‘Perhaps not. I’m really a lawyer.’
‘I’ve always hated lawyers. They’re always so dishonest.’
‘I’d be careful what you say.’
‘Is that a threat?’
Glotz reached for his coffee. ‘Of course not, Hermann. It’s only a warning that the walls have ears.’
‘Then let the bastards listen!’
‘Louis, it’s me. Look, something’s come up. Try to get a bit of sleep and I’ll see you in the morning.’
‘Is she safe?’
‘Yes, she’s safe.’
‘And the boy?’
‘With a nursemaid. Look, it’s okay. I’ve checked it all out. Now go to sleep.’
For a long time there was only silence from the other end of the line – a waste of several centimetres of Gestapo listening tape.
‘It’s that lieutenant, isn’t it? Steiner.’
‘Yes … Yes, his name is Steiner. Louis, I would have told you if I’d known. I would have tried to put a stop to it.’
‘Thanks. I’ll see you in the morning. Oh, anything on that you know what?’
‘No, there’s nothing to report on that.’
Still in his street clothes, St-Cyr lay in the dark on their bed, wrapped in three blankets and smoking the last of his tobacco ration. The purse had been of silk, very French, very femme fatale – from one of the fashion boutiques. The perfume had been someone’s very special concoction. Nothing mass produced. Not that scent. Ah no.
But from a silk purse, without knowing of its contents, and a single whiff of expensive perfume, can a humble French detective sketch not only the figure of the woman but also the rest? Her character, her likes and dislikes. The reasons why, perhaps, she had waited in the car on that lonely forest road while her maid had gone to fetch the purse and had killed the bearer of it?
Steiner was a power to be reckoned with. Only in thinking of the murder was there escape from the hard reality of what had happened.
The photographs were grainy. In an attempt to please, Barbizon’s photographer had made them a set of 25x20 blow-ups but these were streaked as if by specks of sand. Old photographic paper? wondered St-Cyr. Damp in any case, at some point in its career. Things were so hard to get these days. One bought on the black market or worked some other fiddle but one never really knew what one was getting.
In spite of the graininess – indeed, because of it – the boy’s features were etched more sharply. He looked beatific, saintly. Some mother’s son. The face was long and narrow, the mop of dark brown hair curly and careless or carefree. The cheekbones were hard and finely moulded, the mouth somewhat small, as was the chin. The nose was long and typically French, hawkish and of the upper class.
The deep brown eyes had clouded over but their expression was still one of surprise.
A small, brown mole marred the angelic left earlobe. Was twenty years not too young an estimate? In spite of the apparent youthfulness, there was hesitation.
St-Cyr couldn’t put his finger on the reason, but now felt the boy might possibly be a little older. Some men are always young – young at fifty even. At fifty-two their wives …
I’m not young-looking, he said. I’m shabby, tired and a whole lot of other things, and I mustn’t let her leaving interfere with my work.
Quickly he went through the photographs, pausing now only at the shot of him and Kohler grinning into the lens. The Bavarian’s arm was draped over his shoulder. The body was at their feet and the thing looked a little too much like they’d been out hunting and had bagged the poor bugger before breakfast.
Kohler should have been in vaudeville. One thick-soled shoe rested on a boulder. The conqueror and the conquered, working side by side. The Gestapo and the French Sûreté.
Setting the prints aside, he went through the negatives, flashing each up before the grimy window.
When he came to the last of them, St-Cyr resisted feeling ill and went back through them again.
There was no negative of him and Kohler. Either the photographer hadn’t listened, or Kohler had pocketed it.
Failing these two possibilities, there was a third: that someone else in the Gestapo had taken it; and then a fourth: that the Kommandant of Barbizon had had a look or had asked one of his staff to do so, in which case the negative had been pilfered so as to have a visual record of the two men who were on the case – a possibility, yes. Very much so.
And finally there was a fifth possibility: that somehow the Resistance had got to that pouch or to that photographer.
He dropped the last of the negatives on to the pile. Couldn’t something have been easy? Just one little thing?
