The Compromised Detective

by Pirate Irwin

  Lafarge groaned inwardly and felt sick to his stomach as he realised Arthur not only was Palewski’s right-hand man but also and incredibly Berenice’s husband. Nevertheless he nodded and stood up to shake hands with the Colonel who he already knew the back of, but now standing before him and in full uniform he saw a good-looking, square-jawed man with a moustache as neatly-clipped as Palewski’s, but unlike his superior his eyes lacked warmth – they were steel grey and cold.

  “Ah yes, Chief Inspector Lafarge. I wanted to see you, and would have dropped by the Quai if you hadn’t been coming here, to thank you profusely for what you did for Berenice. It is absolutely appalling what happened to her and I hate to imagine what she might have done to herself had you not been such a support,” said de Cambedessus.

  “How is she? I have been intending to stop by and see her, but I have a rather taxing workload at the moment and so I have not been able to do so,” said Lafarge apologetically.

  Lafarge looked for a reaction from de Cambedessus in reference to the mention of his work, but there was none – there would be time for that later and no doubt the colonel was very keen to get the conversation turned towards that end so he could learn the extent of Lafarge’s knowledge.

  Well, Lafarge wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction. This fellow was obviously very clever, though the Chief Inspector thought drily that if only his intelligence work had been as good over the Wehrmacht intentions in 1940 as it had been over him, then they would probably not be having this conversation.

  “I hope your work will allow you to pursue the man who perpetrated this appalling crime on my wife,” said de Cambedessus.

  “Indeed, Colonel, I will be coming to see your wife when I can this afternoon and ask her if she recalls more about the rapist,” said Lafarge, though he wanted to add ‘and I will be coming after you as well’.

  Palewski, who had been almost forgotten in this exchange, grunted and looked at the elegant gold-mounted clock on the mantelpiece as a polite way of telling the two of them that he was pressed for time and they needed to press on.

  As Lafarge had expected once he realised he was in the presence of ‘Arthur’ de Cambedessus didn’t contribute to the conversation; he just sat there silently taking notes, no doubt to be shared with his fellow conspirators, while the Chief Inspector tried to be as careful as he could be in the choice of his information and words.

  “What exactly was Count de Boinville’s mission in Algiers?” asked Lafarge.

  Palewski sipped at his coffee, which by now was erring on the side of tepid, and drummed his thin fingers on his pin-striped knee.

  “He was to initially liaise with Admiral Darlan and see if there was a way in which the Admiral would switch sides,” said Palewski.

  Lafarge nodded, taking it in that de Gaulle had authorised high-level contacts with one of the foremost and more capable leaders of Vichy, Admiral Francois Darlan, who had moved to Algiers to be with his seriously ill son, and had signed the ceasefire agreement in November 1942 with the Americans when they instigated ‘Operation Torch’, otherwise known as the Invasion of North Africa.

  “However, they must have come to nothing as the Admiral was assassinated on Christmas Eve 1942,” said Lafarge.

  Both Palewski and de Cambedessus nodded and this gave Lafarge an opportunity to explore the avenue he wouldn’t have dared bring up otherwise.

  “It is believed he was murdered by a monarchist group, that the assassin Fernand Bonnier de la Chappelle was a fervent believer in the restoration of the monarchy. Did the Count think as much?” asked Lafarge.

  Palewski thought hard while de Cambedessus stared at Lafarge, his regard not giving away anything, but the Chief Inspector hoped he hadn’t provoked question marks in the colonel’s head about how much he really knew.

  “Well de Boinville, to be honest with you, had slightly strayed at that stage and was behaving erratically to say the very least. Isn’t that true, Colonel? We almost had to recall him, which would have been tragic for him and for those of us who adored him. He was one of the most cultured and erudite men you could wish to meet, and extremely amusing company,” said Palewski.

  No wonder the timing worked with regard to the Courneuves and their coincidental arrival in Algiers. Someone must have tipped them off of the Count’s mission and instructed them to fly there. It was a fair bet that person was sitting in the suite in a uniform, thought Lafarge.

