Salamander

by J. Robert Janes

  The boy left the tobacco pouch on the table and his coffee only half drunk. In the fashion of the times, and to cover himself in case anyone was watching, St-Cyr swept up the tobacco and emptied the coffee into his own no matter what germs it might contain. He’d damned well drink it in a toast to freedom!

  Three women had gone into that cinema. Claudine and another had arrived late, and she had then left her seat to find the washroom key and spend her time with the projectionist. Frau Weidling had also been in the audience—she’d been recognized by the ticket-booth operator. And while Claudine was upstairs, her companion left the rush bag on the seat and went in search of someone else perhaps, and/or to lock the door to the toilets in anger, perhaps, at not finding her there but finding several others. Everything pointed to Frau Weidling being the person to be met, but had they both returned to those seats to start the fire?

  Madame Rachline had said she and Claudine had been to the pharmacy, but Mademoiselle Martine Charlebois said she herself had given Claudine a bottle of friar’s balsam that very afternoon.

  He drew on his pipe in earnest contemplation. The trip to the pharmacy could simply have been cover for the cinema they had left in such haste, but had it really been Ange-Marie who had returned to the flat with her friend as the concierge maintained, or had it been Frau Weidling or someone else? The other woman? The later absence of the concierge must also be considered as a factor in getting into and leaving the flat.

  Oxalic and sulphuric acids release carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide in equal volumes when mixed and warmed a little. Both gases will kill, but the carbon monoxide was, of course, much faster and far deadlier. Depending on its concentration, the sulphuric acid might fume when poured out, and such fumes would have had to be cleared away lest they warn the victim. The balsam would give a strong enough and pleasantly sweet aroma. The residue could then be disposed of without a trace by simply washing it down the drain. Death by natural causes then. Pneumonia in wartime under the Occupation and who would care? She had been a prostitute anyway.

  But how had the Salamander come by such things, and the phosphorus, if indeed it had been used to start the tenement fire?

  Henri Charlebois would not have used oxalic acid to clean metal antiques. Ange-Marie Rachline could not have had such a working knowledge of chemistry.

  Leiter Weidling would know only too well the reputation of the silent killer and perhaps, too, the making of those gases in the laboratory. His wife had had Claudine’s name in her purse and that of La Belle Époque, but would she have understood the intricacies of mixing the two acids and of warming them? Had he taught her how to do it? Were the two of them working together?

  Henri Charlebois had been in Dijon. His sister had lost her keys …

  For a woman to understand chemistry so well, and to have access to such things, she would have had to be a chemist, a metallurgist—ah, there were so few females trained in the sciences—a teacher …

  Ah merde, a teacher of course. A chemistry laboratory …

  Sweeping everything into his pockets, he grabbed his hat and made for the front desk of the Hotel Bristol.

  ‘The Inspector Kohler has left the hotel, monsieur, with Frau Weidling and the Gestapo agents she asked me to summon. I believe the five of them went straight to the Hotel Terminus but I cannot be certain of this.’

  ‘The five of them …?’

  ‘Yes. Herr Kohler was under arrest.’

  ‘Arrest?’

  ‘Naked and struggling, monsieur.’

  Maudit! It had happened again. The Gestapo had taken one of their own. Hermann!

  8

  RUEFULLY KOHLER LOOKED AROUND AT THE damage he had caused to Gestapo HQ Lyon. The windows of the third-floor room were broken and splintered, the walls, floor and ceiling scorched—stained by water and flame-retardant too. In the rush to extinguish the fire, the copper bathtub had been dented but the dents had been hammered out and the tub refilled so that it was brimming. Verdammt! Were they going to drown the three of them? He was freezing and could not stop shivering at the sight of the water and the memory of Frau Weidling ducking her head and holding it under. She would want to see the real thing. She would want to get her kicks out of it.

  ‘So now it begins,’ snorted Robichaud. ‘The final descent into hell. Élaine, forgive me.’

  Tied to chairs, they had been left to think things over.

  ‘It’s nothing, Julien. It does not matter. We’re together. That’s what counts.’

  ‘To think we could have agreed to meet at any other cinema, that all we ever wanted was to be together.’

