One by one the girls came down to the viewing room at the House of Madame Chabot. Some wore slippers and a flimsy chemise or see-through negligees, one a dishevelled schoolgirl’s tunic. They didn’t cry as friends should over Giselle’s not being found. Their expressions were hard and watchful, the odours of them mingling with the ever-present fug of Gauloises, the acid of vin ordinaire and the perfume each had chosen as her own little signature but Hermann hadn’t come by. ‘I want answers, damn you,’ rebelled St-Cyr. ‘Giselle is not at the flat, as Madame Chabot has claimed!’
That one, that fifty-eight-year-old with the made-up eyes, blonde wig, round rouged-and-powdered cheeks, vermillion lips and double chin who still insisted on claiming she was thirty-eight, gave but the swiftness of a green-eyed gaze that would have startled a cobra.
‘She has said she would spend the night there, Inspector. Who am I to …’
‘It’s Chief Inspector!’
Ah, bon, he was now shouting. ‘That’s a zéro to me, you understand. The police are the police, but the girl came to the house asking of Herr Kohler and expecting—yes, expecting, I must emphasize—to pass the time of day with friends? What friends?’
‘Now, listen. Giselle le Roy was one of your girls. My partner …’
‘Decided to make a petite amie of her and rob the house of one of its top earners? Rented a flat around the corner to constantly remind me of my loss and to tempt others into giving up the profession and moving in with another of les Allemands? Pah, quelle folie! When spring comes, the Résistance will strip her naked and cut off that jet-black hair your partner loves to rub his fingers and other things through.’
And never mind Hermann’s sex life, interesting as that might well be. ‘When spring comes’ meant the Allied invasion. It could be years away and yet …
‘That is,’ she said tartly, ‘if the blackout sadists who prowl the streets in search of such women don’t get to her first!’
‘She’ll try to hide in the darkness of a passage like the Trinité,’ muttered one of the girls.
‘He’ll ram a table leg up her for good measure,’ said the brunette called Gégé.
‘But first, he’ll give her a terrible beating,’ said Bijou.
‘He’ll not stop until her throat has been slashed,’ said another, clasping her own as the cat wandered in to lift its tail and rub against her legs before arguing with a pom-pom.
‘I can’t afford to have the house endangered, Inspector,’ went on Georgette Chabot. ‘This house—any such house—must always guard its peace. The girls move around enough as it is and are subject to temptation that needs no further encouragement.’
‘Giselle didn’t encourage us to leave, madame. I swear it,’ blurted Didi.
‘ARE YOU TO PACK YOUR BAGS OR DO YOU WANT ME TO PUT YOU ON THE STREET WITHOUT THEM?’ shrilled the woman.
‘Madame, please! I only meant…’
‘SEE THAT YOU MAKE UP FOR IT! Here the house and the licence are French for French, Inspector. Citizen with citizen, patriot with patriot, and that is all there ever has been or ever will be. When that Le Roy person showed up late this afternoon, I told her to get lost and not come back. I can’t afford to endanger my girls.’
‘You did what?’
‘Are your ears not sufficient?’
Threatening her would only prolong the agony. Oh for sure, two of the German military police often paid prolonged visits and the house was heated, its larder sufficiently supplied at a cost, no doubt, to feed the girls, but … ‘Look, Madame Cliquot, the concierge of that building where Hermann insists on renting a flat, has said the girl never went there today.’
‘That woman would say anything,’ chided Georgette. ‘Frankly, she doesn’t want your partner and his women as tenants and is determined to have the owners cancel their lease. She doesn’t want trouble either, does she, a French girl who offers herself entirely to one of the enemy?’
‘Since when was Hermann ever considered one of those?’
‘Since June of 1940, I think. I do know, also, you understand, that Irène Cliquot is intelligent enough not to want such scores settled in her house.’
‘And Hermann?’
‘Isn’t welcome. The law is the law, isn’t it? Who am I to challenge it?’
At 10.37 p.m. the little blue lights that dimly marked the most important street corners suddenly went out. The last trains of the métro would have begun their runs at ten and maybe the most distant ones still had a ways to go.
One thing was certain. The Occupier had again ordered that the plug be pulled. Kohler stood a moment at the corner of the rue La Boétie and the Champs-Élysées. Louis must have known who Denise Rouget’s father was, but Louis wasn’t here.
‘I have to do it,’ he breathed, the street suddenly damned lonely. ‘Either I’m finished as a detective and ripe for the Russian front, or I’m not. That petite amie of the judge’s may have made our phone call.’
Feeling his way in the rain, he started up the rue La Boétie. Through the hush of the city, sounds came. The throb of a distant motorcycle patrol, the squeal of Gestapo tyres, the clip-clop of high heels with their hinged wooden soles one hell of a lot closer, the heavy scent of too much perfume mingling with that of fresh tobacco smoke.
