Honourable Intentions (21 page)

Then “Mrs Langhorn” stepped into a shop.

The
flics
instinctively bracketed it: one loitered, one went on past. Jay, now right out of his depth, just looked like royalty who’d taken a wrong turning. But O’Gilroy concentrated on the swell, who had kept going and even speeded up. By now, he reckoned, they were only a quarter of a mile and a few twists and turns from the
Café des Deux Chevaliers –
if that was where they were heading.

It lay, he recalled, halfway along a street whose other side was the arches of a railway that looped through the abattoirs a little further east, and as they got closer, O’Gilroy lagged back. He wouldn’t dare go into the place, however he was dressed, and doubly so on an occasion like this. What was the swell
doing?
Certainly not his job of watching “Mrs Langhorn’s” back, since he was running ahead of her.

Sure enough, the swell vanished into the café, but came out again less than a minute later with two tough-looking characters dressed much as himself. That answered O’Gilroy’s question: Jay and the
flics
had been spotted all right, and these were reinforcements. They hardly glanced at O’Gilroy as they
hurried back up the street, but by then he was studying the gutter for cigarette ends.

He resisted the temptation to run after them once they had turned the corner – someone might be watching from the café – and shambled instead. It was obvious they were going back to dissuade “Mrs Langhorn’s” followers, but less obvious why. The
flics
must know about the café, and could raid the place at any time they had their own reinforcements. Was “Mrs Langhorn” heading elsewhere and preferred to do so unaccompanied?

So he decided to stay out of any street barney, much as he liked the tactical idea of taking the café thugs from behind. And as he rounded a corner he saw “Mrs Langhorn” come around the one ahead, pass the three toughs with a brief word, then keep going. O’Gilroy paused, apparently watching them as they waited by the corner, and as “Mrs Langhorn” went right ahead past him towards the Avenue d’Allemagne, he followed.

Behind him, there was a shot. Then a burst of several, from at least two guns. “Mrs Langhorn” didn’t even glance back.

The long trudge on those crumbling pavements had scraped away at Jay’s temper. He was observant and quick-witted, and could have given a good performance as an aimless local ne’er-do-well – but not in the dark suit, topcoat and bowler which had belonged so well in the Ritz. Still, there was nothing he could do about it except plod on, ignoring suspicious and deriding glances, and hating everyone who had got him into this. The big Army revolver in his topcoat pocket – he was a firm believer in the knock-down power of the government .455 bullet – made him feel lopsided and uncomfortable, too.

He had spotted the two
flics
since getting off the Metro and guessed who they were (though who could they think
he
was?), so even apart from the gun, he felt quite safe. Just obvious, pompous, angry and hot. And, when the woman vanished into the shop, quite baffled. There was no other shop window to gaze into, not that he’d have wanted to buy anything for miles around. Or could act as if he might. So he consulted his watch, then took out a piece of paper and pretended to be searching
for an address. When three ruffians came around the corner ahead and confronted him, it was almost a relief. He stepped close to the wall to cover his left side, and smiled pleasantly, feeling suddenly alive and at ease.

The one in the most garish clothes snarled something at him in an incomprehensible patois. Jay said: “
Vous desirez de la monnaie?”
and reached for his pocket. The man pulled out a large Mauser pistol, the twin of the one the man in Stepney had used (could anarchists have done a bulk-purchase deal with the Mauser company?). Jay reacted with exaggerated fright, cowering back a couple of steps and looking aghast.

The
flic
on the other side of the road shouted something and started across. The gunman swung, levelled his aim, and fired. The
flic
staggered. Jay took out his own pistol and shot the gunman twice in the ribs. The impact knocked the man off his feet and sprawled him in the dirty roadway, dead or alive but out of the fight. Then everyone was shouting and more than one firing; Jay crouched against the wall, making himself as small as possible and waiting for a clear shot at someone who looked dangerous.

And suddenly it was over. The other two roughnecks had run, one
flic
was helping the other to the pavement and blowing a whistle furiously, and neighbours were flocking out of doors. Jay went over to the gunman, who was wheezing and trying to sit up but not bleeding too badly, and collected the Mauser.

