4

The silhouette on the unwashed wall threw a right that would have killed a man. The Spade ducked and weaved. A right, a left, an uppercut. Murderous that one too. Then back, moving always lightly on the balls of his feet. Another left. A left, a left. Feinting, weaving, now a drop to the right to block the punch.

Sweat poured from the tattooed shoulders and grizzled Fritz-head. The muscles glistened, tightened. Doucette didn’t let up. The shadow of him threw a punch. He ducked, went in on himself hammering hard. At the age of forty, he was still far better than most. An army, a battering ram. ‘ll a le style armoire à glâce,’ snorted Kohler. He has the build of an icebox.

Crisscrosses of sticking plaster had come away from the back of the swarthy neck to reveal two gigantic boils, flame red and hard against the sweat. Another was in the small of his back where the skin was pink from exertion and glistened. There was pus in the crater of that one and it, too, was ready to burst.

‘Erysipelas in the offing,’ said St-Cyr drolly. ‘An acute streptococcal infection if not careful. A very high fever. Nothing to eat for four days. Champagne is the only thing. One tosses and turns in delirium. Five weeks for a full recovery if nothing intervenes, namely death. It’s highly contagious.’

‘He’s contagious,’ hissed Nana Thélème softly under her breath, her dark eyes filled with hatred in spite of all her anxiety.

Herr Max good-humouredly lit a cheroot and, pausing to unbutton his overcoat, dropped the spent matchstick into a waiting bucket of sand and announced, ‘Henri, some visitors.’

The black satin shorts were tight over the muscle-hard buttocks. Unwashed, the webbed elastic band of the boxeur’s athletic support absorbed the constant sweat. The gym was busy, noisy, hot and heavy with body odour. Here a Wehrmacht sergeant pounded a punching bag, there another. An SS-Obersturmführer skipped to beat hell in competition with two of the local toughs. The girls watched. The girls oohed and aahed and laughed or threw kisses.

A fight was in progress in the ring, two middleweights were working each other over. No referee.

‘Henri … Henri …’ The bells rang.

The punching bags came to a stop. The skipping was silenced. The match ceased. Towels were grabbed, faces wiped, wine or water taken and mouths rinsed before spitting it on the floor. Perhaps thirty were in training. Others sat or stood around. Spectators mostly.

Rushed in by laughing SS in uniform, two teenagers were dragged up into the ring – mauled until their overcoats, sweaters, shirts, shoes and trousers were off.

Given gloves and shorts, they were forced to wait as Henri Doucette, ignoring his visitors, climbed dutifully into the ring.

‘The bicycle pumps,’ sighed St-Cyr ruefully, and when Nana Thélème threw him a questioning glance, he said, ‘Surely you’ve seen the SS and other officers remove their ceremonial daggers to hang them up in the coat-check rooms of the clubs and restaurants? Having followed them in, the kids haven’t daggers, so they hang up their bicycle pumps to enrage the Occupier. This, apparently, is to be their punishment.’

‘Tant pis pour eux,’ she said softly. Too bad for them.

Teeth-guards were lifted, dripping from a bucket of water, to be crammed into reluctant mouths. Afraid, confused – uncertain still of what was to happen – they listened as the Spade began to give them lessons.

They were to fight each other and he’d take on the winner. It had to be a good fight. ‘Ten rounds!’ cried one of the SS. There was laughter, cheering, clapping from delighted females.

The kids tried not to hurt each other, and when no blood was produced, Henri stepped in. ‘Hey, I’ll show you how.’

‘They’re too little, Henri,’ cried one laughing blonde with sparkling eyes. ‘Make men of them. It’ll save me the trouble.’

‘I don’t think I can watch this,’ said St-Cyr, and pulling off his overcoat and fedora, thrust them at Hermann before climbing into the ring.

He took the boys aside. He said, ‘You must avoid his right and always try for the left side. He’s partly blind in that eye – a fight he lost in 1928 perhaps because the gypsy wife who hated him fiercely by then had come back briefly to sap his strength. He tries to hide it. Shame him. It’ll anger him. Then dance away and don’t let him hit you.’

They came together, their manager and the Spade. They spoke, but what was said could not be heard.

Then Louis turned away only to turn back so swiftly his left connected hard. There was a crack.

Poleaxed, Doucette tried to shake his head and Louis let him have it with a right.

He dropped like a stone.

There were boos, there were cries of anger but the kids were allowed to leave the ring and to get themselves dressed, the Sûreté saying to them as a father would, ‘Now, no more of that, do you understand?’

A hush descended over the gym. Tension crackled. Kohler knew he’d have to defuse it somehow. Firing two shots into the sand, he yelled, ‘Clear the place! We’re on a murder investigation.’

‘Who’s been murdered?’ asked the pugiliste from the Sûreté and once champion of the police academy, but years ago.

‘You, unless I can prevent it.’

The ventouses, the suction cups, were of plain glass and red hot, and each time one was applied, Henri Doucette shrilled and wept like a baby. Flat on his stomach in the dressing-room without a stitch to cover him, he clenched his still-taped fists as the boils burst, and so much for the Gestapo of the rue Lauriston and one of its key members.

‘I’m saving you from agony, Henri,’ said the Sûreté. ‘One day you’ll thank me. We can’t have you ill when we need you.’

There was another in a very tender place and this the surgeon had left to the last.

‘Hold him, Hermann. Take him by the wrists. You, the ankles, Herr Engelmann. It’s all in a detective’s work.’

The scream filled the room and brought the latest pigeon to gape in panic from the doorway. She was all dressed up in plunging green velvet and emeralds to match her wounded eyes and breasts.

‘Petit, I’m here,’ she said. ‘Chéri, don’t cry. It’s for the best and when we’re alone, your Nathalie will comfort you.’

‘Piss off, Putain! Can’t you see I’m busy?’

She leapt and turned away in tears. ‘You’re always saying things like that. A whore … I love you, Henri. I want you!’

‘We’re finished! It’s over. Over, do you understand? Slash your wrists if you must but don’t come crying to me if you mess up! Make a good job of it this time. Complet, eh? Fini and au revoir.’

Nana Thélème took charge, urging the girl to leave. ‘Give him time. They won’t be long.’

‘He means it,’ the poor thing wept. ‘He’s been so cruel to me. Always it is like I am a dog at his feet!’

‘Then why not give him up?’

The sea green eyes that were so large and innocent blinked their tears away with candour. ‘I have to eat. I have to have a place to stay. He buys me things and yes, I love him. I like it. Can you understand that? I can’t.’ She shrugged her slender shoulders. ‘I’ve tried but always the inner self, it fails to answer me except with temptation.’

There were stares from the others in the gym, looks that were not nice. The SS who had brought the teenagers still hung around, spoiling for a fight.

‘Sit down. Here, have a cigarette.’

