by Pirate Irwin
Lafarge ignored the remark, rose and reached inside his coat, which he had left draped over another chair, dropping the dossier onto Drieu’s chest as he passed him.
“I thought you might like to have your carefully assembled work of fiction back,” said Lafarge sardonically.
Drieu’s expression moved from warm and humorous to doleful within an instant as the realisation dawned on him: firstly, the coup could not have succeeded; and secondly, Lafarge had done a deal with de Cambedessus.
“Ah, I see the good colonel does not deserve a medal for discretion does he! So the coup failed. I guess I always thought deep down that it would as I didn’t see you as being the type to turn against the General. Not once you had ingratiated your way back into favour at the Quai,” said Drieu morosely.
“I told de Cambedessus that if he used the dossier against you before the coup it would be decisive but no, he thought he was cleverer than anybody else and declined to do so. More’s the pity, for he has taken probably many a good man with him,” he added.
Lafarge sighed and lit a cigarette as he looked at Drieu who now knew all his options were used up.
“Drieu, stop trying to sound so considerate about the others. It is you that you are really talking about and but for your obsession with me, Marguerite and de Chastelain you could have got away.
“Instead you are here and living off your nerves as to when the knock on the door will come and you will be taken away, like Brasillach and Luchaire and others, and sent for trial,” said Lafarge.
Drieu smiled wanly and poured himself another drink.
“Yes, it is true I could have gone. Malraux offered to help and with his support I would have had no problem. But you know, Gaston, you kept me here. I did offer you a way out when I asked you to help me leave Paris, but you closed that avenue when you so brutally knocked me back,” said Drieu.
“No, as usual you thought that having extricated yourself from one corner you were immune to any more threats about your past and hints as to your being a triple murderer could be laughed away.
“However, you forget, Gaston, that de Chastelain was a very good friend of mine. Why it was me who deposited him with Gerland in Limoges remember! Then you handed him over to Petiot, condemning him to certain death, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you weren’t in business with the maniac—”
Lafarge stopped him there, for he was not having that.
“That is rubbish, Drieu. I risked my life to get him out of Limoges, and Petiot was an honest mistake, one I deeply regret, and I was certainly not in business with the man,” said Lafarge angrily.
Drieu frowned and then opened the dossier.
“Well, from what he told me he always suspected you of murdering Marguerite,” said Drieu.
“Oh yes, and why on earth would he come to that conclusion? He certainly never mentioned it to me on our trip back to Paris,” said Lafarge.
To his mind Drieu was really getting desperate now. If this was the only substantial ‘evidence’ in the dossier then he had been a fool to agree to the deal with de Cambedessus.
Drieu smiled sourly.
“Well, he wasn’t going to accuse you directly, was he, when you were the man holding the gun and who had also assured him of getting him out of the country? He’d have changed his tone once he was safely away from you and Bousquet and his other hounds,” said Drieu.
“Well, still he never let anything slip. From what I recall of that train ride we drank an enormous amount and it became increasingly convivial. I am sure if he really suspected me of murdering the love of his life he would have not been so amiable and grateful,” said Lafarge.
“For Christ’s sake, Drieu, do you really think I would have gone to such lengths to have him murdered when I could just as easily have pushed him from the train and said he had tried to escape? That’s what many of Bousquets’ goons would have done. No, I genuinely wanted him to escape through a proper organised channel.”
Drieu sighed and poured himself another drink.
“Yes but, Gaston, you’re not like the goons, you never could be. You have a far more calculating mind than that. That is why I admire you and why your little plot was so brilliant but came unstuck once de Chastelain saw you enter and then leave Marguerite’s apartment,” said Drieu.
Lafarge audibly gasped and could feel his grip tightening on the stem of the glass.
“Yes, Gaston, there is not just supposition in this dossier, there are also hard facts. Do you really think de Cambedessus would play such a high-risk game with you unless he felt he had a winning hand? He was hardly going to accept the word and second-hand testimony of, how did he put it to me, ‘a pathetic, pretentious collaborationist loser’. He is a real charmer is our de Cambedessus, but hey ho, no different to the types I have constantly allied myself to over the past few years,” said Drieu.
