The Tortured Detective Read online

  Ah, is that a siren I hear? I can hear steps on the stairs, is this help at hand? If it is, thanks, but no thanks, the flip of the coin has been delivered. I called tails and it came up heads, and I enter the unknown unwillingly but having at least been able to divest myself of my final thoughts. Of course, they are just for you, the reader. It is for the rather somber looking detective – another face from my past – standing over me to work it out for himself, and you are as incapable as me of helping him.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Gaston Lafarge looked down at the stunning corpse lying tidily on the sofa and harrumphed several times in what for him was his way of taking in the scene and assessing what lay before his eyes.

  He had been surprised to be called to the crime scene, as he never usually worked such chic areas as this, but his superior, Pierre Moreton, had that tone in his voice that signified he had been a special request for this particular murder.

  Lafarge had survived the cull of the police force when the Germans had marched in, more owing to the fact he was idling his time away in a prisoner of war camp after being swept up in the remorseless march of the Nazis through France.

  Thus he had reclaimed his previous job without too much trouble once he had been part of a release engineered by the Vichy Government in 1941, in exchange for sending several thousand of his compatriots to Germany to help their war effort.

  Eighty POW’s released for several thousand workers, it didn’t take an intelligent man to work out who got the better end of the deal, but Lafarge was just grateful to have a job.

  Still, Lafarge regretted that many of his old colleagues were no longer around. Most appeared to have vanished, probably, he mused, into the open arms of the resistance, who would be delighted to have recruits who already knew how to handle a gun.

  Instead, in their place he had come across several who had been former colleagues and been reinstated after having been drummed out by the previous regime for a range of reasons, from petty crime to more serious offences.

  Their interest in solving crimes, even when given a second chance, was to say the least, minimal. No, they were back doing what they knew best and that was shaking down anyone, from businesses to Jews, who remained and who thought a bribe here or there would ensure their safety. Hah to that, thought Lafarge, once their money runs out so will their insurance.

  Thus with so little enthusiasm and honesty around it was no wonder that he had been called upon to this particular address and asked to solve the murder of Marguerite Suchet, actress by profession, athough for him, that was pushing it somewhat as a job description.

  He had seen several of her films but really the idea she could be the future Arletty was so ludicrous that he had decided to boycott buying ‘Je suis partout’, which was edited by the brilliant homosexual cinema critic Brasillach.

  While Lafarge had for a while put up with Brasillach’s outrageous pro–Nazi and anti–Semitic views for the sake of the film reviews, now that they were losing their bite, he had decided they could afford to do without his subscription. Rumour had it that the Germans financed the publication in any case.

  Anyway, that debate over her being the next Arletty was now over, for he was looking down at a very dead Suchet.

  She was certainly beautiful, and whoever had killed her had taken great care to leave her looking at her best, thoughtful of him or her Lafarge reflected. She lay on the sofa, with her shoes off but tidily placed below her, with one leg hanging off the edge. She had, it looked like, been shot just the once in the chest, below her right breast, but that would be for the pathologist to decide on.

  Lafarge bent down so he could take a closer look to see if there were any markings round her neck, but there were none, even when he lifted the silk scarf that covered it.

  The victim herself had a peaceful look on her face, a slight smile almost on the edge of her lips. Her head was propped against the end of the sofa and her eyes were directed towards the table that was situated at the opposite end of the sofa.

  The table had on it several photographs, a lamp, with oriental design going up the body of it, and an ashtray which had several butts in it.

  Lafarge stroked his clean shaven jaw and walked over to the table, glanced at the photographs and poked around in the ashtray. There were six cigarettes, some with lipstick on them, others of a different brand with no lipstick.

  The murderer? Perhaps thought Lafarge but let’s not be hasty. The rest of the large drawing room was tidy, no signs of a struggle and there were two wine glasses on the mantelpiece. Strange, not on the respective tables by the sofa, he thought, and once again harrumphed and stroked his chin.

  Time for a cigarette, he thought, that will help me think it through as it used to in the old days and in the camp whenever I could scrounge one from the guards. Thinking and smoking at the same time, hmm two things that makes me unique from the morons I work with, he thought sourly.

  That was why in general he preferred to work alone, though, Moreton objected but was more often than not slapped down by his superiors.

  Fortunately they still believed that even though there was a war on, crime still flourished and needed to be solved from time to time. However, the fact that over 50 percent of crime was perpetrated by their own detectives didn’t seem to concern them and those were certainly not the crimes that they wanted solved.

  As for concerns that on his own Lafarge would not be able to handle suspects if they were reluctant to accompany him to the station, they were dispelled by the very size of the man.

  He wasn’t a giant but at six foot and a fit 13stone he had more than enough strength to cope with the nastiest and meanest on the streets. Something told him that whoever was responsible for this crime would not be one of those, more brain than brawn and evidently had at one point strong feelings or still did for the victim.

