by Pirate Irwin
“Therefore I had to give them a rudimentary examination, attend to them if I believed they were shaky mentally and essentially be their companion till their moment came. Several of them preferred to have me offering succor and comfort than a priest or the regimental padre.
“Their belief in a just God had, rightly in my mind, evaporated given plenty of them were offered up as sacrificial lambs. Some had to be made an example of even though lots were spared.”
Lafarge recalled his father’s last words to him referring to the executions, little wonder he was so contrite given Durand’s testimony.
“How did my father behave? Did he show any sympathy for the condemned men? Or to your knowledge try and use some of your reports as leverage to have some reprieved?” asked Lafarge.
Durand beckoned to Lafarge to feed him some more of the cognac.
“No he certainly didn’t express any feelings such as those in my presence. But then I was a marked man as well, so he wouldn’t have wanted to share them with me,” said Durand.
“There were three cases where I recommended that such was the severity of their mental illness, call it fatigue or shock, they clearly weren’t in any state to understand orders and were next to useless as frontline soldiers and therefore shouldn’t have been there in any case.
“They were soldiers I’d already recommended be withdrawn from duty. That should have been in their files but when I came to show them to your father the papers were missing. All he had to go on was my word, and as I say that wasn’t worth much because I was seen as being a mutineer myself,” he added.
“So I take it that they too went before the firing squad?” asked Lafarge.
Durand nodded, and started to slip off his blood-soaked gloves, his first autopsy finished.
Lafarge whistled through his teeth and pondered how different his father the professional man had been to the one he knew as the family man.
“That would have stoked up some deep resentment, no?” he asked Durand.
“Yes, I imagine it did. I certainly felt resentful and I wasn’t a relative of any of the men. However, it would have been resentment against the system not any particular person,” he said.
“I take it in the usual manner of our great institutions and their glorious transparency that everything was held behind closed doors and all papers destroyed or locked away?” Lafarge asked Durand.
Durand shrugged.
“I imagine so but I wasn’t living among this gilded circle of the elite, so I can’t tell you for sure,” he replied.
“Perhaps you’ll find some reference to it in your father’s papers,” said Durand.
“Yes that is a possibility. Did you ever see him again … that is of course till now!” said Lafarge.
“No, as I said we were from very different milieu his military mine the medical one. Once I was discharged that’s where I returned to. However, I couldn’t cope with telling patients there was no hope, not all of them were mortally ill I hasten to add and I am not another Doctor Petiot in case you were beginning to wonder!” said Durand, referring to the mass murderer who Lafarge had innocently handed de Chastelain to – as he claimed to have a failsafe route out of France for those who needed to escape but at a high price -- and who had been finally arrested and executed the previous year.
“I think that the effects of living those last days of the mutineers lives with them and witnessing their misery, impacted on me and I decided I didn’t want to have anything more to do with the living in a professional sense. Hence why I prefer to deal with the dead, with them you do not need to offer any false hope!”
Lafarge thanked his lucky stars that despite the depravity and horror he had come across regularly during his career he was not yet ready to give up wholly on the merits of humanity. However, perhaps he conjectured while Durand hides in the morgue to escape, he too had run away from it by protecting himself with copious drinking.
“Right Gaston, back to business! Your father, as I think Levau shared with you and he was correct, was definitely murdered. Someone broke his neck with a fierce blow, he took one to the head too, and then a clumsy attempt was made to make it look like suicide by slitting his wrists,” said Durand.
“Was he already dead when the slitting of the wrists took place?” asked Lafarge, praying the response was a yes as he didn’t want to imagine the agony his father would have experienced if he had still been alive at the time.
“Yes thankfully he was dead. Because the manner in which the culprit slit the wrists it would have taken a while. I am guessing but I think he used a shard of glass…never the most effective way to do it,” said Durand.
“What you’ve got previous personal experience?” asked Lafarge joking.
“Ha ha wouldn’t you like to know! I believe he took two heavy blows to his neck and that would have killed him outright,” said Durand.
That figured to Lafarge, Vandamme wielded his baton once his father’s back was turned and made sure with a second blow. He intended if he came across him on his own to drag out Vandamme’s end, a couple of blows to the knees to start with and then really go to work.
“Hey Gaston be careful there!” said Durand, a note of alarm in his voice.
Lafarge wondered what the fuss was about but then looked down and saw he had dug his fingernails into his father’s arm. When he withdrew them he left deep marks on his skin.
“Sorry Durand, I erm was thinking of how much he must have suffered,” said Lafarge, who was horrified at his loss of control.
Durand looked at him with concern.
“Look Gaston I think the second blow was insurance, he was already dead. I think it would be a very good idea if you requested a leave of absence. Pinault is bound to grant it to you, even if it leaves him short on experienced men. Let Levau grab his chance, it will lessen the workload on you too when you return if he proves he is capable of operating in his own right,” said Durand.
Lafarge appreciated his friend’s advice, but he wasn’t going to take it. He was better off keeping an eye on affairs from a distance, and drinking heavily, than sitting around doing nothing and still imbibing huge amounts.
