Christ, the French; Christ, this place. Louis would be feeling it. Louis had brought him here in the autumn of 1940 and had taken him from house to house as that grandmother of his must have done. ‘To understand Paris and its crime,’ he had said, ‘is to understand its history. Wealthy or poor, it binds each citizen, even those whose families have more lately adopted the city as their own. Though all might seem oblivious to this history, they breathe it in every day whether you think they do or not.
‘Know the city like your hand, Hermann. Know its moods, its quiet places, its intricate avenues of fast retreat.’
Wise words. The courtyard of Number 2 was paved with cobblestones that had felt the centuries. Beyond it there was the stable Noëlle Jourdan must have run to, for she’d found that car of theirs and not thrown away the stained white apron she’d been wearing, but had dragged it off and hung it out as a flag for them under one of the colonnaded arches. Louis had found it and had softly said, ‘This way, mon vieux.’
‘Just tell me why the one or ones who are after her also left it out for us?’
Up from the cobblestones came the mist, down from the heavens that first sprinkling of the usual.
The stable door was open, the stench of horse piss as present as the centuries of it.
‘Are you okay?’ whispered Louis.
‘I’ll just go up its ladder. I won’t be a minute.’
‘Giselle, Hermann. Remember, please, that Noëlle Jourdan really does look a lot like her.’
Made of poles, hammered together with hand-forged spikes, the ladder’s rungs were worn and slivered in places, and on one of these the girl had caught her skirt and had pulled a thread.
On another, she had caught the heavy, cable-stitched pullover she must have been wearing, but of course detectives can’t climb such a ladder with gun and torch in hand. It’s either the one or the other.
‘Hermann … ?’
‘Louis …’
He had reached the loft and had swung himself up on to it, the beam of that torch of his cutting a quick swath across time-darkened roof timbers.
The light was gone—Hermann knew its brightness would only destroy his night vision when needed and had switched it off. Back pressed to one of the timbered uprights, St-Cyr waited. Merde, it was dark. Leaking, the roof let water piddle on the stones of the floor, increasing the stench of the years.
‘Louis …’
It wasn’t a cry, wasn’t even a gasp, seemed only to embody despair. ‘I’m coming, Hermann. Please hold on. Watch out, too, eh? We’re not alone. He …’
Time had no meaning. Time had suddenly evaporated. One moved only when absolutely necessary and then solely by feel. One didn’t dare to show a light.
Hermann called out, ‘Louis!’ once again and louder. No answer was possible because none could be given. The stalls were not empty but cluttered with the parsimonious hoarding of the stable’s owner or past owners, the building no longer kept under lock and key, and yet things that could have found use had been left in place. Wooden water buckets, a scythe … Had one of the gardeners once stored things here? Frayed rope, a shovel, another and another—the police academy killing? St-Cyr had to ask—a rake, an axe and the instant relief of having found it first.
Had the owner a son? he wondered. Though Matron Aurore Aumont had stated that she hadn’t known if the girl had had any friends, Noëlle Jourdan had obviously known of the stable.
A side door gave out on to a slender passage, but did this lead to another courtyard, another house and then to the rue de Birague?
A breath was taken … Ah, sacré nom de nom, Hermann, our killer is standing in this passage, not a metre from me.
Down on his hands and knees in the loft, Kohler tried to steady himself. The blood was still hot and rushing from the throat, the wound from ear to ear. He knew her eyes would be open in shock, felt her nose, her lips. Giselle? he had to ask, for her hair had been worn short, worn just like this one’s, the shoulders were just as fine, the back, the seat, that gentle mound, all still clothed, the girl lying face down in a puddle of her draining.
I’m sorry, he tried to say but knew he mustn’t. Louis hadn’t answered him. Louis …
Softly St-Cyr drew back the Lebel’s hammer to full cock, knowing that this would be heard by the killer, knowing too that he had but one chance.
