9

The last of the papier-mâché balls went into the kitchen stove. Alone, cold and deeply troubled – afraid, yes – St-Cyr brought the lighted taper to the bowl of his pipe, but chopped blotting paper, sun-dried herbs, sawdust, carrot tops and beet greens were no substitute for tobacco.

‘Diable!’ he cried, and spitting furiously several times, cleaned out the pipe and laid it on the table, another failed experiment in what the Occupation had produced, a nation of experimenters.

The house, he had to admit, was lonely without the veterinary surgeon and zoo-keeper who could, in moments, bubble with laughter or play the imp only to become serious. A terrorist, a résistant.

Suddenly he remembered the book he had taken from her shelf and cursed himself for having carried it all this time. Page by page he burned it, watching the flames but seeing her standing between the cages of poisonous snakes, ready to kill herself.

Three women, all very intelligent and resourceful but desperate and driven to extremes – each asking what they could possibly do to save themselves when … when, really, nothing could be possible.

That business in the house on the rue Nollet was not right. Oh for sure Tshaya would hate the Spade and would want to kill him but would she have taken such a risk as to notify Je suis partout ahead of time, knowing only he would come and not with others? At the least, she would have requested a private meeting there ahead of time and would have notified the paper later. And where, please, had the Gypsy been? In hiding, in a forest somewhere, among old ruins and in an encampment known only to other gypsies who were now with him, or in Paris at the killing with Tshaya? It must have taken at least two persons to have forced Doucette to lie on the floor like that and then to have tied him to the ringbolts. A gun would have been necessary also.

The leather binding of La Cryptographie Nouvelle refused to burn – the fire was simply not hot enough. The gilded letters on the spine remained, a damning indictment should they be found.

Cutting them off the charred leather, he ate them – it was the only thing to do. The ground outside was frozen solid, the drains could be opened and searched …

‘We were in Tours,’ he said so silently no Gestapo bug could have picked it up. ‘On Wednesday the twentieth we were away from Paris and on Thursday also, until 0500 hours Friday.’

Early on that Wednesday, before the curfew had ended, the Gypsy and Tshaya had robbed the pay-train at the Gare de l’Est. Then on the night of that same Wednesday or early on the Thursday they had cleaned out the wall safe of Nana’s former villa.

After the Gare de l’Est robbery, Tshaya and the Gypsy could have lain up in the house on the rue Nollet but search as he had, there had been no conclusive evidence of this.

Fighting sleep, he sat down at the table to strip the leather from the boards and to cut it into digestible shreds. ‘I can’t be the cause of her arrest,’ he said, but wondered how she had hidden the wireless set so well, no one had been able to find it.

And what of Gabrielle? he asked. A handkerchief had been dropped in the powder magazine at the quarry but this could just as easily have been done by accident on the first visit, on the thirteenth. On Thursday, the twenty-first, she had been returned to Paris by the Gypsy and the résistants who had taken her car and had immediately informed the police of what had happened. As much as twelve flasks of nitroglycerine and at least two cases of dynamite were missing but how much had been taken on her first visit with Nana? One flask and a few sticks, or all the rest as well?

The Gypsy had run out of nitro by the time they had encountered him at the house on the rue Poliveau. Nitro was far more portable and therefore preferred but now … did he have all he needed or had she lied to the police? Had there never been a second trip? Had they simply held back on the explosives, storing them for De Vries? Hermann and he had seen no tyre tracks, no evidence of that second visit, but, yes, the Gypsy could easily have come and gone. Then why had he not left a surprise for them, especially since he had been trying to kill them?

And what of Nana? he asked. Nana had had one of the revolvers from the Gare Saint-Lazare in her purse but had claimed she’d not been given a chance to tell Herr Max about it. Another good citizen unjustly wronged, but where, please, were the other two Lebels that had been taken during that robbery?

None of them had confided much. Indeed, the lies and half-lies had been piling up to screen the whole thing. Henri Doucette would have been a threat to them. He’d have held back from letting Herr Max know everything. Tshaya could well have told the Spade things Nana and the others couldn’t have him repeating.

Certainly the murder implicated Tshaya. Certainly it would send a definite message to the Gestapo of the rue Lauriston and to all such types. It would say exactly how great had become the hatred of them. But had it been Tshaya who had killed him?

Still deeply disturbed by the murder and by the horror of it, he sadly shook his head but spoke aloud and softly. ‘Tshaya must have obtained the cognac during the villa robbery while with De Vries. The SS always drink the most expensive stuff since they don’t have to pay for it.’

From the rue Nollet to Saint-Cloud was half-way and some across the city, easy enough if the Gypsy had had a car and had been able to hide it safely. But in her statement to the police Gabrielle had sworn that just after curfew on Thursday morning she had been forced to drive De Vries to the quarry. They had used her car. Tshaya had had the flu and had not been able to go with them.

Only the coroner could give a reliable estimate of the time of the Spade’s murder, but had Doucette been killed when Hermann and himself had been in Tours on Wednesday?

By then Nana had come face to face with Doucette not only at the Avia Club but at the party in her former villa on the eleventh. She had also talked to the Spade’s latest pigeon who must have been at the party too.

Tshaya had been at that affair. The cognac could have been taken then, her mind set in its intention to kill.

He knew he was arguing with himself, knew also that Boemelburg would have his own suspicions. Walter would have sensed doubt in him. Walter would have begun to question the murder.

*

Subdued, terrified – pulled from a fitful sleep at 0347 hours – Gabrielle stared emptily at the cognac in her glass. She knew she must say something, that they had to have answers.

‘Drink it!’ said Boemelburg using French.

Anger flared. ‘Why should I? I don’t want it! I want a robe – something to cover these … these pyjamas which are not my own.’

A hand was raised. She wouldn’t duck. She would take the blow and rebound from it.

The hand was halted in mid-air.

‘Now drink it,’ grunted Boemelburg.

The cognac was the Vieille Réserve. Was he certain it would make her sick? ‘We didn’t kill the Spade, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ she said ashenly. ‘We had no reason to. I’ve never met him. Tshaya …’

‘How could she have tied him down like that if alone?’ demanded Engelmann in deutsch.

An irritated shrug was all she would offer.

‘The Gypsy wasn’t with her. He was in hiding, was he not?’ said Boemelburg quietly.

Ah damn him. ‘I don’t know. How could I?’ she winced.

Her throat constricted. ‘The Spade was useful to us,’ said Boemelburg, reverting to French, ‘but now that he’s gone, you and the others are our only leads.’

‘Then bring us all together, Sturmbannführer. Let us tell you what we know. We’ll help you in any way we can,’ she pleaded.

‘Where were you last Wednesday night?’ he asked flatly.

Herr Engelmann was incensed at the continued use of French. ‘I … I was at the Club Mirage.’

‘And during your breaks?’ asked Boemelburg.

‘In my dressing-room. Your … your Listeners should have a record of it.’

‘Those tapes are mostly silent.’

‘Then please ask the Rivard brothers, the owners. I did not leave until after the curfew had ended at five on Thursday morning as you well know.’

‘The explosives …’

‘She’s lying,’ said Engelmann in deutsch. ‘There were no other terrorists. She went willingly with De Vries to the quarry.’

‘Bitte, ja? Herr Max. I wish to get a sense of things. You will have your chance with her, never fear.’

‘There … there were six of them, Sturmbannführer, and I am certain one of the three who came with us mentioned a campsite in a forest, at some ruins. I swear it. I wouldn’t lie to you. There … there is too much for me to lose.’

‘The Château Thériault and your son.’

‘Yes.’

More cognac was called for and again she found herself staring at it and unable to lift her eyes to him.

‘Did he scream?’ asked Boemelburg.

She leapt. Her drink was spilled. ‘He … he must have,’ she blurted, forcing herself not to burst into tears. ‘The … the rabbits shriek when blinded. It’s a despicable practice and, yes, I’ve seen it done.’

Ah Sweet Jésus, save her now, she thought, quickly draining the refill he had given her.

‘Why will you not co-operate?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want to see you hurt, Mademoiselle Arcuri. The people who do those things are not nice.’