“Let’s see about that. Anyway best to move on to corpse number two,” he said looking at his watch, and saw that speed was definitely of the essence as time was running out for him to get to see his son.
Durand moved swiftly to the second slab and withdrew the cloth that covered the corpse.
Lafarge gasped and took a step back.
“You know this guy as well Gaston?” asked Durand in astonishment.
Lafarge did indeed for he was staring down at one of his missing prison officers, Fayette.
“Yes, he is one of the men I thought was responsible for my father’s murder,” said Lafarge trying to regain his composure.
“Well, I think you can rule that out. He’s been here for two days and I haven’t been made aware of any weird goings on, or bodies going walkabout,” said Durand.
“Yes I know,” said Lafarge tersely, not liking Durand’s graveyard humour.
The autopsy unlike the previous one was conducted in near silence, largely because Lafarge didn’t want to distract Durand and end up missing his son but also so he could phone through to the Quai and leave a message for Levau regarding Fayette and getting someone to search his apartment. Now that he was dead he wouldn’t be raising any objections over such niceties as the police not having a search warrant.
He wondered what had provoked his murder, had he been indiscreet after a few drinks, had he demanded more money. Whatever it was his hopes of providing for his family and a return to Marseille had ended in the dank waters of the Canal St Martin.
Durand concluded that Fayette had been hit over the head with a blunt object, and when pressed by Lafarge concurred it could have been a baton or club similar to the one that had killed his father. It looked to Lafarge that rather than there being a connection to the first murder, it was the deaths of Fayette and his father that were the work of the sam
e man.
“This fellow Neveu that was also dragged out of the canal, would you say it is the work of the same man as the other two?” asked Lafarge.
“Yes, I would say they are all three connected. Whether the same man did all three murders is not for me to ascertain but you Gaston,” said Durand tartly.
“I can attest more or less positively that in all three cases a similar weapon was used and in the two waterlogged corpses a chain was deployed, not very effectively. Whether it was the same murder weapon I cannot say with absolute certainty.”
Lafarge nodded, thanked Durand and suggested they get together soon for a drink, and thought Christ we have a serial killer on the loose and it was even more imperative that they track down Vandamme, for he could either be the murderer or the next victim.
If Levau refused to obtain a search warrant that night he would go round and break the door down himself, because Vandamme – ‘mr silent’ and for good reason though Lafarge didn’t know what his dark secret might be -- held the key to them finding who had been responsible for certainly his father’s murder and probably for the other two.
Chapter Ten
They raided both Vandamme’s and Fayette’s apartments that evening, having gained Pinault’s agreement to do so again on the condition that Levau played the lead detective and Lafarge was there as an observer.
That was fine by Lafarge as he was drained.
His son was so doped up he hadn’t felt it was worth telling him about his doting grandfather’s death and then Antoinette had become hysterical when he had finally been able to get round to the apartment to give her the news. He hadn’t been able to stay long, he’d got the maid to call the much put upon doctor to come round to give her a tranquiliser, and left Antoinette heavily sedated promising he would return later.
They hit Vandamme’s flat first, reasoning that as Fayette was dead his could keep. They kept one of the gendarmes outside in the unlikely event of Vandamme returning, whilst informing Madame Meunville of what they were going to do in case she got alarmed by the noise next door.
The flat was neat and tidy, all the washing up was done, the glasses, plates etcetera on the drying board, the bed linen smelt freshly laundered, so Lafarge gave him top marks for domesticity.
However, personal effects there were none. It was as if he had lived a hermitic like existence in the flat, eating and sleeping but with no extra comforts such as books or a radio. There were no clothes, nor paperwork to be found, even in the antique escritoire which looked out of place in the non-descript apartment.
“Well he’d make someone a very good husband,” remarked Levau drily.
Lafarge grinned and said indeed he would.
“There’s not even a crumb or a half empty bottle to show someone had lived here. Madame Meunville was not exaggerating when she said how discreet he was. He was like a church mouse,” said Levau.
“Yes but a murderous one,” said Lafarge, reminding his partner they weren’t there to admire the housekeeping of some paragon of virtue.
“Point taken sir, just I’m envious of how one can manage to keep an apartment so tidy! I have a flat the same size and I live alone too and yet there is no way I could ever keep it pristine. Once I’ve tidied something by the time I get to the end of the exercise I would have to start all over again,” he said.
“I know the feeling Levau! Anyway let’s do one more sweep just in case we missed a speck of dust so we can tell him off when we catch him!” said Lafarge, his humour wearing thin as was his confidence in being able to track down Vandamme, who was clearly one step at least ahead of them.
Levau and the gendarme they had employed to help them stared at Lafarge as if he was joking, but he made it clear he wasn’t by moving off into the bedroom and getting down on his hands and knees and running his hand over the parquet floorboards under the bed.
Levau took the salon and the gendarme, not best pleased at having to get his dark blue uniform trousers dirty, went to the kitchen. Levau could be heard grunting and groaning as he shifted a threadbare sofa away from the wall while the gendarme tapped at the running board under the cupboards to see if there was a false compartment.