  “But you didn’t recall him. Anyway, going back to the monarchist angle, do you think they deliberately intervened to upset your plans?” asked Lafarge.

  “It is hard to say. I think that on the balance of the evidence, although Bonnier de la Chappelle didn’t say as much, there was a monarchist link to the assassination. I can’t say I’m sorry at what happened to Darlan, mind you. He was a slippery if highly capable character, but lacking in moral fibre,” said Palewski, a tad pompously thought Lafarge.

  “Forgive me, Chief Inspector, but where exactly are you going with all this with regard to the monarchists? Are you suggesting that they were involved in the murder of the Count as well?” asked de Cambedessus, his tone highly sceptical.

  Lafarge laughed inwardly at the brazenness of the colonel, who was all but challenging him to provide the evidence for it. He did so because he knew Lafarge had none, or at least there he was wrong but the Chief Inspector couldn’t exactly come out and accuse him in front of Palewski. For that he would need a formal identification from Courneuve, and he would want a deal before he did anything like that.

  “It is just one line of thought. Maybe they thought de Boinville knew too much about the Darlan episode and wanted to tie up a loose end,” said Lafarge lamely, hoping that satisfied the colonel he knew nothing about the real target.

  Palewski clearly wasn’t too impressed by this theory either and Lafarge, for the first time in his life, congratulated himself for making him look like a fool.

  “The monarchists are a spent force, Chief Inspector. We have some in our camp, who came over from Action Française, but they are not ardent fanatics. They are willing to follow the General and for him to assume the role of the nation’s leader should he choose to do so,” said Palewski.

  Lafarge nodded.

  “Yes, you are probably right, sir. However, it might be worth providing me with some names of those who are devoted to the restoration of the monarchy just so that we have them on file,” said Lafarge smiling.

  “I don’t see why not. Colonel, can you provide him with the list, you probably have a file on some of them in your office,” said Palewski.

  Lafarge enjoyed the look on the colonel’s face as it clouded over with fury while he nodded his assent.

  “I believe according to Pinault the reason for the murder may be rather more mundane than the restoration of the Bourbons,” said Palewski drily.

  “Yes, it may be more to do with a sexual liaison dating back a few years that turned sour on their return to Paris. Nevertheless it would be helpful to have a list of people whose sympathies might lie with the monarchists,” said Lafarge once again briefly glancing at de Cambedessus who this time kept his emotions to himself.

  Palewski eyed Lafarge with a look that the Chief Inspector for a second took to be that he didn’t believe he was telling him everything, but a second later de Gaulle’s man was smiling and getting to his feet to tell them the meeting was over.

  ****

  De Cambedessus’s office was in a room just adjacent to Palewski’s suite; it possessed a bed, evidently for the colonel to use should his work take him well into the night, although Lafarge mused that if he had as beautiful a wife as Berenice, who had also endured such a traumatic experience, he would make a special effort to return home every night. Besides it wasn’t too far to travel from the Crillon to Rue Vaneau.

  However, he was hardly one to judge others on their matrimonial affairs; he had spent most of 1942 and some of 1943 hundreds of miles away from his wife and children as they had preferred to live i
n Nice and he had chosen to return to the police force and work in Paris. In any case, perhaps de Cambedessus understandably was having a tough time understanding why his wife had fallen for the charms of the German officer and that was none of Lafarge’s business.

  What was his business was to hunt down evidence against the colonel and that he would do with the utmost enthusiasm. Not because of any secondary issues such as nascent feelings of an emotional bond with Berenice but because the man and his fellow monarchists were a threat to the process of bringing some order and much needed stability, not to mention a healing process, to France after the appalling consequences and actions of collaboration of the past four years.

  For the moment, though, he would have to play dumb, and given his performance just now he didn’t think that would be too difficult, although he regretted Palewski would be feeling he had been held back from the General’s tour of France for nothing.

  De Cambedessus made a few grunting noises as he searched through a huge pile of folders as if to show he was making a supreme effort to find the relevant dossier. Lafarge doubted it would be of much help in any case as de Cambedessus was hardly likely to have compiled a list of his fellow conspirators ready to either be handed over or discovered should he be indisposed.

