by Allan Folsom
His abrupt intrusion on Vera and the tall man had been sheer coincidence. Certain she was at Work and the apartment would be empty, he’d chanced coming down simply to use the telephone. He’d agonized for hours before finally coming to the conclusion that the most realistic thing he could do would be to call the American embassy, explain who he was and ask for help. In essence throwing himself on the mercy of the United States government. With luck, they would protect him from French jurisprudence and perhaps, in the best of all cases, consider the circumstances and exonerate him for what he had done. After all, it was not he who had killed Henri Kanarack. More important, it was an action that would put the focus entirely on him and remove Vera from the shadow of a scandal that could ruin her. His own private war had been going on for nearly thirty years. It was neither fair nor right that his personal demons bankrupt Vera’s life no matter whatever else they might have between them. That was until he had opened the door and seen the tall man’s knife at her throat. In that instant the simple clarity of his plan vanished and everything changed. Vera was in it whether either of them wanted it or not. If he went to the American envoy now, that would be end, the same as if the police had him. At the very least he’d he held in protective custody while things were sorted out. And because of the publicity over Kanarack/Merriman’s murder, the media would be all over it, thereby telling the tall man Or his accomplices where he was. And when they got him, then they would go after Vera, as McVey had said.
Lying in his pigeonhole at the top of Paris, his hand throbbing above him in the dark, Osborn’s thoughts turned to McVey and his offer to help. And the more he weighed one against the other, wondering if he could trust him, whether the overture was genuine or just a ruse to lire him out for the French police, the more he began to realize there was very little else.
At 6:45 A.M., McVey lay on his stomach in his pajama bottoms with one foot sticking out from under the covers, wanting to sleep but finding it impossible.
He’d played a hunch because it was all that was in his hand. Without Lebrun’s presence, the French inspectors would not have permitted him to question Vera Monneray at any length. So he hadn’t even tried. Even had Lebrun been there, he would have had trouble exacting the truth of what had happened because Ms. Monneray was smart enough to hide behind the respect of l’amour, or, more correctly, the prime minister of France.
Even if he’d been wrong and she had, out of fear or anger or outrage—he’d seen it before—chased after the tall man, blazing away with the gun as she’d said, her statement about not seeing the car killed her story. Because someone had most definitely gone out into the street and fired at it as it sped away.
If she’d admittedly done as she’d said, why would she lie about not seeing the car unless she’d arrived too late on the scene to be aware of what happened. Which, of course, meant someone else had shot at the car.
And since the tech crew had found two separate blood types, and since Vera herself had been uninjured, it meant at least three people had been in the apartment when the shooting took place. One of them had driven away and one of them was still in the apartment. That left one missing.
The first gunshot brought Barras and Maitrot to attention. The second and third had sent them running, with Barras radioing for backup. The tall man had gotten away in a fast car. Moments later, uniforms filled the area. Every apartment in the building and within a three-block radius had been checked, as had every alley, every rooftop, every parked car, and every passing barge on the Seine that a fugitive might have jumped onto from a bridge or a quai.
That meant one thing. The third person was still there. Somewhere. Because of the quickness of the police response and because gunfire had occurred just outside the service door, the most obvious place for that person to hide was the basement.
Yes, it had been thoroughly checked and secured. But it had been done without dogs. Experience had taught that desperate people can be exceedingly clever or sometimes just plain lucky. Which is why he had let the French police finish their job and then gone back.
At 6:50 he opened an eye, glanced at the clock and groaned. He’d been in bed for four and a half hours and was sure he hadn’t slept two. One day he would get a solid eight. But when that day would come, he had no idea.
He knew people would give him until seven o’clock, then the calls would start. Lebrun, reporting he was on his way back from Lyon and setting a time to meet. Commander Noble and Dr. Richman calling from London.
Then there were two calls due from L.A. One from Detective Hernandez, whom he’d called when he got back to his room at two in the morning because there had been no fax waiting of the Osborn file he’d requested. Hernandez had not been in and no one else knew anything about it.
The other L.A. call would be from the plumber the neighbors had called when McVey’s automatic sprinklers Started going on and off at four-minute intervals around the clock. The plumber was calling back with an estimate of the cost to install an entirely new system to replace the old one McVey had put in himself twenty years earlier With a kit from Sears, the parts to which no longer existed.
Then there was one more call he was waiting for—rather hoping for, the one that had kept him tossing most of the night—the call from Osborn. Again he thought back to the basement. It was bigger than it looked and packed with a zillion cubbyholes. But maybe he’d been wrong, maybe he’d been talking in the dark.
6:52. Eight more minutes, McVey. Just close your eyes, try not to think about anything, let all the muscles and nerves and everything else relax.
And that’s when the phone rang. Grunting, he rolled over and picked up.
“McVey.”
“This is Inspector Barras. Sorry to bother you.”
“It’s all right. What is it?”
“Inspector Lebrun has been shot.”
64
* * *
IT HAD happened in Lyon, at the Gare la Part Dieu shortly after six. Lebrun had just gotten out of a taxi and was entering the train station when a gunman on a motorcycle opened fire with an automatic weapon and then immediately fled the scene. Three others had been shot as well. Two were dead, the third seriously injured.
