Authors: Rennie Airth
The chief inspector closed his file and sat back.
‘There’s where we stand, sir. All we can do is keep at it. I’ve issued a statement to the press. You’ll see it in the papers tomorrow. It deals with the Wapping shooting only. I’ve not mentioned the two earlier murders, and until we’re sure of the link I intend to leave things that way. Last night’s events should be enough to keep them occupied. I’ll be at my desk tomorrow and I’ll keep you abreast of any new developments.’
‘What about Sunday?’ Bennett looked at his watch. ‘You must have some time off, Angus.’
‘Styles has volunteered to remain on duty here.’ Sinclair rose. I shall be spending the day in Highfield. I want to talk to John Madden again. We’re accumulating a lot of information and it’s a question now of making sense of it. That was always John’s strong point.’
‘Let me know what comes of it.’ The assistant commissioner began to tidy his desk. ‘Oh, by the way – ’he glanced up – ‘I can’t help but notice that you’ve been silent on the subject of the International Police Commission records. Am I to take it this initiative of yours has drawn another blank?’
‘Not at all, sir.’ The chief inspector smiled serenely. He’d been waiting for the question. ‘Constable Poole is still pursuing her task with commendable energy.’
In fact, he had left the young policewoman seemingly prepared to stay at her desk all night and had felt obliged to put a halt to her labours and order her home. In the course of the day she had made three separate expeditions to the record depository in the basement, returning on the first two occasions weighed down with the dusty files clutched in her arms and on the third wheeling a tea trolley, heavily laden, which she’d acquired from the canteen on some pretext.
Apparently unaware of the comments her presence in his office had aroused, she’d treated all she encountered – Sinclair excepted – with a jaunty self-assurance that had brightened the chief inspector’s days, particularly when he had seen it extended to one of a group of elderly constables still on the Yard’s strength, all of them well past retirement age, to whom the war had given the opportunity to cling like barnacles to their jobs. Congregated in a room a short way down the corridor from his own, they were available in theory for whatever duty might be required of them but in reality dwelt in an idleness that was virtually undisturbed, thanks to their uselessness for all but the most trivial of errands.
One of them, PC Mullet, had long since designated himself as Sinclair’s special creature and would bring him his tea and newspapers at the start of the day and respond thereafter, though with reluctance, to any further demands made on his time provided they came from the chief inspector himself. Ordered the previous day to bring a second cup of tea and a plate of biscuits for ‘the WPC’, he had dragged his heels in silent protest, returning only ten minutes later with the desired articles, to be greeted by a brisk ‘Thanks, Alf, but next time no milk’ from the young woman, who had hardly looked up from her files. Pausing only to cast an outraged glance at Sinclair, he had departed down the corridor, boots creaking in indignation.
Lost in pleasurable recollection, Sinclair walked down the same passage now, his own heels echoing on the uncarpeted boards, returning to what he thought would be an empty office, but which proved to be still occupied, despite his instructions to the contrary.
‘Constable!’
Not entirely displeased to find Lily Poole still at her desk, the chief inspector nevertheless felt it was time to remind the young woman that orders were there to be obeyed. He stood in the doorway frowning.
‘I thought I told you to go home.’
‘Sir … ?’
Bleary-eyed from hours of scanning smudged type, her cheek smeared with carbon, she was slow looking up from the open file in front of her.
‘Why are you still here?’
She swallowed. She seemed uncertain how to reply. She glanced down at the folder.
‘Sir, I looked at all the jewel thefts reported, but there was nothing, so I started going through other stuff, other crimes … murders and so on …’ She broke off, gnawing at her lip.
‘Yes … ?’ His tone was encouraging.
‘Well, I think I’ve found something, sir …’
Sinclair stepped through the doorway into her small office.
‘Go on,’ he said in a calm voice.
‘It was a case in France … back in 1937 … before the war.’ She saw that he was paying close attention and began to speak more confidently. ‘A break-in at a house near Paris. There were three people topped. But it was the
way
it happened,
how
they were killed. As soon as I read it I wondered if maybe it was him, our bloke …’
‘In France, you say. It wasn’t in Fontainebleau by any chance?’
