Ah grâce à Dieu, this was definitely the old Hermann. ‘Do you want me to have a look at the flat? We’re pressed for time as it is.’
‘Aren’t we always?’
This, too, was the old Hermann, hedging his bets but still, one had best be cautious. ‘Wait for me. Have a stroll. It’ll do you good. That sun should be with us for a while.’
‘Then let’s hope Giselle is alive and looking at it and that Oona doesn’t try to join her children by throwing herself in front of a train.’
‘Oona didn’t say that. She’s far too level-headed.’
‘Well, maybe she is, but I thought it and that’s enough for me.’
‘St-Cyr, Sûreté, to see the passage de l’Hirondelle victim. Hurry.’
‘There’s no hurry where that one’s going.’
‘Is it that you fancy working in the salt mines of Silesia? That is where Gestapo Boemelburg usually threatens to send me if I don’t work fast enough. Ah! I’m late as it is for our meeting. Merde! Shall I tell him you delayed me and that, as a result, I might get lonely unless I had some company?’
‘It is this way, Inspector.’
‘It’s Chief Inspector, and I know the way.’
‘Clothing—do you want to look at it first?’
‘Was any of it taken?’
‘Scattered, I think. No boots or shoes. No ID, no handbag either, or jewellery of any kind.’
It had been raining hard in the late afternoon. Though darker in the passage, there would still have been sufficient daylight. Giselle would have known of the route as a short cut through to place Saint-Michel from the rue Gît-le-Coeur. Rapes, muggings, murders, births, deaths from old age, the plague or other natural causes—sex by the moment and paid for or not—the passage had seen them all and yes, her native instinct would have caused her to dart into it, though it was also one that could easily have been blocked off at its other end. Trapped, she would have had to turn to face her assailants.
Giselle’s dark-blue woollen overcoat, with its broad 1930s lapels and flaps over the pockets, had been thin and a little threadbare. Hermann would never use his position as one of the Occupier to better the state of his household or himself. Stubborn … mon Dieu, he could be stubborn.
Folded, the coat had lost four of its buttons and had obviously been torn open. The soft grey tartan scarf that had set off the colour of her eyes was wet and cold, the grey-blue knitted mittens also. The angora cloche she had been particularly fond of was drenched and filthy.
A girl with short, straight, jet-black hair, half Greek, half Midi-French.
‘Is there nothing else?’
‘Apparently not.’
‘Time of death?’
‘Late yesterday afternoon probably.’
Friday. ‘Found when?’
‘At just after eight last night, the new time. Someone tripped over her.’
‘Who?’
‘It doesn’t say.’
‘Witnesses?’
‘None.’
‘Examining flic?’
A name was given but it meant nothing. Paris’s police force had expanded so much and now there were also ‘auxiliary police’ and ‘order police,’ neither of which needed the full qualifications of the first.
‘Leave me. If Herr Kohler comes looking for me, don’t let him in. If you do, I’ll hound you until you die.’
Mud-grey to brown, the river moved swiftly. Upstream there were no barges; downstream it was the same. Der Führer, in his wisdom, had had them all taken in the early autumn of 1940 for the invasion of England that had never happened. Now, of course, they lay rotting in the north, cluttering up the harbours unless dragged away and beached or sent to Belgium and elsewhere, and the citizen-coal that should have come to Paris, didn’t. Even the compressed dust of its poorest briquettes.
Louis wouldn’t be able to identify Giselle, not if they’d done what they had to the police academy victim. She’d a thumbprint-sized mole in the small of her back he wouldn’t know of, a blemish she had constantly worried about.
‘Giselle,’ he said, looking off across place Mazas to the morgue. Louis was taking far too long and that could only mean …
Irritably he lit another cigarette only to fling it away. This war, this lousy Occupation, the terrible loneliness and the shortages that should never have happened, the runaway inflation, too, all of which could and did put decent mothers and wives or fiancées down on their hands and knees or backs and made others hate them.
And if it isn’t Giselle, the detective in him had to ask, then have the bastards got her?
Telephone calls were always listened to by others, but … ‘Allô? Oui, oui, c’est moi, St-Cyr. Once pierced but definitely closed up? The Madame Van der Lynn was certain of this?’