A lonely car, an Opel Tourer by the sound, turned off the rue de Ponthieu to begin its pass as a figure darted from the shelter to urgently rap on a side windscreen. ‘There’s some bastard lurking around here,’ shrilled the girl as she scrambled in, and didn’t the Occupier drive virtually all the cars, and wasn’t that one just as capable of attacking her?
A cigarette was accepted and a light. The blinkered headlamps went out. The engine continued wasting petrol. Kohler left her to get on with the client’s little moment and went along the street thinking of Giselle and how he had saved her from just such a life. No matter what Louis said, she’d be perfect for that little bar on the Costa del Sol, but the sooner they were out of France and into Spain, the better. ‘False papers,’ he muttered. ‘Cash, too, and plenty of it.’ The lament of the damned.
When he came to what must be the rue d’Artois, he backtracked. Each of these former mansions was cloaked in darkness but at one, the concierge had lit the stub of a candle and that could only mean one thing, of course. The house was warm, too. Though this last didn’t surprise, it did raise a note of caution, but once committed, always committed.
‘Monsieur …’
He would have to say it firmly, couldn’t waver, not with a tenant or tenants from among the Reich’s most privileged. ‘Kohler, Kripo, Paris-Central. The flat Judge Rouget leases. Gestapo HQ have ordered me to take a look around. Lead me to it, then wait down here. Lend me that torch of yours and forget you ever saw me.’
‘Inspector,’ said Laurent Louveau, concierge of this building and with some authority of his own, ‘Monsieur le Juge hasn’t been in for some time.’
‘Don’t get difficult. It’s Élène Artur I’m interested in.’
Louveau tossed his head. ‘Has the girl done something she shouldn’t?’
‘Was she here last night?’
‘Why, please, would she have been if Monsieur le Juge wasn’t?’
Logic was one of the finer points of the French, their brand of it anyway, but there was no sense in arguing. ‘That’s what I’d like to find out, among other things.’
‘Then I must inform you that the girl wasn’t here either.’
‘Good. You’ve no idea how relieved I am. We’ll take the stairs. I don’t trust the lifts.’
Had this one not even noticed? ‘It shall be as you wish, Inspector, since the electricity is off in any case. The flat is on the third floor.’
‘And easy to a side staircase and entrance?’
Sacré nom de nom, what was this? ‘Oui, but … but there’s a little bell above that entrance and I would have heard it, had that door not been locked as it was and is.’
‘Aber natürlich. Ach, sorry. I keep switching languages. That means, of course.’
‘Monsieur the Lieutenant Krantz sometimes also forgets, as does the Mademoiselle Lammers. They make a big joke of it and tell me I’d best learn a proper language, but …’
‘Krantz … Isn’t he one of those who oversee the Bank of France?’
‘Ah, no. He is at the Majestic.’
The offices of General Heinrich von Stülpnagel, the military governor of France. ‘And the Mademoiselle Lammers? Thesima, was it, or Mädy?’
‘Ursula. She’s also at the Majestic. A translator, as is the lieutenant.’
And probably working for the Verwaltungsstab, the administrative staff that dutifully subordinated every facet of the French economy to those of the Reich. Fully five hundred million francs a day in reparations and payments had to be coughed up for losing the war and housing one hundred thousand of the Wehrmacht in France, along with lots of others. Converted from its hotel rooms, there were now more than a thousand offices in the Majestic alone, and wasn’t it on the avenue Kléber at the corner of the avenue des Portugais and but a short walk to the avenue Foch and the SS, and hadn’t von Stülpnagel and Oberg served in the same regiment during that other war?
Of course they had, and yes, Von Stülpnagel left all ‘political’ matters, like the retaliatory shooting of hostages, to Oberg, thereby disassociating himself entirely from the extremes of the latter.
No one could have brought the Lido’s telephone caller here last night. They wouldn’t have dared.
The Club Mirage was a crash of noise. Packed to the limit with German uniforms, there wasn’t even standing room for one lone Sûreté, the bar impossible to approach.
Up onstage, all-but-naked girls, some nearly fifty, one sneezing at the ostrich plumes they wore, presented a shocking tableau of the boy-king Tutankhamen’s spate of pyramid building. Whips cracked. Those being punished cringed. Cymbals reverberated as a bleary-eyed sun began to set but faltered and the guards in their pleated loincloth-skirts stood sentinel with spears if not otherwise employed.
Merde, a tableau such as this could go on for hours! Even those at the bar had stopped attempting to quench their thirst.
‘St-Cyr, Sûreté, meine Herren. Entschuldigen Sie, bitte. I have to see if my partner’s here. It’s an emergency.’
Excuse me, please? Ach, what was this? ‘Piss off, Franzose.’
‘But …’ Nefertiti had turned to face the audience and raise her arms. The politically correct albino Nubian began to sponge her naked back while the sun threatened to drop right out of sight behind the screen of a rose-red horizon but decided to hesitate.
‘Verfick dich!’ came a Wehrmacht hiss. Fuck off.
