2

Shadows fell on bejewelled finches in locked little cages of gilded wire. When torchlight found them, their encrusted emeralds, topazes and other precious and semiprecious stones suddenly lit up as if, now awakened, the birds would begin to sing. It was curious.

The cages were a window-dressing, their padlocks of gold perhaps a statement to the Occupier that some things would not be sold. And to be fair, the shop would have been lost had it not been kept open. Yet business had been extremely good, the temple of haute joaillerie booming, as were all the exclusive shops of the rue de la Paix.

‘The Reichsmarschall Goering purchased an 8,000,000 franc necklace here,’ said St-Cyr, letting the black-out curtain fall back in place. ‘Diamonds and thumb-sized sapphires perhaps, and for his wife, his Emmy.’

The conquering hero. Head of the Luftwaffe. ‘Louis …’

‘Hermann, I am merely trying to get a fix on things. Unlike our Generalmajor’s suite, this place has locks upon locks and the best of burglar alarms.’

An iron grille guarded the door during off-hours; steel shutters the display windows. ‘Every two hours, and at random, a patrol goes along the street and, as is his custom, the Feldwebel in charge checks every door to see that it is locked just in case the flics should miss such a thing.’

‘Impregnable,’ offered Kohler lamely.

Black, velvet-lined boxes littered the floor. At the far end of the shop, every one of the floor-to-counter individual safes had been opened and their trays pulled out for perusal. The little dressing-tables at which only the wealthy would sit looked decidedly lonely.

‘The bastard’s moving too fast for us,’ said Kohler grimly. ‘What’s next, eh?’

‘He must have got in somehow.’

Cartier’s were famous for their art deco approach and the mingling of precious and semiprecious stones. The style was simple, the lines straight, the pieces often one of a kind, exquisitely worked and fabulously priced.

‘He can certainly pick his places,’ offered the Sûreté, hands jammed into the deep pockets of the decidedly shabby overcoat the Occupation and frugality had allowed, the brown fedora much damaged. ‘Please tell the boys in blue to wait outside in the cold.’

Herr Max was grumpy – the lack of sleep perhaps, or still smarting from the Ritz, thought Kohler. ‘So, what is missing, ja?’ asked the visitor from Berlin, distastefully taking it all in.

There were travel cases, combs to fix the hair in place, beaded handbags and watches, and all had that decidedly bright, sharp, angular look. Frivolity in wartime, was that what was bothering Herr Max?

‘The sous-directeur and his assistants are trying to tally things,’ said Kohler.

‘Und who reported the break-in?’

‘A flic found the front door open at 0127 hours.’

‘Did he help himself before notifying others?’

‘I’ll check.’

‘You do that. He’s blown a hole in things, hasn’t he, our Gypsy? Here we were believing the woman had let him into the Generalmajor’s suite and had told him where the combination of that safe was kept, and now this. What are we to think?’

Brushing the dribbled sparklers from a chair, Engelmann sat down to moodily soak up what had happened and to relight the stub of the cheroot that had steadfastly clung to his lips ever since leaving the Ritz at a run. Hell, the shop was just down the street anyway.

‘Sonderbehandlung, Kohler. That is what my superiors have insisted, and since they are also your superiors, you and that French fart will take note of it.’

Special treatment … Verdammt! ‘I knew there had to be something to bring the IKPK out of hibernation. What’s he done then, our Gypsy? Decided on an agenda of his own?’

‘This we do not know. We only know that he was sighted in Tours on the fourteenth, boarding the train to Paris. He “surfaced”, Kohler, and my superiors want to know why he did so, how he got there, and what he has in mind.’

‘And you can’t tell us who reported seeing him?’

Must Kohler always be such a nuisance? ‘The same as notified us of the Ritz but failed entirely to warn us of this.’

The mouton then, the informer. A woman the Gypsy obviously must know.

The office was spacious, the desk immaculate. The cigarette case was of platinum, with an oblong, octagonally shaped plaque of Baltic amber raised at its centre and from which incised rays sparkled as if the amber was some sort of strange sun and the entrapped fly its prisoner.

‘“Tshaya”,’ said St-Cyr softly of the inscription. ‘“Vadni ratsa”. The first is a woman’s name; the second means the gift is from the wild goose of Romani legend.’

Agitated, the clerk blurted, ‘The client came in on Saturday, Inspector. He insisted it be ready for today – ah! for Monday, yes? It is now Tuesday. It’s not easy to acquire amber like that. We worked all day Sunday and half of Monday. Enslaved, that’s what we are. Enslaved.’

‘Yes, yes, of course. A Hauptmann – you’re certain of this?’

‘Herr Oberlammers. He … he has signed for it, yes? Everyone has to these days. It’s the rule.’

‘And he was to pick it up yesterday afternoon?’

‘That is correct.’

‘At what time, please, did he come into the shop on Saturday?’

The salesman’s expression grew pained. ‘At just before closing.’

‘And were there any other customers?’

‘Seven. We’re short-handed. I …’

A breath was taken and held in anticipation of further questions not long in coming.

‘Do you mean to say you left him alone while you served others? You took your eyes from him?’ demanded the Sûreté accusingly.

‘Inspector, how was I to know he was looking the place over? He was in uniform. He asked if he might use the telephone so as to get the inscription correct.’

Kohler gave his partner a nudge. ‘The burglar alarm, Louis. The bastard recircuited the wires so that the alarm remained off but the light came on when the switch was thrown.’

The control box was in the office, on a wall. ‘Entry?’ asked St-Cyr of his partner.

‘A rear door. A tradesman’s entrance – grilled, but no problem. Forced with an iron bar, muffled with a horse blanket.’

‘And the safes out front?’

‘All drilled and punched. Bang on each time, Louis. First the hole to locate and expose the cam of the locking bolt, then the hammer and chisel.’

‘He came equipped but did he come alone?’

‘Apparently, but he couldn’t have carried the tools in that attaché case he walked into the Ritz with.’

‘Then did he knock this place off first, Hermann, before leaving his little surprise at the Ritz, or vice versa?’

‘He would have had to come back here to open the front door for the flics to find.’

There was a nod. ‘Then he did the Ritz job first, and while we were brushing the dust off ourselves, he took his time with this, having prepared the way well beforehand.’