Lebrun had been hit in the throat and chest and had been taken to the Hospital la Part Dieu. Initial reports were that he was in critical condition but expected to live.
McVey had listened to the details, asked to be kept abreast of the situation and then gotten quickly off the phone. Immediately afterward he’d dialed Ian Noble in London.
Noble had just come in to the office and was having his first tea of the day when he found McVey on the line. Immediately he sensed McVey was being careful with what he said.
At this stage McVey had no idea whom he could trust and whom he couldn’t. Unless the tall man had gone directly from Paris to Lyon after his escape from Vera Monneray’s—which was very unlikely, because he’d know the police would throw an immediate dragnet out for him—it meant that whoever was behind what was going on not only had capable gunmen elsewhere, they were somehow monitoring everything the police did. With the exception of himself, no one knew Lebrun had gone to Lyon, yet he had been tracked there just the same, to the point that they knew precisely what train he was taking back to Paris.
Completely baffled, he had no idea who they were, what they were doing or why. But he had to suppose that if they’d taken out Lebrun when he got too close to their setup at Lyon, they would know he and the Paris detective had been working together on the Merriman situation and since he had not, as yet, been molested, the very least he could expect was a tap on his hotel phone. Accepting that, what he conveyed to Noble was what anyone listening would expect to hear. That Lebrun had been shot and was in Lyon at the Hospital la Part Dieu in grave condition. McVey was going to shower and shave, grab a quick breakfast roll and get to police headquarters as quickly as he could. When he had more news, he’d call back.
In London, Ian Noble had gently set the phone back in its cradle a
nd pressed his fingertips together. McVey had just told him the situation, where Lebrun was, and that he was afraid his phone was tapped and would call him back from a public phone.
Ten minutes later, he picked up his private line.
“There’s a mole of some kind in Interpol, Lyon,” McVey said from a phone booth at a small café a block from his hotel. “It has to do with the Merriman killing. Lebrun went there to see what he could find out. Once they know he’s still alive, they’ll go after him again.”
“I understand.”
“Can you get him to London?”
“I’ll do what I can. . . .”
‘I assume that means ‘yes,’ “ McVey said, hanging up.
Two hours and seventeen minutes later a British Royal Air Force medevac jet landed at Aerodrome Lyon-Bron. As it did, an ambulance carrying a British diplomat who’d suffered a heart attack raced out to the tarmac to meet it.
Fifteen minutes after that, Lebrun was airborne for England.
* * *
At five minutes past seven, a car pulled up in front of Vera Monneray’s apartment building at 18 Quai de Bethune and Philippe, weary and ragged from a long, unsuccessful night of staring at photographs of known criminals, got out. Nodding to the four uniformed policemen standing guard at the front door, he entered the lobby.
“Bonjour, Maurice,” he said to the night man behind the desk he was late to replace, and begged an extra hour to shave and get a little sleep.
Pushing through a door and into the service hallway, he went down a flight of steps to his modest basement apartment at the far end of the building. His key was out and he was almost to the door when he heard a noise behind him and someone call his name. Starting, he whirled around in fear, half expecting to see the tall man standing there with a gun aimed at his heart.
“Monsieur Osborn,” he said in relief as Osborn stepped out from behind a door to a room that housed the building’s electrical meters.
“You should not have left your room. There are police everywhere.” Then he saw Osborn’s hand, bandaged and held like a claw near his waist. “Monsieur—”
“Where’s Vera? She’s not in her apartment. Where is she?” Osborn looked as if he’d barely slept. But more than that, he looked frightened.
“Come inside, s’il vous plaît.”
Quickly Philippe unlocked the door and they entered his small flat.
“The police took her to work. She insisted. I was only going to the toilet and then up to see if you were there. Mademoiselle was equally concerned.”
“I have to talk to her. Do you have a phone?”
“Oui, of course. But the police may be listening. They will trace the call back here.”
Philippe was right, they would. “You call her, then. Tell her that you are very concerned the tall man may find her. Tell her to ask the inspectors guarding her to take her to her grandmother’s house in Calais. Don’t let her argue. Tell her to stay there until . . .”
“Until when?”
“I don’t know—”Osborn stared at him. “Until . . . it’s safe.”
65
* * *
“I’M GOING secure now.” McVey punched a button and a light on the oversize “secure phone” in Lebrun’s private office at police headquarters came on confirming the line was safe from wiretap. “Can you still hear me?”
“Yes,” Noble said from a similar phone in the London Special Branch communications center. “Lebrun arrived about forty minutes ago, courtesy of the RAF. We’ve got him at Westminster Hospital under an assumed name. He’s not in the best shape but the doctors seem to think he’ll make it.”
“Can he talk?”
“Not yet. But he can write or at least scrawl. He’s given us two names. ‘Klass’ and ‘Antoine’—Antoine has a question mark after it.”
Klass was Dr. Hugo Klass, the German fingerprint expert working out of Interpol, Lyon.
