3
The rue de la Paix was an unexpected sea of traffic. The snow came steadily. A misery for the drivers, the weather was a joy to the passengers who laughed, stood up precariously in their hacked-off bathtub seats, settees, and ancient fauteuils to throw snowballs at one another. The girls wore thin overcoats, wavy hair and pillbox hats with nets of veiling or snap-brim fedoras and upturned collars, the boys were in grey-green, blue or black uniforms. There was no language barrier, not today.
A circus. Cartier’s wore a banner: Fermé pour les altérations.
Every newspaper had seized on the robberies and had raised the hue and cry with: HEISTS IN THE MILLIONS, WHAT WILL BE NEXT?
First one enterprising vélo-taxi driver and then another had conceived the brilliant idea of a Robbery Tour. And since no two of those crazy rickshawlike contraptions were the same, colours, shapes and sizes clashed as the din rose to attic garrets five and six storeys above the fashionable shops.
Angered, dismayed – terrified, yes, damn it! by what Rudi Sturmbacher had just said, Kohler threw up his big hands in despair and said, ‘Merde! Let’s leave this bucket of bolts in the middle of the street.’
This beautiful Citroën … ‘They’ll only scratch the paint. They’re already doing so.’
Kohler got out to hold up his badge and part the waves. An onslaught of snowballs drove him back behind the wheel.
‘I could have told you so,’ grumbled the Sûreté and, looking well along the street, nodded towards place Vendôme. ‘They pulled it down. The city’s like that, Hermann. Once the people get the fever of an idea nothing can stop them. That’s Paris.’
‘Pulled what down?’ They’d work to do and Louis was in a huff and sensing trouble. ‘Make it short, mein Kamerad. Don’t give me any of your fucking Quatsch.* Not today.’
Hermann’s conscience was troubling him. ‘The column, idiot. After our defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, the citizens got to hating what it represented – all those deaths and failures in Napoleon’s Russian Campaign. They set up a government here in opposition to that of Versailles and one of the first things they did was to pull that thing down.’
‘They didn’t? Hell, the damned thing’s the height of a blastfurnace stack. It must weigh tonnes.’
‘It does. Thousands watched as it broke into three pieces before hitting the ground, and then into at least thirty. There were clouds of dust.’
‘Yet it was put back.’
Louis gave the Gallic shrug Kohler knew he would. ‘They were bound to, but that’s another matter. What’s important for you people to grasp, Hermann, is that they did pull it down, and in one day. 1 May 1871, a Monday at 5.40 p.m.’
You people … ‘Rudi only asked me if I had a source for him. Some cheese.’
How lame of Hermann. ‘And did you?’
‘You don’t trust me.’
‘I’m your partner. I have to.’
And I’m your friend, arent’ I? – Kohler could sense this in the tone of voice. Crises they had had before but never anything like this. Giselle would be yanked from the flat or the street and thrown into a cell – beaten probably. She’d lose the kid. And Oona …? Oona would be deported and never heard of again. Shit!
Kohler gazed well down the street over the jostling sea that all but imperceptibly flowed towards them. He saw Oona in rags, her eyes bluer still and gaunt with hunger. She’d be worrying about Giselle. ‘All right, Rudi warned me. Herr Max is after your head.’
Twelve hundred Russian and Austrian cannons had been taken at Austerlitz in 1805 by blood, tears and sweat and hauled all the way back to Paris to be melted down and cast into the bronze sheathing of that first column. In 1875 that sheathing had been recast using moulds still kept from the time of the First Empire. ‘It’s a small world, as your countryman has only just informed us, Hermann. Moscow and Russia were Napoleon’s nemesis. Stalingrad, Leningrad and Russia will be Hitler’s.’
‘I’ll help you.’
‘But that might not help us.’
‘Gabrielle can’t be involved in this business, Louis.’
‘That’s what we must endeavour to determine.’
Gabrielle Arcuri was Louis’s chanteuse, the new love of his life, though that affair had remained unconsummated – Kohler was certain of this, certain, too, that Louis was still missing Marianne and Philippe and blaming himself for what had happened to them.
He had met Gabrielle not two months ago while on that nothing murder in Fontainebleau Forest. She’d been a suspect then, was she a suspect now too? Ah verdammt! lamented Kohler silently. Why did the Occupier have to be such bastards?
Leaving the car in the centre of the street, they managed to lock the doors, then thread their way to the pavement and along to Cartier’s.
Gabrielle was involved with the Resistance – a tiny cell, a nothing cell. They both knew it of her, knew also, as did she, that Gestapo Paris’s Listeners had recently bugged her dressing-room at the Club Mirage, so the matter, it was serious.
‘Is her group hiding the Gypsy, Hermann?’
‘Merde alors, I wish I knew. The idiots! Don’t they know what Gestapo Paris will do to them? Boemelburg, Louis. Boemelburg!’
The post, the shots at dawn if still alive.
Clément Laviolette, the sous-directeur, was distraught. ‘A tragedy,’ he lamented, on seeing them enter the shop. ‘Irreplaceable, Inspectors. Twelve cushion-shaped sapphire beads of a depth of blue and clarity I have never seen before. Never! Years … it has taken years to accumulate such stones. Each bead has a round diamond brilliant of two carats in its centre. There are thirty-two matching sapphire cabochons graded as to size and linked so as to drape from the neckline of cushions. Each cabochon is separated from the next by a pearl of such exquisiteness, they, too, have taken years to accumulate.’
‘There was a bracelet,’ said St-Cyr.
‘Ear-rings, too, and a ring. Matching stones. Ah mon Dieu, Inspectors, what are we to do? The pieces had been paid for, you understand. 8,600,000 francs up front, the receipt for which I myself have signed.’
A tragedy, like he’d said, thought Kohler. ‘You didn’t lose the cash, too, did you?’
‘Unfortunately, yes.’
‘Yet you did not inform us of these items last night?’ exclaimed St-Cyr. ‘Surely you must have known …’
‘They weren’t in the vault, were they?’ bleated his partner.
Vehemently the sous-directeur shook his head. ‘They were in my private safe. It’s in my office behind the painting. We … we did not think … Ah! the door to it was securely closed and the dial turned to the number 47 just as I myself would have left it.’
Believing the worst, Kohler sighed, ‘So, when was the payment made, eh?’
‘On Saturday. There had been a few minor adjustments to make – nothing much. Mademoiselle Arcuri was really very pleased. A little something new, to go with the dress that is her trademark. We’ve been trying for some time to get just the right pieces together for her. She was ecstatic’
I’ll bet she was, thought Kohler ruefully. Five numbers to the combination – would there have been that many for her to have memorized?