‘I’ve plenty. Let me give you one.’

Her fingers shook. Grabbing the hand, Nana steadied it. ‘Inhale. Fill your lungs. Count to ten and then exhale.’

Calmed a little, the girl sat back on the bench but shrank into herself. ‘I hate this place. Every time I come here I feel as if they are going to rape me. All of them and all at once in the ring. I want that too, don’t you understand? Secretly I’m so afraid of it and this … why this gives me great pleasure.’

‘Relax. They’re nothing.’

‘You were at the party. You were the one who came to sing.’

Though the eyes were dark brown, the left one was cloudy, and when Doucette looked directly at a person, it was not quite on a level with the right eye, but tilted up a little.

‘What do you want with me?’

He had never liked the police but was from Belleville. ‘A few questions. Nothing difficult,’ said the Sûreté.

The Spade threw the visitor from Berlin a questioning look only to see that one nod curtly in agreement.

‘What about you putting me down like that, eh? Why should I do anything to help you?’

‘Ah! easy, Henri. Easy,’ soothed St-Cyr. ‘Forget it, mon ami. Be magnanimous. Everyone will know it wasn’t fair. They’ll say I tricked you. It’s me they’ll blame, not yourself.’

Again the visitor nodded.

‘Okay. Shoot. Let’s have it.’

‘Bon. Take us back to last Thursday, the fourteenth. You and your wife went to Tours.’

‘She’s not my wife. I disowned the slut the day I used her father’s whip on her, since he wasn’t man enough to do it. She’d been running away from me all the time. Weeks, months … She deserved it.’

‘But you’re her conductor now?’

Again he looked to Herr Max for guidance. ‘Okay, so I took her to Tours. It was all laid on. She was to bump into the Gypsy. Perhaps he was suspicious, perhaps not, who’s to say? She was to call in on a regular basis. She was to tell me everything he planned and did, and who he met, but she’s buggered off with him and I haven’t heard from her since Monday when she called in to warn us of the robbery at the Ritz.’

Hermann was translating for Herr Max. ‘But is she with him now?’ asked St-Cyr.

Dumbfounded, Doucette threw Engelmann another look, and wiping sweat from his chest, asked, ‘With who the hell else could she hide?’

‘That’s what we want to know.’

‘Then think again, cow. Her family’s gone. She has no one else she can trust, no friends, eh? She knows no one and yet she still evades us? How can this be?’

The Gestapo and the French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston had people out looking for her, then. A city-wide search in addition to that of the police and the Wehrmacht. ‘You do the thinking, Henri. You took her to a party on the eleventh. She danced.’

‘That one was there.’ He pointed to the door beyond which were the gym and Nana Thélème. ‘You brought her here. Why did you bring her?’

Nervous now, Doucette used both hands to grip the towel that was draped over his shoulders. He was sitting on the edge of the table, dangling his feet into space, and looked evasively down at his boots.

‘Why did we bring her, Henri?’ said Louis. ‘You tell us. I think you’d better.’

‘Her … her bonne à tout faire was …’ He threw Max a tortured look.

Engelmann understood enough of what had gone on to help him out. ‘On 15 December last, her maid of all work was arrested. It was nothing. A week in the women’s cells of the Santé.’

The Santé … Paris’s largest and most overcrowded prison. Population 12,000 normally but now about 18,500, since it varied from day to day and there was always a desperate need for space.

‘She wept most of the time,’ said Doucette. ‘The others had to beat her to shut her up. Two of them fell in love with her and wouldn’t leave her alone except to fight over her.’

Ah merde … ‘And what, please, did this girl tell your ex-wife a month ago?’

‘That her mistress was mixed up in something and that she was afraid she had been arrested because of it.’

‘Henri knows a lot about you,’ confided Nathalie. ‘There are things he hasn’t told that one in there from Berlin, things he is keeping quiet even from his friends at the rue Lauriston.’

Sitting before Nana Thélème on the bench, the girl in green velvet paused. The noises of the gym grew. The skippings, the punchings …

‘What things?’ asked Nana warily.

‘Things a petite oiseau told him. Well, actually, it was a mouton.’

‘Tell me, damn you!’

The girl looked up. Her cleavage dropped to reveal bruises, scratches and bite marks. ‘Tshaya. The one he … Well, you know,’ she shrugged.

‘Am I the reason she was invited to that disgusting party?’

‘She was the reason you were invited.’

Nana Thélème looked away in despair. ‘Tshaya can’t know anything!’

‘She does.’

The dark eyes leapt with fierceness. ‘Such as?’

‘A prospector.’

‘Ah no …’

No, mademoiselle? Despair now, was that it, eh? and Henri knowing secrets which must not be revealed to anyone. ‘You made several visits to the prospector’s house in Tours. He wrote letters to you. He had something he wanted you to do for him.’

‘Tshaya can’t have met him recently. She can’t! Not in years.’

Sweat poured from the pugilistes in the ring. A nose was bloodied. A tooth was spat …

‘She has met him recently.’

‘Pardon?’

How shrill of this beautiful Andalusian who had had the Gypsy’s bastard and had just recently had her face bashed. ‘A place, a very special place. His favourite bordel.’

‘The fool!’

Would Henri beat this Nana Thélème? Would he fuck her, torture her? Between 50,000,000 and 70,000,000 francs were missing. A fortune. Diamonds … lots and lots of those and sapphires too. Pretty things Henri wanted for himself, well, some of them, for his little retirement. ‘A lupanar with a chambre de divertissements détachés.’

‘The house on the rue de la Bourde in Tours.’

The street of the blunder, the heart sinking at the news. Was all now lost? Was that it, Mademoiselle Thélème? ‘The same. The House of the Hesitant Touch.’

‘What?’ demanded Kohler, only to see Louis raise a cautioning hand.

The atmosphere in the dressing-room was tense. They were still discussing Nana Thélème’s maid giving secrets away in a prison cell.

‘Something about a prospector,’ muttered the Spade, wiping sweat from his face.

‘The diamonds,’ breathed Kohler.

‘No, not those,’ insisted Doucette, resigned to telling them. ‘That was almost settled. It was something she had to take to a place near Senlis, the girl thought. Something bad the Mademoiselle Thélème could then get from there if she wanted.’

The dynamite – was that it? wondered St-Cyr. There were stone quarries nearby.

Herr Max reached out to hand Henri a clean towel. ‘Go und have a Brausebad. Ja, ja, mein lieber boxer, you have said all that is necessary for now.’

‘Where is she? I want her,’ said the Spade.

‘Tshaya?’ asked Engelmann.

‘No other woman can fuck like her. No other.’

Frantic, Kohler stopped the Spade on the way to the shower-baths. ‘Which lupanar did you find her in, eh?’

‘Le bordel de la touche hésitante in Tours. La grille de la treillis indochinois. She was the one behind it.’

