Then he cocked his pistol and pressed its muzzle to the back of the bastard’s neck. ‘A girl is missing, you greasy son of a bitch. A friend. The robbery may have nothing to do with it. We’ll have to see. Just start talking or we’ll have an accident.’
Kohler … Kohler had a pretty little pigeon named Giselle le Roy …‘Two suitcases. Leather. Alligator. Louis Vuitton 1934 to ’36. Two men, one woman.’ Péguy angrily spat blood and other things. ‘The men to take the money, the woman to watch the street. One motorcycle for the getaway.’
‘Come on. Two big, heavy suitcases and two guys on one motor cycle? Hey, you can do better than that. Why not throw in a vélo-taxi just to speed things up?’
A bicycle-taxi.
A nostril was cleared. ‘They … they stole a car.’
‘Talk louder.’
‘A car!’
‘Good. Let the others in there know you’re telling me everything, eh? Then it won’t be Talbotte who cuts your throat but your friends.’
‘My usefulness…. Please, the préfet is counting on me to …’
‘Aw, stop whining and get on with it. A car in Paris? A German car?’
The bastard nodded but banged his forehead and cursed Kohler’s ancestors until the gun was pressed a little closer and he was told that, since Talbotte had not wished to co-operate on such a delicate matter, there had been nothing for it but to ask his sources. ‘It’s simply your tough luck, mon fin, so spit it out.’
‘Then yes. Yes! The car of one whose mistress was in a shop across the street. They forced her driver to take them to Pigalle and they ditched him here.’
‘Now wait a minute. Whose car was it?’
‘Ah nom de Jésus-Christ, foutez-moi la paix!’ Bugger off!
Kohler waited.
‘The … the Sonderführer Franz Ewald Kempf.’
A special officer, Section II of the Propaganda Staffel, in charge of news releases for the Luftwaffe. An arrogant smart-ass, a real ladies’ man. ‘Pigalle in broad daylight?’ scoffed the Gestapo’s strong-arm. ‘Maudit salaud, don’t be such an utter idiot!’
‘Montmartre, up on the hill … a farm lorry, a gazogène …’
That was better but still not good enough. Kohler leaned down to whisper in his ear. ‘Is your ass as tight as your lips, or do I have to bring one of your friends in here to find out for myself?’
Both nostrils were cleared. There was some choking. ‘A courtyard off the rue des Amiraux. Number 9. The driver was knocked out and left in the car. They … they walked away.’
‘With two big suitcases like that? Near the goods yards? Hey, you must think I don’t know my way around.’
Péguy swallowed. Two rucksacks. They … they left the suitcases but these were then taken by someone else and we have not yet been able to find them.’
‘Did they leave a little of the cash as hush-up money? Well …?’
‘Yes, yes, most probably. Maybe a bundle of 500s. We do not know as yet!’
‘Didn’t the chauffeur get a look at them?’
‘One wrenched the rear-view mirror aside, the other put the gun to the back of his head. Things moved too fast. He was hit pretty hard and has suffered a concussion.’
‘So, tell me about the two men.’
‘They … they were dressed as mackerels but …’
‘Dressed like pimps so as to point the finger elsewhere? Good Gott im Himmel, how dumb do you think I am?’
‘As maquereaux!’ spat Péguy desperately.
‘Hey, mon fin, pimps don’t have the guts to rob banks, nor would they smash a teller’s face with lead. Come to think of it, why that teller?’
‘He … he reached for the …’
‘Ja, ja, the alarm bell. Hey, look behind the shit to find the ass that left it. Why that teller?’
His nose was broken, raged Péguy silently. His teeth were smashed. ‘He … he may have recognized one of them.’
‘Or?’
There was a sigh, that of a departing soul perhaps.
‘Or known of the shipment and … and foolishly passed the word so as to obtain the pay-off.’ Marseille … could he manage to go into hiding there?
Again Kohler leaned down. ‘Don’t even think of Marseille, mein Schatz, my treasure. You’d stand out like rotten fish. Hey, you’re really very good. If you had udders, you’d make a farmer happy. But let’s hope your milk hasn’t turned, eh? Because if it has, I’ll be back. Oh by the way, those two guys. How old were they?’
