The brown ox-eyes lifted to a ceiling sculpted in plaster. Doves and whorls, harps and cupids, a naked Venus with snakes in her hair or was it Medusa?
Moistening, the eyes asked God, why must You do this to me? Then they were lowered to Boemelburg, and he lied. ‘Yes. Yes, of course, Walter. Joanne first before France. You have my word on it.’
‘Gut! Because if you don’t inform on the Banditen in this matter and all others, I will personally make you eat those words, even though that same Resistance for the most part still hates your guts and still has you on their list!’
Ah no, their hit-list … There were cells and cells. Each was very small and seldom connected to more than one or two others at the most. Gabrielle would not be able to contact more than a few people to tell them the accusation of collaborator was totally false!
Boemelburg’s rapid switch to deutsch hadn’t been without its cruel effect. The Sturmbannführer was only too aware of her interest in this Sûreté. He would know only too well that Gestapo Central had bugged her dressing-room and probably her flat. But while they might have their suspicions, they were apparently content simply to watch her for the moment as they did so many others.
‘Now take a look at the photographs on that table, Louis. Records have spent the night digging them out for me as a favour to you for old times’ sake.’
A favour. How nice …
In black and white, and corpse by corpse, were the grisly bodies of nearly forty women. Some were so badly decomposed only teeth and bones and shreds of flesh and clothing remained. Others were quite fresh. Some had been shot, others strangled, still others bound and gagged then knifed or smothered. Not all were naked—indeed, most were clothed or partially clothed and in only six were the dresses rucked up, the underwear and stockings yanked down, the blouses and brassières ripped open or otherwise dishevelled.
Long hair, short hair, curly and straight—all was spilled over muddy ground, wet grass, concrete, carpeting or floated among tendrils of weeds. Arms and legs slackly sprawled, heads that were crooked at odd angles, eyes that were open in some cases and blindfolded in others or simply closed.
No sign of Joanne as yet … None. ‘Are … are they all from after the Defeat?’ he managed. Could Talbotte be shirking his duties as préfet so much?
‘They bracket the Conquest, Louis. Most are from afterwards but it’s for you to decide exactly how long this affair has been going on. Ah, it’s about time, dummkopf!’ he shouted at Hermann.
Beneath each photograph on the table was the respective dossier. Some were barely a page or two, others quite thick. It was Kohler who said, ‘Most of these can be discarded, Sturmbannführer. We’re looking for potential mannequins of the ages of eighteen to twenty-two.’
‘Then look. Spread out the ones you have from the house of Monsieur Vergès, and the next time you think to slap a verboten notice on a door whose lock you have smashed, remember to ask my permission.’
‘We were in a hurry.’
‘Don’t backtalk your superior officer! Good Gott im Himmel, have you not had enough lessons for one lifetime?’
It was a sore point and nothing more needed to be said. Grumpily Boemelburg spread single photos of each of the fourteen girls out in a row below the others. Then the three of them began rapidly to search for the corresponding photographs or to dig into the files. From time to time there was a grunt, a, ‘Ah, there she is,’ or, ‘No, it can’t be this one.’
Eight of the fourteen girls were accounted for. All were naked. Though some had been left lying face up, others were face down. All had had their breasts removed but these were absent from the scene and had not, apparently, been recovered.
Four were still bound and gagged and had been butchered on the spot, their clothes scattered about the rain-soaked trampled grass of an abandoned field or vacant lot.
Renée Marteau had not been the first to die. At least three others had come before her—one as early as 7 October 1940 and missing since 15 August—fifty-three days and nights of terror.
A gap had then occurred until 21 December 1940.
‘Then 3 March 1941, Louis,’ said Hermann, ‘and then another gap and Renée on 15 August 1941.’
‘The day that one went missing, Hermann, but a year later …?’
‘Some kind of anniversary?’ asked Kohler.
‘Perhaps, but then … Ah, Walter, Walter, even if there is no connection to the robbery, is not the case of these girls and that of Joanne sufficient?’
Boemelburg reminded him of the robbery’s priority.