‘Louis, we’re going to have to go to Tours.’

‘Of course, but first there are things we must do.’

Nana Thélème sat in the front seat between the two of them. Engelmann had released her into their custody. It was to be their necks against hers and she knew they were trying to get her to tell them everything but she couldn’t do that. She mustn’t.

‘Four women,’ mused the Sûreté, scraping frost from his side window to stare out into the pitch darkness Paris had become at nine o’clock in the evening. ‘One a gypsy herself. One a singer of their songs. One a veterinary surgeon and zoo-keeper, the mistress, if we are to believe it, of the sous-directeur of Cartier’s.’

‘And the last one?’ she asked.

‘That is the one who most concerns me, mademoiselle. You see, when we first met, you said you did not know of her yet she has a little car and is allowed that privilege.’

‘And sings to eight hundred war-weary men a night, you said. The Club Mirage is in Montparnasse on the rue Delambre. All right, I do know Gabrielle Arcuri and she did drive me to Senlis to visit the dying mother of Monsieur Jacqmain, the prospector. That was one of his conditions. He and his mother had not spoken in years. He had received a letter from the woman’s housekeeper, but by the time we got there, Madame Jacqmain had passed away.’

‘And when was this trip to Senlis?’

Ah damn him! ‘Right after I went to Tours. On … on the following day, on Wednesday, the … the thirteenth.’

‘Then why did you lie to me about not knowing Gabrielle?’

She gave a nonchalant shrug he would be certain to feel since their shoulders were touching. ‘One lies these days. It’s an age of them, is it not?’

‘But to lie successfully one must be consistent.’

She sighed. She said, ‘Chance plays such a part in life. You have heard, perhaps, of the arrest of my little Juliette, my bonne à tout faire. Who would have thought of her saying anything to anyone? What did those women do to her in that prison, Inspector? She’s tender. She’s pretty. She’s a very gentle creature and very loyal, but now … now she says so little. She’s not been herself since.’

‘Did you tell Janwillem De Vries of the contents of that safe of the Generalmajor Wehrle’s?’

‘I didn’t, but it was not necessary for me to do so, not if the Gestapo of the rue Lauriston had been keeping an eye on things and smelling a fortune. If only they could get their filthy hands on it before Hans did. If only they could get at those people through me. My maid, my Juliette, knew nothing of what I was doing for Hans, nothing of the diamonds or of that safe.’

‘But knew of the prospector?’

‘Unfortunately.’

‘Do you know Madame Suzanne-Cécilia Lemaire?’

They would check with Céci. ‘My Jani loves to visit the zoo. Madame Lemaire was most kind and let him help her feed the wolves. He’s only a little boy. Don’t ask me why he is so fascinated by such animals. The fables Juliette tells him at bedtime, the nightmares, I suppose.’

She grew silent, but then said sadly, ‘A mother has to be present at all times when a child is young, yet when she has to earn a living, such a duty is not possible.’

‘Gabrielle’s son lives at the château near Vouvray with his grandmother, the Countess.’

‘Yes. I’ve been there too. Once or twice. I can’t remember.’

And what of the dynamite? he wanted so much to ask but thought it best to go carefully.

On the way up in the lift, in its privacy, he said, ‘Mademoiselle, it’s the silhouettes that so often defeat a boxer for he can’t hide behind them. They reveal his every weakness.’

‘And mine?’ she asked.

Her expression was tragic but she would have to be told. ‘The SS or the Gestapo won’t use the guillotine. They’ll use an axe, so if you wish to confide in me, please do so now before it’s too late.’

‘It already is. Janwillem saw to that when he parked your car below my windows.’

‘But why did he do so? That is the question?’

‘Ask him when you find him. Ask him why he wanted to kill the son he has never seen. Only he can give you the answer.’

The caviar was malossal, the Russian for slightly salted, and it was to be eaten with the little pancakes those courageous people called blini. Wedges of fresh lemon were provided – all but unheard of these days; also a small dish of finely chopped fresh green chives.

The vodka was crystal clear and so cold, the bottle still wore its coat of frost. The dressing-room at the Club Mirage was tiny and bugged by Gestapo Paris’s Listeners and yet Gabrielle would use her voice.

‘So, mon amour, you have come to see me and as you can surmise, I’ve been expecting you and have prepared myself for your questions. Once again I am suspected of something? These robberies, Jean-Louis, that terrible explosion, have been in all the newspapers. Don’t keep me in suspense a moment longer.’

‘Gabrielle, please! It’s difficult enough. A few small questions just to help the investigation along.’

‘Nothing difficult?’ she arched, catching him unawares.

He winced. ‘Not difficult. No.’

‘And Hermann, where is he, please?’

‘Gone to see Giselle and Oona, and then to have a look into the Gare Saint-Lazare robbery.’

‘Cartier’s … my sapphire necklace … the bracelet, ear-rings and ring. The 8,600,000 francs they will have to return now that this … this Gypsy has stolen them from me, yes from me! Jean-Louis. How could you even think I had anything to do with that business?’

‘We don’t! Hermann and I are both convinced of this but others must be satisfied. It’s the way things are. Berlin are insisting.’

‘Berlin …?’

She blanched. He reached out to comfort her. ‘The Reichsführer Himmler,’ he said. ‘The Führer himself, perhaps.’

‘Those poor boys who were killed … What will become of their families and loved ones? I must hold a benefit – yes, yes, that’s what I’ll do. Please, a moment, my fans will see the need and we can send the money off tomorrow morning. Wreaths for the funerals, condolences and then … then some lasting financial help for the old ones. It’s the least we can do, isn’t that so? and I must do it now! 100 francs from you. 500 … No, 1000, I think. Merci.’

She left him, she with his wallet in hand and soon he could hear the crowd shouting for her and, when the tumult had subsided, her saying, ‘Mes chers amis …’ And the hush was so great, not a breath stirred. ‘We must open our hearts to the families of those brave boys who have so valiantly given their lives in the rue Poliveau so that the safety and homes of others could be spared.’

When she sang ‘Lilli Marlene’, tears fell and St-Cyr could imagine the men spellbound even as his own eyes moistened, for it was a soldier’s song, and he’d been one himself. She had a voice that transcended everything. Clear, pure, bell-toned and soul-searching, but for how much longer would it be allowed to continue?

He remembered an ancient grist mill on the Loire close to the Château Thériault, not two months ago. The Resistance had sent her one of the little black coffins they reserved for those they thought were collaborators who should become examples to others. He, himself, had received one. She’d got the drop on him with an ancient double-barrelled fowling piece in that mill of her mother-in-law’s and ever since then, he’d borne her a healthy respect.

