‘I need a fag and a word.’
Ice-blue and wary above a full and beautifully tapered moustache the Wehrmacht had somehow let him keep, that gaze instantly narrowed. ‘Ach, the first is easy, the second … Well you can see that the place is crawling with blowflies, yourself excluded, of course.’
The cigarette was lit, a welcome drag taken. ‘They’re the very reason I need a word.’
Lying on the seat beside Hermann was a bundle of 5,000-franc notes—a good one hundred of them—two rounds of Brie, some tins of sardines and two bottles of champagne, the Moët et Chandon.
Favouring his moustache, Dillmann wet his lips again and finally said, ‘The horse abattoir. Follow those tobacco trucks. Tell them you’re not about to make an arrest. Just let them leave what they have for me, then tuck the car out of sight, leaving room for my truck and others, and while you’re at it, ask Hartmann, my latest recruit, to close the big doors and give you two packs, no more. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Are you still working with that Frenchman?’
‘Louis? We’re still divvying up the work. I give him the harder tasks.’
‘But he knows you’ve come here? Our little secret has been shared?’
‘He’ll be expecting you not to forget it.’
The Salle Pleyel wasn’t far. Satisfied that he hadn’t been followed, St-Cyr hurried, for that edifice of culture was simply far too visible, an escort service? At 252 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré and art deco in design, the concert hall had been built in 1927 by the Pleyel piano firm. Fire had consumed it but a few months later. Unable to rebuild, it had fallen into the hands of its major creditor, the Banque de Crédit Lyonnaise, a link perhaps. Bank to bank, Hermann would have said, but still …
In the years prior to the defeat, the Pleyel had featured all the greats, including France’s pianist, Alfred Cortot, and yet again here next Saturday evening. The Schumann Concerto in A minor was his speciality and the same as he had performed in Berlin with the Philharmonic last year. Fully eighty percent of the audience here would also be German. An ardent pétainiste and feted by the Groupe Collaboration of wealthy industrialists and bankers, Cortot had been the first French artist to perform in the Reich after the defeat. Later, a subsequent tour had taken him back to Berlin and triumphantly on to Hamburg, Leipzig, Munich, Stuttgart and Frankfurt even though married to a wealthy Jewess eight years his senior. Now, of course, the bombing of such cities had caused him to cancel further concerts there, but music could, apparently, overcome the forbidden, though for a Dutch under-diver to hide here made absolutely no sense.
But neither had her passeur’s hiding behind the marché noir been the usual.
Completely avoiding the concierge’s loge, he quickly went up and up, and then along corridor after corridor behind the concert hall, only to still feel it was far too exposed. Ballet, waltz, tango and the popular now went on all around him in the private studios in spite of the Führer’s ban and that of Vichy, but finally a rippled glass door with Gothic lettering gave the necessary, indicating at least a year or two of existence.
LES AMIES FRANÇAISES
BUREAU D’HOSTESSES, JOUR OU SOIR ET VISITES TRÈS MÉMORABLES
MADEMOISELLE JACQUELINE LEMAIRE
TÉLÉPHONE: CARNOT 33.72
DEUTSCHFREUNDLICH, DEUTSCH SPRECHEN
Soon after the defeat, a number of such establishments had sprung up. Some, like those on the Champs-Élysées, were merely fronts for expensive prostitutes, others but offering German businessmen that tantalizing possibility, but this … That name alone rang far too many bells.
Taking out the little black notebook all detectives should carry, he glanced at what Yvonne Rouget had written of Hector Bolduc’s mistress.
The home address, though different, would overlook the Parc Monceau nearby. Money then, and lots of it, high society, too, and obviously a friend or associate of Madame Nicole Bordeaux, but a delicate matter not just because of the shoes, the dress and under-things that had been delivered here, but because, if approached, Mademoiselle Jacqueline Lemaire would immediately convey that news to Bolduc.
There was nothing for it. Bridges had to be crossed. Retreating to the concierge’s loge next to the artists’ entrance off the rue Daru, he ran a forefinger down the posted list of tenants until one name stood glaringly out to ring bells of its own.
