Again the banana merchant’s voice leapt. ‘But it’s obvious she sold them, dummkopf! Why else would her killer have thrown these forgeries at her?’
They both knew more than they should about the murders, and the Frenchman had forced Oberg into admitting it.
Knochen was impressed. Jean-Louis St-Cyr was defiant. That could only antagonize Oberg and make the thing go round.
‘Sit down. Sit down, the two of you,’ shouted Oberg.
They sat down. The Bavarian’s mouth open in apology. ‘My partner and I seldom agree on things. You’re absolutely correct, Herr Generalmajor und Höherer SS.’
‘Und Polizeiführer, Herr Kohler,’ came the icy response. ‘Please do not forget for a moment that it is to me you owe your livelihood.’
And your life.
Again Hermann confessed that Oberg had been absolutely correct about the girl. ‘The killer must have been insane, Herr Generalmajor.’
‘He was insane,’ breathed Knochen warily.
‘Perhaps, but then …’ St-Cyr shrugged. They were all looking at him, waiting, even Hermann, poor Hermann who had debased himself before his masters. ‘There was another killing. At the foot of the rue Polonceau. A corporal.’ He indicated the death notices and deportation orders that were now gathered in Knochen’s slender fingers. ‘I ask myself is there not some connection to the other killings, General? Is it not possible that all those death notices you have signed are but a mistake?’
Mein Gott, help him! A mistake!
‘Why should that be?’ asked Oberg darkly. The French would never learn.
Heroically defiant, Louis drew himself up. ‘In murder, General, all things are possible.’
There wasn’t a sound. Even the typewriters in distant rooms had ceased their yammering.
Kohler knew he had to break the impasse. ‘We always look for linkages, Herr Generalmajor. Louis didn’t mean to imply that …’
Knochen snorted. ‘We’re not talking of sausages.’
‘Assassination!’ shrilled the banana merchant. ‘This we cannot have! It must be stopped, stopped, stopped!’
So much for trying to stop the death notices. ‘The meat’s all ground up. It’s all the same,’ offered Kohler lamely.
‘Hermann, how could you equate a German corporal with the other two corpses? Please, I think I understand what the Obersturmbannführer Herr Doktor Knochen is implying.’
Sausages …
‘Good, then that is good,’ grunted Oberg, slightly mollified, and the thing came round to the coins again.
‘Who made these?’
‘A professional,’ said St-Cyr, glancing from one to the other of them.
‘The dies were of iron. The faces on all the coins are exceptionally sharp,’ offered Hermann.
Oberg touched the coins. He wanted to scream at these two schmuck cops! ‘The French are notorious for hoarding their gold, Herr Kohler. Greed is in their mother’s milk! It has to be rooted out! Out, damn you! These are from someone’s hoard.’
Hermann thought to please. ‘They’re really quite good. The owner might have been fooled …’
‘Idiot! Don’t be stupid! A collector of such as these would know exactly what to buy and what not to.’
‘But you just said …?’ Oh Mein Gott, what were the two of them really after? ‘We’ve no idea who made them.’
A smile flickered briefly on that chubby face. ‘Come, come, Kohler. Surely you must know who would be a likely candidate? I thought you were supposed to be a good detective? Don’t the two of you know the Paris underworld any better than that? They are good copies, are they not, Herr Obersrurmbannführer?’
Knochen acknowledged that they were.
Oberg was vicious. ‘We can’t have forgers operating in our midst, Kohler. Find the scum who was responsible and bring him to me!’
Never mind the murderer or murderers! Just find the forger. ‘Jawohl, Herr Generalmajor.’
‘Perhaps if I were to talk to the two of them alone,’ began Knochen, leaning close to whisper something into Oberg’s ear while still watching them.
‘Yes, yes, of course. It would be best that way. Good of you to have thought of it, Helmut.’
The pudgy fingers gathered in the coins. Apparently the gold sestertius bearing the head of Mars and the eagle on its obverse side was the rarest and most valuable. And yet the forger had struck all of them with iron dies that could not possibly have been in use at such a time.