A White Russian who had fled the Revolution with her family, she had, having lost them, arrived alone in Paris at the age of fourteen and had been a chanteuse ever since. She was a widow whose husband had been badly wounded at Sedan in May of 1940 and had then died in the late summer of that year. And, yes, she was suspected by the Gestapo but not yet sufficiently to drag her in for questioning or to put her under constant surveillance. Or perhaps it was simply that she was known to too many high-ranking Germans who adored her and therefore extreme care had to be taken.

Sonderbehandlung here, too, he wondered. Sickened by the thought, he opened one of the small vials of her perfume. Its twists of cobalt blue crystal poignantly reminded him of that nothing murder in Fontainebleau Forest, that small murder which had led to Hermann and himself being reviled by many at Gestapo Paris-Central and in the SS, but which had brought Gabrielle and himself together.

There was civet, a little too much jasmine he had thought then and still did. Angelica, vetiverol and bergamot. Lavender of course … Mirage it was called and he had known the creators of it, old friends.

The Club Mirage had been named after the perfume.

Though he wanted desperately to make certain there was nothing incriminating the Gestapo might find, he forced himself not to search through her things. The perfume and the sky blue, shimmering silk sleeveless sheath were among her trademarks, the dress electric with thousands of tiny seed pearls arranged in vertical rows from ankle to diamond choker. Her hair was not blonde but the colour of a very fine brandy, her eyes were the shade of violets, matched only by those of Hermann’s Giselle.

‘So,’ she said on catching him out once more, and he could see by her delight how successful the fund-raising had been but also how pleased she was at finding the vial of perfume in his hand. ‘A few questions, Inspector. Nothing difficult.’

‘It’s Chief Inspector. Hermann is always reminding me of this.’

‘He’s going to be a father again. Isn’t it splendid? A baby, Jean-Louis. A baby!’

‘Oona …? Giselle …?’

The flat on the rue Suger was empty, freezing as usual but in complete darkness too. And when Kohler found the black-out curtains wide open, he saw a lamp on the table in front of the windows and panicked. Had Giselle been arrested? Had Oona been taken with her? It had been deliberate, this placing of the lamp. The stub of an unlighted candle was beside it with a box of matches in case of a power outage.

Arrest would have been guaranteed. Three months in the women’s cells of the Santé, the Petite Rouquette or Fresnes were the usual, any of which would have sufficed if she had hoped to lose the baby.

The bored flic behind the desk at the quartier Saint-Germain-des-Prés’s Commissariat de Police on the rue de l’Abbaye thought he was out of his skull. She wasn’t in the emergency room at the Hôpital Laennec on the rue des Sèvres though everyone agreed that when young girls get pregnant they might well do crazy things.

She and Oona were sitting spellbound beneath the smoke-hazed, garlic-and-onions beam of the projector at the Cluny on the boulevard Saint-Germain, her favourite cinema. Hats on, hats off … The place was packed. Couples were making out here, there, it didn’t matter where so long as they had the chance … The screen was filled with a shabby Marseille flat. An abortionist … ah verdammt! One so evil, the camera zoomed in on the ingrained dirt of the bastard’s cracked fingernails. A terrible eye was clouded by cataracts. A shrew of a wife was railing at him from behind beaded curtains, and at his fresh innocent, his most recent victim.

Helpless, the young would-be virgin looked about the room with abject dismay. There’d be a catheter, a pair of surgical tongs and a length of rubber tubing whose syringe would suck soapy water from a bucket as the bulb was squeezed. Then it’d be down with the underpants, up with the knees … ‘Wider … a little wider, mademoiselle.’ Right in past the cervix, deeply … ‘Up … I must get it up a little more.’ Squish! A massive shock, the girl probably dead in a split second as air entered her bloodstream. A pretty thing, a hell of a waste … ‘Giselle! Oona!’

Kohler stopped himself, his heart racing. He and Louis had seen it all not a week ago. A maker of little angels and a fleabitten tenement across the river in Courbevoie and definitely not the figment of celluloid.

‘Come with me. Please! I … I couldn’t find you. I was worried. Hey, I’ve got to go over to the Gare Saint-Lazare and need a bit of company. Louis … Louis is busy with other things.’

Still in the dressing-room at the Club Mirage, St-Cyr touched a finger to his lips, and taking out some scraps of paper and a pencil, quickly wrote, Cartier’s. The Gypsy knew the combination of the sous-directeur’s safe.

Questioningly Gabrielle raised her eyebrows.

Did you tell him of it? he demanded in pencil, thrusting the paper at her.

Out in the club, the audience were now clamouring for her. ‘How can you think such a thing?’ she asked aloud. ‘At least let us give the happy couple a bassinet and a few baby blankets. Giselle will need so many things.’

Gestapo Paris’s Listeners could make what they would of that. Someone is helping the Gypsy. The robbery at the Ritz for sure; Cartier’s for sure, and probably the Gare Saint-Lazare.

‘Not us,’ she said, a whisper but given too quickly – she could see him thinking this and dreaded his response for she hadn’t said Not me and should have.

Patently ignoring the mistake but filing it away, he wrote, Please tell me where you were on Tuesday the twelfth.

‘I …’ she began, only to stop herself. He’d check. He wouldn’t hold back, even though he loved her – did he really love her? She wanted to believe this but they had been alone together so seldom. I had to go to Tours, she quickly wrote. There, does that satisfy you?

‘A little,’ he said and wrote, Did you meet Nana Thélème in Tours?

‘A rattle …? Is it that you wish to give the baby a rattle?’ she asked aloud and, saddened by his insistence on pursuing the matter, answered, Yes! in writing, but quite by accident. We had a cup of coffee in a small café.

And did she ask you to drive her to Senlis on the folloiuing day?

Gabrielle flinched in despair.

The dynamite, he wrote. Someone is supplying the Gypsy with it.

From Senlis? she asked, writing it out for him and listening for the Gestapo – waiting tensely for them to barge in and shriek, ‘Hände hoch!’

She lighted a candle and burned all the scraps of paper.

‘Giselle must want this baby very badly, Jean-Louis, but will your partner make an honest woman of her now that his wife has gained her divorce and has found another?’

Back home in Wasserburg, ex-wife Gerda had married an indentured French farm labourer, a humiliation Hermann had yet to complain about and probably never would.

St-Cyr waited for Giselle’s answer about the dynamite but she refused. Tears began to mist her lovely eyes. The stone quarries, he harshly wrote. The prospector Nana went to Tours to meet. Monsieur jacqmain asked her to go to Senlis.

To see his dying mother! That was all. I swear it. I could not refuse, she wrote and burst into tears.

In dismay, he saw before him what he’d seen when they’d first met: a determined evasiveness, lies and half-lies and every possible female ruse.

There had been some rough but beautifully coloured diamonds then; there were diamonds now.

Do you still belong to the Society of Those Who Have Been Left Behind?

