At noon, Chez Rudi’s was packed. Wehrmacht and SS grey-green uniforms were everywhere, Gestapo black too, and Kriegsmarine or Luftwaffe blue, with scattered petites Parisiennes and Blitzmädel from home, here to do their duty. Beer-hall big under its brightly coloured murals, the restaurant was still such a bit of home, Hermann was forced to swallow tightly.
All talking had ceased, even the hustle and bustle from the kitchens where Rudi had come to stand, poised in the doorway. A fresh apron girded the 166 kilos. Flaxen-haired, his blue eyes small and watchful, the florid, net-veined cheeks round like a burnished soccer ball, this survivor of the uprising of 8 November 1923, the Munich Putsch, was proprietor and owner of this conquering image to a just reward on the Champs-Élysées and right across the avenue from the Lido.
‘My Hermann,’ he called out, the voice beer-hall big. ‘Your table, mein Lieber, and yours, too, mein brillanter französischer Oberdetektiv.’
They had never had a table reserved for them anywhere in the past two-and-a-half years. The clientele cheered. Embarrassed, baffled and grinning ear to ear, Hermann led the way to the table as Helga, Rudi’s youngest sister, her blonde braids and pale-blue work dress tight, hustled through with two overflowing steins.
‘The Spaten Dunkel, Hermann,’ sang out Rudi. ‘Fresh in on this morning’s Ju 52.’
From Munich, from home. Well, nearly so.
‘Danke, Rudi,’ managed the guest of honour, what honour?
There was a nod, a, ‘I’ve made Lederknödel for you and Rostbratürste, but if the Oberdetektiv St-Cyr would prefer, I can also recommend the Schneckensuppe to be followed by the Geschnetzeltes.’ Snail soup and veal slices in cream, or liver dumplings in a clear broth, and afterwards, small sausages with the taste and aroma of the beechwood over whose charcoal they would have been grilled.
Roggenbrot, too, noted Kohler. Rye bread made just like they used to, and real butter, none of that crappy Norwegian fish-oil margarine the troops usually got and the French had to eat when they could get it.
The beer was cold and dark, not too sweet and with the simple lightness of hops.
‘Helga, what the hell is going on?’ blurted Hermann, as puzzled as his partner.
The girl quivered. ‘You’re back, mein Schatz,’ my treasure, she said with tears. ‘We are all counting on you, Hermann. All of us girls. Every woman in Paris. The men, too. The real men. Not the monsters.’
They had eaten in silence and eaten far better than most in the country, St-Cyr knew, and certainly if the Résistance were to learn of it, which they would, they wouldn’t waste time with this Sûreté, but would shoot first and then ask the questions even though Hermann always seemed to be oblivious to the fact when here.
Conscious of the diners, Hermann had tried not to notice the girls who stole glances at their table while in the midst of conversation. Their trembling uncertainty, their outright fear—some more than others—was all too clear. Bed with the enemy and watch out, eh? he’d be saying to himself. The savage brutality of the Trinité attack, the full frontal and back views, those too of the academy victim. Every one of Chez Rudi’s female clientele had seen Le Matin or editions of the other papers. While their men friends tried to reassure them, there were those who smirked—SS and Gestapo who must know this Kripo and his French partner had a problem no one else wanted.
‘But have we been granted a reprieve, Hermann?’
From the general dislike and the hatred, too, for always pointing the finger of truth no matter where it belonged? ‘It looks like it.’
‘Talbotte’s not just being kind. Our préfet’s gone out of his way to forget my having knocked him out and threatened him with grand theft at the Liberation when all such accounts will be settled.’
‘But has been told to keep us run off our feet?’
By Boemelburg and the Kommandant von Gross-Paris. ‘Perhaps.’
Even Rudi had made certain they would be left alone to discuss things. Cigarettes, pipe tobacco and small cigars had been laid on, cognac too, and real coffee. ‘The Trinité victim,’ said Kohler, lighting another cigarette as that pipe of Louis’s was packed. ‘Madame Adrienne Guillaumet must have been heading somewhere other than home when she left the École Centrale at nine thirty p.m. or close to it.’
The lessons in Deutsch would have been over, everyone hurrying from the building into the teeming rain and the blackout. ‘But had she arranged to be picked up?’
Or had her choice of a bicycle taxi been governed solely by chance? ‘She would have had to go to place de l’Opéra first if she’d arranged the ride ahead of time. Money paid in advance, Louis, the half down probably and one hell of a lot of trust, if you ask me. I’m not sure she could have afforded it, even though the flat she lives in speaks of money.’
Good for Hermann. He had faced up to what the woman could well have been up to.
‘If she did go to place de l’Opéra, Louis, was she overheard by her assailant when ordering that taxi?’
Had he prior knowledge of her? Had he been stalking her, the wife of Captain Jean-Matthieu Guillaumet, resident of the Oflag at Elsterhorst, the POW camp for French officers to the northeast of Dresden? ‘If so, she couldn’t have been aware of it.’ But that, too, could mean, as they both knew, that her assailant must have had ample sources of information.
‘Isn’t that why so many here are afraid, Louis? They’ve sensed that others have been watching them and that they could damned well be called to account.’
For sleeping with the enemy, but perhaps it would be best to ease Hermann’s mind a little. ‘There could have been extenuating circumstances. Reason enough for her having hired it.’
