Salamander

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘What did you hear?’

  The Inspector would hate her for it. ‘A woman crying. My room … It’s in the attic at the back, you understand.’

  Overlooking the balcony and the garden. ‘And did you tell Madame of this crying?’

  His gaze demanded the truth. ‘No, I … I was afraid to. Madame has a heart murmur, Inspector. Sometimes things upset her and …’

  ‘And you were afraid she would be very upset since neither Monsieur Vergès nor his son apparently ever came to the house.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The tears were very real and many. The lovely lips quivered with remorse. He hated to do it to her but had to know. ‘How often did you hear this crying?’

  She mustn’t tell him everything. She mustn’t! ‘Sometimes every night for days but … but then it would stop and … and there would be peace until …’

  He couldn’t keep the sadness from his voice. ‘Until a few days or weeks had passed, or a month or two perhaps, when again there would be much weeping but not, am I right, from the same person?’

  So much was registered in the girl’s eyes. Fear, doubt, anxiety, shame. ‘What has happened in that house, Inspector? Please, you must tell me.’

  Ah damn, what was she hiding and why was she too afraid to tell him?

  ‘Nanette … Girl, has he gone?’ came the voice of Madame Lemaire.

  ‘Yes … yes, madame! I am just bringing the supper.’ Frantically the girl turned to him. ‘Please, Inspector, her heart.’

  ‘I’ll be back. Say nothing of this to anyone. Your life may well be in danger.’

  After he had gone, she pressed her forehead against the door and wept. She hadn’t told him of her attempts to find out what had been going on in that house since the Defeat. The Defeat! She hadn’t told him what she had seen.

  Taking the business card from her apron, she opened her blouse and slid it down under her brassière until it nestled against the plump warmth of her left breast.

  ‘I will sew it into the lining,’ she whispered, ‘I will keep it with me always. And when I have to wash the brassière?’ she asked herself, with all the practicality of her ancestors. ‘Then I will put it under my pillow at such times.’

  He would hate her for what she had seen and said nothing of.

  2

  THE BOY WAS WAITING IN THE FREEZING DARKness of the rue Laurence-Savart beside the gate to number 3. He had been there for hours.

  ‘Dédé, what is this?’ asked St-Cyr. ‘You’ll catch pneumonia.’

  ‘It’s nothing, Monsieur the Chief Inspector. Nothing.’

  ‘Of course, but you know I would have come up the street to visit with your dear mama and papa, and your brothers and sisters. We agreed, isn’t that so? A wash, a cup of bouillon and then the conference. That’s why I’m here. How are they bearing up?’

  ‘Terrible, Chief Inspector. Grand-mére is saying Joanne has been violated and murdered, and that her nude body has been left out in the cold for the crows to peck out her eyes and the rats to eat their way up her …’

  ‘Ah damn that old woman, she ought to know better! Come inside immediately. Is the gas still on?’

  St-Cyr unlatched the gate and pushed it open. The Germans often turned the gas off for the stupidest of reasons and for others too: the acts of terrorism that were gradually becoming more frequent and bolder. Each day the gas was on for but a few hours and he had lost track of those times, for he was seldom home for long. ‘Dédé, please answer me. Men must be brave at such times.’

  Men … ‘It … it’s off, Chief Inspector, as is the electricity and the water, the full job, but … but I’ve brought you a thermos of soup and some bread.’

  ‘Ah bon, c’est bon. You must thank your mother for me. Now let’s go inside and I’ll fill you in on the latest developments.’

  It was freezing in the house but fortunately the Organization Todt had stacked sufficient kindling and bits of board from the repairs for a decent fire. The stove was soon warm. The soup was excellent, a family sacrifice he appreciated.

  But what did one say to a ten-year-old boy who adored his oldest sister because she loved him and made him feel special, since he was caught in the middle so to speak, having both older brothers and younger sisters to contend with?

  Out of respect, the boy had pulled off his knitted hat and placed it on the table. St-Cyr took in the sallow cheeks and hollow eyes, the high forehead and narrow chin that would, in time, fill out if allowed.