It was Louis who said bluntly, ‘Please show us your copy of the receipt.’
Dated the sixteenth, the same day as the Gypsy had ordered the cigarette case, it was clear enough.
‘She came in at about eleven for a fitting. As with our other special clients, this was done in the dressing-room that is just off the office. There it is very private, and if the client chooses, why the door can be closed so as to dress or undress as much as one wishes.’
‘Left alone, was she?’ demanded Kohler.
Again Laviolette vehemently shook his head. ‘There was only one tiny alteration for us to do – she had hoped to take everything with her and to wear the pieces that evening, but could not wait while it was done. One of the linkages had to be shortened a half-millimetre.’
A nothing business. ‘And she paid in cash?’ he asked.
‘In 500 franc notes.’
It wasn’t good, thought St-Cyr, but the receipt might just save her since it offered an alibi of its own, she having made a substantial investment and placed great trust in the firm. And as for carrying around that sort of cash, some did it these days. Her take at the Club Mirage was ten per cent of the gross, kept in an old trunk perhaps to avoid taxes – he was going to have to speak to her about this. It couldn’t go on. ‘Monsieur le sous-directeur, think back, please. At any time was Mademoiselle Arcuri or any customer other than the Gypsy left alone in that office while the wall safe was uncovered?’
‘No. No, of course not. We’re most careful.’
‘Yet you didn’t bank the cash,’ snorted Kohler. ‘Why was that, eh?’
‘Such a large sum,’ hazarded the Sûreté, grimly gesticulating. ‘One would have thought a little caution perhaps? Oh bien sûr, business is booming, but even so …’
‘Noontime had come upon us. The bank was closed for two hours. I myself had to eat.’
‘Yet you had all day Monday to make the deposit,’ countered St-Cyr softly.
They had best be told something. ‘With such a sum, and with such pieces, we always want to know absolutely that the sale has gone through.’
‘So the money was in the safe, along with the necklace and other pieces?’ said Kohler.
‘That is correct.’
‘Then why, please, did she not pick up the jewellery yesterday?’ asked Louis.
Ah damn these two. ‘She … she said she wished to argue with herself a little more. It was, she said, a great deal for her to spend. The authorities … she was worried someone might question such an expense. It would have to be declared, of course. That is the law.’
The careful shopper, thought Kohler, raking the sous-directeur with the look he reserved for duplicity. ‘Anything else, eh? Just what the hell did he really get from that “private” safe of yours?’
‘Nothing else. Apart from those items, that safe was empty.’
Kohler took out the cigarette case to run a thumb over its amber in doubt. ‘He’s lying, Louis. They’d have kept the accounts ledgers in that safe, in case of fire.’
St-Cyr took the cigarette case from him, nodding at Laviolette to indicate that he should accompany them to the office at the back of the shop.
‘Inspectors … a little oversight, yes? These days one has to watch what one says.’
‘Of course. Now the truth about that safe of yours,’ said the Sûreté, stopping him in the corridor to tap him on the chest with the cigarette case the Gypsy had ordered.
His back to the wall, Laviolette frantically threw a glance into the shop to where anxious clerks were trying to pick up the pieces of their little lives but had stopped to gape at the front entrance.
‘Herr Max, Louis.’
The crowd on the street had not diminished but now a gatecrasher was forcing his way through.
‘The truth, monsieur, and quickly before that one sinks his teeth into you,’ hissed St-Cyr.
‘The blanket laissez-passer I have which allows me to travel anywhere outside of Paris except for the zone interdite.’
The Forbidden Zone next to coastal areas and along the Swiss and Italian frontiers.
‘My first-class railway pass. My spare pocket-watch and …’ He licked his upper lip and tried to hastily tidy his moustache. ‘And four packets of capotes anglaises, two bottles of Ricard pastis, one of vermouth and … and the keys and deeds to a little house I have in … in the fifth.’ Ah maudit! would God help him in this moment of crisis?
‘Booze and a woman, and wouldn’t you know it, eh?’ snorted Kohler, blocking the way, thus hiding them from Herr Max who was making noises about the crowd. ‘Is that all?’ asked the Kripo.
‘Oui. Positive.’
‘No it isn’t,’ said the Sûreté. ‘We want the name of the woman and the address of that little nest for which he has taken the keys.’
‘My wife … My daughters …’
Laviolette was sweating.
‘Hey, they won’t even hear of it if you behave and keep all this between the three of us. Silence, eh?’ said Kohler.
‘Numéro trente-cinq, rue Poliveau.’
‘The quartier Saint-Marcel,’ said Louis.
‘Suzanne-Cécilia Lemaire, veterinary surgeon and zoo-keeper – zebras, hyenas, jackals, wolves, wild boar and foxes at … at the Jardin des Plantes.’
How the hell had they met? wondered Kohler, pulling down a lower left eyelid in disbelief. ‘Age?’ he demanded. It took all types, and when Laviolette said, ‘Thirty-two’, patted him on the shoulder, all sixty-two years of it, and said, ‘Don’t get bitten. Women in their thirties are even more dangerous than those in their early twenties.’
‘Now go and entertain our visitor from Berlin while we lock ourselves in your private office to have a look for ourselves,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Let this be a warning to you.’ The Jardin des Plantes … ah merde.
They were moving swiftly. ‘The back door, Louis. The cellars.’
‘Get the car. Meet me in the rue Volney! Fire some shots in the air if you have to, but get it, Hermann, and hurry!’
There was just a chance the Gypsy might have holed up in that house. If so, he was a gambler and was prepared to take risks but had thought the sous-directeur would not have said a thing.
The safe was open, and from the door to the private dressing-room, there was more than a clear enough view of the dial but not of the numbers. Gabrielle could easily have stood here, waiting for Laviolette to bring her the pieces but …
Pulling open the dressing-table drawers, St-Cyr soon had what he wanted, and closing the door to the wall safe, set the vanity mirror with its little stand on top of one of the filing cabinets. Tilting it until he had the dial in view, he retreated to the dressing-room. It was no good. She would have had to stand much nearer the desk but from there, with the use of the mirror, she could have watched the dial and, after several visits, have had the combination or close to it, but had she done so?
They might never know.
And why, please, he asked, would Laviolette not have noticed the subterfuge and put a stop to it?
No, then. She must have done it some other way or not at all. But if she had, then that, too, implied she had known of the Gypsy and had made a thorough survey of the target for him.
