Mayhem

by J. Robert Janes

Kohler found his voice. ‘Which end of the street, Herr Sturmbannführer?’

  ‘The lower end, where it runs into the rue de la Goutte-d’Or. Not far from the Church of Saint Bernard. Some bastard must have dragged him into a courtyard. They’ve only just reported it. A priest. The cloth had the courage to telephone.’

  St-Cyr threw himself into a chair and dragged out a handkerchief to blow his nose and hide his tears. Thirty hostages. Thirty deaths for one corporal!

  Boemelburg was moved to a momentary compassion. ‘I don’t like it any more than you do, Louis.’

  ‘But you have your orders.’

  The giant thumbed a telex at him. ‘Right from the Führer. He’s in a rage.’

  ‘You once lived on that street, Walter. Years ago you ate and drank with those people when you were selling and servicing central-heating systems to the wealthy.’

  The Gestapo’s gaze didn’t waver. ‘I know that, Louis. I don’t need to be reminded of it.’

  The meaty hands gathered in the coins. There were twenty-seven of them and that was an odd number. Kohler? he wondered. How many had he stolen?

  ‘These are not bad imitations, Louis. Did the Italian do them?’

  That dusty page had been torn from the last century, from the annals of great criminals: one Luigi Cigoi, who had worked in copper and billon alloys to produce late-Roman issues that had baffled and shattered the faith of the experts of that day.

  ‘Some of the dies could have been his, Louis, or the originals. The Romans minted in Gaul as they did on the Danube. They left their garbage lying around for others to use.’

  All of which St-Cyr would have known, but there was still no sign of interest.

  Boemelburg began to sort the coins, fingering six to one side and three to the other.

  Kohler thought it best to enter into the spirit of things. ‘Not cast from old coins?’ he offered.

  A cloud descended. ‘How many are missing?’

  ‘Three, Herr Sturmbannführer.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘With the concierge, in temporary payment for information.’

  ‘Good. See that you get them back. Now, gentlemen, take a closer look, eh? Tell me what you think.’

  He thumbed two more of the coins to join the six. ‘At first the Romans used bronze dies, just as the Greeks did before them, but when struck with a ten-kilo sledge, those dies tended to give, so …’ He paused.

  Kohler swallowed. ‘They’ve all been struck from iron dies but …’

  ‘But they could not possibly have been.’ Boemelburg gave him a rare grin of pleasure. ‘The edges of the early ones are far too sharp, those coins far too round. The relief of the figures stands out too sharply.’ He paused. ‘The later coins, which would have been made from the much stronger iron dies, are perfect as they should be.’

  ‘Perhaps the forger was in too much of a hurry, Herr Sturmbannführer? Perhaps he didn’t have the bronze he needed to make two sets of dies. Maybe he simply thought to improve on the earlier ones.’

  ‘Perhaps, but then, is that it, Hermann? Don’t be a dummkopf.’

  St-Cyr heaved a patriot’s sigh. ‘It’s the one who bought the coins that worries me, Walter. He must have been German and if so …’

  ‘Louis, stop wearing your allegiance on your sleeve. At least stick it in your pocket. Common sense …’

  ‘Is that a warning, Walter?’

  ‘Damn you, you know I can’t always look the other way. They’re asking questions about your loyalties over on the avenue Foch. Oberg’s not happy.’

  ‘No one is these days.’

  ‘Then perhaps you’d best tell him that. The two of you are to cart your sestertii over there later on.’

  The brass ones. Four Asses each. Was the Chief losing his memory? asked Kohler of himself. Gott im Himmel, no! Yet that accusation had been made more than once in higher circles, and the word was out that Walter was to be replaced.

  The old lion was having none of it.

  ‘Solve this thing, Louis, and I’ll see what I can do about the hostages.’

  ‘Take the old ones, Walter. Not the young. Let us talk to them, in case they know something we need.’

  ‘Then come with me. Leave Louis’ car behind, Hermann. Ride in front with my driver.’

  It didn’t take long. In the span of time since they’d left the café, the Wehrmacht had moved in to plug the street and shake everyone out into it.

  The hostages were randomly chosen. Some took it with dumb faces, still not realizing what was about to happen to them; others tried to get away or begged on their knees.