MADEMOISELLE ANNETTE-MÉLANIE VEROCHE
False papers often did such things, allowing their owners to hide behind similar names so that if unexpectedly addressed, there would be no hesitation. But for that girl to be living here still made no sense, especially as the shoes had been made to fit someone else.
Or had they? Had the size simply been a mistake, Madame Bordeaux being a socialite bent on doing something she had dreamed up on impulse, or alternatively, had she thought that girl a possible candidate for Jacqueline Lemaire to groom as an escort?
Behind him a throat was cleared. ‘Chief Inspector, you have caused me to hurry up all those stairs. These old legs, as you well know, don’t relish such a task. What is it you want this time? Another dancer?’
A previous visit last January with Hermann had been completely forgotten. ‘Monsieur Figeard, please overlook the haste. It’s merely another dance studio, as you have mentioned, but only to refresh something that will then allow progress in yet another direction.’
‘The usual, in other words.’
‘Ah, perhaps I had better just run a finger down your list again.’
‘Chief Inspector, surely you know these old ears have been dinned enough by those who occupy the studios?’
From the Auvergne, and a former deliverer of coal until the back and the legs had given out, Armand Figeard was in his mid-seventies yet still wore the black leather cap, dark grey shirt and sweater, black coveralls, boots and apron of the trade, right to the safety pin that had held fast the chest pocket where he had tucked his daily receipts.
Yet if asked if any of the tenants were away, that too would not be safe. ‘I’ll just have another look upstairs.’
‘Not without me, Inspector. Me, I know the law as well as yourself.’
‘But have unfortunately forgotten that it’s not just “Inspector.”’
‘Mademoiselle Veroche is the only one who is away at present. She hasn’t yet returned from Rethel. The mother again, the chest and pneumonia. Me, I sincerely hope it wasn’t a funeral that has delayed her this time.’
‘Had she been back to Rethel before?’
Such an interest could not be good. ‘Early last December, from Tuesday the first until Thursday the tenth, but was certain her dear mother had recovered. Never have I seen one so relieved. She said a week or two more in hospital would do it. The doctors were all very happy with her mother’s progress; Mademoiselle Veroche so pleased we even had a little celebration, just the two of us. Where she got that wine from the Haut-Médoc, I’ll never know. The half of a Château Latour, warm yet full-bodied and as urgent as Rubens’s Portrait of Hélène Fourment or Boucher’s L’Odalisque.’
A concubine, but ah mon Dieu, wine from a region Hector Bolduc had a definite interest in.
‘We had rabbit, too, which she helped to cook since she had fed and cared for it as much as myself. We’ve three, with two females that produce like clockwork, chickens too.’
Yet she hadn’t stayed over in Rethel for Christmas. That city was, of course, about fifty kilometres to the northeast of Reims and had all but been destroyed during the Blitzkrieg, false papers using names from there and similar places since only the tombstones could be checked. ‘And now again, Monsieur Figeard, another visit. When exactly?’
Why was there the need to also pin that down? ‘Last month. She left on Sunday, 19 September, would be about a week, maybe a day or two more. It all depended on her mother’s health.’
Was Figeard so gullible? The SS, the Gestapo and the gest
apistes français wouldn’t have hesitated. ‘A student, you said?’
‘Oui. Of medieval history, the role of the Benedictines, especially the Cistercians.’
She had known of that spring. ‘The two of you actually raise rabbits and chickens on the roof?’
‘And have a little garden. The bell jars now, if there’s the threat of frost. Annette-Mélanie can’t have done anything a person such as yourself would be interested in. She even has a part-time job here as an usherette at the concerts but also does the Friday afternoons and Saturdays at the German bookstore on the rue de Rivoli.’
The Frontbuchhandlung* but this whole thing was simply going far too deep.
‘She speaks German, does she?’
‘Fluently. Otherwise she would not have been offered either position. None of the other usherettes speak it, though some are taking lessons.’
‘And how long has she lived here?’