  ‘Yes but … but now we are, chéri, and for me, ah, I no longer care who knows about us. My husband, my children … May God forgive me but I could not stay another moment in that house. When we were together, Julien, those were the best times of my life.’

  ‘Mine also.’

  Good Gott im Himmel, they were trying so hard! They knew the room would be bugged! ‘Look, I’ll do what I can,’ grumbled Kohler. ‘Barbie must want something from me. Otherwise it doesn’t make a damned bit of sense my being here!’

  They looked at each other and said nothing—after all, he was Gestapo too, and he couldn’t expect much else from them. Élaine Gauthier had spent the night in the cellars; Robichaud had, of course, been at the tenement fire and had not known she’d been picked up. Nor would he know what she’d said during the hours of interrogation that had left her gaunt and haggard.

  Kohler remembered their meeting in the lobby of the Hotel Bristol and feeling that she had had more to say. Was the truth now to be forced out of her, and himself to be witness to it? A lesson for him perhaps?

  She would not look at the bathtub. Robichaud could not help but do so or look up at the meat-hooks that hung above her. ‘I love you, Élaine,’ he said, and then again, ‘Forgive me.’

  ‘For involving her?’ shouted Kohler angrily. ‘Ah nom de Jésus-Christ, dummkopf, come clean and they’ll go easy on her. You were at that cinema to meet with Resistance people among the railway workers. You bastards want to unite throughout France. Every fire-fighting unit in every city and town; every railway worker on every train and in every marshalling yard and repair shop. That’s what Obersturmführer Barbie believes and nothing you or I say to the contrary will ever change this. Can’t you see what he’ll do to her? He’ll have her stripped naked in front of us. Then he’ll question her, and if she doesn’t speak up, they’ll shove her head under in that thing and hold her down until her lungs all but burst!’ He dragged in a breath and clenched his fists. ‘Then they’ll do it all over again,’ he added sadly, ‘and they’ll keep on doing it.’

  The couple said nothing. They gazed steadily at each other. Kohler pleaded with them even though he knew Barbie would be listening in and that everything he said would be written down and used against him if not today, then later on.

  In desperation, he said, ‘Leiter Weidling doesn’t stand a fart’s chance in a windstorm of stopping the next fire with you out of the way, Robichaud, but the blame for it is going to rest solidly on the Obersturmführer’s shoulders. Right about now my partner will be filing our interim report with Sturmbannführer Boemelburg in Paris, who will then call Gestapo Mueller in Berlin. Hey, they’re old friends. They’re in this together, right? That report will place full responsibility for this fiasco on Hen-Barbie but the sap just doesn’t know his balls are for the skillet!’

  ‘And myself?’ asked Robichaud steadily.

  The fire chief had realized there could be no escape for him. ‘You have no other choice but to tell them what they want to hear. Look, I’m sorry but that’s the way of it. No matter how hard you both deny it, this will only reinforce what he wants to believe. But what he doesn’t see is that he could accomplish everything he wants and earn himself an Iron Cross First-Class into the bargain. All he needs is to keep Madame Gauthier in custody. She’s insurance enough you won’t try to escape. Gestapo Mueller wants the Salamander stopped and
to do so, my partner and I need you.’

  It was Madame Gauthier who said distantly, ‘The Salamander knows the city so well. Without Julien’s help, the Théâtre des Célestins will be child’s play.’

  ‘Phosphorus?’ asked Kohler sharply so that the boys in the next room could hear.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Robichaud gravely. ‘Only a little is needed and, of course, one can hide it in several places. That theatre … beautiful and ornate as it is, why … Ah, I’ve been telling them for years that something must be done to improve the fire exits and the extinguisher syst—’

  The door opened and Barbie’s two German shepherds came in to get acquainted. Shit! Excited by the prospects ahead, Frau Weidling darted her eyes from the woman to the bathtub, then to the larger of the dogs and back again to Madame Gauthier who could now no longer look at any of them.