Jumping and waving a desperate arm to signal the bar was useless, but something must have been said, for as Nefertiti’s pseudo-Nubian sponged her ankles and calves, Remi, with the face of a mountain that was all crags, clefts and precipices, motioned.
A pastis, a double, had been set on the zinc, the Corsican adding a touch of water to cloud it green as if by magic. ‘Down that, mon ami. And another. You’re going to need it.’
‘Hermann … ? Has something happened to him? To Gabrielle?’
That massive head with its thick, jet-black, wavy gangster’s hair gave an all but imperceptible nod to indicate the dressing rooms as the crowd erupted into cheers through which came calls for the slaves to pluck their feathers and for the guards to drop their spears and loincloths.
Torchlight pierced the darkness of the judge’s flat. Briefly Kohler shone the light over a chinoiserie panel of leaves, vines and exotic birds before letting it fall to the Louis XVI table where Rouget would have left hat, walking stick and gloves. Judges were way higher up than detectives; judges had friends and friends of friends. Lieber Christus im Himmel, why did it have to happen to Louis and himself? The building had given no hint of warning. From somewhere distant, though, came the metallic clunking of a hot-water radiator.
There was no dominant smell except for that of the mustiness of old buildings and antique furniture. ‘Please use the candles, Inspector,’ the concierge had earlier said. Candles weren’t common anymore. Even in the South, in the former Free Zone, they hadn’t been seen by most since that first winter of 1940–1941.
Torchlight found her dark-blue leather high heels. They’d been soaked through last night but were now dry and needing a good cleaning and bit of polish. ‘Louis,’ he softly said. ‘I don’t think I can go through with this.’ Questions, Hermann, Louis would have said. You must concentrate on those. The time of entry? That call she made from the Lido last night didn’t come in to the quartier du Faubourg du Roule’s commissariat until 11.13 p.m. There would have been lots of time for her to have joined the judge at his table between sets …
Lots of time for others to have seen her sitting there with him. She had a child—was she married to a POW? She hadn’t been feeling well, had gone home early, the stage doorman said, but when, damn it, when? Early in a place like the Lido could mean anything up to midnight at the least.
Torchlight shone into the salle de séjour to settle on a gilded sconce. The cigarette lighter on the glass-topped coffee table was heavy. The matching cigarette box with its tortoiseshell repousé hadn’t had its lid completely replaced. Had her assailant dipped into it?
He knew she was here. Instinct told him this. Detective instinct.
Resting on the mantelpiece behind glass was a framed poster: Une Nuit à Chang-Rai, 7 Mai 1926 at the Magic City. Had the judge had a taste for showgirls even then?
Deep blue irises encircled soft pink roses that surrounded a scantily clad eighteen-year-old pseudo-indochinoise dancer. Slender, upraised arms crisscrossed above the coolie hat she wore. The look was squint-eye, the black lashes long and straight, the short hair curled in about her neck, and wasn’t the thing a parody Élène Artur must have definitely not appreciated, the judge a hypocrite? The dark-blue heels were every bit the same as those he’d just found.
‘Élène Artur,’ he said again, and weren’t names important? Hadn’t all the dead of that other war had names that had counted for something?
A vitrine held enamelled boxes, spills of jewellery, strands of pearls and beads, Fabergé eggs, Sèvres porcelain figurines, a Vénus, a marchioness … Had Hercule the Smasher used them to tempt his girlfriends into doing what he wanted or to pay them off by letting them choose some little memento as they left, one that said in no uncertain terms, Ferme-la, chérie? The kitchen was hung with copper pots and pans, Judge Rouget, Président du Tribunal spécial du Département de la Seine, immune to the scrap-metal drives that demanded everyone else cough up such items. The copper-sheathed zinc bathtub hadn’t been used to hold her corpse but the bidet had cigar ashes floating in it. A Choix Supreme? he demanded. Had Vivienne Rouget chosen to offer this Kripo one of those not because the Vichy gossip could be used if needed to shield that daughter of hers, but because she had damned well known or suspected this might happen?
Clothing clung to the open doors of an armoire whose mirrors threw back light from the candle in his hand. A necklace of sapphire beads had been broken. A dark-blue velvet off-the-shoulder sheath lay crumpled on the floor with a blue lace-trimmed silk slip and brassiere, silk stockings, too, that were scattered and had been yanked off—two men, had two of the bastards done it? The garter belt was entangled with the stockings and her step-ins.
Everywhere things had been broken, everywhere things torn or thrown, he waiting for the shakes to come, knowing, too, that that damned Messerschmitt Benzedrine he and sometimes Louis took to stay awake, wouldn’t help matters, but Louis who would, just wasn’t here …
The hush that enveloped the Club Mirage was every bit as deep as that first time St-Cyr had seen Gabrielle walk out onstage, a mirage of her own. Always she would have to sing ‘Lilli Marlene,’ and always that voice of hers would be carried over the airwaves by Radio-Paris and Radio-Berlin to be picked up by the Allies who avidly listened in, and wouldn’t being such a celebrity damn her in the end when finally France was freed? Hadn’t she best be got out of the country? A résistante!
