Spook's Gold (7 page)

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.  After 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. 

Until he obtained an identification of whoever it was that he had killed, or some photos that he could show Pichon, Marner had nothing more than a small collection of dead-ends regarding the identity of Schull’s murderer.  Which left him with just one option and that was to follow the trail that Schull had been following.  Due to the fact that Schull had left behind no notes or clues regarding his line of investigation or findings, Marner had to assume that it was the submarine transports. 

A call to Hoffman elicited no response, his assistant stating only that Hoffman was busy in meetings and could not even define when he might be free.  Marner’s frustration translated itself into a need to do something, anything, even if just to provoke a reaction and therefore he decided to make another visit to Kriegsmarine. 

Under no urgency to be there at an allotted time he elected to walk, which would both burn some pent up energy and also permit Paris to sooth his nerves.  Exiting the building onto Foch, he moved immediately out onto the central avenue and set off towards the Arc.  The view of the avenue from here at the west end soothed him as it always did, its wide panorama stretching away in a near parody of artistic perspective that even a cultural philistine like him could appreciate.  He passed the junction of Rue Pergolese which swerved off at an acute angle from Foch, on the corner of which was his favourite building, a sharp wedge of a building on the sliver of land there.  Only four storeys high, it was dwarfed by its neighbours.  What made it special was the balconied terrace ten metres high atop the end of the ground level, jutting out into the small corner garden.  This gave the distinct impression of it being the prow of a grand ocean going ship, with its steel railings around the edge of the terrace, the floors above rising up vertically to a very ornate double window and balcony that could have been the bridge deck.  It reminded him of a childhood visit to the docks of Rostock during a summer holiday on the Baltic coast of Germany.  Just six or seven years old, he had been awed by the incredible size of the luxury liners berthed there, standing there on the dockside with his young neck tilted all the way back to peer up the towering steel sides.  He had dreamed through his childhood that he would one day roam the vast oceans of the world at the helm of one of these, even considering applying to the Kriegsmarine on the outbreak of war. 

An early patrol of troops clattered past him on their horses, the sight and sound thrusting him forward in time to his first days in Paris.  As well as his reasonable French language skills, it had been a rising tide of attacks against German military personnel that had led to him being posted here.  In those initial months he had often worked undercover amongst the crowds lining the avenue during the frequent military parades of German men, armour and horse-mounted guards on the Champs-Élysées.  His mission had been to watch for any potential insurgent action against the parade.  There had been none, although he had heard jeers from the crowd over the thundering vibration and noise of the machines and horses’ hooves.  There were always numerous calls and looks of contempt and hatred, as well as both men and women openly weeping whilst their children gaped and pointed at the spectacle. 

At that time he had partly believed what he had heard quoted of the French: that by declaring Paris an open city in response to the German invasion, they had demonstrated that they were a weak and decadent people who deserved to be subjugated.  He no longer credited any truth to this, but what to conclude about the German army now ceding Rome in the same way?