An older brother had inherited the small farm near Wasserburg but, long before the deaths of his parents, Hermann had wanted to become a big-city detective. Now he was no longer sure of this but nothing short of a bullet or the piano-wire garrotte of Gestapo retribution could intervene. He was stuck with it, and with the Occupation, and so made the best of a bad bargain.
He had two women in Paris to warm a bed he seldom used. Giselle, a young and very vibrant hooker from the house of Madame Chabot around the corner on the rue Danton, and Oona, a Dutch alien he sheltered, though everyone in Gestapo circles must know of it.
A man for the times and in his element. A man on holiday. Well, almost.
‘Let me keep the pad, Hermann.’
‘Certainly. Just tell me where the photographer got the chloroform.’
‘And the film.’
Questions, there were always questions.
Patiently they gathered the photographs into a pile for each victim. From time to time they studied them and made terse comments or paused to ease an aching back or knees, but for the most part they were tireless. Two very determined men who knew they had little time in which to find Joanne alive.
All of the girls had good bodies—hell, most of that age were biological honey pots, thought Kohler, and wasn’t it a pity so many of the young men were dead or away in the Reich in POW camps or with the forced labour brigades or hiding out in the woods and hills of France with the maquis, the ‘terrorists’, the fledgeling Resistance? ‘But why the stipulation of chestnut hair and eyes, Louis?’
‘Such specifics demand a rationale.’
‘A sister, a former lover, a mistress or hated mother,’ offered the Gestapo.
‘Or nanny.’
‘Right back to the crib, eh?’
‘They’ve all been photographed in exactly the same poses, Hermann.’
‘On or against the same pieces of furniture? Naked and trapped in the same …’ Quickly Kohler sorted through three of the piles, then sat back on his heels and sighed. ‘That corner over there, I think. Behind the armchair and sofa, beside the lamp—squashed in next to the desk and with the vitrine full of porcelain and silver directly behind them so that the light reflected off the curvature of the glass for special effects. Ah merde, Louis, with what are we dealing?’
Each of the girls had retreated in shock to cower in that same corner, dismayed and in tears, with a breast clasped hard or the base of the throat and, in two of the photos, the other hand tightly gripping the crotch.
St-Cyr tried to clear his throat, but still a catch remained. ‘Surely someone bent on humiliating a succession of young women would have been distracted sufficiendy by fear of discovery and would not have chosen the same settings for all fourteen girls?’
Yet when the photos had been spread out in broad arcs across the living-room floor, they realized that, indeed, each girl had been caught in almost exactly the same poses and settings. On the chaise-longue and looking up into the camera, most with doubt and fear, one self-consciously smiling, for she had got the message and had thought perhaps that by offering the use of her body she could escape. Poor thing.
‘They were all photographed in a prearranged sequence, Louis. First the clothes and the modelling, the girls modestly getting undressed and dressed behind a screen.’ Kohler tapped a photo. ‘Then, having got used to the camera, a few shots in evening gowns on the staircase with the chandelier’s glimmer in the eyes and diamonds around the neck and wrists—are they really diamonds?’
‘Perhaps, but then …’
‘Paste perhaps. So, okay, it’s something to think about, seeing as there’s gold or silver jewellery elsewhere—it is gold or silver, isn’t it? Hey, it looks like it.’
‘Then a few more shots in the bedrooms, Hermann, and on up the stairs to the attic but never were any photos taken in the rooms up there. Never.’
‘But into the main bathroom and finally, the insistence that it would really be best if a shoulder was bared or a bit of thigh.’
‘Still no gun and no threats,’ muttered St-Cyr. ‘But to ease the minds of nervous young ladies whose stations in life might not have matched this place, there would have to have been more than just words of reassurance. The presence of another woman perhaps?’
A man and a woman, and a kid from Belleville … ‘Good. Yes, that’s very good, Chief. Having to work with me is toning you up, eh? So, come on, my fine flic from the Sûreté, let your big brother from the Gestapo show you a little something else.’
‘The balcony off the attic?’ mused St-Cyr.
