A gathering of the establishment to plan and discuss how best to do business with the Reich. Aircraft engines and airframes, synthetic rubber tyres, ammunition, lumber and aluminium and other things like wheat and potatoes, wine and horses, labour also and yes, cheese and submissive girls, cement too, of course!
Rudi didn’t even ask if the police academy victim had been trafficking in women. He just took it for granted.
‘There’s an epidemic of VD among the men, Hermann, and this is preventing them from returning to the front as quickly as needed. These unlicensed girls we’re getting aren’t clean. The street roundups of women and girls are not working either.’
Housewives, secretaries, shop- and schoolgirls, their teachers and librarians also—any French female in sight between the ages of fourteen and ninety, diseased or not, could be rounded up and carted off for a swab and a look by a doctor they didn’t know nor care to.
‘The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht estimates that there are between eighty thousand and one hundred thousand illegal prostitutes on the streets,’ said Rudi.
The High Command always overestimated such things but still …
‘Only from five to six thousand have so far been licensed and issued the bilingual cards that show they are nur für Deutsche.’
Registered for use only by Germans and how was one to stop the boys from seizing the moment, especially when forbidden to use the legal, French-only brothels?
‘Hospital maternity wards are full of girls having their love children, my Hermann.’
More beer was taken, the salt rolls again passed. ‘Not even once-weekly visits by the doctor to each licensed house have lessened the VD plague. I tell you all of this, Hermann, so that should the Kommandant von Gross-Paris raise his voice, you will understand why.’
‘But, Rudi, wouldn’t the streets being terrorized at night help to lessen the VD?’
‘Paris is paradise, is it not? Besides, the Führer in his wisdom made a promise to all of our boys that they would each get to spend a little time here.’ Rudi gave it a bit of a pause. ‘Also,’ he went on, the puffy eyelids with their lashes at half-mast, ‘there is one girl, a Blitzmädel, Hermann, whose handbag was unfortunately snatched last Sunday at 1247 hours while she was washing up at a restaurant in the Buttes Chaumont Park. Near the carousel, I think. You know the one, of course. “Some schoolboys,” she has said. Four of them.’
‘Their ages?’ squawked the Sûreté as he should.
‘Ten. I tell you this, Herr Oberdetektiv St-Cyr, only so that should the handbag and its contents turn up during your investigation, you will know where it came from.’
A salt roll had best be fingered, assessed and then eaten, thought Rudi. ‘A reward of one hundred thousand francs has been offered by this restaurant, since she is a secretary for those over on the avenue Foch.’
The SS General Karl Albrecht Oberg, the Butcher of Poland and now Höherer SS und Polizeiführer of France, and hadn’t chance or fate played its part? No wonder the boys on Louis’s street had hung around and been late for school!
‘A Mausefalle, my Hermann. Your friends in the SS are going to demand that you set one for these criminals and bait it with one of your women.’
A mousetrap.
* * *
They had to take a moment, had no other choice and shared a cigarette as the Citroën idled outside Chez Rudi’s.
‘Oberg can’t yet know about the boys, Louis. Rudi will keep that to himself for a while.’
But would he? ‘The boys will still be in school, Madame Courbet out lining up at the shops. We’ll have to leave it until later.’
Louis was really feeling it and with good reason. ‘Rudi sure knows how to threaten. If anything should happen to his Helga or to his Julie and Yvette …’
‘Tears, a girl from home?’
The boys would steal that one’s handbag. Louis, who had tried so hard to set an example for them and was their hero, could only feel betrayed.
‘If Oberg does find out, Hermann, I’m up against the post and so are you.’
A souricière … A mousetrap, the floodlights suddenly coming on … ‘I can’t use Giselle nor can I ask Oona.’
‘You’ve used Giselle before and in the blackout too.’
‘ARE YOU SUGGESTING I PUT HER LIFE AT RISK AGAIN?’
‘Not at all. I was merely reminding you of …’
‘That time was different.’
‘Times, Hermann. More than once you’ve …’
‘Face it, I can’t ask either of them any more than you could Gabrielle. They both mean far too much to me. It’s equal, Louis. I could never choose between them.’
