Spook's Gold by Andrew Wood Read Free Book Online

couple of local ladies who cleaned and made up the rooms. 
    That Pichon had not met Schull struck Marner as implausible.  This hotel would not attract many German officers and Marner doubted that any manager would have passed up the opportunity to tap Schull for extra money in return for an improved grade room or food, or for extra ‘services’ such as prostitutes and alcohol.  These were the primary ways that hotels supplemented the paltry amount that they could legitimately charge. 
    Marner switched to the offensive.  “Okay then, find your wife, you are both coming with me to Avenue Foch.”
    The mention of the infamous address sparked immediate panic from Pichon, whose eyes bulged in alarm, and sent him into another fit of wheezing and gasping, clinging to the door frame for support.  “But.... but why?! I ... I ... have nothing to tell you about this .... we ... I ...”
    “A high ranking German officer has been murdered!” cut in Marner, moving to put his face up close to Pichon’s, whose eyes again flared in fear.  “An officer whose hotel room, yes! – in your hotel Monsieur, whose room has been entered and searched.” He gestured to the disarray of the room with his arm, but Pichon’s eyes remained locked on Marner’s face.  “Presumably by those persons responsible for his murder.  There is a single key to the room, which hangs in your hotel reception and the door has not been forced.  I therefore know that at least one crime has been committed here and I conclude that it was probably with the knowledge or even assistance of someone who works here.”
    Pausing to let his words sink in, Marner dropped his voice to a more menacing tone, “So we are going to Foch and my colleagues there will help you to decide whether or not you really know anything,” and then he strode past the cringing Pichon and away down the corridor. 
    He barely heard the “Wait!” exhaled by the gasping Pichon.  Whilst he had no love for the majority of the Gestapo organisation and its objectives and activities, the assumed membership of it together with the instant recognition and fear that the SS flashes on his uniform engendered was immensely persuasive and valuable in pursuit of what he considered to be his real task – true police work. 
    Pichon motioned Marner to follow him back into Schull’s room and he closed the door, dropping his voice to a whisper that had nothing to do with his breathing difficulties; Pichon of all people knew how thin the walls of his establishment were.  Still wheezing and spluttering, but now focussed and motivated by his fear of Marner, Pichon recounted that they had come to the hotel the previous afternoon, had forced him to hand over the key and to go and make himself absent for ten minutes. 
    “‘They’?  Who do you mean?” demanded Marner. 
    Pichon’s face contorted with anguish, wrenched between his fear of Marner and a visit to the dreaded building on Avenue Foch, and ‘them’. 
    “God-damn...” barked Marner advancing again in the face of Pichon, who buckled and blurted, “Them! La Carlingue!”
    ----
    Leaving the building ten minutes later, Marner reflected on this strange twist, the possible involvement of the Carlingue.  This was the name of an organisation of French nationals who had been set up as auxiliaries to the Gestapo.  They used and abused the freedom derived from their sanctioned pursuit of Jews and others sought by Department IV as a front to pursue their own enrichment and criminal activities.  Many Jews whom they rounded up and subsequently turned over to the Gestapo had already been tortured to give up their wealth and riches.  It was an open secret that their Gestapo handlers were taking a cut, but also assumed that many of the Carlingue’s victims did not survive the torture, or were simply killed in order to hide the true amount that these self-serving opportunists were really raking in. 
    Formed from a diverse group of individuals,