  It was the lack of milk, cheese, vitamins and minerals. No milk could get into the city from the farms of plenty, except for that sold on the black market or directly to the Germans. There were no potatoes in a land of them. They had all gone to the Reich.

  But of such hardships there must be no mention. He grinned and threw his hands out, shrugging too. ‘So, progress, mon vieux. Great progress. Joanne was not killed in the house to which she went for the interview.’

  Not killed … ‘But … but she has gone to the Théâtre du Palais Royal for the interview?’

  Why was it boys of this age always seemed to have such large eyes? Beseechingly they demanded absolute truth.

  ‘A letter was left there for her, Dédé. Joanne then went to a house.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘That I can’t say. For now it must remain confidential so as not to jeopardize the investigation.’

  Confidential …

  St-Cyr leaned over the table, pushing a small tin of age-old mints a little closer. ‘Go on. They help.’ He nodded towards the mints. ‘My partner proves his usefulness at times. Take two. One for each cheek. Don’t crush them up. They last longer.’

  The mints were taken but one was dropped through nervousness, moving St-Cyr to say earnesdy, ‘Be brave. There’s still hope. After three days, she was taken from the house to another place last night. We’re working on it and I expect to have further answers when I meet my partner in an hour or so. We’re not sparing the clock on this one. Joanne was special.’

  The Chief Inspector had not yet removed his overcoat and scarf or galoshes, hat and gloves. He ate the last of the soup with the thoroughness of the determined, and when it was gone, wiped the bowl and spoon with the last of the bread just as they did at home.

  ‘It saves on the washing-up, eh, Dédé? Now listen.’

  He shoved plate and spoon aside and brushed a few crumbs into a hand before eating them. ‘She got to the appointment early. She used her head and looked the house over first. Very cleverly she let others know where she was going. This has made our job much, much easier. It tells me Joanne has her wits about her and will, perhaps, leave further clues for us to follow.’ Merde alors, how could he lie like this to the boy?

  Further clues …

  ‘We’ve gathered a great deal of information, Dédé, in a very short time thanks to her quick-wittedness.’

  The Chief Inspector used the candle flame to light his pipe, tilting both away from each other so that the wax fell not into the bowl of the pipe but onto the table. For a moment there was silence as he drew in those first few puffs and wished for the luxury of contentment, but his mind was churning.

  ‘She would have got off the Métro at the station Bourse, Dédé. From there, she would have walked west along the rue Quatre Septembre, approaching the scene of the robbery. The time …’

  ‘12.15, Monsieur the Chief Inspector. I followed in her steps and …’

  ‘Pardon?’

  There was such a look of hardness in the Chief Inspector’s eyes. ‘We … that is, myself and the other boys, decided to follow in her steps.’

  ‘To where?’

  Had they done the wrong thing? wondered Dédé apprehensively. ‘The bank and … and then back towards the station Bourse and down past the Bibliothèque Nationale to … to the Théâtre du Palais Royal.’

  This in itself was trouble, but one must go easy. After all, how else were the boys to stand the awful waiting? ‘The bank then. At what time would she come close t
o it, before retracing her steps to turn down the rue de Richelieu and make her way to the theatre?’

  Disappointment registered and then a massive frown. ‘12.27 perhaps, so she might not have seen anything of the robbery, Monsieur the Chief Inspector.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But … but Joanne, she has had plenty of time? She might have …’

  ‘Window-shopped, is this what you mean? Those shops … those places, Dédé, they make us feel uncomfortable. Besides, the prices are far too high for her, myself also.’

  Again there was that frown. ‘But Joanne was going to have to model such clothes, Monsieur the Chief Inspector? Seeing them is to learn something of them, is it not? We … we think she would have taken a little of her time for this.’

  Though he would have to check it out, he knew the boys were right. ‘So, she might well have been in position at 12.47 when the robbery and shooting took place …’

  ‘Did one of them follow her? That is the question,’ said the boy with all the gravity of his tender years.

  ‘You should become a detective, Dédé, but I wouldn’t wish the life on my worst enemy!’

