La Bête humaine … the Human Beast. An obsession … three fires in 1938 in Germany, two women and now this. A Salamander … The cry of Fire.
The film had been set totally in the world of railwaymen, its scenes so vivid one could still thrill to the power of the locomotive beneath one’s feet and lean out to see the track ahead racing inevitably towards the story’s horrible conclusion.
Even the smell of hot engine oil was still with him, even that of coal dust and the stench of sulphur dioxide.
One hundred and eighty-three deaths—450 in the audience, all with separate stories of hope and desire, deceit and avarice or pain and struggle. Always there were these stories, only the more so in cases like this because the victims’ last moments had to have meaning, the substance of individual lives. That woman and her daughter; the one who sat up here but could well have escaped unscathed; the one who had frantically remembered to replace her wedding ring only to lose it as she fell under the feet of others.
The man who had murdered in his fury to escape; the one who had climbed a dry fountain, hoping its stone goddess would offer succour.
One thing was certain. The cinema was not the usual for railwaymen, its location too expensive, its seats too posh, yet they had come en masse.
Clearing away the ice from one of the portals, St-Cyr peered down into the cinema. There was no sign of Hermann, no sign of anyone but the dead, yet as sure as he was standing here, he felt there had been Resistance people in the audience. A meeting. Ah merde, was it a complication or in itself reason enough for the fire so as to kill the lot of them?
And if so, how did this business of the Salamander fit in? Mere coincidence, or was it that the arsonist or arsonists had known someone in the audience and had wanted to get rid of them no matter the cost?
A Salamander. A person or persons so elusive only a codename could be attached to them.
A directive from Berlin, and now a visiting fire chief who claimed to know all about it. merde!
Kohler nudged the door to the toilets open and shone the light over the ice-covered walls. Four men and two women had been trapped in here—locked in. Yes, verdammt! The key was still in the lock, the bolt sticking out. Out! The firemen had had to use an axe to get in.
The bodies were fully clothed. Overcoats, heavy sweaters, corduroy and twill trousers, beige paint on bare female legs instead of silk stockings, a wrist-watch that had stopped.
Two of the men had their faces crammed over the squat-holes in the floor, hoping against all odds that the sewer gas would contain enough oxygen to sustain life.
One of the women was bent double over the deep wash-basin at the far end, her head still under the faucet she clutched. Purse spilled open on the floor, pillbox hat and veil in ruins.
Another of the men had tried to cling to the tiny air vent high on the far wall but had finally had to let go and was now slumped against the corner.
The last woman and man had lain directly behind the door, trying to cover their faces with handkerchiefs.
Not liking what he’d found, Kohler fingered the lock and key in doubt. One toilet for both sexes, that was the norm, so nothing out of the ordinary there. A three-holer Turkish with trough urinal for the boys and a cracked mirror so they could comb their hair and try to watch the ladies at their peeing. But why lock the door on them? Why? Was the arsonist or arsonists so sick in the head, he or she or they could think to do a thing like that in addition to everything else?
The bodies had been untouched by the flames and lay exactly as they’d been found, except for the two behind the door. He stepped over them and nudged the door closed. He set the torch down on the floor and turned the man over, sucking in a breath as he did so.
There was a rolled-up sheaf of paper in the right hand, the grip so tight it was only with difficulty—a foot pressed down hard on the knuckles—that it was released.
Railway schedules, ah merde. Lyon to the internment camp at Besançon and on to the German border near Mulhouse. Lyon to Paris. Lyon to Tours, to Bordeaux, to Marseille and Toulon …
The locations of bridges, viaducts, tunnels and switching yards … the lines black and clear under the torch beam. A siding at Dijon had been circled with red ink; another at Mâcon. A water tower at Moulins, a coal depot at Nevers …
Switches … and more of them. The locations of flatbed cranes to lift track or wrecked locomotives and railway trucks out of the way. Verdammt! What had the bastards been planning? To blow up everything?
Were the papers to have been sent over to England?
Dragging the woman back against the door to hold it closed, he went to work. First the identity papers of every one of them, then the contents of the men’s pockets and the women’s purses.
