The Compromised Detective

by Pirate Irwin

  “Yes, Lafarge, your sister and myself, fucking on the back seat of Lafont’s Bentley after we returned from the the massacre in Mussidan. Don’t look so shocked, Lafarge, she was a most willing travelling companion and she had so much fun watching the deaths of the 50 or so lily-livered compatriots I selected.

  “When we got separated after the attack on Lauriston I didn’t find it too hard to track her down through some of the contacts I still had in the Quai. They were more than willing to get their own back on you, a traitor to the cause who had betrayed Bousquet and Vichy and was now ingratiating himself with the new regime.”

  Lafarge went numb as Villaplane’s remarks, delivered in an increasingly triumphant tone, sank in and he tried to reject them as coming from a man who was so desperate he was now in complete self-denial.

  “You’re a lying bastard, Villaplane! Everyone knows you are first and foremost a con man. Why should I believe you now that you are in a corner and would say anything to destablise those who are after you?” said Lafarge, though, his words carried little conviction.

  Lafarge also searched desperately in his cluttered mind to recall the reference to Mussidan; he hadn’t even heard of the place and fancied it was a ruse by Villaplane.

  “Ah yes, returning to Mussidan, which you may not be aware of as there were so many other massacres carried out in the name of law and order.

  “This is where I displayed my fealty to the Nazis and the SS. As a lieutenant with high hopes of attaining a higher rank, which no doubt I would have done had I opted to flee with them, I personally took charge of that operation. Your sister had travelled with me – well I didn’t want to leave her in Bonny’s reach – and so as I said she witnessed my hour of glory,” he said proudly.

  “You know what death is like, Lafarge, you have certainly killed enough to know what it is to look in a dying person’s eyes or to have someone beg for theirs. To have that power is so overwhelming, it is unlike anything I have ever felt before, even leading France out for their first match in Uruguay. This was on another level.

  “Oh plenty begged. ‘Take her or take him we can join you,’ they screamed. Well I took the ones they recommended and killed them and they thanked me as hope returned to their eyes that they would indeed live … but of course they didn’t. I wasn’t going to allow cowards like that to live. Yes they would be ashamed, but no I wanted to see that hope of life extinguished in front of me.

  “Believe me, Lafarge, those types are not worthy of the France that is going to be built from the ruins of Vichy. Of course it is one that I will look at from afar but with great interest. I am a Frenchman first and foremost!” he said.

  Lafarge was trying to block out his words but the pride Villaplane took in his deeds and the vehemence he said them with made it impossible.

  Lafarge had of course been responsible for many deaths, but not once even with those he had murdered had he gained sexual pleasure which is what Villaplane had clearly experienced. His had been politically motivated. No matter how many times Villaplane protested his had been as well no one with a sound mind, let alone a judge, would ever concur.

  “You’re a sick bastard, Villaplane. You belong in St Anne. Bonny and you were well made for each other. At least Lafont has some excuse coming from the background he did and he at least possessed some charm,” said Lafarge, his voice trembling.

  “If you don’t mind I would like to see my sister so we can clear this mess of lies up. Now, Villaplane, or I tear the card up, open that window onto the courtyard and denounce you!”

  Villaplane didn’t look best pleased at having orders barked at him, nor being threatened, but Lafarge was in no mood to placate him and if he thought his days of serving others was over, with both his bosses under lock and key, then he was sorely mistaken.

  “Vanessa, please come out and take a weight off your prudish brother’s mind,” said Villaplane giving Lafarge a look that made him fear what was coming.

  The door opened and out walked his sister. To his surprise she was looking far better than the last time he had seen her.

  She was beautifully dressed too in a red dress that went to below her knees and holding in her hands a red beret. Vanessa and Villaplane, who was wearing a smart navy suit, cut quite a couple if one viewed them from a distance. The problem for Lafarge was that he was in the same room as them and she was his sister, who had gone beyond the boundaries of legality now, and Villaplane was a mass murderer.