A man with a dilemma. ‘Ah, bon, then let’s lose the tail the Propagandastaffel have assigned to us.’
A dark-blue Ford Ten, the 1935 four-door, sat idling behind them, the one at the wheel no doubt the reporter, the other with the flashgun and camera in his lap.
‘Let me go and have a word while you take over here, Louis. We can’t both be in the same place at the same time anyway.’
‘Au Philatéliste Savant …’
‘Is all yours.’
‘The place de l’Opéra and the owner of a certain vélo-taxi?’
‘I’d better do that one and drop in to see Old Shatter Hand.’
‘Then please don’t forget that once a month he makes a point of inspecting the brothels, the legal ones that are nur für Deutsche.’ A Prussian of the old school, the General Ernst von Schaumburg, Kommandant von Gross-Paris, was a confirmed bachelor and moralizing prude who hated the French almost as much as he did the SS and the Gestapo, and liked nothing better than to stamp out disorder. It was best that Hermann deal with him.
Kohler grinned companionably as the side window was unwound and a blue fug of Gauloise smoke escaped. Two hard brown eyes gazed impassively up at him from beneath the grey snap-brim of a brand-new fedora.
‘Hey, listen,’ he said. ‘There’s been a fantastic development we thought you’d be interested in. A lead, maybe, to the brains behind this whole string of rapes and murders.’
‘The brains … ?’ blurted Jean-Max Privet, taken aback by their luck.
‘If you can give me a lift, your friend here can shoot the brass while you scoop the story.’
Was Kohler just ragging them? Could they chance leaving it? ‘Hop in, then. Where to?’
‘Let’s try place de l’Opéra first. Protocol. You know how it is.’
The Kommandant von Gross-Paris, and didn’t everyone know Kohler and St-Cyr worked quickly?
These two were from Paris-Soir, whose aged Alsatian elevator-operator-cum-night-watchman had been the only one left to guard the newspaper on the day the Occupier had marched into Paris and had soon found himself in the boss’s chair running one of the city’s largest dailies. Decisions by the Propagandastaffel had had to be made quickly. Where else could they have found a man who knew the building better, the workings too? He’d been the man for the job and still was, having easily mastered the art of hiring managing editors and others. Now he just read the articles they submitted and gave advice to guys like these.
‘Hector Morand, à votre service,’ said the photographer. ‘It’s good of you to cooperate.’
‘Isn’t St-Cyr going to the Kommandantur too?’ asked Privet.
‘Him? I’m sending him over to the rue des Saussaies to organize a little backup.’
A Gauloise bleue was offered by Morand and accepted, a light too, and why not? ‘This car of yours is nice but not as roomy as I’d like in the back.’
It was really one of the car pool’s. ‘Move things, Inspector, if you need more space,’ sang out Privet with a toss of his head and glance into the rearview as he negotiated traffic.
‘Provisions,’ chuckled Morand. ‘On our way here we had to pick up a few things.’
Two baguettes, one string bag of cooking onions and potatoes, a chain of garlic bulbs, four litres of unlabelled red, one of oil, too, and good by the look, a cabbage, three kilos o
f carrots and one newspaper-wrapped parcel that had leaked butcher-blood.
‘To think that I almost bought one of these cars,’ said Kohler with a sigh. ‘I was in England on a police course at the time. The British made ninety-seven thousand of them but they were also made in the Reich. Mon Dieu, I could have got one for 145 pounds—that was about 10,875 francs or close to it then.’ And now only about two thousand francs more than the price of a brand-new bicycle if one could find it! ‘Rudi told us the press were going to cover things in detail and that it would be best for us to help you boys, but how did the two of you get chosen?’
‘We drew lots at the briefing this morning and our number came up,’ said Privet.
They were heading for place de l’Opéra now. Long queues for permission, lost IDs and complaints, et cetera. ‘Good. I can see that we’re going to get along. Don’t park too close to the barricades. It’s better if we walk a little. That way the sentries won’t get anxious.’
The Kommandantur, with its rain-soaked swastika and big white signboard in heavy black Gothic lettering, was in the same building as the leading branch of a bank, behind whose plate-glass windows a forgotten poster with permed mother and saccharine-smiling kids blithely announced, PARTEZ EN VACANCES, SANS SOUCI, LOUEZ UN COFFRE AU COMPTOIRE NATIONAL D’ESCOMPTE DE PARIS.