The quartier Saint-Marcel had been going downhill for years. Built mainly in the first half of the 1800s, its houses of two and three storeys still held that sense of a small provincial town or village. The slanting roofs were often cut off and at odd angles with the sky but also with a towering wall of dirty yellow brick which represented ‘redevelopment’ into a monotony of identical flats.
‘It’s unprotected,’ said Louis of the district. ‘Ripe, sadly, for tearing down. That thing’, he indicated the apartment building, ‘was built in the 1920s.’
Still a stronghold of le petit commerce and of retired shopkeepers, sales clerks and maids of all work, its shops were small, its ateliers struggling, the narrow courtyards far too long and far too handy.
Neither of them liked the look of the place. The doorway to number 35 hadn’t been used in years. The black paint was peeling, the monogrammed ironwork over the curved bottle green light above was First Empire but badly rusted.
They had left the car around the corner but even so, two plain-clothed detectives, no matter how casually they kept their hands in the pockets of their overcoats, could not fail to attract attention.
A lace curtain fell in a first-storey window across the street. Stares were given from behind the window of the café-bar below.
‘Louis, you watch the street, I’ll take the courtyard.’
‘That door has been sealed with iron spikes as long as my hand. He’s not Hercules is he, our Gypsy?’
The courtyard was close, the stucco walls mildewed, the house separated from others by yet another courtyard behind it.
Lines of grey washing were frozen stiff. There were clouds of breath not just from the neighbours but from the ateliers of a mender of cooking pots and a scavenger of roofing slates and floor tiles.
Steps pitted by frost and worn into hollows by long use led up to a side entrance. Unattractively the number 35B in cardboard was pinned to a door that had been left off the latch.
Cautiously, St-Cyr took the Lebel from his overcoat pocket and, pulling back the hammer, gave the door a quiet nudge. Hermann was right behind him and had drawn his Walther P38. ‘Louis …?’ he softly said and in that one word there was consternation and terror – ah! so many things.
They had both smelled it. They hesitated when they ought really to have run. The shutters were all closed, the cast-iron stove was cold, the air ripe with the stench of bitter almonds. ‘The kitchen!’ managed Hermann, removing his hand from the stove; they were moving quickly now, delicately.
The aluminium stew-pot on the hotplate was still boiling, the fumes were thick and white and acrid … ‘Ah nom de Jésus-Christ, be careful!’ hissed St-Cyr.
Both of them looked questioningly at the ceiling above. Both looked to the pot where the remains of several broken-up sticks of dynamite in water bubbled thickly beneath an oily, pale yellow scum, the nitro.
Two eye-dropper bottles had already been skimmed. A small glass funnel lay on its side. There was a ladle, a long-handled wooden spoon. Absolutely no friction could be tolerated, no sudden shocks, no sparks, no matches or cigarettes. Both bottle and funnel would have been tilted during the filling so that the nitroglycerine would trickle smoothly down the inside of the glass. A master of self-control, a fearless idiot but desperate.
They left the kitchen and took the steep, narrow staircase on and up – they didn’t want to. He’s armed and dangerous, they would have said if they could have found the words. Their heads were buzzing so hard from the fumes and the dizziness, it was all they could do not to bolt and run, to gag and clear the street.
The Empire bed was huge and sturdy and heaped with rumpled covers. No one hid in the massive Breton armoire that held the woman’s clothing. No one was in the spare room, a nursery perhaps in bygone days or a tiny sitting-room, but now jammed with suitcases and the bits and pieces from the mistress’s former flat.
The bathtub on its four cast-iron legs had been painted green too many years ago. The geraniums were wilted, the towels cold.
Kohler nodded towards a shuttered door. Louis saw him do so in the gilded mirror above the tub.
Shots would be exchanged out on that roof – there was no hope of preventing them. Hermann ducked out on to the little porch where in summer the veterinary surgeon and zoo-keeper would have sunned herself or cooled herself after a bath, her lover too. He slipped and fell, went down hard, the Walther P38 banging off two rounds as he rolled aside and threw himself behind a low railing that was lined with stone planters.
Nothing … there was no answering fire. ‘I thought …’ he blurted.
‘You thought incorrectly, so did I.’
They heard the Citroën start up – hell, there were so few cars in Paris that wasn’t hard to do – and when it left the street where they had parked it, they knew he had taken it.
‘The keys,’ swore Kohler. ‘I put them under the driver’s seat when I got our guns.’
‘Idiot! Now what?’
‘We find us a telephone and call the bomb-disposal boys, but first we turn off that hotplate before the soup boils dry.’
Suzanne-Cécilia Lemaire lay under the covers, bound hand and foot and gagged. A not unpleasant-looking young woman, she was furious at what had happened to her and embarrassed that anyone should see her wearing four heavy flannelette nightgowns, two sweaters, three pairs of thick woollen kneesocks and gloves, her auburn hair put up in papillotes for the night, her eyes weeping from the fumes.
‘Bâtards!’ she shrilled when released. ‘Who the hell are you, and who the hell was he?’
The hands of caution were raised and she was told the street would have to do for the moment, and quickly.
Hermann almost kicked over one of the little bottles. It had been left for them on the doorstep. Sickened, he watched as the woman paled and sucked in a breath. Tears streamed from her. A lower lip quivered. ‘No one told me this would happen,’ she blurted. ‘He’s crazy! He said that if I knew what was good for me, I should lie very still.’
The quartier Saint-Marcel had been cleared of every living soul but those of the Wehrmacht’s bomb-disposal unit. The Café of the Deceiving Cat, on the avenue des Gobelins, was teeming with disenchanted residents and merchants all shouting about Sûreté incompetence and loss of income. The Gestapo never got publicly blamed. Never!
‘By five o’clock it’ll be in all the newspapers,’ sighed Kohler ruefully. ‘Hero boils it up. Shots exchanged. Sûreté car stolen in getaway.’
‘They’ll make a living legend of him,’ said Suzanne-Cécilia Lemaire, her soft brown eyes clouded with worry, hesitantly cradling her ‘café au lait’, no milk, no sugar, no coffee but hot. With the paper curlers removed and her hair combed, she looked a little better but was far from sure of things.
‘Why not go and find the car, Hermann? Try the quartier de l’Europe. He may have friends there. He can’t drive around, not for long.’
Louis wanted to be alone with the woman. ‘And if not there?’
The woman threw Louis an apprehensive glance, was watching everything.
‘The Avia Club Gym but I would prefer to be with you for any interviews.’
She took this in.
‘The Spade, ah yes. Okay, Chief. I’ll find you back at the house on the rue Poliveau?’
As if on cue, the thud of a massive explosion several blocks away brought dust from the ceiling and everyone to a crouch.