The Frenchman would know this, so, too, the Bavarian. They’d both be wondering why an able forger should think it possible to pull the wool over someone’s eyes with these.
Goering … would they think of the Reichsmarschall and Reichsführer Goering, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe?
‘That is all. Now get out of here, the two of you.’
Knochen led the way. Once up the stairs to the second floor they came to the vault, a room whose barred entrance gave subdued light to the contents within.
There were paintings in richly gilded frames, old masters, young masters, stacked and leaning every which way against exquisite pieces of sculpture, antique cabinets, vases, Louis XIV and XV chairs, crates … silver, much silver … an Aladdin’s cave.
Knochen let them look. ‘All confiscated from those who refused to obey the law and failed to report their valuables. Jews, Freemasons, reactionaries – enemies of the State. Vermin, gentlemen. Hoarders. Find out where the girl got the coins and you will, no doubt, unmask the forger and discover the loot.’
‘And if there is no loot?’ hazarded St-Cyr.
Knochen took a moment to study him. ‘Then the suspicions of our friends over on the rue Lauriston are incorrect and the forgeries were not used to hide the real thing.’
The rue Lauriston … The infamous Monsieur Henri and his sidekick, the ex-inspector Bonny. Ah no. No!
‘Old friends of yours,’ said Knochen, watching him closely.
Kohler was certain then that the whole meeting had been for this one moment of revenge for what had happened at Vouvray in that last case.
‘Acquaintances,’ acknowledged Louis with admirable steadiness.
Kohler flicked a troubled glance at Knochen. That little smile was there, the moment of triumph slowly savoured so as to prolong the pleasure.
‘You’re to work with them on this, Inspector.’
‘It’s Chief Inspector.’
‘Louis, don’t!’
The warning was an added bonus. ‘As I was saying, Inspector St-Cyr, your friends over on the rue Lauriston have much to offer. You would be wise to ask for their help.’
‘Has this forger done your people in before?’ asked the Frog, failing to conceal the little triumph he, himself, felt at exposing the Nazis to their gullibility.
The look the academic gave was cruel. ‘But of course he’s taken us in before. Why not? There are always those who are eager to buy, and the forger knows this. Find him! Now get out of here and don’t come back until you have him.’
Giselle was no longer waiting in the car. The bird had flown and no doubt with good reason.
‘Louis, let me come with you.’
‘No, Hermann. Not this time.’
‘Then at least let me give you a lift?’
‘The exercise will do me good. It’s not far in any case.’
Kohler knew that his partner wanted to be alone, that Louis, being Louis, would have to breathe the air of Paris before descending into the slime.
‘Talbotte, Hermann. This is why he has left us to clean up the mess. He is afraid we are tainted and the SS do not want to breathe the same air as we do.’
‘We’ll meet later?’
‘Yes, yes, of course. You to Records, me to the rue Lauriston.’
‘The morgue at five?’
‘Let’s make it four. I want to get back to the house before dark.’
‘But aren’t you staying at Gabi’s flat?’
St-Cyr’s eyes betrayed only emptiness. ‘Not now, Hermann. Nev
er. Not with them taking such a fine interest in us. Me, I could not live with myself knowing harm might come to her.’
Poor Louis. They’d just wiped the street with him and he knew it.
3
There was little traffic on the Étoile as St-Cyr crossed to the Arc de Triomphe. The humiliation of what he was about to experience was almost more than he could bear. In 1936 he had put the infamous Monsieur Henri of the rue Lauriston away for ten years for armed robbery and the ‘accidental’ wounding of two cops, both fathers, who’d come to question things and had somehow got in the way.
In the years before that he’d crossed swords with Pierre Bonny and had seen that one into Fresnes for a term of not less than three years for accepting bribes while under the oath as an officer of the Sûreté.
Later it had been embezzlement, but by then the ex-inspector Bonny had been eking out a living as a private investigator.
Now, of course, it was from Knochen that the two received their orders and amnesty. Amnesty for hardened criminals, for murderers and thieves!