She tried to speak but couldn’t. Furious with her, he told Engelmann to bring the veterinarian. ‘You, go and sit on the bed and keep silent.’

Pale and badly shaken, Suzanne-Cécilia was hustled into the room and thrown into the chair. Terrified, she tried to make herself as small as possible but they shone the light on her. The nightgown she wore was thin and someone else’s. Wounded, her dark brown eyes lifted furtively to them only to duck away as she was struck once, twice, three times, not knowing what had been said to them, not even knowing if she had been betrayed.

The thick auburn hair was dishevelled. The long lashes and perfect eyebrows were knitted as she cringed in pain, Gabrielle realizing in that moment that Céci had earlier worn Marianne St-Cyr’s clothes and that they had fitted her perfectly.

It was a silly thought and such jealousy had no meaning here.

‘Je suit partout, madame,’ said Boemelburg quietly.

‘Oui?’ she blurted, blood trickling down her chin, the fear in her wounded eyes all too clear.

‘At 1630 hours Thursday a woman telephoned them to report that she had “information on the whereabouts of the estranged wife of Henri Doucette”.’

‘And?’ she asked, biting off the word.

‘Did you or did you not give them the address they then printed?’

She sucked in a breath and wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘“Estranged”, it’s a big word for an anonymous informer to use.’

Verdammt! he’d have to cut to where it would hurt. ‘Your husband, madame?’

‘My dead husband, yes?’ she blurted in tears.

‘Your wireless code was similar to that of his unit during the invasion. It was modified but followed the pattern of those advocated by Delastelle.’

Ah no, the book … ‘Honoré told me very little about his life in the army. If his code, or one like it was being used by whomever hid that wireless set in my zebra house – and I’m not saying there was a wireless set there – I … why I know nothing of it. How could I?’ She wiped blood from her lips and nose with the back of a hand that trembled. Smarting, she blinked her eyes to clear them but could not seem to stop herself from shaking.

Engelmann passed in front of the lamp to throw his shadow over her. Then he stepped behind her and she had to ask herself what was he going to do now?

‘Your student days,’ breathed Boemelburg. ‘One of your professors mentions “a remarkable ability with electronics”.’

‘I …’ she began, only to flinch as she felt Herr Engelmann’s hands brush the back of her neck. ‘I was young. I was interested in everything. It … it was just something to do.’ She shook him off.

‘But when asked, the professor was quite convinced you could have built a wireless set and would have had no trouble in operating it. “As a student, Madame Lemaire belonged to a group we called the Cricket Talkers, the Society for the Improvement of Wireless Transmission.”’

‘But … but why would he have referred to me as Madame when I was to him unmarried at the time?’

Tears were blinked away. Verdammt! why would she not confess without the use of reinforced interrogation? ‘The questioner gave him your married name,’ snapped Boemelburg gruffly.

‘Then he should have used Carrière, Sturmbannführer. My father is a pharmacist, a gold medallist, as is my mother. This professor you speak of did not know me. If he had, he would have shaken his head in despair at the memory of all my questions, and would have referred to me as Céci or la petite espiègle.’

The little imp! Furious with her, Boemelburg grabbed the front of her nightgown and, bunching it up, shoved his fist under her chin so that she was pushed back into Herr Engelmann. ‘Bring the other one!’ he shrieked.

The left side of Nana’s face was very red and swollen. Her lips were bleeding again. The bruises on her neck were darker, bigger. Violently she was thrown into the light. The nightgown had been torn and hung by a single shoulder strap. She’d been banged up against a wall and had been struck repeatedly.

‘I’m your only link,’ she hissed, yanking herself free of Engelmann. ‘I may even know where Janwillem is hiding, but as long as I live I will tell you nothing!’

Ah nom de Dieu, winced Gabrielle.

‘Leave us. Get out!’ he shouted in deutsch at Engelmann, and when the door was closed, took a moment to study these three. Everything in him said that things were not as they should be. The wireless signals, the Gypsy, the robberies, each of which must have been well surveyed beforehand. The murder of the Spade … the death of Hans Wehrle … Berlin were demanding an end to things. Himmler had taken a personal interest and had been shrieking for blood.

Calming himself, Boemelburg indicated they should sit together on one of the couches. Cursing them silently, he gave them each some of the cognac. ‘Now tell me’, he breathed, ‘where Dr Vries and his woman are hiding. Do it, damn you, or I swear I will have you taken from this house and given over to those who would like nothing better than to strip you naked and beat you until the answers gurgle from your battered lips and punctured lungs.’

Ah Jésus … ‘If … if we knew …’ began Suzanne-Cécilia only to feel Gabrielle’s warning hand on her arm.

‘Nana …’ Gabrielle tried to find her voice. ‘When … when Janwillem left you in the spring of 1938 you had just discovered you were pregnant. Do you remember we met at the Café de la Paix? You were so upset, chérie. You thought Tshaya must have come back into his life and that he was staying with her father’s kumpania. A woods to the west of Paris, some ruins – I think you said it was at an old monastery, or what was left of one.’

Nana stared at her cognac and tilted the glass to let some of it run over her fingers, but if she thought the Vieille Réserve a deliberate reminder of the Spade’s murder, she gave no indication of this.

She bathed her lips and indicated Céci should do the same.

‘That … that was all I knew at the time,’ she said. ‘A place the gypsies had been going to for centuries but one, yes, that the Deuxiéme bureau des nomades knew nothing of.’

There, she would let this Gestapo pig digest the crumb she had given him.

His watery blue eyes sought her out. ‘Are we to search every woods to the west of the city?’ he asked blandly.

‘Only those with ruins,’ she countered swiftly. ‘I don’t like being hit, Sturmbannführer, nor having my nightclothes ripped from me, nor do I like being nearly drowned when a few sensible questions calmly given are all that is necessary. Janwillem is not himself, not any more, but your people and the Norwegians before them kept him in prison so long he can only think of himself as a gypsy and therefore at complete odds with the rest of us. Get that into your head. You’re a Gajo; he’s now of the Rom completely.’

‘Versailles,’ hazarded Boemelburg only to see her vehemently shake her head and hear her acidly toss the words at him. ‘It’s too popular, too fashionable, particularly these days.’

‘Then try to think. Try to give us a little more.’

‘So that the guillotine or the axe might fall on a neck whose head was empty?’

He sighed. ‘That temper of yours is far too swift for your own good. If you and your friends are innocent, I will personally see that you are cleared of all charges. You have my word on it.’

Is it as good as your Führer’s? she silently asked. Will you apologize for what you’ve done to us? ‘Agreed,’ she said but did not try to smile.

He gave her a moment. Gabrielle took her by the hand. ‘A monastery … You told me the gypsies always marked the way they had travelled by using special signs. You wanted us to look for Janwillem, Nana. You were certain that together we could find him.’

‘The patterans,’ she said. ‘The trident, the cross – heaps of leaves or grass at a corner of a crossroads, branches piled up in winter.’

‘The swastika,’ said Suzanne-Cécilia. ‘I remember once reading of it. An ancient symbol from India which was adopted and used by the gypsies in their wanderings. The gypsies …’

‘Don’t you dare taunt me, madame. And as for you.’ He looked at Nana. ‘De Vries would not have marked his trail this time.’

‘Not unless he wanted other gypsies to follow and to gather,’ said Nana softly.

‘For what purpose?’ he asked.

She let him have it. ‘Sabotage, since the times are no longer ordinary and there are so few of their people left. He has everything he needs, hasn’t he?’

‘Think, Nana,’ urged Gabrielle quickly interceding. ‘A conservatory – didn’t he once tell you of one?’

‘A house that had been fashionable in its day,’ added Suzanne-Cécilia, ‘but one which, on the death of its owner, had been left to a religious order.’

‘An arcade,’ said Nana. ‘An inner courtyard. Janwillem … I once overheard him saying to someone on the telephone that they should meet in the conservatory where … where the Prussian general had established his personal latrine during the war of 1870-71. The house is a former villa, Sturmbannführer, within whose stairwells the ceilings are still decorated with the same paintings of swallows that were there in the fourteenth century. There is a chapel. A maze of corridors connect innumerable bedchambers, since cut up into the more recent cells of the monks who have now long departed. Above the rooms and corridors there are gaping holes in the roof.’