She was. ‘Ah, bon. Merci.’
Replacing the receiver was not difficult, tearing his gaze from it somewhat harder. The call to the commissariat of the quartier du Gros-Caillou had been by far the hardest he had ever had to make, the waiting for its return a positive agony.
They had sent one of their staff to the residence of Madame Adrienne Guillaumet, there not being a telephone in that building, up-market though the district was.
‘Please tell Coroner Tremblay that he’s to look for the marks of hobnails and to compare the passage de l’Hirondelle’s victim with that of the police academy killing. No one else is to examine either victim, is that clear?’
‘No one. Do you want to see the loose dental fillings?’
It would be best to shake the head. ‘Put what clothing was found with her out of sight in the lockup and don’t release it to anyone other than Coroner Tremblay or myself. Not to Herr Kohler, you understand. Definitely not to him.’
Fifty francs were found in a wallet that had been mended with fishing line, the cash a sacrifice, but would it help to cement the bargain? These days one had to pay for everything.
Hermann had been impatiently waiting but had best be steadied. ‘Not her,’ said St-Cyr, taking him by the arm. ‘This one had pierced earlobes. Age perhaps twenty. Jet-black hair, what was left of it. Now listen, Giselle may have gone to ground.’
‘Not taken? Not abducted and held in reserve?’
He was really rattled. ‘This one was wearing Giselle’s overcoat, cloche, scarf and mittens.’
‘And they followed the wrong one?’
‘They must have.’
‘Then they made a mistake and it went harder on the girl they caught?’
‘Harder, yes.’
‘Rage?’
‘Uncontrolled. Hermann, the sooner we meet with Walter, the sooner we can get back to work.’
‘You leave Denise Rouget to me, then, Louis, and that mother of hers.’
‘Walter, mon vieux, but first a little stop en route. Now give me one of those cigarettes. It’s not like me to steal things. Usually you are the one who does.’
‘Not Giselle …’
‘Hermann, Oona will have understood this from what was relayed.’
‘She and the children won’t go out, will they, or open the door to anyone but us or Giselle?’
‘That, too, was relayed.’
‘Then I’ll drive. We’ll get there faster.’
The rue des Francs-Bourgeois was busy, the queues in front of the mont-de-piété of the Crédit Municipal de Paris among the longest Kohler had ever seen. The wealthy, the poor, the middle class, all had come to pay homage to that great leveller of humanity, Ma Tante.
Four staff cars, their drivers waiting with engines running, were in a line of their own, their officers inside as prospective buyers of what had been left beyond the required length of time. Six months, was it, or now three?
‘Four,’ came the intuitive reply, Louis not liking what they were seeing, but where else were those who had no firm contacts in the black market supposed to go, if not here?
‘You’d better let me come with you,’ said Kohler. ‘You know how shirty those bastards behind the wickets can be. Muscle is the
only thing they understand.’
‘And is it that you still don’t think I’ve got what it takes?’
Three pale-green tickets were dug out of one of those bottomless overcoat pockets. Always Louis was collecting the bits and pieces of each investigation.
‘So often, Hermann, it’s the little things that count. When I found these in Noëlle Jourdan’s empty locker at the Hôtel-Dieu, I knew I couldn’t resist a visit here.’
‘You’re enjoying yourself. Admit it.’
‘That girl has much to tell us and now we are about to pry the secrets from her but …’
‘Boemelburg will insist that we not bother wasting time with the robbery at Au Philatéliste Savant.’
‘And that’s precisely why I’m making certain we do, especially as we were definitely not to have been assigned to that one.’
‘Noëlle Jourdan didn’t pawn the collection.’
‘But it’s curious, isn’t it? Why pawn other items and not that one?’
‘Familiarity. Too frequent a visitor to this place?’
‘Perhaps, but then … ah, mais alors, alors, Hermann, was it that the girl realized how little Ma Tante was given to charity and wished to better herself?’
‘Or knew those tickets could be used to identify her.’
Good for Hermann. ‘But did the robbery of those stamps really have nothing whatsoever to do with the murders and assaults or has chance played its part by sending us to it?’
Chance could sometimes mean everything these days. ‘I’m waiting, Louis. I do know that for the lousy two thousand francs Le Matin paid her, the girl gave up a very promising career.’