He’d kill Kohler if he could! ‘Thirty … thirty-two to thirty-six, no more, not much younger.’
Things must have happened pretty fast. ‘And they didn’t talk or act like pimps, did they? Well, come on. Empty the udders so that I can put you out to pasture.’
The head was shaken. A hair was savagely spat. ‘Well-educated, eh?’ asked the Gestapo.
The head gave a nod. ‘So, good. Yes, that’s very good,’ said Kohler, straightening to stand over him. There was only one language a bastard like this would understand. ‘Don’t move. I’ve got to put the pistol away and take out the other one.’
Giving it a moment in which Péguy cringed and waited himself, he said, ‘The woman. The one who watched the street. Let’s not forget her.’
‘She … she lost herself quickly.’
‘Just walked away? No bicycle? No motor cycle or vélo-taxi?’
‘None.’
‘How old?’
‘Thirty to thirty-five, maybe a little older.’
‘Okay. Was it a Resistance job?’
‘We … we don’t know. Perhaps not. It … it’s too early to say.’
‘So you told Talbotte no.’
The head leapt, the bastard tried to face him.
‘Yes, yes, I told him no! Do you think I want trouble with those people? If they find out I’ve squealed on them, they will slice me up.’
It had best come softly. ‘Maybe that’s what you deserve.’
Péguy raked his mind for details. Giselle le Roy liked to dance in the Bal Saint-Séverin and to while away her time watching old movies in any of three most favoured cinemas. Sometimes she would go around the corner to pay Madame Chabot a little visit and to talk over old times. Since she could no longer offer the use of her body to anyone but Kohler, the girl was bored.
In boredom would there be vengeance. The sword with the serpent entwined.
‘Thinking about tattoos and vowing you’re going to kill someone close to me, eh?’ snorted Kohler. ‘Hey, I’d watch it if I were you. Ah merde, the battery’s dry. You’re in luck!’
No piss.
For good measure, he leaned on Péguy’s head and ground it into the trough a last time. ‘Don’t even think of touching Giselle or Oona. I’ll kill you if you come within a block of either of them. If your friends out there allow you to leave. If. Bonne chance, you’re going to need it!’
The battered lips quivered with rage, the bloodshot eyes were smarting. ‘I … I will have the protection of the préfet and they will know it.’
‘Then I pity you for its worthlessness. Au revoir, mon fin. Sleep lightly.’
The Cluny was at 71 boulevard Saint-Germain, not all that easy to find in the darkness. Kohler stood in the middle of the street. Hell, there was so little traffic, a drunk could have slept out here.
From time to time the squeaking wheels of a frost-pinched vélo-taxi would struggle by, but for the most part the night left him alone. His right arm was stiff—nothing more than a flesh wound, but close. They had patched him up at the Hôpital Laennec and had asked why he hadn’t gone to one of his own clinics.
He had simply said the hospital was nearer and had warned them to say nothing. But the confrontation in the Bar of the Broken Cat was troubling him and not just because one of his confrères had given him a bad tip and some in Gestapo Paris would like to be rid of him, but because this war had to end and when it did, those who were left behind were going to have to pay for it, rightly or wrongly.
; Only too well he knew the French passion for ‘justice’. ‘Giselle,’ he said, searching the dark outline of the cinema’s billboards where once, in good times, the lights would have been lit up until three or four in the morning. ‘I’m going to have to do something. Oona’s in it too.’
Sentiment rushed in on him. He liked and admired them both, often for quite different reasons. They made him feel at ease with himself when all around him he could see so clearly what was going on. They never once openly questioned their relationship though deep within themselves they must be asking what was going to happen to them when the Germans went home.
Sure as hell life would be made damned miserable for all who had fraternized with the enemy. And Louis? he asked.
The Resistance would go for Louis, disregarding entirely that he had had to work for the Occupier or else. False papers, new IDs … travel permits? wondered Kohler. Spain, maybe Portugal? Somewhere warm and near the sea. Then maybe after the rubble and the hatred had cleared, a small bar, a quiet little shop, nothing fancy, only peace.
