by Pirate Irwin
Time away and with the family could rectify that and rebuild his strength. But it wasn’t going to deter him from solving the Suchet case one day and Bousquet surely knew that. Just to be sure he disabused any notion the police chief might have had of it being to the contrary.
“Bousquet you may feel that you are untouchable and I may be as popular here as a pork chop in a synagogue – a phrase no doubt that pleases you – at the moment but things will change. The war will turn in the Allies’ favour and then you may ask yourself whether it hadn’t been better to side with the terrorists as you disparagingly refer to them.
“For the record I am not a member of the Resistance. But from what I have seen in the past two days there are many like me who will have been persuaded that yours is not the right way and that the answer to our future lies across the channel.
“But before that day comes Bousquet I will be back here in the same office and I will hold you to account for your part in Marguerite Suchet’s murder. For if I am certain of one thing it is that you are involved to the extent that criminal charges should be brought.
“I will grant you a certain amount of capital for handling my charges with a surprising equanimity and fairness, qualities I thought you no longer possessed. But that does not mean I will forget the case nor will it prevent me from bringing to account those who I believe to be guilty.
“You can be judged by a higher person than myself for those actions you have permitted in your role as head of the police, but on one case of murder I will be the man responsible for your fall.”
With that Lafarge opened the door and left.
He passed briefly by the office to collect some personal items and without so much as a goodbye even to Massu he rode the lift down to the ground floor, stepped out into the sunlit afternoon and breathed his first breath of Parisian air as a liberated man.
PART TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY–FOUR
“Please wait here Gaston while I go and see if the Marshal is ready to see you,” said Pierre Lafarge.
The former chief inspector smiled and took a seat in the lobby of the Hotel du Parc Majestic where Petain and his increasingly isolated and delusional Vichy government held court.
Despite the decline in their power the hotel still buzzed with activity. Well–dressed men and women strutted to and fro with folders under their arms, no doubt with reams of grandiose statements inside them ready to be signed and counter–signed by the relevant ministers.
Whether any of them made any difference to how the country was run was a moot point as the Germans now controlled all of France.
With their usual sense of trampling over history and symbolic dates, the Nazis had taken over the Vichy controlled part of France on November 11 of 1942, Armistice Day when the last World War had finally come to an end with the defeat of the Germans and their allies.
Fifteen months had passed since Lafarge had been dismissed by Bousquet, and they had been long but useful ones for him.
Walks with the children and Isabella in the afternoons, early dinner usually in their large house, paid for not by him but by her father, and then long hours reading or listening to his wife play the piano, had restored the bonds both matrimonial and paternal.
However, lately he had started to brood and resume his heavy drinking.
His festering resentment at the manner in which he had been drummed out of the police force, at the behest of a man who he suspected of conspiracy to burgle and perhaps murder, had resurfaced.
His mood hadn’t been lightened by the sight of Bousquet appearing in a photograph with Leguay and SS officers in Marseille prior to the southern metropolis’ own experience of ‘Le Rafle’ – not something that one entered to win a prize – but the term used for rounding up the Jews in the city.
Not that you would have known the Vel D’Hiv in Paris had been used as a temporary prison for the Jews rounded up in Paris. Just three months after ‘Operation Spring Breeze’ the great and the good – the term of course used by Lafarge in its most sarcastic form – had trooped there to watch a European welterweight title fight featuring France’s darling Marcel Cerdan.
His fight with Jose Ferrer was at least fought on equal terms – less blood spilt too – as opposed to the cycling tracks’ previous ‘show’ the incarceration of unarmed Jews by armed gendarmes. But by September with the blood dried or washed away it was as if it had never happened.
Lafarge, though, had not forgotten about those crimes or the one he had been close to solving before his investigation had been unsatisfactorily interrupted. Even, though, Bousquet had said that he would put someone else onto the case, Lafarge had never heard from his replacement so he concluded it had simply been dropped.
Lafarge bided his time and eventually told Isabella that he was going to try to get reinstated by using his father’s influence over Petain. That way Bousquet could not block his return, even if the secretary–general sneered about the Marshal to the Germans he was still technically in his post thanks to Petain and was therefore obliged to obey his orders.
Thus Lafarge now found himself in the lobby awaiting his audience with the hero of a previous war, who now looked like he was going to end this one as a villain. Unfortunately for Petain the Nazis were taking a beating almost everywhere, from the desert in North Africa to the Eastern Front where the Soviets had not caved in as had looked likely to start with and now had the upper hand.
The war was not over, far from it, but that crucial moment where one could say the tide had ‘turned incontrovertibly’ had arrived and this Lafarge hoped would help his case. It might also make Bousquet’s position that bit weaker.
His father Pierre was a lifelong civil servant who had risen to a prominent position and had married a wealthy banker’s daughter.
However, despite his closeness to the Marshal it hadn’t stopped several members of his wife’s family being rounded up after being falsely denounced as having Jewish blood, and only released by payment of a large fee to Bousquet and De Brinon.