‘Since June of 1941, the third week. Me, I … I offered to keep an eye on her bicycle so that she wouldn’t have to walk it up to that room of hers where there’s little enough space anyways, and those stairs … It’s a good one, too, a Sparta, but heavy.’
A Dutch bike, and if that wasn’t taking a chance, what was? ‘And kept where?’
‘In the cellars, of course. She’s beyond reproach, Chief Inspector. Me, I have seen her studying by candlelight, if a stub can be found. I once, on taking a little something up to her, teasingly asked if she, like others, had been borrowing them from the Église Saint-Philippe-du-Roule.’
At 154 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.
‘But she shook her head and told me with all earnestness that she had been given them by a subdeacon at the Cathédrale Alexandre Nevesky, a boy no older than herself, the one who mixes the incense, she said, and lights its little fires of charcoal before handing the censers to the priests. She liked, she said, to experience other religions. A good Catholic can have doubts, can’t one?’
Especially since the accent of that second driver who’d been following them this morning had been Russian. ‘Repeated visits, repeated candles?’
‘That I … I wouldn’t know, Chief Inspector.’
‘But assume it’s correct?’
Must he press so hard? ‘Do the young not like to talk to the young, especially these days?’
A centre of the White Russian community and no friend of the Bolsheviks and Stalin, the cathedral was behind the Pleyel and faced on to the rue Daru and its intersection with the rue Pierre-le-Grand. Chez Kornilov, the Russian restaurant that was favoured by many of the Occupier and especially by its black-market dealers and sometimes, too, by the gestapistes français, was just across the street, but … ‘You’re absolutely correct. At times, I tend to question things far too much. She’s obviously of no concern to myself and my partner.’
‘Then you won’t be needing my pass key?’
‘Whatever for? I’ll just walk back through by the concert hall and let myself out that way. My thanks for your patience. It’s always good to refresh old acquaintances.’
Oberfeldwebel Dillmann had better have some answers for Hermann.
* An industrial suburb in la zone to the northwest of Paris.
* The guillotine.
* Renamed the rue Jean Mermoz.
* Now Rue Ernest Renan.
* Now the Paris heliport.
* Pressed duck, a house specialty.
* A panier à salade, a Black Maria.
* Formerly the British bookshop of W. H. Smith.
4
For one who loved horses and had, felt Kohler, used them often both on the farm and in the artillery of that other war, the Vaugirard horse abattoir was far from pleasant. Rotting offal, horses’ hooves, bones, dung and scraps of hide—vestiges of these were everywhere under daylight until the big sliding doors had been closed by Schütze Hartmann.
Now under the faded light, the bloodstains at his feet appeared darker. The gobs and mounds of fat were still a greasy-yellow, but to everything came the constant dripping of leaky taps, while above him, and thrown into shadow as if waiting for some insane SD, SS or Gestapo to string the piano wire, a railing carried large metal hooks. Had there been any stock, each would have taken a horse, stunned, killed or still screaming, to the knives that would have swiftly disembowelled it, the butchers in full-length rubber being constantly showered by blood and offal. That girl, that Anna-Marie Vermeulen, really couldn’t understand what those types could do to her. Under the SD decree of 12 July last year, ‘reinforced’ interrogations had been given the okay but had already been in use by Rudy de Mérode and the other gangs. Oona and Giselle could face the same if Louis and himself weren’t careful, and yet … and yet they still didn’t even know why Kaltenbrunner had sent those two, and Heinrich bloody Ludin would be out there somewhere waiting for him to cough up everything or else!