The war widows. ‘Why should I not?’ she demanded aloud. His nod was curt, his whole being the detective she had first encountered. ‘My friends are clamouring for me. Will you come and listen?’

Neither of them had touched the vodka or the caviar. ‘Of course. But first …’

There was silence as he took from a pocket the crystal of clear quartz they both had been given last Saturday – his last investigation; a child of eleven, an heiress. Had she been a clairvoyant, that child? ‘It is magic,’ she had said so seriously. ‘You will need it, I’m afraid, for the cards are not good. A visitor is to come into your lives who will pit you against each other with terrible consequences. Please do not forget this. Remember to be true to each other.’

The crystal was one of those ‘diamonds’ of the curious stone and mineral trade, a dipyramid perhaps two centimetres by one and a half, six-sided and pointed at both ends but grown lopsidedly and full of internal fractures. They had gone to meet the child at a villa in Neuilly on the far side of the Bois de Boulogne. On the way, Jean-Louis had received a telex that had been meant for Hermann, since all such messages were directed to his partner. MOST URGENT. REPEAT URGENT. IKPK HQ BERLIN REPORTS INTERNATIONAL SAFE-CRACKER GYPSY REPEAT GYPSY HAS REPORTEDLY SURFACED. LAST SEEN TOURS 1030 HOURS 14 JANUARY HEADING FOR PARIS. APPREHEND AT ONCE. HEIL HITLER.

Jean-Louis did not know the réseau to which she belonged had received a wireless message tacked on to what the British had sent regarding the child’s parents.

GYPSY … REPEAT GYPSY DROPPED TOURS NIGHT OF 13 JANUARY. PROVIDE EVERY ASSISTANCE. MOST URGENT. REPEAT URGENT. WILL HAVE EXPLOSIVES. GIVE FULL PRIORITY. CODE NAME ZEBRA.

The Gypsy hadn’t had any explosives even though London had said he would have them. He had denied it to their faces, but of course they had already taken care of the matter on the thirteenth, during the trip to Senlis.

Three women. Nana, Suzanne-Cécilia and herself. Dynamite. Code name Disaster.

Nitroglycerine also, and plenty of blasting caps and fuse. Ah Jésus, jésus, what were they to do?

The Gare Saint-Lazare was the world’s third largest railway station. Gargantuan, it was divided into two long arrival-and-departure sections by an immense hall, every one of whose panes of glass, high up there above, had been crisscrossed by strips of brown sticking paper and given a thick and repulsive wash of laundry bluing.

The resulting gloom was only increased by the paucity of blue-washed lamps, the whole having a distinctly other-world feeling. Breath steamed. People spoke quietly. Though they hurried to and fro, the cumulative hush was broken only by stifled coughs, sneezes and the clack-clacking of wooden-soled high-heels. ‘Giselle …’

The girl kicked off her shoes and Oona gathered them in. Kohler knew he was in trouble. The two of them had given him the silent treatment all the way across town. ‘Look, I’m sorry, eh? Hey, I’ll take you both to the pictures tomorrow night. I swear it. The same ones if you want.’

‘It’s not what I want!’ hissed Giselle, meaning an abortion. ‘I’ll kill myself first!’

‘Oona, talk some sense into her.’

‘Me? Haven’t I done enough? Didn’t I find her sitting in front of that window debating arrest? Didn’t I convince her to see that film? Pah! why should I say anything? It’s your job. You’re the father!’

‘Verdammt! I want her to have the kid.’

There, he had got that out at last. ‘And what about me?’ she demanded.

Ah merde, where the hell was he to find the chef de gare or the sous-chef? he wondered. Pedestrians became travellers of the deep under clocks whose Roman numerals registered an alien time. 10.57 p.m. Tattered, picked-at posters advertised excursions to Deauville. Sun, sea and sand, and wouldn’t that be lovely except for it being the fiercest winter on record?

Condensation had frozen on the inside of walls and windows. Furtive sparrows sought warmth up there, pigeons too. The floor was spattered with their droppings.

Achtung! Achtung! Avertissement: Peine de mort contre les saboteurs. Warning: Death to saboteurs.

Beneath the notice someone had scratched: Les dés sont jetés en Russe. The dice have been cast in Russia.

For a moment time was transfixed and one saw clearly the shabby suitcases and the clothing people wore, the made-overs, cast-offs and hand-me-downs, the things rescued from the thirties and from the trunks of long-dead relatives.

A girl tried to straighten her grandmother’s black lisle stockings, another was checking the seams of the paint job she had given her bare legs.

Soldier boys came and went. Les filles de la nuit plied their trade but could only wait to be asked, since here the law prevailed and the place was thick with cops of all kinds.

Kohler knew only too well that if one wanted to hide, as the Gypsy must, the city was by far the best of places.

There was a Wehrmacht soup kitchen for the boys that had come from the bunkers of the north. Soup with potatoes in it and maybe a bit of meat. Black bread and margarine.

He managed two servings and led Giselle and Oona to a bench. ‘Now wait here, please,’ he begged. ‘I’ve got a little job to do.’

‘And me … what about me, Hermann?’ demanded Oona. ‘You have not answered my question.’

‘Later, eh? I’m busy.’

Croissants, baguettes, brioches and pâtisseries were all banned and had been for nearly two years now. The daily bread ration, if one could get it, had been reduced to two 25 gram slices. A notice advertised that a reward of 100,000 francs would be paid for information leading to the arrest of terrorists or those assisting them. There were soldier-warnings about syphilis, tuberculosis and cancer – Berlin believed the French were rife with these diseases. Others warned the citizenry of the dangers of eating cats – the rat population would explode and bring on the bubonic plague.

Giselle chewed a doubtful morsel then decided to discreetly drop it under the bench. When she found a much-thumbed, tattered notice for the restaurant La Potinière at the Hôtel Normandy in Deauville, she stared at it for the longest time.

‘Potage normand,’ she said with longing. ‘Huîtres au gratin. Darnes de saumon à la crème ou tripe à la mode de Caen. Poulet à la Vallée d’Auge, salade Cauchoise, soufflé surprise et … et Puits d’amour.’

One longed for the past but also for the simplest things. Far from menus like that, Giselle had spoken repeatedly of late of poached eggs and glasses of milk. ‘Don’t worry so much, chérie,’ soothed Oona. ‘You’ll be all right. I’ll see you through. I promise.’

‘You’re so good to me. If there wasn’t this Occupation, would it be the same?’ She tossed her pretty head.

The short, jet black hair, clear, rosy cheeks and stunning violet eyes were lovely. ‘You’d still need a nounou.’

A nanny. ‘I’ve no training in having babies. I’m not the mothering kind.’

‘Wait till she nurses, then you’ll know for sure where you stand. Now come on, finish your soup and bread. Dream of Deauville, eh? and of better times. Cream puffs.’