‘Would it be in or near the Forêt de Marly-le-Roi, Nana?’ asked Gabrielle.

She didn’t look at any of them but said faintly, ‘Yes, that is where it is. L’Abbaye des frères bienveillants.’

The Abbey of the Benevolent Friars. ‘Were you ever there?’ asked Boemelburg.

Her gaze met his fully and she had to ask herself, Does he know of it after all? Has he suddenly remembered it?

‘Once and now … now I have given him to you and may my son and God Himself forgive me.’

In the pitch darkness before dawn, Hermann was silent. The rue Laurence-Savart had barely awakened. The Citroën was freezing. ‘Didn’t you sleep at all?’ asked St-Cyr.

‘A couple of hours.’

‘And Giselle, is she still determined to throw herself from the belfries of the Notre-Dame?’

‘What …? Oh, Giselle. A false alarm. Cramps, all that sort of thing. Her cycle’s way out of tune, but she’s still determined to kill herself, though she says she’ll wait to see if we return.’

‘And Oona?’ asked St-Cyr sadly.

‘Still thinks she’ll drown herself but admits it will be difficult cutting a hole through the ice without an axe.’

‘Bon! That should slow her up. Now why don’t you tell me what’s really bothering you? No baby on the way? I would have thought you’d be …’

‘Celebrating? Then read this. I got it from a friend of a friend at Gestapo Central but had to pay the lousy son of a bitch 10,000 for it.’

‘Francs?’

‘Idiot! Reichskassenscheine. Suddenly nobody wants francs any more, not since von Paulus stopped being supplied. There’s a rumour he told the Führer he was going to have to throw in the towel.’

Stalingrad … The Sixth Army … A hundred thousand men at least and had the pendulum finally begun to swing the other way? Berlin would be enraged.

The flimsy slip of paper was a copy of a telex from Himmler to Boemelburg and it had come in at 0530 hours, not ten minutes ago. SETTLE IT – that was all there was to the message, but the intended inference was Befehl ist Befehl, an order is an order.

‘Jacqmain blows his head off. The Spade is torched. Wehrle takes cyanide. Death follows on death but all Gestapo Paris-Central and the SS over in Saint-Cloud have to show for it is a shortage of at least 100,000,000 francs, an obvious absence of cyanide and explosives, and three women in their nightgowns, each of whom steadfastly claims her innocence! The Chief hasn’t any other choice. I’m telling you, Louis, it’s us or them. They’re terrorists.’

‘We can’t turn them in!’ It was a cry.

‘Look, I know that. I just had to get it clear with you because now it’ll have to be the five of us against all of them.’

‘Snipers?’

‘Or grenades but, yes, it’s the thought of snipers that worries me the most. Killed while attempting to apprehend the Gypsy! You, me, the three of them and it’s … why then it’s all settled and no one has to fuss about us any more. Hell, we only look after common crime. No one cares about that, not with all the really big crime that’s going on!’

‘And we’ve crossed the SS once too often.’

St-Cyr wet his lips in uncertainty as he searched the darkness ahead. ‘What did Boemelburg send the Reichsminister to engender such a response?’

‘That he wasn’t sure of our loyalties, nor those of the three suspects.’

There was a sigh. ‘Then they really do intend to kill us. It’s to be a classic Gestapo-SS ploy.’

Kohler tossed his hands in despair. ‘And we’re going to have to go in there after the Gypsy knowing there’s a gun at our backs and that the trigger will be pulled!’

Or the grenade thrown …

It wasn’t fair. It was criminal! but there was nothing they could do. ‘We’re already as good as dead. There will be mountains of white silk lilies and carnations for Gabrielle and her friends. Their coffins will be draped with swastikas. Tears will be shed wherever soldiers wait, and Goebbels will have a field day with it. Loyal French women killed in the act of assisting the Reich!’

Snow-covered, the lane passed through magnificent stands of oak and beech whose trunks stood tall and sentinel in the hushed and frozen air. The ruins were not within the Forêt de Marly-le-Roi, but were just on its outskirts and well to the north-west of the Joyenval crossroads.

From where he stood beside Boemelburg’s car, St-Cyr could not yet see them. Silently, as before an assault, heavily armed troops in their white, padded parkas, hoods and overtrousers fanned out to take up positions. Perhaps a platoon in number, perhaps two squads and some.

Uncertain of what lay ahead, Gabrielle looked steadily at him from the other side of the car; Suzanne-Cécilia also. From the north, another approach was being made. But there, the troops would have to pass through several hectares where willow shoots had been harvested down through the centuries for basket-making and other wickerwork. There, with backs to the thickets, Nana Thélème and Hermann would have to cross a frozen brook and fields and then make their way uphill through the abbey’s former gardens to the ruins.

The Forêt occupied a low and hilly plateau which had once bordered the ancestral Seine; the ruins were downhill of it on a lesser rise. Beyond them, in the lowlands, there was a brook and, beyond this, the willow shoots. It was, for De Vries and Tshaya and, in the past, the gypsy caravans, a perfect location. Isolated yet within twenty-five kilometres of Paris and all but surrounded by forest, copse or low-lying field and farm.

Boemelburg didn’t even bother to get out of the car. ‘Louis, we’ll give you two hours before we move in. Warn us if he’s wired it. Enough good men have already been lost. Berlin are adamant. We can’t spare any more.’

‘But there are at least three others with them, Walter?’

‘Talk to them. Convince them to come out. If they throw down their arms, they’ll be deported. That’s the best I can do.’

‘And if they refuse?’

‘We’ll come in and get you.’

‘Am I not even to be allowed my gun?’

‘We want to talk to them, Louis. I’m sorry.’

‘And Hermann?’ The bags below Walter’s eyes seemed bigger, sadder, more jaundiced in the grey light.

‘No weapon either. Signal twice with the white flag when you’ve contacted De Vries, and three times when you’re ready to bring him and the others out. If they try to make a break for it, we’ll get them.’

‘There’s no need for Gabrielle and Madame Lemaire to come with me. Why not keep them here?’

Must Louis make things difficult? ‘They’ll soften them. Their presence will make De Vries less cautious and more open to talking.’ Twice now Louis had noticed the rifles the snipers would use and had frantically torn his gaze from them. Had he realized what was to happen?

‘And if he’s not there? If there’s no one?’ leapt St-Cyr.

‘We’ll deal with that when we come to it.’

‘Then it’s au revoir’ he said, dismayed.

‘Bonne chance.’

Sickened by what was to happen – betrayed, angry – he took Gabrielle and Suzanne-Cécilia by an arm. As they picked their way among the trees and underbrush, his spine was tense. If he could he would shove each of them aside and try to cover for them as they scrambled away.

But it would do no good. They’d all be taken. ‘Did you kill the Spade?’ he asked. There was a shallow ravine they had to cross and he was helping them into this. Gabrielle met his gaze.

‘Why do you ask? Why do you doubt me so?’

Suzanne-Cécilia said, ‘There is no way we could have, Inspector.’

‘It’s Chief Inspector,’ he replied impatiently. ‘Gestapo surveillance on you both was not in any way complete until after you had turned yourself in, Gabrielle. Not until Thursday afternoon. Did you pierce his eyes?’

‘Is this what you believe of me, Jean-Louis?’

They would tell him nothing. They would each be shot – would he hear the sniper’s gun? he wondered. Would he see them throw up their arms and open their mouths to cry out silently in shocked surprise even as they crumpled to the ground, or would they die from a grenade?

‘I need to know. I cannot find it in me to believe any of you capable of such cruelty but the detective in me says I could be wrong.’

Silence followed the outburst. Gabrielle was a good head taller than either of them and easily pulled herself out of the ravine. Suzanne-Cécilia remained behind and when the two of them waited, looking down at her, Céci, disheartened and afraid, looked up to say, ‘They’re going to kill us, aren’t they, Jean-Louis?’

In despair he looked away to where the men could no longer be seen. ‘Yes.’

Hurriedly she crossed herself and kissed her fingertips, having pulled off Marianne’s mitten to do so. ‘I’ve not killed anyone,’ she said, ‘but since it seems a time for confessions, I would have slept with you willingly in that house of your mother’s we shared so briefly.’