Clément Laviolette was sous-directeur, a far different person from his sales clerk. Clearly he didn’t want the Kripo and the Sûreté asking too many questions. ‘Inspectors, it’s nothing – nothing, I assure you. Those little safes we have out front are merely for show. Our vault in the cellars is inviolable. Please … a few trinkets are missing. Mere baubles.’

He was positively beaming, and when he sat down in an Empire fauteuil to benevolently fold his hands in his lap, he said, ‘Two millions at most when he could have had thirty. The rectangular, chain-linked diamond necklace with matching bracelets. Two rings with step-cut, rectangular, blanc exceptionnel stones of 31.98 and 19.53 carats respectively. A wider diamond bracelet than the others – stronger, yes. More distinctive, more of a statement. The latent pugiliste in the female perhaps? A pair of ear-rings – single droplets those – he could have had the proper ones to go with the chain-links but passed them up. A ruby pendant, a diamond brooch, an epidote-and-diamond necklace which was exquisite for the delicacy of its platinum lacework and for the warm and enticing combination of its soft green and pale yellow tints.’

He sucked in a breath, never letting his eyes leave them. ‘But it is as if this perceur de coffre-fort was searching for something he had had in mind for a long time yet couldn’t quite make up his mind when presented with the confiserie of our establishment.’

The bonbon shop, ah yes. ‘Seven years between sheet metal in Oslo, Louis, the sentence commuted by our friends in Berlin for all we know, but time enough to dream. Then one empty safe and a fortune left behind.’

‘One empty safe …? Ah! messieurs, the vault in the cellars was not touched, as I have only just informed you.’

Kohler let him have it – St-Cyr knew he would. ‘Then why weren’t the little safes out front emptied and their contents locked away below? Isn’t that the normal procedure at the close of each day?’

There wasn’t a ruffle of discomposure. ‘The pressures of business. The shortages of suitable staff. It’s understandable, is it not?’

‘Five millions,’ grunted Louis.

‘Perhaps a little more,’ conceded Laviolette. ‘When we have the final figure we will, of course, be quite willing to divulge it.’

How good of him. ‘Ten at least, Louis.’

‘The insurance, Hermann.’

They turned to leave the office. ‘Messieurs …’ bleated the sales clerk. ‘The cigarette case … It … it has only had the deposit.’

‘Tack it on to the rest, eh? Lose it if you have to.’ Kohler slid the thing deeply into the left pocket of the greatcoat that, had he worn a helmet instead of a broad-brimmed grey fedora, would have made his appearance all the more formidable.

Touching a forefinger lightly to his lips and shaking his head, he whispered, ‘Don’t even mention it to the detective out front. It would only upset him.’

The vault was indeed inviolable. Even tunnelling under it would have been of no use. ‘He had to have known the staff had become complacent, Hermann, and that things were being carelessly left overnight in the safes upstairs.’

‘Someone has to have looked the place over for him. A woman, no doubt. One who could have made several visits. This piece, that piece …’

‘See if there’s a record of the clientele. Try for a singer, for Mademoiselle Thélème. The shop is on her way to the Ritz.’

‘Done, but why did the son of a bitch leave the cigarette case behind? He must have known they’d have it ready? He’d have had access to the office and to the sous-directeur’s desk during the robbery.’

‘Perhaps our Gypsy was too busy. Perhaps it was only a means to his looking the place over and to hot-wiring the burglar alarm.’

‘Perhaps he simply forgot it in the rush,’ said Kohler, lost to it.

‘Then why have it inscribed in such a manner?’

‘That’s what I’m asking myself, Louis. Why did he deliberately go out of his way to identify himself with the Rom while wearing the uniform of those who must at least officially hate them?’

The house at 3 rue Laurence-Savart was in Belleville, on a street so narrow, the canyon of it threw up the sound of the retreating Citroën.

As Hermann reached the corner of the rue des Pyrénées, the tyres screeched and that splendid traction avant grabbed icy paving stones. Then the car shot deeply into the city St-Cyr loved, and he heard it approach the Seine – yes, yes, there it was – after which it reached place Saint-André-des-Arts and coasted quietly up to the house on the rue Suger. Five minutes flat, from here to there. No traffic. There seldom was at any time of day or night, and in ten minutes one could cross the city from suburb to suburb. The cars all gone. 350,000 of them reduced to 4500 or less; 60,000 cubic metres of gasoline a month reduced to an allocation of less than 600.

As one of the Occupier, control of the Citroën had passed instantly into Hermann’s hands. They were capable, of course, and occasionally Hermann did let him drive his own car just so that he wouldn’t forget how to. And yes, they had become friends in spite of it and of everything else. Two lost souls from opposite sides of the war, thrown together by the never-ending battle against common crime.

‘War does things like that,’ he said aloud and to no one but the darkness of the street. ‘We’re like a horseshoe magnet whose opposing poles agree to sweep up the iron filings. All of them.’

The city proper held about 2,300,000; the suburbs perhaps another 500,000 and yet, even with 300,000 or so of the Occupier, on any night at this hour or just after curfew it was so quiet it was uncomfortable. And at 4.47 Berlin Time, it was all but ready for the first sounds of those departing for work. Not a light showed, and the time in winter was one ungodly hour earlier than the old time; in summer it was two.

Boots would soon squeak in the twenty degrees of frost. The open-toed, wooden-heeled shoes of the salesgirls, usherettes and secretaries would click-clack harshly, though most had long since lost interest in how they looked or in trying to find a husband, what with so many of the young men either dead or locked up in POW camps in the Reich.

After more than two and a half years of Occupation, nearly three and a half of war, hunger was on everyone’s mind unless some fiddle had been worked, or one slept with the enemy or had one living in the house. The system of rationing had never worked and had been open to so much abuse, most existed on less than 1500 calories a day.

Yet they had to get up at 4 a.m. the old time, six days a week.

He turned his back on the city. He went into the stone-cold house, saying softly, ‘Marianne, it’s me …’ only to stop himself, to remember that she was not asleep upstairs but dead. ‘Ah merde, I’ve got to watch myself,’ he said. Fortunately there were still a few splintered boards left from the explosion that had killed her and their little son. Hermann had had the Todt Organization repair the damage. With pages torn from About’s The King of the Mountains – a tragedy to destroy it – he lit a fire in the kitchen stove.

And searching the barren cupboards found, at last, one forgotten cube of bouillon.