“He should have known that using a member of your family as a bargaining device was never going to work. I told him you weren’t prepared, when offered another chance, to forgive your sister, who could receive the death sentence!
“I said to him: ‘If you think Chief Inspector Gaston Lafarge is going to swing behind you because you threaten his son’s life then you have not fully understood the man’s character.’
“I told him: ‘You are dealing with a strange bird where if you threaten what he believes is the right side morally you will end up as Bousquet did.’ And I pointed at the dossier to emphasise what lengths you would go to to achieve your goal.
“But I added: ‘If you threaten him with exposure then he will support you because at the end of the day he is like us in that all he cares about is preserving his status and his life. Indeed the only thing he cares for, above all else, is the wellbeing of Gaston Lafarge.’
“You proved that once again today. I am sorry I was so right about you,” said Drieu, staring maliciously at Lafarge.
Lafarge had regained some of his energy as he had listened to Drieu prattle on. His words had stung him as some of what he had said was true. However, that didn’t make him begin to warm again to Drieu, just because he seemed to understand him better than anyone else, it actually made him angrier.
For adding fuel to his burning anger was that Drieu had just betrayed himself in having been au fait with the fact Pierre, who he was godfather to, was being held hostage by de Cambedessus and it appeared had done nothing to save him.
Lafarge excused himself to go to the bathroom and when he returned found Drieu pouring himself another whisky. Instead of returning to his chair Lafarge came and stood over him which forced Drieu to sit back.
“Anyway, Drieu, that is by the by, for de Cambedessus has lost. Like you said, he thought he was cleverer than any of us and because of that he overplayed his hand and ended up dealing the card in a position of weakness.
“As a result I am, as you put it earlier, once again the man with the gun and the fact he knows I am as guilty as sin as well is of little consequence,” said Lafarge coldly.
Drieu glanced up looking alarmed and saw dangling from Lafarge’s hand a bottle with pills in it. Lafarge shook them so the half dozen or so left in the bottle rattled, then he slowly unscrewed the cap.
“So yes, Drieu, now I come to the answer to your question earlier. Why did I feel it so important to come here late at night? Well, firstly to hear your version of events, and then to share a last drink with you,” said Lafarge.
Drieu looked terrified now and tried to leap off the sofa to the side of Lafarge. However, the Chief Inspector pushed him back violently, withdrew his service revolver with his free hand and stepped back.
Drieu was starting to sweat profusely, his eyes darting from side to side to see if there was the slightest chance of escape but there was none. A table, with a lamp on it, barred any way out from the end of the sofa he was nearest to and Lafarge blocked his route the other way.
“Come on, Gaston, don’t be a fool! Combelle will finger you for this immediately,” said Drieu, his voice
near to whining.
Lafarge laughed, but there was no humour in it.
“I lied to you, Drieu. I saw him but I didn’t speak to him, and he certainly didn’t see me as I hid in the shadows,” said Lafarge.
Drieu slumped forward on hearing this.
“So come on, Drieu. It is well known you already tried to commit suicide twice so people won’t be in the least bit surprised that you succeeded on the third occasion. Take these – they will taste better with the whisky. I don’t want to have to force them down you,” said Lafarge, the menace clear in his tone of voice.
Lafarge was half expecting Drieu to throw them over his shoulder in one last act of defiance. However, all the fight had gone out of him. Perhaps he wanted to do it and he just needed someone to be there to encourage him, but then that was probably wishful thinking on Lafarge’s part.
Whatever the reason, Drieu took the gardenal pills, usually prescribed for epilepsy though Lafarge had never heard he suffered from that, and drank from his glass.
Lafarge checked Drieu had swallowed the six pills by forcing open his mouth. He used his gun like a probing drill to do a thorough check of his mouth – the upper and lower gums and then to the sides to ensure he had not secreted them in between his gum and his cheek.
Duly satisfied he stepped back and regained his seat still pointing the gun in Drieu’s direction.