A farm for Louis, since even a recent case in Provence had failed to make him shut up about going back to work a land he had never farmed like some, his partner namely, except as a boy on holiday.
Flinging his cigarette down in disgust at himself, Kohler said, ‘Use your brains, idiot, not your balls! Let them go while they still have a chance. Set it up for them and say goodbye.’
Giselle was sitting in the middle of the cinema, about three-quarters of the way towards the back because her eyes couldn’t take anything closer. Shoulders that were so lovely when naked were hunched. No heat in the damned place, of course. Half-hidden by the cheap fur collar of a thin overcoat, she stared raptly at the screen, was completely oblivious to all the others around her who smoked, necked, fucked, slept or did other things. Ah yes.
She was totally lost to a film she must have seen twenty times since its release in 1937. Another ancient rerun the war and the censors had allowed, the latter because, asses that they were, they had thought it reflected unfavourably on the French!
Pépé le Moko. The story of a little thief who was wanted by the flics and had taken refuge in an Algerian kasbah. Christ! the wonder of celluloid. A kasbah no less, and no knife in the guts from another thief!
Apart from this, it was a good film, but he hadn’t the time for it and when he ousted the man next to her, Giselle didn’t even look up or pay attention to the disturbance but only stared at the screen.
A tear trickled down a soft cheek, another followed it. ‘Giselle …’
‘They … they have arrested him. He … he is now going to kill himself rather than face prison.’
Quickly she crossed herself and kissed her mittened fingertips, was all broken up about the ending just because the fantasy of hope had turned out to be the harsh reality of life.
Handcuffed, the thief cut his own throat with a penknife. End of Pépé. Would that all such thieves and punks would do the same.
‘There … there will be no escape when this war is over,’ she said, a torn whisper as she dried her eyes.
The film was late due to a ‘power failure’. It was nearly 11.00 p.m. when the Métro would close. Everyone else didn’t bother to stand for the anthem of the Occupier but beat it. They were soon left alone in the dark. ‘Look, I’ll do what I can, chérie. You know I will. Hey, I was only just thinking about it.’
She had short, straight, jet-black hair with a fringe, strong, decisive brows, good hips, lips, legs and all the rest. Magnificent violet eyes, a lovely milk-white throat.
She was only twenty-two years of age, half Greek, half Midi French, could pass for someone else. Was not stupid and would use her brains.
‘The résistants, the ‘patriots,’ will kill me,’ she said. ‘They will strip me naked, Herr Kohler, then they’ll beat me as those from the rue Lauriston did not so long ago, isn’t that correct? And then they will stone me to death.’
The rue Lauriston … She was refering to a previous case. ‘Hey, what’s with the Herr Kohler bit? It’s Hermann you’re talking to.’
Entirely not her fault, she had been badly roughed up in that other episode by gangsters of the French Gestapo and still bore the bruises and the memories of it.
‘Come on, let’s pick up Oona. I have to see Louis. It’s urgent.’
She shook her head. ‘It’s finished, Hermann. Your little ménage is over. Me, I am going back to work so as to be fucked by Frenchmen!’
‘Oh no you’re not’
‘Am I too good for my fellow countrymen, Herr Haupsturmführer?’
‘Of course not. You’re too good to be a whore.’
‘And you—you are saving me from that? You with your great big Bavarian cock?’
‘Come on. A girl is missing, Giselle. We have to find her before they kill her.’
* * *
The Club Mirage was on the rue Delambre in Montparnasse. Squeezed among the thirsty tunics of Fritz-haired men in grey-green and navy or air-force blue, St-Cyr tossed back the pastis with a gulp and fiercely thrust the glass across the bar. ‘Another,’ he said. Eight hundred Wehrmacht troops on leave hooted, cheered and ogled the chorus line of naked girls and grandmothers who should have known better, while the band, preferring noise above all else, blew their guts out.
It was pandemonium—Kultur with a capital K! Under chartreuse floodlights, emerald ostrich plumes and brilliant red pasties moved in a layered haze of tobacco smoke, farts and sweat that had a life of its own.
Leon Rivard, the one with the face like ground meat, tossed him a quizzical eye but knew enough not to ask what the trouble was. ‘This one is on the house,’ he shouted. ‘The last one also.’