‘I knew it!’ said Gabrielle. ‘You can’t be trusted, can you, Céci?’

‘Then the sous-directeur of Cartier’s was not your lover?’

‘M. Laviolette? Me? I simply rented the house from him to be closer to the wireless. He was tempted to believe an affair possible. He was always prepared and would try to press the issue but … Ah! what can a woman say?’

Kneeling, reaching out to her, he wrapped a hand about her arm and pulled her up, and for a moment the two of them knelt facing each other, Gabrielle looking uncertainly towards the troops, then to them and then towards the ruins which could not yet be seen. ‘Have I lost you, Jean-Louis?’ she asked, but heard no answer, simply his, ‘Where, then, did you hide the wireless set?’

His eyes were so large and deeply brown, soft, warm, full of concern and compassion for them, and for herself, thought Suzanne-Cécilia. ‘In the holding tanks below the pens of the wild pigs. They are not to be emptied until spring but by then it won’t matter will it?’

He pulled off a glove to gently touch her swollen cheek and to refix the sticking plaster which had come loose over the bridge of her nose. ‘I enjoyed our moment, even as I have enjoyed those I have shared with your amie de guerre. Now, please, let us go forward. To stay here is to invite the bullet or the grenade. Hermann and Nana may already have been killed.’

‘But … but we have heard nothing? No shots …?’ blurted Suzanne-Cécilia.

‘She’s right, Jean-Louis,’ said Gabrielle more harshly than she wanted, for this was love she was seeing before her and she knew she could not fight it but must let it happen.

The willows had been a bugger to get through. Not copsed since before the Defeat, they offered superb cover. But now there was open space, now snow-covered fields of stubble sloped down to the brook in its swale before rising gently up to the ruins.

Perhaps eight hectares had been enclosed by the abbey’s outer walls, perhaps a little more. It was hard to tell, for the walls had fallen in several places offering perfect defensive and sentry positions. Forest and brush had long ago encroached on an orchard that could now hold terrorists. Ah Gott im Himmel!

Desperately looking for a way out, Kohler stood beside Nana Thélème. The men, supremely confident and thoroughly experienced, had taken up their positions. The dogs they had brought with them were muzzled but intently searched the lie of the land as he did.

There wasn’t a sound. Breath steamed in the air.

‘At least let us have a look, eh?’ he said to the lieutenant in charge. Under the padded white parka, the bastard wore the ribbon of the Winterschlacht im Osten 1941/42, the ‘Frozen Meat Medal’. He had lost his right leg to the Russians but had got through the willow shoots easily enough on that prosthesis of his.

The silver wound badge and both the EK2 and EK1 were pinned to that same tunic, the Eiserne Kreuz, the Iron Cross.

Max Engelmann and the SS-Untersturmführer Schacht had chosen to wait in the Citroën. Schacht had even asked for the keys ‘in case of problems’. Goodbye car, goodbye trouble.

Given the field glasses, Kohler searched the ruins for any sign of life.

‘Janwillem and Tshaya won’t have built up the fire during the day,’ confided Nana sadly.

The belfry of the chapel dominated everything. From there, the abbey’s walls enclosed a substantial inner courtyard in which there were now large trees. He could make out nothing of the arcades at ground level, could get only glimpses of gaping windows and holes in the roof above them. Once stuccoed, the thick grey limestone of the walls was often exposed in ragged patches and where not, the yellowness of age and dampness remained.

A lane, unused in today’s approaches, could just be made out leading in from a gap in the forest to the west. Men would be covering it, should De Vries and his band attempt a break-out.

‘That is enough, ja?’ said the lieutenant.

Kohler handed the glasses back to him. ‘Your rifle’s Russian. Hey, my boys were both killed at Stalingrad. I wonder if it was with one of those?’

‘A lady’s gun. The Soviets always make a big thing of their women snipers but the truth is, the weapon doesn’t stand up to field use.’

‘May I?’ asked Kohler, and not waiting for an answer, took the rifle from him to examine its telescopic sight. ‘What’s it set for?’

‘1300 metres,’ came the grim and wary answer.

The distance from here to the outer walls? wondered Kohler. The SVT40, the self-loading Tokarev, had a ten-round detachable box and used 7.62 mm cartridges. To the sniper, its semiautomatic action’s main advantage was that a second shot could be rapidly got off without moving the cheek from the stock to reload. ‘It seems we can’t make anything ourselves any more,’ he grumbled. ‘Our Gewehr 41s are simply copies of this.’

‘But better. Now give it back to me, ja? und go. Already we are a little behind schedule.’

‘Just let me tie my shoelace. Here, Nana, would you hold this?’

Swiftly Kohler turned aside to give the rifle to her. The lieutenant made a move to get round him, but the muzzle of a 9 mm Beretta was pushing his chin up.

The gun had been strapped to a leg …

‘Say nothing, my friend,’ breathed Kohler. ‘Just walk out there as if there’s been a little change of plan and you’re going to check out the ruins with us. Nana, put the rifle under your coat, the muzzle down. Leave only one button done up so that you can hand it to me quickly.’

‘You won’t get away with this!’ seethed the lieutenant.

‘Hey, relax. We already have.’

Where the forest ended, the walls began. Trapped, St-Cyr looked anxiously back towards the troops and Boemelburg’s car, but there was no sign of anyone, so well were the men hidden.

Then he realized tears were misting his eyes and lamely said to the others, ‘This way, I think.’

Merde, it was terrible knowing the shots could come at any moment. Why do they not get it over with then? he demanded. Why must they torment us like this?

‘Janwillem De Vries was the “package”, wasn’t he?’ he said bitterly to Gabrielle who was in front of him. Suzanne-Cécilia had fallen back a little. ‘When I talked to René Yvon-Paul, he told me things were far too difficult for them. After De Vries had done all the robberies you had arranged for him, he was to have been taken to Château Thériault to meet up with the local Resistance. From there, what was it to have been?’

Neither of them replied. Gabrielle pulled off one of her mittens to break a small icicle from the lip of a rocky ledge. It was so beautiful.

‘Your Vouvray people were to have taken the Gyspy where?’ he demanded. ‘Was he to meet his next contact under the tail of the bronze horse?’

Lyon was a centre of the Resistance and one of their meeting-places, known just as he had given it, was near the equestrian statue of Louis XIV in place Bellecour, but how had Jean-Louis learned of it? ‘Lyon is far too dangerous now,’ she said. ‘Our contacts in Vouvray had agreed to take him through Château-roux to Limoges, Toulouse and Narbonne.’

‘And then?’ he asked, subdued.

It was Suzanne-Cécilia who said, ‘Perpignan and then into Andorra.’

‘Via the tobacco smugglers of Las Pscalades?’ he asked.

‘And from there into Spain to Seo de Urgel and Córdoba.’

The truth at last. ‘Then Gibralter,’ he sighed. ‘The diamonds would have been proof enough of the Reich’s desperate need for them. It’s a tragedy it went so badly, but what I cannot forgive is that you didn’t take Hermann and myself into your confidence. We could have helped!’

He was really upset and was needing answers. ‘I tried to keep you both out of it,’ said Gabrielle sadly. ‘I knew that Hermann would be placed in an untenable position, and with him, Giselle and Oona. Oh for sure, I had faith in him but even so, it was not simply up to me. The decision had to come from all of us.’

‘We were striking a fantastic blow for France, Jean-Louis,’ said Suzanne-Cécilia earnestly.

‘And the money the Gypsy stole? Was it to have funded the Resistance?’

Must he press so hard? wondered Gabrielle, dismayed to be facing him like this. ‘They were to have taken it south. Eventually it was to have reached the maquis of the Auvergne and those in the Haute Savoie.’

‘They are desperate for funds,’ confided Suzanne-Cécilia, hesitantly reaching out to him. ‘We … we had worked it all out. At least 100,000,000. It’s a lot, but …’ Hastily she wiped away her tears. ‘But it wasn’t to be.’

‘Did the Spade learn of your plans?’ he asked.

‘Why must you keep harping about that one?’ demanded Gabrielle, in tears herself.

