by Pirate Irwin
Vandamme’s complexion changed all of a sudden and he shot Lafarge a look of surprise.
“Ah you weren’t aware that Fayette was dead? Well he is and so is a fellow called Neveu, killed in the same way and by the same man,” said Lafarge.
“However, unless you are more forthcoming your tally of murders is soon going to draw close to that of Petiot’s. Perhaps that is what you want after all you’re already going to the guillotine for killing two detectives so why give up somebody else for another two you can claim.
“Add my father’s murder and you’ve got a full hand. That should earn you a footnote in the book of serial killers,” added Lafarge sardonically.
Vandamme bit his lower lip. Lafarge took heart from this for it suggested perhaps he was preparing to talk, or at least debating with himself as to whether he should.
Vandamme gestured for a cigarette which Lafarge gave him thinking this could be the opening of real communication between them. He nodded his thanks to Lafarge, after the Chief Inspector lit it for him, and raised one of his manacled hands to take it from his mouth.
Lafarge pulled some keys from his trouser pocket and as another gesture of goodwill unlocked the handcuffs. Vandamme gave him another nod, although Lafarge would have preferred to hear him say thank you.
Lafarge’s sparse knowledge of Mulhouse extended only to the Klapperstein which was a heavy stone necklace hung round gossips in the Middle Ages – Vandamme would never have suffered that indignity judged by his performance today.
He amused himself by imagining the reason for Vandamme being taciturn was due to a family history of being paraded round the town with it hanging from their necks. If he really was from those parts thought Lafarge.
“What amuses you so much Chief Inspector?” asked Pinault.
“Oh I was just thinking that Vandamme’s silence isn’t down to any code of honour with his friend who ordered the murders of my father and Neveu and the attempted murder of Durand, but due to a historical punishment of his family for talking too much,” said Lafarge staring at Vandamme.
“Ah yes that ugly thing that used to be hung round gossips necks, but what is it called?” said Pinault scratching his head.
“I can’t for the life of me recall perhaps it is the Vandamme memorial? Tell me Vandamme is that the real reason you escaped Mulhouse as soon as you could because your family were always a point of ridicule and the butt of jokes for talking too much,” said Lafarge.
Vandamme’s eyes flashed with anger and his pale features reddened. Good thought Lafarge even this most calculating of murderers has something in common with decent people. He doesn’t appreciate his family being made fun of.
“There’s nothing wrong with my family or my ancestors,” hissed Vandamme suddenly finding his voice. Lafarge was delighted for the prisoner had taken the bait.
“There’s nothing wrong with a gossip, why we at the Quai often rely on them when investigating crimes,” said Lafarge drawing a chuckle from Pinault.
“Vandamme what is the name of that bloody thing, put us out of our misery would you?” asked Lafarge springing the trap.
Lafarge knew that Vandamme couldn’t very well remain silent on this point, to do so would be to dishonour his family and provoke more ridicule at the hands of him and Pinault.
Vandamme rubbed his chin and licked his lips, frighteningly similar to Lucien’s reaction when he was nervous the night before thought Lafarge. Vandamme puffed out his cheeks and bit off a grubby fingernail before spitting it out on the equally dirty floor.
“Pierre des Silencieux, the perfect punishment for those who talked too much,” said Vandamme leaning back and tipping his chair on its two back feet.
“After a few tours of the town with that round your neck you’d have very little energy to say anything,” he added looking pleased with his answer.
It was indeed a pretty good answer thought Lafarge, but not for somebody who claimed to have been brought up in Mulhouse.
Lafarge tried to suppress his joy at grinding out a small victory over their opponent, but it was difficult to keep it out of his voice.
“Vandamme bad call you made there! You’re about as much from Mulhouse as I am from Tokyo, it’s called the Klapperstein or I suppose in French Pierre des bavards,” said Lafarge a smile spreading across his lips.
“Dear dear dear, are we to assume you have also given us a false name?” asked Pinault.