‘Things like this build character – isn’t that what you always said, maman?’ he cried out for it was her house. It had always been hers even after she had passed away, and hadn’t that been part of the trouble with the first wife and with the second?

‘No. It was the long absences. The work. The profession, and I was determined to succeed, but if one does not climb the ladder, one soon slides down it.’

Flames lit up the room and, cursing himself, he ran to draw the black-out curtains Madame Courbet across the street had thoughtfully left open to brighten the place while cleaning it.

The Gypsy had done the Ritz robbery between 8.15 and 8.47 p.m., Monday, but the flic who had found Cartier’s front door open had not done so until today at 0127 hours. Lots of time, then, for the Gypsy to have been as thorough as possible, yet he had left things behind, had definitely not taken all he could have.

‘And that’, breathed St-Cyr, ‘is a puzzle, unless he was trying to tell us something.’

The bouillon cube was old and so dry he had to remove a shoe to smash it with the heel, only to worry about damaging the footwear. Scraping the crumbs into a hand with the blade of a dinner knife, he fed them to the pot from the surface of whose cup of water rose the first tendrils of steam.

More wood was added to the stove, and from his pockets, guiltily now, the half-dozen lumps of coal Hermann had pilfered unseen from the cellars of the building that housed Cartier’s.

Hermann had kept six for himself – he was like that. He wouldn’t take what was his right as one of the Occupier, the Citroën excepted, and certain of his meals. He would go without but ‘borrow’ from those who had.

Idly St-Cyr wondered if his partner had picked up a little bauble or two for Giselle and Oona. Underwear, yes – silk stockings if they could be spared and the victim found in such a state only one pair would be necessary for the funeral if the coffin was to be left open. If.

‘But why Cartier’s?’ he asked himself, removing his overcoat at last but keeping the scarf tightly wrapped around his throat, the chest covered thickly. The flu … one never relaxed one’s vigilance for it was serious. So many had died of it last winter.

Cartier’s was close to the Ritz but Van Cleef and Arpels was on place Vendôme and much closer, other world-famous jewellers too, yet the Gypsy had settled on that one.

He had left the cigarette case for them to find – St-Cyr was certain of this but as yet had no proof. ‘Tshaya,’ he said, and blowing on the cup of bouillon, ‘Vadni ratsa.’

Kohler heard the telephone ringing its heart out in the hall downstairs. The sound rose up the stairwell floor by Christly floor until, tearing himself out of bed, he ran to stop it. Down, down the stairs, he pitching through the darkness rather than have Madame Clicquot bitch at him any more. The rent, the lack of coal – ‘Why will you not see that we receive our proper share?’ Et cetera.

They collided. The candle stub flew out of her hands; the stench of garlic, onions and positively no bathing was ripe with fortitude. ‘Monsieur …’ she exhaled.

‘Madame, forgive me. Allô … Allô … Operator, put the bastard on. Gestapo … yes, I’m Gestapo, eh? so don’t take offence and hang up.’

‘Louis … Louis, what the hell is it this time?’

A moment was taken. And then, ‘Cartier’s, Hermann. The Opéra, June of 1910 and Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. The Schéhérazade. The Thousand and One Nights, The Arabian Nights.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘I was there with my parents. It was magnificent!’

‘I’m still listening.’

‘Bakst put such colours into the décor. Nijinsky was the black slave.’

‘Continue.’

‘Louis Cartier, the grandson, was so impressed he revolutionized Cartier’s style and the way we see gems and semiprecious stones. He and his assistant, Charles Jacqueau, began to create what were then very daring combinations of onyx, jet or pearl and diamond, with malachite, jade and amethyst or lapis lazuli. That’s why he hit Cartier’s.’

‘You’re not serious.’

‘The Club Schéhérazade, idiot! Tshaya, Hermann. Nana Thélème. She was wearing a dress with stag-horn buttons and a belt of goid links. Those are gypsy things. Their most powerful talismans are not man-made but natural. A polished bit of antler, a beach pebble bearing its tiny fossil …’

‘A plaque of amber with its entrapped fly, eh? Hey, mon vieux, I’m going back to bed. Your French logic is just too much for me!’

Tshaya was Nana Thélème? Ah! Louis was crazy. Too tired, too overwrought.

The flat was freezing. Giselle wore three sweaters and two pairs of woollen trousers, kneesocks, gloves and a toque. Oona also.

There was no room for him in the bed – there hadn’t been when he had arrived home. Ah! the three of them didn’t share the same bed. Those two would never have put up with anything like that! not even in this weather …

Oona’s bed was freezing and when he had settled back into it, he knew Giselle would accuse him of favouritism and that she wouldn’t listen to his protests even though her bed had been fully occupied.

He was just drifting off to the tolling of the Bibliothèque Nationale’s five o’clock bell some, distance across the river, when Oona slid in beside him to fan the flames of jealousy into a little fire of their own.

‘Kiss me,’ she said. ‘Hold me. I’m worried.’

‘Can’t it wait?’

‘Another seven and a half months? Perhaps. It all depends on Giselle, doesn’t it?’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Only that she’s the one who’s expecting, not me. You were thoughtless, Hermann. You got carried away and did not take precautions.’

‘It’s the war. It’s those lousy capotes anglaises they hand out. Someone’s been sabotaging them.’

The condoms. Long ago in Paris the Englishmen had worn rubber coats with hoods, and the French had given the name to that most necessary of garments.

‘Perhaps you are right,’ she murmured, snuggling closely for comfort, ‘but, then, perhaps not.’

When she awakened, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, wrapped in his greatcoat, gloves and fedora, smoking a cigarette, and she knew he’d been like that ever since. Unfortunately he had had to be told things and, yes, unfortunately she had had to be the one to have to tell him. ‘A woman notices such things, Hermann. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. Hey, you were right to tell me. Giselle wouldn’t have.’

11 rue des Saussaies was bleak at any hour but especially so in winter as the sun struggled to rise. Its grey stone walls and iron grilles were webbed with frost. The courtyard’s snow had been packed hard by the traffic of the previous night.

Gestapo plain clothes came and went in a hurry always. A panier à salade languished, the salad shaker,* having emptied its guts at 3 or 4 a.m. A wireless tracking van drew in to report after a hard night’s trying to get a fix on a clandestine transceiver. Had they zeroed in on someone? wondered Kohler. Those boys didn’t work out of here, so their presence had to mean something was up.