  The dogs … Kohler could hear her saying. The dogs …

  Not a month after he’d arrived in Lyon, Barbie had earned himself a reputation for the baseness of his cruelty towards the women he interrogated, never mind the men. Though he knew he mustn’t shout, Kohler raged at Frau Weidling and tried to stall them. ‘What’d you do to get those photographs, eh? Prostitute yourself to some zero-brained detective in Lübeck? Hey, my sweet little bit from Schwerin, is Lübeck where they came from? Throats slit, breasts cut open, vaginas … Ja, ja, Frau Fire Chief, the Lübeck cop-shop and you with your bare ass on some bastard’s desk even though you didn’t want him to dip his wick into you. He knew you were responsible for those fires. He knew you would try it again and again and … Ah Gott im Himmel, I’m an idiot! It was that husband of yours. He’d followed you from fire to fire. That’s why you married him. The bastard found you out and forced you to—’

  There was no denying she was beautiful when angry. She fingered his scrotum and said quietly, You should not have touched a thing in my room, Herr Kohler.’

  ‘It’s Inspector to you.’ Barbie was smirking. Shit!

  ‘I was nowhere near Lübeck or Heidelberg or Köln at the time of those other fires. I was in Paris.’

  She had the whitest teeth. ‘You’re lying. That husband of yours knows all about you. Hey, I think you and Claudine Bertrand were once lovers—a casual little affair that was remembered, eh? So, here we have a chance to come to Lyon and by God, love again. But Claudine promised to bring along a friend, someone really special, another woman. Did you want to hold a lighted cigarette between that one’s toes, or were you more interested in the other parts? Flames when you masturbate. A grandfather who—’

  Her features sharpened. Excruciating pain shot through him, stiffening every muscle as she squeezed his scrotum until he could not help but scream in anguish and gasp.

  Then she hit him until there was blood in his eyes, and in a blind, numb way he understood this was her only means of convincing Barbie of her usefulness.

  Boemelburg had a filthy cold. ‘The line is scratchy, Walter. No … ah no, there is no need to shout!’ pleaded St-Cyr.

  The Head of SIPO-SD Section IV, the Gestapo in France, had no patience for an old acquaintance from before the war. ‘Louis, what has Kohler been up to this time? Come, come, you know very well that dummkopf should have telephoned me himself. Another fire, eh? Yes, yes, Gestapo Mueller has just been on the line demanding … demanding! … to know what is going on.’

  Hermann’s Chief hawked up lumpy custard and let it erupt into a handkerchief perhaps. St-Cyr anxiously wiped the receiver on a sleeve just in case the lines carried more than words. ‘Walter, we are almost positive we know who the Salamander is but I absolutely must have Hermann’s help. Klaus Barbie has him.’

  A difficult gob was swallowed. ‘The Obersturmführer … but … but why is this?’

  They were speaking deutsch, though Boemelburg was fluent in French. ‘A small misunderstanding,’ confessed St-Cyr.

  ‘Has he been arrested?’

  ‘Yes, Herr Sturmbann—’

  ‘Gott im Himmel, Louis, why was he arrested?’ Kohler … Kohler … oh mein Gott, not again!

  It would be best to tell him just a little. More rubbish was swallowed. St-Cyr filled him in and then said, ‘Herr Robichaud knows nothing of the Resistance, Walter. The man was simply in the cinema to meet up with his girlfriend, a married woman who has a family, that is all. French—yes, yes, Walter, they’re both French and the Pope will castigate them for their infidelity.’ Ah merde! ‘I swear they had nothing to do with those people who were locked in the toilets. We need Robichaud for a little while. Just until the concert is over.’

  ‘Concert? What concert is this? Don’t tell me you’re all fucking the dog down there?’

  ‘Walter, Walter, please! It’s a benefit. Something to gather money and clothing for the Russian Front.’

  ‘Then that is good. Yes, good. When is it to be held?’

  Was he thinking of coming himself? ‘Tomorrow evening. It starts early and ends well before curfew. At least, I think it does. I imagine it does. I …’ Have said too much?

  ‘Phosphorus, Louis? Oxalic and sulphuric acids? Our arsonist is a chemist, a metallurgist, an engineer, teacher or professor perhaps. Yes, someone with access to such things and the knowledge to use them.’

  They talked for a little longer and then that was it. Short of setting fire to the place himself, there was little else he could do. Exhausted by the conversation, St-Cyr put down the telephone which rang immediately. Orders flew. An SS corporal raced for the stairs. Another leaned on the bell-push of the lift.

  Impressed, the Feldwebel on the desk gave the Frenchman the once-over.