This had hardly warmed relations between the Lafarge family and Bousquet and on the several occasions Pierre and Antoinette Lafarge had visited Isabella and himself, Lafarge had played upon this with his father and pleaded with him to get him reinstated or at least facilitate an audience with Petain.
Aided by his mother – whose hatred of Bousquet even out–rivalled his own – they had succeeded in persuading Pierre to circumvent Laval. He had convinced Petain that Bousquet and his Prime Minister were colluding in trying to have him replaced as Head of State with the latter taking his position and Bousquet becoming Prime Minister.
Petain didn’t take much convincing as the Germans had already once forced him humiliatingly to recall Laval after he had dismissed him.
With the Prime Minister being Bousquet’s political godfather Petain knew where the latter’s loyalties lay.
He remained loyal even though he had been undermined by Laval’s enthusiastic embracing of the Germans’ idea to raise a new French militia, called the Milice, as he agreed the police were not to be trusted with both the French people’s and Germans’ security.
Several of these diehard ideological loyallists now guarded the hotel and some stood outside the lifts by the lobby, their long floppy blue berets distinguishing them from the other uniformed security forces.
Lafarge espied Laval at one point across the lobby, typically a cigarette was hanging from his mouth, while he held his silver–topped cane in his hand and dictated some comment or statement to his harassed looking secretary.
Laval thankfully didn’t notice him and if he had done he did not give any indication he had recognized him otherwise he might have insisted on his being present at the meeting.
Eventually he walked off into the hotel bar accompanied by some German officers and their lady friends, he was not going to be defecting from his friends any time soon, Lafarge ventured. In any case it would be impossible for him to do so as he had stated publicly on the radio the yea
r before that he was praying for a German victory as the alternative was Bolshevism.
Time Magazine’s man of the year of 1931 had no hope of a repeat honour mused Lafarge, more likely the next time he featured on the magazine’s front cover it would be in a rogue’s gallery line–up.
Finally his father returned and gestured to him to come with him. As they went up in the lift he patted his arm sympathetically and told him everything should be alright, though, the Marshal was sometimes, because of his age, inclined to lose his temper as he forgot things.
Lafarge Junior nodded and braced himself for his first ever meeting with the hero of Verdun, who had saved France once but now faced ignominy and vilification for the manner in which he had tried and failed to save the French a second time.
Petain’s office bore no relation to Bousquet’s. It was much smaller and certainly less ornate and Lafarge could not see a drinks cabinet, although he was not to be disappointed as the Marshal’s military aide asked him if he would like a drink to which he readily said yes and ordered a cognac.
Petain himself was not there yet. He finally emerged from a little side door dressed in his blue Marshal's uniform, looking younger than his 80 plus years, his blue eyes alert, and his handshake was firm while he held the taller Lafarge in the eyes with a steady gaze.
Lafarge remained standing until Petain offered him to take a seat and both sat silent for a few minutes, Lafarge sipping his cognac while the Marshal fiddled with several pieces of paper, browsing through them before placing them neatly in front of him.
“Well Lafarge I hear you want to return to Paris and make a nuisance of yourself again,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.
Lafarge smiled and brought out his cigarette case and asked the Marshal if he could smoke to which he nodded.
“I think Lafarge that once you get to my age and having fought one major war, not to mention subdued an uprising in Morocco, and led the country in a second one that if you haven’t already been taken by a bullet a cigarette isn’t going to make much of a difference,” he said.
“I take your point Marshal. Now with regard to Paris, yes, I am keen to return there and to resume my duties because I feel frustrated that I was not able to resolve the case I was working on at the time of my unfair dismissal,” said Lafarge laying the emphasis on unfair.
Petain said nothing and opened the folder that lay before him.
“I have to say Lafarge that reading the report filed by the secretary–general about your behaviour and suspect activities it gives me little in the way of justification of restoring you to your previous post.
“To be frank it makes for grim reading and if you had been serving under me I am certain I would not have been so lenient as Bousquet in simply dismissing you,” said the Marshal.
Lafarge shivered a little as he didn’t doubt that he would have been facing a firing squad rather than a reunion with his family if it had been Petain’s choice. However, he wasn’t going to let Bousquet’s one–sided report be the end of the matter.
“I would insist sir that this report is heavily biased and is based on personal animosity and also self–interest in that Bousquet was one of the main suspects in the case I was investigating,” said Lafarge.
“These allegations that he has included in his report he even cleared me over them, but I see he has still seen fit to include these calumnies.
Petain waved his hands as if to calm him down, Lafarge hoped it was that and he was not being dismissed.
“Come come Lafarge. Do you really think a man as ambitious as Bousquet would risk ruining his career, not to say putting his life at risk, by murdering some harlot who advanced her career through her good looks and her body,” said the Marshal.
Lafarge wasn’t enjoying this meeting at all. His father’s confidence appeared to have been dreadfully misplaced, for so far he had been told he would have been shot and had had his defence dismissed out of hand. He didn’t see how he could convince the Marshal that he justified being sent back to Paris.