Silence followed. It was as if the rain of rubble was still up in the sky and had yet to come down.
‘Ah Christ, Louis. Widows and orphans!’
Everyone began to move. A hand shot out and grabbed Suzanne-Cécilia by the arm; she threw the Sûreté a look of panic, more tears springing from her.
‘Sit down!’ he ordered. ‘Hermann, go and find the car. Neither of us can do anything for them. It’s impossible, mon vieux.’
‘Boemelburg, Louis. He’ll demand hostages. He’ll say it was a Resistance plot. Ah, hell!’
‘Calm down. We can only take it as it comes.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’
He left them then and they had a last glimpse of him agonizing over things on the boulevard. Like the soldier he had been, Hermann began to run towards the disaster knowing exactly what he’d find because he’d seen it all before.
‘My partner was a bomb-disposal expert, among other things, in the last war.’
Filled with despair, she darted her eyes away, and for a moment could not find her voice, then said abjectly, ‘You must know each other very well. What one thinks, the other is aware of.’
‘Usually, but not always, and he’s the stubborn one. Now please, mademoiselle …’
She pulled her shoulders inwards to wrap the bathrobe about herself more tightly. Terrified by this new development, she said hollowly, ‘It’s Madame Lemaire. My husband was killed in 1940 at Sedan. A woman has needs, Inspector. My Honoré left me no money but the widow’s pension and, as we have no children and I’m too young to stay that way, I have to think of the future.’
‘Laviolette …’ he muttered, passing her his handkerchief which she took with a faint, ‘Merci.’ ‘It seems an odd choice. Your lives are so different, your interests … Do you share anything in common?’
Ah Jésus, Jésus, she said to herself, why must he ask a thing like that at a time like this? The house in pieces – had it really been the house? How many dead, and she the only tenant? The Gestapo would come for her – they would have to, yet here he was trying to distract her. ‘We … we met in the zoo. Clément would come to feed the animals – he knew we had little to give them and for him, it took him away from his wife on a Sunday afternoon and allowed him to exercise a kindness. I found him one day with oats he had gathered handful by handful in Normandy – can you imagine him doing such a thing?’ Quickly she dried her eyes. ‘My zebras loved it, Inspector, and he genuinely loved them and was not at all like most who come to see them. And to think,’ she sighed and shrugged and tried desperately to smile faintly, ‘he had brought the oats from far away. Not for himself, you understand, but for my animals.’
‘Bon. Compassion’s rare these days. You met when, exactly?’
‘Inspector, is my private life suspect?’
‘Ah no. No of course not. I merely wish to establish why Monsieur Laviolette should leave the keys to that house in his private safe.’
Again she threw an anxious glance towards the street as if expecting the Gestapo momentarily.
‘They … the keys were with the deeds. For this, you must understand that Madame Laviolette holds him constantly under suspicion and frequently includes his private office and desk among her searchings.’
‘Henpecked, is he?’
‘The roots of your suspicions are deep, Inspector. Why is this, please?’
‘Just answer the questions.’
‘Or you will get angry with me, eh? Hey, monsieur, you’re perturbed enough when it is I who have been subjected to such indignities, I …’
He wasn’t having any of it. ‘Yes, then. He is henpecked and not just by that wife of his, by his four daughters, two of whom are married. They constantly examine every aspect of his life and criticize him amongst themselves.’ She blew her nose.
Creases framed the frown she gave. Her lips were parted slightly as if she wondered, still, what he was thinking of her answers. The nose was not big or small but decidedly impish. The thick, auburn hair was a little less than shoulder length, in waves and curls, masses of them, and worn over the brow with only a part in the middle to all but hide her frown and emphasize her eyes.
‘Life on the sly with a thirty-two-year-old zoo-keeper and veterinary surgeon must be better,’ he grunted. ‘Should they ever discover the affair, your Monsieur Laviolette will immediately blame his wife and daughters to their faces for having caused him to stray!’
Taken aback, she said softly, ‘He’s not vindictive. Oh bien sûr, the house, it was an investment and not much – he wouldn’t let me spend a sou fixing it. He always said she would only find out if he did. But …’ She clutched the robe about her throat and tossed her head. ‘But he has made his promises and I believe he’ll keep them.’
New laundry for the old and she beginning to distance herself from the explosion. ‘You’re far too intelligent to believe it, Madame Lemaire. So when, please, did the two of you first meet?’
Ah damn him. ‘Last summer. 13 June.’
‘And he was feeding oats he had gathered in early summer to the zebras?’
Merde! how could she have been so stupid? ‘He had purchased a small sack of last year’s harvest from a farmer. I thought …’ She shrugged. ‘Well, that you would understand that’s what I meant.’
‘And when, exactly, did the affair begin?’
Laviolette would be questioned closely, therefore she had best answer as truthfully as possible. ‘The end of June,’ she said. ‘I … I only make 650 a day, Inspector. It’s not so much for a woman who does a man’s job, is it? That’s when we decided on our little arrangement. He wanted someone to live in the house, otherwise the authorities would have taken it over, isn’t that so? It was close to my work. In a few minutes by bicycle, a little longer on foot, I could be there without the expense of the métro or autobus but now … now I don’t know what I’ll do. His wife is bound to find out. The press … Ah nom de Dieu, I had not thought of them.’
A study in contrasts, the expressions she gave in quick succession changed from firmness of resolve to doubt, hesitation and despair as she realized they had already mentioned the press.
‘The bolts on your side door, madame?’ he said.
‘Pardon?’ she managed, startled by this new direction.
‘Why were they left open? Ah certainement, the Gypsy had the key but there were two other bolts, one at the top, the other at the bottom. The owners of those old houses felt they never could take chances. The cambrioleurs of those days were tougher than they are today.’
The housebreakers … ‘The bolts stick in winter because the cold freezes the dampness in the wood, so I …’ She shrugged. ‘I left them open, otherwise it would have been a window for me and those are – were, I should say – stuck tightly and shuttered also.’
She’d try to have an answer for everything. ‘Then only the key was necessary. The Gypsy entered at about 4 or 5 a.m. Did he have two suitcases or a rucksack – what, please?’
She drew back, and again threw a frantic look towards the street. ‘I … I wouldn’t have known, would I? He wouldn’t have carried all that loot upstairs. He’d have needed his hands, his wits …’ Why was the Sûreté so suspicious of her? Why? she wondered anxiously. ‘I awoke to find a gun pressed under my chin and a hand clamped over my mouth. He was lying on top of me, Inspector. Me! Can you imagine what I thought? Ah! a woman’s worst nightmare. He assured me that wasn’t the case, and since he had the gun, I did not resist.’