  She didn’t even have to open her mouth now to confirm what Villaplane had said – her very appearance condemned her. She evidently thought so too, and viewed her brother from Villaplane’s side with a mixture of amusement and disdain.

  “You are such a naïve man, Gaston, despite your qualities as a detective,” she said lighting a cigarette with a gold lighter prompting Lafarge to wonder which of the many victims of the gang it had belonged to.

  “Professionally excellent but hiding oh so many weaknesses as a human being. It is amazing that you can sense correctly that people you have never met before are guilty and yet when it comes to those you should know best you have no inkling whatsoever,” she added giving him a withering look.

  “But I have to admit I feel flattered in a way as I thought I had over played my hand in conning you in the hospital but obviously I am a better actress than I took myself to be.”

  “But what about the doctor? He said you were almost beyond help,” said Lafarge desperately.

  Vanessa took a drag on her cigarette and exhaled slowly, a sly smile spreading across her lips.

  “Sexual favours as I learnt during the Occupation can get you anything, certainly the support of a an over-worked doctor who has precious little time to relax,” she said.

  “Of course I didn’t know when you would or indeed if you would turn up, but he was primed by me to give you the sob story and I switched off as soon as you entered the room.

  “I played you Gaston and you reacted as I wanted you to.”

  Lafarge had had enough by this stage. The anger he felt at being betrayed yet again by his sister, having forgiven her the first time, was now such that if he had had a gun he would have shot her first and then Villaplane.

  “Well excuse me for not making the link between a drugged-up gangster’s whore and an accomplice to a mass murder,” said Lafarge mustering all the sarcasm he could draw on.

  He could tell it had hit its mark but she tried to mask it with a hollow laugh.

  “Right, Alex, shall we get going. It will be dark soon and the curfew will be in force. We could at least make Fontainebleau and then get an early start in the morning,” she said.

  “Why Gaston might even help us down with the luggage,” she added.

  Villaplane laughed and held his hand out to Lafarge for him to hand over the card.

  Lafarge smiled and stood up making as if to fiddle in his pocket to find the card, while his left hand went to his back as if he was stiff and wanted to correct his posture.

  He pulled out the card and held it towards Villaplane, who went to pluck it from his hand but never made it. Lafarge swung the sap down with his left hand and connected with the villain’s head sending him toppling to the floor unconscious.

  If Lafarge hoped his effort at subduing Villaplane would force his sister into once again seeking his forgiveness he was to be sorely disappointed.

  “You bastaaaard!” she screeched.

  She hurled her beret in his face and launched herself at him, vainly trying to scratch his face whilst tearing at his hair.

  He fought her off and as she came for him again he resorted to picking up the glass of cognac and thrust the liquid into her face. She reeled back, yelling in agony and furiously rubbing at her eyes, while he pursued her and delivered a blow of the sap to her kidneys which resulted in her collapsing to the ground.

  While she lay moaning Lafarge sought out the telephone and rang the Quai hoping that at least Levau would be there. His wish was granted and after a brief exchange
Levau said he would be round immediately with a police van if there was one free.

  Lafarge pulled his sister up into a sedentary position from the foetal one, but aside from that there would be no more help.

  “Vanessa, this is as far as it goes between us now. You have destroyed any sibling feeling I might have had to help you. Once my partner gets here your fate will be out of my hands. You will enter the justice system and it will take its course, which given the associations you have had during the past few years does not bode well as to how it will turn out,” said Lafarge, his voice devoid of sympathy.

  Vanessa raised her head from her chest and stared at him disbelievingly.

  “Gaston, you can’t do that! I’m your sister for Christ’s sake. It’s not as if I killed anyone – and this was just a caper, having fun at your expense. I love Alex and I would have done anything for him, we were going to marry once we got to Spain,” she mumbled.