Everyone knew vélo-taxi drivers, like concierges, were funds of information if for a price. ‘The eggs, white flour and sugar, Hermann. The milk also, with which to bake the forbidden-by-law birthday cake of a child.’
And a simple enough reason. ‘I don’t know if her son or daughter has a birthday coming up. Giselle and Oona might, but I’ve not been back to see them yet.’
Hermann was not only worried about those two women he lived with, he was blaming himself since, through no fault of his own, he would still be considered one of the Occupier.
‘She left her children alone, Louis. Classes would have begun at six thirty p.m. Travel from the flat on the rue Saint-Dominique would have taken a good half-hour, more if she stopped in at place de l’Opéra.’
‘But did her assailant imagine what she was up to, or had he known of her from before?’
That was the question but still it had to be asked. ‘A random attack when there’s been so many?’
‘Had he been following her, Hermann?’
‘There was a fingernail.’
Pipe in hand, Louis looked at that thing. ‘Dirt, blood and grease, Hermann, this last no doubt the same as I felt on the seats of that taxi and on her shoulders. Big hands. Strong hands.’
‘The Drouant attack. It’s not that far a walk from the passage de la Trinité.’
That attack had taken place at 11.52 p.m. and with plenty of time to have gotten into position from the Trinité. ‘And not random but planned—it must have been, Hermann—the whereabouts of the victims known well beforehand but even more importantly, that M. Gaston Morel would have his driver take his wife’s stepsister home early.’
‘And that Morel would accompany Madame Barrault to her flat on the rue Taitbout, eh? She’s not wealthy, but does live near enough to the place de l’Opéra if it was being watched for women like that.’
‘Another POW wife, another stolen wedding ring, but condemnation and punishment this time for committing adultery with a Frenchman, the husband of another. I’m certain Madame Morel is convinced of it.’
‘As is her friend, Denise Rouget.’
‘A social worker.’
‘And socialite. A parasite, Madame Barrault called her.’
‘From the Secours National?’ The National Help.
‘We’ll have to ask her.’ And hadn’t Madame Barrault sat as far as possible from Denise Rouget?
‘Stamps or some other item are then stolen at between twenty and thirty minutes past midnight and not likely by the same person or persons but that clay, Hermann. Were the sewers used to get there?’
It would have to be said. ‘From the passage de la Trinité to that of the Jouffroy isn’t far by the streets, and this must have been known to Madame Guillaumet’s assailant since he damned well knew how to find the Trinité on such a night.’
Whoever was committing these crimes, and there must be several of them, knew the city as if blindfolded. ‘But before any of these, the police academy.’
‘Which we definitely were to have been sent to?’
‘Perhaps. And after that killing, a girl who telephones to let the world know about it.’
A call that had been made from the Lido right across the street from them!
Louis took a moment to glance around at the clientele who now seemed more at ease. Setting his pipe aside, he leaned closely. ‘Are we to wonder then what this one has done to that girl?’
Cupped in his palm was the buttonhole silk of a ribbon whose red moiré, a weak shade of scarlet, had definitely been crimped so as to give it a wavelike pattern as always, though now it looked like water spilling down a series of steps.
‘Three men, Hermann, at least one of whom wore hobnailed boots.’
‘Veterans?’
‘Unless we are to be led into believing it.’
‘And a dog, Louis.’
‘Ah, oui. Lulu, age seven. Breeder: the Kennels Bouchard at Louveciennes on the edge of the Fôret de Marly-le-Roi, the dog’s owner, Madame Catherine-Élizabeth de Brissac, an old and much venerated family now residing on the avenue de Valois overlooking the Parc Monceau.’
And if that wasn’t convenient, what was? The remains would have been buried probably in the late afternoon and just before the gates were closed and locked. The police academy victim had been abducted perhaps from the Lido at about 7.30 p.m., killed between 8.30 and 9.30 p.m. ‘But not enough time for any of his assailants to then steal a bicycle taxi, Louis, and ride to the passage de la Trinité.’
They were up against it. Doubtless there was another victim—the telephone caller—and as yet they had no idea of what else had happened last night. More victims, further killings. The attacks were escalating, the wives and fiancées of POWs were being targeted, mistakes made, of course, the hair taken in some cases, the handbags in all—identity papers, ration cards and tickets—and wedding or engagement rings, especially if worn.
‘Five crimes in one night, Hermann, when invariably we get one or two at most, and certainly these can’t all be connected, and yet … and yet we are …’
‘Kept busy as hell but not supposed to have been assigned to the stamps and not to Lulu either?’
Had some overzealous despatch officer been having fun with them? ‘Not one assailant but several, and though there is still some question with the Trinité attack, certainly in the academy abduction and killing, the Au Philatéliste Savant robbery and the Drouant attack, information must definitely have been known beforehand.’
Especially as certain things had been left in that safe! ‘Noëlle Jourdan, Louis.’
‘There, too, for how, please, did the press know she could be tempted and would be on the night shift and looking after Madame Guillaumet?’
‘And why did she consider it her duty to let those bastards photograph the woman?’
Rudi, who had been watching them, could no longer contain himself. Surprisingly agile on the balls of his little feet, he was all purpose and swift to it. A plate crowded with Salzstangen, the small salt rolls, was in one meaty hand, a tankard of beer in the other.