  He finally came across it, a tatty grey covered file which was one of the smaller ones on his desk. Lafarge flicked quickly through it, noticing the list of names on the top of the 15 or so pages ran to no more than nine. “Well, that is nine off the list of likely suspects,” he thought.

  “As you can see, Chief Inspector, it is not a long list. Most of the monarchists decided to stay loyal either to Vichy or to Maurras, but you take what you can get. None of those on that list, apart from one or two, could be designated as being privy to important information, and even those two are given diluted versions of planning and projects.

  “One can’t be too careful, as we learned to our great disappointment after the Armistice in 1940, of who one’s friends are even among one’s own,” he said with a sad smile.

  “That is certainly true, Colonel. However, even now I would imagine it is hard to tell who is and who isn’t loyal. No doubt, too, there are those who have joined the cause of the good rather tardily,” said Lafarge.

  “Indeed, Chief Inspector, and I would number you among them,” said the colonel enjoying his moment of getting even with Lafarge.

  Lafarge congratulated himself again on how well he was playing being dumb, for he had deliberately opened the way for such a remark, preferring the colonel to think he was gaining the upper hand or had something he could play on even if the Chief Inspector had been provisionally cleared.

  “I take your point, Colonel. Is there anything else?” asked Lafarge.

  Obviously there was, for de Cambedessus pointed to a chair indicating he should sit down, while he withdrew from a wooden cupboard behind his desk a bottle of calvados and two glasses. Lafarge was never one to decline a drink, although in this case he would be prepared to not least because Pinault had been insistent he relieve the tireless Levau and arrest Courneuve.

  However, his inquisitiveness got the better of him and having taken possession of both the chair and the calvados – a very fine one too – he sat back and waited for de Cambedessus to offload whatever he had on his mind.

  “You’ll like this calvados. I liberated a couple of cases from a chateau in Normandy that some of the Wehrmacht General Staff had been living in. Boy, they must really be distraught about their change of circumstances! There they are now, in headlong retreat, with no hope of regaining their life of luxury in Normandy,” joked de Cambedessus.

  Lafarge grinned, though for a different reason as all he saw was that the calvados was now being drunk by another charlatan with the same ambition of destroying de Gaulle.

  “Anyway, Chief Inspector, that is not the reason I asked you to accompany in me drinking some of this fine Calvados in their honor. I have some information regarding the dreadful attack on my wife and I thought as you know the circumstances that you would be interested in learning it,” said de Cambedessus.

  “Indeed I would be, Colonel. I have been distracted, as I told you, by the murder of the Count but that is not to say I had forgotten that there is a depraved rapist out there, either pretending to be a gendarme or, perish the thought, is a real one,” said Lafarge.

  De Cambedessus looked pleased by his enthusiastic response.

  “Well, the information that has come to me, for obviously I have made my own enquiries and also Berenice has slowly revealed some details, has produced a name and I am afraid it is indeed a serving member of the police force,” said de Cambedessus grimly.

  Lafarge swore under his breath and followed it with a large swig of calvados.

  “His name is Captain André Monnet, stationed at the Quai, so you may know him,” said de Cambedessus.

  Lafarge swore again, this time louder, for he did indeed know him and it made him wonder if the rape of Berenice had just been a dreadful coincidence. For he had humiliated Monnet in front of his own men back in 1943, after he had witnessed him shooting two young Jewish schoolboys in the back. He had arrested him but been forced to release him shortly afterwards.

  “So it appears you do know him, Chief Inspector,” de Cambedessus said, fixing Lafarge with one of his steely gazes.

  Lafarge nodded but refused to elaborate.

  “Very well, Chief Inspector, I see that for both of us this matter is personal. Thus what I suggest is that we take this off the farm so to speak and deal with it ourselves. Are you happy with that?” de Cambedessus asked, a smile appearing at the corner of his mouth.