None of the men were over the age of forty-five. The women were in their late thirties. Not young, not old, not beautiful but ordinary … Why did he have to look at them that way?
Madame Madeleine Roget of the passage Mermet in Croix Rousse, the hill between the rivers and home of the silkweavers …
Kohler yanked her head up from under the tap. ‘What the hell did you think you were doing, madame? Plotting terrorism? You were a courier. Come on, answer me! You were going to take those plans to someone else. Two women would split the risk, the one going north, the other south.’
He let her head fall. He tried to get a grip on himself. Louis …? he asked. Louis, what am I supposed to do? Tell Gestapo Lyon or keep silent about it?
Behind the projectionist’s booth, and facing on to the place Terreaux, there were three flats. A corridor led across the width of the building to the now-open doorways and the narrow staircase to the street. St-Cyr hesitated. Ah nom de Dieu, there was no sense in risking life and limb, yet he had the feeling there was something he should see and asked angrily, ‘God, why must you do this to me, eh? A simple detective? Roasted children on the Eve of Christmas! Mothers straining to reach their daughters! How much more do You think a man can take?’
As was His custom, God did not answer. One of the occupants had leapt to his death. The others had either made it down the stairs or had been taken down the ladders.
Gingerly stepping on to a joist, St-Cyr began to pick his way along the corridor, turning first to the right and then to the left when things got shaky.
The middle flat had not been occupied by the man who had jumped. There was nothing, no furniture, a puzzle until he noticed the charred buckets that had once held paint or glue for wallpaper, the remains of the ladders and bags of patching plaster. Redecoration in these times of shortages? The black market for materials. He heaved an immense sigh of relief at the prospect of finding no more bodies.
When he came to the doorway on the other side of the building, he hesitated, then ran his eyes swiftly over everything, for here the fire had left a few things: toppled, high-backed armchairs that would have had lace antimacassars, the jade-green fabric scorched and then drenched by the hoses; a marble-topped table, now cracked in half, an alabaster vase and bust, both broken and on the floor. In spite of the stench, he imagined he could smell the place as it must once have been, the dust of ages, the closeness of faded linen mother or grandmother had left to an only daughter, the sharpness of camphor, wine, cheese in days past, and once-forbidden cigarette smoke. Dust filtering slowly through the sunlight that would, on those rare days, have streamed in through the windows.
Ornate, three-globed lamps on tall, thick standards of Napoleonic brass had been toppled over and smashed. Family portraits had been flung onto the floor and were now jammed into the corners behind all the rest of the debris.
The brass of a ruby-coloured chandelier had been blown right off its moorings by the pressure of the hoses.
Again that feeling of dread came to him, tightening the stomach muscles and telling him his instinct had been right. Smoke damage was everywhere. Hot … it must have been so hot.
The bed frame was of iron, the coverlet and blankets soaked through and yellowed. Only a sodden
curl of dark brown hair showed. Cursing his luck, he eased the covers back and saw at once that the woman was naked. Flat on her stomach, with her arms stretched out above her head and all but hidden beneath the pillows, ah merde.
Her wrists were tied to the ironwork, her ankles too. Her hips, thighs and seat were chunky. A woman of forty-five or fifty, he thought and when he found her purse, found her name and asked, Why did he not free you?
There was a rag in her mouth, the jaws clamped so tightly they would have to be broken to free it. Breath held in outrage, St-Cyr began slowly to examine her back and buttocks for signs of a whipping.
Finding none, he asked, Did the fire interrupt things? And then, gently and aloud, ‘Who was he, Mademoiselle Aurelle? The one who jumped, or someone else? You were lonely, isn’t that right—please, I’m only guessing, of course. But … but you invited him in for a yuletide glass of marc perhaps, and a cup of that lousy acorn water everyone hates but is forced to call coffee. You were thinking of a little romance, even sex perhaps, but had planned to tell him you would have to go to the late-evening Mass.’
Terrified, she would have lain there stiff with fear, begging him not to hurt her until, having heard enough, he had stuffed the rag into her mouth to shut her up. Then had come the cry of Fire, and he had left her.