Black Citroëns were in a row with black Renaults, Fords and Peugeots, black everything and hated, too, because like the trench coats and the briefcases of the plain clothes, they were a symbol of what this place had become.

Once the Headquarters of the Sûreté Nationale, it was now that of the Gestapo in France yet had retained all of the attributes and successes of the former, particularly a records section which was second to none, even to that of the Sicherheitsdienst in Berlin.

Kohler coughed. Louis hunched his shoulders and pulled up his overcoat collar before saying, ‘To business then, and stop worrying, eh? Everyone knows that without sufficient food, the female body loses its ability to menstruate. Treat Giselle to some good black-market meals. Include Oona. Stop being so pious. See if it doesn’t help. Load the larder. Use your privileges and your head, and suit-up before you have another go at either of them!’

Father Time and no patience, no sympathy at all! Louis had always gone on about Giselle’s returning to her former profession, to the house of Madame Chabot on the rue Danton, which was just around the corner from the flat and a constant reminder. ‘Oona’s positive.’

Ah, pour I ‘amour de Dieul what was one to do? Drag along this worried papa-to-be who was old enough to have been the girl’s grandfather? ‘I can’t have you distracted, Hermann. Not with the Gypsy. Besides, Pharand wants to see me. He’s insisting.’

‘Then quit fussing. Hey, I’ll take care of that little Croix de feu for you. Just watch my dust!’

The Croix de feu were one of the notorious right-wing, fascist groups from the thirties. Kohler went in first, Louis followed, but when they reached the Major’s office, the Bavarian left his partner out of sight in the corridor and shot in to ask, ‘Have you seen St-Cyr?’

The secretary spilled her boss’s coffee. A Chinese porcelain vase went over – a priceless thing – and she cried out in dismay even as he righted it only to hear Pharand hiss from his inner sanctum, ‘Not in, eh? and at 0900 hours! It’s les hirondelles for him.’

The swallows … the bicycle patrols in their capes and képis. ‘Why not the pussy patrol?’ sang out Kohler.

Louis’s boss came to stand in the doorway. ‘Enough of your shit, Hauptsturmführer. Where is he?’

That’s what I’m asking.’

The carefully trimmed black pencil of the Major’s moustache twitched. The rounded cheeks were sallow and unhealthy in winter, though they’d always been like that. The short black hair of this little fascist was glued in place with scented pomade and splashes of joli Soir, the dark brown eyes were alive with barely controlled fury.

‘He was to see me first. A report is forthcoming. Orders are orders, is that not right, Hauptsturmführer? The Ritz, then Cartier’s and now … why now … Ah! you did not know of it, did you?’

The bastard …

The pudgy hands came together as if squeezing the joy out of his little triumph. At fifty-eight years of age, Osias Pharand still had his friends in the upper echelons and hadn’t wasted them. Readily he had moved out of his plush office – had given it up to Gestapo Boemelburg and had willingly shifted his ass down the hall. Taken his lumps because he had known the French would run things anyway, and had cluttered the den with the trivia of his years in Indochina and other places.

A stint as director of the Sûreté’s Deuxième bureau des nomades had been a big step to the top – you’d think he’d have come to appreciate the gypsies for having provided so many rungs in the ladder but no, he hated them as much as he hated the Jews. But for the Resistance, for the so-called ‘terrorists’, he reserved an unequalled passion.

‘Bring St-Cyr in here now,’ he said.

The air was full of trouble but Kohler couldn’t resist taunting him. ‘He’s probably with Boemelburg already. The IKPK, eh? Hey, the two of them worked together before the war. They’re old friends, or had you forgotten?’

‘Never! Not for a moment. It’s the only thing that saves him but with this …’ Pharand toyed with the fish. ‘With this, I do not think even that will be enough. The matter demands special treatment – Sonderbehandlung, or had you forgotten?’

‘Maître Pharand …’

‘Ah! I’ve got your attention at last. Another robbery. A big one, eh? Now piss off. Go on. Get out. Leave this sort of work to those best suited for it. Let me live with my secrets until they become your partner’s demise. Perhaps then he will understand that it is to me that he owes his loyalty and his job. I could have helped you both.’

Boemelburg was not happy. ‘The Gare Saint-Lazare. The ticket-agent’s office. That idiot of an agent-directeur didn’t bother to deposit last week’s receipts or those of the week before. Apparently he does it only once a month.’

‘But … but there are always those on duty, Walter? A station so huge … Traffic never stops …’ insisted St-Cyr.

A stumpy forefinger was raised. ‘Passenger traffic does stop, as you well know. Those arriving must wait until the curfew is over; those departing must purchase their tickets before it begins. The wickets are then closed, the receipts tallied and put away in the safe, and the office locked.’

‘How much did he get?’ asked Kohler, dismayed by the speed with which the Gypsy was working.

The rheum-filled Nordic eyes seemed saddened, as if in assessing them, Boemelburg was cognizant of certain truths. A flagrant patriotism in St-Cyr, questionable friends, a rebellious nature in Kohler, among other things. ‘682,000 francs in 100 and 500 franc notes. He left the rest.’

It had to be asked. ‘What else, Walter? I’ve seen it before,’ said St-Cyr. ‘You always drop your eyes when you want to tell us something but are uncertain of how to put it.’

A big man, with the blunt head and all-but-shaven, bristly iron grey hair of a Polizeikommissar of long experience, Boemelburg had seen nearly everything the criminal milieu could offer but he was also Head of SIPO-Section IV, the Gestapo in France.

‘Three Lebels, the 1873 Modéle d’ordonnance, and one hundred and twenty rounds, the black-powder cartridges. Forgotten during the Defeat and subsequent ordinance to turn in all firearms. Overlooked in the hunt for delinquent guns. Left in their boxes and brand-new, Louis. Good Gott im Himmel, the imbeciles!’

‘From 1873?’ managed the Sûreté. ‘But that is …’

‘Yes, yes, only two years after the Franco-Prussian War. Look, I don’t know how long they were in that safe. No one does. Each agent-directeur simply thought it best to leave those damned boxes alone.’

‘It’s serious,’ said Kohler lamely.

‘Are the Resistance involved in this matter?’ shouted the Chief.

Ah no … thought St-Cyr, dismayed at the sudden turn. Counter-terrorism, subversion, tracking down Jews, gypsies and all others of the Reich’s so-called undesirables were Walter’s responsibility, not just combating common crime. But then, too, in one of those paradoxes of the war, he ran gangs of known criminals who did the Gestapo’s bidding when they, themselves, wanted to remain at arm’s length.