Her dressing room was at the end of the corridor and right next to the stage door and stairs that led down into the cellars or up to the Rivard living quarters and storerooms and from those, down other sets of stairs to independent exits or up to the roof and from there to others.
Certainly Gestapo Paris’s Listeners had bugged that dressing room and just as certainly Gabrielle had left those bugs in place. Apparently, though, she had taken to keeping a bicycle handy. Unlocked, this shabby, third-hand instrument leaned against a wall, facing the exit and ready at a moment’s notice. Age and wear gave it a little less chance of being stolen, and wasn’t a bike by far the best means of travel these days? Didn’t it allow one to avoid the checkpoints and roundups that increasingly plagued the métro? Didn’t it also give advance warning of street controls since one could often see well ahead and reroute if possible or walk the bike up into a courtyard as if one belonged?
The dressing room was starkly Spartan, the more so from when he had met her during the investigation of a small murder, a ‘nothing’ murder Hermann had called it, only to then find otherwise. ‘Standartenführer … ? Forgive me, please. I didn’t know Gabi … the Mademoiselle Arcuri had someone waiting for her.’ Remi Rivard had tried to warn him. Remi …
‘St-Cyr, Sûreté—am I correct?’
Schwaben … Was the accent from there? ‘Jawohl, Colonel. I’m looking for my partner.’
‘Then you’ll be disappointed.’
Were the SS hunting for Hermann? ‘Gabrielle might have heard from him.’
St-Cyr hadn’t moved from the doorway and looked as if to bolt. ‘She’ll not have heard unless within the last ten minutes. Ach, bitte. Close the door. Though I love the sound of her voice, the shouting and applause I find disturbing. Would you care for one of those?’ The cigarettes were indicated. ‘I’m sure Madame Thériault won’t mind.’
Her married name had been used as a definite hint to that ‘nothing’ murder. As then, there had been Russian cigarettes, but had the case been purposely left open on her dressing table in defiance of this SS since the Russians were now getting the better of the Reich?
This Sûreté couldn’t help but notice the other items the ‘Arcuri’ woman had left out: a glass of the Château Thériault’s demi-sec, the vineyards near Vouvray, a wedge of chèvre crottin with a dusting of herbs and dill, some slices of a baguette, these last forbidden by law and therefore subject to both a fine and prison sentence or forced labour.
Everything registered clearly in St-Cyr’s expression, including concern over why she had been so foolish as to not have anticipated a visitor from the SS.
‘Standartenführer …’ blurted this Schweinebulle who placed honesty and truth above all else, as did Kohler, the two of them having incurred the wrath of so many of Paris’s SS and Gestapo, especially for what had happened at that same château.
‘Bitte, mein lieber französischer Oberdetektiv, Hjalmar Langbehn à votre service.’
The heels were smoothly brought together but hardly a sound from the jackboots was heard, a slim hand extended and taken since it had to be. ‘Colonel, what brings you here?’
A certain Blitzmädel’s handbag, was that what was worrying St-Cyr? ‘A little supper—oh, not those.’
The glass of wine he had wished for, St-Cyr knew, when Gabi had shared the repast with him at the Château Thériault’s mill on the Loire.
‘Those have, I gather, been left for yourself in welcome on your return from Alsace, but …’
He would leave a little pause, thought Langbehn. It always seemed to unsettle those who did not wish to reveal more than possible, and St-Cyr was definitely one of them. ‘Mademoiselle Arcuri has kindly agreed to be my guest at Chez Francis.’
The Alsatian restaurant on place de l’Alma had long been a legend in its own right, but before the Defeat several of its waiters and sous-chefs had been spies and fifth columnists for the Reich. Now, of course, they owned and ran the restaurant.
A cardboard suitcase—nothing so fine as from Vuitton or Hermès—lay tucked behind the colonel’s chair, but had he noticed it? Did Gabi now keep it packed and ready to take into hiding at a moment’s notice—had things become that desperate for her even within the past ten days?
One might never know. Such suitcases had come with the disappearance of leather to the Reich, but they had one great advantage: so common and identical were they, few among the Occupier could differentiate and they could, if confronted by a control, be casually slid in amongst others at a railway station and left behind.
‘These blackout crimes,’ said Langbehn. ‘Brief me on your progress—I trust such has been made?’
Had Oberg ordered this one to look into the matter? Fortunately Sonja Remer’s handbag was still hidden under the overcoat. ‘I’ll just go out to the courtyard to see if my partner might have finally arrived. Hermann often chooses to come in that way but has trouble closing the doors.’
‘Gut, then both of you can brief me. I understand that Judge Rouget’s daughter was at the Drouant last night with Gaston and Madame Morel when he and the stepsister of the latter were attacked.’
‘Give me but a moment. I’ll be right back.’