‘One that obviously allowed her to acquire the Veronal her dear papa needed.’
‘A papa who should have been wearing his Légion d’honneur. And now what’s she to do, eh? Try her hand at making artillery shells or lorries and aircraft here for the Reich, or get on a train to there and leave that father behind?’
‘Or find some shopkeeper who’ll be willing to hire and not insist on getting into her?’
‘There has to have been a reason.’
‘And we have to find it, even if the theft of those stamps is totally unrelated to the rest.’
‘Which it can’t have been, can it?’
‘Not unless I’m very wrong.’
The tureen, of Augsburg silver circa 1770, was magnificent. Brought out to be laid on the counter of despair, its design incorporated the heads of several Chrysanthemum leucanthemum. ‘A priceless heirloom for such a poor household, Hermann. Mon Dieu, there was hardly any furniture in the flat and never a trace of anything like this.’
‘And that one?’ asked Kohler, still shouldering the curious out of the way.
‘A pilgrim bottle in Augsburg silver-gilt.’
‘Late seventeenth century,’ offered the mouse in the bow tie behind the wicket.
‘Engraved, Hermann. Peasants at table in an orchard. The mark of its maker, that of?’ asked Louis pleasantly enough.
‘Johann Christoph Treffler,’ swallowed Jérome Godet. These two were going to insist on confiscating the items. Monsieur le Directeur Ducasse, who had still not come back from lunch, would be furious and bound to dismiss him.
‘And the last?’ asked the one with the dueling scar who was still toying with the pistol he had lain on the counter.
‘Meissen, Herr …’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten? Louis, can you believe it? Tell him my name.’
‘It’s not necessary. Now please don’t argue, Herr Hauptmann. We haven’t time. An urgent meeting with Gestapo Boemelburg …’
‘Meissen, Inspectors. The work is most probably that of Heinrici, the date perhaps 1750.’
‘A gold-mounted, Commedia dell’ Arte double snuffbox, Herr Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter Kohler. The funds released to hold such objects, Agent Jérome Godet?’
Ah, merde! ‘One hundred francs for the box; one fifty for the bottle, and …’ It would do no good to lie. ‘Three hundred for the tureen.’
A fantastic bargain.
‘Pay him, Hermann. That way he’ll be certain to remember your name and not mine. Sign for the objects, too, of course, and tell him that they’ll be returned unless it’s discovered that they’ve been stolen, in which case, by having accepted them and not notifying the proper authorities, he’ll face a charge of compliance perhaps or even complicity.’
Out on the street, back in the Citroën, Hermann sighed as he fondly gripped the wheel of a car that wasn’t even his. ‘I enjoyed that, Louis. It was like old times. I stopped worrying about everything else.’
Newspapers littered the antique limewood desk that had been made larger by the addition of pine planks. Bien sûr, Le Matin and Paris-Soir were there, but also the Berliner Zeitung and Das Schwarze Korps—that of the SS—Der Angriff as well, The Assault—Goebbels’s Berlin afternoon paper. All were splashed with the news from Paris and all were, no doubt, demanding that the crisis be settled and the streets made safe again.
‘Walter …’ hazarded St-Cyr. The Herein, the Come in, had been brutal.
‘SCHMETTERLINGE, LOUIS. DIE KLEINE SCHLAMPE WAS CAUGHT PUTTING THEM IN MÉTRO CARRIAGES. HAND-COLOURED PAPER STICKERS THE SIZE OF MY THUMBPRINT. RAF BULL’S-EYES ON THE WINGS, THE CROSS OF LORRAINE ON THE BODIES. VERDAMMTE HURE, SHE’LL HAVE TO BE SHOT!’
Butterflies were what these little stickers were called, though not always done in the shape of such but, ‘Walter …’
‘Putain de merde, what is wrong with you French? ORDNUNG MUSS SEIN!’
Fucking hell … order must prevail. The big hands were thrown out in defeat, the all but shaven, blunt grey head shaken in despair.
‘Ten hostages are not enough. Twenty will have to be chosen and she’ll have to be one of them. The Höherer SS will insist on it. I’m sorry, Louis. It can’t be helped. Not this time.’