‘“Wells of Love”.’

‘Oysters au gratin. Salmon steaks in cream …’

‘“She” …? Why is it, please, that you feel it will be a girl?’

‘Ah! why would you ask me that? I hate this lousy war. My two children gone from me, my husband too!’ Oona threw her tin cup away and tore her hair in anguish.

Kohler hurried back to comfort her, saying, ‘Hey now, I’m going to take care of you both.’

Blonde, blue-eyed, tall, graceful and about forty years of age, Oona had lost her children during the blitzkrieg, her husband, a Jew, to the French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston and not so long ago …

When he found the safe, it was waiting for him and Kohler knew at once that here was trouble of a far different sort. It was huge. It was ancient. Its door was closed and locked but there was something sinister about this and when he asked the sous-chef de gare, he discovered the door had been left open by the Gypsy, but had been later closed and locked and only then had they discovered that the wheel-pack had been reset. Now no one dared to try to open the damned thing.

It was as if the Gypsy was tempting him. It was as if he shouldn’t weaken and yield to the challenge.

‘Louis, this guy’s playing with us all the time,’ he said, but Louis wasn’t here.

The vodka had remained untouched, the caviar too, but they were again writing notes to each other in the dressing-room.

The dynamite, Gabrielle. I must insist that if you know of it, you tell me how the Gypsy came by it.

She couldn’t tell him the truth. She mustn’t! Perhaps he had it xvith him – have you thought of this?

She was still being evasive. Are you suggesting he first extracted the nitro he used at the Ritz and then found he needed more?

Two boil-ups, the last at the house on the rue Poliveau … Mon Dieu, how could you possibly think I would know anything of such?

The Resistance, your little réseau?

We don’t do things like that! We’re women. We have no such experience.

Was the réseau composed only of women? he wondered. He tried to kill us, Gabrielle! He booby-trapped our car!

She was visibly shaken and stammered, ‘I … I didn’t know of this. Forgive me.’

Fine. He’d be firm now and give the next question aloud. ‘Tell me why on Monday last you did not pick up the jewellery you had ordered at Cartier’s?’

So, they were back to that again and Jean-Louis wanted the Gestapo to listen in, but why had the Gypsy tried to kill them? They hadn’t told Janwillem to do so. They had only warned him to be careful of them, that if anyone could stop him, it was them. ‘I was too busy.’

‘A moment, please. Ah! I have it here in my notebook. Laviolette, the sous-directeur, said that you wished to argue with yourself a little more. It was a great deal of money. The authorities … someone might question such an expense. It would have to be declared.’

‘That is correct.’

‘Then why, please, did you just tell me you were too busy?’ He nodded for her to speak aloud.

‘Now that you have reminded me, I do remember. He was most distressed. Certainly I promised to collect the pieces first thing on Tuesday but by then, it … well, it was too late, wasn’t it?’

‘Please don’t distress yourself.’ It doesn’t become you! he wrote. ‘Someone told the Gypsy of the contents of the safe and gave him the combination.’

Again their were tears. ‘Have you questioned everyone at Carrier’s?’ she blurted.

‘Not yet.’

‘Then perhaps, Inspector, you will find among them the accomplice if such a one exists!’

She was still not co-operating! He raised his voice. ‘There was a blanket laissez-passer in that safe and a first-class railway pass. The Gypsy can have those altered – a difficulty, yes, since he’s on the run but whoever is helping him could take care of it.’

Did the Gestapo suspect her of this too? she wondered but said softly, ‘Tshaya … the newspapers are saying a gypsy girl is with him.’

‘I’ve not had time to read them.’

‘They say she was married to a boxer but that he whipped her savagely.’

‘What else do they say?’

‘That she’s the Gypsy’s lover and that the two of them will turn the city upside down before they leave. That only then will the memory of them be left to last the centuries.’

Will they be apprehended?

Never! Of this I can guarantee.

You?

The press. I meant to say the press. Ah damn …

St-Cyr knew he had to warn her that the Germans had released the Gypsy from the Mollergaten-19 in Oslo but if she was taken in for questioning, this would be the first thing Herr Max would ask.

Look after yourself.

You also.

‘Do you have your receipt from Cartier’s for the 8,600,000 francs?’

‘Yes, it’s in my purse.’

He snapped his fingers. She smiled faintly and when she handed him the beaded silk purse, which was another of her trademarks, he looked questioningly at her.

The purse had been left at the scene of that nothing murder. ‘I thought it appropriate,’ she said, looking steadily at him.

Without a word St-Cyr put the receipt into his wallet. Then he reached for his glass, and raising it, said grimly, ‘À ta santé, Gabrielle.’

She took hers up and, though it was foolish and proud of her, gave him good health in Russian. ‘Za vashe zdorov’e, Jean-Louis.’

The door closed and he was gone from her, the caviar untouched, a waste yet she had no desire for it and, sitting down at her dressing-table, picked up the quartz crystal he had deliberately left for her.

Very thin slices of such crystals, if clear of fractures and inclusions, were used in shortwave wireless transceivers. Each thickness let in or out wavelengths of only a very narrow band. Their set had two such ‘crystals’: one for daytime use, which they never used but kept for emergencies only; and one for the small hours of the night which were best for transmitting and receiving.

Jean-Louis could not know that a British aircraft had dropped the Gypsy by parachute near Tours on the night of the thirteenth. He could not know that weeks of planning had gone into this and that they had received a message from England telling them to help this safe-cracker, nor could he know that the Gypsy had very quickly proven himself to be far too difficult to handle. They and the British had trusted Janwillem De Vries and he had broken that trust.

The house on the rue Poliveau was gone – six dead Boches, a terrible complication no one could have foreseen. Hostages would have to be taken. Berlin would insist on nothing but the truth and in the process, their little réseau would be smashed and Jean-Louis and Hermann would be caught up in things and held responsible.

‘Alles ist Schicksal,’ she whispered bitterly, borrowing the saying from the German. Everything is controlled by fate. Janwillem De Vries had taken one flask of nitro and a dozen sticks of dynamite. More he couldn’t have carried and was to have come back but had buggered off on them and had severed all contact.

*

In the dank blue haze of the Gare Saint-Lazare the clock on the four-cornered tower registered 11.27 p.m. Giselle wondered what was keeping Hermann. He had gone into the ticket office hours ago, it seemed. Oona was watching him through the grating of one of the wickets.

People hurried, for the curfew was fast approaching and soon everything here would be closed up tightly, the wicket gates slamming down, the doors shutting while Hermann, he … he took his time.

She studied a faded poster that was behind wire mesh. Waving, sunburnt, big-breasted Rheinmädels smiled at marching soldier boys who lustily sang, ‘Wir fahren gegen England’.

We’re going to England.

‘Don’t believe a word of it,’ said someone in French. Startled, she turned to look up and into the bluest of eyes.