Plank by plank, he traced out the boards from that door to where he and the killer were standing, only the wall between them. Had the killer come alone? Had a Sûreté the right to shoot without first giving the challenge?
A breath came and he heard it, but it was closer now, much closer, and with it came another sound but …
‘IT WASN’T A CUTTHROAT, LOUIS!’
The hammer fell on a damp, dead cartridge. The hammer had to come back and fall again. The flash of fire momentarily blinded as boards splintered, the sound of the shot rolling away …
‘LOUIS!’ cried out Kohler.
The acrid stench of spent black powder filled the air. ‘I missed him, Hermann. He realized he’d been given a reprieve and took it. Those cartridges you got me from stores …’
Up in the loft, Louis took one look at her under torchlight and said, ‘You’re right, that was no cutthroat. Blood has shot a good metre from the end of that knife as he swung it away. Has he slaughtered sheep? She was on her hands and knees and trying to scramble away, was taken from behind, grabbed by the hair, the head yanked back as the throat was cut, and then … then was held down, clamped firmly between his knees as if on a farm or ranch until all motion had stopped.’
All quivering even. ‘Otherwise she might still have run for a little.’
Good for Hermann. Such a thing was definitely possible. ‘But she would never have made it down that ladder.’
‘Could well have pitched off the edge of the loft.’
‘He wanted us separated and realized that if she had fallen to the floor below, we wouldn’t have been.’
‘He’s trouble, Louis.’
‘Most definitely.’
‘And now?’
‘We must find him, but first the Jourdan flat again.’
‘He might have gone back there …’
‘Having anticipated that we would realize we had to.’
Ah, merde, trust Louis to have seen it: ‘If we are ever to find out how that girl came by the things she did.’
‘And what, exactly, that father of hers has been stating in his letters to former compagnons d’armes. Jourdan praised the girl for having let the press in to photograph Madame Guillaumet and cursed the hospital staff for admitting such women. He was all too ready to blame them for betraying their husbands.’
‘Spreading the gospel, was he?’
‘Enlisting support?’
‘But letters only within the zone occupée, Louis. It’s still forbidden to send anything south into the former zone libre.’
Even though the Occupier now occupied the whole country. ‘A campaign against wandering wives and fiancées of prisoners of war. Matron Aumont felt the girl’s attitude was that of the father who had raised Noëlle from the age of five, Hermann. Apparently when asked about her mother, the girl would only state that she was dead, but such hatred on the part of the father demands answer.’
‘As does everything else. Just what the hell are we really up against?’
It had best be said. ‘The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg. Noëlle Jourdan must somehow have been getting things from one of their warehouses, as must Delaroche. Where else could that girl have picked up those figurines, where else, the colonel, that Ysenbrant painting and other objets d’art in his office?’
The Rosenberg Task Force, the Aktion-M squads, the plunderers of the household furnishings and other items of deported, transported individuals. Whole families, many of them, and certainly not all had been poor. ‘But why steal the stamps back?’
‘Especially as we were not to have been assigned to that robbery.’
‘Chance having been
allowed to play its part, eh? Chance, Louis.’
‘Fate, Hermann. Was it fate?’
‘But we were told to head on over to the Restaurant Drouant.’
‘Having been assigned to it and the Trinité, should assaults take place at both, which they definitely did.’
‘The Agence Vidocq must have learned of Boemelburg’s assigning us to blackout crime even before we did, Louis.’
‘They’re very well connected and have more than adequate sources of information …’
‘Boemelburg has always kept us busy and has so far been able to counter SS and Gestapo rank-and-file hatred of us, simply because he has to display some semblance of law and order but now Berlin aren’t just being adamant. They’re demanding his recall should he fail.’
‘Oberg wants an end to us and hires the agence to work with Sonja Remer, using Giselle as bait …’
‘But she doesn’t let them take her, Louis. She wouldn’t have. I’m certain of it.’