‘Did Tshaya tell him of what Janwillem De Vries knew of us – is this what you’re thinking?’ blurted Suzanne-Cécilia.

‘You know that is what I wondering. Mon Dieu, why must you both be so stubborn? Why can you not tell me everything now? The Gypsy is in there among the ruins with others. He’ll have wired the place, will have created a last refuge, lines of defence, escape routes most certainly.’

‘Perhaps, then, you had best ask him when we find him,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Perhaps either he or Tshaya will tell you so that you … you will not believe us guilty of such a sadistic murder!’

‘The Generalmajor Wehrle had no choice but to kill himself,’ interjected Suzanne-Cécilia earnestly. ‘Once he learned Nana was seriously under suspicion, and then of Gabrielle’s arrest and the raid on my wireless set, he knew precisely what awaited him at the hands of his fellow Nazis.’

Swiftly he asked which of them had given Wehrle the cyanide. ‘Answer me, damn you. Men like Wehrle wouldn’t have been issued such a thing.’

They said no more, these two résistants. Taking each other by the hand, they walked on ahead of him until coming to a gap in the wall. Then they were lost to view and he was left to face the forest and his doubts, to search, to try to find the rifle that had marked him down.

When no shot was fired, he made his way along to the gap and stepped through it to find them waiting for him. Both were desperately afraid of what must lie ahead. Both anxiously swept their eyes over the trees and brush that lay before them until the ruins were reached.

‘Wehrle had ordered caviar and champagne again,’ he said, ‘but Nana couldn’t understand his having done so since it automatically implicated her in his death and in everything else. Perhaps he blamed her for betraying him and helping the Gypsy, perhaps he merely wished to atone for the mistake he had made and was thinking of the well-being of loved ones in the Reich, but someone had to have given him the cyanide.’

‘And?’ asked Gabrielle sharply.

He shrugged. He said, ‘That leaves only the two of you.’

‘Which implies we robbed Nana’s former villa in Saint-Cloud – is this what you are thinking, Jean-Louis? A stronghold of the SS. The headquarters of their Sonderkommando?’

‘Didn’t Janwillem and Tshaya rob it?’ demanded Suzanne-Cécilia.

‘They wouldn’t have given Wehrle the cyanide. They had no reason to do so. Having robbed him, what more need of him had they?’

It was Gabrielle who said, ‘The SS could have taken him aside and given it to him with an ultimatum.’

‘But … but they showed no signs of having done so?’ he said, looking earnestly from one to the other of them.

‘He doesn’t realize we’re in a war,’ blurted Suzanne-Cécilia. ‘He has failed entirely to understand us!’

‘Then perhaps he had best talk to Nana. Perhaps Nana can tell him the things he so desperately wants to know.’

Two shots rang out. Two more soon followed but by then they were running towards the sounds only to now hear the fierce barking of dogs. ‘Hermann …’ began St-Cyr. ‘H … e … r … mann!’

Widely spaced from one another across the open expanse of fields, three of the dogs lay dead in the snow.

Kohler waited for the others to be released. Lying flat on his stomach, his legs spread, he held the rifle ready. ‘Let the lieutenant go,’ he said, not looking back to where Nana kept the Beretta on the man. ‘Take his ammunition pouch. Hey, mein Kamerad, we want no trouble with any of you. This is between Herr Engelmann, myself and the SS-Untersturmführer Schacht. Tell your men to hold the rest of the dogs and to send those two up to us.’

‘You are to be allowed to enter the ruins alone. No one else is to go with you. I have my orders.’

‘Fuck your orders. We’ve now warned the sons of bitches we’re here and they’re surrounded, eh? The Gypsy will have wired those ruins so well we can’t have the dogs setting them off. I’ll need the extra hands and eyes.’

‘The dogs were let go because you took me hostage. They were not to have been released unless all else had failed and you hadn’t been able to bring the Gypsy and his woman out.’

‘And if we had?’ asked Kohler, taking aim again. ‘You’d have dropped each of us, eh? and would have left De Vries to the last.’

‘And then released the dogs to stop him from running,’ said Nana in deutsch. ‘Bitte, Herr Leutnant, I do not want to kill you or anyone. This whole thing is a tragic mistake. Herr Engelmann and the Untersturmführer are very wrong about us and are the ones to blame for what the Gypsy has done.’

The pistol was too tightly gripped. Kohler was pinned down …

‘I will shoot you if I have to,’ she said. ‘You see, they have left us no choice. Now go, please, before I do.’

Engelmann had come to the edge of the willows. One of the dogs strained at the leash he held.

With a single shot, Kohler hit the animal in the chest, causing it to rear up suddenly on its hind legs and to fall back. Herr Max scrambled for cover.

‘Tell Gestapo Boemelburg I could have dropped that man had I wanted to. The rifle’s good but it pulls a little towards the top left quadrant. Hey, tell the boys I like dogs and hated to shoot them. They were beautiful animals.’

‘I’ll tell him and I’ll try to keep the other two back.’

‘Good.’

They watched as he walked down towards the brook. He held up his arms and spread them widely to signal that no one should do anything until he got there. Without a word, Kohler got up and together with Nana ran for cover behind the wall.

‘Now start filling me in on De Vries,’ he said, not letting her get free of him. ‘And don’t stop until I know how the son of a bitch will think and what he’ll do and have done.’

‘And Tshaya?’ she asked, her dark eyes registering dismay as he took the pistol from her. ‘She hates me. She’ll try to kill me. She can use explosives just as well as Janwillem but is of the Rom and knows their ways and these ruins, so will have the others at her beck and call.’

‘Look, just fill me in on the two of them and on this place.’

‘But … but I haven’t been here in years. I wouldn’t know where to begin. He’s crazy. There are so many places … He’s not the same as the man I once knew. He’s …’

She felt Kohler’s fingers gently touch her lips; his thumb, her tears. ‘Listen,’ he whispered.

It was Louis. Louis was calling to him. Louis sounded trapped and in despair but was a long way off.

‘He’s inside the ruins, in the great hall,’ said Nana sadly. ‘That is where the gypsies gathered to hold their feasts and the Kris Romani, the trials at which all serious offences and conflicts within the kumpania were settled by the elders. He’s found something and is trying to warn you of it.’

A trial … Ah, Christ!

The hall, where the monks had once dined, was long and huge, its ceiling high. And from where there had been leaded glass in more recent years, the grey light of day entered under the arcade outside to throw pale shafts across the littered floor.

Snow had been swept in by the wind. Rags, cushions, blankets, bits of tattered, faded carpet lay among scattered eiderdowns whose feathers were teased by the wind and whose carmine, beige or white silk coverlets, with a black embroidery of flowered designs, had been torn.

Overturned cooking cauldrons were beside the fourteenth-century fireplace. An iron tripod still stood over long-dead ashes. There was broken furniture, some of it still bearing ancient fabrics and leaking horsehair. There were carved oak chairs with no legs, chairs with two or three … Benches, a narrow wooden bed, a wicker chaise-longue, a broken card table … Scatterings of dresses, the skirts wine purple, deep red and brown, all voluminous, the blouses once white and loose and low-cut.

A faded yellow kerchief that would have been tied around a boy’s neck lay next to the diklo, the headscarf in magenta which had once covered the long and braided, glossy, blue-black hair of his mother.

There were broken wine bottles, kicked-over wooden water buckets, battered fedoras, old suit jackets, horseshoes, horse harness, tarpaulins, anvils, the leather bellows of a simple but effective forge …

Jars of pickled cucumbers, those of hot red peppers in vinegar.

‘August 1941 …’ St-Cyr heard himself sadly exhaling the words. ‘Tshaya, daughter of the horse trader Tshurkina la Marako who was deported to Buchenwald 14 September of that year with all members of his kumpania except herself.’

‘Jean-Louis …’ began Gabrielle only to hear him caution her with, ‘Wait, please. What have we come upon?’

The ancient leather trunks and suitcases, the wooden boxes, had all been opened and dumped in a mad search for gold coins. The men would have been herded to one end of the hall, the women and children to the other. Sandals, broken shoes, sabots, old rubber boots – all of it was here.

Stripped of their gold, the gypsies had been loaded on to lorries and taken from this place.