‘Verdammt!’ snorted Kohler. ‘And here I thought I was going to be one up on you.’
From the french windows of what might have been a bedroom or the sitting-room of an attic suite, they looked out into the rapidly fading light across a balcony that ran to a stone balustrade and urns and continuously around the three sides of the quadrangle, servicing every one of the houses and offering a ready means of coming and going.
‘I’ll quiedy ask of the neighbours, Hermann. Nothing so alarming here as your presence, I think. Not just yet.’
‘Then I’ll chase up the robbery details and see if I can find out if the other girls are listed as missing.’
‘Of course, but please don’t alert the préfet. To invade his territory is to stamp on his balls and disturb the city.’
Paris and its environs were Talbotte’s beat. The Sûreté and its Gestapo counterpart in the fight against common crime had the rest of the country to forage, and in any case, their investigation was totally unofficial.
Intuitively Kohler understood that Louis needed to be alone. ‘Take care, mon vieux,’ he said, gripping him by the arm. ‘I’ll drop back in a couple of hours and we’ll go over to Chez Rudi’s for a bite to eat.’
The head was shaken, the battered brown felt trilby pushed a little further back off that broad brow. ‘There’s no time. None, Hermann. Meet me at my place.’
‘The club, I think. Won’t Gabi be back?’
‘Yes, yes, all right, the club. I must pay my respects.’
To a woman who loved him but to a love that had yet to be consummated.
Kohler thought to have the last word but turned away only to call back up the stairwell, ‘Hey, I’m going to slap a verboten notice on the door and leave you a bit of wire to tie it shut. Okay?’
The hand of acknowledgement would automatically be lifted in salute he knew, the pipe and tobacco pouch taken out with feelings of doubt—short on rations again. Ah nom de Dieu, I’d better find him some, swore Kohler inwardly as he got into that big, black, b … e … a … utiful Citroën of Louis’s.
It had been repaired at last, and repainted. No more bullet holes, broken glass and shot-out tyres. So, good. Yes, good.
As the tyres screeched on the rue de Valois and then at the corner of the rue de Beaujolais, St-Cyr followed him with his mind’s eye and grimaced furiously.
Right to the main branch of Crédit Lyonnais over on the rue Quatre Septembre, he grimly followed the sound of the Citroën— there were so few cars on the streets these days, a hush like no other. Then all the way back again to fix a forgotten notice to the door, leave the wire and gather up the photographs to stuff them safely in the boot!
At last St-Cyr was able to pack his pipe and strike a match. Well, strike three of them in succession because they were so terrible but they’d always been that way, war or no war, Occupation or no Occupation. Like taxes, the government made them.
Letting the silent house come to him, he willed away all thoughts but those of Joanne and the other victims and heard in that terrible loneliness their earnest cries for help.
* * *
French banks were a bugger—Kohler was positive of it! They opened and closed at their convenience, took offence when none was intended, and had three hour lunches when they damned well felt like it, even in wartime.
But this one was different. Below stone carvings, in front of bronze plaques, two flics in dark bl
ue kepis and capes stood guard in the snow with iron-cleated boots and black leather truncheons, a bad sign.
Flashing his Gestapo shield and looking grim and determined, he blithely rocketed between them and in through bronze doors too heavy for old ladies to open. Shit! The place was all but empty.
Surrounded by a floor whose sea of mottled grey marble lapped a magnificent staircase of the same and rose in plush red carpeting, he looked up into the frescoed vault above and then slowly brought his gaze down to the mezzanine.
Two superbly sculpted golden Venuses flanked the préfet of Paris, two of his detectives, the suave, bespectacled manager of the main Paris branch of Crédit Lyonnais and an assistant. There was a huge tapestry on the wall behind them, a gift no doubt from the impoverished silk weavers of Lyon in hopes of sales.
For perhaps ten seconds the gathering was overcome by the intruder and speechless, then Talbotte ripped himself away and bellowed, ‘What the fuck do you think you are doing here?’
Ah merde … ‘My chief wants me to look into things,’ sang out Kohler so that his voice would echo too. It was a lie of course.