Having filled his glass with cognac and lit a cigarette, Lafarge sat there watching his former friend’s life slowly ebb away and the strange thing was he didn’t feel an ounce of regret.
EPILOGUE
Lafarge drove back to Père Lachaise elated that one large pebble had been removed from his shoe.
The passing of Drieu would not be mourned by many and he would certainly not be listed as a suspicious death given his recent history.
Indeed there would be many who had profited from the Occupation who would be as content as the new regime at his disappearance, for he held a lot of damaging information on many people.
He conceded the last few moments of Drieu’s life had not been pretty to observe and no doubt much more uncomfortable for the victim.
However, while far from a mercy-killing, Lafarge reasoned that Drieu had little to live for ultimately. The authorities would have come for him eventually because Malraux could not protect him for ever.
Even Malraux would probably have washed his hands of him after he refused to leave Paris. Instead Drieu would have faced certain death in any case, for the mood at the moment was not all about compromise and forgetting what had taken place. There would have to be high-profile sacrifices so as to allow others to live.
It wasn’t the fairest way to dispense justice but as Lafarge had learned, it all depended on what one had to offer. Drieu had damaging evidence against him but now de Cambedessus was in their thrall it counted for nothing and made his former friend an irritant and very much expendable.
Lafarge justified to himself he had satisfied everybody with his brutal decision to get rid of Drieu, not least himself.
There Drieu had been correct about the paradox in Lafarge’s character. For he did have a strong moral belief in what was right and wrong in what a state did, even at the expense of his family’s wellbeing, but when it came to his personal security being endangered then those rules counted for nothing – and he would look back on today and genuinely say a page had been turned and indeed a book was closed.
He had the dossier and it was clear it was the original. A thorough search of Drieu’s apartment, untidy as it was, had yielded no sign of another one.
Drieu had not given the impression during their conversation there was another copy lying in a bank vault to be opened and read on his death. As to whether de Chastelain was alive, he shrugged off Petiot’s opaque remark as that of the madman he was.
In any case, if there was one person who would have known whether de Chastelain was indeed alive it would have been Drieu.
As Drieu’s whole motivation for trying to destroy Lafarge was due to his belief the Chief Inspector had deliberately connived with Petiot to murder his friend made the likelihood of de Chastelain still being alive very remote indeed.
Everything looked so much rosier than it had done on awaking that morning. The coup had failed and his career as a result had taken a huge leap forward, his loyalty now could not be doubted. On a personal front he would be able to rebuild the bridges with Pierre and hopefully through that establish a relationship between his son and Berenice.
That would not be easy, but Lafarge felt confident he could succeed. In order to facilitate that process he would take a leave of absence and spend time with both of them. Pinault, he felt, would have no problem with it as he owed Lafarge a huge debt.
No, it was time for yet another new beginning and there was no more appropriate a symbol for that than Berenice bearing them their child. Again that would have to be handled delicately with Pierre.
However, this was where he, Lafarge, could at last change. He really would build and devote himself to a strong family unit.
It was something he had hoped to do with Isabella, Isadora and Pierre in Argentina until that dream was so brutally destroyed.
Once things were more settled he would sell the apartment, although money was no problem as he still had the majority of the jewels he had taken from Suchet’s parents’ farm where she had hidden them for safekeeping. However, he would be patient for a sudden rise in his standard of living would arouse unwanted interest.
Lafarge smiled as he passed dear Madame Grondon in the entrance to the apartment building and bid her goodnight. Lafarge shook his head in wonderment as to quite why at this late hour she was watering the few potted plants that still adorned the courtyard.
He roused himself for one last energetic effort of what had been a seemingly interminable day and prepared himself for the four flights of stairs. Not wanting to be overly ambitious he took the stairs one at a time until he reached the second-floor landing and he heard a gunshot ring out.
At first he thought it was someone firing at him from the shadows, and he quickly unholstered his revolver and crouched down. The central lights were as usual not working. Either there was not enough money to pay for light bulbs or, more sinister, the gunman had removed them and waited for him to return.