By then the
flic
had sat his colleague, who had only an arm wound, on a doorstep and took time off from blowing his whistle to start asking questions. Jay gave him a visiting card and offered to surrender his pistols.

The
flic
puzzled out the words “attached to the War Office” and asked: “
L’Intelligence?”

Jay rocked his hand to indicate “you might say something along those lines” and the
flic
nodded. They understand these things so much better in France.

Once they had crossed the Avenue d’Allemagne, the buildings became substantial warehouses and the people more purposeful. Now O’Gilroy was getting suspicious glances not because he
was a stranger but because he might be a pilferer. The world had taken a step up from the streets of La Villette.

Then “Mrs Langhorn” turned left along a broad rectangle of water which O’Gilroy realised must be the
bassin
of La Villette, unloading point for the cargoes of grain and whatnot brought in from the countryside along the canal. Nothing much seemed to be happening, which was normal for any port he had seen, but the
bassin
was jammed with long low barges that seemed very wide to British eyes. The cobbled quayside was lined with warehouses, chandleries, shipwrights, a few stubby cranes and occasional crowded dockers’ cafés.

Carts and a few lorries gave some cover, and O’Gilroy was working his way closer around one when “Mrs Langhorn” vanished. He kept his head bent but his eyes flickered all around, and there was a glimpse of her crossing behind the cabin of a moored barge to the one tied up outboard of it. This had to be the end of the line, unless she proposed to swim, and all he needed now was the name of the barge and he’d call it a day.

But that wasn’t so easy. Apart from all being “barges” to the layman, the craft were very varied: some were just open metal tanks, some had raised hatches, others had tarpaulins stretched over their holds, and their cabins were of all sorts. What they had in common was the obscurity of their names. Perhaps their very individuality made names superfluous – to other bargees. So trying to find the name of one that was mostly hidden by the quayside one, while still looking like a passing tramp, in the end defeated O’Gilroy. He memorised a rough description and was shuffling away when a man ran along the quayside behind him and danced his way across to the outer barge. News of the shooting affray?

So he sat on a bollard almost out of sight for twenty minutes, but nothing more happened.

*           *           *

They had decided to meet at the buffet at the Gare du Nord, which was cosmopolitan and roughly halfway towards
La Villette anyway. Ranklin hadn’t rushed there, but still had to wait through three coffees before seeing a figure looking like the roadside flotsam which had so fascinated him and disgusted his mother when he was a small boy. He nodded at his Inverness cloak, hung on a nearby peg, and O’Gilroy covered his shame with that. It was too small, of course, but its looseness hid a lot.

“Ye’ve heard nothing of young Jay?” O’Gilroy asked (Jay was about his own age, but newer to the Bureau). “Was a bit’ve shooting jest after I saw him last, so mebbe he was in that.”

Ranklin was startled. “The devil he was! He could be hurt.”

“He can take care of hisself. Anyways, was a couple’ve
flics
following her as well, so mebbe they helped out –
un grand au lait, s’il vous plaît – et une fine,”
to a hovering waiter. “How it went was . . .” and he told the tale.

“Hm.” Ranklin wondered whether to roast O’Gilroy for not going to Jay’s help, but decided no: the job had been to follow the woman and he’d done that. If Jay couldn’t look after himself in a Paris street fight, then he had to be expendable. Such conclusions were inseparable from being in command, but that didn’t mean he liked them. He switched thoughts. “So they – whoever they are – could be hiding out on a barge. And the police may not know about it, or at least
they
don’t think they know. But you don’t know what it’s called?”

“I know where it is, and I got a drawing . . .” He produced a crude sketch, although not much cruder than the way those vessels were built anyway. “ ’S’got a green cabin and red handle thing to the rudder and—”

But then Jay came smiling past the crowded early-lunch tables and stood a moment looking down at O’Gilroy. “My loyal colleague. Where were
you
when the fun and games started?”

“Listening. And following ‘Mrs Langhorn’.”

“Oh well.” Jay sat down. “I suppose somebody had to.”

“Are you all right?” Ranklin demanded.