‘Where have you been all my life?’ he said. Those eyes of his danced over her, he taking in each feature to linger on her lips, her chin, her eyes and hair. ‘Enchanté,’ he said, and he had the nicest of smiles and yes, it was good for a woman to hear such things.

‘Monsieur …?’ she began.

He was tall and thin – quite distinguished-looking, very handsome, about forty years of age, and the Hauptmann’s uniform he wore carried combat medals and ribbons on its breast.

‘Can I give you a lift?’ he asked.

‘Ah, no,’ she answered. ‘I … I’m waiting for someone.’

‘I thought so,’ he said and sadly shook his head. ‘Another time perhaps.’

She could not place his accent. Was he a Fleming? There were scars on his face, little slashes where the skin had been parted and left to heal unstitched. He set the fine leather suitcase down, the canvas rucksack too, and began to put on his greatcoat. ‘The Claridge,’ he said. ‘You can reach me there, or is it at the Ritz? I can never remember.’

He found a scrap of paper in a pocket and nodded as he read it. The hair was blond and closely trimmed, the nose was long but made his expression all the more engaging. A man, a little boy. Mischievous, serious – ah! there was laughter in his eyes as he watched her scrutiny deepen.

‘Your name?’ he asked. ‘At least allow me that.’

‘Giselle le Roy.’

‘Must you really wait for him?’ He nodded towards the ticket office and she realized he had known all along that Hermann was in there.

Two of the scars were high up on the cheekbones and equally placed. The third one was on the bridge of that nose. For a moment the hands of the clock stood still. Giselle tore her eyes away to the ticket office, to Oona who was starting towards them. Oona … she tried to cry out. The blast erupted. Flames, debris, dust and smoke flew at her, she shrieking, ‘Oona! Oona!’ as she felt herself being dragged to cover, to hit the floor and be buried under him … him … Bang … a deafening BANG!

No one came running. Dazed, some bleeding, people picked themselves up. A large piece of glass shattered at her feet. Another and another. Pigeons scattered. Sparrows grew silent.

Three of their number fell, and when their little bodies hit the floor, they bounced.

‘Hermann …?’ began Giselle. ‘Hermann!’

A hand caught her and dragged her back. She fought to pull away. She shrieked, ‘Let go of me!’ and he did, but did not smile.

The house at 3 rue Laurence-Savart was occupied and St-Cyr knew it right away. The perfume of smouldering animal dung was pungent. ‘We dry it first,’ said a female voice.

Startled, he looked questioningly at the century-old cast-iron stove in the kitchen where the last pages of About’s The King of the Mountains had disappeared. The smell reminded him of films he had seen of darkest Africa, of slaves and villages and King Solomon’s mines.

Madame Suzanne-Cécilia Lemaire, the veterinary surgeon and zoo-keeper from the Jardin des Plantes and the rue Poliveau, had moved in.

‘Hermann won’t believe it of the dung,’ he said. ‘He has the curiosity of a small boy towards all things French but this …’

‘Aren’t you going to try the soup?’ she asked and only then did he see her curled up on the floor beside the stove. ‘It’s warmer here.’

The soup was thick and of onions and garlic, yet the dung had purged the air of its aroma. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ she said. ‘One gets used to lots of things. This Occupation of ours teaches us that humility and ingenuity are blood brothers to survival.’

‘It has simply broken down a lexicon of social customs which should have been cast aside long ago,’ he said tartly. ‘Did Madame Courbet give you any trouble?’

The housekeeper who lived across the street and had a spare key … ‘She looked me over, tossed her head and clucked her tongue before raking me with that voice of hers. “Men, all they think about is rutting with a woman! Old enough to be your father, madame. A Chief Inspector of the Sûreté, for shame! His wife hasn’t been dead two months. The period of mourning must be respected!”’

‘For Madame Courbet it has to last an eternity,’ he sighed. ‘She questions everything. A pair of high-heeled shoes I brought home once. A heel was broken – did she tell you that? They were the shoes of a girl I had met on a street after curfew. She was avoiding the patrol and her feet were freezing.’

‘But you didn’t bring her home like me. Only her shoes.’ And so much for ‘social customs which should have been cast aside long ago’.

‘What else did the street’s most virulent gossip tell you?’

‘That you have; been seeing another woman, but that this chanteuse comes seldom and only in the small hours at curfew’s end, and sometimes with a general as her companion. That you desperately need looking after. That you are a hero to her son Antoine and the other boys of the street but that they are saying you were never home and that your poor wife – Ah! she was all but a virgin after five and a half years of marriage and, like the first wife, just couldn’t stand the stress of not having sex, so ran off, this one with a German officer who gave her a lot of it but … but she had to come home when he was sent away to Russia to die.’

A mouthful, and thank you, Madame Courbet! ‘Hermann had the house repaired. The bomb smashed the front wall and every pane of glass on the street.’

‘And now?’ she asked.

‘He’s at the Gare Saint-Lazare, I think. Looking into that robbery. Late, of course. One of us should have been on the scene as soon as we had word of it but …’

‘But the Gypsy kept you on the run.’

‘He tried to kill us again.’

Hurriedly she got out of the nest she had made for herself, dragging blankets she wrapped around herself.

‘Build up the fire. Open the draught. Buffalo is better but zebra will have to do.’

The snow was terrible, the quai Saint-Bernard an impasse into which the tiny slits of blue-shaded headlamps fought for visibility.

Gabrielle knew it was crazy of her to have come out on a night like this without a laissez-passer and so close to curfew, but Céci had to be warned.

No lights shone in the Jardin des Plantes. Only by feeling its way, did the little Peugeot two-door sedan finally manage the gates, which were locked, of course.

Leaving the engine running – cursing herself again and all that had gone wrong – she struggled out. Snow rose to her ankles. Her silk stockings would be ruined. The engine didn’t sound too good either. Was there water in the gasoline again?

She rang the bell. Old Letouche, the concierge, was almost stone deaf. He’d be asleep. Had he died in his sleep?

Shivering, railing at herself, she blew on gloved fingers and stamped her high-heels to pack the snow down a little. ‘Monsieur,’ she called out. ‘It’s me, Gabrielle. Is Suzanne-Cécilia here?’

‘Not here,’ came the frayed, wind-tattered voice.

‘But she had nowhere else to go? I was worried about her?’

‘Not here. Gone to the detective’s house.’

‘The detective’s …?’

‘He offered, she accepted. I gave her my share of the dung to help her along. It’s freezing in here without a fire.’

‘Which detective?’

‘The one with the house, of course. “The difficult one”, she said.’

Dismayed, she looked away in the direction of Belleville. She couldn’t go to the house, not until the curfew was over. ‘And by then,’ she asked herself, retreating to the car, ‘will it be too late?’