Ah nom de Dieu, such were the ways of some, but was the murder—he would have to call it that—more directly related to the fire?
There was nothing of importance in the other flat. Downstairs, there were only two flats, one much larger than the other and therefore better furnished. The owner’s? he asked himself, flicking a doubtful glance at the ceiling, still thinking of that woman. Asking again, Who was he, madame? Someone you had only just met by chance or someone you met on the stairs nearly every day?
A copper bathtub rested on a black-and-white tiled floor, the bidet and toilet in another room as usual. A Meissen clock, Louis XV armchairs with tapestry coverings … A settee in plush maroon velvet, a large canvas of a street scene now in shreds. Smoke and water damage everywhere. It was as if the pompiers had taken out their anger on the place, hammering everything in sight with the force of their hoses.
Again he thought of the woman upstairs, of how she must have tried to scream for help and strained at the ropes. She would have been only too aware of what was happening to the building.
The place Terreaux was now deep in darkness, with only the blue-washed glass of occasional streetlamps and pinpoint torches to guide the way. The black-out, of course. On November eleventh, the Wehrmacht had crossed the Demarcation Line thus ending the existence of the Unoccupied Zone and bringing with them the SS, the Gestapo and all the rest of it.
He wondered if the girl with the bicycle had come back. Suddenly the need to find her was overwhelming and he went down the stairs to the street, and quickly out across the square. Stood where she must have stood, asked, Why did you run away?
Though the crowd had thinned, there were still onlookers, their silhouettes dark and muffled in the darkness. He shone his light around. He gasped, ‘Mademoiselle …?’ She threw up a forearm to shield her eyes. For perhaps two seconds panic gripped her, then she ran with the bicycle, hopped on, even as he yelled for her to stop and ran after her.
It was no use. The ice … the ice. Ah merde! He slipped and fell heavily. Even so, the memory of her face lingered, the fear in her eyes, the tightness of her lips, the dismay at being discovered.
She had dropped something and when he saw it clearly, he said, ‘Not you, mademoiselle. Ah no, not you.’
It was the yellow work card all prostitutes must carry.
They shared a cigarette, just the two of them, in the darkness of the square beyond the fountain. ‘Louis, this student of Weidling’s, this Salamander of Gestapo Mueller—hey, where did Berlin get a code-name like that?’
It was a problem, Berlin’s knowing things they ought rightly to have shared. ‘Salamanders are slippery, Hermann. Some can change the colour of their skins so as to blend in with their surroundings.’
Kohler handed him the cigarette. ‘Stop being so evasive. You found something.’
And so did you, said St-Cyr to himself. ‘A visitor, yes. I am almost certain a woman went up to the projectionist’s booth.’
‘One of our two women?’
The cigarette was returned. ‘Perhaps, but then … Ah,’ he shrugged, ‘nothing is definite, my old one. Nothing. There was another woman, but that is a separate matter and I think the two are unrelated.’
‘What about the girl with the bicycle? Did you find anything?’
‘Me? Ah no, nothing. A student perhaps, but a teacher, I think.’ He would keep the yellow work card private for the moment. ‘And you, my friend? What did you find?’
Kohler knew he would have to say something but he need not reveal everything. ‘A Lebel. The old Model 1873. I dropped it into a sewer over there.’
‘Merci. I am most grateful, Hermann. The less fuss the better.’
‘Leiter Weidling wasn’t telling us everything, Louis, and neither was Robichaud.’
The cigarette had now burned down to the fingernails and could be passed only with great difficulty. ‘Lübeck, Heidelberg and Köln,’ said St-Cyr as if lost in thought and asking questions of himself. ‘The same technique, Hermann, yet I must ask why gasoline was not splashed so thoroughly on the staircases to the balcony? Was it that the arsonist, this Salamander perhaps, or one of those two women who came in late, wanted to save the other?’
‘Who was upstairs visiting the projectionist?’
‘Yes.’
‘A prostitute, Louis?’
‘Perhaps, but then perhaps not. At the moment nothing is clear except that the Resistance were here in force, Hermann. Me, I am certain of it, and that revolver you found says so.’
merde! The bastard had the nose of a ferret. ‘There was a priest, Louis, and a cross.’