The office was on the fifth floor of the Sûreté, overlooking the courtyard that led on to the rue Saussaies in the heart of the city. The Citroën wasn’t in the courtyard, so either Hermann hadn’t been in yet, or he’d been in and had gone out.
Chances were Hermann had the negative.
St-Cyr wondered what sort of squeeze his partner had put on the photographer. Had the Bavarian wanted to share the blame and give the photographer the chummy evidence of this? Had that been the reason for the photograph of the two of them?
Or had it simply been because of the purse and its handkerchief, because of his asking to have the spoor photographed – a kind of mutual blackmail, You don’t tell the boss, and I won’t show this to you-know-who?
It was one more thing to worry about in a morning of worries but serious. Ah, Mon Dieu, it most certainly was. The Resistance, they were beginning to kill collaborators. They tended to shoot first and listen afterwards to explanations of why one hadn’t been a collaborator at all.
They’d never understand, not those boys. Things had already gone too far, and were only worsening. They’d not believe he’d thought of resigning many times, had thought of applying for a transfer south – neither of which would have been allowed.
They’d never believe the lives he’d saved by destroying their dossiers.
They’d only look at that photograph and pull the trigger.
The dog-eared, badly smudged business card gave the name Hermé Thibault, Photographer with Excellence, Barbizon, and the telephone number. Beneath the name were the words: Christenings, weddings and funerals, as if space was so limited, life demanded no further record.
The bill that had been submitted revealed a firmness not seen in the photographer. He reached for the telephone, said to hell with the Gestapo listeners, and asked the switchboard to get him the number.
A harsh female voice broke like glass over his head. ‘Hello! Hello!’ as if she’d tear his heart out.
‘Madame Thibault?’
Instantly the woman was wary. ‘Yes … Yes, it’s me.’
‘Madame, I am Inspector Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the Sûreté Nationale. Your husband took some photographs for us yesterday. He was to include all of the negatives but …’
He heard her suck in a breath. There was a longer pause, during which a head was shaken vehemently perhaps.
Then the harshness crept back. ‘You’ll get the last one when the bill has been paid in full.’
‘Madame, I must warn you …’
‘Warn if you like, Monsieur the Inspector. We’re sick of you people not paying your bills.’
The bitch hung up! At once there was that sense of loss, of self-doubt. Of course, a little blackmail of their own, and why not?
But why hadn’t he anticipated it? He should have. He would have if Marianne hadn’t …
Kohler stood in the doorway, grinning from ear to ear. ‘Want to take a little drive?’ he asked.
‘Let me send them the money, eh? Just this once.’
It wasn’t easy being a French cop working for the Nazis. Kohler almost felt sorry for him. ‘It’s just not your day, is it?’
‘No, I don’t think it is.’
‘Von Schaumburg wants to see us in his office at eleven o’clock. The Major’s asking for us now, and Boemelburg, being Boemelburg, wants his wor
d as well. After the Major.’
‘But … but we haven’t even got started?’
Kohler shrugged. ‘I told you we should have let that bastard rot in a pauper’s grave. Pretty boys like that are always trouble. Any new thoughts on why our young friend wasn’t in a prisoner-of-war camp or in the Reich as a labourer?’
‘None … None at all at the moment.’
‘Well, you’d better have a damned good reason, Louis. Word has it von Schaumburg’s out for blood.’
‘Then we’ll use the possibility of the priesthood for now.’
‘I knew you’d see it my way,’ roared Kohler. ‘Now relax. I’ll tell the old fart the boy broke his vows and was in trouble with a married woman.’
‘Was he?’
Kohler pulled down a lower eyelid and stared at him but said nothing further. As St-Cyr stepped into the hall, the Bavarian opened their lock-up and took from it the Frenchman’s gun in its shoulder holster. Without a word, he thrust the weapon into St-Cyr’s hands and motioned him to put it on. After all, it was only a Lebel six-shooter, the old Model 1873.
But a devil’s gun in the right hands. Besides, it would impress the French Chief and show the little bastard that the two of them meant business and the Gestapo trusted St-Cyr.
Shooters for the French cops were only issued when on serious operations. Handcuffs always.