  Some had only hatred in their expressions, not pride. One man spat at them from a distance too great to matter.

  ‘Take that one,’ said the Chief.

  ‘Bâtard!’ screamed the man. A rain of rifle butts bloodied his nose and lips, and broke his teeth.

  ‘And this one.’

  ‘She has a child, Walter, a little one.’

  ‘Oberg will want a cross-section, Louis. So will General von Schaumburg.’

  The Kommandant of Greater Paris, Old Shatter Hand himself. Rock of Bronze to those who knew and loved him best.

  Screaming at them, the woman was carted off to one of the iron salad baskets, the forbidding black steel-meshed vans of the police. Would she be taken to the Santé or to the rue du Cherche-Midi?

  Some still huddled in their nightdresses though they should have been up and about by now. Perhaps they’d been ill in bed. One old man still wore his stocking cap, nightshirt and slippers, as if he’d awakened on another planet and was waiting for the nightmare to clear.

  The collection moved on up the rue Polonceau like a nervous wind. The bag was now almost full.

  ‘Out of deference to you, Louis, I’ll leave the hotel and its courtyard of squirrels.’

  St-Cyr prayed no one had overheard. The last thing he wanted was to be seen in public with the Nazis at what could well turn into a mass execution.

  Hermann must have sensed this for continually he had tried to put himself between the Sturmbannführer and his partner and to push his little Frog away.

  ‘And that one.’

  ‘No, Walter. Please. Not that one.’ The baker was dragging off his apron. ‘That one I need to question.’

  Boemelburg looked the man over, nodding as he did so. ‘All right, Louis, he’s yours. You can have him for ten minutes.’

  ‘Alone, Walter. No one else. Not even Herman.’

  ‘Louis, don’t. Let me come with you.’

  ‘Hermann, just this once do as I have asked.’

  ‘Four men, one room. The men to cover the exits, Louis. Orders to shoot if he makes a run for it,’ grunted Boemelburg.

  It was his turn to nod.

  They went into the shop, to a back room with a rumpled bed, a table, two chairs – nothing much. A hotplate, an empty wine bottle, two glasses and some cigarette butts. A pair of dirty socks …

  St-Cyr offered a cigarette. ‘Monsieur, I am not one of them. No, please do not interrupt me. If you do not wish your girlfriend to be arrested, you will answer what I have to ask.’

  The man drew on the cigarette. ‘Marianne had nothing to do with that killing. She …’

  ‘She stayed here the night.’

  How had the cop known?

  ‘Your papers. Papers, please! Look, I hate myself for having to ask for them.’

  The wounded brown eyes looked up at him from the edge of the cot. Georges Lagace was not quite fifty years of age, so had missed even the last of the call-ups in the spring of 1940 and had probably gone underground for a while. He was of medium height and build and totally nondescript.

  ‘I lost the wife and kids on the road south during the invasion, Inspector. We …’ He gave a futile shrug. ‘I have thought I was taking them to safety, not into the cannon shells of their Messerschmitts.’

  ‘And the girl?’

  ‘She lives over in Montparnasse, the rue Boulard – look, is this nec
essary?’

  Reluctantly Lagace gave up the address. ‘Number 37. She has a room on the third floor. She … she rents out the rest of the flat to some friends so as to make ends meet. We … we met quite by accident in the Cemetery of Montparnasse, she to see her husband, me the wife and kids – the stones anyway. Not the bodies. They’re all buried elsewhere but it’s closer here, and for a small charge you can, if you know the right people, have a stone to remember.’

  One was always learning. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Marianne St-Jacques. Look, she’s … she’s only twenty-eight. An … an artist’s model, that and part-time in a hat shop, but there’s less of that work now so she has to do more of the modelling. Because there’s no coal, she’s got two days off. We were going to meet to –’

  ‘Georges, there was a murder.’

  ‘She didn’t kill him and neither did I. I swear we didn’t, Inspector.’

  ‘Look, I know that. It’s the other murder I’m interested in.’

  ‘Oh, that one. Marianne won’t know anything useful. You’d be wasting your time. She didn’t come here all that much. I usually went to her place.’

  ‘Then what about yourself, eh? Did you see anything that might help us?’

