by Mike Ripley
Asher had got to his feet and was slowly descending the stairs as quiet as a cat, and I noticed that he had buttoned his jacket coat, I would like to think so that the girl might not be frightened at the sight of the shoulder holster. But then, it was not the girls he was trying to impress.
I put his age at twenty-seven or twenty-eight, and although I had the advantage of a couple of inches of height, he came armed with greater width and several pounds of weight, all of it muscle rather than fat. He had a round, oddly childlike face, which had been weathered by the sun, and black hair which gleamed with some brand of vanilla-scented pomade. For a British army sergeant listed as ‘missing’ two years ago, he appeared to be doing rather well for himself, and would probably look equally at home sitting at a roulette table in Monte Carlo as he did in the seedy stairwell of a crumbling tenement in the docks of Marseilles.
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and grinned when he saw me wince, but he produced only a silver cigarette case which he clicked open and offered.
‘You never answered my question,’ he said as he shared a flame from a gold-plated lighter.
‘Which question?’
‘I asked why you told the padre here that his Mission could be in danger if you told him your real name, ’cos I’ll bet a bottle of rum to a bag of toffees that it isn’t Hamelin.’
‘I can assure you that while I am in Marseilles it is, but I cannot prove it. That is the reason I’m here.’
‘Now you’ve lost me, squire. You’d better come clean ’cos I don’t like anything that might worry the good padre here.’
‘There’s no need for threats, Magnus,’ said the good padre, more in hope than expectation as he recognized, as I did, a man who enjoyed making threats.
‘I am a Canadian diplomat,’ I said firmly, ‘officially accredited to the Vichy government. Last night I was assaulted on the street and my passport stolen. One of the men who attacked me was shot and wounded by the police. I want my passport back and my information is that the wounded man may have sought shelter – if not sanctuary – here in the Mission. Rather than instigate a police search of the premises, I thought I would try and persuade Pastor Nevin to break the sanctity of the confessional, so to speak; but he would not.’
‘You should have asked me,’ said Asher with a smug smile.
‘Magnus! We have rules about the people we shelter,’ protested Nevin.
‘Come off it, Padre. Rules is made to be broken, we both know that; and it seems a pity not to help such a nicely spoken gent, whoever he says he is.’
The pastor’s response was through gritted teeth: ‘We have rules, Magnus,’ he repeated. ‘Rules to keep us safe.’
Asher held up a hand as if to deflect the smaller man’s criticism, but he fixed his eyes on me. ‘No name, no pack drill; that’s the rule here. Don’t care who you are as long as you’re flotsam or jetsam looking for shelter from the storm, though I was never sure what the difference between flotsam and jetsam was. I never said I’d give a name, in fact I don’t know it, but there is a man with a bullet hole in his shoulder right here, up in the attic, right now. Come on, squire, let’s finish our ciggies and I’ll introduce you. Best if a sensitive soul like you stays downstairs, Padre. This might not go pleasant.’
I could have explained that flotsam was something washed off a sinking ship whereas jetsam was an object or objects deliberately thrown overboard, and though I was beginning to put Magnus Asher in the latter category, I bit my tongue as I followed him up the stairs.
The first floor of the Seamen’s Mission extended over the ground floor of the building next door, and there was a second floor, the attic, on top of that. It was what a country solicitor would insist on calling a ‘flying freehold’ when drawing up the deeds for the land registry, though I doubted that any such legal niceties were of any concern to the current residents.
Not that anything was likely to worry the residents of the first floor, which was essentially one room with a toilet and sink at the end and six badly stuffed straw mattresses on the floor, three against each long wall. Four of the beds were occupied by sleeping figures, none of whom stirred as Asher and I creaked up the stairs. They gave off the sweaty perfume of men who have been sleeping rough, and where flesh was visible under the thin blanket each had been given, it was an unshaved chin or a pair of hands black with dirt. From one of the pallets, where the blanket had slipped from a sleeping figure, a lozenge of blue material – almost certainly an RAF uniform jacket – peeped out. Whoever they were, I saw no good reason to disturb them. They needed all the rest they could get.
