Spook's Gold (11 page)

The door exploded inwards, shattering one side of it and ripping the door frame from the wall with a screaming and rendering of wood fibres.  Marner, the door and one of the men inside crashed to the floor in a tangle of splintered timber and flailing limbs.  Marner fired his pistol involuntarily as his arm took the jarring impact and then the gun went clattering away into the darkness. The hallway and wrestling figures were briefly illuminated by the flash of the discharge.  He heard Lemele scream and prayed that she had not been in the trajectory of the stray bullet, but he had no time for distraction.  He was up immediately onto his knees on what he assumed was the chest of whichever man had been behind the door.  Marner threw his fists at what he could just make out as the shape of a head on the end of the torso.  Two heavy blows out of three went home and he heard a satisfying grunt of pain, noting, however, that his right shoulder was very sore and limiting somewhat the power of his punches. 

Lemele yelled again and peering into the gloom he could make out two figures wrestling a few metres along the hallway.  Marner lunged to his feet and moved forward but immediately tripped and sprawled on the debris of the felled door.  Instantly he was struck by a heavy blow to his forehead and stars flashed in his vision.  He had been kicked and had seen enough from the shadows to know that it was the figure on the right who had kicked him. 

He heard a crack and the man yelped in pain; evidently Lemele was not entirely helpless and was putting up a spirited resistance.  Nevertheless, the next blow that he heard was heavier and he heard her whimper.  He sucked in air, hauled himself up on his arms and dragged his knees and feet under him into a crouch.  After taking a moment to test his sense of balance in his spinning head, he sprang upward like an animal, bellowing with rage. 

The figure to the left, Lemele, was sliding down the wall as her legs buckled under her.  As Marner reached the man he saw the silver glint of a gun being drawn from a jacket pocket and extended outward to aim.  He grabbed out for the arm, grasping the wrist and pushing it up and away just as a shot was fired.  This one was a big calibre revolver, deafening in the confined space and images of the gaping wounds in Schull’s body flashed in his mind. 

The man jabbed at Marner’s throat with his free hand whilst still trying to work the pistol back around for another shot.  Marner wrenched the hand from his throat, but now each of them had both arms occupied in this wrestling match and they pushed and heaved back and forth, bumping off the walls, Marner nearly tripping when his feet tangled in the legs of the unconscious Lemele. 

Sensing the slight shift of weight of his opponent that signalled the coming knee strike towards his genitals, Marner managed to turn his hip and thigh to absorb the blow, which was numbing nonetheless.  His opponent’s momentary lack of balance afforded Marner the opportunity to lean in closer to deliver his retaliatory head-butt.  It hit directly home and he heard the man roar with pain as his nose cracked, Marner’s own head flaring again with stars at this new shock. 

The man still had not regained his equilibrium after the attempted knee strike and Marner used his side-on position to press home his advantage by kicking his boot forward and under his opponent’s lower legs, pulling hard on the two flailing arms and thus tripping the man forwards and down onto his front.  Marner stepped back and sideways to give the body sufficient space to fall under its own momentum, realising that he would have to release the right arm holding the gun, but counting on the final face-down position to render the man temporarily unable to bring the weapon to bear.  The man was fast and agile, trying to bend and reform his knees to arrest his fall.  Marner had done enough hand-to-hand fighting and wrestling to know that he only needed to keep pulling on the left arm, keep the body coming forwards.  As soon as the man hit the floor, Marner immediately brought his knee down onto the neck to pin the man down.  The right arm flapped out trying to bring the gun up and around the head to orientate it in any direction for a shot, but the movement was impeded by close proximity to the wall.  He loosed off a shot anyway, possibly in rage or frustration, possibly hoping to startle Marner sufficiently that he might back off. 

Unperturbed, Marner pounded his fist three, four times into the lower back which, thanks to Marner’s full weight on his knee in the back of the man’s neck, was relatively still and fully exposed.  The man screamed in pain as the kidney blows hammered home and Marner was bucked up and off as the man curled into a foetal position, but he did at least release the gun to the floor.  Marner quickly scooped it up and slammed the butt down with his maximum force into the side of the man’s skull, the crack sounding almost as loud as the gunshot.  He felt the slight give as the butt went home and knew that his opponent’s skull had caved inwards, confirmed when the writhing, screaming body went instantly silent, still but for a residual twitching. 

