Not thrown from the top of them as first thought. ‘Violent exertion?’ asked St-Cyr.
‘Any such struggle would speed the onset of rigor, making the body almost immediately rigid.’
But this was more. ‘The hands,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Were they so tightly clenched, the only way the fingers could be loosened was to stamp on the fists?’
‘Precisely!’
‘As a result of instantaneous cadaveric spasm?’
One didn’t see this often, but … ‘He was strong and in good shape,’ acknowledged Tremblay. ‘He resisted his attackers. At one point he got away from them but …’
‘Was brought down and hit again, that second time.’
‘The bruising of the buttocks and thighs bear this out, also that of the left shoulder. The scrotum was then grabbed and torn, not crushed. He may well have passed out, though; would have been brought round, dragged up, steadied …’
‘Held by two men, while a third smashed him across the face with the flat of a long-handled shovel, the neck instantly breaking.’
‘A sudden, violent disruption of the nervous system, Jean-Louis, but unlike rigor, the fingers stiffen so much they are far more difficult to open even when compared to the tightly clenched fists of a living person who resists with all their might.’
Had the victim grasped something during the struggle? Had this been why it had been necessary to open the hands, the fingers then removed not so much to hide the victim’s identity as to hide the reason for their opening? ‘Strands of hair?’ St-Cyr heard himself ask. ‘A wristwatch perhaps? Some item that could lead to the identity of his killers?’
It wasn’t a happy thought, they both looking down at the grille of the sewer. ‘There might be a catchment at the bottom of the shaft or a weir to hold back the solids,’ mused Jean-Louis who had, it must be admitted, far more experience with such things. ‘We could,’ he added, ‘order up the sewer workers and wait for them to arrive, or go fishing ourselves to save time and further possible loss.’
‘Idiot, it’ll be freezing. Is it that you would have us toss a coin to see who strips off to take the first plunge? In any case, he must be turned over and moved, and that will help to verify the spasm.’
* * *
Kohler longed for a cigarette. More than ever he felt Louis and he were on quicksand. Too much bad feeling towards them, the two of them being put on the run like that last night.
Austere in the old Cité barracks, the Préfecture de Police was to his right, overlooking place du Parvis Notre-Dame. To the south and directly ahead of him beyond the quai, the Seine was mud-grey in the rain, to the east, the main portal of the Notre-Dame accepted a hurrying, umbrella-bearing flock of sisters. Wounded, the eye of the rose window had been plucked to safety in the autumn of 1939. Now its canvas and timber-framed bandage bagged and sagged with accumulated moisture, causing the gargoyles to cringe.
The Trinité victim, Madame Adrienne Guillaumet, age thirty-two, had been a part-time teacher of German for the Deutsche Institut, and hadn’t the French, its Parisians especially, flocked to learn the language, and wasn’t everything being done to encourage them? But here, too, things were never simple. The Institut had taken over the Hôtel Sagan, the former Polish Chancellory on the rue de Talleyrand and not far from her flat at 131 rue Saint-Dominique, which was in the quartier du Gros-Caillou and just to the west of the Invalides, in a very up-market Left Bank neighbourhood.
The École Militaire was immediately to the south of the Gros-Caillou, the Champ de Mars and Tour Eiffel to the southwest. Money there, too, bien sûr, but the quartier École Militaire was home to retired career officers from that other war and this one too, some of them, and most were nothing more than pompous pains in the ass who would be all too ready to damn an absent fellow officer’s wife if she strayed.
She had taught her evening class at the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, over on the rue Vaucanson in the Third. At just after 9.30 p.m., or close to it, she must have stood in the rain on the rue Conté to hail a vélo-taxi’s little blue light. The college of engineering and manufacturing was popular. Some of those taxis would have been waiting until evening classes were out, but why hadn’t she just run the short distance south to the métro entrance on place Général-Morin? That would have got her home safely.
Though he didn’t want to think it, not with her, not with those kids of hers and a husband locked up in the Reich, it would have to be asked: Had she been on her way to meet someone? She had left the children at home, hadn’t had the cash perhaps to have hired anyone to come in or hadn’t wanted the neighbours to know, yet had had the cash for a taxi.