‘Walter, who was the girl?’
A name was searched for but couldn’t be found. The Nordic eyes, bagged by overwork and worry, were ever angry. ‘It was an ATTACK!’ came the shrill response. ‘WE THOUGHT WE HAD BROKEN THE BACK OF THE FTP IN DECEMBER. INFILTRATED, BETRAYED, WE HAD THEM ALL.’
But not quite. The Francs-Tireurs et Partisans …
‘COMMUNISTS. IMMIGRANTS—ROMANIANS, ITALIANS, JEWS, POLISH UNTERMENSCHEN!’
Subhumans.
‘At ten this morning, when you two were no doubt still asleep, one of them tossed a grenade into a lorry on the boulevard Haussmann and close enough for the avenue Foch to have heard the blast. French driver killed, French assistant killed, windows shattered, blood and glass all over the street and everyone rushing in to grab what meat they could and let the bastard get away.’ A breath was caught. ‘Chickens … Alive but a moment beforehand.’
And a black-market lorry, sighed Kohler inwardly and still standing behind Louis but towering over him as the chief would too. Fifty percent of those chickens would have already been removed by the boys on the controls, and as for the FTP, unlike other réseaux if they even existed, and they did, their whole policy was one of armed resistance, hence the hostages that would have to be shot.
‘Now sit down. Kohler close the door. Louis, have a cigarette. Go on. Take one.’
‘Merci. Hermann, would you …’
‘I didn’t offer him one, Louis.’
‘Forgive me, then, if I save it for later.’
‘All right, Kohler, you may take one, but only one.’
‘The butterflies, Walter. Let’s have that, so that we can fully comprehend what has upset you so much.’
That bit of paper was finally found. ‘A schoolgirl. Age seventeen. Geneviève Beauchamp. No previous record but juvenile delinquency has become a problem, hasn’t it?’
Oh-oh, the boys. Antoine and the others, thought Kohler. The squeeze.
‘Walter, the Fräulein Sonja Remer’s handbag was returned by me via Rudi Sturmbacher,’ said Louis.
‘And not thrown there from a passing bic
ycle taxi?’
‘Not thrown.’
‘But without its chocolate bar, Louis, and tin of bonbons,’ said Boemelburg.
‘That couldn’t be helped, given the shortages and the necessity of returning it as soon as possible, along with its Tokarev TT-33, which was fully loaded.’
Such sang-froid in the face of the inevitable was admirable. ‘À beau jeu, beau retour, then, Louis.’ One good turn deserves another.
‘Kohler, you and Louis will take the Fräulein Remer fully into your confidence. You will involve her, work with her and use her to fullest advantage. Is that understood?’
Rudi had been right. Giselle was to have been the bait. ‘Jawohl, Sturmbannführer.’
‘Gut. Now these murders, muggings and rapes. What have you got for me?’
‘They’re the work of more than one individual,’ said Kohler. Gott sei Dank, Louis had been in and had read the chief’s note, pinned to the left of the map.
‘The level of violence is escalating,’ said St-Cyr.
‘Well planned, Louis?’
‘Exceptionally so.’
‘Good sources of information?’
‘Excellent,’ interjected Hermann. ‘We have a probable source but would like to hold that for the time being.’
‘A gang?’ asked Boemelburg.
‘Most certainly,’ said Louis, ‘though they might not wish to refer to themselves as such.’
‘Terrorist links?’
‘None that are known, but …’ went on Hermann.
‘But what?’
Louis gave a nod. ‘The mothballs are a possibility,’ said Kohler. ‘One of them, or two, or more.’
‘Ex-military types, Walter. This was found at the site of the police academy killing.’
‘The ribbon of the Légion d’honneur. Some honour, eh? I want him, you two. He’s to be made an example of.’
And hadn’t the General von Schaumburg said the same to Hermann? ‘There is one thing that has yet to be clarified, Walter. Whoever wore this may not have been its owner. That is to say, he may have worn the ribbon to …’
‘Facilitate things,’ sighed Boemelburg, ‘since the very sight of it still opens doors and commands respect. Now give me the identity of the police academy victim?’
‘We’re working on it,’ managed Hermann. ‘There’s …’
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