  Crime of passion? Possibly. Political motive? Possibly too as she was well known for her relationship with the Abwehr officer but she would be the first such victim of the resistance for conducting such a ‘treasonable’ adventure with the enemy.

  As for the crime of passion, well, he would have to talk to the present lover von Dirlinger obviously and then look at her past lovers. Easier for them if they were found guilty of a crime passionnel because even now, and despite the Nazis’ lust for the death penalty, French courts still treated such crimes with a certain sympathy.

  Thankfully we haven’t surrendered everything to them, Lafarge thought. We’re still standing there naked being fucked and laughed at by them but there are every so often moments of sanity.

  “Can we take the corpse now?” asked the medic with a resigned and impatient tone which reminded Lafarge that Suchet’s last deathbed scene had not just had him as the lone spectator. Lafarge grinned at the tired looking medic, who was probably working a 24 hour shift, and nodded his assent.

  “Yes you can take her, not much I can do until I see her naked later,” he replied dryly.

  The medic summoned up somehow a tired laugh and motioned forward his helper, the ambulance driver, who looked as if he could also be dropped off at the morgue, and they lifted her as decorously and gently as they could onto the stretcher and carried her for the last time out of her apartment.

  Lafarge eyed the large bloodstain that marked where she had bled out onto the silk covered sofa, the dark blue cloth on one of the cushions now like the last cry of a sunset as the dark embraced or ate up the red of the sun. Where, though, had she been shot for she had surely not been shot lying down?

  Lafarge walked through the rest of the large apartment, having bagged the cigarette stubs just in case they were relevant, and having also done the same with the glasses to give to the fingerprint boys.

  He had found little else of interest in the well–furnished drawingroom, which had no less than three sofas and six art deco style chairs with beside each one a delightful (if inappropriately named) mahogany shabby nightstand table, for they had only been on the market since 1940.
He grimaced at the several nudes and pastoral scenes – a bit of a culture clash for Lafarge’s taste – that adorned the pale blue wallpapered walls...

  Avenue Foch was so wide that there was little chance that those living opposite would have been able to see anything going on in the apartment and in any case the pink curtains with a rose imprint were drawn.

  The sparsely decorated kitchen – that is in terms of cooking utensils – looked like it hadn’t been used apart from for fetching the ice and a bottle opener, though, in the fridge there was a can or two of foie gras, expensive stuff too and a tin of caviar, largely untouched.

  Two bottles of champagne and a bottle of vodka were the only other inhabitants of the fridge, but reflected the expensive tastes of the victim.

  Lafarge looked around him and seeing that the two uniforms from the neighbourhood were idling outside the front door availed himself of a glass of vodka. He puffed on another cigarette, downed a second glass of vodka, which was indeed high quality stuff, and proceeded to visit the other rooms.

  The bathroom, was in contrast to the kitchen, well stocked with everything a beautiful youngish lady would want but yielded nothing of interest save that her lover liked to put pomade in his hair.

  The huge bedroom, though, was full of intriguing clues. For her clothes were strewn all over the floor, polished wood surface covered by expensive looking rugs, and not in a manner that Lafarge thought had been done by her as she mulled over what to wear, for the attire she had been wearing was more daytime than night time.

  No, this looked like either she, under pressure, or her murderer had rifled through the cupboards that were set against one wall, which was egg white in colour, and her drawers by her dressing table had been thrown onto the floor.

  There was no suitcase on the double bed as if to suggest she had been preparing to pack for a trip, so that too discounted a desperate rummage through her clothes to pick what she required. No, this was definitely a search for something.

  Then he noticed her several jewellery boxes, beautiful Chinese former opium containers, were also open with their contents spread over her dressing table. Difficult to tell if anything had been taken but he would ask her maid, for he imagined she had one given her status, and her lover too for he must have given her some jewels to keep her sweet.

  It was only when he looked up from the jewels that he noticed it, taking a deep breath as he did so. There was blood on the mirror, splashed in several droplets.

  The room was dimly light, hence his tardiness in noticing it. Lafarge got down on his hands and knees to look for any other clue of a struggle or a blood trail that would lead him back to the drawing room. However, apart from some blood on the carpet beneath the dressing table there was no trail.

  He looked too to see if there was any sign of where the bullet had ended up, but again there was none and he surmised it must still be in the victim.

  With a weary sigh he retraced the route back to the drawing room, and perused the photographs on the tables.

  As her final position had been sitting upright staring at the table at the opposite end of the sofa where some photographs stood he had the wit to think that she, and not the murderer, had made the effort even in her weakened state to pull herself up so she could perhaps give a clue as to the identity of the killer.

  Of course that was a long shot but Lafarge was willing to embrace any scenario if it could take him a step further down the line. He studied the photos, there was one of her with Otto Abetz, his wife, a couple he didn’t recognize and another man.

  There was one taken in the country with an elderly couple and there was one of her with a man he did recognize the celebrated lawyer Pierre–Yves de Chastelain.