The passage de la Trinité hadn’t been far, the time perhaps 9.45 or 9.50 p.m. He shuddered at what she had had to go through, couldn’t help but recall other such cases.
When Matron Aurore Aumont of the Hôtel-Dieu found the detective, he was staring bleakly down at the square as many must have done in the old days when dragged there to be anointed with oil before being set afire in the face of God. He looked, she was certain, like a gentilhomme de fortune who had just seen the ashes of his life.
She had been going to tell this gestapiste that there was no soap and little disinfectant, that there had been a 50 percent increase in tuberculosis, wards full of those who had foolishly smoked uncured tobacco, obtained illegally of course, and that appendicitis, ulcers of the stomach and ruptures of the bowel were due entirely to the eating of rutabagas—cattle food! the potatoes having all gone to the Reich. But she couldn’t bring herself to say any of it to this fritz-haired giant with the terrible scar and others far smaller but still far too many to count.
‘Monsieur, you wished to see me?’
‘Has Madame Guillaumet said anything?’
‘Not to us. There may be memory loss simply from hunger, you understand. Like so many these days, it’s the little things first that one forgets, and not just with the rape cases, which are never easy, as I can see you are only too aware.’
As if it mattered deeply to him, he said that he and his French partner handled only common crime. ‘We’re floaters,’ he said, and that they had been brought in especially to deal with this tidal wave of blackout crime and could use all the help she could give. ‘The girl who let the press in?’
‘Noëlle Jourdan.’
‘How could they have gotten to her?’
‘The press, they have their ways. I wouldn’t know, of course.’
‘But might have an idea?’
Was this one on an amphetamine—Benzedrine perhaps? she wondered. He had a nice grin, not unkind and though the accent, it was harsh to sensitive ears, he did speak French and was not like so many others of the Occupier who didn’t even bother to learn a few words. ‘Inspector, is it that you would shut us down at such a time? Those who must have helped them get to Mademoiselle Jourdan have been set the example of her dismissal in disgrace. Now, of course, they tremble that they’ll be next. Is that not enough?’
A wise woman. ‘Tell me about the girl. Her age, address, training—give me as much as possible in the limited time you have to spare.’
‘Nineteen. The mother’s dead. The girl lives alone with her father at 25 place des Vosges. Noëlle was very competent. It struck me hard to have to dismiss such a promising candidate. One invests the time, n’est-ce pas? One cares deeply, rejoices at each step of progress and then …’ She shrugged. ‘The young, they abandon you.’
‘Two thousand francs wasn’t much.’
Enough to buy perhaps three days of food, but he’d seen that too, this one. ‘Inspector, I simply don’t know who paid her, only that when confronted, the girl cried out that she had done her duty. To whom, I ask?’
Her duty … ‘Was she forced into agreeing, do you think?’
‘Did they get to her because they knew they could, is this what you are saying? If it is, the answer must be that I couldn’t possibly know.’
There was absolutely nothing else he could do. To offer mone
y to make sure the woman didn’t kill herself would only insult the matron who, by one of the pins she wore, had been made a widow by the 1914–1918 hostilities as so many had been: 1,390,000 Frenchmen, with another 740,000 left permanently disabled. ‘Take care of her then, madame.’
* * *
The police academy victim’s fingers were stumps. Shreds of skin and splintered bone suggested that in places at least two or even three jabs with the shovel had been necessary; in others, the severing had been immediate.
Anger? wondered St-Cyr. Hatred? Haste? Unfamiliarity with such an action? A new shovel, an old one? These days, obtaining a new one would have been all but impossible. Had the shovel, then, not been used much and therefore not blunt along its cutting edge?
‘As sharp as shovels go,’ conceded Armand Tremblay. ‘There is rust, Jean-Louis. Oxidized flakes of the metal are embedded in the face and will have to be retrieved later, but for now, an old shovel, long-handled, though one not used much and therefore sharp.’
‘A killer who doesn’t throw anything out or sell it?’
‘Or one who has access to such items. Didn’t you say one of your Drouant victims was involved with … ?’
