Dead of Winter

by Rennie Airth

‘Perhaps he had a torch,’ Sinclair suggested. Finding that the pub was out of whisky – an occurrence all too common these days – he had settled for a gin flavoured with bitters.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. You remember those burned-out matches Billy found by the body? It sounds as though Marko was fumbling around in the dark himself.’

  The chief inspector ordered a fresh drink. Around them the pub was filling up, growing noisy, as a steady stream of customers, many of them in uniform, drifted in from the street. A ripple of notes from a hidden piano proved to be the prelude to a chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’. It was followed by an even louder rendition of ‘Why Was She Born So Beautiful?’

  The two men eyed each other.

  ‘Shall we … ?’ The chief inspector picked up his glass.

  In search of quiet they found a small ‘snug’ bar at the back of the smoke-filled taproom separated from the public area by a half-glassed partition and as yet unoccupied. Commandeering the single table it contained, Sinclair sat down with their drinks, and while Madden went in search of something to eat – they had decided to forgo dinner in favour of a sandwich – the chief inspector assembled his thoughts. It had been an exhausting day. The translation of the dossier had only marked the beginning of his labours; later he had had lengthy meetings, first with the detectives assigned to the case, then with Bennett. But tired as he was, he had much to relate, and as soon as Madden returned, plate in hand, he set out to enlighten him.

  ‘It’s too bad about the name. But we’ve not come up empty-handed. Duval’s compiled a long report separate from the evidence they’ve collected and he only gave us the bare bones yesterday. For one thing it’s clear now how the Wapping robbery came about. The same kind of trick was played on that furrier Marko murdered. First he was sold the diamonds, then he was robbed of them. The aim was identical in each case: to get both the money and the stones.’

  Sinclair paused as a chorus of voices burst into song next door. Forced to wait until the noise died down, he sampled one of the cheese sandwiches his companion had brought from the bar. They were sitting facing each other across the table, and as the last notes faded, Madden leaned forward.

  ‘Was it Marko’s idea?’ he asked.

  The chief inspector shook his head. It was cooked up by a Dutch diamond dealer called Eyskens. Although he was based in Paris, he had links with Hendrik Bok going back years, and was part of a diamond-smuggling operation which Bok started after he got control of the Rotterdam docks. He brought in illegal stones from West Africa and Eyskens used his business to feed them into the European market. The French police knew he was crooked, but what they didn’t know was that he was effectively Bok’s man in Paris. Nor that he’d been instrumental in setting up the Lagrange murder. He’d provided Marko with a plan of the villa at Fontainebleau which he’d acquired somehow. He was one of the few people who’d actually met him.’

  ‘How did the French police come by this information? Did they arrest Eyskens after the Sobel robbery?’

  ‘They meant to. But when they went to pick him up they found him dead. Marko had got there first. Most of what I’m telling you now came from Bok’s wife. Widow, rather. Bok himself died in 1941, of natural causes. He had cancer. She made a long statement to the Dutch police which they sent to Paris. It fills in some of the blanks.’

  A burst of loud laughter from beyond the partition interrupted him again, and Sinclair took advantage of the moment to finish his sandwich, stifling a yawn as he did so. Madden waited patiently until he was ready to resume.

  ‘Bok’s wife was also his book-keeper, and after he died the Dutch police got hold of some of his ledgers, which were in her hand. It gave them a lever to use, and she was persuaded to tell them what she knew about her husband’s activities and his relationship with Marko. We don’t know for certain how they met, but Bok had dealings over the years with a number of other European gangs, and at a certain point when he was battling for control of the docks he went looking for help. His wife was clear on that point. He was shopping for a killer. Where he found him – how they were put in touch – she didn’t know, but towards the end of 1927 Marko turned up in Rotterdam. Strange to say, there’s a record of their meeting, a photograph no less. They were only snapped by chance – they happened to be in the picture – but the Dutch police managed to get their hands on a copy of the photo and I’ve brought it along for you to look at. Not that it’ll be of any use to us.’