  “You’re not making any sense, Vanessa. On the one hand it was just a caper and then on the other you are openly saying you were willing to help a fugitive from justice. I would make your mind up pretty quickly before you form a defence,” he said.

  “Either one of those scenarios is unlikely to get you much of a sympathetic hearing.”

  Vanessa spat at him, but the spittle landed well short and he rubbed it into the carpet with the sole of his shoe.

  “So you are going to stand by and watch your sister hauled before the courts and be sent to prison? I imagine you will be waiting to do the same thing to Papa when he returns. How are you going to allow that to rest easy on your conscience, sending two of your own family to prison?”

  Lafarge shrugged his shoulders.

  “You chose your sides and you must pay for the result of choosing the loser. I don’t doubt that you would have shown me any more pity had I lost, in fact we wouldn’t have even been conducting this conversation as Lafont and Bonny would have murdered me without wasting their time on a trial,” said Lafarge.

  Vanessa laughed hysterically, although it was more of a cackle.

  “Oh how I wish Bonny had ignored Hoariau and his boss Gerland’s orders that night and drowned you. That’s why I preferred Alex, he wouldn’t have obeyed them.

  “You wouldn’t have noticed but I watched part of the torture you went through, and you know what, I didn’t feel the slightest compunction to help you. I got a thrill out of seeing you, the austere high-minded brother, being brought to your knees,” she said, her visceral hatred of Lafarge clear in every word.

  Lafarge could hear footsteps ringing out on the stairs but it didn’t stop him delivering one final blow of the sap to Vanessa’s kidneys before he went to open the door.

  Levau entered a couple of minutes later accompanied by two uniformed gendarmes who hauled Villaplane to his feet, clamped handcuffs on him and dragged him to the door. He vainly tried to resist as they proceded down the stairs with one of the gendarmes shining a torch in front of them in case they stumbled.

  Levau took Lafarge to one side and asked him if he really wanted his sister arrested and if so on what charges.

  “Yes I want you to arrest her, and aside from collaborating with the enemy and extortion you can add accomplice to mass murder,” said Lafarge loudly enough for Vanessa to hear.

  “But that carries the death sentence, Gaston,” said an astonished Levau.

  Vanessa stared in disbelief at Lafarge, willing him to change his mind or admit he had made a mistake.

  “All are equal in the eyes of the law, Levau. I can’t be seen to be lenient on those close to me whether family or friends. In any case, as from now this woman is no longer considered by me to be my sister.”

  Vanessa’s screams and Levau’s attempts to calm her accompanied Lafarge the whole way down the stairs and the only thing he was thankful for was that the darkness hid the tears streaming down his face.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A month had passed since he had effectively condemned his sister to death.

  However, with a proper judicial system being restored in place of the compliant judiciary during the Occupation, unlike many women during the previous four years she could play upon her being a woman to gain enough sympathy to win at least a custodial sentence.

  His tears had dried quick enough, indeed they had not been so much for Vanessa, for her true wickedness and connivance in the criminal activities of Lafont and Bonny became clearer by the day, but for the Lafarge family as a whole.

  While they had not been regarded as one of the elite families before the war they had been a happy and close-knit unit and all in varying degrees regarded as successes, certainly academically.

  Lafarge had surprised many, and disappointed his father in particular, by joining the police force. Ironically this is where Bousquet and his father had concurred in viewing the police as not a job for someone with a good bourgeois upbringing, although the former was to find that in actual fact police work, or at least being connected with them, did pay handsomely – at least for a time.

  Now, though, the close-knit unit had unraveled just as if a cat had got hold of the ball of wool.They could be regarded as archetypal of the splits that had emerged throughout France.

  Vanessa had followed her father into the hall of infamy, though for very different reasons – she for money and drugs, he out of a sense of loyalty to his patron and mentor Petain and also his devout Catholicism which he believed was best represented by Vichy’s ideals.