‘Of course. How stupid of me to have forgotten.’
Kohler felt he had best say something before Louis hanged himself. ‘It looks like the kidnappings began after the fall of France.’
Not the conquest? Was Hermann trying to be kind? wondered St-Cyr, alarmed.
‘Point is, did their murderer figure he could get away with it now?’ asked Hermann with all that such a question implied about the Occupation. Giselle had suggested it.
‘Or did he feel such women, and what they stood for, had betrayed France in her hour of greatest need and sought to punish them?’ asked Boemelburg. There had been a legacy of bitterness after the Defeat of June 1940, the accusations of cowardice all too common. ‘There has to be a rationale, Louis. Violent hatred such as this must have its roots in a deep psychosis.’
Walter couldn’t yet know of the son of Monsieur Vergès or of the boy’s fiancée. ‘Have Ballistics come up with anything?’ asked St-Cyr.
There was a nod. ‘A typical terrorist gun, just as Hermann said to Talbotte in that bank. An officer’s gun that wasn’t turned in. A Lebel Model 1873.’
And as common as dust.
‘But was it from the First or the Second War, Walter?’ asked St-Cyr gravely. ‘That is the question, since the gun, as you well know, was used in both.’
‘But not with any of these,’ grunted Boemelburg, indicating the eight of the fourteen victims.
With each of those whose bodies had been found, the hair had been cut off in fistfuls and disposed of elsewhere, with the breasts perhaps.
Four of the bodies had been moved after death, but only Renée Marteau’s corpse been found in water, in the Seine.
Two of the girls had been strangled with silk stockings. An axe had been used with the two whose heads had been removed. A single blow in one case, three blows in the other.
One girl had been smothered by having her face pushed into mud. Another had been forcibly drowned, in a bathtub, perhaps and her body dumped elsewhere.
‘And one was so badly burned with acid, Louis, she must have died in agony,’ said Hermann, ‘though not a drop was spilled on her face.’
Ah nom de Dieu, wondered St-Cyr, what was he to tell Joanne’s parents? Acid … A drooler who hated young women …
‘Louis, I’ve had the dossiers and the photos copied for you as a gesture of our willingness to co-operate in this matter,’ said Boemelburg.
The sad eyes lifted to him. ‘And that of the bank teller, Walter?’
‘That also. He had a wife and two children. Perhaps the wife can tell you something.’
A nod of thanks would suffice. ‘We’ll go first to the warehouse of the mover to see what has happened to the furniture from that house, then we’ll split up so as to get the work over as quickly as possible and cover more ground.’
‘Bon. Keep me informed and remember our little agreement.’ ‘Our agreement. Of course.’
‘What agreement? Louis, you’d better tell me.’
‘Then perhaps you’d best not drive so insanely. After all, it is my car!’
‘Piss off! Don’t evade the issue. Boemelburg swore you to allegiance. Otherwise it was fuck Joanne and get on with the robbery.’
‘Please don’t use such crudities. The girl has a mother and father.’
‘And a grandmother!’ They were shouting.
So Boemelburg had put it to Louis, the poor sap. ‘Hey, mon vieux, if you want it, I
’m going to give you the last word to make you feel better!’ Kohler tramped on the brakes, hit the accelerator and they rocketed up the hill of Montmartre. No traffic … Well, none of consequence. Vélos, vélo-taxis, one miserable horse-drawn carriage, a Wehrmacht lorry and …
‘Ah no!’
Screech!
‘Ice … the roads are icy, Hermann. Please. God has just granted us a small miracle. Let us proceed more cautiously since the boy was not crushed under our wheels and is now weeping in his mother’s arms.’
‘A ball, Louis. Why the hell was a ball rolling out on to the road like that in winter?’
‘The street is narrow. We’re in an older part of the quartier. The people here have to make do. The boy is too little to play elsewhere. The mother …’
Kohler pulled on the handbrake. The car idled beautifully. ‘Hang on a minute. It’s Christmas,’ he said and, getting out, went over to the woman who immediately thought she was going to be arrested.