Bonny was the organizer of that little operation; Monsieur Henri the schemer, the searcher of hidden valuables, and Knochen the supplier of cars, gas, guns and Police ID cards that offered protection with impunity.
Much of the loot that filled the avenue Foch had come straight from the rue Lauriston.
The brim of his hat was crumpled, the felt stained, the sweat-band rather too grimy to look at.
Pigeon droppings were at his feet and, in the background, the steady rumble of a German Army convoy broke the patient silence of bicycles.
All points radiated from the Arc de Triomphe. The rue Lauriston was a narrow, straight artery next to the avenue Victor Hugo, a street of the wealthy, the upper class. Less than a kilometre of it lay between him and Number 93.
There was a small café across the street from the unassuming three-storeyed grey house. Empire-style railings protected the tall windows of Number 93’s ground floor; Nazi bars, those of its second and third floors, the third most especially. Ah yes.
‘A pastis without water.’
The crook who ran the café was obviously an informer for the avenue Foch and a friend of the rue Lauriston.
‘Large or small?’ he asked, not grinning.
‘Large. A double.’
The humiliation had begun. There were a few tables near the street, time enough to toss one’s hat on the fake marble and have a smoke.
Number 93 rue Lauriston – some called it the offices of the French Gestapo and they had every right and reason to do so. The servants’ quarters on the third floor had been made over into cells so as to keep the sounds of torture a little farther from the street. The bars up there were to prevent people from leaping to their deaths. The offices were on the second floor, with others on the ground floor, together with the storerooms.
Though hidden from the street, there was an inner courtyard, a small garden. How nice.
Up to now he’d managed to keep clear of them. He’d avoided that confrontation he’d always known must inevitably come to pass.
Henri Chamberlin, alias Henri Normand, now Henri Lafont, had been born in 1902, a child of the Paris slums. In the thirty-eight years leading up to the Defeat he’d been arrested for a host of crimes – burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, fraud, arson, swindling, the pistol-whipping of a young girl he’d tried to force into prostitution.
On 16 June 1940, he’d been evacuated along with the rest of the convicts from the Cépoy Prison and had escaped during the confusion of the invasion.
A tenure with the Abwehr had followed – he’d kept good company in prison. His cellmates had been Abwehr agents caught for spying. But it hadn’t all been easy. The Abwehr had wanted proof of his abilities. His trapping the leader of the Belgian Resistance who’d been hiding in the South of France had suited well enough. Nearly a hundred patriots had been taken as a result of that little escapade.
Sensing that the Abwehr would fall from grace and the Sicher-heitsdienst rise to far greater heights, Lafont had gone over to the other side, to the SS. He still had friends in the Abwehr, friends in very high places, a German citizenship now and a certified German Police card, Number 10474R.
Early in 1941 he’d moved into the rue Lauriston. Recruitment while with the Abwehr and here, too, had been from the jails, the cream of France’s underworld. Lafont had personally chosen them and in May of 1941 Pierre Bonny had come to work for him. A nice touch. An ex-inspector of the Sûreté joining forces with a hood. Partners in crime without restriction.
The pastis was good – pre-war stuff. He took the two Benzedrine tablets Hermann had given him, telling himself they were for the morgue and not for the house across the street.
‘Another,’ he shouted, ignoring the, ‘With pleasure,’ but lifting moist, warm, doubtful eyes at the proferred, ‘It’s on the house, Inspector. They’re expecting you.’
‘Then do me the honour of announcing my arrival.’
Pastis was no joke, but its 90 proof suited him. In the early afternoon the street was all but empty, the wind unkind.
‘St-Cyr to see the boss.’
‘He’s on the third floor. You can take the lift. It works.’
‘I’ll walk up. Tell him I’ll wait in his office.’
‘They’re sweating someone’s cherry. It might be fun.’
‘Get lost, scum. Don’t talk to me like that.’
‘Swallow gasoline, my fine Inspector. Monsieur Henri will be only too glad to light the match.’
The stairs were hard. The girl gave a scream. No lonelier sound could have been heard. She cried out again and again in terror, and he didn’t know if he could stand to hear much more.