Lafarge couldn’t stretch far enough under the bed to tap all the floorboards, so summoning some hidden reserves of energy and strength he lifted the bed, to his relief it wasn’t too onerous a task as it was like a soldier’s camp bed.
He knew immediately it had been worth that little extra effort as there was clearly a floorboard – right under where the middle of the bed had been – which had been prised away and then put back. The question was had it been while Vandamme lived there or was it the previous occupant.
Lafarge called both Levau and the gendarme to join him and act as witnesses in case there was any question posed about his having fitted up Vandamme with phony evidence. He asked both Levau and the gendarme to check the floorboard was nailed down properly before he levered it up. He went to the kitchen and chose the knife with the most serrated edge for the job.
Pulling the floorboard up at first it appeared they were going to leave empty-handed for it looked as if whatever had been hidden there had been taken by Vandamme, or if he was dead the third man. However, Lafarge ran his hand along the inside and something pricked it, forcing him to withdraw. It had drawn blood and he sucked at it to stem the flow before putting his other hand back into the recess and pulled out a medal.
His two companions gasped for he was holding in his hand an Iron Cross.
***
“We don’t know whether it belongs to Vandamme, it could have been the previous occupant’s. In any case why would Vandamme have an Iron Cross!” said Levau as they drove to Fayette’s flat.
Lafarge groaned but admitted it was a very good question. Unfortunately neither Madame Meunville nor any of the other residents of the block had been able to tell them who had been living in the apartment prior to the arrival of Vandamme.
That may not have been enlightening either as perhaps there had been a German living there during the Occupation, although, it was hardly the most salubrious of addresses. Lafarge doubted senior officers, who were the only Nazis allowed to live outside barracks, would have chosen that as their residence. No they had preferred the smarter areas such as St Germain, the 16th arrondissement and Neuilly.
Lafarge would have preferred not to have found the Iron Cross as it had thrown up more questions and added to their workload, for they would have to track down residency lists for the block during the Occupation.
Even then the lists – ostensibly put together so the Nazis could ascertain where the Jews lived – may not prove reliable as there had been so much movement and some may have rented their apartments out for a lot of money – for few were Good Samaritans -- to people whose identities were best kept secret.
“Remember, though, Levau what Madame Meunville said of the conversation she overheard. The unknown third man said to Vandamme he owed him for saving his skin when they fought together,” said Lafarge, trying to fight through his fatigue and keep his mind ticking over.
“Yes, so perhaps our fugitive is actually a hero. The Iron Cross could be a trophy of war, like the Red Indians used to take scalps, count coup,” said Levau.
“Blimey Levau I’m impressed with your knowledge of the history of the frontier, it wasn’t on our curriculum when I was at the lycee,” said Lafarge.
“And yes that is also a possibility, either taken during the brief hostilities in 1940 or latterly fighting for the maquis. They would appear to be the most logical reasons for possessing the medal, and certainly the most appealing,” he added.
Arriving at the rundown building where Fayette had lived ended their ruminations on the topic of the Iron Cross.
They mounted the dingy stairs to the apartment, accompanied by the gendarme who had been watching the building. Lafarge put a handkerchief to his mouth to stop him from retching as the stairwell stank of stale urine and damp, and he was certain the smell wasn’t going
to improve once they gained entrance to Fayette’s flat.
The gendarme forced the lock on the door and Lafarge’s fears were realized as the odour was unbearable. The sight that greeted them was in complete contrast to the one they had encountered at Vandamme’s. Dirty plates and glasses littered the floor surface of the small salon, and there were papers scattered all over it.
“Needle and haystack spring to mind,’ Lafarge ventured to his two companions, who would probably have smiled if it hadn’t been for the realization it was they who were going to have to wade through the mess.
This time round Lafarge decided all three of them went from room to room given the task. They discovered very little, no dodgy medals at least, but some papers with scrawled handwriting which they put aside for future reading.
They attacked his bedroom next which was just one step up from the state of the bathroom, which they had poked their noses into and retreated almost instantly. Clothes littered the small room, the bed was unmade and looked like Fayette had urinated in it, and there were a whole collection of empty bottles, mostly wine and pastis, under it.
Lafarge felt pity for the now late prison officer. He could spare him some of that as he had been dead by the time his father was murdered, and whatever his involvement had been it had been terminated early. Indeed Lafarge wondered when he came to meet his maker would those who tramped through his apartment find a similar scene of the debris of a failed life.
Mind you he thought to himself I could still be alive and have a visit from the police if things go even worse than they are and his murderous past caught up with him.
“Right Giraud I suggest we leave things as they are in case there are prints which don’t belong to the victim, but looking at the state of this place I don’t think that likely,” said Lafarge addressing the gendarme, who looked grateful at being spared a task that even the most menial of servants would have met with distaste.
“What I think we should do to make our stay as short as possible is scour the surfaces and look in the cupboards, feel inside the jackets and trousers for papers and then we can clear off,” he added.