A cop, and now a thug too, he unfortunately knew the city well, having worked here in his youth as a heating and ventilating engineer. He spoke French as good as any Parisian, even to the argot of Montmartre.

That grim, grey look passed over them. ‘I’m warning you. I want no trouble with this. Berlin are adamant. The Gypsy is to be apprehended at all costs. Taken alive if possible – there are things we need to know from him – but dead will do. That’s what they want and I must insist on it.’

‘And Herr Engelmann … why is he here?’ asked Kohler.

‘Why not? The IKPK have card indexes on all such people.’

‘Then it didn’t stop functioning at the onslaught of hostilities. Heydrich kept it going?’ asked Louis.

‘As the Gruppenführer knew he should have. Herr Engelmann is not just with their robberies division. He holds a cross-appointment with the Berlin Kripo. In the course of his duties in ‘38, and then in ‘40 and ‘41, he went to Oslo several times to interview our friend, and has come to know him intimately, if anyone can ever do so.’

‘Then why is he being so difficult? Why doesn’t he take us fully into his confidence?’ asked Kohler.

Security allowed only so much to be said. ‘That is precisely what I have asked him to do. Full co-operation. A concerted effort to bring this safe-cracker in and quickly before he does us all an injury from which we cannot recover.’

Boemelburg was clearly worried. Leaning forward, he hurriedly shoved things out of the way, and lowered his voice. ‘Whose agenda is he following? What are his next targets? Where will he hole up and exactly who is helping him?’

Nana Thélème or someone else?

The set of fingerprints was very clear, the head-and-shoulders photographs sharp, but to St-Cyr the file card – the top in a bundle of perhaps thirty – was like one of those from the past. It evoked memories of Vienna and the IKPK and worries about the distinct possibility of another high-level assassination, the then impending visit of King George VI to France in July of 1938. Boemelburg and he had worked together on it, a last occasion before the war.

The IKPK had sent such cards to all its member countries, requesting whatever they had on a certain criminal or type of crime. These cards were then stored in rotatable drum-cabinets and a detective such as Boemelburg or himself, or Engelmann, could in a few moments collate data from cities in France with that from Britain, the Netherlands, Turkey, Italy, Greece and, at last count in 1938, some twenty-eight other countries around the world.

Lists of stolen property were painstakingly spelled out where possible. Missing persons, unidentified cadavers, murder, arson, counterfeiting, fraud, drug trafficking and prostitution – all were there at the turn of the drum and yes, very early on, even in 1932 and ‘33, there had been concerns about a Nazi takeover, yet the service had offered immense possibilities. A radio network in 1935 linked many of the major cities, allowing policemen to talk directly and informally to colleagues in other countries, very quickly forming professional liaisons that were of benefit to all.

Special cards were tinted to denote les Bohémiens, though keeping track of their wanderings often proved exceedingly difficult. But in any case, the Gypsy was not one of the Rom, so his cards were like all others, if more numerous than most.

‘Janwillem De Vries,’ grumbled a disgruntled Herr Max who didn’t like being told to co-operate with the present company. ‘Father, Hendrick, no known criminal activities but a socialist do-gooder when not pouring out historical pap to stuff the teat of it into the eager mouths of bored Dutch Hausfrauen. Mother, Marina, no suggestions of anything there either. Vivacious, quick-minded, deft with the brush but impulsive and given to wandering off for days on her bicycle, or to working in her studio night after night. A flirt – mein Gott, there is ample evidence of it, given that she often posed in the nude as a statue for her photographer friends. Orpheus and her lute, but that one was a boy, wasn’t he? Died, unhappily, 18 June 1929 of a drowning accident on the Linge near Geldermalsen while trying to reach some lilies she wanted to paint, though to see her sketches is to see nothing but the confused and flighty mind of the avant-garde who should have been trussed up with her apron strings and taught a few lessons!’

Naked? wondered Kohler idly – was this what Herr Max had meant?

The visitor lit a cheroot, he looking as if he’d just got out of bed and hadn’t quite had time to dress properly.

‘Apprehended 20 April 1938 – caught with his hands in the wall safe of one Magnus Erlendsson, a prominent shipping magnate who should have known better than to keep such things at home and to tell others how clever he was. The tax authorities were most interested and Herr Erlendsson quickly found himself going from one theft to another!’

Engelmann gave a throaty chuckle – work did have its compensations. ‘Oostende,’ he coughed. ‘Coffee … is there a little, Sturmbannführer? A brandy also und a raw egg, I think.’

Tears moistened the hard little eyes behind their gold-rimmed specs. He took a breath, then remembered the cheroot.

‘Oostende …?’ hazarded Kohler.

The visitor let his gaze linger on the Bavarian before clearing his throat of its blockage. ‘First, don’t ask until you’re told to. Second, rely on me to lead this little discussion.’

The matter of the uniform the Gypsy had acquired in Tours was brought up. ‘He didn’t kill him, did he?’ blurted Kohler only to feel Louis kick him under the table to shut him up.

‘Reprisals … is this what you are worrying about, Kohler? Hostages to be shot. How many, I wonder?’ asked Herr Max.

He gave it a moment. Boemelburg’s look was grim and it said, Kohler, how dare you worry about such things? You, too, St-Cyr.

‘To say nothing of his embarrassment and the reticence of his tongue,’ went on Herr Max, allowing what appeared to be a smile, ‘our Hauptmann Dietrich Oberlammers is alive and well but he fell prey to the oldest of gypsy tricks, which leads us right back to that villa in the hills overlooking Oslo.’

‘A woman,’ breathed Louis, ‘but was it the same one?’

‘She rubbed herself against the Hauptmann in the half-light of a corridor or room,’ sighed Kohler. ‘She offered everything she had but gave him nothing more than deep glimpses of bare flesh and sweet caresses, then let him strip off in some maison de passe before heisting his papers and uniform.’

‘The wallet of Herr Erlendsson also, and news of the Oslo safe’s location and contents,’ added St-Cyr, his mind leaping back in time to the spring of 1938.

‘The combination also,’ grunted Herr Max. ‘Erlendsson was fool enough to have given it to her in a moment of drunken bravado while she was in his hotel room. Oostende and Oslo were worlds apart, so what could it have mattered eh? But it did! Oh my, yes, but it did!’