Outside and standing in the rain, St-Cyr knew that the colonel might well look around the dressing room and find things he shouldn’t. There’d been an Eisernes Kreuz First-Class at the neck of that uniform, and from that other war, Wehrmacht wound and flak badges too, and the 1939 clasp and bar with Nazi eagle and swastika in silver gilt, the double braiding and skull and crossbones on the cap, an SS-Dienstauszeichnungen also, the long-service award with SS runes and ribbon signifying twelve years of absolute loyalty.
But now … now the Standartenführer wasn’t simply a soldier but an administrator, one of the Totenkopverbände who ran the concentration camps, and hadn’t Hermann and he had to visit the camp at Natzweiler-Struthof in Alsace not three, or was it four days ago?
A granite quarry whose cruelty had been matched by the harshness of winter in the mountains of the Vosges.
The rain was icy when he lifted his face to it. There was, of course, absolutely no sign of Hermann who knew all about this courtyard and stage door but would have blithely roared in through the front entrance to chat up the coat-check girls before taking in a bit of the show and making his way through to the bar.
But where was he when most needed? Had he found Giselle?
The bed was Empire and of mahogany that gleamed but Élène Artur wasn’t in it. She had spun away to the far side, had been caught by an ankle, had kicked, scrambled up, run to the dressing table and seized something—a letter opener. Had she defied her assailants with it? She had knocked over a perfume bottle, the toilet water, rouge, talcum powder, face cream and other things. A hand mirror had then been thrown. Where … where the hell had she got to? Had she managed to get away?
They had caught her by the hair and had thrown her down. One had pinned her head and hands against the carpet, but she’d bitten his left wrist or hand, had bitten deeply—there was blood on the carpet, not much, but enough.
The door to an adjacent room was all but closed … ‘Go on, you must,’ he said aloud. Louis wouldn’t expect it of him. Louis would say, Hermann, leave this to me!
But Louis wasn’t here and all the sounds of that other war were coming at him now, the stench, too, of cordite and of mouldering earth and entrails. The blast had been so loud the ears had been stunned and they hadn’t heard the humming of the shrapnel as it had filled the air. Young Heinrich—Grenadier Oberlan and one hell of a shot, age eighteen who had never been with a girl, let alone the one whose photo he carried—had run blindly through the deep snow among the shattered, decapitated fir trees at Vieil Armand on that mountainside to the west of Colmar in Alsace in that first winter of 1914–1915, his hands desperately trying to contain the guts that were spilling from him.
Heinrich had tripped on them and had lain there blinking up at the one who had always told him, Hey, mein Lieber, don’t worry. I’m going to look after you.
His legs had still been moving. ‘You promised,’ he had managed. Nothing else, the bright red, grey to plum-purple, net-veined, sticky tubular coils slithering flaccidly from between slackening fingers, the heart beating and then not, the uniform in shreds.
‘Louis … Louis, they cut her open and let her run.’
‘Giselle … ? She hasn’t been to the club, Jean-Louis.’
Gabrielle struck a match, the sound of it reverberating throughout the dressing room, she to fix him with a gaze that said, as the match was extended to light the cigarette she had given him, Look after my René Yvon-Paul. I don’t know what this one wants of me.
Her son was only ten years old and lived with his grandmother at Château Thériault, but Langbehn was watching closely.
A wrap was found, the Standartenführer putting it about her shoulders then taking her overcoat from its peg, she slipping into it as that one held it for her, she knowing there was little she could say, not even, Jean-Louis, how I’ve missed you, only, ‘I understand from the colonel that you and Herr Kohler are working around the clock.’
Herr Kohler, not Hermann. ‘As always.’ They couldn’t signal to each other, nor could he warn her of just how desperate things had become.
Alone, St-Cyr budgetted the cigarette. She didn’t use them often, but when she did, the tobacco was invariably Russian. There was, of course, a phial of Mirage on her dressing table. In the old days, the good days between the two most recent wars, Muriel Barteaux, the source of that perfume, had been a regular patron of Gabi’s, listening to her at the Lune Russe and others of the chanteuse clubs, but then there’d been a long hiatus: marriage and motherhood for Gabi, and then the Defeat and widowhood had come and, miracle of miracles word had spread, and there that voice was again, so much so that Muriel had created Mirage for what had appeared on the stage of this club.
Muriel and Chantal Grenier were old and dear friends, well into their seventies, their shop Enchantment on place Vendôme—exquisite lingerie and perfumes, bath soaps and salts and much, much more but always crowded with German generals, et cetera since the Ritz was right next door. Had the location meaning for Hermann and himself, especially as the Trinité victim had planned to go to that hotel?
Though he had spoken often of the shop, Giselle wouldn’t have sought refuge there. She didn’t even know her way across the Seine from the Sixth into the First. The river was like a moat to her.
Sonja Remer’s handbag haunted him and he unbuttoned his coat, took it out, held the Tokarev, checked it as one always should and wondered again where it all must lead. No note or word of warning could be left for Gabrielle, lest it be found or heard by others. The Standartenführer’s little visit could mean nothing or everything. Hermann might know something but where had he got to? Had he found Giselle safe?
