been disturbed in years until their clumsy passage. The strange odour had no origin that he could define, although he was sure that it had something to do with whatever was living up here. Another scuttling movement only a few metres to his right prompted him to instinctively rise up and back away. Fortunately Lemele’s voice came to him out of the darkness and stopped him from taking full flight. “Over here. I’ve found it.”

  Peering into the inky blackness, he was unable to see her, to differentiate her from the many bulky shadows in the gloom. “Come on!” she insisted impatiently and he willed his arms and legs into motion, towards the approximate direction from which her voice emanated. He was not aware that he had reached her until she spoke to him again from just centimetres away. “You can’t see it but there is definitely a hatch. The problem is that the panel is a tight fit into the frame and I cannot get a finger into the gap to lever it up.”

  Suddenly something grabbed his wrist and he flinched and gasped in fear, then realised that it was Lemele’s own hand. “Calm down and stop acting like a schoolgirl in a haunted house,” she chided. Pulling once more on his hand, she guided it to the recess. He explored the outer edges of the hatchway with his finger tips and then reached into his bag, fumbling around to locate his service dagger. Years of grime and settled dust had sealed the panel firmly in place; he was obliged to patiently work the blade tip several times around the seam, levering and twisting before it finally shifted.

  The light that blinded him was a welcome return to the world of the living and he did not think or hesitate before pulling the hatch upwards and discarding it behind him. He poked his head down and saw a bedroom, well lit from the open curtains. In the bed were a couple, maybe late twenties in age, still deeply asleep despite the daylight streaming through the window and the racket that he and Lemele had been making above their heads.

  Gripping the hatchway frame, he lowered his head and shoulders to descend through it upside-down, curling his body around in mid-air to let his legs follow and leave him hanging from the hatchway; a parody of the manoeuvres he had practiced on the bars in school gymnastics. At least his exit from the roof space had been more graceful than his entry. He dropped lightly the last few centimetres and motioned Lemele to pass the bags, indicating with finger to lips and pointing to the bed for her benefit.

  Now it was Lemele’s turn; she dropped her legs through and managed to reach a position with her elbows resting on the hatch frame, but then could not work out how to finish the manoeuvre; how to move from being supported up on her forearms to finish hanging down from her hands. Realising that there was a problem, Marner moved to grab her legs for support, wrapping his arms around her thighs which were at his chest height. Lemele was not expecting this attack and, unable to see anything below, suddenly let go with her arms, lancing them straight up in the air to allow herself to free-fall through without touching the sides. Marner in turn was not prepared to take the sudden full load, in particular of such a top-heavy weight. Lemele was pivoting at the waist and further destabilising them so that he staggered and was left with no choice but to pitch her forward onto the end of the bed for a soft landing, as he collapsed onto his knees.

  The sleeping couple jerked upright in bed, instantly awake and the girl screamed, only moments later realising that she should also pull the sheet up above her exposed chest. The man leapt out of bed and made towards them, although from the confused look on his face he was clearly unsure whether he was attacking or defending, but determined to do something about this intrusion.

  Lemele jumped up and put out a placating hand. “Please help us, we’re in trouble. The Gestapo are hunting us,” she improvised.

  At this, the man stopped and relaxed. “Ah, okay. You gave us one hell of a surprise though. Look, I’d like to help but you can’t stop here. And you could have picked a better hiding place; don’t you know that there’s a hotel full of those scum next door?”

  “Of course,” smiled Lemele. “We’ll go out the door and not trouble you any further.”

  If the man was aware of or embarrassed by his nakedness, he made no indication, just stood there indicating towards the door with an outstretched palm.

  Marner gathered up the bags and stumbled after Lemele, mumbling apologies. They exited the bedroom and paused in the small lounge of the apartment. Lemele stopped to examine her reflection in the full length mirror there and noted that her stockings were wrecked at the knees. She pulled another pair from her bag and hoisted her skirt to change them, lowering her face into Marner’s line of sight to give him the message that he should not be looking. Taking the hint, he turned his back and began brushing his clothes down. The trousers were very dusty and stained with something on one leg; his ministrations succeeded in removing the worst but he knew that he looked extremely scruffy. Peering over his shoulder he could see that some of the lining was protruding from the torn stitching of his jacket.