‘Is she now your mouton?’ asked St-Cyr.

A little more co-operation could not hurt. ‘That is correct. She betrayed the Gypsy to us in Tours, and she was with him back then in Oostende and in Oslo in April of 1938.’

‘But she didn’t tell you everything, did she?’ sighed St-Cyr, taking an apprehensive guess at things.

There was no answer. They waited for her file cards – the Gestapo’s on her too – but Herr Max didn’t produce any. He simply said, ‘Find her,’ and gave them time to swallow this while he had his egg and brandy.

Then he pulled the elastic band from the stack of cards and thrust the top one at Kohler. ‘Read it!’

Hermann’s face fell. ‘Mecklenburg, Louis. 20 November 1932. The estate of Magda Goebbels’s ex-husband. An unknown quantity of gold bars and jewellery. How can anyone have an “unknown” quantity in a safe?’

‘That is none of your business,’ countered the visitor.

‘The manager’s office, the Kaiserhof Hotel in the Wilhelmstrasse, 17 March 1934. “Cash in the amount of 25,000 marks but also 8000 American dollars and one gold pocket-watch. Property of …” Ah verdammt, Louis, der Führer!’

‘Read on,’ sighed Engelmann. ‘It can’t get worse but then …’

‘The residence and office of the Köln banker, Kurt von Schroe-der, 5 May 1935, a strong supporter of the Party, I think,’ said Kohler lamely. ‘Jewellery to the value of 7,000,000 marks; cash to that of 28,000,000. Do you want me to keep going?’

‘Of course,’ grunted Engelmann.

‘The villa of Alfred Rosenburg in the Tiergarten, 15 December 1937. Documents …?’

Again they were told it was none of their business, but there had been some loose diamonds, gold coins and banknotes, though no values were given.

‘The residence of Prinz Viktor zo Wied – Berlin, too, the Kurfürstenstrasse, 17 January 1938, then Joachim von Ribben-trop’s villa in the suburb of Dahlem, 18 January, the same year.’

Von Ribbentrop had been made foreign minister of the Reich on 4 February, just seventeen days after the robbery. Kohler felt quite ill. How had the Gypsy pulled off those jobs in a police state? Why had the idiot taken on the Nazis, for God’s sake? None of the robberies would have been mentioned even to the IKPK’s member countries, let alone the press, yet the hunt must have gone on in earnest.

‘And in Oslo we finally had him,’ sighed Herr Max. ‘That’s when all the pieces came together for us.’

‘Correction,’ said Louis. ‘The Norwegians had him.’

‘But soon we had Norway.’

Not until 9 June 1940. ‘Then why didn’t you have him extradited? Surely there was room enough in the Moabit?’

Berlin’s most notorious prison. ‘Because his willingness to co-operate was absent. Because we had other matters to concern us.’

‘You finally made a deal with him,’ snorted Kohler. ‘You let that son of a bitch out of jail but he didn’t keep his word and now you want him back.’

‘Correction,’ interjected Boemelburg. ‘We have to have him back.’

‘Ah nom de Jésus-Christ, Louis, why us?’

The stairwell resounded with their taking two and three steps at a time. ‘Because we’re common crime. Because the quartier de l’Europe, that favoured haunt of les Gitans, was once my beat long before I was fool enough to become a detective.’ St-Cyr caught a breath as they reached a landing. ‘And because, mon vieux … because, why sacré, idiot! they’re up to something.’

Kohler stopped so suddenly they collided. ‘What?’ he demanded, looking his partner over.

Louis’s heart was racing. ‘Either to rob for them or to set a little souricière for someone.’

A mousetrap … ‘But he’s decided to rob for himself – is this what you’re saying?’

‘Perhaps, but then … ah mais alors, alors, Hermann, is it not too early for us to say?’

Unsettled by the thought, they went up the stairs more slowly. Hermann wouldn’t use the lifts, not even in a place like this. Caught once and left hanging by a thread, nothing would change his mind, not even the most modern and best maintained of elevators.

When they reached the sixth floor, the only sounds they heard were those of their shoes. No longer was there that din of hammering typewriters, telexes and the constant ringing of telephones. No one hurried past. No one shouted in German or French. Even from the cellars, there were no sudden screams of terror.

Records occupied the whole of the top floor. Its grey labyrinth of steel filing cabinets, card-index drums, shelves and mountains of dossiers was separated from all outsiders by the brown and unfeeling plateau of the linoleum-topped counter all such governmental edifices held.

Turcotte and every one of his clerk-detectives, all thirty or so of the day shift, were standing rigidly to attention, grim-faced, some with tears.

‘What the hell has happened?’ breathed Kohler – he couldn’t believe it. Usually Turcotte fiercely guarded his domain and acidly fought off all requests to hurry.

The intercom brought answer via Radio-Vichy and the shaky voice of the aged Maréchal Pétain, now in his eighty-seventh year. ‘Mesdames et messieurs, it is with deep regret that I must report the nine-hundred-day siege of Leningrad has been lifted. Though the population has been dying at the rate of twenty thousand a day, this is expected to lessen in the weeks ahead.’

‘Effort brings its own reward,’ whispered Kohler, giving a well-known phrase of the Maréchal’s. ‘Les Russes are no longer food for the fish of the Neva and the Teutonic generals of this war are being taught a damned good lesson.’

Hermann was still bitter but seldom showed it. He had just recently lost both of his sons at Stalingrad where von Paulus was about to surrender the last remnants of the Sixth. He had tried to convince the boys to emigrate in ‘38 to Argentina but being young, they had replied, ‘You fought in the last one; let us finish it in this one.’

The moment of silence following the broadcast was rigidly observed. Not a one of the clerks would have broken it. They were all terrified of their boss and afraid of being sent into forced labour or worse. ‘A far different response than last Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, eh, Louis?’ he whispered. ‘They’re not patting each other on the back and saying, “I told you so.”’

The Wehrmacht, on a violent whim of the Führer, had dynamited the whole of the Vieux Port of Marseille, evicting thirty thousand souls with but a two-hour notice, and sending most of them to camps at Fréjus and Compiègne. An altercation in a whorehouse had started it all, the Resistance shooting up the place and others paying for it. So many, no one could have predicted it.

‘Well?’ demanded Turcotte, lord of his empire.