  He and Lafarge had crossed swords on more than one occasion before the war.

  De Chastelain had this fault of some aristocrats that they felt guilty for their being born better off than most and the advantages that came with it like schooling, name, title and of course money.

  Thus he had taken to defending those accused by the State and its apparatus, the police for example, of crimes. No matter the severity of the crime or the wealth of evidence assembled against the suspect, you could count on de Chastelain to be up for a fight, to allege brutality or that his client had been fitted up for the murder, robbery or rape.

  Time and time again Lafarge, who rarely if ever bent the rules, had faced him in court and done his utmost to keep his temper as the advocate sought to needle him and to try and expose any weakness in his evidence.

  He liked to think that it had never been personal between them, that he was just one in a long line of police officers who had been targeted by this bleeding heart liberal aristocrat. However, because he had got the better of de Chastelain on several occasions he sensed an increasing antagonism from him.

  None more so than in a serial rape case where the defendant Jean Cartignon, a seemingly respectable 35–year–old accountant, had alleged that Lafarge had tried beating a confession out of him and when that failed had slept with one of the victims so as to coerce her into testifying that the guilty man was the man in the dock.

  All of it was sheer nonsense of course, although a bit of physical encouragement was not unusual and was generally permitted so long as the object of the attention didn’t end up in hospital.

  That he had slept with one of the victims was just risible. He liked women every bit as much as any fellow did but the thought that he was so desperate or so depraved as to strong arm a rape victim into bed was downright slander.

  Needless to say de Chastelain had made good use of this in court playing to the gallery, and while the judge did not appreciate such theatrics, the spectators had, as had the press. With de Chastelain having drawn out his cross examination of Lafarge to the end of the day it allowed the press to feed off it.

  ‘Defendant’s lawyer puts dubious police methods under spotlight’ read the headline in the right wing leaning ‘Le Figaro’.

  The left leaning L’Humanité – which had made so much out of the Dreyfus scandal at the turn of the century – reveled in the establishment’s discomfit running a banner headline ‘Rape case defendant’s lawyer puts police on trial’.

  Another a trashy far–right journal, normally a defender of the police, used it for its own political ends against the government at the time to say in an editorial: ‘This disgraceful display of investigative ardour is reflective of the malaise at the heart of the Third Republic and is yet another reason why a full scale revolution is needed to infuse France with National Socialist principles and laws,’ it trumpeted to no avail at the time.

  De Chastelain, though, lost the case, for the other victims had held steady under examination whilst the woman accused of sleeping with Lafarge had not been permitted to testify.

  That itself left Lafarge bitter against the lawyer, for he felt as if he too had emerged guilty from the case and now all three parties were reunited again several years later. Although Marguerite would not be able to have her day in court again, this time through no fault of her own.

  Lafarge smiled grimly, pocketed the photos of the group out celebrating plus the one of de Chastelain and Marguerite, took a last sweep of the apartment, a final slug of the excellent vodka and bid a gruff goodnight to the two gendarmes positioned either side of the front door.

  The thrill he had had of being handed his first murder case since returning from the camp had quickly died away. Instead it had been replaced by a deep anxiety that he was being set up and he would have to tread very carefully if he were not to end up in the same state as Marguerite.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Lafarge returned to Quai des Orfèvres, the solemn grey stone building which housed his department the Brigade Criminelle, and which adjoined the Palais de Justice where the major cases were heard.

  For those who faced the possibility of the guillotine it was rather appropriate, he mused, that the building also housed the Conciergerie where Marie Antoinette among others had await
ed the arrival of the tumbrel and their final journey.

  Lafarge, though, had many other thoughts running through his mind, such as who had arranged for him to be the detective to handle the Suchet case, for unless the person was completely gaga or naïve they must have been aware of his connection to her, albeit events that had taken place seven years ago.

  Like with her murder, he could envisage several different possibilities for his being called to the scene.

  He tried to dismiss them from his mind as he settled down at his desk and started typing out his initial thoughts and concrete facts, of which there were not many, while awaiting the call from the pathologist to summon him for the autopsy.

  On another piece of paper he jotted down in his elegant clear handwriting names of people he would wish to talk to.

  The maid, whose name Mathilde Langlois had been furnished to him by one of the gendarmes who had done a canvas of the apartment block. The neighbours would have to be spoken to at greater length, though all professed ignorance at either hearing anything or having made the call alerting the police to a disturbance, as would the German lover of course and de Chastelain.

  De Chastelain, though, would be a bit problematic for he had disappeared suddenly a few nights back, for reasons that were not altogether clear or at least whatever they were had not filtered down to Lafarge.

  He had been rather pleased to hear the news but now, his pleasure was lessened by the fact the crusading lawyer was at the very least a person of interest to his case.

  He hoped Moreton could enlighten him about the disappearing act and also aid him in having access to the Abwehr officer, for the Germans were especially touchy about French detectives interrogating one of their own.