As St-Cyr watched, the Gestapo’s Bavarian protector dragged out, from God knows where, a handful of sweets.
The woman was so rigid with fear, he had to take off the boy’s hat and leave them in it.
Backing away with the palms of both hands upraised in caution, and looking ridiculous in greatcoat, scarf and fedora, he got back into the car. Breath steaming. Fog on the windscreen.
‘Gimme a fag, Louis.’
‘I haven’t got any, Father Christmas.’
‘A fag, damn it! Light one for me.’
Hermann was shaking.
The cigarette, retrieved from one of the Gestapo’s inner pockets and lighted, began to do its work. At last the giant confessed. ‘I don’t ever want to have killed a child, Louis. I could never live with that on my conscience. Two wars and I swear I haven’t yet. No women either.’
‘Me also. So let us proceed more slowly.’
The office and warehouses of Dallaire and Sons were in the industrial heartland of Saint-Denis just off the rue du Landy and by the railway tracks. Depressingly grimy windows shut out the grey light of day. The stench of soot and sulphur dioxide was in the air, stares from workmen down the way who were loading sacks of coal into railway trucks …
Bound for the Reich no doubt, but where the hell had they found them? wondered Kohler.
‘Are Dallaire and Sons on holiday, Hermann?’
‘Pardon?’
St-Cyr indicated the place. A front office in one of twin warehouses. No sign of the gazogènes.
‘Maybe they’re out on a job?’
‘Perhaps, but then … Ah merde, Hermann, unless I’m mistaken, they’re not here.’
The warehouses were empty. There was rubbish—when one had cleared the window glass sufficiendy to peer inside, the litter became all too apparent.
‘Empty since the Defeat, Louis. They probably left for the south during the exodus and simply didn’t bother to come back.’
Must God do this to them? ‘Now what?’
‘Someone with contacts enough to borrow a couple of lorries, Louis. Someone smart enough to have known or taken the time to find this place was empty and then to have used the name.’
‘Which will now have been removed from the lorries.’
‘Did that little maid tell you the truth?’
There was that shrug Kohler knew so well but then, ‘She had no reason to lie about this.’
‘Yet she didn’t tell you everything.’
‘No, but then did that mouchard you beat up tell you everything?’
‘Péguy? He can’t have known anything about the house. We dealt only with the robbery.’
‘Then perhaps this is the link we’re looking for? The name of a firm that is no longer here but which would cause no suspicion if its lorries were seen by the neighbours.’
‘I was hoping we would find the negatives. More photos— other things than we’re permitted to see in the prints they left us. Shadows, an arm, a leg—the woman who helped out’
‘But why empty the house, Hermann? Oh, bien sûr there may well have been thoughts of their leaving fingerprints we would find, but all the furniture? And three days later? It doesn’t make sense. Even if interrupted, as obviously they were, why clean the place out like that?’
‘Maybe the stuff was simply stolen.’
‘By someone else? Is this what you’re thinking?’
‘Or by the kidnappers who’d become used to having such nice things around them, or simply moved by the drooler, the owner’s son.’
The drooler … ah, merde … ‘We never thought to check the photos, Hermann, but for myself, I don’t think we’ll find any fingerprints other than our own.’
‘Let’s see where the bastards from the robbery dumped the getaway car and its chauffeur.’
It was not far. Just back into Montmartre a little way.
The courtyard of 9 rue des Amiraux was so close to the goods yards, they could hear the constant shunting of locomotives. Various small ateliers gave on to it. A carver of tombstones, an ironworker who threaded bolts for the railways … All were at it behind closed doors and shutters for it was winter and damned cold.
Only a woman of forty or so, with a thick and tattered black shawl over her shoulders, stared impassively at their entry from a distant doorway.
‘No one will have seen a thing, Hermann. It’s useless to ask and will take much time.’
‘But why this courtyard, Louis? Why not any of the countless others?’
It was a good question for which there were no ready answers, except the nearness of it to the warehouses of Dallaire and Sons, its obscurity and a knowledge of the area. ‘Two men, two very fine suitcases crammed with banknotes which were hastily emptied, then left for someone to steal,’ said St-Cyr.