The Inspector fiddled with the pipe he had taken out but had yet to pack with tobacco. He was waiting for her to add to what she’d just said and she knew that if she did, it would not be wise of her, but if she didn’t, he’d believe her evasive. ‘He lit the candle I have beside my bed – or had, I should say. It’s necessary to have such things due to the frequent electricity outages, is it not? He let me see him. He was tall and thin and blond and had the sharpest blue eyes of any man I’ve ever met. Swift, calculating – far ahead of my thoughts or anyone else’s, I must think, and very sure of himself with women – with men, too, I suspect, though I cannot say for certain. The nicest smile, the gentlest hands. Très caressant, you understand, even when tying a vulnerable woman and gagging her.’
‘Yet he warned you to lie still.’
‘Yes!’
‘And when we left the house together, madame, you said on the doorstep …’ St-Cyr flipped open his little black notebook. ‘“No one told me this would happen.”’
‘I … I didn’t know what I was saying. I was angry. I was scared. I’d been put upon.’
‘Who was it that failed to warn you?’
‘No one. I’m not lying, Inspector. I’ve no reason to. How could I have?’
Ashen, she threw another glance at the street. He couldn’t let her go. He had to keep an eye on her and keep her from the Gestapo. ‘And now you have no house or clothing beyond what you wear. Permit me, please, to offer the use of my house until you’re settled once again.’
‘Is it that you wish to keep me a prisoner?’
‘Ah! of course not. The house is empty. There are two bedrooms and if I am ever there, you may lock your door and leave the key in the lock though, as a detective, I would not advise this elsewhere.’
‘Why is that, please?’
‘Because as every experienced housebreaker knows, such a key can easily be manipulated.’
‘And your partner?’
‘Lives with two women and at the moment, has his hands and flat full.’
‘And you have no one?’ she asked, fiddling with her robe.
‘A chanteuse, but she’s very understanding and works nearly every night. Besides, she has her own place.’
‘Then perhaps I could stay with her. Would this be possible?’
‘Perhaps, but you will need clothing, and this I have plenty of – my dead wife’s. I … I haven’t had time yet to pack up her things. You’re about her size, I think, though she was a little younger than yourself.’
‘Ah!’ she tossed her head in acknowledgement. ‘And how, please, did that one die?’
There seemed nothing else for him to do but to tell her, and she knew then that he had deliberately manoeuvred her into accepting and that he had not yet wanted to let go of her.
And his partner? she wondered. Would that one reinforce the Sûreté’s doubts or merely treat them with impatience?
And why, please, had the Gestapo not come for her, not yet? Were they leaving it to this one and his friend? Was he offering the house to keep them from her?
‘All right, I accept. It’s very decent of you but I should warn you I sometimes have to work late and for this, I must stay overnight in my surgery. Just so that you understand and don’t come looking for me.’
‘Of course.’
*
The look Boemelburg gave would have broken glass. Grabbed by two strong-arm boys while frantically clearing rubble, Kohler had been hustled into a black Renault and hurtled across town at 180 kilometres an hour.
‘Four men, Hermann. Dead, do you understand? Two others so injured they will not recover. Did you think von Schaumburg wouldn’t shriek at me to find and arrest those responsible immediately?’
Old Shatter Hand … Rock of Bronze, the Kommandant von Gross Paris under whose authority the ordering out of the bomb-disposal boys had fallen. An old friend from previous investigations. Well, sort of.
‘Sturmbannführer, we didn’t know the Gypsy would be doing a boil-up. He’s moving far too fast even for us. He’s also leaving surprises.’
‘And the dynamite?’
‘We don’t know how he got it. We’re working on it.’
‘You’re “working on it”, Ja, das ist gut, Hermann. You disobey my orders. You lock Herr Max out when it is he who is in charge. Verdammt! could you not have gone up with the mortar dust to save the lives of those men?’
Furious with him, Boemelburg seized and hurled a Chinese porcelain figurine, a leftover from the days when Louis’s boss had occupied the office.
10,000 Reichskassenscheine went everywhere and even Pharand down the hall would have heard it and leapt.
‘I’m warning you, Kohler. This matter is to be handled delicately. Berlin, you idiot, SONDERBEHANDLUNG, JA?’
‘Chief, your heart.’
‘Fuck my heart. It’s your balls we have to worry about und your neck. Mine too.’
‘We know so little,’ bleated Kohler. ‘We’re not being told everything.’
‘Sit. Light up if you wish and wipe the dust and blood from your face and hands. There … over there, idiot. My basin of water and towel.’
Kohler would see death when he looked in the shaving mirror. He would realize he looked ninety. Damned worried. Too much Messerschmitt benzedrine in his blood and too little sleep. Everyone knew he was popping those pills the fighter pilots took to stay awake and alive.
‘Don’t get careless with this, Hermann. We all have to make sacrifices.’
And wasn’t Louis to be one of those sacrifices – wasn’t that what Rudi Sturmbacher had said? thought Kohler. Had the gossip started here?
His big hands shook when he lighted a cigarette – the aftershock of the rue Poliveau.
‘A brandy, I think, and then some coffee,’ grunted the boss.
A mouton had let Gestapo-Paris know about the job at the Ritz but had failed to get the timing right or mention Cartier’s or the Gare Saint-Lazare. Kohler fished about in his pockets for the cigarette case only to remember Louis had it. ‘Lucie-Marie Doucette. Tshaya,’ he said, ‘daughter of a horse trader. We’re to find her – is that all Gestapo Paris-Central can give us, Chief?’
‘Herr Max can, perhaps, tell you more.’
‘Like who’s her conductor? Is it the Spade?’
The boxer, Henri Doucette. ‘Perhaps. I really wouldn’t know.’
Kohler sighed inwardly with disbelief and said, ‘Herr Max obtained an agreement from the Gypsy in writing, Srurmbannführer. De Vries was then released from the Mollergaten-19 and taken to Tours so that this Tshaya could make contact with him and let her conductor know what was up.’
‘That is correct.’
‘Then her conductor was told by Herr Max what to feed her. She must have believed the Gypsy had escaped from prison. She’d have rejoiced in this and would have lied about the timing of the Ritz robbery in order to save him.’
‘You’re beginning to understand, Hermann. She’s well known to De Vries. They travelled in the same kumpania during the war years and every summer for years afterwards. She’s the daughter of the family that, on seeing how well the boy had come to learn their ways and language and to respect them, took him in and treated him almost as one of their own, even though he was a Gajo and marhime.’