  Someone had followed her, thought Dédé. He was almost certain of this now. Why else the sudden outburst from the detective? Why else the compliment? But had it been one of the robbers?

  If not, who could it have been? ‘Was she followed, Monsieur the Chief Inspector?’

  ‘Ah, Dédé, you have me. Yes. Yes, she was followed but by whom?’

  More he couldn’t say. Concluded, the conference ended with his gruffly pressing the tin of mints into the boy’s hands and telling him to share them up. ‘Don’t go around looking for any more answers, eh? Wait for my instructions. I may need you for something special.’

  But then at the door, he said, ‘Stay out of trouble. It’s dangerous. We don’t want to ruffle any feathers until we’ve found Joanne and got her safely away.’

  St-Cyr was thinking of Paul Meunier, the son of the engraver, as he closed the door. He was thinking of the world he found himself in. One of watchers upon watchers. Why the hell had someone followed her? Had it been someone from that house making sure she was alone?

  In pencil, with a fine and very artistic hand, Paul Meunier had deftly sketched Joanne as he had seen her in the shop, even to etching the worry in those lovely eyes, the strain of her not knowing why she was being followed though certain that she was.

  Giving life to her, so much so, he could still hear the sound of the pencil on paper and how the younger Meunier’s breath had quickened as the girl had grown before him.

  To have such a remarkable recall was not common. Clearly the engraver’s son should have been free of the shop and allowed to follow a career as an artist.

  Young Meunier had broken all the rules of his class and his father’s establishment and had offered Joanne a cup of coffee which the girl had taken standing up with, yes, two heaping teaspoons of white sugar and milk. Yes, milk.

  Some have all the luck, especially engravers of cigarette cases and other knick-knacks for the Germans.

  Now where was Hermann? Suddenly the need to see him was all-consuming.

  * * *

  Pigalle was usually fun, but the Bar of the Broken Cat, in a cellar off the rue Fontaine, was most definitely off-limits to the Occupier. Kohler wet his throat as he stood in the entrance. The music had stopped and so had all talk and motion.

  From a smoke-filled sea of tables, huddled gangsters stared at him while in the distance, a three-piece orchestra waited. There was only trouble for him here and he had walked right into it. A ‘friend’ at Gestapo Paris-Central had given him the address. A friend, the laughing bastard!

  Where the girls clung dolefully to each other circling round and round on glass that scratched and scoured the music, there was now only an electrified stillness. Not even a look from half of them, the breath held.

  He wished that Louis was with him. Louis was good in situations like this. But Louis wasn’t with him and they needed answers quickly if they were ever to find Joanne alive.

  The préfet had his informants, his mouchards. The ‘word’ from Gestapo HQ, such as it had been, was that the one who would have the most to say could be found here. Henri Roland Péguy, one of the durs, the hard ones who had spent time in prison and would wear the three dots on the web of skin between the right thumb and index finger. M.A.V.—Mort Aux Vaches, Death to the Cows, the cops. Ah yes.

  He had last been in the Santé awaiting trial for the murder of two pensioners from whom he had been trying to squeeze their life savings. But that had been in the fall of 1940. The jails had been emptied of their most useful occupants who had then gone to work for the SS and the Gestapo.

  Péguy had been passed over in the first rush but then miraculously sprung by the very man who had put him there, the préfet of Paris, though that little bit of information was supposed to remain a secret for ever.

  Now the secret was in jeopardy and Péguy waited.

  He was a mean-eyed, hard little bastard of forty-four with one prominent gold tooth, the upper right lateral incisor. Hence the nickname of ‘Fortune’.

  Kohler found him at last, three tables back of the postage stamp dance floor, holding court with four others amid a clutter of wine bottles and cigarette butts. ‘Now, look, all I want is a little information,’ he said quietly.

  There were five empty bottles and spills of red wine on the linoleum table-top.

  ‘Eat dung. Kiss your mother’s ass.’

  ‘Don’t be tiresome.’

  A flick-knife came out; the blade leapt! Fifteen centimetres of highly polished, hardened steel straight from the Reich and bearing the much-coveted logo of the SS, the death’s-head.