‘Werte Herren,’ my dear sirs, he whispered conspiratorially as he lowered himself into a chair and spread over the table, ‘our Soldatenheime, our troop hostels, are being watched, our boys tailed on their evenings out. Pigalle, eh? Those bare breasts they love to get their hands on. The Bal Tabarin with its sacrificial virgins or the Naturiste with its snake charmers. Lovesick boys, Hermann. Boys who are easy to tail since like dogs, they return to those they think are in heat.’
Gossip was like flour to Rudi.
‘The Soldatenkino, my Hermann. Those are also being watched. After each film, don’t the street girls with the sweetest voices troll the pavements even though they know it is verboten to approach any man and forbidden also for the men to pick them up and not use one of the licensed brothels that are reserved entirely for us?’
Out of Paris’s 120 legalized brothels, 40 had been taken over by the Wehrmacht but … ‘Ach, mein Gott, Rudi. Tailed through the blackout? You’re being paranoid.’
Stung, the battering ram of a challenging fist was thrust at him only to calm itself and wag a reproving finger.
‘This is serious. There are whispers among the brass and visiting big shots that Gestapo Boemelburg is not just due his retirement but beyond it and that someone with far more muscle even than our Walter is now needed.’
He would let them digest that little mouthful, thought Rudi. He would offer each a salt roll and suggest they take two, since it was entirely due to Boemelburg that they had been allowed to continue fighting common crime and hadn’t been put up against a wall and shot.
‘The French—excuse me, Herr Oberdetektiv—are beginning to doubt us, Hermann.’
A pull at the tankard was necessary, the thick, wide lips pursed, the beer no doubt judged more than acceptable.
‘Things are changing,’ went on Rudi as he fingered a Salzstange before biting into it. ‘Some of those who openly supported the Führer and his many legitimate and necessary causes, and saw those as their own, have begun to drift away. Verdammte Verräter, Kotzscheisser!’
Damned traitors, nauseating shits. He was really worried. The Battle for Stalingrad had been the Reich’s first defeat that had been publicly announced and followed by three official days of mourning.
‘The Propaganda Staffel, Hermann. My informants there tell me that they have been ordered to constantly splash news of these blackout crimes across the papers and to emphasize during every wireless broadcast that progress is being made and a favourable solution but momentary. I’ve warned them that no pictures or interviews are to be taken here. I can’t have the restaurant being targeted. I simply will not have it!’
‘Rudi, what the hell are you trying to tell us?’
‘That no photographs are to be taken here of the two of you, but out there …’ He indicated the Champs-Élysées and streets too many. ‘Out there you are not safe from prying cameras and reporters.’
‘Us?’ blurted Hermann.
‘You, meine Lieben. You are to be watched and followed. Tracked—photographed while in action against these … these schweinigein Vergewaltiger und Mörder.’
These dirty rapists and murderers but thank God Louis understood and spoke the language.
‘It’s not safe for my Helga, Hermann. You know how sweet she is on you. It’s not safe for my Yvette and Julie either, nor for those two women you cannot seem to leave for my Helga. Take care of these verrückter Sadisten. Get them by the balls and use the knife. Better still, bring them here and I will give them a fry-up they won’t forget.’
The salt rolls that couldn’t be refused were again passed. ‘If I were you,’ said Rudi, ‘I would watch in places like that one across the road where, my Hermann, you questioned only the stage doorman when you should have paid a visit during a performance. The Cercle Européen is still being held there once a week no matter what anyone else says.’
A gathering of the establishment to plan and discuss how best to do business with the Reich. Aircraft engines and airframes, synthetic rubber tyres, ammunition, lumber and aluminium and other things like wheat and potatoes, wine and horses, labour also and yes, cheese and submissive girls, cement too, of course!
Rudi didn’t even ask if the police academy victim had been trafficking in women. He just took it for granted.
‘There’s an epidemic of VD among the men, Hermann, and this is preventing them from returning to the front as quickly as needed. These unlicensed girls we’re getting aren’t clean. The street roundups of women and girls are not working either.’
Housewives, secretaries, shop- and schoolgirls, their teachers and librarians also—any French female in sight between the ages of fourteen and ninety, diseased or not, could be rounded up and carted off for a swab and a look by a doctor they didn’t know nor care to.
‘The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht estimates that there are between eighty thousand and one hundred thousand illegal prostitutes on the streets,’ said Rudi.
The High Command always overestimated such things but still …
‘Only from five to six thousand have so far been licensed and issued the bilingual cards that show they are nur für Deutsche.’
Registered for use only by Germans and how was one to stop the boys from seizing the moment, especially when forbidden to use the legal, French-only brothels?
‘Hospital maternity wards are full of girls having their love children, my Hermann.’
More beer was taken, the salt rolls again passed. ‘Not even once-weekly visits by the doctor to each licensed house have lessened the VD plague. I tell you all of this, Hermann, so that should the Kommandant von Gross-Paris raise his voice, you will understand why.’
‘But, Rudi, wouldn’t the streets being terrorized at night help to lessen the VD?’