“All I can say Marshal is that my talents lie in being a detective, my record clearly shows I am very good at what I do. My instinct and the evidence I had collated told me that unfortunately for your government one of its senior members and rising stars was heavily implicated in the murder, not to say also the burglary that preceded it,” said Lafarge.
Petain took a sip of what looked like water and swirled it round his mouth as he pondered what Lafarge had said. Lafarge by contrast lit another cigarette and took a gulp of the cognac.
“Very well Lafarge. However, the one pertinent witness to these tawdry unwholesome events is now I believe no longer in our custody and could even be outside our jurisdiction.
“If that is the case, what use is it me provoking trouble with Bousquet and by extension Prime Minister Laval in sending you back to Paris where all you can do is repeat the same things and still without a witness?” said Petain.
Lafarge tugged at his lip, reflecting that no wonder this old bugger held the Germans at Verdun, he didn’t give a bloody inch even in debate.
“Well there is not a lot I can say to that. Save there is other means and another witness who can at least verify most of what de Chastelain said to me.
“There is also a German officer from the Abwehr, who I need to speak to again as I believe he too is involved.
“Finally with regard to the burglary, the burglar, Arnaud Lescarboura, could still be alive despite being transported abroad. I would ask you to demand his return so I can speak to him again and offer him guarantees that I was unable to the previous time we spoke,” said Lafarge.
Petain sighed and stroked the back of his bald dome.
“In terms of demanding the return of this burglar, you are asking the impossible,” said Petain.
“Why last year when I was in a stronger position I couldn’t even get an old friend Senator Pierre Masse released by the Germans. They replied saying that under no circumstances would they release one of the most dangerous Jews in Europe.
“Do you really think now that they have taken control of the whole of France they will listen to me and go looking for a common jewel thief among the millions of people that have been sent to Germany or to the East!
“On the other hand Lafarge, thanks to your father’s undying loyalty to me during the time here, where he has shielded me as much as he could from these petty little court disputes and intrigues and alerted me to any possibility of revolt, I am prepared to allow you to go back to Paris,” he said.
“I am not, however, doing it out of altruistic reasons, because I don’t think you have a solid enough case against Bousquet.
“The thought that you might also seek to bring down this Colonel von Dirlinger, yes Lafarge I know his name for I have read the full report, fills me with horror on your behalf. I don’t know if you have a death wish but if you do I believe that I am fulfilling it for you by agreeing to your reinstatement.
“Furthermore you will be doing me a service as it is time that Laval had his wings clipped. By taking Bousquet out of circulation you will be achieving that goal for me because he has been his eyes and ears up in Paris and has also collaborated with him to perpetrate crimes that have shamed France.
“I have played my role in those I agree but I did not order them. The hero of Verdun disappeared a while ago, but I still possess some fight in me and if it is just to see Laval humiliated a bit then I am willing to help.
“It is bizarre isn’t it how destinies don’t pan out the way that they look like doing.
“Look what would have happened if all three of us had died before the war. I would have received a state funeral, Laval would have been revered for having been a great statesman and Bousquet would have been feted for the Legion d’Honneur for extraordinary courage he showed at the age of 20 for saving all those people in the floods.
“Now all that probably awaits us are paupers’ graves and the enmity of the French people. It would be funny if only it weren�
��t so damn tragic,” said Petain a sad smile on his lips mirrored by the look in his eyes.
Lafarge didn’t know what to say, the unlikeliest of solutions had been delivered and yet he was being told that it was most likely leading to his own demise but in doing so he would be helping the old man in front of him.
He helped himself to another cognac, the bottle having been helpfully left on the tray. Reluctant as he was to admit it, he had to agree with Petain over his self–pitying soliloquy about the trio of Vichyistes. The irony was that having thrown his lot in with the Nazis, Petain’s finest moment in winning the last War was for obvious reasons not permitted to be celebrated anymore.
He raised his glass not in honour of them but to thank the Marshal, downed it in one, and thought to himself I will be responsible for the downfall of one of them at least and that will salve my conscience.
I am not going to my death, thought Lafarge, I am going to my salvation and that is the destruction of Bousquet.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Lafarge sauntered down the corridor feeling extremely happy with himself, only to be stopped by his father and ushered into his tiny little office.
The only redeeming factor about the small room was that it had two windows, which allowed a lot of light in. This was crucial these days as there were constant power cuts, a good analogy for France’s present government thought Lafarge.
His father poured them both a large cognac and gestured for Gaston to sit in a comfortable armchair, while he sat on an unstable looking wooden chair.
“So you got your wish then?” asked Pierre, his full head of silver hair gleaming in the midday light.
Gaston nodded and thanked him for his help, while mentioning almost as an aside that Petain had said he was probably sending him to his death.
“Well Gaston I believe he may be correct. I think you are being stubborn and foolish in insisting in resolving this case which quite honestly can sit gathering dust until the war is over, and not cost me one of my sons,” said Pierre.