And polluted, as were all Gaje. ‘Is she helping him now?’
‘This we do not know but suspect.’
‘Someone must be.’
‘That’s what we want you to find out.’
‘And never mind her conductor?’
‘You’ll find him too. I’m sure you will.’
The Club Monseigneur’s neon sign was out because all such things had been forbidden. In the greyness of swirling snow and fast-fading light, the rue d’Amsterdam was busy. There were uniforms everywhere among the pedestrians, Vélo-taxis and gazogène lorries, and one lonely Citroën parked where it ought not to have been.
The only flic in sight was writing up a traffic ticket for the only car in sight. Enraged, Kohler said loudly, ‘Piss off! Go on, beat it, eh? There may be a bomb under that thing.’
The Führerlike moustache twitched. ‘A bomb …?’
‘That’s what I said. Now don’t try my patience.’
‘But … but the car is not where it should be? It was stolen.’
‘So you’re writing up a parking ticket?’
‘Certainement! The law is very clear in the matter, monsieur.’
Ah putain de bordel! a stickler. ‘Then write it up but don’t touch the car. Not until I’m done with it.’
Reluctantly Kohler got down on all fours to peer under the car, only to find it better if flat on his back. He strained to look up into the engine, got his hands all greasy and had to wipe them on his overcoat. Oona would be furious. She was always trying to keep him tidy. Giselle would back up every word, if not in tears over the baby …
When he lifted the bonnet, he found three sticks of dynamite wrapped with black electrical tape and wired to the ignition. Sickened, he took his time. There was verdigris on the bloody blasting cap. It was too delicate to touch … too delicate …
The cold weather didn’t help. It made the wires stiff. Carefully he tucked the sticks into his overcoat pockets and then dropped the cap down a sewer only to realize he ought really not to have done this.
The flic handed him the traffic ticket and Kohler took it without a word, the injustice of it all building silently within him. The bonnet was gently closed. The keys were under the seat just where he had left them.
He was still counting but there was no nitro lying around loosely in its little bottle, though there had been two of those bottles at least, and the Gypsy had left only one of them on the doorstep of that house in the rue Poliveau.
The flic glared at him from the pavement and Kohler was tempted to say, Why not get in and give it a try? but it was his responsibility, no one else’s.
Though he didn’t want to, he got in behind the wheel and when the engine suddenly came to life, he let it run for a moment while the tears trickled freely down his ragged cheeks.
Switching the ignition off, he locked all four doors and put the keys in a trouser pocket. Then he looked uncertainly up to the Louis XIV wrought-iron balusters of the narrow balconies above the club. He tried to pick out Nana Thélème’s flat.
‘Aren’t you going to move the car?’
The Paris flics could be almost as obnoxious as the waiters.
When Louis found him, Kohler said, ‘Is that bastard up there with her or long gone?’
Hermann was a wreck. ‘He wouldn’t have hung around. He would have known this was one of the first places we would look but if we ask any of the locals, none of them will have seen a thing.’
‘Merde! I’ve got to pee. Hang on. It can’t wait.’
Electrified by his refusal to move the car, the flic yanked out his truncheon and started for them only to ignore the ice.
Louis helped him up and brushed him off. ‘Forget about all this talk of arrest, eh? That one is Gestapo and dangerous.’
‘Asshole, I don’t give a damn if you both are dangerous!’
The left knee bent a little as Louis feinted that way but then the right fist came up and hard. There was a crack.
Unconscious, the flic was put in the back seat and handcuffed.
‘He won’t freeze, will he?’ asked Kohler.
‘Not with the farts he’s been letting off.’
‘Make sure he can breathe. We don’t want him puking all over the place.’
‘Shall I awaken him?’
‘He’ll only start shrieking again.’
They took the lift. Hermann seemed too tired to care. He didn’t even wince when they had to stop at the third floor. But on the fourth, he did look back in surprise as the gate was closed and only then realized he’d been in the lift.
‘I’m still shaking, Louis. That bastard is out to get us. Three boulder-breakers and so nicely wired, I couldn’t have done it better myself, but he’s like a hop-head. That blasting cap he used was so corroded it could have blown his fingers off.’
The sticks of dynamite were old and at their ends, an oily, pale yellowish fluid had formed little beads that were sticky. Lint from Herr Kohler’s overcoat pockets clung to them as the sticks lay on the end table beneath the foyer’s mirror.
Terrified by what he was now seeing, Herr Kohler seemed unable to say anything.
Nana Thélème threw her eyes up to questioningly look at him in the mirror as he stared down at those things. ‘Louis …’ he finally said.
‘Ah nom du ciel, idiot! What have you done?’
‘Carried them. Thought nothing of it. That blasting cap … I guess I was concentrating too hard on freeing it and didn’t really notice.’
St-Cyr was swift. ‘Is there a telephone, mademoiselle?’
She found her voice. ‘Downstairs. On the concierge’s floor, near her loge or in the club, by the bar.’
‘Stay here, Hermann. Don’t let her touch them. Don’t drop anything.’
‘Just call the bomb boys and have them bring one of their little boxes, Louis. Tell them this one’s for real too.’
Still they stood before the mirror, and still Herr Kohler stared at those things.
‘Taken from the magazine of an abandoned quarry,’ he said at last and the emptiness of his voice matched that of the faded blue eyes. ‘The French … the Resistance, eh? How could the silly sons of bitches have carried it at all without killing themselves? Nitroglycerine with sawdust or gelatine as the filler. That’s all dynamite is. Fifty per cent strength – you can just make out the number on the side. Velocity better than 5300 metres a second. Sends a powerful shock wave which creates a tremendous shattering effect even when unconfined.’
She waited and he tonelessly continued. ‘Extremely useful for wrecking old machinery or blowing apart the car of unwanted detectives, preferably with them in or near it.’
She winced. ‘I … I know nothing of this.’
‘Nothing? Then why the hell did that bastard park the car directly under your windows?’
The stench of the nitroglycerine was so powerful, she gagged and turned away only to have him yank her back. ‘Ah no, Mademoiselle Thélème. If I’m to die because of you, I’ll need your company. One good knock, eh? That’s all it needs when the sticks are like that. Shock or friction, and to think I was so lucky down on that street of yours not to have blown myself to kingdom come.’
Still they waited. A little later he said, ‘When breaking railway lines, bridge abutments or gun emplacements we used to put down a patty of wet clay first. A good daub of it. Then the sticks lying side by side but never ones like those, and only one would have the cap and fuse, or cap and wires if we were to use electrical blasting. It’s all really very simple once you get the hang of it and quit being afraid. More clay covers the charge – a thicker layer. Works every time. Defused them too, the other side’s. Had to. Orders were orders. I want the truth, mademoiselle, ‘cause you and those damned things are scaring the hell out of me.’