Vandamme swallowed nervously and that angry look flashed across his features again. Lafarge guessed Vandamme’s anger wasn’t aimed at them as much as it was at himself for being lured into the trap and for treating his interrogators with contempt feeding them a false story thinking they were dumb and would accept it.
A heavy silence descended on the room. Pinault excused himself to go to the bathroom.
Lafarge got up and stretched his legs, all the time keeping an eye on Vandamme in case he tried to take advantage of Pinault’s absence and assaulted him.
Lafarge felt exhausted and was desperate for a nip of cognac, but even though he had refilled his reserve hip flask he didn’t think Pinault would appreciate him indulging.
The snails’ pace progress being made in the interrogation was unlikely to pick up pace despite exposing Vandamme’s lie about his birthplace.
Their only hope still lay with the officers upstairs and their fingerprint research. He rested his head against the wall and smoked observing Vandamme, who stayed motionless and staring into space.
Suddenly something clicked inside Lafarge’s head and he made for the door ushering the uniformed officer inside whilst he went off in search of Pinault.
He found him having an animated conversation with Grognard. Lafarge interrupted them – Grognanrd looking none too pleased -- and took Pinault to one side.
“Have they found something? The way he was gesticulating I thought maybe they’ve got a composite set of prints,” said Lafarge.
Pinault shook his head.
“Quite the contrary he was agitated that good manpower was being devoted to such a hopeless task. Those are his words not mine,” said Pinault smiling.
“I should hope so as you told me to do it! Anyway I’ve just had a brainstorm. At least I hope it is one,” said Lafarge.
“I think our guy downstairs is a veteran from the Charlemagne SS Division. I am basing that on him having an Iron Cross in his flat. Originally I thought he had taken it from a German on the battlefield as a memento, but now what if he won it himself?”
Pinault looked troubled by Lafarge’s theory, justifiably so as the present administration did not relish addressing the fact that several thousand Frenchmen had gone even further than collaborating, like many of their compatriots, and volunteered to fight in the German uniform.
Some even claimed the remnants of the French contingent, who had already taken heavy losses on the Eastern Front, had been wiped out in the defence of Berlin.
However, if Vandamme had indeed fought with the Division then that gave the lie to their belief.
Pinault took off his glasses and wiped them with a pocket kerchief. He looked almost as tired as Lafarge felt.
“Jesus I hope he isn’t. Leclerc had several executed when he captured them in Bavaria and I thought that was the end of them. I think the desire is for any who are caught, heaven knows how one would know that they were as they are hardly going to be still dressed in Nazi uniform, to be summarily dealt with,” said Pinault.
“The clear impression we at a senior level have been given is it is fine to arrest and try the main Vichy politicians but a different matter should one of those traitors fall into our hands.
“They don’t really want trials of Frenchmen who fought in the Nazi uniform, as it goes beyond collaboration and makes the General’s statement of France having been dishonoured and the French people being led astray by a few bad apples look ridiculous. As a result it also weakens his argument for forgiving and forgetting and bringing the people together.”
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bsp; Lafarge didn’t give a damn about De Gaulle’s policy of sweetness and light indeed he thought it pretentious and ill-advised. He now feared that Pinault was going to back off and be satisfied with charging a man living under a fictitious name with triple murder, or perhaps he would throw in Fayette and Neveu as well for good measure.
It would probably please Vandamme and certainly would be extremely good news for the man behind the murders, because with the guillotining of their prisoner would go any hope of catching the mastermind.
In fact the only person who would feel unhappy about the outcome would be Lafarge and that would be ironic given it was his father who had been murdered. He didn’t think he would be capable of looking Antoinette and Lucien in the eye and telling them Vandamme had been solely responsible.
However, the matter was out of Lafarge’s hands, it was up to Pinault.
Pinault paced up and down outside chainsmoking, he often did this when presented with a problem, and made Lafarge wait.
Five minutes of this restless thought process was sufficient for he came striding back in with a purposeful air about him.