I followed Asher up a second flight of stairs to the attic/mansard floor, which extended into a shadowy blackness. I guessed this attic connected with at least two more buildings, perhaps even to the end of the street. Light was provided courtesy of two mansard windows thick with grime and several missing roof tiles. There was no plumbing up here, only a chamber pot beside the one straw pallet on the planks laid across the beams to provide a floor. It was occupied by a man who appeared as near to death as is possible while still breathing.
He was shirtless and wore a singlet which was pitted with holes where moths had feasted, and splashed with brown, dried blood. His left shoulder was bandaged with clean white strips of linen and his arm pinned across his chest in a sling made from a far from hygienic towel. His face was the colour of faded parchment and his expression was one of a man who was halfway across the Styx before he realized he’d left his fare in his other trousers.
‘Hello again,’ I said, which got a reaction, but only from the man’s blank eyes.
‘I take it you two know each other,’ Asher said, and the wounded man’s eyes flashed in his direction. Now there was concern if not fear in them.
‘Remember me? We met last night. Had a bit of a tussle in a gutter before being rudely interrupted by a policeman, which was lucky for me but not so much for you, but after our encounter I discovered I had lost something. A passport. I would dearly like to have that returned.’ The eyes were on me, but were expressionless, like a shark’s. ‘Is any of this ringing any bells with you?’
The man squirmed on his straw mattress and nursed his sling with his working arm but remained stubbornly silent. Asher gave him ten seconds or so before moving closer to the sick bed until he loomed over the wounded man.
‘He’s not being very helpful, is he?’ he said to me in English.
‘Perhaps he’ll talk to the police,’ I said, having no intention at all of calling the local gendarmes.
Asher snorted back a laugh. ‘This guy’s a Panier gangster, a hood. Not a very good one, I admit, but the gangs in the Panier are not frightened by the cops; they own most of them.’ He switched back to French. ‘I think more direct action is called for.’
He raised his right foot and very slowly and deliberately brought the sole of his brown shoe down on to the bandaged shoulder of the man on the pallet. It was a shockingly cruel act, made more shocking by the fact that I witnessed it in silence.
The wounded man was anything but silent. He screamed, loudly.
Asher lifted his foot and the scream turned into a series of breathless sobs.
The wounded man thrashed around, his right arm flailing behind him and down the side of the straw mattress, then his right hand went under the mattress, groping blindly for something. My first thought was that the man had a weapon hidden under there, and perhaps Asher thought so too, as he raised his foot again, ready to stamp out any danger.
The man’s hand reappeared and it was waving my diplomatic passport as if it were a white flag.
‘There,’ said Asher smugly. ‘That wasn’t so difficult, was it?’
TWELVE
For Want of a Sharp Knife
The Dorchester Hotel, London. 20 May 1970
‘What a perfectly cruel and horrible man,’ said Perdita.
‘Yes, he was,’ said Mr Campion.
Perdita turned sharply to face Robert von Ringer. �
�Why didn’t you shoot him instead of that poor man on the mattress?’
‘Perhaps I should have,’ said the German ruefully. ‘It would have saved a lot of heartache and, technically, he was my enemy.’
‘So was Albert,’ observed Luke. ‘Technically, that is.’
Ringer smiled. ‘In the sort of war we were engaged in, terms such as “friend” and “enemy” often became blurred. True, we were working together, but had we been discovered doing so, we had agreed a cover story that we were really enemies, each trying to trap the other. In fact, we rehearsed a story that I had actually tried to shoot Albert on two occasions.’
‘It was a jolly good story,’ Campion chipped in. ‘Very dramatic, and I was incredibly brave on both occasions, escaping a hail of bullets by the skin of my teeth. When I eventually got back to London, I told the story constantly and got lots of free drinks out of it. Now eat your pudding and drink your wine. All this reminiscing means we’re lagging behind the rest of the trenchermen.’
Perdita looked at the circle of almond and lemon meringue roulade centred on the plate in front of her and briefly considered its potential impact on her figure, which she liked to keep ‘stage ready’ (for she could, when roles were thin on the ground, still pass for a teenage ingénue).