‘Merci.’
Downed again. A fire in the belly and the brain. A real tough guy who was pissed off at something. Ah yes. ‘Hey, Gabrielle isn’t mad at you, Inspector. She just cut her holiday short to come back to work. Okay?’
‘It’s Chief Inspector St-Cyr to you, and she’s far too good a singer for a dump like this.’
Rivard grinned. One of two brothers who owned and ran the place, the Corsican fluted, ‘Just as you please, monsieur,’ before fist-wiping the zinc and refilling the glass a fourth time.
The girls up on stage were thrusting their bottoms at the troops. The roar grew deafening. St-Cyr added a drop of water for propriety’s sake and gloomily watched as the pale yellowish-green of the pastis became milky. ‘Hermann,’ he grunted disconsolately, as he fingered his glass in thought. Everything with his partner would have to be out in the open this time. There must be no secrets if they were to find Joanne. He would have to tell him the engraver’s son had been forging papers for the Resistance. He would have to trust Hermann not to turn the boy in. There might be a connection to something the Bavarian had uncovered.
The pastis, pre-war and 90 proof, was kept under the bar not only because of its rarity but because most Germans found its strong taste of liquorice revolting. The girls were gone, the stage empty, the hush expectant. Perhaps a minute passed but not an eye was diverted. Even the thirsty who thronged the bar had put down their glasses or rapidly shaken their heads when more was offered.
In the shimmering, sky-blue, sleeveless sheath that was her trademark, with diamonds at her wrists and neck, Gabrielle Arcuri walked on stage. Thousands of tiny seed pearls, in vertical rows on the fabric, rippled, electrifying the place with her gracefulness and fluidity. Tall and willowy, she had an absolutely gorgeous figure. The hair was not blonde but the soft, soft shade of a very fine brandy, the eyes not just blue but an exquisite shade of violet.
She clasped her long, slender hands before her as a schoolgirl might and shyly smiled, then broadly grinned and shrugged as if, having suddenly made up her mind about them, she could now accept them into her heart. ‘Mes cher amis, I have a song for you of love. Of lovers who have been separated by trouble and now do not know if each still has in them the love for the other that was once there. They meet in a cinema
under the cone of light from the projector. Cigarette smoke filters up into this light but the film, it means nothing to them. Nothing, you understand. They are sitting side by side, not even daring to hold hands, not knowing what the other is thinking.’
She sang. She gave herself to it totally and the song brought tears to every last man in the place. She held them in the palms of her outstretched hands which implored them to understand the tragedy of life, of war, of hardship and separation.
A breath was caught, a note was kept until her lungs threatened to burst and all at once there was a collective sigh and then a single shout, the voices of men who knew of the battlefields and wept for home. She brought the house down.
‘Louis … Hey, Louis, sorry I’m late.’
It was Hermann. ‘Your arm? What’s happened, please?’
‘It’s nothing. A punk called Péguy.’
‘Fortune? Ah merde, did you …?’
St-Cyr saw that Oona and Giselle were with him. He touched his lips with the tip of a troubled tongue and plucked nervously at his moustache. ‘Fortune isn’t to be trusted, Hermann. Exactly how well did you destroy him in the eyes of his friends?’
‘Completely.’
St-Cyr turned swiftly to the barman and hissed, ‘A table. Quickly!’
There were objections from the troops. Even the chanteuse had to wait while they were seated but laid the soft down of a pacifying voice over the ruckus by asking the displaced to join her on stage.
She put her arms around them. They grinned shyly and stood with her like great dumb drunken blockheads not knowing what to do.
With her fingers trailing in their departing hands, she smiled at each of them, then sang as they left the stage, mollified and coddled in the cocoon of her generous nature.
Giselle le Roy could only remember standing naked before men such as these, hearing their hoots and thrusting catcalls, their hush as her bruised and battered body had been exposed to them by the gangsters of the rue Lauriston.
Hermann had covered her. He and Jean-Louis had come to the rescue, but now it was as if those two didn’t even remember what had happened here not long ago and were oblivious to her feelings.
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