The girl would have been distraught. Being banished couldn’t have sat well with her. She’d have gone in search of a friendly face—some of the nearby shops specialized in magic and the reading of fortunes. A realist, she liked at times to kid herself but wasn’t overly superstitious, as were many prostitutes, and why must the cop in him never forget where she’d come from? She was far too intelligent for such a profession anyway, far too sensible but of her own mind always. She would have found those other doors just as shut to her in any case, since the House of Madame Chabot serviced the neighbourhood and what that one said, others obeyed or else.
It would still have been daylight. The café Les Deux Magots was a little to the west but she could easily have gone there, it being on the corner opposite the Église de Saint-Germain-des-Prés. One of the largest Soldatenheim, the troop hostels, was on the rue Saint-Benoît and just around the corner. Lots of friendly faces, lots of interest in her, or had she gone into the church to beg forgiveness for having slept with one of the enemy, only to then catch the métro and try to find her way back to Oona? Had she impulsively caught a vélo-taxi, been followed, been taken into one of the air-raid shelters to be beaten, raped, murdered—terrorized first? There’d been no alerte but those doors were never locked. She was street-wise—mon Dieu, she’d have had to be. Hadn’t Hermann used her in more than one investigation?
Had he gone to the rue des Saussaies to see if she’d been picked up and taken there? Was he even looking for her?
‘Giselle … ?’ It couldn’t be her, thought Kohler, and yet the feet were as hers, the small of this one’s back, the shoulders, the way she had run, had suddenly stepped up on to the chaise longue and then had stepped down to the carpet on the other side, all in a hurry, all in terror, she then tripping to fall to her hands and knees, to pause, to try to understand …
‘Giselle,’ he heard himself saying again as if dazed and wandering among shell-shattered trenches and through the acrid fog of no-man’s-land. ‘Giselle?
‘It’s Élène Artur, damn it.’
Pale and flaccid, glistening still, net-veined, dark-red, blood-red, grey-white and blue—pale yellow where there was a little fat—intestines were coiled about her left ankle. At first, on being disembowelled, she had tried to catch herself, to stop the viscera from spilling from her. In shock, some sense of what was happening must have come but then she had collapsed on to her left side, the legs fully extending only to be drawn in and up.
Faeces and urine stained the carpet to mingle with the blood and other fluids that seemingly were everywhere. ‘Élène Artur,’ he said again, the voice a broken whisper, for the jet-black hair he mustn’t touch was that of Giselle and so like hers, the image of her kept coming at him.
Rigor was still present. The eyes were wide and clouded—dust would have collected. Blood had erupted from both nostrils. The teeth, what could be seen of them, were very white and straight—she’d not used tobacco, couldn’t have drunk much coffee, real or ersatz, or black tea—had been gagged by a silk stocking that had been forced between the jaws and tied behind the head. Tied tightly—too tightly. They’d done that after she’d bitten one of them. After.
Semen had trickled down the left thigh to be smeared as she had run, but there were only traces of this that could be seen, hidden as it was by the rest, but definitely rape beforehand.
‘Élène Artur,’ he said yet again. She’d been dead for about twenty-four hours, would have been brought here from the Lido at about what? Eleven forty? Twelve midnight, maybe? The call to the district commissariat had been made at 11.13 p.m. She had first been forced to contact the press. Here, then, at half after midnight, or maybe 1.00 a.m. at the latest, the concierge sound asleep. Had they known this too?
The face was swollen, livid and blotchy. There were deep bruises on the neck where she’d been held during the rape, showers of petechial haemorrhages under the eyes and across the bridge of the nose and the cheeks. Some of the slate-blue to reddish-purple blotches on the lower parts of the left buttock, thigh and calf were due to postmortem hypostasis and would have to be sorted from the bruises. There were abrasions and scratches—several cuts as well, the flesh having been laid open, the assailant darting in with a cutthroat?
‘A knife—but what kind of knife, damn it? That was no cutthroat.’
The right breast had been cleanly and deeply sliced open by one slash that extended down through the nipple. That shoulder had also been opened and then the forearm as she had managed to pull free and had tried to fend him off only to have that arm grabbed again by the other assailant, the one who had come up behind her. The knife had been pulled away after she’d been cut open. Blood had shot from its blade, lots of blood that had, only at the last, dribbled from it.
Had the bastard known how to butcher? Had he been a butcher?
‘That knife, it’s not the usual.’ Louis and Armand Tremblay would have to see her just as she was, but Judge Rouget wasn’t going to like what had happened in his little nest. Hercule the Smasher would have to run to Oberg to beg that one’s help in hushing things up. Oberg would love it, since the judge, the judicial system and the night-action trials would then be even more within that grasping fist, the police too, and wasn’t that really what Oberg wanted most?