Weeping when she wept, clutching his heart when she stopped in panic, he waited as she waited, then heard the blow, the cough, the gasp, the choking as vomit spilled from battered lips and nose.
‘I won’t tell you. I won’t!’ she shrieked.
Unable to control his hands, St-Cyr clutched the stuffed canary in one overcoat pocket and the pearls in the other.
Again he was forced to listen. Again a shrill scream ripped through the upper halls. She hit the floor above him; the boots were being applied! He knew he had to go up there to put a stop to it, that this was what the bastards wanted of him.
And yet … and yet, he knew he could not do so. And they had known it too, and had shown it to him.
‘Louis, it’s good to see you.’
‘You’re sweating, Henri. Is it because you have had such a hard time with that one upstairs, eh, or are you still afraid I’ll put the bracelets on you?’
Once a cow, always a cow! Lafont roared with laughter. The high falsetto that was so incongruous in that tall, muscular handsomeness, shocked as it bounced off the walls, the paintings, the sculptures and objets d’art.
‘Still the same old Louis. Well, my fine, things have changed. Sit down or stand, it’s all the same. Nicole, a glass of the lime for our friend.’
Polite custom? An attempt at manners? ‘I refuse. I’ve had sufficient. I’m not thirsty.’
‘But you will drink it anyway.’
The girl, a dress designer’s mannequin in off-white cashmere and gold with generous cleavage, moved quickly away to an antique cabinet.
Lafont sat down behind the desk he’d looted from one of the Rothschild villas. ‘So, Louis, a small matter, eh?’
At forty, he’d gained a bit of weight – all that high living these days. The face was incredibly not what one would expect in a gangster, more that of a film idol. Good, clean-cut, clean-shaven cheeks, a wide, strong jawline and admirable chin. The wide and slightly sensuous lips were what a woman might have wanted – and many of them did. The eyes … only in the eyes was the lie of it given. Even the dark-brown hair, well cut and brushed towards the left, was what one would have expected in a banker or an investment dealer.
Which was what he was, in a sense, these days.
The brows were neither
thick nor too thin. The nose was long and prominent but the eyes … the eyes: these were small, round, hard, glistening, watchful things. The eyes of a falcon just before it takes the sparrow.
Lafont examined his fingernails. He would have to gauge the wind the avenue Foch had put into St-Cyr’s sails. Nicole had turned from the cabinet and remained with her back to it. The glass of lime was in her hand.
‘Louis, you’re going to need our help. No, my friend, don’t get your ass in a knot. Just listen, eh? Sometimes it is necessary.’
At a nod the girl came forward. There was mischief in her lovely brown eyes but more than this, a feral excitement St-Cyr found disconcerting. She fairly breathed it. The fine nostrils were pinched. The pinkness of her tongue touched the crowns of her slightly parted teeth. The mop of auburn curls was short, cute, saucy, so many things. Perfume … What was that scent she was wearing? Mirage – could it be Mirage? Ah no. Why? Why must God do this to him?
‘Your drink, m’sieur.’
St-Cyr met the look she gave with a steadiness and cruelty he hated in himself.
There was a boldness in her eyes, no shame, lust … was there still lust? Had she …?
Nicole de Rainvelle moved away from him again. He had understood her only too well, this Chief Inspector from the Sûreté. Had it shown so much?
She went to lean back against the window-sill behind Henri. She’d fold her arms over her chest and stare at this cop.
There were droplets of blood on her dress but she’d not yet noticed these, had been too excited, too caught up in the beating of that girl upstairs.
Mirage … why was she wearing Gabrielle Arcuri’s perfume?
St-Cyr still didn’t miss much. Lafont massaged the middle finger of his left hand with the thumb and forefinger of the right. ‘The coins aren’t bad, Louis, but the forger’s new to the game.’
‘Continue.’
The lime squash, a hideously vile concoction of ersatz fruit essence and saccharin, still hadn’t been touched. ‘The girl who was murdered in the Hotel of the Silent Life was not the pigeon of the mackerel who operated the carousel.’
The prostitute of the pimp. ‘Did they know each other?’ asked the cop.
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