However, he quickly registered the gunman hadn’t fired a second time and he could not smell any cordite. All he could hear was wailing from up above.
No one came out into the corridors or leant over the banisters. The inhabitants had learned during the Occupation that it was best not to interfere, and it would take them a while to get used to the new order.
Lafarge bolted up the stairs to where the crying was coming from. To his horror he ascertained it was coming from inside his apartment.
Christ, he thought ,someone’s got Berenice and Pierre, but who is it? Had Bonny and Lafont called in a favour, even from their cells, or was it Fremont? Levau did not know what he looked like, so he might not have been among the dead at the house, and he was now taking revenge for the failure of the coup. Or was it de Cambedessus, who might have left the Quai a broken man but was still capable of avenging himself deal or no deal?
Lafarge stood to the side of the door and quietly withdrew his keys, holding the revolver in his other hand. He turned the keys in the lock and it gave way instantly. He wished for the rest of his life it had not done so.
He stood with his mouth open, staring at the scene – Pierre standing over the prone figure of Berenice with a gun in his hand, oblivious there was someone standing in the doorway.
Lafarge choked back a scream and breathed deeply, dropped the inculpatory dossier, before walking over to Pierre and relieving him of his gun. The boy stood silently to one side as Lafarge bent down to feel for a pulse but there was none. Berenice and his child had gone.
He turned to look at his son, who stared blankly into space in total shock.
Lafarge stood up, took the boy in his arms and guided hi
m to the battered old leather chair which faced out into the courtyard.
He grabbed a half bottle of cognac. He poured himself a glass and a little one for Pierre, to try and bring his boy out of shock, and then pulled him onto his knee.
“I want my mummy! I want my mummy!” sobbed Pierre.
Lafarge remained silent, tears stung his eyes as he rubbed his son’s back, and the noise of the sirens got closer.
The angels of heaven had been a mirage, for now once again he was enveloped by the hounds of hell and their barking would not stop.
HISTORICAL CHARACTERS
Henri Lafont and Pierre Bonny
Heads of the French Gestapo based at 93 Rue Lauriston in a chic Parisian neighbourhood. They were less motivated by ideology than by making money and were opportunistic, sociopathic gangsters. Lafont became a member of the SS and led a brigade of ne’er-do-wells dressed in SS uniform on several unsuccessful military excursions in France. Bonny was a former detective who had been thrown out of the force and served time in the 30s. Tried in December 1944, Bonny failed lamentably to evade all responsibility by blaming Lafont. Both were found guilty and executed shortly after spending a final Christmas behind bars.
Alexis Villaplane
His fall from grace was remarkable even by that era’s standards. Captain of France at the inaugural World Cup to being tried and executed 14 years later is quite some achievement. However, there is little in terms of extenuating circumstances that could have saved him. Like Bonny he served time during the 1930’s, his crime was for match-fixing, and once he saw the riches to be made as a con man and profiteer under the Occupation there was no restraining him. He was indeed in charge of a unit that perpetrated the massacre depicted in the book and gives the lie to those who claim it is a big step up from conman to murderer.
Joseph Joanovici
‘Mr Metal’ who made millions out of the Nazis and their war machine, and as a result was successful in escaping the fate of so many of his fellow Jews. Moldovan of origin he is believed to have ingratiated himself with the liberating forces by betraying the whereabouts of Bonny and Lafont when they tried to hide out after the Liberation. He is considered such a schemer he also had links to the Soviet intelligence service and also as insurance helped to free some resistants during the Occupation. Nevertheless he ended the Occupation a very wealthy man. However, his protectors, including several influential policemen, either retired or disappeared and in 1947 he made good his escape before he could be arrested thanks to a tip-off by a high-ranking officer. However, he was eventually brought to trial but escaped with a relatively light sentence of five years in jail and a fne. He resumed his business affairs after his release but once again fell foul of the legal authorities. He fled to Israel but they, in a rare instance of refusing asylum to a Jew, rejected him and he was condemned to a year in prison on his return to France. Failing health and fast disappearing finances plagued his final years and he died in 1965.