She stopped speaking. Her jaw dropped.
‘You know about it, sir?’
By way of reply the chief inspector held out his hand for the file. He opened it and studied the contents in silence. The seconds ticked by. Lily Poole stared at him, her eyes wide.
‘Well I never … !’
Sinclair shook his head in astonishment.
‘I’ll be blowed!’
He looked up. His gaze met Lily’s.
‘Well done, Constable,’ he said. ‘Well done, indeed.’
12
‘F
OR A GIDDY MOMENT
I had visions of the case being resolved at a stroke. I felt like that fighter pilot. I was ready to carry WPC Poole off in triumph on my shoulders and present her to Bennett, wreathed in laurels. But then reason reared its head. It’s only a lead, after all. But do you know, I’ve a sneaking feeling this is our man.’
The chief inspector blew on his fingers. A few seconds before, he and Madden, their gaze drawn upwards by the sound of a low-flying aircraft, had seen a Spitfire speeding by overhead perform a slow victory roll, a manoeuvre greeted by rude hand signals and a round of ironic applause from a group of young officers engaged in a scratch game of football not far from where they were standing in the gardens of Stratton Hall.
‘What she’d spotted, my young Artemis, was an advisory sent out by the commission in 1937 in response to a request from the Paris police. It concerned a triple murder that took place at a house in Fontainebleau, not far from the city. As soon as Poole mentioned the case I remembered it. You probably do, too. It made quite a splash at the time. The owner of the house was a wealthy businessman. He and his wife were both killed, as was their fourteen-year-old daughter.’
Sinclair paused while they negotiated a muddy spot in the yew-lined path. On arriving by train from London earlier that morning he had learned they were all to lunch with Lord Stratton, and it was thanks to Helen that he’d been given this chance to discuss the case with his old colleague. Closeted at that moment with their host, she’d contrived to kill two birds with one stone and use the occasion of their invitation to make an examination of a patient of hers who, now that he was past eighty, had grown increasingly fractious and prone to dismiss any fears she might have for his health as being of little consequence in the eye of eternity. At her suggestion the two men had delayed their arrival at his lordship’s apartments, and Sinclair had used the time to acquaint Madden with the details of the Wapping shooting and to tell him about the disturbing new direction the investigation had taken.
‘They say the devil is in the details, and fortunately Poole took the trouble to go through this rather lengthy message we received from the IPC carefully. The killer broke in just before midnight when most of the household was asleep – he’d cut the telephone line first – but the police were able to piece together what happened from the position of the bodies as they were found afterwards. The businessman – his name was Lagrange – was strangled in his study; he’d been up working late. His wife had gone to bed earlier but she must have been disturbed, since her body was found on the stairs. It seems she spotted the intruder, perhaps as he was leaving the study, because she screamed and he shot her from below, hitting her in the stomach. The noise brought the Lagranges’ daughter out of her room and she, too, was shot, hit in the leg, but able to drag herself a short distance away from the top of the stairs down the passage.’
The chief inspector paused once more. He eyed his companion, who’d been listening in his customary silence, a frown creasing his brow.
‘Now bear in mind that Madame Lagrange’s scream had been heard in the servants’ quarters at the top of the house – the police determined that later – and was followed by two shots which must have roused them all. But did this man panic? Did he flee? Not a bit of it. He walked calmly up the stairs and put a bullet in the back of Madame Lagrange’s head, then did the same to the daughter, who was still trying to drag herself away, as shown by the bloodstains on the carpet.’
The two men had reached the end of the yew alley, where there was a fish pond, and for a few seconds they stood gazing into its weed-choked depths before Sinclair continued.
‘By any measure his behaviour was extraordinary – and the resemblance to what happened at Wapping remarkable. But there’s more. Lagrange wasn’t just strangled; he was garrotted, and according to the police report it was the work of an expert; just what Ransom said about the Desmoulins woman.’
Sinclair stole another glance at his companion.
‘Fourteen years old, you say?’ Madden was still gazing down, but he caught the chief inspector’s nod. ‘Why was the report circulated. What were the French after?’