‘Cement. That one couldn’t have done it. He’d have used his fists or a sledgehammer, but with this one a thumb and forefinger would be most useful. Was it the killer who stamped on the hands to open them, or one of his accomplices?’
‘Whoever it was, he didn’t wear rubber boots. Here and here again, there are what appear to be the marks of hobnails.’
Again they both looked questioningly at the sewer. ‘Jean-Louis, I really must insist. Who needs a drowned detective or one that’s on his deathbed from hypothermia?’
‘You sound like Hermann. You worry too much about the wrong things. Haussmann and Eugène Belgrand, his chief engineer, weren’t idiots when they put such things in place.’
A hundred years ago …
‘But is it a lateral for the runoff?’ went on Jean-Louis. ‘Sometimes Belgrand would have a weir installed to hold back the larger solids, which could then be periodically removed by lifting the grille and using a shovel, a long-handled one, too, at that, I must add. At other times a catchment was installed at the bottom of the shaft for exactly the same reason and also, again, to hold objects that might have accidentally been dropped.’
In an age of pocket watches, wrought-iron keys, flintlock pistols and little leather bags of coins. The end of one era, the beginnings of another.
A glance up the stairwell revealed unabated rain. Out on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré there would be nothing but the hush of hurrying bicycles and the click-clack of wooden-soled shoes, the eyes not purposely averted from this scene of horror if the press had indeed brought notice to it, simply gazes that were empty of all feeling.
‘Ours is a funereal city, Armand,’ he said of the Occupation. ‘The sound of laughter is often as rare as that of tears. Instead, there is usually nothing but a numb indifference.’
The area beneath the victim had yielded only the grey granite of the paving stones and iron of the grille. Jean-Louis peeled off coat, jacket, pullover, shirt and undershirt. The thick dark brown hair was pushed out of the way, the bushy moustache tweaked as if he was about to step into the boxing ring.
An iron bar had been obtained to prise the grille open. Lowering it into the sewer, he probed for the bottom and when, perhaps a metre or so below, it was touched, said, ‘Dieu merci, perhaps I’ve been spared the necessity of holding the breath.’
The force of the water was not great but because of the quantity, there was backup and the lateral full. Reaching down with both arms fully extended, the walls could be felt and gently probed, each brick’s outline followed.
‘Ah, mon Dieu, the things one has to do!’ he shouted. ‘If Hermann could see me now, I’d never hear the last of it!’
Up he came again, to catch a breath. ‘We’ll probably have to wait for help,’ he said, his teeth chattering.
There were no fingers, there was no weir, no catchment either, it seemed. Repeated attempts failed to yield anything, thought Tremblay, ready with a towel.
‘It’s not later than Haussmann,’ Jean-Louis was forced to admit after a last dip. ‘It’s definitely not recent. The weir is of cast iron and has rusted through but has held back a little something.’
Like a secretive schoolboy of ten, a frozen fist was opened. Hadn’t Napoléon been the one to say men were ruled best by baubles?
‘Vanity?’ managed Jean-Louis as he rushed to dry off and get dressed. ‘Pride? The joys of possession, eh?’
Not just any award, but the thin red ribbon of the Légion d’honneur.
‘Was it ripped from the lapel of his killer’s overcoat?’ he exhaled. ‘Caught on the barb of a decayed weir.’
The ribbon was more often worn on the lapel of the suit jacket.
‘There’s only one problem, Armand. Well, two, no three,’ he went on. ‘First, of course, it may not have been the killer’s, but if it is, he could have been awarded it for honest reasons, either civilian or military, and therefore his arrest might be difficult, especially these days if he’s a friend of the Occupier.’
‘Or?’
‘You know the answer as well as I do.’
‘It could have been awarded by a friend or associate for services rendered to that friend or an associate of said.’
‘Or associates of both.’
Scandal had also plagued the Légion d’honneur. Hadn’t Daniel Wilson, the playboy son-in-law of Président Jules Grevy caused that one’s downfall only hours after he had been returned to office for a second term in 1885?