‘He’s the father of my son, my Jani.’
‘Janwillem De Vries, the Gypsy.’
‘Yes, but we never married. He was arrested in Oslo and was sent to prison.’
‘That why he hates you?’
‘I … I don’t understand what you mean?’
‘Then I’ll make it plainer. Did you tip off the authorities in Oslo so that they could put him behind bars?’
‘No, I didn’t. I hadn’t seen him in ages by then. Nearly two years. I thought … why, that he’d gone completely out of my life.’
He hated to correct her. ‘When was your son born?’
Ah damn! ‘5 November 1938.’
Kohler didn’t say anything. He let her think what she would, but as sure as that God of Louis’s had made birds to sing, the Gypsy and this one had been together in late January or early February of 1938. De Vries had been arrested 20 April of that year. Would the news of fatherhood have pleased him? he wondered, then thought briefly of Giselle and looked again at the dynamite.
‘So, now he’s turned up in Paris again and he’s aware you’ve moved from Saint-Cloud to here.’
‘Yes, but … but don’t ask me how he became aware of it.’
‘Tours,’ he said. ‘Was he the reason you went there last Tuesday?’
‘No! I went there because of the diamonds. Monsieur Jacqmain, the prospector, would not sell them to Hans unless I … I personally guaranteed his safety by making yet another visit.’
‘You’re a busy woman. You go to a party on the previous night. You sing your heart out for the SS who are occupying your villa, then you catch the 5 a.m. express to Tours.’
‘Not quite. The train did not leave until eight.’
‘Tell me something, mademoiselle. Who attended the party and why was it given?’
‘Now listen, I’ve already told you at the Ritz all I know about who was there. As to why the party was given, those kinds of people don’t tell people like me anything. We played and sang for them, that is all.’
But was it? he wondered. ‘And on Thursday the fourteenth the Gypsy is seen in Tours boarding the train for Paris.’
‘Look, I’m sorry those men were killed at the house in the rue Poliveau and I’m sorry he tried to kill you but …’
‘“The” house – you said “the”, mademoiselle? That implies you knew of it.’
Ah no … ‘I didn’t.’
‘But maybe you did, and when my partner gets back we’re going to sort you out. Oh by the way, in case you were wondering, Jean-Louis St-Cyr’s name is still on some of the Resistance’s hit lists. Could that be why your Gypsy’s trying to put paid to us?’
‘I … I wouldn’t know. The Resistance …? Please, what the hell do I have to do with those people?’
‘That’s what I’m asking myself.’
The two detectives spoke quietly, and Nana Thélème wished with all her heart she could hear what they said. The bomb-disposal unit were packing things up. The car on the street below was being given another going over. The sewer had been opened to find the blasting cap.
They’d trace the dynamite – this would cause them some delay but she really didn’t know how she could possibly stop them from doing so. She still could not understand why Janwillem had left such a device below the apartment of his son, the little boy he’d never seen.
Had the bomb gone off, it would, at the least, have sent flying glass inwards, perhaps killing Jani and herself.
Letting the edge of the velvet drape fall from her hand, she stood a moment undecided – wished then that she had not been trying on the loose-fitting, rose-coloured, striped silk chiffon trousers with their long waistcoat of rose and gold lame and the outer one that came to just below her waist but was of many vibrant colours and much fine needlework. She wished she had not had her dancing shoes on. The heavy, black high-heels with their sturdy straps gave her height, strength and that overt alertness and suppleness of body she did not want at the moment.
St-Cyr was studying her. He’d remember that her hair was still loose and that there was the look of the gypsy about her. He’d see the gold ear-rings, the heavy gold bracelets and rings. He’d think there was more to her than met the eye.
Tshaya … A fly in amber. Vadni ratsa. Why had Janwillem asked for such a thing as that cigarette case? Was it to have been her final insult?
No. No that was the bomb in the car below.
‘Louis, the Resistance have to be involved. They’re the only idiots desperate enough to fool around with stuff like that. We’ve got to find the quarry and quickly, and then trace the stuff to whoever took it.’
The Resistance and Gabrielle, and was this not the reason Herr Max wanted a certain Sûreté’s head? ‘Perhaps but … ah mais alors, mon vieux, is it that others wish simply to make it appear as if the terrorists are involved?’
The SS of the avenue Foch, the Gestapo of the rue des Saussaies, or the French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston. Louis couldn’t know he had talked to Boemelburg. Not yet. ‘I’ve thought of that too. Engineer a crisis, eh? so that you can then have all the authority you want to stamp it out.’
The relief of Leningrad, the defeat at Stalingrad were excuses enough but so, too, were increasing acts of ‘terrorism’ and related evasions of the forced labour draft, the hated Service de Travail Obligatoire which was sending so many workers to the Reich but also driving the young men to swell the ranks of the maquis.
‘Knock off a few places to make sure the loot taken more than compensates for the effort, eh? since if the plan works,’ said St-Cyr, ‘all those involved in it will be handsomely rewarded with a lot left over for the bosses.’
‘But it isn’t working, is it?’ said Kohler sadly. ‘He’s buggered off on them.’
‘And now they have to have him back.’
Louis dragged out his pipe, only to ruefully examine the meagre contents of his tobacco pouch and, momentarily furious with life, put both away. ‘There’s no denying his parking the car outside her flat can do nothing but cause her trouble.’
‘He can’t be happy with her but is he with anyone?’
‘Someone’s been helping him and not just with that uniform and ID he got in Tours,’ muttered St-Cyr. ‘He knew Wehrle’s safe would be loaded. He knew all about Cartier’s, knew the Gare Saint-Lazare kept its receipts too long, and knew enough of the house on the rue Poliveau to take the keys to it.’
‘He had to have help getting from the Gare to that house. Two suitcases, a large rucksack … The patrols, the risk of being stopped … He was carting dynamite too, wasn’t he?’
‘A bicycle would have been sufficient, Hermann. He has all the recklessness and nerve needed to ride one when fully loaded and on ice. No problem.’
Louis was just evading things. ‘A car,’ breathed Kohler sadly. ‘Who do we know in the Resistance who has one?’
Hermann had finally got to it. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t ask, but even Gabrielle can’t drive about after the curfew without a laissez-passer.’
‘I’ll check it out. I’m going to have to, Louis. Someone had to haul that dynamite around. Someone had to find it first and then store it. Boemelburg and Herr Max will expect it of me. I’m sorry, but I have no other choice.’