‘Paris is paradise, is it not? Besides, the Führer in his wisdom made a promise to all of our boys that they would each get to spend a little time here.’ Rudi gave it a bit of a pause. ‘Also,’ he went on, the puffy eyelids with their lashes at half-mast, ‘there is one girl, a Blitzmädel, Hermann, whose handbag was unfortunately snatched last Sunday at 1247 hours while she was washing up at a restaurant in the Buttes Chaumont Park. Near the carousel, I think. You know the one, of course. “Some schoolboys,” she has said. Four of them.’
‘Their ages?’ squawked the Sûreté as he should.
‘Ten. I tell you this, Herr Oberdetektiv St-Cyr, only so that should the handbag and its contents turn up during your investigation, you will know where it came from.’
A salt roll had best be fingered, assessed and then eaten, thought Rudi. ‘A reward of one hundred thousand francs has been offered by this restaurant, since she is a secretary for those over on the avenue Foch.’
The SS General Karl Albrecht Oberg, the Butcher of Poland and now Höherer SS und Polizeiführer of France, and hadn’t chance or fate played its part? No wonder the boys on Louis’s street had hung around and been late for school!
‘A Mausefalle, my Hermann. Your friends in the SS are going to demand that you set one for these criminals and bait it with one of your women.’
A mousetrap.
* * *
They had to take a moment, had no other choice and shared a cigarette as the Citroën idled outside Chez Rudi’s.
‘Oberg can’t yet know about the boys, Louis. Rudi will keep that to himself for a while.’
But would he? ‘The boys will still be in school, Madame Courbet out lining up at the shops. We’ll have to leave it until later.’
Louis was really feeling it and with good reason. ‘Rudi sure knows how to threaten. If anything should happen to his Helga or to his Julie and Yvette …’
‘Tears, a girl from home?’
The boys would steal that one’s handbag. Louis, who had tried so hard to set an example for them and was their hero, could only feel betrayed.
‘If Oberg does find out, Hermann, I’m up against the post and so are you.’
A souricière … A mousetrap, the floodlights suddenly coming on … ‘I can’t use Giselle nor can I ask Oona.’
‘You’ve used Giselle before and in the blackout too.’
‘ARE YOU SUGGESTING I PUT HER LIFE AT RISK AGAIN?’
‘Not at all. I was merely reminding you of …’
‘That time was different.’
‘Times, Hermann. More than once you’ve …’
‘Face it, I can’t ask either of them any more than you could Gabrielle. They both mean far too much to me. It’s equal, Louis. I could never choose between them.’
A man with a dilemma. ‘Ah, bon, then let’s lose the tail the Propagandastaffel have assigned to us.’
A dark-blue Ford Ten, the 1935 four-door, sat idling behind them, the one at the wheel no doubt the reporter, the other with the flashgun and camera in his lap.
‘Let me go and have a word while you take over here, Louis. We can’t both be in the same place at the same time anyway.’
‘Au Philatéliste Savant …’
‘Is all yours.’
‘The place de l’Opéra and the owner of a certain vélo-taxi?’
‘I’d better do that one and drop in to see Old Shatter Hand.’
‘Then please don’t forget that once a month he makes a point of inspecting the brothels, the legal ones that are nur für Deutsche.’ A Prussian of the old school, the General Ernst von Schaumburg, Kommandant von Gross-Paris, was a confirmed bachelor and moralizing prude who hated the French almost as much as he did the SS and the Gestapo, and liked nothing better than to stamp out disorder. It was best that Hermann deal with him.
Kohler grinned companionably as the side window was unwound and a blue fug of Gauloise smoke escaped. Two hard brown eyes gazed impassively up at him from beneath the grey snap-brim of a brand-new fedora.
‘Hey, listen,’ he said. ‘There’s been a fantastic development we thought you’d be interested in. A lead, maybe, to the brains behind this whole string of rapes and murders.’
‘The brains … ?’ blurted Jean-Max Privet, taken aback by their luck.
‘If you can give me a lift, your friend here can shoot the brass while you scoop the story.’
Was Kohler just ragging them? Could they chance leaving it? ‘Hop in, then. Where to?’
‘Let’s try place de l’Opéra first. Protocol. You know how it is.’
The Kommandant von Gross-Paris, and didn’t everyone know Kohler and St-Cyr worked quickly?
These two were from Paris-Soir, whose aged Alsatian elevator-operator-cum-night-watchman had been the only one left to guard the newspaper on the day the Occupier had marched into Paris and had soon found himself in the boss’s chair running one of the city’s largest dailies. Decisions by the Propagandastaffel had had to be made quickly. Where else could they have found a man who knew the building better, the workings too? He’d been the man for the job and still was, having easily mastered the art of hiring managing editors and others. Now he just read the articles they submitted and gave advice to guys like these.
‘Hector Morand, à votre service,’ said the photographer. ‘It’s good of you to cooperate.’
‘Isn’t St-Cyr going to the Kommandantur too?’ asked Privet.
‘Him? I’m sending him over to the rue des Saussaies to organize a little backup.’
A Gauloise bleue was offered by Morand and accepted, a light too, and why not? ‘This car of yours is nice but not as roomy as I’d like in the back.’
It was really one of the car pool’s. ‘Move things, Inspector, if you need more space,’ sang out Privet with a toss of his head and glance into the rearview as he negotiated traffic.