‘Yes, yes, a priest,’ said the Sûreté, impatient with him for not revealing all. ‘And a girl on a bicycle, eh, Hermann?’ he taunted.
‘What about the fire doors that were locked? What about the owner?’
‘What about him indeed? Let’s find the owner and ask him.’
‘No sleep?’
‘Not tonight. Not yet anyway. Not while the Salamander, if he or she even exists, is out there, Hermann, waiting to see what we will do.’
Louis seldom had the last word but the prospect of being watched was uncomfortable and Kohler let him have it. There was also Gestapo Mueller’s interest to consider. Shit!
In silence they returned to the cinema to find Robichaud and ask him where the owner might be found. It was not far.
2
THE BISTRO ALBERT BRÛLÉ WAS ON THE QUAI DE la Pêcherie, overlooking the Saône and Fourvière Hill, if one could see them through the darkness. There was only a tiny blue light above the entrance to signal anything out of the ordinary behind the black-out curtains, yet three vélo-taxis and two horse-drawn cabs were waiting in the freezing cold. The foyer held a bar and coatcheck. The restaurant was jammed, the talk earnest and everywhere. A businessman’s place but several women were about, all well-dressed, gay and vivacious. Excited.
Mistresses? grinned Kohler, inwardly nodding as Louis hushed the head waiter and negotiated Sûreté business. The men would be showing the girls off to their competitors and associates. Not a whiff of tobacco smoke in the place—a real chef then. A fanatic in these hard times. If you want to smoke, go elsewhere. Don’t ruin the taste of my cooking! And wasn’t it marvellous what a person could do on the black market?
The clientele obeyed the no-smoking rule. Perhaps fifty customers were seated. There were two long rows of marble-topped tables placed end to end. Knees touched. A hand was on a woman’s silk-stockinged knee. Ah yes, she was good for a little feel. Island tables elsewhere had electric lights turned down to give atmosphere, not to save on power as per the regulations. Panelled mahogany walls held oil paintings of nearly naked girls ru
nning through moonlight, and of others bathing in the buff while eating grapes and thinking of more tasty things, perhaps.
There wasn’t a word of the recent catastrophe, not a mention of little girls in flames. Why spoil dinner?
‘Remember to let me make the overtures, eh?’ cautioned the Sûreté, gruffly putting his badge away and removing his fedora. ‘There is absolutely no sense in throwing your weight around in here, Hermann. These people will all have well-placed friends in the SS, the Gestapo or the Wehrmacht. Indeed, several of those types are here tonight, so, please, do not make a disturbance! We’ve been in enough trouble and must get this over with.’
‘Just remember I’m older than you and still the boss.’
‘Then perhaps you would be good enough to tell me what it was you found so disturbing in the toilets of that cinema?’
‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing, Louis. You know how my stomach is. So many bodies, the smell of roasted fle—’
‘Hermann!’ St-Cyr grabbed him by the arm. ‘A cognac,’ he hissed at the barman. ‘Hurry, idiot! Before he vomits all over the place!’
Visions of braised human ribs came to Kohler, of a woman’s shapely buttocks, the skin now crisp and brown, the juices running through the cracks. He smelled the sweetness of death, the putrefaction. He saw a set of white, white teeth, red lips parting in laughter and wanted to choke that laughter off!
The Prunier was downed in a gulp—aged thirty years! The ragged cheeks, with that terrible scar from the left eye to chin and memory of a rawhide whip, slowly began to lose their pallor. St-Cyr gripped his partner a moment more before releasing him. ‘Is the news that bad?’ he asked. ‘Ah, nom de Jésus-Christ! Résistants, Hermann? Come, come, mon ami, out with it, eh? We’ve been condemned to work together. It’s best I know everything.’
The Bavarian’s eyes were smarting. He swallowed another brandy with difficulty. ‘Then you tell me what you didn’t, and I’ll tell you what I didn’t.’
That was fair enough. Always there was this hedging on both sides of the partnership. ‘Later, then. Let’s see what our Monsieur Artel has to say about his cinema.’
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