Yes, Oberg would have to hear of it but first from this Kripo. There wasn’t any sense in trying to avoid the issue or prolong the agony. It would be expected of him and he had best do that, but first, a little look around so as to have the background needed to save one’s ass if possible.
‘But what sort of knife would leave a spurt of blood that long when withdrawn?’ he asked. ‘A blade but not like butchers use even for the smaller cuts, since the thing must have collected one hell of a lot of blood in a groove or something to have had it spurt off the end like that when removed.’
The washbasin was clean, the floor as well, but one had to ask, Why so tidy when one had left such a mess? Why not simply flick ash on to the floor? Impulse, had that been it? One of long familiarity and care?
They hadn’t taken her handbag. One of them—the one with the cigar—had dumped it out on a side table in the salle de séjour and had dropped a little ash, which had been quickly but not completely wiped away. Again a tidy man. Well dressed? he had to ask. One who knew the judge and had used the flat before and perhaps often?
ID, ration cards and tickets had been taken as with other victims but also to slow identification, though here there had been just too many holes in the sieve for them to have plugged and they hadn’t figured on Didier Valois forking up the address and name of the judge’s petite amie, had thought instead that Hercule the Smasher would have found her first. Not Louis or himself, but Rouget who would then have run to Oberg—had they known that’s what he’d do? Had they understood him and the use of this flat so well they had counted on it and felt supremely confident and safe from honest detectives who might just start asking questions?
But why empty the handbag, why not simply take it as with other victims?
When Kohler found her wedding ring, he instinctively knew it was one of those little breaks every detective longed for and that her killers must have wanted it as proof.
The ring had fallen to the malachite top of the table and had bounced on to the carpet, there to roll out and across the parquet before hiding itself under the far corner of the radiator.
Opening the valve, Kohler bled off the entrapped air to silence the radiator’s pinging he must have been hearing all along. ‘I haven’t any other choice, Louis,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry but I’m going to have to go to the avenue Foch and might just as well do so now and get it over with while I still have what it takes.’
But first, he would have to take a look in the toilet. That, too, couldn’t be avoided, especially as the parquet had been mopped but not completely.
Numéro 11 rue des Saussaies was as blacked out as the rest of the city at seven minutes past midnight, now Saturday, 13 February 1943—how had Hermann and himself lasted this long? wondered St-Cyr. Leaving the Citroën at kerbside where it could be more easily located if in a hurry, he avoided the front entrance. Heading up into the courtyard, he felt his way by running a hand along the inner wall, all the while listening to the streets and to the rain.
The cellars were ice cold. Water lay in pools. Dimly lit at the best of times, the corridors ran every which way. The first cells were starkly empty. Scratches gave names and dates—one couldn’t help but notice. A poem—sometimes beautifully composed; a message, if but brief; a curse that could only have made things more difficult. A ‘reinforced’ interrogation brought its echoes. Cringing with each blow, he hurried—Hermann and he had agreed to spend as little time as possible in the building, in that ‘office’ of theirs on the fifth floor.
The women’s cells were at the back, down yet another corridor. French or Occupier, did it matter who was in authority here? Often the former liked to show they were better at it than the latter, but would they really have to answer for their actions when spring came? Wasn’t Pharand, head of the Sûreté, a past master at blowing the smoke screen and hiding behind it? Wouldn’t those such as himself and Hermann, too, be left to answer for the crimes of others?
Blood, pus, human waste and vomit made the air rank. Suddenly a man shrilled a name. Other names rapidly followed, then a penetrating silence, then a sickening blow to which the whole of the cellars would have listened.
Upstairs, on the ground floor and above this, there was much activity. Questioning the duty sergeant brought nothing more than a knowing smirk and then an uncaring shrug.
There was no mention in the docket of Giselle’s having been picked up. The morgue then? he had to wonder. If so, how could he possibly break the news to Hermann? Hadn’t it been hard enough having to let him know of the deaths of his two sons? Hadn’t Boemelburg deliberately left that duty to this partner and friend of Hermann’s?
Walter’s door was closed but never locked since none would dare enter without being asked and the duty sergeant was keeping an eye on this Sûreté.
But not long enough.
Quickly letting himself into the spacious office Pharand had had to vacate after the Defeat, he closed the door and listened hard to this place he’d once been proud to be a part of. The blackout drapes had been drawn—Walter often worked late. The green-shaded desk lamp he’d brought from a distant past as a salesman of heating and ventilating systems would be sufficient. Before making the career change to detective, Walter had worked in Paris in the twenties and had learned the language so well as Head of the Gestapo’s Section IV he spoke it like a native of Montmartre.
Boemelburg and he had liaised on IKPK matters before the Defeat and on that infamous day no surprise had been shown at finding this Sûreté upstairs in Records destroying sensitive files the Gestapo and SS wanted. He had merely wagged a reproving finger and had said to cooperate or else, since some appearance of fighting common crime, no matter how limited, would be useful in calming the public. ‘But I’ll delegate someone to watch over you.’