“He’s telling us it was Klass who requested the Merriman file from the New York Police Department,” McVey said. “Antoine is Lebrun’s brother, supervisor of internal security at Interpol headquarters,” McVey said, wondering if the question mark after Antoine’s name meant Lebrun was concerned about his brother’s safety or that he might have been involved in the shooting.
“While we’re at it, let me enlighten you about something else,” Noble said. “We’ve got a name to go with our neatly severed head.”
“Say what?” McVey was beginning to think the term good luck had been snatched from his vocabulary.
“Timothy Ashford, a housepainter from Clapham South, which you may or may not know is a working-class district in South London. He lived alone and worked as a day painter from job to job. His only relative is a sister living in Chicago but evidently they didn’t have much to do with each other. He disappeared two years ago next month. It was his landlady who reported it. Came to the authorities when she hadn’t seen him in several weeks and he was behind in his rent. She’d rented his flat but didn’t know what to do with his belongings. He’d got his skull smashed by a billiard cue in a pub fight. It’s our luck he also punched a bobby. Patching him up, they had to put a metal plate in his head; it was a matter of police record.”
“That means you’ve got his fingerprints.”
“You are absolutely correct, Detective McVey. We’ve got his fingerprints. Trouble is, all we’ve got of the rest of him now is his head.”
There was a buzz and McVey heard Noble pick up the line to his office.
“Yes, Elizabeth,” McVey heard him say. There was a pause and then he said, “Thank you,” and came back on the line. “Cadoux is calling from Lyon.”
“Is he on a secure phone?”
“No.”
“Ian,” McVey said quietly. “Before you pick up. Can you trust him? No reservations.”
“Yes,” Noble said.
“Ask him if he’s at headquarters. If he is, find a way to tell him to leave the building and call your private line from a public phone. When you get him, plug me in, make it a three-way call.”
Fifteen minutes later Noble’s private line rang through, and Noble quickly picked up. “Yves, McVey is on the line from Paris. I’m putting him on with us now.”
“Cadoux, it’s McVey. Lebrun is in London, we got him out for his own safety.”
“I presumed as much. Although I must tell you the hospital security people as well as the Lyon police are more than a little upset about how it was done. How is he?”
“He’ll make it.” McVey paused. “Cadoux, listen carefully. You have a mole at headquarters. His name is Doctor Hugo Klass.”
“Klass?” Cadoux was taken aback. “He’s one of our most brilliant scientists. The one who discovered the Albert Merriman fingerprint on the glass shard taken from the Jean Packard murder scene. Why would—?”
“We don’t know.” McVey could see Cadoux, his burly frame squeezed into a public phone booth somewhere in Lyon, twiddling his handlebar mustache, as understandably perplexed as they were. “But what we do know is that he requested the Merriman file from the NYPD, via Interpol, Washington, some fifteen hours before alerting Lebrun that he’d even come up with a print. Twenty-four hours later, Merriman vas dead. And very soon after that so were his girlfriend in Paris, and his wife and her entire family in Marseilles. Somehow Klass must have learned Lebrun had come to Lyon and traced the file request. So he had him shut up.”
“Now it starts to make sense.”
“What does?” Noble asked.
“Lebrun’s brother, Antoine, our supervisor of internal security. He was found shot in the head this morning. It appears to have been suicide, but maybe not.”
McVey cursed to himself. Lebrun was in bad enough shape himself without having to be told his brother was dead. “Cadoux, I doubt very much you’re looking at a suicide. Something’s going on that involved Merriman but reached a lot further. And whatever it is, whoever’s behind it, is now killing cops.”
“Yves, I think it’s b
est you take Klass into custody as soon as possible,” Noble said, directly.
“Excuse me, Ian. I don’t think so.” McVey was standing up, pacing behind Lebrun’s desk. “Cadoux, find somebody you can trust. Maybe even from some other city. Klass doesn’t suspect we’re on to him. Get a wire on his private line at home and put a tail on him. See where he goes, who he talks to. Then work backward from Antoine’s death. See if you can follow the line from the time he died until the time Sunday he met Lebrun. We don’t know which side he was on. Finally, and very judiciously, find out who Klass got at Interpol, Washington, to make the Merriman file request to the New York police.”
“I understand,” Cadoux said.
“Captain—watch yourself,” McVey warned.
“I shall. Merci. Au revoir.”
There was a click as Cadoux hung up.
“Who is this Doctor Klass?” Noble asked.
“Beyond who he appears? I don’t know.”
“I’m going to contact M16. Perhaps we can find out a little about Doctor Klass ourselves.”
Noble clicked off and McVey stared at the wall, angered that he couldn’t get some definitive grasp on what was going on. It was as if he’d suddenly become professionally impotent. Immediately there was a knock at the door and a uniformed policeman stuck his head in to tell him in English that the concierge from his hotel was on the phone. “Line two.”
“Merci.” The man left and McVey turned from the “secure phone” to lift the receiver on Lebrun’s desk phone. “This is McVey.”
“Dave Gifford, Hotel Vieux,” a male voice said.
As he’d left his hotel earlier McVey had slipped the concierge, an expatriate American, a two-hundred-franc tip and asked to be informed of any calls or transmissions that came for him.