“Let’s get the bastard, your father may have been on the wrong side but you deserve to have an honest answer and not a gift wrapped one with a nice bow and nothing inside,” he said clapping him on the shoulder amiably, although his expression told another story of a man fearful of consequences from higher up.
Lafarge nodded and they descended the stairs, but not before Pinault had bellowed at the less than happy Sergeant Grognard to bloody well find them a match. Grognard’s scowl which Lafarge espied over Pinault’s back was a picture to behold, becoming almost apoplectic when the Chief Inspector shot him a cheeky wink.
Their entry into the room conveyed the message clearly to Vandamme that once again the dynamic of the interrogation had changed. The Pinault and Lafarge who returned bore no resemblance to the pair of browbeaten detectives that had stumbled through the previous part of the questioning and left the room looking fatigued and frustrated.
This was certainly the impression they wanted to give, even if they still had a minimal amount of information to wield against him. However, it was crucial they prised enough out of him to give them a lead as to the mastermind, who it looked more and more certain had also murdered Neveu and Fayette.
Vandamme fiddled with his glasses, wiping them as best he could with the scruffy sleeve of his blue shirt. His angular features and slicked back black hair to Lafarge gave him the look of what he imagined Count Dracula to look like. He certainly had one thing in common with the Transylvanian vampire and that was a lust for blood, sadly he was very real unlike the Bram Stoker character.
Lafarge picked up his chair and slammed it down to the side of Vandamme with its back facing the prisoner and with him straddling it. Vandamme’s eyes flickered from Pinault to Lafarge, the latter detecting for a brief moment alarm in his eyes.
“You fought for the enemy didn’t you Vandamme,” said Lafarge his tone bristling with menace.
Vandamme looked startled, but tried to hide it by launching into a coughing fit so that his eyes screwed up into slits.
“Oh dear we’ll have to tell the warders not to allow you any cigarettes Etienne. We don’t want you dying before the guillotine comes down on your head, but before then we’re going to hand you over to some friends of ours,” said Lafarge.
Vandamme looked at him, again biting his lip.
“What friends?” he asked his voice still relatively steady.
Lafarge gave way to Pinault.
“They’re the new intelligence bureau, formed from Resistance cells. They aren’t overseen by anybody, so they are allowed free rein on those that they think merit special attention and they usually get their briefings from us,” said Pinault making it up as he went along but nevertheless sounding convincing.
“Now of course sometimes we give a positive report and the prisoner gets a mild physical going over from them but others well they get a proper seeing to. They don’t treat you quite as viciously as the Gestapo but it is satisfyingly brutal for those of us who hate traitors.”
Vandamme smiled and clapped sarcastically. Lafarge kicked him onto his back. That wiped the smile off his face and there was even less reason for him to do so when Lafarge picked up his glasses and put them in his pocket. As he turned his back on Vandamme he made a cracking sound as if he had broken them.
“So Vandamme we have a simple proposition to put to you, a kind of bad news and worse news scenario,” said Lafarge wheeling round again and bending over Vandamme.
“You can earn a positive report from us, and avoid spending your last few days on earth writhing in agony from the bruises and broken ribs, by telling us how you came to win the Iron Cross or you can remain silent and we give you the lowest grade possible and well heaven knows what bones they may break.”
The mention of the Iron Cross gave credence to Lafarge’s hunch for the look on Vandamme’s face had gone from being bored and an attitude of ‘I couldn’t give a damn’ to shifty.
Lafarge deployed this strategy always when he had few facts to fling at a suspect. Drop in one real fact every so often mixed in with a load of mumbo jumbo and it is enough to unnerve the strongest most confident of criminals.
Vandamme sighed heavily and got to his feet lifting his chair as if it was a lead weight.
“Yes I was awarded the Iron Cross but I also won the Croix de Guerre. There can’t be many people who can claim that, rewarded for bravery by two Armies in the same war,” he said a note of defiance and pride in his voice.