Kohler winced. ‘We’re having trouble, Émile, and need a little help.’

‘Such subservience is rewarding but we can do nothing for you today.’

‘Oh, sorry. Berlin were asking. It was Berlin, wasn’t it, Louis?’

The little ferret got the message, but when the wheels were turned, the index cards of most gypsies had been stamped with one big black word and Turcotte had his little triumph. ‘Déporté ou fusillé, c’est la même chose.’

Deported or shot, it’s the same thing.

‘We’re looking for a mouton,’ said St-Cyr, hauling him out of harm’s way. ‘A female. Last seen in Tours, Thursday the fourteenth, but also a regular of the Santé or the Petite Roquette or the cells here and over on the ave’ Foch if her conductor feels she needs a change of air.’

The SS or the Gestapo … The lark-eyed gaze flew evasively over the warren. ‘I know nothing of this.’

‘We didn’t think you would,’ came the soft response, ‘but of course when one has been seen buying sugar and white flour from the green beans to flog it to the butter-eggs-and-cheese boys, one must be careful, isn’t that so?’

The German soldiers in their grey-green uniforms, the black marketeers …

St-Cyr the cuckold. St-Cyr the friend of the Resistance who had mistakenly put him on their hit lists but had blown up his wife and son instead.

‘Start talking, Émile, or what I have to tell those same people you are thinking of will include the denunciations of old enemies.’

‘You bastard …’

‘Just give us what we want. It will save us all time.’

The drum was spun, the card turned up and accidentally ripped from its wheel of fortune to be then spat upon in fury and thrust at them.

‘Une roulure rumaine. Une fille de la duperie, la superchérie et escroquerie!’

A Rumanian slut. A daughter of deception, trickery and swindling.

‘Now leave us,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Go back to your weeping.’

‘The end’s coming, Émile,’ breathed Kohler, giving him a parting shot. ‘You had better prepare yourself for the worst by sealing your lips. Hey, maybe if you behave, Louis could fix it so that you’ll get the Médaille Militaire and Croix de Guerre with palms.’

‘Up against the post,’ muttered St-Cyr under his breath.

‘Not until we’ve had breakfast.’

The file card Turcotte had torn from the drum was replete with entries which went right back to when the Gestapo’s mouton had been ten years old. A charge of stealing two chickens and a round of goat’s cheese had been compounded by the laying on of curses. Sentenced to six months in Bucharest, she had escaped in less than two weeks. A guard was found to have been fooling around with her. Even then she had known how to convince men she was ripe for plucking only to deceive them.

The name on the card, which had been updated in August 1941, was Lucie-Marie Doucette but St-Cyr knew that such a name could well have meant nothing to the gypsies. A mere formality the Gaje authorities insisted on to control border crossings, entry visas and issue identity papers and passports.

She was, as Turcotte had so viciously stated, of Rumanian descent – at least, it would have been thought by those in authority that she had been born there. She’d have let them think what they wanted, knowing only that she had again fooled them.

Her real name was Tshaya. She was dark-haired, strongly featured and quite striking, but in the expression she had last given the police camera, there was deceitfulness, wilfulness, hatred … ah! so many things, and a depth of sadness which went well beyond her years.

The hair was parted in the middle, blue-black, long and glossy. Loosened strands trailed provocatively across the forehead, enhancing allure and all but hiding the ears which would have held gold rings or coins, though these must have been taken from her.

The eyes were large and dark beneath strong brows. The nose was full and prominent, the lips not parted. The face was what one would call a medium oval, the chin not pointed but determined, the throat full.

They had put her age at twenty-eight in August 1941. She would not have argued. Again such Gaje things meant little. For the gypsies, life was of the present, not of the past or of the future, alas.

Someone – her conductor perhaps – had tersely written in: Of the Lowara tribe. Daughter of the horse trader, Tshurkina la Marako, deported to Buchenwald 14 September 1941.

She had stayed behind and they had had their reasons for keeping her. Perhaps she had escaped for a time – there was no record of it. But they had used her.

Colour of skin: dark brown. Height: 1 metre, 68 centimetres. Weight: 62 kilos. Length of arms, length of legs, bust measurement, waist, that of the hips, the wrists and ankles – all such things were given in the tiniest of handwriting, especially the shape and size of the ears, for like fingerprints, the ears remained the same throughout life.

Signes particuliers: whipmarks on rear of thighs, buttocks, back, shoulders and upper arms, all dating from the summer of 1928 when she’d have been fifteen years old, if the age of twenty-eight was correct, which it probably wasn’t.

Her father? he wondered but thought it highly unlikely. Banishment for a time, perhaps, if the offence, such as stealing the gold of another, warranted it, not a savage beating.

But someone had tied her wrists to a post or tree and had let the whip do the rest.

Hermann was no stranger to this sort of thing and his mood darkened when told of it. Instinctively he gingerly felt his left cheek. That scar was the measure of truth over loyalty to one’s peers, and it ran from just below the eye to his lower jaw.

The SS had done that to him. What had begun as a ‘nothing’ murder in Fontainebleau Forest, a commonplace murder, had ended at a château near Vouvray as a far different matter not two months ago. The scar was more than matched by the one that ran beneath his shirt from the right shoulder to the left hip. They were still being held accountable for pointing the finger, still reviled, distrusted and held suspect by both the SS of the avenue Foch and the Gestapo of the rue des Saussaies.

‘She’s e gajo rom, Hermann – married to a non-gypsy, Henri Doucette. There’s a notation at the bottom of the card.’

‘Not the Spade?’

‘The same. Once touted as our answer to the Americans’ Gene Tunney. A major contender for the heavyweight championship in 1928 though no fight was held that year, and still, I think, the work-out man at the Avia Club Gym over behind the Porte Saint-Martin unless he’s found more lucrative things to do.’

The rue Lauriston perhaps? The notorious French Gestapo that was made up of gangsters the SS had let out of jail immediately after the Defeat to make ‘collections’ among other things.

‘Let’s go and have a word with him. Let’s stuff a rawhide whip down his throat before we cut off his balls.’

‘There’s no mention of his being responsible for this.’

‘Then he’ll tell us, right? and he’ll have nothing to worry about.’

Chez Rudi’s was just across the Champs-Élysées from the Lido. Everyone knew of it, and those who could not eat here or anywhere else would linger beyond the front windows watching those inside.