‘Provisions,’ chuckled Morand. ‘On our way here we had to pick up a few things.’
Two baguettes, one string bag of cooking onions and potatoes, a chain of garlic bulbs, four litres of unlabelled red, one of oil, too, and good by the look, a cabbage, three kilos of carrots and one newspaper-wrapped parcel that had leaked butcher-blood.
‘To think that I almost bought one of these cars,’ said Kohler with a sigh. ‘I was in England on a police course at the time. The British made ninety-seven thousand of them but they were also made in the Reich. Mon Dieu, I could have got one for 145 pounds—that was about 10,875 francs or close to it then.’ And now only about two thousand francs more than the price of a brand-new bicycle if one could find it! ‘Rudi told us the press were going to cover things in detail and that it would be best for us to help you boys, but how did the two of you get chosen?’
‘We drew lots at the briefing this morning and our number came up,’ said Privet.
They were heading for place de l’Opéra now. Long queues for permission, lost IDs and complaints, et cetera. ‘Good. I can see that we’re going to get along. Don’t park too close to the barricades. It’s better if we walk a little. That way the sentries won’t get anxious.’
The Kommandantur, with its rain-soaked swastika and big white signboard in heavy black Gothic lettering, was in the same building as the leading branch of a bank, behind whose plate-glass windows a forgotten poster with permed mother and saccharine-smiling kids blithely announced, PARTEZ EN VACANCES, SANS SOUCI, LOUEZ UN COFFRE AU COMPTOIRE NATIONAL D’ESCOMPTE DE PARIS.
Go on holiday without fear—rent a safe-deposit box!
‘Your papers, press cards and badges, mes amis. You’d better let me have them for a moment. That way we’ll be able to go right in.’
The poster was big, bright and brand-new, thought St-Cyr, and it decorated Au Philatéliste Savant’s window so that one had difficulty looking into the shop. Spaced as though on either side of an open road, d’après Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, long double lines of workmen and women from all walks of life were heading towards the distant smokestacks of the Reich. Above a slender horizon tinged with red, the helmet-and-chin portrait of a stern and unyielding Wehrmacht strong-arm bravely faced the current hostilities.
ILS DONNENT LEUR SANG. They are giving their blood, the thing read. DONNEZ VOTRE TRAVAIL. Give your labour to save Europe from Bolshevism.
Odilon Bélanger shrugged. ‘They came this morning, Inspector. Monsieur Picard threatened trouble if I didn’t let them hang it.’
‘And that one?’
‘Reads his newspapers. Sits next to his safe.’
Nearing seventy, Félix Picard was ramrod stiff and thin, all nose, neck and fingers. The hairline was receding, the narrow brow dominant above gold-rimmed pince-nez and intense blue eyes, the shirt collar and tie so tight and out-of-date one had to take another look: 1928 perhaps, 1920 maybe, but definitely a neckband shirt and detachable Argonne collar, the cheapest of the cheap.
L’Oeuvre, that anti-Vichy, pro-Nazi, virulently collaborationist rag of Marcel Déat’s Rassemblement National Populaire, was lowered. ‘You took your time, Inspector. Am I to be compensated for the loss of business?’
The weekly Je Suis Partout was handy. Anti-Third Republic, anti-Semitic, anti-Communist and very pro-German, et cetera. ‘Not if you want your property returned.’
‘But …’ He blinked. ‘Nothing has been stolen. Absolument rien.’
The surprise of surprises, eh? ‘Don’t be difficult. We already know you’ve broken enough laws to close the shop and see you in the Santé for a visit of no less than three years.’
‘Merde, and you call yourself a police officer!’
‘Monsieur …’
‘The safe, it is ruined. The cat, ma petite Angèle, has abandoned me, and you … you stand here accusing me of lying?’
He slammed the paper down, stood tall and swore, ‘J’irai le dire à la kommandantur.’
I’ll go and tell the Germans about it. ‘You do that.’
‘Pardon?’
‘You heard what I said.’
‘Inspector …’ hazarded Picard.
‘That’s better. Now start talking. Two or more twists of gold louis, black-market …’
‘Only the one. The louis were all I had for my old age.’
‘And the illegally obtained rations?’
‘The cat …’
‘Monsieur, what was stolen?’
The louis had been returned—they must have been, thought Picard, and that could only mean the flic had taken them and thought better of it! ‘An album of firsts. The 1849 to 1850s, among them the twenty-centime black, the blue also, which was never issued because the postage rates were changed immediately after its printing, the pale vermillion “Vervelle” forty-centime, a sheet of which was ungummed, the 1862 reissues complete, the Napoléon IIIs of 1863–1870 … Those of the colonies, the 1859 to 1865 Eagle and Crown, the 1877 to 1878 Peace and Commerce, especially the bluish twenty-five-centime, all of those from the French Congo, French Equatorial Africa, French Guiana, French India, French Morocco, Polynesia and the Sudan, Indo-China also. The 1889 five-centime overprint on the thirty-five-centime orange with the surcharge inverted; the 1892 seventy-five-centime orange with the Indochine absent …’
‘A fortune?’
‘Once in a lifetime such a deal comes along.’
‘Ah, bon. Now for the difficult part. How did it “come along”?’
‘Inspector, must I?’
‘It’s Chief Inspector and please don’t tell me you bought it at the open-air stamp fair.’