  ‘Me? I’m far too busy fighting off the bitchers and the forgers to worry about what goes on across the street in that place. It’s full of shits. Misers! who don’t pay their bills.’

  The forgers … the ration tickets for the bread, of course. It was happening all the time now.

  ‘At least I was too busy. Now …’ He tossed his hands in despair. ‘Now I no longer have to care.’

  ‘Let me see what I can do.’

  St-Cyr went back to the street. Twenty-nine of the hostages had been taken. Only the tidying-up remained.

  Boemelburg was sitting in the back of the Daimler, Hermann in the front with the driver.

  The window was rolled down. ‘Well, Louis?’

  ‘Walter …’

  ‘Herr Sturmbannführer, if you please.’

  ‘Sorry. Herr Sturmbannführer, regardless of what the man knows, he is responsible for supplying the local barracks with their bread. It would be better not to choose him.’

  ‘Then who do you suggest, Louis? Pick one. Any one, only hurry it up.’

  Kohler found the old man with the pigeons. ‘This one, Herr Sturmbannführer. Take this one.’

  The car rolled away. The street held its silence, immobile as a carousel before the gears began to mesh.

  Louis, poor fool, was crying. ‘Come on. Let’s go and get something to eat.’

  The music had begun.

  ‘Two eggs on horseback, the split-pea and ham soup, the sausage, lentils, cabbage and beer. Bread and borsch on the side.’

  Poised on the balls of his tiny feet, Rudi Sturmbacher took the order with gusto. A Brown Shirt from the days of the Munich Putsch, a man with fists – a survivor – he had received his just reward.

  Chez Rudi’s was on the Champs-Élysées just across the avenue from the Lido through the naked branches of the chestnut trees. Right in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe itself – well, almost. A bustling place, now in its mid-morning quietude.

  The ham-fat fingers stopped their scribbling. The small, pale-blue eyes blinked up and out from their red rims under thatches of ripened flax.

  At 166 kilos Rudi wasn’t losing any weight. Paris had been good. So, too, his little Julie and Yvette who took such care of their ‘big’ Rudi. Big in the loins.

  Greed and larceny brightened his eyes. A student of the black market, Hermann could usually be ‘touched’ when necessary, but Hermann had cut himself. Mein Gott, the whip, it could do wonders!

  ‘And for your “friend”, my Hermann?’ fluted the mountain, enjoying the sight of the stitches and the gossip they’d entail. ‘I regret there is no asparagus.’

  ‘What? No limp asparagus?’ shouted Kohler. ‘Gott im Himmel, Rudi, I thought all things were possible under the Third Reich?’

  The cook-proprietor let his voice fall to caution. ‘Some little things are beyond us, Hermann, but the Gestapo could always oblige?’

  ‘And change the seasons?’ roared Kohler. ‘Give Louis the hero food, damn it! He needs feeding up.’

  Another whisper came. ‘Or cutting down to size.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ asked Kohler darkly.

  The grin was huge; Chez Rudi the centre of all gossip, a minefield of it. ‘That you are to enjoy your lunches, or your dinners.’

  Or your breakfasts for that matter.

  ‘Hermann, must you?’ groaned St-Cyr when the man had departed. ‘You know how I hate coming to this place. I cannot eat in any case.’

  ‘You’ll eat because you have to, and that’s an order.’

  ‘The Resistance … one of these days they’ll hit it. Me, I would not like to have to scrape you off the walls.’

  ‘Relax. Rudi’s okay. Try to get on his good side, eh? Use your charm, Louis. Oberg’s on top of the wave, remember?’

  ‘He doesn’t eat here.’

  ‘Of course he doesn’t but we need to. Besides, you’re out of ration tickets. Remind me to get you some.’

  Two eggs on horseback … unheard of these days unless one ate in places such as this.

  A few of the regulars sat about. An SS major was slumming with his coffee and Berliner Tageblatt, fresh in on the morning’s Junkers JU-52. Were the papers getting thinner yet again?

  A girl in a short black skirt, red silk jacket, cream blouse, gloves, chic grey-blue angora cloche and black stockings was sitting all alone over by the windows.

  A girl with short, straight jet-black hair, strong, decisive brows, good hips, lips, legs and all the rest. About twenty-two or twenty-three. On her third or fourth cup of coffee and watching the street as if the window was a mirror.

