Are you tough enough?

Chapter 2

Le Beuf and Dupont arrive at the Champ de Mars to meet with the German teacher.  She is a mousy flustered little woman, she is hysterical about her missing colleague.  The students are restless, rowdy and unmanageable.  She has difficulty in containing them.  She is clearly inexperienced and she is totally overwhelmed by them.

"You need to take this one,"  Henri says to Natalie.

"Why me?  I am not the empathy type you know"  She glares at him.

"I really cannot deal with this hysterical woman"  He says, looking at her with a serious look in his eye.

"No way, you are the senior detective, you deal with her"  She says with finality.  

While they are arguing on who should interview her, the teacher walks over to them.

"Excuse me?  Are you the police?"  She asks with wide watery eyes.

"Yes, madame, we are,"  Henri says with a soft sigh.

She looks at Henri and ignores Natalie.  "Are you going to find my colleague?  His name is Georg Bahn.  He went missing when we were visiting the Eiffel tower last night.  We decided to bring the students to look at the Eiffel tower all lit up.  And now......he is gone."  She says and starts sobbing.  She throws herself into Henri's arms and presses her face into his jacket.  He looks at Natalie unimpressed.  She is enjoying this way too much.  

"Excuse me madame...umh..."  He says trying to get her to stop and at least tell him her name.  But she just cries out louder.  He tries to push her away, but she just moves closer to him. He looks at Natalie with a panicked look.

She smiles and moves forward.  "Okay, that is enough now, we cannot do anything if you keep on crying and not tell us anything important."  She says in a sturdy voice.

The woman is shocked and looks up at her, wiping her tears.  "My name is Gretha Kehr, I am a geography teacher at a pristine German school in Munich.  My colleague is a history teacher at the same school." She says blowing her nose into her handkerchief. 

"Do you think he just left to do some sight seeing on his own?"  Henri asks.

"No, we had a rule that the one always tells the others where they go.  He would not have broken that rule. I cannot handle all these children alone.  They do not listen to me."  She says starting to cry again.

"Do you want to tell me that it was only the two of you that accompanied the children on this trip?"  Natalie asks in surprise.

"No, we are four teachers, but the others all went in their own direction and left Georg and me with them."  She says looking around.

Natalie walks over to the children and scolds them, they all jump up and fall in line. They then sit down and they are quiet as mice.  She turns and walks back to Gretha.  "You need to be stern with them,"  She says and walks past her.

Gretha looks down and nods her head.  "Let us get back to your missing friend, what do you remember?"  Henri asks, giving Natalie an annoyed look.  Sometimes she can be very tactless.

"Not much out of the ordinary happened.  We were gathered to look at the Eiffel tower as I said and ..... oh yes he left to get us some coffee at the vending machine.  He never came back."  She says bursting out in tears again.

"Where was this vending machine exactly?"  Natalie asks, irritated by this woman.

"I don't know, I did not see where exactly he went."  She says fiddling with her handkerchief.

"Well that is a start, I will go over there and talk to all the coffee vendors"  Natalie says and walks away without waiting for a reply.

"Madame, do you perhaps have a photo of your friend?" Henri asks.

"Yes, I think somewhere on my phone.....oh yes this is him"  She points to a tall grey haired man in a photo between some of the students.

"Thank you, can I have the photo please?"  He asks, pointing to her phone.

"Yes, sure,"  She says, giving the phone to him.  He takes the phone and Bluetooth the photo to his phone and sends a copy to Natalie.

"Merci"  He says and hands her back her phone.

She gives him a nervous smile and straightens her glasses.  "Please find him,"  She whispers.

"Madame Kehr, please return to your hotel, we will be in touch.  I am sure he just got lost somewhere and will find his way back to the hotel soon.  But nevertheless we will be searching for him."  Henri says with a slight nod of his head and leaves.

Gretha turns away all teary.  She should never have come on this trip.  She was very nervous to do so from the start.  But they convinced her to join the tour. They told her that this would be an experience of a lifetime.  At this moment she could have been safe and sound in her lovely apartment surrounded by her six cats.  But instead she has to deal with naughty school children and a missing colleague all in a foreign country.

Henri catches up with Natalie at the first coffee vendor.  "This is hardly a missing person, he has only gone missing since last night.  He probably found a nice café or restaurant and lost track of time and then got lost on his way to the hotel.  Happens all the time. He probably needed a break from the children and from his colleague.  She is something.  What have you found out so far?"  Henri asks Natalie.  

"Nothing yet, this is only the first vendor, you know!  They hadn't seen him."  She snaps at him.  She is clearly annoyed by this whole situation.

"Good job! Now let's move to the next vendor, you can take one and I will take one"  He smiles at her in a way that just annoys her more.  She shoots daggers at him with her eyes. He winks at her.

They split up and start to ask around, they ask random people as well as any vendor they see.  No one saw him.  One lady said she thinks she saw him with the school group but that was it.  After a few hours of inquiry they decide to call it a day.  They decided to rather look into the person himself.  Maybe he had an enemy that followed him to Paris.  Or maybe he knew someone in Paris that wanted to make trouble for him or get rid of him. That is if he is indeed missing.

Natalie did a criminal background check on Georg Bahn.  The check did not show anything suspicious or out of the ordinary.  He is a model citizen and a well respected teacher and deputy headmaster of the school where he is also the history teacher.  As far as the search goes, no one in Paris is connected to him.  He was merely here for the tour. On top of that, this was his first trip to France.  In fact this is his first trip out of Germany.

Henri did a criminal background check on Gretha Kehr.  That only showed that she was a very mundane person.  What he saw of her just confirmed that.  She is scared of her own shadow. It doesn't seem that she is involved in Georg's disappearance.

Nothing in any of the other teachers' or students' lives showed anything suspicious.  They are at a dead end. They started to phone hospitals and morgues to try and find out if he was maybe injured or killed.  But still nothing.

"Well, I must say, I think this guy is either stuck somewhere having the time of his life or drunk and passed out somewhere in an alley."  Natalie says, sitting back in her chair.

"Paris is a big place Natalie, he could be anywhere"  Henri says rubbing his hand over his jaw.

"I am going to start phoning taxi services and see if he perhaps ordered a taxi to take him somewhere"  Natalie says.

After hours of investigating and gathering information, they are still at a dead end. Natalie slams the phone down. "Agh.... another dead end, this guy couldn't have disappeared into thin air.  Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything and nobody took him anywhere.  How is it possible that in a crowded place nobody knows anything?"  She says frustrated.  

"I hate working on missing persons cases.  You don't have any clues to go on!"  She says while getting up and walking over to the coffee machine. "That is why I prefer homicide cases, you have clues and suspects and you definitely knows what happened to the victim, he is dead.  But missing persons are just like trying to find a needle in a haystack in a blackout.....Do you want some coffee?"  She asks Henri.

"No thank you, I think I will go back to the place he was last seen, maybe I can find someone that was not there this morning that perhaps saw something last night.  I will also ask the vendors as well, maybe one of the vendors only comes there in the evening."  He says, while getting up from his chair.