Held every Thursday in fine weather on the park benches of the rond-point of the Champs-Élysées and a favourite of the Occupier.
‘A girl … I’d never seen her before. She had no understanding of …’
‘The value.’
‘She simply said her grand-maman wished to sell the collection.’
‘And?’
He had best shrug, thought Picard. ‘I offered.’
‘After some deliberation?’
‘A little. One can’t always be sure. Stamps, like rare paintings, can be forged.’
‘And you were suspicious?’
‘Have I not the right to be after fifty-six years in the business, my father before me?’
‘Her name?’
‘I didn’t catch it.’
‘Her age?’
‘I’m not certain.’
‘Hair colour?’
‘Brown, I think.’
This was going nowhere. Perhaps if the bracelets were brought out …
The handcuffs! ‘Inspector …’
‘Monsieur, you bought on the quiet, n’est-ce pas? First, where, really, did the collection come from; second, how much did you pay for it and what was its estimated value to you, the expert with … was it fifty-six years of experience? Thirdly, the name and address of the one who sold it to you, and if you gave that one a sex change, correct your little mistake.’
The flics had always been shits, the Sûreté far worse. ‘The name and address she gave must have been false, though I wasn’t certain of this at the time. The price paid was twenty-thousand francs—I’ve not much for a life’s work, as you can see.’
‘And its estimated value?’
‘I didn’t make an exact appraisal.’
‘Monsieur, you had a good look as soon as that “girl” left the shop. You closed up and went to that room you’ve rented for years in the Hôtel Ronceray. Must I ask the magistrate for a search warrant?’
‘Between seven hundred and fifty thousand and one million francs.’
The bastard. ‘Old francs?’
‘Old.’
And enough to retire on. ‘Bon. Whose collection was it? Come, come, the name of the owner would have been embossed in gold leaf on the album.’
‘M. Bernard Isaac Friedman.’
‘Address?’
‘Number 14 rue des Rosiers.’
Right in the heart of what had once, and for so many years, been the Jewish quartier of Paris, the Marais, where so many of the immigrants from the east had taken up residence. ‘Deported?’
‘He must have been, mustn’t he? All of those people.’
‘The Vel d’Hiv?’ The cycling arena, the grande rafle, the first huge roundup of last year.
‘Oui.’
‘And now his stamp collection suddenly turns up. It’s curious, isn’t it?’
‘Inspector, I don’t know what …’
‘I mean? Monsieur, dealing in stolen property is a serious offence.’
‘I didn’t know it was stolen!’
‘You most certainly did!’
‘To steal from those people is no harm. The more taken, the better.’
‘Ah, bon, I didn’t hear that, monsieur. Though I must still obtain the warrant, please consider yourself under arrest. Agent Bélanger, would you …’
‘Inspector, the girl came to the shop a few times. Hesitant always and walking the aisles as if to examine the envelopes while studying myself and the clientele. When she had made her little decision, she then arranged to bring me the collection.’
Even though Picard had ‘never seen her before.’
‘And when was that?’
This one would have to have everything.
‘Two days ago, in the late afternoon. About five or five thirty. I remember it clearly. Angèle was thirsty and I’d poured her a little of the …’
‘Yes, yes. Wednesday, the tenth.’
‘She said she was in a hurry and mustn’t be late for work or else the surveillante at the hospital would be upset, and that … that she would take what I could give her.’
A head nurse, a nursing assistant and a bargain but a crime to which they weren’t to have been sent.
In the never-neverland of the Kommandantur, where rain-soaked galoshes, mismatched carpet slippers and ankle-deep coal-black dresses waited in line, there was absolutely no sense in pissing around. ‘Kohler, Kripo, Paris-Central to see the General on urgent business.’
Rock of Bronze to his staff, but damned dangerous at all times even though well past retirement, Von Schaumburg was still suffering the aftereffects of the flu that had struck him a good ten days ago. A towel was tightly wrapped about the throat, the smell of eucalyptus oil, menthol, camphor and boiled peppermint in the air, positively no tobacco smoke. Even the window he had been bleakly staring out of was open!
Taller than himself, bigger too, across the shoulders and replete with Iron Crosses and campaign medals, he didn’t hear at first and only then, as the throat was cleared, did he hawk up a wad of phlegm. ‘Kohler, what is this you’re saying?’
It was now or never and the look in the watery, fever-ridden, pouch-bagged Nordic eyes said as much. ‘My partner, General. He’s found something that could well lead us to one of the chief perpetrators of this plague of blackout crime.’
‘Something … Must I remind you that military men such as myself never like intangibles?’
‘The red ribbon of a Legion of Honour, General. You’re the first and only one to learn of it other than myself and our coroner.’
‘And that’s the way you would like it kept?’
In spite of Boemelburg’s being the boss of all such Kripo. ‘Yes, General. The press …’
‘Those infernal bastards. I’m going to get them this time!’
Overcome by a coughing fit, he grabbed the edge of the window then pushed the damned thing wide open. ‘Air …’ he gasped. ‘My chest. Verdammt, Kohler, can’t you see what those people have done to me? Das Stinkt zum Himmel!’