  ‘She’s waiting for me, Louis. We’ll let her wait.’ Kohler dragged out a vial. ‘Want some?’ he asked.

  Messerschmitt Benzedrine. ‘Take a couple and we can go for a full forty-eight.’

  ‘You’ll not be of much use to her without them. No wonder you threw up your guts!’

  ‘Quit suffering. That rafle had to be. It was fate, Louis, just like I couldn’t avoid meeting her. Here, come on, at least take them with you.’

  He shook four of the capsules on to the red-and-white chequered tablecloth. ‘Two for you and two for me.’

  With beer. Rudi was in the kitchen. His youngest sister, Helga, slung the suds, giving Hermann a knowing leer and tossing her round milkmaid’s eyes towards the windows. Blonde braids and all. ‘She’s nice, my little liebling. Very nice and anxious.’

  ‘Tell her to go away then. Louis and I have to talk. We’re for it if we don’t.’

  ‘Then let her wait.’ Helga trailed teasing fingers over the collar of his coat, then, wetting her ruby lips, touched the wound across his cheek. ‘I like it, Hermann. When it heals it will look exactly like a duelling scar. You’ll be able to lie about it.’

  Her ample bosom rose. Everyone would know exactly how Hermann had received the gash.

  She departed with a saucy flick of her chunky hips, the pale-blue workdress hugging her behind. One did have to get a man, a husband! And what better place than Paris? So many of the German women came.

  ‘They certainly know you here,’ sighed the Frog.

  ‘And you too.’

  A pair of sheer, dark-blue briefs with lace was dragged out of an overcoat pocket. A corner of the midnight négligé could not help but show itself.

  At last Hermann found what he was looking for. Hunching forward, he lowered his voice in earnestness. ‘Louis, listen to me. As God is my witness, I’m going to tell you everything this time. Everything! I took these from the girl’s room. I was going to show them to you anyway.’

  A pair of gold and emerald earrings – were they really emeralds?

  ‘And these,’ confessed the Gestapo. ‘A choker of pearls and a single strand of the same.
That kid would have looked good in them, Louis. Not a stitch on but the pearls and those.’

  The earrings.

  The Bavarian nodded towards the windows. ‘Giselle, she’s perfect for me, Louis. Just what I’ve been looking for.’

  ‘Our girl wasn’t dark-haired, Hermann. She was a blonde.’

  ‘But …?’

  ‘Never mind. For now let’s just chalk it up to experience, eh? Why did you keep these from me?’

  ‘Why else?’ Kohler nodded towards the windows again. The girl had noticed the two of them, of course, but had turned quickly away when she saw them looking at her.

  Wounded perhaps. Hurt in any case. ‘Go and talk to her, Hermann. It’s all right. I, who now have only three murders to contemplate and who could be as old as that one’s grandfather, forgive you. It’s the times. Fighting with death brings out the worst in us.’

  He gave the shrug of a priest in difficulty. ‘Oh by the way, my friend, did the other one have a purse too?’

  The murdered girl. Kohler shook his head. ‘It must be some place, Louis. Probably with her papers.’

  St-Cyr heard him say to Helga, ‘Hold the eggs on horseback. Give me five.’

  ‘Rudi won’t like it. You know they’re a specialty of the house.’

  The house … Ah Mon Dieu, the arrogance of the Germans …

  ‘Then tell him to toss them out and start again. He’ll understand. I want to watch my partner enjoying them.’

  The pain of the rafle in the rue Polonceau began to ease. It would, of course, never go away – how could such a thing vanish?

  Nor would the humiliation of being referred to as wet, limp asparagus by that Munich Brown Shirt.

  Duty called to take him away from all such thoughts and he welcomed this with a sip of beer. The earrings were quite old. In his haste to pocket them, Hermann had failed to notice that they were far more than simply antique. Tiny gold platelets had been linked to each other to flash and dangle to single emeralds of perhaps three or four carats in weight and of a stunning depth of green. The cut was a tabled square, the ancient facets sharp if simplistic.

  The gold platelets had been hammered. They were not precisely round, giving further evidence of great age.

  Gold never quite lost its lustre. Inca? he wondered. Had the girl’s ears been pierced? Ah now, that was a good question.