Mr Campion, who could still – blast him – fit into his 1945 de-mob suit, gently nudged her wine glass closer to her hand.
‘Do try the wine, dear. It’s a ’67 Château d’Yquem and quite outstanding.’
Perdita took a sip, savoured the wine and then picked up her fork and spoon. In for a penny, she thought – as long as it didn’t result in a pound on the hips.
‘Well, thank goodness the little girl you befriended didn’t see any of it,’ she said between spoonfuls. ‘Is that really her down the table, talking to Amanda? She was The Maid, as you called her?’
‘Yes, it is and yes it was,’ said Campion, ‘and I’m afraid she saw other things which were much worse.’
‘And did things which were worse,’ said Ringer softly.
The concentration on dessert resulted in a temporary hiatus in the volume of the clatter of knives and plates and background chatter, but Guffy Randall was still having trouble listening in on the story unfolding on the top table.
‘Perdita is trying to get that German to shoot somebody!’ he hissed towards his wife.
Mary Randall, registering the rising eyebrows of Joseph Fleurey, and the fact that his spoonful of roulade had paused a good inch below his chin, moved swiftly to defuse the situation and lower her husband’s blood pressure.
‘I’m sure you misheard, Guffy. It might be time to have your ears syringed again. Anyway, I’m not sure you should be eavesdropping – or trying to.’
‘They were definitely talking about shooting somebody,’ Guffy persisted in a rasping whisper.
‘Well, if they were, it was probably one of Albert’s stories – you know what he’s like. Gangsters, gunmen, pirates, burglars, fast cars, being chased up hill and down dale; Albert had a fund of adventures in his sprightlier days. I think he’s secretly disappointed no one ever wrote a book about him.’
Joseph Fleurey leaned in and lowered his voice conspiratorially: ‘I think Monsieur Campion and Herr Ringer are telling war stories, about their time in Marseilles.’
Mr Randall made a slight snorting sound as he sipped his wine.
‘That’d be a rum do. Albert’s always kept quiet about his war. Why is he bending Perdita’s ear with it now?’
His wife shrugged a delicate shoulder.
‘I know she was always curious about what Albert did in the war. Perhaps she pestered him so much he finally gave in.’
‘But why now, at a birthday party?’ Guffy persisted.
‘Perhaps he has assembled the right audience,’ said Joseph Fleurey quietly.
‘You know they’re talking about you,’ said Amanda to Madame Thibus.
‘What woman does not want to be the centre of attention?’ said the Frenchwoman. ‘Especially when the attention comes from two such distinguished gentlemen.’
‘You said you met my husband during the war. Was that when you met Herr Ringer also?’
‘No, I became interested in his career after the war.’
Amanda made a conscious effort to keep a high-pitched note of alarm out of her voice.
‘Not in your professional capacity as a lawyer … une avocate?’
Madame Thibus diverted her eyes downwards towards her plate when she answered. ‘Not exactly.’
Charlie Luke scraped his plate squeaky clean, drained his glass and found he could contain himself no longer.
‘So what happened next? Don’t keep us in suspense.’
Mr Campion smiled benignly. ‘Such was the rather bizarre life we led in those days that the moment I regained my diplomatic passport saying that I was Jean-Baptiste Hamelin, a Canadian, I became Didier Ducret, the Frenchman who worked as a warehouseman in the Old Port for a very understanding boss.’ He winked cheekily at Ringer. ‘Though, come to think of it, I never got paid …’
‘I don’t follow, Albert. Could you possibly be less vague?’
‘Is the idea of me having an actual job so unbelievable, Charlie? I assure you, I was honestly employed – without pay – in Robert’s import-export business for a week, and it was an eye-opener, I can tell you.’
‘What was? Seeing how the other half lives?’
‘Please, Charlie, curb your socialist tendencies. I had to keep a low profile. When I used my room at the Hôtel Moderne I was Jean-Baptiste Hamelin, but really that was only for bed-and-breakfast. During the day, I was Didier Ducret, an itinerant warehouseman grateful for a job but not averse to the odd bit of pilfering of the stock.’