  Having finished her stocking change, Lemele was able to cover up the state of the rest of her clothes by donning the light overcoat that was in her bag. This completed, she turned to help Marner poke the lining back into the seam as best as possible and then began beating down his shoulders and back to remove the dust there.

  As they prepared to leave the apartment they passed a telephone on a stand by the door. Marner dialled Boris’s number and he picked up immediately. “Boris, what the hell is going on? Can you talk?”

  “I don’t have that file here I’m afraid. I think that it is in Meuser’s office so I will have to go and find it down there. Give me thirty minutes and meet me in Meuser’s office,” and Boris hung up.

  “What did he say?” asked Lemele. “What on earth is going on?”

  “Boris could not tell me, he is probably being watched or something is making him very cautious. But he’ll meet us in thirty minutes. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Twenty Five

  They emerged from the apartment block onto the front street, having tried the rear entrance and discovered that it shared the alleyway with the hotel, meaning that they would have to pass in full view of the waiting soldiers to reach the main boulevard. Marner went first and alone; he glanced briefly up and down the street but saw no evidence of anyone watching and then strode briskly away in the opposite direction from his hotel. After waiting a further sixty seconds, Lemele saw no one pursuing Marner and so followed.

  Boris’s use of the phrase ‘Meuser’s office’ was in fact referring to the Bar Legende, a departmental joke. Oberleutnant Meuser was an officer who had been despatched back to Berlin to an unknown fate, having been implicated in the murder of a dancer. Prior to his disgrace, Meuser could invariably be found in the bar at any time between eleven o’clock in the morning and mid-afternoon, and would then take up residence again from early evening onwards.

  The murder had been one of Marner’s first cases after his posting to Paris. The case had attracted the attention of Kripo because the girl was linked with a number of German officers. In fact ‘linked’ was a euphemism for the fact that she had entirely quit her dancing job and was living off earnings gleaned from her patrons. Meuser had been guilty as far as Marner could establish, although the evidence was entirely circumstantial and it would have been a challenge to obtain a conviction in a civilian court of law against an even half-competent defence lawyer. The case never came to a court, civilian or military; Meuser was dismissed back to Germany and Marner was advised to let it go, with hints that Meuser was getting his just desserts.

  When Marner arrived at the south end of Avenue Kléber, on which the Legende was located, the unmistakable bulk of Boris was lingering on the far corner of the junction. He had been concerned that Boris might be planning to meet inside the bar, which was not a good idea since it was a popular location with many SD and Wehrmacht officers. However, on spotting him, Boris turned and walked along the street away from the bar. Marner pause
d for a moment to see if anyone else moved, anyone possibly watching Boris. There was no one as far as he could see, so he crossed the junction and went to the same corner. He did not want to walk on in pursuit of Boris yet; he needed to wait until Lemele caught up. She appeared at the corner that he had just vacated, saw him in turn, and followed. Thus in a bizarre relay they walked on two blocks into back streets of small shops and apartment buildings until finally Boris chose a small café.

  When Marner entered, Boris was already seated and bellowing an order for three coffees to a diminutive, elderly lady who was profoundly deaf. By the time that Lemele had come in and joined them at their tiny table in the corner, the coffees had been delivered and the lady had retired to the obscurity of her sitting room beyond the bar.

  Boris looked at the dishevelled state of Marner’s clothes, then at Lemele who had shrugged out of her coat, hot after the rapid pace of the walk from the hotel. “So you two are cooperating again,” he beamed. “Or are you systematically trying to destroy that expensive good suit?” he demanded of Marner.

  “Very amusing, but I don’t have time for humour. Thanks for the warning this morning, by the way, it was a very close thing. Now please tell me what is going on.”

  Boris immediately became serious. “I have not figured it all out yet. I was dragged into the office very early this morning. Two goons from Department VIII,” and here Boris raised his eyebrows knowingly at Marner, “turned up at Chantal’s apartment. Now how would they know to find me there? Never mind, not important.”