  While he was speaking, Sinclair had been searching in his pocket, and, having fished out a photograph, he passed it to Madden, who held it up to the light and squinted at the glossy print. The subjects of the snapshot were a young couple sitting hand in hand at a table in a café. But it was the pair of men behind them that Madden fixed his gaze on. They were seated at another zinc-topped table, this one bearing a bottle, half-empty glasses and an overflowing ashtray, and the head of one of them had been circled with a pen. He was the least visible of the duo, appearing to have turned away at the moment when the photograph was taken, and only one side of his face could be seen; the image was further marred by the hand which he had raised to his temple. His companion, fair-haired, and with a thick moustache, sat sprawled in a careless pose, legs thrust out, and there was more than a hint of aggression in the way he held himself. Not so the other. Lean and alert-looking, he had not been taken by surprise, Madden saw. The lifted hand, the quickly turned head – everything about his pose suggested a swift reaction.

  ‘The one with the moustache is Hendrik Bok,’ Sinclair explained. ‘He had a bodyguard called Graaf, who ended up in prison, and Duval arranged with the Dutch police to interview him. According to Graaf, the snapshot dates from the day Marko arrived in the city. He said he’d accompanied Bok to the café where the rendezvous took place, but was told to wait outside and keep watch. He didn’t actually set eyes on Marko, but quite soon after this meeting, the cull of Bok’s enemies started and word spread about a Serbian killer he had working for him.’

  The chief inspector took the photograph back from Madden and returned it to his jacket pocket.

  ‘Bok’s wife never met Marko, incidentally, though she knew all about him, and she believed the story Bok put about – that he’d been a member of the Black Hand. And she said an interesting thing. She thought her husband was afraid of him.’

  ‘Even though Marko worked for him?’

  ‘And even though Bok must have come across some bad actors in his time. He was one himself. It makes you wonder whose idea it was to keep Marko out of sight; to produce him only when he was needed. Perhaps it suited them both. Marko didn’t want his face known and Bok may have been relieved not to have him around.’

  ‘One to stay away from.’ Madden murmured the words to himself.

  ‘What was that?’ Sinclair cocked an ear.

  ‘Something Florrie Desmoulins said. Men were her business; she knew he was dangerous.’ Madden was silent for a moment. Then he asked, ‘ about the Sobel robbery? ‘What did Bok’s widow have to say about that?’

  ‘Very little. Only that when Bok heard about it later – when the Dutch police questioned him – he had laughed and said that some people were too greedy for their own good. Later he told his wife he’d had nothing to do with it. It was Eyskens’s own idea. Marko himself had quit Holland some time earlier. The war had put an end to his partnership with Bok, who was dying anyway. Although he didn’t say where he was going, his only escape route lay through France, and he must have got in touch with Eyskens as soon as he reached Paris. I say “must have” because what follows is supposition on Duval’s part, though it seems to hang together.’

  The chief inspector emptied his glass. He took a deep breath, trying to shake off his drowsiness.

  ‘Eyskens had already agreed to sell Sobel the diamonds: he’d done the same for other émigrés who needed to leave in a hurry, and made a handsome profit out of it. But before the deal went through, Marko appeared, and that seems to have given him the idea of going one bet
ter: of doubling his money, so to speak, by stealing the stones back from Sobel after he’d paid for them. But what he didn’t stop to ask himself was why a man like Marko should have sought him out in the first place. Their only connection had been over the Fontainebleau affair, and that ought to have warned Eyskens. Apparently it never occurred to him that Marko might be set on wiping out whatever tracks he’d left before moving on: that he was one of the few people who could identify him. What seems certain is his plan to rob Sobel merely postponed the inevitable. Marko must have seen it as a windfall, a way of lining his own pockets before attending to his main business.’

  Sinclair paused to reflect on what he had said.

