Spook's Gold by Andrew Wood Read Free Book Online Page B

itself. 
    Setting aside this ‘static’, Marner returned to his desk intent on concentrating on what he could do something about – his case.  He had only been there a few minutes when his phone rang.  It was Lemele; she wanted to meet with him to update on what she had discovered.  They agreed to meet at the same café as the previous day. 
    Again he managed to obtain a car, but this time only a Kubelwagen that dealt badly with the potholed streets and slid alarmingly on the damp roads as the driver threw it around the turns.  It had now started to drizzle, with a stiff breeze gusting and driving the sparse rain drops under the canvas roof cover of the car. 
    Lemele was already there when he arrived, sitting at the same table and sheltered from the weather under the awning.  She did not smile and seemed only marginally happier to see him than yesterday, even though it had been her proposal that they meet.  Marner took encouragement from the fact that she at least shook his hand this time.  He ordered a coffee and they sat in silence until it arrived.  This time, ignoring the Parisian etiquette, he immediately turned his chair to face her, although she felt no compunction to do the same.  So whilst she watched the falling raindrops sparkle and dash in the chinks of sunlight breaking through the black thunderclouds overhead, he made a teetering stack from the dirty coffee cups and saucers left on the table, using this childlike amusement as cover to complete his appraisal of her.  Her face had a long aquiline nose, slightly too strong in side-profile but saved by its fine narrowness and that distracting, incredible mouth.  Green eyes that glittered emerald in the light reflecting in them, hair that he had taken for auburn but in natural light was a dark shade of russet, confirmed as natural by her eyebrows.  So a hint of redhead; he should beware of that, he though wryly. 
    The waiter who delivered the coffee removed Marner’s precarious tower of china with a contemptuous “tut” and shake of his head.  His departure was Lemele’s prompt.  Her first news was that she had been replaced immediately that morning, as predicted.  The new inspector, Franck Thioly, had shown little interest in Lemele’s basic report of details and no interest in sharing his own thoughts with her. 
    “So what other cases are you working on?” asked Marner. 
    “The usual.  Reports of missing persons.  Most of which are entirely pointless because we all know why they’ve gone missing and where they’ve gone.”
    Marner met her hostile, challenging gaze straight on for a moment and then looked down to his coffee, not wanting to alienate her, needing to know what she might be able to add to his rather dismal lack of hard information or progress of his own. 
    After a silence in which Lemele clearly felt she had won the point, she continued, “I only really put in the effort to investigate the genuine cases of missing women and children.”
    “Genuine?”
    “Yes.  Those where there is no apparent reason for their disappearance, where the trail isn’t obviously going to end up at Drancy,” she snapped, referring to the internment camp in the northeast suburb of Paris that was being used to hold those who had been rounded up, pending deportation. 
    Marner nodded and looked away again, not really knowing what more to say on this subject.  “So did you have any success in identifying our Frenchman?”
    “Yes.  That’s what I really wanted to tell you about.  I checked with reports of missing persons.  Didier Lemarchand; he was reported missing by his wife to the local commissariat in Sevres.  The description matched so I went to visit his wife at their apartment this afternoon and confirmed the identity from a photo that she showed to me.  She assured me that he had no links or activity to any type of crime or organisation.  Lemarchand was just a baker’s assistant who worked hard and drank little.  He