‘Tshaya … we have to find her too.’
*
‘Lucie-Marie Doucette. I know nothing of her,’ said Nana Thélème. ‘The name, it is unfamiliar to me.’
The flat grew still.
Herr Max had arrived at the departure of the bomb squad. Furious with her, and with Kohler and St-Cyr, he said quietly, ‘Nothing, Fräulein?’
Louis started forward. Kohler grabbed him. Still she stood defiantly in those all-but-Ali-Baba trousers – that was the way Engelmann would see her – with arms tightly folded across her chest. And all around her, the Turkish and Afghani leavings of the Marché aux Puces, the flea-market stalls in Saint-Ouen, threw back their throw-rug colours and kilim-patterns. Dark reds, blues, greens and yellows, the geometry of their patterns and the pseudo-mid-Eastern attire so foreign and repulsive to him, they could only bring anger at her obstinacy.
‘Nothing,’ she said.
The hammered brasses glinted. Gilded, carved neo-Gothic chairs were caught in wall-mirrors that must have come from some circus, the beautifully sculpted head and shoulders of a gypsy patriarch too, a Rom Baro, a ‘big man’, a leader with a fiercely bushy moustache that drooped at its ends. The Rassenverfolgte, the racially undesirable and here she was keeping images of them.
Herr Max removed his bifocals, letting his gaze pass myopically down over her. Untidy wisps of hair fell across his brow. ‘Tshaya?’ he asked again.
All around the room, watercolours gave scenes of gypsy encampments and caravans. Portraits too. The smoke, the scent of camp fires, of women and young girls washing clothes in a stream, of an ancient matriarch pouring Turkish coffee from a superb brass jezbeh, of another wearing heavy necklaces and earrings of gold coins. Holland, Belgium, Normandy, the Auvergne … Provence, Spain and Andalusia, where hadn’t Janwillem De Vries travelled with them?
The paintings were exceptional and St-Cyr realized then that De Vries could so easily have become an artist of a far different sort but … she had got the message.
‘All right, I … I did know of her once,’ she said sharply.
Engelmann gripped her by the chin. She yanked her head away. ‘But … but your former lover slept with her, Fräulein, with this marhime lubnyi you hate so much? That unclean whore took him from you, yes you! She could have had any man she wanted, but chose instead that which was forbidden by gypsy law. A Gajo. Always it was your Gypsy she wanted right from when she was seven years old and he but a boy of eleven. When marriage to De Vries was refused absolutely by her father and all the others of the kumpania, she ran away to Paris to find him. Age fifteen then, in 1922.’
Her nostrils pinched. The smile she gave was swift and cruel. ‘She found she had a sudden likeness for muscles, for the smell of male sweat and the thrill of being splashed by blood during a fight!’
Oh-oh, thought Kohler.
‘Henri Doucette,’ sighed Herr Max, pleased that he had got her to respond with such acrimony. ‘The Spade, Fräulein, a guest at that party in your villa a week ago Monday. Her husband, her conductor. She was his mouton, his informer. Tell me, please, did he applaud your singing?’
Dear Blessed Jesus, help me, she said silently and then acidly, ‘He was too drunk and loud to have noticed.’
‘But had brought her along?’
‘Yes.’
‘And she knew who you were?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you were forced to sing gypsy songs in front of her, knowing you were no gypsy yourself but that she had taken the father of your son from you?’
Her voice leapt. ‘What would you have had me do? Refuse those loudmouthed, arrogant pigs?’
His eyebrows arched. ‘The SS? The Gestapo and the French Gestapo who were their guests?’
‘It was my house! Doucette deliberately tried to humiliate me. They thought it a great joke. They were drunk. There was food everywhere. On the walls, the ceiling, the carpets – my carpets! They threw it. They encouraged their whores to do so and when one of them tried to dance naked on the table, they clapped and roared and slapped her behind.’
‘No. No that is not quite correct. Tshaya danced for them fully clothed as a gypsy. While you remained silent, your little orchestra played for her. She showed you how it was really done. If anyone humiliated you, it was her.’
‘He … he had sex with her on the table afterwards while they all shouted encouragement. He … he stripped her naked and she … she spat in my face when I tried to cover her.’
Ah Gott im Himmel, swore Kohler silently. Louis was thinking the same. Debauchery – her villa, everything she had once owned and had taken pride in but for these few things, the paintings …
‘I don’t know where either of them are, nor do I know if they are hiding together or who, if anyone, is helping them.’
‘Then why the tears?’ asked Engelmann. ‘Is it that you are afraid for them?’
She clasped her mouth to stop herself from vomiting and turned away. ‘Because you can’t control a man like that! Because wandering is not just a way of life, it is life! Lock him up and he’ll go crazy. Crazy! do you understand? That is what you have to deal with now.’
‘And is she helping him?’ said Herr Max.
‘She must be!’
‘But … but you were the only one other than the Generalmajor Wehrle who knew the contents of his safe?’
Stung, she turned back to face him. ‘No! that is incorrect. Everyone who sold diamonds to Hans knew those things were in his safe. Others, I don’t know who, would have known he made his shipments to the Reich once a month or even once every two or three months. It all depended on how much there was.’
‘Where will she go?’
When Nana Thélème shrugged, Engelmann hit her. Shocked, dazed and bleeding from the nose and mouth, she stumbled back and fell to the floor.
He stepped between her legs and she waited defiantly for the kick he would give.
Doucement! ‘Now just a minute, Herr Max,’ swore St-Cyr. ‘Janwillem De Vries has at least one bottle of nitroglycerine. If we waste any more time here, Berlin will be certain to question the delay.’
‘The Spade, Louis. Let’s go and have a talk with the son of a bitch!’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Herr Max, grinning at them for having given him exactly what he had wanted from them. ‘Perhaps she should join us. Then if Doucette says something she disagrees with, she can clarify the matter.’
‘I’ll have to change,’ she said, sucking in a breath while silently cursing him.
‘No you won’t. You’ll come just as you are. It’ll do you good. It’s never warm in the camps in winter.’
‘Buchenwald … is it that you are going to send me there?’ she blurted.
He did not answer. Shattered, she found she could not move.
Louis took her gently by the arm and quietly confided, ‘For now we must do as he says. Here, be sure to put on your overcoat and boots, a scarf and hat. Mittens … have you no mittens?’
‘I’ve done nothing.’
‘That won’t matter.’
Buchenwald … Why not any of the other camps? Why had she said it if not knowing, too, that Tshaya’s father had been sent there?
Déporté 14 September 1941.
* crap.