‘While the chauffeur, bound and gagged, was out cold,’ snorted Kohler.
‘Why didn’t they kill him? A perfect witness?’
‘Maybe they were afraid to, seeing as he was a member of the Occupying Forces.’
‘Then who freed him?’
‘Perhaps the mistress who borrowed the car can tell us, Louis. Perhaps the chauffeur himself. And if not either, then the owner of the car and the guy who’s fucking her, the Sonderführer Franz Ewald Kempf of the Propaganda Staffel.’
‘Have fun. I’d best return to the house of Monsieur Vergès for another look around and a quiet think.’
‘Do you want the photographs with you?’
Good for Hermann. ‘Some of them. Please drive by the house you have so kindly had repaired for me. I’ll collect my briefcase but make the selection elsewhere, I think. Yes, that would be best.’
‘Chez Rudi’s then, for breakfast. Hey, I can smell the coffee and the croissants, and to hell with ration tickets and your principles. The soul needs to be fortified before tackling the ass of the mistress!’
Hermann always had to have the last word. One ought to object. Privation was a national pastime and heroic but … ah, heroes were not always so and the meal would be good. Perhaps a simple thermos could be provided and a few sandwiches? He would leave the details to them.
‘You okay?’ asked Kohler.
‘Yes, I’m okay.’
‘Those photos the Chief laid out for us, they’re not bothering you, are they?’
‘A little.’
‘Hey, we’ll find her. She’s going to be okay. I’ve got a feeling about it, Louis. Joanne’s alive but only because the house had to be emptied in a rush.’
A feeling … How comforting. St-Cyr stared out the side window at the bleakness of what Paris and France had become. A cinematographer at heart and fascinated by the cinema, he could not help but see with the camera’s clear eye the last and final moments of those girls.
He heard them begging for their lives, their frantic screams and saw their pathetic struggles as they tried to escape. It was now nearly ten o’clock. He and Hermann hadn’t been on the case twenty-four hours, yet could he not do more? Had the lack of vitamins numbed his brain?
/> The car had stopped outside his house. ‘A moment, Hermann. I’ll just dash in. Please tell Dédé we’re on urgent business and can’t delay.’
Kohler dug into a pocket as the boy came down the street towards him but found the sweets all gone.
The boy was ashen.
He rolled the window down and managed a grin. ‘Hey, kid, she’s alive. We’re going to get her soon, eh? Unharmed. Not a hair touched.’
Without a word, the boy stood watching him, unyielding in denial until at last Dédé said, ‘You’re lying,’ and turned away.
Coming quickly from the house with his briefcase, St-Cyr caught him by the shoulder. The boy swung on him in tears, in rage, but stopped himself from cursing the only one who could help them.
‘Dédé, listen to me. It’s serious. We’ve had a major setback this morning but are working on it and hope to have something positive very soon.’
The flat was three storeys above the boulevard de Beauséjour, not a stone’s throw from the Bois de Boulogne and the apartment of Louis’s chanteuse, which was just to the north on the boulevard Emile Auger at number 45. A tidy neck of the woods that smelled all too evidently of old money and young inheritors with too much time on their hands.
Gabrielle was an exception.
Kohler finished his cigarette in the car at the side of the road. Becker of Gestapo Central’s internal records hadn’t liked fishing for details on the Sonderführer Kempf. ‘Betrayal of a sacred trust’ and all that shit. Money had had to change hands. Lots of it— 5000 francs to put it blundy.
One could never quite get used to paying for information that ought rightly to have been given freely by one’s own associates and subordinates, but what the hell? It was the Occupation. All the rules had had to be rewritten. Paris was expensive.
He thumbed open his wallet and saw that he had exactly 20 francs left for house money and everything else. Pay-day had been and gone and would not come again until 5 January at the earliest, unless the Führer decided to make it later.
Mademoiselle Denise Celine St. Onge was twenty-seven years of age, a graduate of the Sorbonne with a degree in Ancient History and French Literature, absolutely useless to her should she have to earn a living as a riveter.
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