Marner did not hear the other man behind him, his ears were still ringing from the blows to his head and the reports of the gunshots in the confined space, but he saw the shifting of a shadow on the floor beside him.  Pivoting on his crouching legs, he turned and fired the gun in one smooth motion, his target silhouetted in the doorway and thus an easy target.  The recoil and Marner’s poor balance meant that he tumbled backwards, but all danger was now over and he rested a moment, gasping lungfuls of air that was rank with the smell of cordite and sweat. 

----

After maybe thirty seconds, Marner hauled himself to his feet, the world lurching along with his stomach, his head pounding and too many aches from all over his body to count.  Possibly he had a concussion, but there was no time to be wasted.  He stepped over the dead body and moved to Lemele, who thankfully was breathing.  Gently he lifted her to her feet, his shoulder protesting under her weight, relatively slight as she was, his head throbbing again at this new surge of blood.  This caused Lemele to stir and revive a little, such that she was able to half stagger under his support.  They negotiated the obstacles of the two bodies and the wreckage of the door and emerged into the courtyard.  He gently lowered Lemele into a sitting position against the wall; she regained a little more consciousness, sufficient to remember what had been happening to her when she had lost it and she began flailing and pummelling blindly at Marner in panic. 

“Relax! Stop! – It’s me, Marner.  They are dead; you’re not in any danger now.”

Lemele stilled and looked around blinking.  She let out a muffled cry as she spotted the head of the man that Marner had shot protruding from the doorway, a puddle of blood expanding under it. 

“Are you hurt?  Wounded?” demanded Marner, who could see a couple of scrapes on one cheek, a large red swelling high on the other that was going to be a very vivid bruise, and a black and bloody welt in her scalp line that must have been from a bullet that grazed her. 

“I’m okay.  Okay.  I am!” this last an assertion more to herself than to him. 

“Good.  I’m going to tidy up here – find my gun and see what identification these two have on them.”

Lemele nodded and Marner moved to search through the pockets of the bodies.  The first, the man in the brown coat who had been shot was Caucasian and late thirties, maybe early forties.  Marner had to take care when searching through the inner pockets to avoid the blood from the chest wound.  Inside the corridor he located his pistol and also Lemele’s bag.  The body in the grey suit revealed nothing in his pockets except a wad of money, which he pocketed – it was becoming a habit, he thought. 

He emerged and found her now standing upright and leaning against the wall, supporting herself with one hand whilst gingerly exploring the swelling on her cheek with the other.  “Does the name ‘Georges Aubert’ mean anything to you?” he asked. 

Lemele shook her head.  Marner gestured to her to come take a look at the body in the doorway.  “According to his identification, he is a sergeant in the Sureté, your own police force.  Are you sure that you don’t recognise the name or his face?”

Lemele studied the dead man’s face again; a look of surprise was fixed in his dead eyes and open mouth, his head neatly framed by the congealing pool of blood.  “No, I don’t know him at all.”

A sudden noise above made him look up and he saw a head duck back inside a window that was then slammed shut.  There was no point in hiding things away now, the police would arrive soon.  “Come on, we need to go,” he insisted and took her arm to lead her away. 

“Wait, no!” she protested, wrenching her wrist from his grip and taking a step backwards for good measure.  “We should call the police and wait for them to arrive.  We’ve done nothing wrong, it’s me who was followed and attacked and it is our duty to report this.”

“Do you really think so?” challenged Marner, only hearing the sarcasm in his voice, only realising that he had advanced a step towards her when she backed away from him with a look of alarm in her eyes.  Deep breath, calm voice, he counselled himself and then he continued in his best tone for frightened old ladies, “At this moment there’s no one that you – we! – can trust.  We have an unsolved homicide and the Carlingue mixed up in it somewhere.  If they are involved, then their tentacles of corruption reach not just into your police force, but the Gestapo too.  These are people who are not afraid of you, or of me.  Your own colleagues will not protect you.  He,” pointing at the body of Georges Aubert, “is proof of that.”