Hermann was no more certain than himself, felt St-Cyr, but shouldn’t be contradicted. ‘Berlin want the streets safe and an end to this plague of assaults …’
‘Otherwise it’s bad for the image. Even the Swiss are citing Paris as an example of how bad things can become, so the chief does what he always does.’
‘He unwittingly assigns us to the task.’
‘Not knowing what Oberg really wants because that one hasn’t quite told him.’
‘And Oberg might well want the POW wives to be targeted, Hermann, since they’re being held responsible for the huge increase in venereal disease the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht have been bitching about.’
‘And the Reichsführer Himmler wants to impress the Führer and the High Command so that it and the army, like everything else can be put better under an SS thumb.’
‘And Oberg wants to take over complete control of the French and Paris police. What better way, then, than to prove them utterly incapable of controlling the streets at night?’
‘He also wants Judge Rouget taught a damned good lesson, Louis.’
‘And hires the Agence Vidocq to take care of the matter?’
‘Or did he? Couldn’t the agence have had another reason?’
‘Élène Artur is forced to make a phone call concerning the police academy victim, indicating that the agence is responsible for both.’
‘But why kill her in a building you’ve a flat in, one you let your secretary use, unless there is another reason? Why not simply kill Élène out on the streets where some would say she had definitely belonged?’
‘Some like Vivienne Rouget?’
‘I think so.’
‘We’re going to have to keep an eye on Mademoiselle Dunand, Hermann.’
‘And on Oona and Giselle, if we can find her before it’s too late, eh? And on Adrienne Guillaumet and her kids, and on Marie-Léon Barrault and her daughter. Gaston Morel can take care of himself.’
‘Come on, then. Me first, Hermann.’
‘No, me, and that’s an order simply because I’m better at it than you.’
‘Then let’s not become separated, for I think we are dealing with one who will not hesitate because he and the others can’t afford to.’
‘And that’s what Oberg really wants.’
‘An end to us.’
The house at Number 25 was far quieter even than when they had first encountered it. Rainwater, piddled on the lower stairs, glistened under torchlight but didn’t leak from above. Shoulders rubbed as they touched each other, first Hermann going ahead, felt St-Cyr, and then himself, the one hesitating and then the other. Landing by landing, and not a sound. No further sign of the rainwater on the third floor except for that from themselves. Had this killer realized the splashes would give warning and removed his shoes and coat, even to rolling up his trouser legs to stop the leakage?
The door to the Jourdan flat was closed but hadn’t been left that way by them. The string was loosely looped around its nail, but this could easily have been done from inside and then the door closed.
Hermann fingered the string—had their killer a gun? he’d be wondering. The SS might have supplied the Agence Vidocq with them; alternatively such weapons could simply have not been turned in after the 1914–1918 war; alternatively, too, they could be purchased on the black market, either from one of the Occupier or from any number of others—the German troops on leave were notorious for selling things. Hence Sonja Remer’s Tokarev TT-33 could just as easily have come by that route but would have been bought with a purpose. Always there would be a purpose behind such an acquisition by the SS.
The string was teased from around the nail, the door given but the slightest of nudges.
‘He’s in there, Louis,’ said Hermann, his lips moving silently under finger-shielded torchlight. ‘We split. We have to even things up.’
Showing a light only meant showing a target and yes, there was little enough furniture to contend with. The table at which Jourdan had written his letters and neatly stacked them for the daughter to post was empty of all but its ink bottle, pen, blank paper, blank envelopes and loose stamps. A gerbil scurried across the floor and one could hear it rooting around in a tin box, but then even that sound ceased. Now only the rain hitting the windows could be heard.
Kohler knew, from the feel of it, that he was in the girl’s bedroom and not alone, but had the son of a bitch wanted to separate him from Louis again or had he been unable to lay his hands on what he’d not wanted them to find?
The blackout drapes were of doubled burlap, dyed black no doubt and with a dyed sheet behind them next to windows that would overlook the gardens. Along from the curtains, in a far corner against the wall, there was an armoire whose doors were open. Clothes had been scattered as if the search had been in haste and desperate.