  Lafarge was surprised at this, and curious as to how the colonel wanted it handled. He had to also keep in mind de Cambedessus was deeply implicated in the case he was officially investigating, and the last thing he needed was to have any complications when it came to dealing with him over the de Boinville investigation.

  “What exactly would you like me to do, sir?” asked Lafarge keeping his voice steady.

  De Cambedessus refilled their glasses, stroked his moustache, and lowered his voice to a whisper.

  “Why, Chief Inspector, don’t be so naïve. If I suggest we take it off the farm there is only one outcome I am talking about and that is to kill the perverted son of a bitch,” said de Cambedessus, his tone reminding Lafarge of the way he had spoken to Courneuve the day before.

  Lafarge sat back in amazement at what he had just been asked to do. He acknowledged that what Monnet had done was appalling, no less so than what he had done the day Lafarge had crossed swords with him, and that scores were being settled throughout the city and the country, but he would not perform the role of hit-man for de Cambedesuss.

  “I’m sorry, Colonel, but I cannot do that. He has committed a base crime and I will get him to answer for it by going through the normal channels,” said Lafarge coolly.

  De Cambedessus sighed, his disappointment clear, and from his top drawer pulled out a thick file. He tossed it across the desk towards Lafarge, who did not take kindly to his brusqueness. However, he picked it up and opened it, and there staring up at him was a photo of his sister, Vanessa. He went pale as he saw his sister had had her head shaved like Berenice and a swastika daubed on her forehead.

  “What the fuck!” Lafarge yelled.

  De Cambedessus leant back in his chair and stared at Lafarge, the hint of a smile returning again to his face.

  “So you see, Lafarge, we share something in common – your sister was another of Monnet’s victims. He found her at the French Gestapo headquarters in Rue Lauriston. Bonny and Lafont and most of their gang had already fled, Bonny as gallant as ever leaving your sister to face the music,” said de Cambedessus.

  “Monnet, to be fair, was rather courageous in fact and shot three of the Gestapo dead, but then I’m afraid he overreached himself and took your sister as what he thought was his rightful prize.”

  Lafarge was seething, not just at Mon
net but also at the insouciance of de Cambedessus in the manner he was relating the details.

  “Why wasn’t he arrested there and then for crying out loud?” asked Lafarge trying to bring his voice and temper under some sort of control.

  De Cambedessus shrugged his shoulders and picked at his nails.

  “Christ, you knew all about this well before he did the same thing to Berenice, your own wife, and yet you didn’t intervene,” said Lafarge.

  “Look, Lafarge, it is all very well for you to sit there and judge my morals but there was a lot more than just the raid on the French Gestapo headquarters going on! We were in the middle of some pretty intensive mopping-up operations and I could not personally be everywhere or indeed able to issue orders to a police force whose loyalties were questionable to say the least,” he said bluntly.

  “I am sorry, but when we were notified of the clean-up operation at Lafont and Bonny’s place we were more concerned as to where they had fled to, because they are among our top targets. The fact three of their men were killed and a former floozie of theirs was raped didn’t really cause us much upset.

  “It was only when I learned her name and that one of my junior officers told me she was the sister of a former top detective called Lafarge did I then make the connection with you.”

  Lafarge could not believe what he was hearing, but while de Cambedessus’s callousness only gave him more reason to ensure he brought him down, he was keener to know how and where his sister was.

  “I’m sorry to tell you she has been taken to a mental institution as she is in a very precarious state; what with the dope habit she had and then the rape she was a serious risk to herself. Maybe in a few weeks you will be able to see her,” said de Cambedessus again in his provocative, laconic tone.

  “That won’t do, de Cambedessus! I want to see her now and you cannot prevent me from doing so!” shouted Lafarge.

  De Cambedessus waved his hands at him to tell him to quieten down.

  “I am afraid that is quite out of the question, Chief Inspector. Aside from her parlous mental state she is, or could be, an invaluable source of information to us. I am not going to let your sentimentality try and obstruct the state’s priorities, which is hunting down those who openly collaborated in some appalling crimes which have left us with a huge mess to clear up and a large stain to erase,” said de Cambedessus.