Wilson had sold Légion d’honneur medals and ribbons to retire gambling debts and other loans. ‘Yet still we all aspire to it,’ said Jean-Louis with a sigh, ‘and nearly everywhere it’s worn it brings profound respect and a willingness by others to give assistance and even to obey.’
The boulevard du Palais separated the Préfecture from the Palais de Justice. Kohler stood in brief shelter by the main entrance of the latter and under a stone lintel that still carried the carved motto of the Third Republic: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, freedom, equality and brotherhood, but had been bolted over by a white wooden signboard with black Gothic letters that gave Vichy’s and the Maréchal Pétain’s Travail, Famille, Patrie, work, family and homeland.
Two paniers à salade—Black Marias, salad shakers with individual wire cages inside—had pulled in to the kerb. Emptied, girls of all ages tumbled out, raising voices to the rain. Unchained and then linked up again, these ‘submissive’ girls, who probably hadn’t had licences and certainly looked like repeat offenders, were lined up: no hats, all shades of hair now drenched, the dye, mascara, rouge and eye shadow streaming on some, while the open-toed high heels of several were disintegrating. One aged daughter of the night had been pinpricked by cobbler’s tacks that had held the red felt uppers to their white wooden soles. She cursed, gestured, shrilled at the flics, ‘LÉCHE-BOTTES! LÉCHEZ MON CUL, ESPÈCES DE PORCS À LA MANGUE!’ Boot-lickers. Kiss my ass, you worthless pigs. ‘Voilà, mon cul!’ she shrilled and flared her bare bottom at them only to be given a clout she’d remember. The stocking seams she had painted up the backs of her legs had smeared.
Herded by their guardians, they were marched along the rue de Lutèce towards him, convicts already, since under French law a suspect was considered guilty until proven innocent and that could take years. The Police Correctionnelle, the small crimes court, wouldn’t be in session until 2.00 p.m., a long wait. Afterwards they’d be taken to the Petite Roquette over in the Eleventh on the rue de la Roquette, and wasn’t that prison, like all the others, vastly overcrowded? Hadn’t one French citizen in every fifty been deprived of their liberty? In November of last year the courts here and all over France, for the whole country had been fully occupied then, had begun to submit copies of every verdict and sentence to the Gestapo. One never knew, as Louis had said at the Drouant, when somethi
ng useful might turn up, and the Gestapo knew it as well and that even the most incidental thing might lead them to a résistant or network of them or to valuables that should have been declared.
The Police Judiciaire, known colloquially as the quai des Orfèvres—Préfet Talbotte’s criminal investigation department—was in this massive warren of buildings and courtyards. Detectives were on the third floor, those who kept tabs on visiting nationals on the fourth via Staircase D, if one had a mind to find it. The Bicycle Brigade was in an entirely different building, so if one had to track a stolen bike’s owner who had been murdered, one had not just to go from floor to floor, but from building to building. There were almost two million bicycles in the city, the cost of a new one impossible, if one could be found, and weren’t vélo-taxi licences on file over there, too?
Of course they were. And of course the racket in stolen bikes was huge, but first he had to find the owner of a certain dog.
Records was at the far end of one of the courtyards and in under a stone arch that must date from God alone knew when. The notice board at the head of the stone staircase, whose steps were worn, was cluttered. A reward of one hundred thousand francs was being offered for turning in the names and addresses of those engaged in criminal activities, i.e., the Résistance and those who were trying to avoid the forced labour call-up. Hadn’t Louis’s housekeeper two sons in that age bracket? Hadn’t Yvon Courbet, a veteran of that other war, made damned certain his boys would avoid this one and now that much-hated call-up by finding essential jobs for them in a munitions factory?
Posted dead centre of the notices was an open-fold from the IKPK’s** magazine, Internationale Kriminalpolizei. Even the Swiss were decrying the explosion of blackout crime:
The problem is, of course, not nearly so rampant as in Paris where Gestapo Boemelburg, head of Section IV, blames French decadence and immorality. When asked to comment, Herr Boemelburg has declined beyond saying emphatically that the problem has been blown out of all proportion and that the investigation, though under tight wraps, is rapidly drawing to a successful and gratifying conclusion.
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