And now? he asked himself.

He picked up a photograph from among the scattered hundreds. The long, drooping moustache, heavy gold rings, gold coins hanging from the watch chain across the waistcoat, fedora, crumpled dark suit jacket, wide corduroy trousers and riding boots were those of a Rom Baro. ‘Tshaya’s father,’ he said. A sweat-stained silk kerchief of dark colour was knotted around the neck.

‘Did she turn them all in?’ he asked of Tshaya. ‘Did that husband of hers force her to tell him where her family was in hiding? Is this why the Spade was murdered in such a horrible fashion?’

He took a moment and then told them the worst of his thoughts. ‘Boemelburg must have known of the round-up and yet has said nothing of it to us.’ Instead, Walter had let him and Hermann believe the Gestapo and the SS had had no prior knowledge of this place or of what had happened here.

Some granular snow struck the shattered remains of a window, startling them. Suzanne-Cécilia found his hand to grip it tightly. Gabrielle moved closer.

‘There are no recent tracks,’ he said emptily. ‘Has no one been in here since it happened?’

‘The chapel then,’ said Gabrielle in a whisper. ‘Perhaps they are using it.’

‘For what!’ he asked, alarmed.

‘For her trial and … and as a last redoubt.’

‘But … but how is it that you know of this?’ he bleated.

‘I don’t. I’m only suggesting it.’

For two days he and Hermann had been absent from Paris. Gestapo surveillance of the réseau had been slack and had only been stepped up on their return. Had this given Gabrielle and the others an opportunity to travel unnoticed?

The Spade had been murdered; the Generalmajor had been given a cyanide capsule and told what? he wondered. The truth!

‘Where is the chapel?’ he asked, sickened by his thoughts. ‘Show me, please.’

Neither of these two résistants argued with him. In single file, with Gabrielle leading, they picked their way among the rubbish to a far portal. He did not know if Hermann and Nana had been killed, only that the shots they had heard had come from a rifle.

And now? he asked himself. What will we find?

Half hidden among the barren branches and undergrowth, and at a distance of perhaps 200 metres, the bleached grey ribs of six large caravans stared emptily at the sky. Tensely Kohler let his gaze sift questioningly over them, understanding only too well what must have happened. There had been no recent tracks in the overgrown orchard and gardens, no tripwires, not even snares for rabbits or signs of wood-gathering.

The ruins just beyond the caravans were quiet. The air was clean and sharp – there wasn’t a hint of hastily extinguished cooking fires nor of tethered horses.

Nana Thélème could not seem to take her eyes from the caravans. ‘There is scattered clothing,’ she said hesitantly.

They could go round the carvans, they could head for them. The belfry of the chapel was some distance to their right. She started for it. He heard her suck in a startled breath when held back by him.

‘Were the girls and young women raped?’ he asked.

Stiffening, she answered fiercely, ‘How could I possibly know?’

‘Let’s have a look at what’s left. Now start telling me about De Vries, like I asked. I want everything.’

‘He … he was always gentle and kind and had such a sense of humour but was mischievous. He … he loved Tshaya’s father as his own and was adopted by him.’

‘And Tshaya – how did he feel towards her?’

‘She was forbidden. She was not for him. When she was fourteen her father agreed to marry her off to someone younger from a neighbouring kumpania. They were third cousins, I think. Tshaya wanted no part of the boy but the bride-price had been paid and was soon spent lavishly on drink and food to celebrate.’

Kohler helped her over some fallen branches. ‘So she ran off to Paris after Janwillem.’

‘At the age of fifteen, and has been running after him ever since.’

Kohler pulled her to a stop. ‘She disgraced her family yet they took her back when the Spade came for her?’

Nana’s head was shaken. ‘She was considered marhime, as was her family.’

‘So her father let the Spade beat her?’

Why must he demand answers now? ‘Janwillem wasn’t there to stop it, nor do I think he could have, though he always regretted his not having done so.’

A sigh was given. ‘The kumpaniyi gathered and had a trial,’ said Kohler. ‘Her father was a Rom Baro. They threw her out. They banished her but De Vries still loved her.’

‘Not in that way. To him she was like a sister. It was she who wanted him as a woman wants a man.’

‘You’re only saying that because he left you for her.’

‘To commit a robbery, yes, but has he now discovered the truth about her? Has he?’ she demanded.

‘And what of the others who are supposed to be with them? What of the three who went from the quarry to Paris in Gabrielle’s car?’

What of the car and of the explosives? ‘I … I don’t know. I … I wish I did.’

Once among the caravans, it was easy to see what had happened. There were human remains among the bloodstained, torn and rodent-infested eiderdowns and dresses. Some of the braids had come undone, others were tied together …

‘Come on, let’s find Louis and get this over with.’

‘Look, I’m … I’m sorry I spoke out like that. All I want is to see Janwillem a last time. When he hears what I have to tell him, he’ll understand I didn’t betray him, nor would I ever have done such a thing.’

Oslo, 20 April 1938, then the Mollergaten-19, prisoner 3266, cell D2 and cell C27. Well over four years until Herr Max paid visit after visit to finally offer a Gaje deal that couldn’t be refused.

‘He must have told Tshaya we were to have a child and be married. This … this she could not allow.’

With the stirring of the wind, the snow was gently swept across the floor of the arcade. Depressions were soon filled; others uncovered. Footprints led down the length of it to a staircase. St-Cyr hesitated. Alarmed, he strained to listen. There were at least two sets of footprints. Were De Vries and Tshaya waiting for them in the chapel? The others? he asked. Were there tripwires?

Gabrielle’s eyes, of the softest shade of violet, were full of apprehension. Suzanne-Cécilia gazed warily at him, searching for the slightest sign of what? he demanded and wished again that they had confided fully in him and Hermann. Was it doubt she sought? he wondered.

He went on. They had to follow. And when he crouched to pass exploring fingers over one of the footprints, he looked up first to Gabrielle and then to Suzanne-Cécilia with only the heartfelt sadness of a detective doing his job.

‘These are at least two days old,’ he said. Whispering to themselves, they trailed behind – he could hear them doing so. Are there no guns? he cried out silently to them. No other gypsies? Ah damn you, damn you. I thought you were my friends.

Light bathed the little chapel, passing through a ragged hole in its once eloquently decorated ceiling where faint black swallows still flew in premonkish paint.

The rope was coarse, the trailing diklo crimson. The benches were ancient, grey and heavy – carved and covered with dust and rubble. A handprint was here, a gap was there. Some of the chairs had had to be moved.

Tshaya stirred but slightly in the softly eddying wind which carried the granules of snow down from the belfry above to pass them over her body. Her hair was long and braided and blue-black but not glossy in this light. Her face was slightly puffed, the expression placid, the brow wide and strong, the jet black eyebrows fierce perhaps but not now, the eyes dark and wide and bulging only slightly, the lips a dark blue. Frozen … the corpse was frozen.

The rope had been thrown up and over a sturdy yet worm-eaten timber. It had been knotted about her throat, the knot placed on the right side so that the head was crooked to the left and the diklo trailed that way and would have caught the saliva as it drained from her mouth.

Thursday … had it been done then? he asked himself.

Her bare feet were together. The ankles had not been tied. Though her wrists had been secured behind her back, it seemed she had put up little if any struggle. Had there been three or more of them and she with no chance of doing so, or had she simply defied them to the last?

There were bloodspots, the petechiae that were caused by ruptured blood vessels immediately below the skin. He looked for mucus which should have issued from her nose, for signs of saliva draining from her mouth – for urine and faeces. Had they all been washed away?

Rigor had set in. Two days at least, he thought. The dark brown skin of her back and buttocks, and of her bare arms and shoulders was blotched and covered with a mass of glistening scars.

‘Help me,’ he said. ‘We must cut her down.’

‘Louis, don’t! Leave her for the Chief. It can’t matter now.’

St-Cyr reached out to him. ‘Merde, I thought you had gone from me. She had had the flu, Hermann. She had not been able to go with Gabrielle and De Vries to the quarry.’

Turning, he said swiftly to Nana, ‘What did you do with the flypapers you bought in Tours? Damn it, you tell me!’