Lafarge glanced at Pinault, who raised his eyebrows in astonishment. This information opened up the possibility again as to which army the mastermind of the plot and Vandamme had fought in together. If it had been the Charlemagne Division it would have narrowed the field of suspects down considerably as there would be lists of the volunteers. They would then have been able to whittle down the suspects by their thousands owing to the enormous casualties they suffered.
However if he was an old comrade from the French Army unless Vandamme gave them a name, which Lafarge thought unlikely, they were sunk.
“You did well to survive, I believe most of your brothers-in-arms didn’t come back,” said Pinault his tone once again sympathetic.
Vandamme looked sad for a moment, recalling Lafarge surmised his fallen comrades and broken dreams.
“Yes not many of us made it back home. You know who formed the last line of defence round the Chancellery? No it wasn’t the Wehrmacht it was us the French and some Scandinavian SS soldiers,” he smiled sourly.
“The irony of it all wasn’t lost on us, even under constant shellfire and mass charges by the Soviets, who didn’t care how many men they lost. There we were foreigners defending the last bricks of the 1000 Year Reich and barely a prime piece of Aryan German male to be seen!
“‘Les Schleus’ and ‘Le Grand Jules’ as we dismissively referred to the German Army and Hitler had disappeared.
“The former, all save a few units, laid down their weapons and prayed they would be treated more mercifully by the Soviets than they had treated them when they rampaged through the Soviet Union and well good old Jules as you both know didn’t man the barricades and fight with his people to the end.”
Lafarge and Pinault both sat rapt as Vandamme recounted the last days of their former occupier. Even Lafarge conceded that Vandamme’s account was mesmerizing and moving, about fallen comrades and the mad dash to the Chancellery where he and several of his compatriots had the Iron Cross pinned on their ragged SS tunic by Hitler, a physical wreck of a man gaunt, eyes holding a manic stare and the colour of his skin as pale as a skeleton’s bones.
“His hands shook so badly that one of his aides had to step forward to steady them. He didn’t even react, just smiled and said it was due to lack of sleep as he was preparing the master plan for us to be relieved and for the fight back that would outrival Stalingrad,” said Vandamme.
“We o
f course knew all was lost, all we were interested in was saving ourselves and avoiding a long stay in a Soviet gulag or worse simply being shot on the spot.”
“Well obviously you avoided that fate,” said Pinault.
His face relaxed and he actually smiled a real smile, which radiated genuine warmth, the first time Lafarge could attest they were dealing with a person who possessed human feelings.
“Yes I and a few others squeezed through the Bolshevik net. In fact I and a colleague did it the hard way escaping from a Soviet hospital. I don’t think they’ll be too upset, they’ve got enough German POWs to torture and abuse for years to come,” said Vandamme, pride in his voice at recalling his escape.
“Well we’d better make sure our cells are not as porous. There again you’d know all about them from being at Fresnes. You don’t still have the keys?” asked Pinault half jesting.
Vandamme smiled and shook his head.
“This other man you escaped with from the hospital. Is he the third man in the plot?” asked Lafarge bringing the conversation back to the present and the point of the interrogation, his father’s murder.
Vandamme folded his hands in front of him resting them against his mouth and stared back at Lafarge.
“I am more disposed than I was when I first entered this room to help you Chief Inspector, even if you have slapped me and kicked me over as well as taking my glasses you’ve given as good as you got and I respect that,” said Vandamme, who Lafarge acknowledged sounded sincere.
“However, you and I imagine your boss here know what it’s like to put on the uniform and stand alongside men in the battlefield. If they behave in the right way and watch your back then that forms a bond and this man well he did that twice.
“Once he dragged me out of one of those dense forests in Pomerania, shrapnel from the trees were cutting us to pieces, could barely see a thing with the smoke and the shards of wood and metal flying around.
“I thought my time had come, but no it hadn’t yet because suddenly I felt two hands pulling me along the ground with some choice French words being yelled in my ear! Then again in Berlin he saved my life, telling me to come away from the Tiger tank that some Germans and I were walking alongside thinking it offered us protection. Well it was perhaps the toughest tank and bloody difficult to knock out so it was he I thought was dumb and not us.