‘Your chief …? Piss off. You’ve no jurisdiction here. Boemelburg …’
‘Cash is cash, Préfet. The Resistance may have knocked off this little nest egg to buy guns and explosives from naughty boys who shouldn’t sell them.’
‘The terrorists?’ snorted Talbotte, doubling a fist. ‘Don’t be an imbecile, Haupsturmführer. It was a straight gangland snatch and shooting. The coup de grâce at one metre for misbehaviour.’
In other words, pushing the right bell at the wrong time! ‘Done with an eleven millimetre service revolver, Préfet?’ sang out Kohler like a buzzard trying to pick the bones before the lions closed in.
Talbotte shrugged magnanimously. Yielding a little information could not matter. A gram or two of the flesh so as to discover why Kohler had shown up unannounced. A little of the blood.
‘Yes, yes, an eleven millimetre most probably. Ballistics are still working on it.’
‘After four days? Hey, that’s a typical Resistance gun, my friend. I’d better jot that down and let the chief know of it.’
‘Nom de Jésus-Christ, now wait a minute! We are not sure of this.’ Talbotte turned to the others and raked them with a hiss. ‘A moment, you understand? Let me deal with this one personally.’
Clapping his fedora on one of the Venuses and throwing his overcoat over the other, the préfet launched himself down the stairs with both fists at the ready. Blue serge suit and tie and all the rest. Dressed like a banker too.
Of medium height, square and tough … ah Gott im Himmel, yes … the préfet was nearly sixty years of age. There was Basque blood in him somewhere …
The swift, hard dark eyes of a gangster savaged the intruder. The bully, the street bastard and top cock of the dung heap, roared up to the mincemeat from Wasserburg and snorted garlic at him.
‘Why are you and that fart of yours not in Lyon?’
‘Oh that. We wrapped it up in style and slept all the way home on the train. Smooth as silk. We’re raring to go.’
‘So, where is Louis?’
A smile would be best and the offering of a cigarette. ‘Busy.’
‘You shit! I don’t smoke with traitors, Kohler. Traitors!’
The insult echoed. It crashed all around them, shocking Kohler. It referred to a previous case, a lesson he had not quite learned …
‘What happened in Vouvray was justice, Préfet. Justice! If you were anything of a cop and not so fucking corrupt and in bed with the SS and their friends, you’d know all about it.’
This was heresy. The cigarette was still shaking. Clearly Kohler was terrified his confrères might still wish to punish him for far too zealous an attention to ‘justice’, especially when one of their own had been involved.
And just as clearly the Resistance still thought his partner and friend—a known patriot—was a collaborator, ah yes!
Talbotte wagged a reproving finger. ‘You should not have got the Organization Todt to repair Louis’s house, mon fin. This Resistance you speak of may well have planted the little bomb that accidentally killed Jean-Louis’s fornicating wife and child instead of himself but they will come back if I should give the nod, eh? The nod.’
The shit. Louis’s wife had been fooling around behind his back but had decided to come home.
‘The explosion took out all the windows,’ breathed Kohler, ‘to say nothing of smashing up the front of the house and getting his neighbours angry at him for costing them their windows too.’
‘Which you had the Todt replace as well, and at cost to yourself.’
‘So what? It was personal.’
Talbotte lit up and blew smoke through flaring nostrils. Kohler’s French was really very good. ‘So out of charity to the two of you, let us agree to co-operate a little, eh? Let us show the good will among police forces so that your Führer will be pleased.’
The hypocritical bastard! Kohler chanced an uncertain glance up the stairs to the spellbound audience. The préfet’s gaze never left him. Hooded under thick black brows, the eyes waited.
A shrug would have to do. Louis wouldn’t like it but … ah what the hell. ‘So, okay, let’s co-operate. How many held the place up?’
Still the eyes didn’t shift.
‘First you tell me why you are interested in this affair?’
‘My chief …’
Talbotte flicked ash at him. ‘Your chief, as you call him, was just here. The Sturmbannführer Boemelburg is convinced the terrorists had nothing to do with the matter because, Inspector, I have said so and what I say goes.’