Go on holiday without fear—rent a safe-deposit box!
‘Your papers, press cards and badges, mes amis. You’d better let me have them for a moment. That way we’ll be able to go right in.’
The poster was big, bright and brand-new, thought St-Cyr, and it decorated Au Philatéliste Savant’s window so that one had difficulty looking into the shop. Spaced as though on either side of an open road, d’après Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, long double lines of workmen and women from all walks of life were heading towards the distant smokestacks of the Reich. Above a slender horizon tinged with red, the helmet-and-chin portrait of a stern and unyielding Wehrmacht strong-arm bravely faced the current hostilities.
ILS DONNENT LEUR SANG. They are giving their blood, the thing read. DONNEZ VOTRE TRAVAIL. Give your labour to save Europe from Bolshevism.
Odilon Bélanger shrugged. ‘They came this morning, Inspector. Monsieur Picard threatened trouble if I didn’t let them hang it.’
‘And that one?’
‘Reads his newspapers. Sits next to his safe.’
Nearing seventy, Félix Picard was ramrod stiff and thin, all nose, neck and fingers. The hairline was receding, the narrow brow dominant above gold-rimmed pince-nez and intense blue eyes, the shirt collar and tie so tight and out-of-date one had to take another look: 1928 perhaps, 1920 maybe, but definitely a neckband shirt and detachable Argonne collar, the cheapest of the cheap.
L’Oeuvre, that anti-Vichy, pro-Nazi, virulently collaborationist rag of Marcel Déat’s Rassemblement National Populaire, was lowered. ‘You took your time, Inspector. Am I to be compensated for the loss of business?’
The weekly Je Suis Partout was handy. Anti-Third Republic, anti-Semitic, anti-Communist and very pro-German, et cetera. ‘Not if you want your property returned.’
‘But …’ He blinked. ‘Nothing has been stolen. Absolument rien.’
The surprise of surprises, eh? ‘Don’t be difficult. We already know you’ve broken enough laws to close the shop and see you in the Santé for a visit of no less than three years.’
‘Merde, and you call yourself a police officer!’
‘Monsieur …’
‘The safe, it is ruined. The cat, ma petite Angèle, has abandoned me, and you … you stand here accusing me of lying?’
He slammed the paper down, stood tall and swore, ‘J’irai le dire à la kommandantur.’
I’ll go and tell the Germans about it. ‘You do that.’
‘Pardon?’
‘You heard what I said.’
‘Inspector …’ hazarded Picard.
‘That’s better. Now start talking. Two or more twists of gold louis, black-market …’
‘Only the one. The louis were all I had for my old age.’
‘And the illegally obtained rations?’
‘The cat …’
‘Monsieur, what was stolen?’
The louis had been returned—they must have been, thought Picard, and that could only mean the flic had taken them and thought better of it! ‘An album of firsts. The 1849 to 1850s, among them the twenty-centime black, the blue also, which was never issued because the postage rates were changed immediately after its printing, the pale vermillion “Vervelle” forty-centime, a sheet of which was ungummed, the 1862 reissues complete, the Napoléon IIIs of 1863–1870 … Those of the colonies, the 1859 to 1865 Eagle and Crown, the 1877 to 1878 Peace and Commerce, especially the bluish twenty-five-centime, all of those from the French Congo, French Equatorial Africa, French Guiana, French India, French Morocco, Polynesia and the Sudan, Indo-China also. The 1889 five-centime overprint on the thirty-five-centime orange with the surcharge inverted; the 1892 seventy-five-centime orange with the Indochine absent …’
‘A fortune?’
‘Once in a lifetime such a deal comes along.’
‘Ah, bon. Now for the difficult part. How did it “come along”?’
‘Inspector, must I?’
‘It’s Chief Inspector and please don’t tell me you bought it at the open-air stamp fair.’
Held every Thursday in fine weather on the park benches of the rond-point of the Champs-Élysées and a favourite of the Occupier.
‘A girl … I’d never seen her before. She had no understanding of …’
‘The value.’
