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importantly, her interest.  Shuffling his chair around to face her, the better to engage with her and emphasise his point, he continued, “But how would he be able to use a badly wounded arm to unholster his weapon and shoot? Even if he already had the gun in his hand, I still don’t believe that he would have been able to raise and fire it.  And accurately enough for a shot through the heart don’t forget!”
    She sat silently looking at the trees shuddering in the stiff breeze that had suddenly sprung up with the darkening sky, a rain squall approaching.  “So what do you think happened then?”
    “I can only think of two possibilities.  Either Schull made some super-human effort to fire his pistol and was lucky enough to hit his opponent’s heart, or.... it was someone else who shot the Frenchman.”
    Lemele shook her head and raised her hand.  “Stop.  Stop.  Stop!  I’m confused.  You don’t think that it could have been Schull who shot him, even though the wound that killed him seems to be consistent with the calibre of Schull’s gun.”
    “Exactly!” exclaimed Marner, other café patrons turning to look.  “So my new theory is that there is a third person, and...”
    “...that third person ran away after trying to defend Schull.”
    Marner wagged his finger, “Or that third person staged the whole thing.  Perhaps even shot them both.”
    Turning her head to meet his gaze, she saw that he was serious and shook her head in disbelief.  “Very fanciful.  So how are you going to find your third person?”
    “We’re inspectors! If anyone can find them, we can.”
    “No!  As I’ve already explained to you, patiently and at least once: I’m not the assigned officer and I don’t have authority to work on this, and especially to co....” she hesitated. 
    “Collaborate?” he provided. 
    “I was going to say ‘cooperate’!” she snapped, and Marner clearly got the message that she was not to be teased. 
    “Well then,” he continued smoothly, “Let us agree on what we can do individually.  You have an unidentified body who is presumably a French national and therefore you have the authority to investigate, at least until tomorrow.  I have the murder of a Kriegsmarine officer that I have to solve.  The two are linked and we can only benefit from cooperation. ”
    Lemele asked warily, reticent, “So what do you suggest?”
    “Simple.  You try to identify our dead Frenchman; find out who he was and what possible motive he could have had for being involved.  Also, you could help by asking around the crime scene, canvassing the residents.  My uniform tends to make people go silent; you will get more information and assistance than I will.  Even if they didn’t see anything, what did they hear: how many shots, how close together, and so forth.”
    Titling her head on one side, Lemele looked out into the street at the people strolling, wishing she was there with them, uninvolved.  Taking advantage of her silence and indecision, Marner continued on, “I will find out what Schull was doing in that vicinity at that time of the morning.  According to the papers that were on his person, he only arrived in Paris a few days ago on a special mission, reason undisclosed to me at the moment.  So we will each pursue our lines of enquiry and I will get back in touch with you in a few days to share what we find.  How does that sound?”
    Still Lemele continued looking around, as if one of the other clients of the café might help with the answer.  Finally she nodded her agreement, not trusting her voice. 
    “Excellent,” beamed Marner.  “I’ll be in contact soon then.”  He followed to rise as she suddenly sprang to her feet and he made to offer his hand to shake for the second time that day.  But she had already turned and he was left with only the view of her striding away down the street. 

Chapter Four
    It was the afternoon of the following day before Marner was finally