It’s an absolute scandal. Paris-Soir, Le Matin—even today’s Pariser Zeitung—were seized from the desk and torn. ‘Mein Kirschwasser, Kohler.’ He flung an arm out to indicate a side table. ‘Gestapo Boemelburg was most kind and sent that bottle over as soon as he learned you and St-Cyr were back in the city.’
A cherry brandy from Alsace and a warning should they come here, but there was only one glass, thank God. Boemelburg would, of course, have to be dealt with later. ‘The press, General.’
The glass was drained, refilled and drained again. ‘Alsace was to your liking?’
The gossip had already reached him. ‘Not entirely, General, but a successful conclusion to a difficult investigation.’
Kohler couldn’t have put it better. For all the dissipation, skirt chasing and cavaliering, this former captain in the artillery hadn’t backed off when challenged, so good, yes, good. ‘A ribbon, you said?’
‘The killer’s, we believe, of the police academy’s victim.’
‘And the rapist who so savagely defiled the Trinité woman, Kohler? How did the one who stole that bicycle taxi know to take it and no other? Ach, don’t look so surprised. I’m not without my sources. Was that poor woman seen having a drink over there with one of my officers? Liebe Zeit, kommen Sie her. I’ll not give you the flu. I’ve been over it for days.’
Across the rain-streaked wasteland of place de l’Opéra, where pedestrians scurried or darted down into the entrance to the métro and vélo-taxis struggled or parked themselves in line to wait for a fare, the Café de la Paix, on the corner of the boulevard des Capucines, looked inviting. A favourite of the staff here and elsewhere, business hadn’t stopped booming since mid-June 1940.
‘Was that woman there, Kohler, to arrange an assignation for later last night and if so, which of my officers was she with and did the one who attacked her see her with him and then overhear her lining up one of those infernal machines?’
‘She still hasn’t said anything beyond a few first words, General. I was on my way over to the café to question the staff and taxi drivers but the press … St-Cyr and myself can’t have them photographing us as we work. Let me leave the identity papers with you of the two who followed me here. Let me borrow their car since I need it more than they do and my partner is busy elsewhere.’
The grey, bristled crown of that massive head was given an irritated brush with an equally irritated hand. ‘Shall I send them to Fritz Saukel’s forced-labour office? By evening they could be pouring concrete along the Atlantic Wall or digging bunkers in the Channel Islands, or would you prefer I ask Herr Oberg to consider them Sühnepersonen?’
Expiators held as hostages until needed and then shot to atone for some act of terrorism, i.e., résistance. Wehrmacht through and through, Von Schaumburg really had little use for the SS and Gestapo. ‘Just put the two from Paris-Soir to work scrubbing the floors and toilets, General. I know those are spotless but another good scrubbing never hurt.’
And spoken like a true soldier. ‘Find the one who wore that ribbon, Kohler, and bring him to me. I want a Wehrmacht solution to this problem the French have created for us.’
All down the length of the rue des Rosiers not a cyclist could be seen hurrying through the rain, not a pedestrian, a hand-pulled cart or barrow.
It’s as if the ghetto has become a ghost town, said St-Cyr sadly to himself. Repeated roundups since that of 16–17 July of last year had virtually left the quartier seemingly abandoned. Eight hundred and eighty-eight ‘teams’ of from three to four—Parisian flics and students, yes! from the police academy—nine thousand ‘cops’ in all had hit mainly five arrondissements in the small hours of that night. Arrests had, however, gone on all over the city—12,884 had been taken to the Vélodrome d’Hiver and subsequently deported, among them more than four thousand children. And now, of course, there are empty houses and apartments all over the city and country.
The gilded letters of M. Meyer and Sons Vins et Liqueurs de Sion, of Zion, were still in place but the shelves and counters had been stripped. Alone, a black leather shoe, the left, lay on its side among the rubbish and next to a hastily packed suitcase whose contents had been strewn in the search for valuables.
‘Forgive me,’ he said, rubbing a fist across the glass to clear it. ‘Hermann and myself weren’t here when you most needed us and didn’t think such a thing could possibly happen in France. But ever since then I’ve been building a dossier on Préfet Talbotte. He knows it, too, unfortunately, because I was foolish enough to have told him.’
Foreign refugees and naturalized French citizens had been amongst the first taken. Sephardim from Spain, Portugal and North Africa who had fled the Spanish Revolution; Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe and the Reich who had fled the Nazis. Then, too, and since, there had been those whose families had been French for generations. Citizen French.
The house at number 14 was empty. Not a stick of furniture remained, not a wall fixture, lamp or lightbulb, faucet or basin. Friedman and his family could be in any of the camps or already ‘up the stack’ as Hermann and he had had to hear an SS say at the Konzentrationslager Natzweiler-Struthof in Alsace.
Above the entrance to the house, the curly-haired, ruff-encircled stone head of a smiling young woman from the Middle Ages gave welcome to all who entered. The street was not that of the rosebushes as commonly thought, but of the ros, the teeth along the raddle or wooden bar over and through which the warp was drawn as it was wound on to the beam of the loom to keep its width constant and prevent it from being entangled.
Many other houses and apartments in the quartier and elsewhere had been emptied just like this of their furnishings and fittings, even the doors and hinges in some cases.
‘The Aktion-M squads,’ he said. The M was for Möbel, the Deutsch for furniture.