Vain, insanely jealous of his position, very political, officious and a real shit, Major Osias Pharand glared at them from behind what had once been his secretary’s desk.
‘Von Schaumburg,’ he hissed. ‘Only this moment another call. Beauschamp, the Préfet of Barbizon, wishes to know why he was not notified and why the Sûreté should think to arrogantly bypass the local police. Auger, the Mayor of Barbizon, has also telephoned. So, what have you to report, eh? Out ripping off the tabacs when you should have been attending to business?’
‘As a matter of fact, Monsieur le Director, I’m out of tobacco,’ said St-Cyr.
Pharand never spoke directly to the two of them, preferring the French edge of the sword. ‘Well, what about it?’ he demanded.
With a knuckle he irritably dusted the carefully trimmed black pencil of his moustache before clasping the pudgy hands in impatient expectation.
Kohler stood back while St-Cyr laid out the photographs and went over things with his boss. Pharand hadn’t been around the day of the defeat. He’d run just like most of them but had been only too willing to return, even if it had meant giving up his precious office. Violently anti-Semitic, a real Jew-baiter, he hated the Jews even more than the Resistance which he hunted down with rabid enthusiasm.
Their necks or his, and wasn’t war wonderful? No in-betweens, thought Kohler.
‘Details,’ muttered Pharand acidly. ‘Von Schaumburg will want details.’
‘Once we’ve identified the victim, the rest should be easy,’ said St-Cyr.
‘Have Records come up with a blank?’ demanded the Major.
‘No … No, they have not begun the search, Monsieur le Direc …’
‘Then ask them to do so immediately. Let me know the moment you have anything. Don’t breathe a word of it to anyone else.’
He snapped his fingers for the photographs St-Cyr had held back. ‘More shots of the body, Monsieur le Director. Nothing new.’
‘Yes, yes … Quickly!’ A snap again. ‘Please allow me to judge.’
When he came to the photograph of Kohler’s spoor with its white silk handkerchief he lifted questioning eyes to St-Cyr but went on.
The safari photograph caused but a moment’s impatience. At fifty-eight years of age, Osias Pharand knew the ropes.
‘The Sturmbannführer Boemelburg can see you now. Dismissed.’ He tossed a hand but couldn’t resist adding, ‘I’m warning you, St-Cyr. If this affair involves the Resistance, please do not attempt to hide things. I know you’re soft. It won’t be tolerated a moment longer, eh? Do you understand?’
Shit and more shit, and the day had only begun.
‘Would you really attempt to hide things?’ asked Kohler as they went along the hall.
‘Of course not. How could I with you looking over my shoulder?’
‘I just thought I’d ask, Louis. Nice of your boss to remind me, though.’
‘He’s all heart, that one, and often confused.’
‘Well, leave this one to me. Boemelburg’s got his head screwed on.’
‘Word has it that he’s becoming forgetful.’
‘At least he knows what building he’s in.’
More couldn’t be said, for Kohler had knocked. ‘Enter,’ came the summons with just a trace of impatience. ‘Both of you this time, Hermann. I want answers.’
The office, though spacious, had none of Pharand’s former trappings. Gone were the works of art, the clutter of Chinese porcelains. In their place were street maps of Paris and all the major cities and towns in France, batteries of telephones and teleprinters, and, lost among the pins, the obligatory photograph of the Führer.
No man for the finer sensibilities, Boemelburg hadn’t thought the antique limewood desk large enough and so had had the carpenters nail boards over its top. The clash of plain pine with the Louis XIV carvings always moved St-Cyr to whimsy. But then he’d known Boemelburg from before the war, from their work with the IKPK, the International Organization of Police, with its headquarters in Vienna.
An old and much respected policeman, Boemelburg spoke fluent French, having worked for a time in Paris in his younger days as a heating and ventilating engineer.
The Head of SIPO-SD Section IV, the Gestapo in France, was a favourite and much trusted friend of Gestapo Mueller in Berlin.
The handshake was firm. ‘Well, Louis, it’s good to see you.’
‘And yourself, Herr Sturmbannführer.’ What else was he to have said? wondered St-Cyr. I am as the rabbit while passing through the lion’s cage.