Marner saw the fear and realisation creeping into her face.  “So at this moment the only person in this city that you can trust is me, and I trust no one, not even my own colleagues and countrymen.  If we wait for the police and you go into their
protective
custody, then I don’t give a high probability of you being protected at all.”

Lemele pondered on this, looked at her feet, then back up at him and gave a brief nod. 

“Okay, let’s move.” He motioned her towards the archway, but did not attempt this time to take her arm. 

Chapter Twelve

They worked their way through the back streets towards République until they found a horse-drawn taxi to take them to Avenue Foch.  On seeing the state of Lemele and Marner with their bruised faces, Marner’s clothes stained with blood and the right jacket sleeve unstitched from the shoulder with the lining gaping out, the driver was not inclined to accept them.  Marner resolved the driver’s reluctance by thrusting his identity card into the man’s face and ordering him to take them to Foch. 

On arrival there, Marner marched directly to his office with Lemele in tow, brushing past the confused guards and their request for identification from Lemele, ignoring the looks from other officers.  Once inside his office he threw his uniform, returned earlier by his driver, from the spare chair onto the floor and bade Lemele to be seated.  He made three rapid calls, one for a medical orderly, the second for water and sandwiches, the third to the guard room. 

Amazingly, Boris was still at work at this hour and came into Marner’s office just as he was hanging up on the last call.  “What the f. . . .” spluttered Boris in amazement at the sight of  Marner and the condition that he was in, but managing to strangle his outburst on seeing Lemele sitting there.  Boris alternated his astonished gaze from one to the other, each time taking in yet another bump, bruise, scratch or rent to clothing.  Finally he settled for his usual approach: comedy.  “Did you two have a falling out?”

When it became obvious that Marner, who stood staring out of the window trying to calm his mind, was not going to dignify Boris’s absurd question with a response, it was left to Lemele to reply.  “No, I am Inspector Lemele of the French police.  Herr Marner and I are cooperating on an investigation.”

“Well, whichever, I’d say that you came out of it better than Dieter.  But what is that on your scalp?” he enquired as he leaned over to peer up close, more for theatrical effect than need.  “It looks like a bullet wound!”

Lemele nodded. 

“So who shot you?”

“Well, I guess you could say that he did,” responded Lemele, pointing sheepishly at Marner, who now turned around. 

Boris doubled over with laughter, holding his sides, and it was a full minute before he was capable of wiping the tears from his cheeks.  “Oh wow, oh my,” and he kept breaking into laughter every time he tried to form words.  Marner stepped forward to cut in, but Boris straightened and calmed a little, shushing Marner’s protests with his hands so as to give himself a final chance to deliver his punch line.  “I’d sure hate to be around when you two stop cooperating,” and with this he set to roaring with laughter again. 

“Boris, what the f. . . .” Marner stopped, continued more slowly and calmly, “Boris, what the
hell
are you doing in the office this late anyway?  If you have nothing to contribute to this situation, please...go away.  Now!”

Boris managed to calm down and adopted a more serious, business-like attitude.  “I’m waiting for you actually.  We have to report to Odewald as soon as possible.  He is in a really foul mood, even by his standards.  He’s waiting in his office and insisting that he wants to see both of us, immediately that you arrive.”

Marner wondered what Odewald wanted.  If it was to do with the incidents and the mounting body count from the last two days, why would Boris also have been summoned?  They were not working on any common cases at the moment, so it couldn’t be that either.  Boris could see Marner’s mind working and confirmed that he too had no idea of why they were being summoned.  “Come on, let’s go,” said Boris, “You know that it is never a good idea to keep Odewald waiting, especially at the end of the day when he is impatient to go out on the town.”

At that moment two guards arrived, summoned by Marner’s call a few minutes earlier, both armed with machine guns.  “You two,” barked Marner, trying for his best ‘fearsome senior officer’ voice, noting with satisfaction that they instantly snapped to attention and stared at a point above his head.  “You will stand guard on this door and permit no one to enter or leave until I, and only I, return and relieve you.  Deviate from my instructions in anyway and I will personally sign your transfer papers to the Russian front.  Is that understood?” he finished with a roar and they both nodded furiously, staring all the harder at the ceiling.