“Never better. I actually shot someone under the very eyes of the police and they said ‘Thank you’. There, I bet that’s never happened to
you.”
He smiled at O’Gilroy. “Interesting thing,
though: they were from the
Sûreté Générale,
not the
Préfecture.
Do I hear the merry clash of competition there?”

“Probably,” Ranklin said, wondering if this was good or bad for their cause. Either force might now act hastily, but that itself should distract them from the Bureau’s doings.

“They took me down to the Quai des Orfèvres,” Jay continued, “and I had to sort-of-explain who I was to excuse following that woman. But mostly, they were wrathy about one of their chaps getting plugged, and I think they’re going to use it as an excuse to do something drastic. But they showed me the door before I found out what. Funny people, rozzers: when you don’t want to be there they hang on to you, but once you start getting interested, they heave you out. Still, I’ve got the name of a chap there who might be useful . . . Should we pool everything we’ve got?”

Ranklin nodded and said: “First off, the woman
isn’t
Mrs Langhorn. I don’t know who, perhaps just an Englishwoman of a certain class living over here and down on her luck. But it more-or-less confirms the gang have the real Mrs Langhorn under control: they wouldn’t send a fake unless they knew the real one wouldn’t turn up. Anyway, I presume this fake went off to report what I said about their conspiracy coming unravelled in London.”

“D’you think it is?” Jay asked.

“It isn’t all going as they planned . . . anyway, O’Gilroy knows where she went.”

So O’Gilroy told about the barge. When he had finished, Jay said: “So that’s as far as we’ve got? Are we any closer to stopping this runaway train you spoke of?”

Ranklin shook his head sombrely. “Not that I can see. But I’d like to know where Dr Gorkin is. I think the La Villette end is being run by the café proprietor, Kaminsky, but I still fancy Gorkin as being the brains behind all this.”

Jay lounged elegantly back in his chair and tapped the table-top with a coffee spoon. Given half a chance, he enjoyed being a boneless dandy. “Are we hypothesising, then, that Gorkin came up with the strategic plan and then relied on the
apaches
from the
Deux Chevaliers
to do the dirty work? And when he was without them in London and things went wrong he rounded up some local thugs, sight unseen, and they turned out to be less competent?”

“Something like that. But sorting that out isn’t our concern. We should he worrying about what Gorkin’s going to do with what he knows now.”

O’Gilroy said: “If we’re really looking for him, there’s the office of
Les Temps Nouveaux,
and an intellectual anarchist café on the left bank near the Boul’ Mich’.”

Ranklin decided: “You two try and trace Gorkin without him knowing. Meanwhile, I promised St Claire I’d report back to him. I shan’t tell him anything, but I don’t want him having any more clever ideas.”

Jay said: “If you can’t stop runaway trains, you can always try blowing them up.”

“We’ve only been in Paris about five hours and already shot one man. Let’s try and leave it at that.” But something Gorkin had said, or he had said to Gorkin, was echoing in his head – only just out of hearing. And it had seemed relevant, in an oblique way . . .

15

St Claire and Harland were waiting in the lobby of the Ritz, showing signs of having been there for some time and with better things to do.

“Sorry if I’m late,” said Ranklin, who didn’t think he was and wasn’t truly sorry anyway, “but one of our chaps got mixed up in a shooting fracas down in La Villette. No, I don’t think we’re in any trouble, we may even have made some friends in the police: they credit our chap with saving one of their lives. And yes, the police were following her as well, from right outside here. You haven’t been terribly secretive about all this, you know.”

St Claire abandoned any lecture he was about to give and said in a subdued voice: “I’m supposed to be over at the Quai d’Orsay approving the arrangement of Their Majesties’ apartments. Perhaps you’d care to come along and tell us what’s been going on as we do that?”

Again, St Claire was treating him as a brother officer. It wasn’t clear that Harland seconded the motion, but it was the Palace in charge. “Fine. Let me go first. I’ll take a taxi and wait round the corner in Rue St Honoré. You stroll out in five minutes and jump in with me.”

St Claire looked puzzled. Harland, quicker on the uptake now, said sourly: “This is for the Captain’s sake, not ours. He assumes that anybody watching the hotel knows us, and he doesn’t want to be associated with us. But only in the criminal mind, I’m sure.”