  A man of few words, then, but with them, the sickening realization that, though it was forbidden to kill any member of the Occupying Forces, there was one exception. Hermann Andreas Kohler. Fair game and no one’s loss.

  ‘Put the knife away. Please. Let’s not get heavy, eh? Just a few small questions,’ breathed Kohler.

  A bottle fell, the table quivered, neckties and faces were blurred. Kohler grabbed another bottle and smashed it. The sound of breaking glass shattered the silence. A girl screamed but was slapped into silence.

  Péguy got slowly to his feet to face the spines of glass. ‘Give me room,’ he hissed, tossing the words out of the side of his mouth.

  The others backed away. Soon there would only be the two of them on the dance floor, ringed by spectators all thirsting for blood. Mine! thought Kohler. Ah merde.

  The table was flipped out of the way, the knife flashed. Kohler lost the broken neck of the bottle. Blood ran from his right forearm, flooding over the back of his hand. ‘You cut my overcoat?’ he said, feeling no pain. A puzzle.

  ‘Now the liver!’ spat Péguy. ‘You have no friends.’

  To one side, revolvers had come out but were not yet pointed at him. Was it but a taste of things to come when this lousy war should end and everyone else had gone home?

  ‘Look, I’ll walk out of here. Okay? No problem. No questions. Nothing said.’

  The knife didn’t move. Balanced lightly, it was held close in, with the elbow braced against the base of the ribcage and the muscles knotted.

  Slowly Kohler pulled off his scarf and gathered it as best he could around his bloodied hand. If he drew his pistol, the bastards with the guns would even the score. Ah Christ, there was nothing for it.

  ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ he said. ‘I’m bigger. I don’t like to pick on little guys.’

  The knife flashed, the wrist was grabbed, Péguy taking to the air to land on his back with a crash that broke the floor and sent the bottles spinning.

  Kohler swept up one and smashed it.

  The Frenchman began to back away on his ass, to throw his pals looks of desperation. So, a court of last appeal and everything not exactly going one way, snorted Kohler inwardly. The rest of them had figured it out by themselves.

/>   The bastard scrambled up and made a run for it through the parting crowd. Kohler got to him in the toilers. Throttling him from behind—seizing him by the belt and lifting—he crammed the pomaded, black-haired, jerking head into the stained trough of the urinal and shrieked, ‘Kiss it, you son of a bitch! Kiss it and puke!’

  Blood ran from battered lips to mingle with the piss and other things. ‘Now talk,’ he whispered, letting up a little and catching a breath. ‘Talk!’ he shrieked in good Gestapo form.

  Down on his knees, with his face still squished to one side and his eyes fighting for a way out, Péguy spat blood and his gold nugget and winced. ‘Air,’ he managed, vowing to rip open Kohler’s other cheek and cut off his balls. ‘Air.’

  ‘Okay. Don’t choke on your puke.’

  Straddling him, Kohler eased up a little. ‘So, what did you find out for our friend?’

  He waited. He shook the bastard. ‘The robbery, eh?’ he hissed. ‘Eighteen million straight in from Lyon that very same day, am I right?’

  Vomit joined the blood. There was a ragged gasp up the nose. A breath was caught and swallowed. ‘My knees …’

  ‘Fuck your knees. You’re one of the préfet’s mouchards, piss-head. Where did the money come from, when did it arrive and who the fuck knew about it?’

  That was too much to ask. The préfet would kill him. ‘Silence. I keep the silence!’ came the watery hiss.

  ‘Jesus, a hero!’ shouted Kohler, slamming him back into the trough. ‘I’ll piss on your head, you little fart!’

  ‘Lyon that … that same morning by banker’s dispatch. Eighteen millions, in 1000- and 500-franc notes. New francs.’

  ‘Ja, ja. Now who told who about it?’

  ‘We … we do not know that yet!’ shrieked Péguy, struggling to escape.

  He was throttled like a dog and forced to kiss the urinal but there was nothing more to come on that aspect. ‘So, now tell me about the suitcases. Start with those and see if you can remember everything.’

  Kohler let go of him suddenly. He would give him time to think that maybe … just maybe it would be possible to get up.