‘Initially, any indication that this killer might have been active elsewhere. Later, they were more specific. They were after a particular man, one who’d been sought for years all over Europe and had a score of murders attributed to him.’
‘A professional, do you mean?’ Madden stared at him.
‘That’s right. A paid assassin. Highly expert. One you may even have heard of, though he’s never been active in this country. Does the name “Marko” ring a bell with you? That’s with a “k”.’
Madden shook his head.
‘The popular newspapers have written him up once or twice. He was said to be a Serb—’
‘A Serb?’ Madden scowled. ‘But our man’s British. Florrie Desmoulins was positive on that point.’
‘So she was. But that’s not the end of the story. Far from it. Bear with me.’
Sinclair paused for a moment as they turned to walk back the way they had come, waiting until they were pacing side by side again before resuming.
‘Now do you recall that big fraud case we had before war – it was in 1938 – involving a City firm? Astrid Holdings? There was a French bank mixed up in it and the Sûretè sent one of their men over here to help, a detective called Duval. A first-rate man. It turned out he’d also been in charge of the Fontainebleau investigation, and since he spoke good English I heard all about that, in particular what lay behind the crime. According to Duval it was what they call a “règlement de comptes” over there: a settling of accounts. The businessman, Lagrange, had got mixed up with some shady characters in the Paris underworld and let himself be lured into investing in an opium deal. But at the last moment he pulled out of it and threatened to go the police, which was tantamount to signing his own death warrant. One of the principal figures involved in the deal was a Dutch gangster called Hendrik Bok, who had control of the drugs trade in Holland at that time. He was importing opium from the Far East into Europe via Rotterdam and he saw his business threatened, so he sent a killer to Paris to deal with Lagrange. It was the sort of crime the police usually got nowhere with, Duval told me; their sources of information would dry up. But in this instance the “milieu” had felt that the murder of the daughter went beyond what was regarded as permissible, even in that world, and the police were tipped off as to who had done the killing. The wife and daughter weren’t part of the contract, but apparently this man Marko had a reputation for leaving no witnesses behind.
At that point the French police pulled out all the stops. They began pressing the Dutch police to move against Bok and also set out to discover all they could about this mysterious “Serbian”. What they learned was quite extraordinary. I must say I was spellbound listening to Duval.’
The chief inspector shook his head. ‘He pursed his lips in a silent whistle.
‘The trail they followed led back to Belgrade, which is where he first came to notice and where he was thought to have committed several murders in the early Twenties: political assassinations, all of them. You’ll recall the Balkans were a most unstable area then: it was after the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The only name the Yugoslav police were able to provide Paris with was Marko Pilic, but they stressed it was false: the real Pilic had emigrated to America; somehow this man had got hold of his papers. They had no idea who he really was, or where he came from. Now, as it happened, the real Pilic had been a member of the Black Hand in his youth. Remember them – that Serbian secret society that was behind the assassination at Sarajevo? The society was broken up after the war and its leaders executed, but some of the smaller fry escaped and set up in business on their own. Extortion and bank robberies were their staples but they also hired themselves out to do the odd killing, and for a while this man who was calling himself Marko Pilic joined up with them. Eventually the Yugoslav police cornered the gang in Belgrade; there was a gun fight and most of them were killed.’
‘But not Marko, obviously.’
‘No, he escaped. Perhaps he was tipped off. Anyway he disappeared after that – at least as far as the Yugoslavs were concerned – and wasn’t heard of again until he took up with Hendrik Bok. This would have been in the mid-Twenties, at a time when Bok was engaged in a struggle with other gangs for control of the Rotterdam docks. How they got together isn’t known, but soon after Marko was hired, Bok’s enemies began turning up dead, and he let it be known he had a killer working for him who had once been a member of the Black Hand. It was a crude piece of psychology – Bok was obviously bent on creating a climate of fear – but that was when the myth about Marko began. No one ever set eyes on him. He wasn’t part of the gang Bok had about him; he was invisible, appearing only when needed, and almost invariably disposing of his victims by garrotte, which only added to his legend. After all, it’s the true assassin’s weapon, isn’t it? The wire? Silent; bloodless. And it takes a certain kind of man to use it, wouldn’t you say?’