‘I always suspected as much,’ observed a straight-faced Ringer.
‘Some very interesting goods, not to mention chattels, moved through that import-export business, Robert. Quite a lot of the exports seemed destined for the Afrika Korps in Libya, and I do admit on one occasion I was tempted to steal a pair of Afrika Korps pyjamas, as they seemed better quality than my own threadbare ones.’
‘It was important for Albert to stay out of sight during the day,’ Ringer told Luke. ‘He had very quickly come to the attention of some very bad people, and I could not protect him properly, or not without raising the suspicions of my own side.’
Ever the policeman, Luke probed further: ‘The gangsters of this – what did you call it? – Panier district. The man who took Albert’s passport was one of them?’
‘Exactly, and one gang in particular, run by a man called Paul Pirani, who had the local police in his pocket. He did not take kindly to one of his wounded men being tortured by Albert.’
‘That’s outrageous!’ stormed Perdita. ‘Albert didn’t touch that hoodlum, it was Asher!’
‘I’ll bet that wasn’t the story Pirani was told,’ said Luke. ‘I think Albert was portrayed as the villain of the piece.’
‘How did you know?’ Ringer turned to Luke, genuinely curious.
‘I’ve been pulling wide boys and petty crooks for almost twenty years. Wharf rats from Marseilles to Limehouse, they’re all the same when a job goes wrong: they blame somebody who isn’t there.’
The German nodded in professional agreement. ‘Albert was safe when working at the warehouse and at his hotel, where I had a man undercover in the kitchens, but out on the streets he was at risk until I could arrange a meeting with Nathan Lunel. Then we could make a plan.’
‘And this meeting was to take place in a concentration camp.’ Luke did not make it a question.
‘Well done, Charlie, you’ve been paying attention,’ said Campion cheerfully, ‘and this is where the story gets really exciting!’
‘I do hope it has a happy ending,’ purred Perdita.
‘Oh, I never promised you that, my dear. It’s a war story, after all, and wars are not happy things. Anyone who pretends …’
Mr Campion faltered, his attention caught
by a movement at the far end of the room where the large and unmistakeable figure of Lugg was attempting to squeeze behind the row of diners, his girth causing no more problems than a tidal wave in a narrow gulley.
‘Oh dear, I see the dinner-jacketed shadow of doom approaching and, from the look of it, he hasn’t touched his pudding, so he’ll be in a bad mood. He’s making a beeline for us, so we must have done something wrong.’
Wheezing slightly from his exertions and the numerous apologies he had been forced into making for ruining the digestion of innocent diners, Lugg eventually made it to the top table. After nodding his obeisance to Lady Amanda as he shuffled by, he drew himself up – and out – to his full bulk and loomed over Campion’s left ear.
‘There’s a problem,’ said the fat man, in what for him counted as a subtle whisper.
‘The roulade not to your liking? Or is it something really serious? We haven’t run out of wine, have we?’
‘The maître d’ called me out for a quiet word,’ said Lugg patiently and rather proudly, ‘and my professional expertise.’
‘Short of staff in the washing-up department, are they? That’s not like The Dorchester. Now, The Savoy …’
‘Something’s gone missing from the other room where we’re supposed to repair to for the dancing and the rest of the frivolities.’
Charles Luke pricked up his ears. ‘Stolen? Do we have a thief at the party?’
‘P’rhaps,’ grunted Lugg, ‘but mebbe it’s a bit more serious than petty thievery.’
‘Come on, old fruit, spit it out. That hangdog expression of yours is bringing down the mood – and it is my birthday.’
‘Birthday without a cake at the moment.’ Lugg’s tone was lugubrious, his face resembling that of a suicidal bloodhound.
Campion did a theatrical double-take. ‘Somebody’s stolen my cake?’
‘Not the cake, the knife that was put out for the ceremonial cutting. Flash thing it was, brought out specially for the occasion. Bone ’andle and a fourteen-inch blade honed to perfection. Could be a nasty bit of kit and do some serious damage.’ He paused dramatically before adding: ‘In the wrong hands.’