It being mid-morning, no meals were being served because lunch was being prepared, but all around them the Occupier came and went, many in uniform, most with their newspapers. Pariser Zeitung, the Völkischer Beobachter – Hitler’s own paper, or Signal, his picture magazine. Le Matin, too, and others. All controlled because that was the way things were.

The café filtre was black and strong and excellent when taken with two lumps of sugar. Real sugar and twice in the same day!

‘I saw that, Louis. You slid four of those sugars into your pocket. You know Rudi doesn’t like the customers when they take things. Put them back.’

A nod would suffice. Hermann turned to look over a shoulder, as indicated. There were four of them with their faces pressed to the glass. ‘Why aren’t they in school?’ he blurted.

‘Perhaps the schools are closed due to the lack of coal.’

‘It’s not my fault.’

‘No it isn’t but if you expect me to eat in a place like this, try to understand that it is difficult for me.’

Kohler grabbed four thick slices of bread. Butter, honey and plum jam were added, some cheese also, he piling the slices up on a napkin and calling out to the kitchen, ‘Rudi, I’ve got to do this!’

The kids took the bread and ran, and he stood in the grey light with the snow swirling around him as he watched in despair, his feelings hurt because they hadn’t even thanked him.

‘They called me a dirty Kraut, Louis. They spat at me and said spring would come but that it was taking a long time.’

Parisians the city over were saying this, spring being the end of the Occupation and of the Occupier.

‘I was thinking of my boys,’ he said, looking at the jam on his fingers.

‘And I wasn’t thinking. Forgive me.’

A shadow fell over them. ‘It’s such a small world, isn’t it?’ fluted Rudi Sturmbacher, noting the file card beside St-Cyr and then comparing the scars with the largest of those on the cheek of the Kripo’s most errant Detektiv. ‘They say hers glisten when oiled and that, by the time the Spade was done with her, the dress and blouse were in shreds yet she remained defiant.’

The Spade …

At 166 kilos, Rudi was the centre of all gossip, Chez Rudi’s a minefield of it. The flaxen hair was so fine it blew about every time he moved and was therefore closely trimmed. The florid cheeks were smooth and round and netted with the blue-black veins of too much good living, the pale blue eyes wary, sharp and swift to greed, sex or larceny.

‘Who’s oiling her?’ asked Kohler blithely.

The puffy eyelids widened beneath their thick thatches of ripened flax. ‘No one at the moment but there are those who are so fascinated by her scars, they want her back.’

‘Sit down,’ said Kohler. ‘Hey, rest a while and tell us what the airwaves are saying about the Ritz, Cartier’s and the Gare Saint-Lazare.’

The big lips were compressed. A floury hand was wiped on an apron that had seen use since well before dawn, though Rudi often changed them and it must be due to the shortages that he hadn’t.

‘Well?’ asked Kohler.

‘The airwaves …’ A steaming bowl of sauerkraut and sausage was brought, a little mid-morning sustenance.

Rudi cut off a slice of sausage and examined it. These two could be useful. ‘Information for information, are we agreed?’

‘Of course,’ said Louis.

They were desperate, then, and still very much on the run, and that could be good or bad depending on the whereabouts and accessibility of the loot, all 50-70,000,000 of it and taken in one night. The talk of the town.

St-Cyr would never agree to anything in spite of his having said, ‘Of course.’ Rudi fed the slice of sausage to Hermann. ‘That sous-directeur of Cartier’s overlooked a sapphire-bead-and-cabo-chon necklace with oriental pearls and South African diamonds to the value of 250,000 Reichskassenscheine.’

5,000,000 francs. ‘Anything else?’ managed the sausage-eater.

‘A sapphire and diamond bracelet with five rows of square-cut, deep blue sapphires, then a row of clear white diamonds on either side. Three hundred and seventy-five blue ones, each exactly the same; one hundred and fifty of the white. One of a kind.’

They waited. Hermann was fed another bit of sausage and then a forkful of sauerkraut, the juice running down his chin and Rudi dabbing at it with a napkin so as not to mess the tablecloth.

‘100,000 Reichskassenscheine,’ said the mountain. ‘Ear-rings to match – that was another 50,000. And a ring, the stone set in platinum. Another 30,000.’

‘That sous-directeur is just inflating the loss for insurance purposes,’ grumbled St-Cyr.

No sausage was offered, not even the sauerkraut.

‘He wishes he was,’ said Rudi, watching them both as one would two frogs before spearing them for their legs. ‘But apparently a woman had been in on several occasions to try on the sapphires. Tall, blonde, statuesque and with eyes not unlike your little Giselle’s, my Hermann. That perfect shade of violet. A chanteuse who couldn’t quite make up her mind.’

‘Ah no, not Gabrielle …?’ blurted St-Cyr, aghast at the implications.

A bit of sausage was cut off and savoured, Rudi judging the smoke-curing to have been as perfect as the times and the constant demand for sausage had allowed. ‘The same,’ he said. ‘Maybe she has some explaining to do, maybe she hasn’t. Like I said, it’s a small world.’

Louis leapt from his chair to grab his coat and hat and then to head for the street and the car. Rudi nailed Kohler’s wrist to the table with a grip of iron. ‘The fence or fences, Hermann. The loot, mein lieber Detektiv. I want a part of it.’

‘For the future?’

‘Who knows what might happen but it’s wisest, I think, to be prepared for all eventualities, is it not?’

‘Leningrad is only a city. It means nothing.’

‘Nor, then, does Stalingrad or the machine-gun nests the Wehrmacht are installing around town.’

‘Still no snipers on the roof?’

‘Not yet.’

Rudi had wanted the snipers up there in case the citizens of Paris should take a notion to revolt.

‘Information, my Hermann.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Gut. Oh, I almost forgot. A cigar, ja? for the proud papa to be. Take care of your little Liebling. I hope it’s a son to replace one of those you lost. Twin boys, perhaps, who knows? But watch over her. Don’t let them pick her up just because you weren’t cooperating. Your visitor is straight from Berlin and doesn’t trust either of you. He smells a rat. Don’t disappoint him. Give him one.’

‘Louis …? Do you mean Louis?’

Kohler threw a tortured look towards the street. The cigar was crumbled in a fist and fell to the floor, a waste.

Rudi patted him on the shoulder. ‘But first the Gypsy, mein Schatz,* and his woman, his Tshaya.’

* the Black Maria

* my treasure.