Mein Gott, but he needed a cigarette. Butchering hadn’t gone on here that long. In 1894, the hog abattoirs, which faced inward from the rue de Dantzig to the west, had been the first, those for cattle in 1897, and finally this one in 1904 and backing onto the rue Brancion. Since the abattoirs were serviced by rail on their southern boundary—the Chemin de Fer de l’Ouest—those two tobacco trucks he had followed had taken the rue de Dantzig north to the rue des Morillons, and then had gone east on it to the entrance. Otherwise there was fencing around the area and only limited foot traffic in and out, but here an ordinary door must lead to the rue Brancion. Directly across from it would be a boucherie chevaline whose golden horse heads advertised the steaks, roasts, sausage, et cetera had the stock not been shipped on the hoof to the Reich. But would that girl know the Vaugirard? Had she hidden in this arrondissement? Waxworks, leather tanning, machinery, pharmaceutics, even the bleach that had given the Quai de Javel its name and every skylight its blackout coat of laundry bluing, dominated the 15th. The Citroën factories were on the Allée des Cygnes in the Seine. Like the 11th and 12th, the Vaugirard was also a warren of narrow streets and passages, low-rental tenements, houses, small garden plots and ateliers and such that would have made it perfect if she could have settled in, especially as it was an area seldom visited by the Occupier unless well armed and in a rush. Even Dillmann would have had to make arrangements with the local BOFs and the pègre.
Pay off the one to pay off the other, and business as usual.
From a farm and fishing family in the old town of Schleswig, Schütze Hartmann couldn’t have been in Paris for more than six or seven months, the Wehrmacht but a few more. Though he had the look of Viking ancestors, the steel-rimmed specs made him appear far from that. Hovering over the four cases of cigarettes that had been dropped off by those tobacco trucks, he was armed with a Schmeisser he might be able to use, though that gave little comfort since ill-experienced trigger fingers could be dangerous.
A teenager whose bad eyesight said a lot about the Führer’s latest recruits, the boy finally opened one of the boxes and asked, ‘Two packets, was it, Herr Detektiv?’
‘Cigarette currency, eh?’ replied Kohler, indicating the loot. ‘And since your pay and that of the average regular is two Reichskassenscheine per day, and equivalent to forty francs, even at one-hundred francs the packet, those four cases hold a fortune.’
This was something he could talk about, felt Hartmann. ‘Ach, ja. Ten to fifteen packets will get you the full night with a really beautiful girl on the Champs-Élysées, but in Pigalle from three to five cigarettes are enough. Most are so desperate, they’ll do it up against a wall, but if you have eight francs for the room in one of those walk-in hotels the French use, no questions are ever asked, no papers demanded, and she’ll do anything you want again and again, and if you give her a few more, you can keep her all night.’
And no wonder the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht were constantly worried about the health not only of the men but especially o
f those street girls. ‘You boys get time off do you?’
‘Only when the Oberfeldwebel feels we need a break. He treats us well, though, and we’re lucky to have him, that’s for sure.’
And Dillmann, being Dillmann, had made certain of their loyalty. ‘How long has he been using this abattoir?’
‘Not long. For a while it was the sheet-iron horse auction, but when this place was temporarily closed, the Oberfeldwebel felt it would be better since it’s out of the way a little more, but with that high-alert at the Versailles entrance, he had to keep the truck there.’
‘But usually those with things they’re bringing into Paris momentarily tuck the trucks out of sight here and wait for him?’
‘Ach, ja. They give us half the load they’re carrying, and we give them the motor oil, grease and gasoline or diesel fuel they need to get home, collect more stuff and come back.’
‘And that truck of Dillmann’s is also loaded with jerry cans of fuel?’
‘For a Detektiv you ask a lot of questions.’
‘Here, have one of these and give us a light.’
‘Shit, they must have forgotten to drop off the matches. Now I’ll catch hell for not having demanded them.’
Since the Tabac National also made those, but fortunately the boy had matches of his own.
‘Why the muscle at that entrance to the city, Inspector?’
‘I was hoping Werner could tell me.’
‘All we know is that they’re looking for a gazo that’s hauling stuff for the schwarzer Markt. We don’t even know when they’ll lift the search. It could be days.’
‘And that’s not good, is it?’
‘People like us already have enough to worry about.’
‘Here, let me give you a little something to take the chill off.’
Opening the Citroën’s trunk, Kohler found the bottle and handed it to Hartmann. ‘That’s the shotgun from the bank van that was robbed. Beautiful, isn’t it? Feel how light it is and well balanced, yet how solid is the forehand’s grip. Be careful. It’s still loaded.’
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