‘She simply said her grand-maman wished to sell the collection.’
‘And?’
He had best shrug, thought Picard. ‘I offered.’
‘After some deliberation?’
‘A little. One can’t always be sure. Stamps, like rare paintings, can be forged.’
‘And you were suspicious?’
‘Have I not the right to be after fifty-six years in the business, my father before me?’
‘Her name?’
‘I didn’t catch it.’
‘Her age?’
‘I’m not certain.’
‘Hair colour?’
‘Brown, I think.’
This was going nowhere. Perhaps if the bracelets were brought out …
The handcuffs! ‘Inspector …’
‘Monsieur, you bought on the quiet, n’est-ce pas? First, where, really, did the collection come from; second, how much did you pay for it and what was its estimated value to you, the expert with … was it fifty-six years of experience? Thirdly, the name and address of the one who sold it to you, and if you gave that one a sex change, correct your little mistake.’
The flics had always been shits, the Sûreté far worse. ‘The name and address she gave must have been false, though I wasn’t certain of this at the time. The price paid was twenty-thousand francs—I’ve not much for a life’s work, as you can see.’
‘And its estimated value?’
‘I didn’t make an exact appraisal.’
‘Monsieur, you had a good look as soon as that “girl” left the shop. You closed up and went to that room you’ve rented for years in the Hôtel Ronceray. Must I ask the magistrate for a search warrant?’
‘Between seven hundred and fifty thousand and one million francs.’
The bastard. ‘Old francs?’
‘Old.’
And enough to retire on. ‘Bon. Whose collection was it? Come, come, the name of the owner would have been embossed in gold leaf on the album.’
‘M. Bernard Isaac Friedman.’
‘Address?’
‘Number 14 rue des Rosiers.’
Right in the heart of what had once, and for so many years, been the Jewish quartier of Paris, the Marais, where so many of the immigrants from the east had taken up residence. ‘Deported?’
‘He must have been, mustn’t he? All of those people.’
‘The Vel d’Hiv?’ The cycling arena, the grande rafle, the first huge roundup of last year.
‘Oui.’
‘And now his stamp collection suddenly turns up. It’s curious, isn’t it?’
‘Inspector, I don’t know what …’
‘I mean? Monsieur, dealing in stolen property is a serious offence.’
‘I didn’t know it was stolen!’
‘You most certainly did!’
‘To steal from those people is no harm. The more taken, the better.’
‘Ah, bon, I didn’t hear that, monsieur. Though I must still obtain the warrant, please consider yourself under arrest. Agent Bélanger, would you …’
‘Inspector, the girl came to the shop a few times. Hesitant always and walking the aisles as if to examine the envelopes while studying myself and the clientele. When she had made her little decision, she then arranged to bring me the collection.’
Even though Picard had ‘never seen her before.’
‘And when was that?’
This one would have to have everything.
‘Two days ago, in the late afternoon. About five or five thirty. I remember it clearly. Angèle was thirsty and I’d poured her a little of the …’
‘Yes, yes. Wednesday, the tenth.’
‘She said she was in a hurry and mustn’t be late for work or else the surveillante at the hospital would be upset, and that … that she would take what I could give her.’
A head nurse, a nursing assistant and a bargain but a crime to which they weren’t to have been sent.
In the never-neverland of the Kommandantur, where rain-soaked galoshes, mismatched carpet slippers and ankle-deep coal-black dresses waited in line, there was absolutely no sense in pissing around. ‘Kohler, Kripo, Paris-Central to see the General on urgent business.’
Rock of Bronze to his staff, but damned dangerous at all times even though well past retirement, Von Schaumburg was still suffering the aftereffects of the flu that had struck him a good ten days ago. A towel was tightly wrapped about the throat, the smell of eucalyptus oil, menthol, camphor and boiled peppermint in the air, positively no tobacco smoke. Even the window he had been bleakly staring out of was open!
Taller than himself, bigger too, across the shoulders and replete with Iron Crosses and campaign medals, he didn’t hear at first and only then, as the throat was cleared, did he hawk up a wad of phlegm. ‘Kohler, what is this you’re saying?’
Tapestry Page 7