Questions … there wouldn’t even be time for those when the end came and the Occupier had to leave. Hermann and himself wouldn’t have a chance. There were only about 2,400 German Gestapo and SS in the country but there were more than 50,000 working for them: the French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston—gangsters who had been let out of prison and put to work; the Intervention-Referat, the Bickler Unit and other gangs, and as if these were not enough, now there was Vichy’s newest paramilitary force, the Milice française. Then, too, the Sûreté and the Paris police—all 15,000 of these last—and every other police force in the country, even the gardes champêtre, the rural police. Certainly not all were bad—ah no, of course not—but orders were orders and often the only choice a flic or village cop had was to follow them to varying degrees, some more than others.
But civil war would erupt when the Occupier pulled out. Caught up in things—trapped—Hermann wouldn’t have a chance, never mind himself.
A metronome drew his attention—such a lovely thing conjured thoughts of childhood piano lessons that had been hated until, wonder of wonders, Grand-maman had stopped having earaches.
Next to it was a phial of bitter almond, the smell like that of potassium cyanide. Walter was now constantly searching for improvements: the incessant tick-tock of the one during an interrogation, the smell of the other in a war of nerves that was only going to get far worse.
Sonja Remer’s name had been written and encircled on an otherwise blank sheet of paper beneath which there was a telex from Gestapo Muller in Berlin but prompted, no doubt, by an enraged Heinrich Himmler. ACHTUNG. IMMEDIATE END TO BLACKOUT CRIMES IMPERATIVE OR FACE RECALL AND COURT-MARTIAL. HEIL HITLER.
Berlin were seldom happy. Though Von Schaumburg might be counted on, Walter was really this flying squad’s only supporter. By his word alone did they continue to exist.
In the top drawer there were blank identity cards, blank ration cards with next week’s colour-coded tickets, blank laissez-passers and sauf-conduits, all rubber stamped and signed not only by Préfet Talbotte but also by Von Schaumburg. Lots and lots of them, each type bound by an elastic band. French-gestapo plainclothes and others often had to go under cover to trap résistants or to locate hidden works of art and other valuables.
Five sets would be needed, but Gabrielle could never be persuaded to leave her son, so six would have to be taken. Giselle, if still alive and safe, simply wouldn’t want to step off her little corner of this planet. ‘And I know I’m not a thief, not even now,’ he breathed. ‘It’s far too dangerous anyway and I really must stay.’
Behind the desk there was a large wall map of Paris. Immediately apparent from the colour-coded flags and their brief notations was the fact that Hermann and this partner of his had merely scratched the surface. Not only had there been a huge increase in the usual sort of blackout crimes, there had been this other aspect.
While some of the sexual attacks would have been against females simply because they had cohabited with the Occupier, one group, as they had discovered, definitely had been targeted: those who were married to, or engaged to, prisoners of war.
There were close on three hundred of these flags, but the earliest of them dated only from 1 December, so the numbers would be much higher. Of those who could be interviewed, all had lost their wedding rings if they had had these with them. Some had lost their hair and/or their clothes. Not all had been raped, some only threatened with such, others beaten but not severely, still others savagely, some even to death and … and recently. Ah, merde!
Female, age 20–25, no identity papers, hair jet-black and glossy, colour of eyes not possible. Beaten, raped and kicked to death. Died of a massive haemorrhage.
The attack had taken place in the passage de l’Hirondelle, a narrow lane off the rue Gît-le-Couer in the Sixth, and so close to Hermann’s flat and the House of Madame Chabot it sickened.
Pinned to the left side of the map, Walter had noted many of the things they, too, had discovered or been thinking.
1) Violence escalating?
2) Attacks not random but chosen so as to give that impression?
3) The work of a gang whose sources of information yield potential targets that are then followed up on?
4) Targets selected by a committee or by one individual? If so, could information be leaked about Giselle le Roy so as to put into action the Höherer SS Oberg’s astute suggestion that we use the girl to bait a trap?
5) Won’t these criminals already have had access to that information? If so, is it their intent to use it before we do?
Had they already done so? St-Cyr had to wonder. Was Oona to be next?
6) Are the press being notified only when felt useful?
A hastily scribbled notation revealed just how desperate things must be.
7) Could the Terroristen be contacted and convinced to help in return for lenience and an end to the shooting of hostages or given the offer of treatment, when captured, as prisoners of war under the articles of the Geneva Convention?
The Résistance—had that been behind the Standartenführer’s taking Gabrielle to dinner? To sound things out?
She would not have gone along with anything, and Langbehn wouldn’t have asked. It was total war and everyone knew it, Walter as well.
Beneath Sonja Remer’s name and the telex, there was a slip of notepaper dated 1610 hours, Thursday 11 February and signed by Oberg.
Informants advise possibility of assaults being committed this evening in the passage de la Trinité and outside the Restaurant Drouant. If confirmed, advise assigning Kohler and St-Cyr to those.
There was no mention of the police academy attack or of the robbery at Au Philatéliste Savant, nor was there any of Lulu.