She threw Gabrielle a desperate look. ‘They … they were for the school of dance,’ she tried. ‘Mother … mother wanted them. We can’t get them in Paris any more. I … I bought all I could, thinking I could sell what we didn’t need.’

‘Oh yes, oh yes.’

‘De Vries, Louis. The belfry. We’d better find him and quickly.’

But was the Gypsy still playing with them? wondered St-Cyr sadly. And why had he tried to make it look as if he had hanged Tshaya if not to hide her having first been poisoned, and to indicate she had been punished for betraying her family and himself?

From the belfry there was a clear view of the surrounding countryside. Down from the forest, up from the willows, the men advanced. There was no way of stopping them. If De Vries and the others had rigged the place, several were bound to be killed.

‘Killed, do you understand?’ swore St-Cyr, still demanding answers.

Gabrielle shouted, ‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that!’ Suzanne-Céclia said, ‘Look.’

‘Look where?’ swore Kohler.

‘The inner courtyard. Under the arcade at the far corner.’

Ah nom de Dieu.

Hermann used the telescopic sight. Thinking he was about to shoot at them, the men threw themselves to the ground. Schmeissers opened up. Bullets struck the stone tower. They ducked. They cringed. One of the women shrieked, ‘I’ve been hit!’

Fresh blood spattered the timbered floor next to her. ‘Ah Christ, cut it out!’ cried Kohler, waving the white flag desperately. ‘It’s wired! Stay back!’

Sniper fire singled him out. He ducked. Stone splinters flew. Hesitantly Louis raised the white flag above the lip of the ruined wall. There were gaps through which they could be easily hit.

‘Hermann … Hermann, I think there is a lull.’

Hermann was staring down through the hole in the floor at the corpse. Louis shook him. ‘Here, give me the rifle,’ he said.

‘No. No, I’m better at it than you, eh? Hey, I’ve already had to use it.’

Cautiously he got to his feet, was soon too exposed. At least three of them would have him in their sights. The lieutenant … Herr Max … the SS-Untersturmführer Schacht. Ah bastards … bastards …

Putting the rifle to his shoulder, wrapping the sling around his left arm, he sighted down into the courtyard. Slowly he moved the sight along inside the south arcade until he came to Gabrielle’s car. It was parked in a far corner, tucked beyond brush and tree limbs, and he could just make out De Vries sitting behind the wheel.

‘Kill him,’ swore Louis. ‘You’re going to have to.’

‘There’s a flask of nitro hanging from a cord about his neck. The … the rest of it’s in his lap and on the seat beside him.’

‘Are there others with him?’

‘None that I can see.’

‘Is he going to drive the car along the arcade and into the wall?’

Kohler thumbed the rear lens to clear it of the fog the closeness to his eye had caused. ‘He’s not moving, Louis. Maybe the battery’s dead.’

‘Maybe he’s dead – is this what you’re really saying? Maybe there was no second trip to the quarry. Maybe there were no other “terrorists” to apprehend the car and hitch a ride back to Paris but merely a trip to here … to here, Hermann.’

‘Hang on. Get down.’

There was a blinding flash, a rush of air. Stones, timbers and earth flew up and outwards. The dust was thick. A timber fell, another and another. Someone screamed as she dropped through the floor, someone else cried out, ‘Don’t try to move! I’ve got you!’

It was Gabrielle and she dangled by her coat and scarf and was hanging on to the rope beside Tshaya.

Louis scrambled over to the gap in the floor. Leaning down, flattening himself next to Suzanne-Cécilia, he gasped, ‘Grab me by the ankles. Hermann, help!’

Slowly, gradually Gabrielle was pulled from the corpse and when they had her safely on the floor, he held her tightly and rocked her gently back and forth, saying, ‘Forgive me. Murder is only murder when one is not at war. You had no other choice but to kill or be killed.’

Tears streamed from her. ‘I didn’t want to pierce his eyes, Jean-Louis. I will hate myself for the rest of my days but we had to make it look as though Tshaya had done it. We had to make it look as if Janwillem had tried and convicted her for what she had done.’

Startled, Kohler looked from one to the other of them and then to Suzanne-Cécilia and finally to Nana.

‘My arm,’ she said. ‘It’s shattered. I can’t feel any pain but am so cold.’

For a moment her eyes were clear. ‘The cellars,’ she said and softly smiled at them. ‘The cellars.’

‘Ah merde, Louis, she’s gone.’

There was blood on the snow where Nana lay, and all around her soldiers came and went without regard for her body. They were hurrying to recover the loot from the cellars. Flames towered beyond them. The abbey’s roof and floors threw pillars of smoke and glowing ash high into the winter’s sky.

Kohler put an arm about Suzanne-Cécilia’s and Gabrielle’s shoulders and pulled them close. ‘Hey, hang on, eh? We’re not done yet.’

Tallying the loot, Herr Max had to crouch to thumb through the bundles of banknotes and the jewellery or examine the leather bags and small cardboard boxes in which Wehrle had kept the diamonds. Nearby, the Untersturmführer Schacht stood at the ready with pencil and paper. Both of them were only too anxious to save their own lives.

Boemelburg had given himself distance and had taken Louis with him to hear the Sûreté’s side of the affair.

‘Jean-Louis doesn’t love me any more,’ said Gabrielle woodenly.

‘Now, now, it’s not like that.’

‘We’re all to be shot in any case so why, please, make such a crisis of it?’ snapped Suzanne-Cécilia. ‘Could we not both have shared him?’

Merde, what had happened to the women of France that they would even think of such a thing? Too few men, he said sadly to himself. Too few opportunities for a little happiness.

‘Well, Louis, tell me what went on here,’ asked Boemelburg, offering a cigarette to fingers so desperate they shook.

St-Cyr inhaled deeply and paused to hold the smoke in. Flames had reached the belfry. No attempt had been made to recover Tshaya’s body. ‘When they got here, De Vries saw the caravans and the littered rubbish of the kumpania and realized his companion had betrayed her family. For a time, I think, he said nothing, Walter. She danced for him and the other terrorists in the cellars. They slept and ate down there. Then at the height of a dance or at its conclusion, she was accused and taken up to the chapel. This, perhaps, was when he found out that Nana Thélème had not been the cause of his going to prison.’

‘Tshaya did not resist being hanged?’

‘The others must have been with him but left De Vries afterwards, perhaps to seek escape routes. They’ll see the fire or will be told of it. They won’t come back.’

‘So we’ve no hope of finding them?’

‘Not here. Not in Paris either. It will simply be too dangerous for them. No, I think they will head south, perhaps to the Camargue, to Les Baux and Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.’

A gathering ground and holy place of the nomades before the war. ‘Will there be others of their kind for them to take refuge with?’

‘This I really cannot say. I’ve no knowledge of how effective the deportations have been.’

Was St-Cyr simply guarding that tongue of his, or had he finally seen the light and would now no longer be so difficult? ‘What went on with the Spade?’

‘Tshaya lured him to the house on the rue Nollet. Together, she and De Vries murdered him.’

‘You’re certain of this?’

Had an autospy been done? Had they found something? he worried but would have to take the chance. ‘Yes. Yes, I’m certain of it.’

‘And the robberies?’

‘The loot will, I think, be totally recovered, the cyanide capsules as well.’

For a time they smoked their cigarettes in silence. The remains of the belfry’s roof were collapsing. The men were now watching the fire. The two women knelt beside the body of their friend, with Kohler standing near them, looking lost and alone. ‘Herr Max returns to Berlin with the diamonds, Louis. The Untersturmführer and the rest of his Sonderkommando will go with him as security. The villa in Saint-Cloud will be occupied by others. It’s much-needed accommodation.’

‘And the banknotes?’ asked St-Cyr. ‘The jewellery, the sapphires …?’

‘Will go up in smoke. Tell Kohler to see that they are loaded into my car. Go with him to make certain none are stolen.’

‘And Nana Thélème?’

‘A small funeral, a quiet burial in the Père-Lachaise. No members of the press. This matter is closed. See that your little songbird sings her heart out. Understand that even the Führer listens to her when not attentive to his Wagner.’

Understand that this is a final warning.