They’d been thorough, those squads of Parisian labourers and their masters. All items thought useful to resettled or bombed-out Germans, especially those of the SS and Gestapo in the newly acquired Lebensraum of Slavic countries, had been taken. One special task force, the Sonderstab Musik, dealt only with the musical instruments of the deported. Three warehouses alone just to the north of the city were crammed with pianos; one other, on the rue de Bassano, but a few steps to the east of the Étoile and off the Champs-Élysées in the Eighth and Sixteenth and very close to the SS of the avenue Foch and the French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston, held trumpets, clarinets, violins and violas, et cetera. Last year alone, forty thousand tons of such furnishings had been shipped to that Lebensraum, and yes indeed Préfet Talbotte had availed himself of the safe-deposit-box contents of some of those who had been deported and had been threatened with exposure, but had now chosen to be accommodating.
‘Because of what it implies, Hermann isn’t going to like where that stamp collection came from,’ he said aloud and to himself alone, ‘but first, the seller of it, Mademoiselle Noëlle Jourdan of 25 place des Vosges.’
The Café de la Paix occupied much of the ground floor of the Hôtel Grand, that sumptuous palace of seven hundred rooms that had been opened on the fifth of May 1862 by the Empress Eugénie. A home away from home, the café was busy even though at three forty-seven in the afternoon most should have been working. Wasn’t there a war on?
Of course there was, Kohler silently snorted as another waiter brusquely squeezed past him with a heavily laden tray, and everywhere there was the aroma of real coffee mingled with those of expensive perfume and pungent with tobacco smoke. Nice … Ach du lieber Gott, it must be, but if the Führer only knew. Certainly not all here were with their girlfriends; certainly too, though, among the ranks present there wasn’t one below that of a Leutnant, but didn’t the Führer desperately need men at the Russian front?
Uniform or not, Blitzmädel or not, the Occupier behaved as if he or she had the world by the balls. Here also there was none of that Nur Attrapen, that Only-for-Show nonsense on bar bottles of coloured water as seen in the everyday citizen’s watering holes, none of those demands for ration tickets or the chalked-up pas d’alcools signs that spelled out the no-alcohol days. Though many of the Parisiennes glanced up at him from their tables, their men friends seemed not to notice and were too busily on the make or simply couldn’t be bothered even though they damned well must know he was a cop and why he was here clutching a copy of Le Matin.
Louis would have said, Look closer still. See how a waiter nods in answer to a male whisper, then gives a curt nod towards a table where someone else’s petite amie flashes downcast eyes—pimping, are they, some of these waiters? Hasn’t a carefully passed one hundred-franc note just been tucked away? Girls and middle-aged women, some with their wedding rings hidden, who hang on every word their companions utter even though some of them can’t understand too many and are doing their best to catch up three nights a week—was it three that Madame Adrienne Guillaumet left her children alone in the flat and went to the École Centrale to teach Deutsch to females such as these and to older men? Older, since there aren’t too many young Frenchman around are there?
Had her assailant known of her? Louis would have asked and said, Oh for sure, that taxi was stolen from the stand out there, but more importantly, from in here one can see whether such a theft was possible and when best to strike.
Had her assailant been watching for her, Hermann, having stalked her for days or weeks only to at last lift his glass or cup in salute and silently say, All right, ma fille, it’s now your turn?
A regular, Hermann, of this establishment and others, the Lido especially, or had he been one of her students?
Must every possibility be examined, and if so, if some of the waiters were pimping, weren’t others betraying those same girls to those who would do them harm? Beyond the heavily draped, plush burgundy curtains that would be tightly closed during the blackout, there were bird’s-eye views of place de l’Opéra and the white-railed entrance to the métro whose subterranean-leading slot opened on to the boulevard des Capucines like an inclined mine shaft. Any female leaving that entrance and heading for the café would be seen well before she got here; seen, too, if earnestly engaging a taxi for later, or had she been sitting here for an hour or more at one of these tables or at one out under the awning and next to the warmth of that charcoal brazier, she smiling shyly, listening intently and maybe, yes, maybe laying a hand fondly on that of her lover? Had she been upstairs first, eh, to one of those seven hundred rooms since officers and Bonzen from home were billeted in many of them? Sure the officers, and all others in uniform, weren’t supposed to take women to their rooms, but who the hell was going to police such a thing in a place like this? Had her lover been one of Von Schaumburg’s men? Had he got up and gone out there to hire that taxi for her and chosen Take Me simply because he had known that’s what she wanted or had already let him have?
A child’s birthday cake, Hermann, Louis would have cautioned. The flour, the sugar …
‘MONSIEUR, I MUST INSIST THAT YOU DO NOT WANDER ABOUT AMONG THE TABLES GETTING IN THE ROAD. PLEASE OBEY THE NOTICE AND WAIT IN LINE TO BE SEATED!’
Lieber Christus im Himmel, what the hell was this and from a mere waiter? ‘Gestapo, mon fin. Kripo, Paris-Central. A few small questions. Nothing difficult unless you want to make it that way. Clear a table. Ja, that one will do, and bring me a café noir avec un pousse-café.’
A black coffee with a liqueur. Louis would have loved it. His partner playing Gestapo, but only when absolutely necessary. ‘Spit in them and I’ll not just see you arrested but shot.’