  ‘Whether Sobel’s murder was part of Eyskens’s plan, or whether Marko was simply following his instincts, we’ll never know. But the scheme misfired. It seems Rosa turned up at the critical moment. She may actually have seen the murder take place. What’s certain is she screamed and ran from the house out into the street and Marko pursued her. Given his usual pattern of behaviour, there’s not much doubt he would have killed her as well if he’d caught her, but before he could do that he ran into a pair of gendarmes who were patrolling in the district and had to turn tail. Shots were exchanged and they chased after him, but he managed to escape. However, in the interim Rosa had disappeared. The gendarmes had seen her come out of the house and one of them called to her to wait for them there, but when they returned she was gone. Later, after Sobel’s body had been found, it was learned from his desk diary that he’d had an appointment that same afternoon with Eyskens. Since his name was already known to the police, a pair of detectives were dispatched to bring him in for questioning, but they found him dead in his office. Strangled. Presumably his plan had called for Marko to return the stones to him after robbing Sobel, so he would have been expecting him. Later, when their pathologist examined his body they found signs of torture on it.’

  ‘Torture—?’ Madden shot him a look.

  ‘He’d used his wire on Eyskens’s neck before killing him … the marks were plain to see. The police thought it likely he was trying to persuade him to open his safe; that he was after the money Sobel had paid for the stones earlier. We’re back with greed. He must have been interrupted though, because he had to run for it again when the police arrived – this time over the rooftops. But he took the diamonds with him and that list Eyskens had made. The police found a copy of it on Sobel’s body: that’s what alerted them to the theft. They also found a large sum of cash in the safe when it was eventually opened. The equivalent of about £25,000 according to the figures Duval gave us.’

  ‘But Marko got away?’

  Sinclair nodded. ‘By the skin of his teeth. But the police had a stroke of luck. They got hold of the name of the hotel where he was staying. He’d rung Eyskens when he’d arrived and left a number which Eyskens’s secretary had made a note of. So they got to the hotel before he did and found he’d left a briefcase in the safe there with a large sum of money in it. About £40,000 in various currencies, Duval said.’

  ‘Good grief!’ Madden was struck dumb with surprise.

  ‘The wages of sin, one assumes.’ The chief inspector cocked an eyebrow. ‘All this took some time to put together, needless to say, but eventually the Dutch police discovered the identity he’d been living under in Amsterdam and they located a safe-deposit box in the same name at a bank. It was empty; he must have cleaned it out before leaving.’

  Sinclair paused to swallow what remained of his drink.

  ‘They also provided the French with some details about him, what they’d gathered from people who’d come in contact with him. It made interesting reading. The name he used for a start – Meiring. As I say, he had French papers, acquired for him by Bok most likely, but he claimed to come from Alsace, of German stock, which would have explained his less than perfect French. He let it be known he was a dealer in rare stamps and actually had a collection, though there’s no record of him having done any business. Or none the French have been able to come up with. But it gave him an excuse to travel whenever he needed to.’

  ‘How did the Dutch police know he had a stamp collection?’ Madden had been paying close attention.

  ‘From a woman who knew him. A prostitute. She used to visit him once a week. His tastes were … how shall I put it … unusual.’

  The chief inspector raised an eyebrow.

  ‘He liked to be punished … whipped or beaten with a cane. The woman in question was a specialist in these matters, but although she was accustomed to dealing with clients of his kind, she claimed she was never at ease in these sessions. There was something about this man that alarmed her, and although the drama they played out required her to assume a dominating role, in fact it was she who was afraid of him, and she only continued with the arrangement, which lasted for a few months, because he paid her well.’

  Sinclair drained his glass for a second time.

  ‘That apart, his life was unremarkable, excessively so. He seems to have lived at the same address in Amsterdam for six years without catching anyone’s eye. He’d obviously come a long way since his Balkan days. There he’d been little more than a cheap thug. By the time he joined up with Bok he was a much smoother article, and he must have put some thought into how others saw him. Though he made no friends, he had a number of acquaintances and he let it be known that he’d been married in the past but lost both his wife and young son in a motor accident. He was thought by some who knew him to be still in the grip of melancholy, and he seems to have used this perception as a means of keeping them at bay, not that anyone seemed to regret this. None were ever easy in his company.’