What had begun with so much promise had fast become a nightmare. The Gypsy had proved himself far too difficult to handle. They had lined up the robberies for him but he had gone his own way and had done nearly all of them in one night! They didn’t even know where he was hiding.

‘And as for this Tshaya of his, if the Gestapo get their hands on her, she’ll be only too willing to betray us and already must know far too much.’

It was a mess – it was worse than that. It was a catastrophe! ‘Zèbre,’ she said from behind the wheel now. Why but for the intrusion of fate – ‘Yes, fate!’ – had the British chosen to use such a code name?

They couldn’t have known the wireless set was hidden in the zebra house. Direction-finding at such long distances was simply too inaccurate. Even the German direction-finding vans had to get in really close.

The Wehrmacht’s Funkabwehr unit and now, also, the Gestapo’s Listeners constantly monitored the airwaves for clandestine transmissions. They used three widely spaced listening sets and, drawing lines from each of these to the source, triangulated the approximate location. Then, by repeatedly smaller triangulations as they moved in with their listening vans, they narrowed things down until, at the last, a house or flat could be singled out.

But so far the réseau had seen no sign of any such activity. Suzanne-Cécilia had been very, very careful. Transmissions were kept to a bare minimum and were always given at the same time and on the same frequency. Now only once a week and on Fridays at 0150 hours Berlin time.

It had to have been coincidence, the British using Zebra as the code name. It had to have been!

‘I must do something,’ she said. ‘I can’t just sit idly by and let De Vries destroy everything we’ve worked so hard for!’

Single-handedly, and over nearly eighteen months, Suzanne-Cécilia had painstakingly assembled the wireless transceiver from parts she had gathered. Oh for sure they had talked of doing something – anything – but the times had not been right, the Occupation so very difficult.

But then on a cold, clear night in October of last year, and well before she had met Jean-Louis and Hermann, Céci’s faint tappings into the ether had finally brought a response, NOUS VOUS LISONS. We read you.

Cécilia had used, and still did, her modification of the French Army code of her husband’s unit – one of many, and yes, the Germans would be aware of it, but what else could she have done? By some quirk of – yes, fate again – the code book had been sandwiched among the bloodstained letters that had been returned to her along with her dead husband’s boots.

Lieutenant Honoré Lemaire had been in the same unit as her own dead husband, and it wouldn’t take Jean-Louis long to discover this. ‘The Society of Those Who Have Been Left Behind, eh?’ she said bitterly. ‘Of course we are working together!’

Tasks had been assigned by London. The constant comings and goings of generals and other high-ranking officers – the troops too. Ah! she herself did this. It was easy for her. The audience at the Club Mirage changed constantly. The boys all loved her, trusted her. She was their loyal friend.

The sales of major international works of art at the Jeu de Paume – stolen, many of them. Could a list be provided? Of course! She was known to frequent the sales, often on the arm of a German general or other high-ranking official.

The sales of priceless antiques too, in the rooms of the Hôtel Drouot, the Paris auction house.

So many things and all of it had been working so well but then Jean-Louis and Hermann had solved the Sandman murders. The child, the heiress, had lost her only friends and her parents too, and had been left all alone in the world.

Would London help? The child’s father had been a noted designer of weapons. The couple had gone to England just before the blitzkrieg and had not been able to return, had supposedly died in the bombing of Coventry.

On 15 January at 0150 hours London had sent its answer. It hadn’t helped. They couldn’t have sent over things like that.

Right after the message there had been a distinct break of several seconds – end of transmission – but then, suddenly, the green light had come on again and another message had come in. A message she could not have revealed to Jean-Louis and still could not do so.

The Gypsy had been dropped near Tours on the night of the thirteenth. Code name Zebra, but by then, of course, Nana and Suzanne-Cécilia and herself had known he was in Paris because he had arrived on the fourteenth.

Puzzled as to why there should have been that break in the transmission, Gabrielle took out the quartz crystal the child had given them. She looked away into the darkness and the falling snow to where she knew the zebra paddock and house must lie. Céci’s surgery and laboratory of physiology were very convenient to the zebra house, and it had been perfect. It really had. As veterinary surgeon, she could legitimately spend nights here tending sick animals. No one would have thought to question this.

‘But now?’ she asked herself. ‘What now?’

The dust had settled in the Gare Saint-Lazare but the ringing in the ears would probably never go away.

Kohler tried to get his bearings. The ticket office was a shambles. The massive door to the old iron safe was off its hinges, bent, ripped apart and still disgorging sand and bricks, and half embedded in the floor.

‘I told you not to tamper with that dial, Inspector. I warned you the safe had a booby trap built into its locking mechanism!’

The sous-chef de gare was livid. ‘Then why didn’t it blow off the Gypsy’s hands?’

‘The portrait, yes? The Maréchal, you idiot! Have you forgotten this?’

Tattered, dust-covered and furious, the little twerp blinked and apprehensively licked the dust from his lips when he saw the Kripo take a step towards him.

On the wall above the safe, Pétain, and before him legions of former presidents, had looked sternly out at ticket agent and buyer. Nearly one hundred years of thumbprints had greased the lower left corner of that picture frame and wall. The damned thing had been slid aside enough times for the world to have seen the marks from any three of the wickets.

The combination had been written in pencil on the wall but the Gypsy had changed the settings. He’d written the new combination above the old one, the numerals so perfect one had to wonder about the severity of his schooling as a boy, but no one had wanted to try the numbers.

The booby trap … A travelling salesman fresh off the boat from Buffalo, New York, in 1903, had installed the bloody thing on a trial basis and had never come back for it. The Badger Safe Protector. Two little vials of fulminate of mercury probably, but those hadn’t blown the door off and wrecked the room.

For that De Vries had used the fulminate to detonate a charge of nitro or dynamite. Three or four sticks at least.

‘The bomb boys can pick up the pieces and tell us all about it. How many dead?’

‘I do not know. None so far.’

In the pandemonium of injured and rescuer, cop, stretcher-bearer and nurse, there was no sign of Oona or Giselle. Oona had been at one of the wickets. He, himself, had taken shelter before using a length of cord to pull the handle open. He had called out to her to leave and she had … ‘Oona!’ he cried out, startling several. A flic started for him, a Feldgendarm also …

Desperately he searched the hall. Both of their backs were to him. She was standing beside Giselle who had an arm about Oona’s waist. There were no cuts, no abrasions. She must have tripped and fallen to the floor. They were staring at a poster … a poster!

DANCE
TANGO, WALTZ ETC AND ALL THE LATEST BALLROOM DANCES
LESSONS AND CLASSES
Madame jeséauel, Professeur Diplômé, et Mademoiselle
Nana Thélème, danseuse électriaue de flamenco.
Studio Pleyel No. 6
252 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, Paris
Téléphone: Carnot 33.56

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