A thin cardboard gift box had been discovered but had fallen to scatter its contents and tempt the unwary.
The throw rug under this debris had been made of woven rags.
He lifted the Walther P38 and took aim, the darkness all around them and complete.
‘He’s gone, Hermann. As quickly and decisively as he came.’
Noëlle Jourdan hadn’t had a lot. The mirrored doors of the armoire were losing their backing and gave reflections that appeared as if silver filings were being thrown at the viewer. The lower drawer had been yanked out and gone through, the box uncovered.
‘What was he after, Louis?’
‘Something that girl would have hidden from her father.’
It wasn’t under her pillows or under the mattress or in it, nor was it under the rug or behind the armoire. It was on top of this last and hidden behind the trim of a scalloped moulding.
The envelope was of plain brown kraft and when shaken out, gave photos of Jourdan and the girl’s mother at their wedding, 10 July 1914, in Nancy. There was another of the couple taken at the Gare du Nord on Jourdan’s return from being a POW, the sergeant evidently still in a lot of pain but proudly wearing his Croix de guerre and Médaille militaire.
‘His Légion d’honneur also, Hermann.’
Louis found the red ribbon he’d recovered from the police academy killing and momentarily put the two together as an old soldier should.
‘Did one of them borrow or buy it from her?’
‘She’d not have sold it, even if threatened, Hermann, but told me that one of the building’s children must have been in and taken it, and that she’d get it back.’
‘And the boy, the young man in these?’
At the age of seven and that of nine perhaps, Noëlle and her friend had been photographed by someone in front of the stable; at the age of ten and twelve they’d used one of the Photomaton booths at the Bon Marché to catch themselves holding hands, Noëlle not grinning, not smiling, the boy doing so and thinking it all a lark.
At the age of fifteen and seventeen, they’d kissed and recorded the event in secret; at the age of nineteen and twenty-one the young man had found himself a camera and fi
lm and had photographed her both alone and with himself last autumn in front of that same stable.
He’d money. He’d a good job by the look and yes, he’d not been called up, hadn’t become a POW. ‘Our academy victim, Hermann?’
‘The loft, then, for another look.’
‘Just give me a moment with Jourdan.’
Louis could examine a corpse for the longest time.
‘His papers are missing, Hermann. They weren’t in the right trouser pocket or his shirt pockets, nor under him, nor on the night table or in the overcoat the daughter would have had to help him into.’
‘Was he searched?’
‘I’m certain of it.’
‘Then he’s very thorough, this killer of ours, very quick thinking and …’
‘Wants definitely to keep us from seeing something.’
‘But what? We know they’re supposed to be working for Boemelburg and Oberg, know they’re supposed to be helping us put a stop to things.’
‘Yet are the cause of them, Hermann. It begs answer.’
‘Jourdan obviously would have been a member of the Grands Mutilés.’
The association of them. ‘But that, in itself, is no reason to take his papers. Flavien Garnier is a member of the Union Nationale des Combattants, which is ultraconservative and has within it a very right-wing, reactionary, collaborationist faction.’
‘Who would like to see the wives and fiancées of certain POWs punished?’
In the South, in the former Free Zone, and in spite of stiff opposition to their doing so, Pétain and his government had banned all previous veterans’ organizations and had squeezed them into one, the Légion Française des Combattants, but in the north, in the former and still ‘Occupied’ Zone, the Occupier had seen such a single group as a decided threat and had banned it but allowed all the others to remain much to Vichy’s displeasure and consternation.
‘Is it that the Agence Vidocq has its own agenda, Hermann?’
Neither that of the SS and Gestapo, nor even of Berlin and the Occupier at large, but of themselves. ‘And with their former commanding officer again telling them what to do?’
‘Perhaps, but ah, mais alors, alors, Hermann, in the South, the far right of the Légion Française des Combattants is also known for similar attitudes and denunciations.’
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