‘Hermann, a chair,’ thundered Boemelburg, indicating that the two of them were to sit opposite the desk. ‘So, gentlemen, a small murder? Perhaps, Hermann, you could fill me in and then, Louis, you could add the more important details your partner will no doubt have forgotten.’
Kohler grimaced at the warning. St-Cyr half-listened as his partner began. Boemelburg was well up in his sixties, the blunt head almost shaved of its bristly iron grey hairs, and the blue Nordic eyes watery but not from sympathy.
A big man, like Kohler, he had the split-minded compartmentalization necessary for the first-class cop. He knew Paris like the palm of his hand and, like all first-class cops, had the inherent suspiciousness of a small boy who has just had his favourite pencil stolen in class.
No bully, he had knocked about, and it showed not so much in the ragged countenance or the tired lift of the eyes, but in his silent analysis of what had really gone on. The truth.
As Head of the Gestapo in France, Boemelburg dealt mainly with counter-terrorism and subversion – the Resistance and the Allied agents who were increasingly being dropped into France – but there were spill-overs into all other departments: the black market, the press, common murder, bank robberies, et cetera.
His liaison with the Sûreté had begun on that fateful day of the defeat and St-Cyr could still remember how Boemelburg had barged in the front door from that empty, empty street only to find him in Records and shake his head before saying, ‘Now, Louis, that will be enough of that.’
Fair was fair in Boemelburg’s eyes, but now that the order had changed, he’d expected one hundred per cent co-operation or else.
The choosing of hostages and the signing of their execution orders also fell to him.
As a sideline, he had the distasteful task of overseeing two notorious French units: the Intervention-Referat – hired killers and known criminals who did the Gestapo’s work when they wanted to appear dissociated from it, as in kidnapping, extortion, murder or bombing of some nuisance politician or industrialist; and the Bidder Unit whose school trained informers and infiltrators before s
ending them out to do the Gestapo’s bidding.
With Pharand both St-Cyr and Kohler knew they might avoid things, with Boemelburg it would be out of the question.
‘This purse, where is it?’ asked the Chief.
‘In the lock-up,’ said Kohler blandly.
‘Has Louis had the privilege of seeing its contents?’
‘Not yet. I thought it might be better, Herr Sturmbannführer, if we discussed it in private.’
‘Why?’
Kohler shrugged. ‘There’s nothing specific, Herr Boemelburg. Women’s things – cosmetics, a small amount of money …’
‘How much?’ rapped the boss.
‘A million francs.’
‘Idiot! A million … Gott in Himmel, Hermann, a cop’s lockup? Why isn’t it in my safe?’
‘I was going to suggest that, Herr Sturmbannführer. The money isn’t in francs – she’d have had to have a sack for that. It’s in diamonds.’
‘Diamonds!’ stormed Boemelburg. ‘The black market, eh? A currency fiddle? Theft – what about it? Were they reported?’ All such things had had to be written down and the lists submitted to the authorities. This purse, go and get it.’
‘Of course, Herr Sturmbannführer.’ Kohler even clicked his heels and bowed.
Boemelburg fumed. ‘Diamonds … Louis, what do you make of it?’
Trust Hermann to keep that little bit of information to himself. St-Cyr affected a dryness that was admirable. ‘It’s news to me, Walter.’
The head tossed briefly in acknowledgement. ‘What’s it smell like then?’
‘Still a crime of passion.’
‘Then why is von Schaumburg so interested?’
‘Perhaps because the Kommandant of Barbizon is a personal friend of his.’
‘Talk … these days there is always talk behind our backs. So, how have you been?’
‘Busy.’
Again there was that nod, the intuitive understanding that enough had been said. ‘Did Pharand insist on your checking the boy out with Records?’
‘He did, but my feeling is, Walter, they won’t have anything.’
‘Even with the diamonds?’
‘Yes, even with them. You see, the boy looks to be of money, isn’t that right? The son of an aristocrat, one of our wealthy industrialists perhaps. Records won’t have anything because if they once had, the file would have been … Well, you know what I mean.’
Mayhem Page 3