‘Bon. So, how many were involved? Three … was it three? One to watch the street, one to hold the gun on the employees and the last to …’
‘I’m still waiting, Inspector. Why have you such an interest in something that can concern you not in the slightest!’
The sparrows on the mezzanine hadn’t moved. The Venuses gazed sublimely down upon the world … ‘All right. A small affair. A girl is missing. She may have seen something.’
‘A girl. So, good. Yes, that is good. Now a little more, I think.’
‘Her name, eh? You first. Were there three men or was there a woman with them?’
‘This girl, perhaps?’ asked the Chief of Police pleasantly enough. ‘Please, is this what you wish to know, Inspector?’
Ah Gott im Himmel, the bastard … ‘Just, was there a woman with the men who robbed this bank?’
Talbotte filled his lungs with smoke and held it in only to release it slowly through the nostrils as a dragon would before eating a peasant and his pig.
‘Then ask someone else but do so in the street.’
The fingers were snapped, the voice thrown back over a shoulder and up the stairs. ‘You and you, accompany the inspector to his car and switch on the ignition for him. If he resists, give the sieve to his brand-new radiator and abort the tyres to remind him that in Paris it’s not only the gangsters who do things properly!’
The birds took wing, drawing their guns as they came down the stairs.
The banker blinked and wiped sweat from a worried brow. Now why was that? wondered Kohler. A banker in trouble after the fact!
Out on the street, he grinned and said, ‘Okay, okay, you win, eh, until we meet again.’
The custodian of the gates to the garden of the Palais Royal couldn’t remember seeing anyone remotely resembling Joanne Labelle. ‘In here, a girl like that?’ he said. ‘Ah no, no, Inspector. I would most certainly be aware of such a one.’
You snob! grimaced St-Cyr, disliking the man intensely for looking down on the citizens of his beloved Belleville but nodding in agreement several times. ‘How stupid of me. A girl like that in a place like this …’ He waved the snapshot Dédé had given him. ‘Other girls perhaps but not such a one as her, especially as there were ten degrees of frost and the garden would have been all but deserted.’
Vincent Girandou
x drew himself up until his dark blue cap with the gold braid and badge of authority all but touched the roof of his tiny kiosk. ‘Inspector, the domestics aren’t appreciated in the garden. Nannies are, of course, and the nurses, the companions of the elderly ladies who live here but …’ He teased a cuff of his dark blue greatcoat with gold braided epaulets and brass buttons down a bit. ‘But if the tenants thought for a moment …’
‘That you were disloyal? Now listen, she was not someone’s mistress. She was …’
The dark horn-rimmed bifocals leapt. ‘I didn’t say anything about mistresses!’
‘Okay, okay, so those are all more classy. Please, I come from Belleville myself, eh? She’s just a girl we are looking for.’
‘Why?’
‘That doesn’t concern you but … Ah but if she’s been murdered, it’s entirely possible we’ll have to summon you to testify.’
‘Murdered … Here? Let me see the snapshot again. Why doesn’t she wear an overcoat and galoshes?’
The photo had been taken in the fall of 1940. ‘Imagine her in a beige double-breasted overcoat with the collar turned up. Give her a golden yellow mohair scarf from Hermès, monsieur, and a cocoa-brown beret. Gloves of brown suede—pre-war of course— and most probably not winter boots but rubbers over shoes with medium heels. Pumps.’
‘Silk stockings?’
The quality of the scarf had done its work. ‘Perhaps. Yes, it’s entirely possible but, like the rest, they would have come from long before this war.’
‘Then the clothes would have been handed down.’
Their eyes met. The detective waited, then said guardedly, ‘Hand-me-downs and recently made over yet again to suit, yes. They were my first wife’s and I gave them to the girl’s mother in the spring of 1934 when that first wife left me because she could no longer stand the nights and days of never knowing if I would return from work alive. She just walked out and left, and one day I came home to find her gone.’
Mannequin Page 2