They would walk in the Bois de Boulogne as they had before the problem of the Gypsy had begun. They would each in their own way try to find that moment to settle things between themselves but would Jean-Louis understand and forgive?

‘I could sleep like a dormouse,’ said Gabrielle sadly. ‘Never have I been so exhausted.’

In Provence, in the late fall of each year, the dormice come indoors to find themselves a hole in which to sleep until spring.

‘Nana’s death couldn’t have been helped,’ he said. ‘None of us, not you, not Hermann, nor I or Suzanne-Cécilia could have prevented it.’

‘Two shots. One in the left arm; the other in the abdomen.’

‘I’ve seen it happen too many times and so has Hermann.’

‘We could have done something! We could have …’

Gabrielle burst into tears and he had to hold her tightly. ‘We couldn’t have done anything,’ he pleaded with her. ‘We were trapped! Things simply happened too quickly.’

She bowed her head and tried to stop herself, blurted, ‘At first, when he arrived in Paris, the Gypsy led us to believe he was on our side and that he would pull off the robberies we had lined up for him. We would get the funds to the Resistance. We would see that he got safely back to the British, but then …’

‘He turned against you as he fully intended. He and Tshaya went out on their own determined to cause trouble and to take advantage of the situation.’

She took the proffered handkerchief. ‘We had to stop him before it was too late. We had to!’

‘He and Tshaya robbed the pay-train.’

‘It … it had all been looked over – arranged, you understand, well ahead of time. By then we thought it the end for us but later that day he and Tshaya paid Nana a visit. They wanted me to take them to the ruins. They … they wanted out of Paris.’

‘But Nana had prepared a little something for yourselves should things go wrong.’

Gabrielle ducked her head away. ‘She … she gave them each a glass of the eau de vie de cassis she had made herself from grain alcohol, saccharin, artificial blackcurrant flavouring and colour.’

Lots of people made such things these days. They were invariably dreadful and horribly sweet. ‘Strychnine is very bitter. How long did it take?’

He was so grim and sad. She wanted desperately for him to take her in his arms and to tell her things were well between them. ‘Seven minutes for Janwillem; ten for Tshaya. Nana … Nana did it on Wednesday at about two thirty in the afternoon. They … they had told her where they had left the loot.’

‘In the house on the rue Nollet.’

‘Yes.’

‘Who telephoned the Spade at the Avia Club Gym?’

‘I did.’

‘And he came running all by himself.’

‘Yes! We were desperate, Jean-Louis. Frantic. You and Hermann were not around. We felt you must have gone to Tours and then to Senlis, to the quarry. What, please, were we to have done?’

They had reached a copse of birch trees. Leading her among them, he asked, ‘Was it you who lit the match that set the Spade afire?’

She blinked her tears away. ‘Will you despise me now?’ she asked. ‘Will you turn your back on me if I tell you I did it?’

‘You pierced his eyes.’

Only Suzanne-Cécilia had been with her, but Céci had already told him she hadn’t killed anyone, so it was no use avoiding the truth and she had best get it over with. ‘Yes, I did it. There, does that sanctify your self-righteousness, Monsieur l’lnspecteur principal? I am a résistant. We had each to make terrible sacrifices and we had, Céci and I, drawn straws to see who would do it.’

When he said nothing but simply fiddled with a tiny shred of bark, she said, ‘We had to make it appear as though Tshaya had done it, otherwise those of the rue Lauriston and the Gestapo would have done the same to us or worse. Besides, he knew too much and we couldn’t have that.’

Was the war within France to become one of outright savagery? he wondered.

‘Later that night we … we robbed the villa in Saint-Cloud. We had to make it appear as if …’

‘Yes, yes, as if De Vries and Tshaya were still alive. Which of you gave the Generalmajor Wehrle the cyanide?’

He would hate her now. He would never be able to find it within himself to sleep with her for fear of … ‘I did. I know a lot of those at the Ritz, so it was no problem my going there to leave a little envelope for him when I got back to Paris. I went there first before giving my statement to the police. Wehrle …’ She shrugged. ‘He must have seen he had no other choice but … but as to his having ordered caviar and champagne for Nana, that can only have been a parting gesture, his little revenge.’

‘But he didn’t kill himself until Friday.’

‘He waited to see what would happen.’

‘Only to find he had been recalled to Berlin.’

A tiny shred of the paperbark was pulled from the tree and examined. ‘The bomb in the zebra house,’ he said, and she told him Suzanne-Cécilia had put it there. ‘Only Nana and I went to the ruins with the bodies of Tshaya and Janwillem, the loot and the explosives. We started out soon after the villa robbery. It was very dark and bitterly cold. Perhaps this is what saved us, who’s to say? And yes, I was supposed to have been at the club and I worried all the time that the Gestapo would come looking for me there or to Monseigneur for Nana, or to the Schéhérazade. The car … would the engine seize up? The snow … We … we were stopped only once. I … I simply told the Feldwebel the Hauptmann and his lady friend were asleep and not feeling well, and that we were driving them to their country house. It worked. Don’t ask me why. Fear of the flu perhaps.’

‘And on the return?’

Must he have everything? ‘We each went our separate ways. I stole a bicycle but then managed a lift to Les Halles in a gazogène lorry full of rutabagas. Nana walked until able to catch a lift in a Wehrmacht lorry full of troops. They were coming into the city to help search for the Gypsy.’

The risks they had taken, the chances … ‘Suzanne-Cécilia is being transferred to Lyon, to a private zoo.’

‘But … but the Untersturmführer Klaus Barbie is head of Section IV there? He’ll … he’ll have her constantly watched.’

‘It’s his little zoo. We could do nothing. She’s Boemelburg’s insurance that we behave and say nothing further of the loot. It simply had to be.’

‘Ah no …’

‘Please don’t do anything more, not for a good while. Lie low, Gabrielle. Keep out of it. Let others take up the sword.’

‘She’s in love with you. I saw it happen. It … it was quite beautiful, but … but it made me hate her for a brief moment.’

‘Love has no place in war. It can only intrude.’

They walked in silence through a frozen land where those who were in uniform enjoyed themselves on skis, sleighs or on horseback. When asked what was to become of Nana’s little boy and the daughter of Janwillem and Tshaya, she told him that she’d already asked the General von Schaumburg to allow the children laissez-passers to Vouvray and Château Thériault. ‘Nana’s mother agrees and so does Madame Moreel in Senlis.’

They had reached the Carrefour de Longchamp. ‘And now we must part,’ she said. ‘Please don’t hate me. What was done had to be done.’

Hermann had caught up with them in the Citroën. ‘Avignon, Louis. Something about a madrigal singer who suddenly lost his or her voice. I can’t quite make out the telex Boemelburg handed me. It’s blurred. He wants us to get out of town for a bit. Hop in.’

‘A moment, then.’ Turning to Gabrielle, St-Cyr took hold of her mittened hands, saying earnestly, ‘Give me time. Let us speak of things when I get back.’

‘Kiss her, Louis. Ah! you French. The Italians could teach you plenty!’

‘And the Boches?’ came the swift retort as Louis got into the car.

‘More again if you’d only listen. Hey, there’s a bottle of pastis and a tin of pipe tobacco on the seat.’

Kohler got out of the car to take Gabrielle in his arms, to kiss her on each cheek and draw in the faint scent of that fabulous perfume, and to tell her to stop worrying. ‘He’s just being self-righteous. He’ll be okay. I’ll straighten him out.’

‘Even though detectives make such lousy lovers?’

‘Hey, ask Oona and Giselle about that. They’ll give you an earful. Ah! would you see that they get this? I forgot.’

The roll of banknotes was bigger than needed to choke a zebra. Thousands … ten thousands … He peeled off 100,000 at least. ‘Expenses,’ he said. ‘Boemelburg will never miss it. Oh, I forgot these too.’

In the palm of his hand were the sapphire ear-rings from the jewellery she had ordered at Cartier’s. ‘Keep them out of sight until spring comes, eh? They’re from Louis but he’s just too shy to give them to you.’

Alone, she watched the car cause the snow to swirl and billow until she could see them no more and they were gone from her.

‘Au revoir, mon cher vieux,’ she said. ‘Alles ist Schicksal. All is fate.