  The chief inspector was silent for a moment.

  ‘There was something else the Dutch police learned – they found out he’d been a member of a chess club and used to play there regularly. He was better than average, according to other members, but they knew little about him. He would arrive, play a game or two, drink a glass of schnapps and then depart. When he first joined, one or two tried to engage him in conversation, but they gave up. It seems he had nothing to say for himself. All the same, the police were told an interesting story …’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘It came from one of the members of this club, a lawyer who played quite often with Meiring. He said that once in the mid-Thirties – he thought it was in 1934 – he had travelled to Brussels on business and while he was there had caught sight of his chess opponent. At least he had thought it was him, though Meiring looked different. He was wearing spectacles and his hair seemed to have greyed somewhat. The encounter was fleeting. This lawyer was hurrying to board a train to return to Amsterdam and he only caught a glimpse of the man he took for Meiring.’

  ‘Took for him, you say?’

  Sinclair nodded. When they met again a few weeks later at the chess club, the lawyer remarked that he thought he’d seen him in Brussels, but Meiring said he was mistaken. He hadn’t been away for some time.’ The chief inspector grunted. ‘Our friend Duval was intrigued by this and went through the records – their own collection of IPC messages – and found there’d been an unsolved murder in Antwerp in June of 1934. The director of a shipping firm had been shot dead in his office late one night. There seemed to be no motive for the killing other than the fact that he’d threatened to expose one of his partners for embezzlement. Duval recalled what Bok’s widow had said about her husband hiring out his pet killer from time to time and wondered if this was another of Marko’s victims.’

  ‘It sounds as though they had a financial arrangement,’ Madden remarked. ‘Bok arranged the contracts and Marko executed them.’

  ‘And given the amount of cash he was carrying when he left Holland, he must have been well paid. His life’s savings lost at a stroke! That may explain why he set up that Wapping business. He needed the money – for when he makes a run for it.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s what bothers me …’ Madden stirred unhappily in his chair.

 
‘You mean the haste he acted with? What you said before?’

  ‘It was a strange way to behave. Rosa was dead. She wasn’t a threat to him any longer. He could afford to take his time. Yet he acted at once, setting up the robbery and using an accomplice he normally wouldn’t have touched with a bargepole. Something was goading him on. But what?’

  Gnawing at his lip, Madden peered into the dregs of his beer, as if the answer might lie there. Then he shook his head again, this time in frustration. ‘You were saying – they missed him at the hotel, the French police?’

  ‘He must have realized they were waiting for him; the trail went cold after that. Mind you, the fact that the first German units entered Paris the day after Sobel’s murder didn’t make things any easier. Though policing continued as normal during the Occupation, there must have been a hiatus which Marko may have used to his advantage. Duval says they weren’t sure at that stage who he was, but they already suspected he might be the same man who had killed the Lagrange family because of the link with Eyskens and through him to Bok. Later, when they received a copy of Bok’s widow’s statement from the Dutch police, they could be certain. By that time, of course, it was clear Marko had left the country, and since they had no idea of his destination, they checked with the Spanish and Portuguese authorities and also got in touch with the FBI in Washington. We know now it was England he came to, and since it seems unlikely he travelled via Spain and Portugal, he must have found some way of crossing the Channel.’

  Sinclair stretched in his chair. He was feeling his years.

  ‘His details had been noted at the hotel where he stayed in Paris. That’s how the Sûreté got hold of the name he was using. Later they were sent to the Dutch police, who used them to ferret out the identity he’d been living under. The point is, Marko seems to have been in possession of papers and probably a passport that to all intents and purposes looked genuine, and he could have used them to enter this country if he’d wanted to. There was no way we could have learned they were bogus: not with France and Holland occupied. He could have sat out the war here as Klaus Meiring and no one would have been any the wiser. But instead he chose to abandon the name, which suggests he had another ready-made identity to step into. One that was clean.’