  St-Cyr let him have it. ‘Get these clothes and a pot of coffee up to Inspector Kohler immediately. See that he receives the following message. He is to bring Frau Weidling and the others to the temporary morgue at the Lycée Ampere, and he is to wait there with them until I return.’

  The hotel’s frescos were mirrored in its lobby doors as he turned swiftly away. Oozing sentiment, they blissfully portrayed life in the Rhône Valley and in Renaissance times. Joyous faces among the peasants. No rain or snow or twenty degrees of frost and Gestapo torture rooms.

  He would not take a vélo-taxi. He would catch a tram-car to the place Terreaux and use the ruins of the cinema to cover his tracks before continuing. Yes, yes, that would be best. There was no sense in leading Gestapo Lyon to the quarry. Martine Charlebois might simply have been duped, but she’d lost her keys and someone had found them.

  When he got there, the Pare de la Tête d’Or appeared gripped in the fierceness of a polar waste, devoid of all sign of human life, dog, bird or cat. Down by the lake, the iron-and-glass cupola of the bandshell was hung with jagged icicles and at first he didn’t see her.

  She was standing alone, gazing out over the ice-covered lake toward the Île des Tamaris, the nearer of the two islands. Lost in thought, she was totally oblivious to the wind and the cold. Worried … ah so concerned with the turmoil of her thoughts, the brow beneath the knitted, dark brown toque would be well furrowed.

  Now and then the gloved fingers of her right hand rubbed the railing as if, though still undecided, she had to agree it must have happened. When, finally, he cleared his throat and stepped up on to the platform, she awoke to him and gasped, then held a hand to her mouth to stop herself from saying anything. Trapped … Oh mon Dieu, she was terrified. Sick and looking away from him, panicking …

  ‘Mademoiselle Charlebois, it is one thing to have lost your keys and to have had them returned, it is another to still agonize over how you could possibly have lost them and why, of all places, here. Is that not so?’

  Dear Jesus help her. There was no one else with him but why had he come? Why? That latest fire, that tenement … did he know the truth of it? ‘I … I was daydreaming, Inspector. Thinking about … about how I loved this old bandshell as a child. Pirates and castaways … oh, it was so many things for me. A ship, an island …’

  She threw up suddenly, and he waited for her sickness to
pass as she leaned over the railing in tears.

  ‘Mademoiselle, if you dropped your keys here, why was it that you had them in your hand? Surely you would have kept them in a safe place? Your purse, your briefcase, a drawer at home perhaps … ah, it is a puzzle unless …’

  Unless what? she wanted to shriek at him. Unless she was lending them to someone? Was that what he thought? ‘I … I was trying to remember, Inspector, while … while thinking of my childhood. I … I can’t understand why I had them out but I must have, mustn’t I?’

  Ten days ago at least! ‘Mademoiselle Charlebois, why, please, did you have the keys at all? Is it not customary for the concierge of the school to open and lock all doors?’

  He had not yet mentioned the tenement fire but would he ask her where she was last night? Would he? ‘M … Monsieur Legrange, our custodian, has been quite ill. We all like him so much, we did not wish to seek a replacement so the staff agreed to take turns. I … I had not yet passed my keys on to Madame the Professor Calmette, my superior.’

  ‘But if the keys were lost and it was your duty to lock up, who did this for you?’

  He was trying to unsettle her with all this talk of the keys … the keys! ‘Monsieur the Assistant Professor Paul. He … he has the other set. Usually we alternated. Every other day one of us would do it but he … he said he would cover for me until I … I found my keys.’

  He would make her think he was suddenly fed up with her evasiveness. He would grip the railing and stare across the lake. ‘Were you alone when you lost them?’ he asked. ‘Come, come, mademoiselle. Was it your three zazous you met here ten days ago or your Monsieur Paul?’

  ‘My Monsieur Pa … ul? He … he is too old for me, Inspector. He is … he is fifty-six. I am only twenty-six!’

  He’d be gruff about it. ‘Fifty-six is not so old, not these days when most of our young men are away in POW camps or in the grave.’

  When she didn’t respond, he said, ‘You were meeting Jean-Pierre. He’s the oldest of your little tribe. Seventeen, is he, or eighteen?’