  Well Lafarge hoped his religious devotion was getting him through what must be very dark and depressing days in exile in Germany and preparing him for the consequences once they returned.

  For there was little doubt that some time in the next couple of years that would happen. He himself thanked his lucky stars – well they weren’t that lucky, he reflected, for having lost his faith in God and in Catholicism at an early age, and any compunction he may have had about returning to the faith had disappeared once he entered the police force.

  Now of course he felt he had paid handsomely enough for his crimes and he would be able to look his brother, Palewski’s former fellow pilot in the eye – his other brother the last time he had had news was fighting for Vichy French forces in the Levant although since then some had switched sides – if he came through what remained of the war unscathed.

  What he felt almost convinced him it was better, after all, to leave convicted murderers alive and behind bars for the rest of their lives. Then, just as he did, they could weigh up whether the price of taking another person’s life and to have their freedom taken from them was worth it.

  However, he reasoned not all murderers were like him. They did not for the large part possess a conscience. In the cases of the policemen who had devoted themselves to committing crime after crime during the Occupation, without the remotest questioning of whether what they were being told to do was wrong, they deserved no more compassion than they had displayed to their victims.

  Lafarge had had time to brood over his family’s disintegration because over the past month there had been no sign of de Cambedessus or McLagan.

  There had been some excitement something was brewing when three Gaullist officers were assassinated within a week of each other. However, the perpetrator escaped and for the moment their murders were classified as being the work of diehard Vichyites.

  Lafarge had still managed to claim the trio of deaths for his file and his case.

  There was little enthusiasm on the part of his few remaining colleagues to add to their workload. Aside from their own investigations they had inherited others from those detectives who had been arrested and were now on ‘gardening leave’ awaiting either trial or to be processed by the sinister-sounding Police Committee.

  The endless search for the elusive Petiot carried on and indeed it was tempting to heap the three assassinations on his shoulders, as one colleague suggested. Lafarge replied acidly that ‘if we did that then he will end up being blamed for all Vichy’s crimes’.
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  Indeed so quiet had become the de Cambedessus case that Lafarge and Levau were drafted into the search for the good doctor.

  Levau had given up his daily interrogations of Madame Courneuve as they proved completely fruitless. Even when they had moved to officially charge her with the murder of the Count she hadn’t reacted at all – as if she was in a trance or had resigned herself to her fate.

  Lafarge willed himself not to be the one who did finally track Petiot down. He didn’t know if he would be able to stop himself from shooting him dead, not because of any sense of justice but so as to prevent him from blabbering about his mysterious visit that night with de Chastelain.

  Lafarge came up with the perfect remedy for not proving very effective at the pursuit of Petiot and that was to hide himself away in various cafés for several hours, usually with Levau although Ruffier filled in from time to time. While on the face of it it was to ask the clientele had they seen a man resembling Petiot in the area it was also to warm themselves with several cognacs.

  For conditions in Paris showed no signs of improvement: the electricity supply was erratic at the best of times which resulted in the Metro coming to a halt several times a day; the queues at the shops never seemed to get shorter; and supplies were as scarce as they had been towards the end of the Nazis rule.

  Thus the initial euphoria at being relieved of the Germans’ presence had worn away quickly enough as the city’s inhabitants prepared for a long hard winter while some still feared the Nazis’ return as they were holding on stubbornly in the east of France.

  Lafarge could see it etched on the people’s faces, already drawn after years of privations. Fear and doubt were returning. This could only help de Cambedessus and his plans to undermine de Gaulle, planting the seed in the minds of the people a restoration of the monarchy would spark the Americans into supporting France financially and as a result plentiful supplies of American products.

  Indeed the lust for all things American showed no signs of abating. He eschewed the dubious attractions of chewing gum whilst the advent of Coca Cola had sobered up certain Parisians no end as they gloried in the fizzy dark colored drink – Lafarge commented sarcastically it was the only coloured thing most white Americans liked.