Carousel (26 page)

St-Cyr clamped his eyes shut and tightened the grip on his injured hand. They'd cut it right across the back. It would be stiff for days.

Pressing a thumb against the wound, he continued on up the street. Twice more there was the sound of that car. Hermann, was it Hermann? Then a convoy of trucks started up, and when he reached the rue des Plantes, there was the sound of a patrol.

Had this been what had deterred them the most? Had their hearing been so good, their instincts so much better than his own?

If they had wanted to kill him why hadn't they simply come to the house, to Belleville and the rue Laurence Savart?

It was damaged. They'd not thought he'd go there to sleep.

They had also known the address of Christabelle Audit's residence. They'd been waiting for someone to show up.

Kohler finished the last of his cigarette. Oona Van der Lynn waited beside him in the Citroën, where Louis usually sat if not sleeping in the back.

‘Look, I know how you must feel, Herr Kohler. I'm sorry we could not find your friend.'

They'd been to a carousel, to a villa, a small hotel, a church, a house whose front had been blown to pieces by the Resistance. They'd been to so many places. Now the dawn had come and there was nothing more to be said except, ‘You needn't worry about me any more. I can manage on my own.'

‘You're a good woman, madame, and I'm sorry for what's happened to you. Louis wouldn't want me to leave you in the lurch, not with those bastards holding your husband.'

‘Your friend must be exceptional.'

‘He is, or was. Come on. I'll take you there.'

The Vél d'Hiv, the Vélodrome d'Hiver, looked shut up. The wind fluttered a poster, years old, for a cycling race. The stadium needed a coat of paint.

To the north of them the Eiffel Tower would be flying the flag of the Third Reich. Here on the rue Nélation there was only the reminder of what that Reich could do and had done.

The doors were locked. He raised a fist. They could hear the pounding echo inside the empty stadium. ‘God damn it, open up. Gestapo!'

The
flic
who unlocked the door from inside had been sleeping in the straw but managed a grin at the sight of them. ‘Ah, the one with the slash. Good morning, Inspector. Your fame, it has spread even to this small corner of the earth.'

‘Go fuck yourself. Where's Martin Van der Lynn? He's wanted for questioning in connection with a murder case.'

The turd ducked his pumpkin head in deference. ‘Of course, Monsieur the Inspector. Please come this way. I, Claude Poirier of the fifteenth in the
Quartier
Grenelle, will escort the Inspector and madame to the gardens, eh? Number …' he consulted a notebook … Number 100312, Yes … Yes, that's him.'

Kohler gripped the woman by the arm. ‘Hey listen, eh? Things will be okay. Once we've got him out, I'll see what I can do. Don't worry.'

They went through to one of the concrete staircases and up this into the grandstands. The cycling track looked bleak and empty under the washed blue of the glassed-in roof high above them. It made one feel lonely to see no one else about. It made one hear the shouts, the cheers as the cyclists hurtled themselves round and round the track in suicidal clusters at the bends.

It made one hear the cries of little children, the hysteria of their parents who'd been taken from them. Cattle trucks to the concentration camps at Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande, the adults straight to Auschwitz, the kids to the one at Drancy and then finally to the same and bugger that crap about no one knowing a thing. Only one of those 9,000 French cops who had rounded up the Jews of Paris had resigned in protest. Only one. Poor Louis.

The ‘gardens' were several rows of crosses tucked away in a far corner next to latrine pits that had overflowed this past summer but were now awaiting the annual rise of the Seine.

Kohler realized the joke of a fresh grave was on him but had no liking for it. Lafont and Bonny had accused him of being a lover of the French, their Jews included, and so had thought to show him the truth. They couldn't have known how badly Louis had taken the whole thing but had guessed at it. And they did hate Louis with a passion even though they wanted the poor Frog's help.

‘Oona, come on. It'll do no good to stay here. Look, if it means anything, I'll make certain you don't come to any more harm.'

‘He was a nice man, a good man, the father of our children.'

Taxidermists who slept behind their shops slept late like the exhibits in their windows. Chez Rudi's offered an interlude: Black Forest ham, two eggs on horseback, coffee and rolls.

Awakened, Verdun, the stuiffer of birds and animals who smelled of lye as if he drank it, examined the tool with the care of a demolitions expert.

Kohler breathed impatiently. Out on the rue des Lions, Oona Van der Lynn sat in the car, his mascot now.

‘Look, I'm packing two guns so don't fart about. Just tell me what it is.'

‘It's a modelling tool, for pushing the chopped tow in under the skin and around the skeleton when mounting small birds or animals. Sometimes it is used for sculpting in plaster or paraffin wax, though we do not recommend the use of such things.'

A taxidermist's tool, but had Réjean Turcel been the one to drop it or Charles Audit? ‘It's been well used,' said Kohler, glancing up to see Verdun drag his eyes from the car. ‘Handmade years ago. What's that one?' He pointed to a case beneath the glass. ‘The one that looks like a flattened dental pick, an earspoon?'

The eyes settled back into their lofty perch. ‘A skull-emptier. Has the tool anything to do with the Chief Inspector of the Sûreté who came here, monsieur?'

‘St-Cyr? That schmuck? Not a chance.'

Verdun gave a shrug. ‘I could have sold his canary. I told him so. I offered.'

‘You didn't! Did he really have a canary?'

It would be best to be truthful. ‘A beauty. A Clear Border Yellow cock, perhaps the commonest of canaries, but a superb job of mounting, considering the primitiveness of that tool. He wanted to know who'd done it. He asked about the elastic band.'

‘And you could have sold his canary?'

Verdun drew himself up. ‘Yes, to the Vice Admiral von Lion. Me, I have told the Vice Admiral of the bird. He was most disappointed to have missed it.'

Kohler gathered in the tool. ‘I'll bet he was.' Tracking down stuffed canaries instead of gathering military intelligence! Hunting for gold coins and girls who sold them. What would the Abwehr think of next?

The empire of Hermann ‘Otto' Brandl never stopped. That huge purchasing company the Abwehr had set up in France had its head offices in two fine old period houses at numbers 21 and 23 square Bois du Boulogne. This was money. This was power and class. The air fairly breathed of it. Even the rain that was pissing ran cleanly to the sewers.

Oona Van der Lynn stirred uncomfortably on the seat beside him as the Citroën's engine began to cool. ‘Relax, eh? This is where it's all at. If you want to get ahead in business today, you have to come here to Brandl or see that one of his minions comes to you.'

‘And if you want to hold on to your wealth?' she asked.

She wasn't dumb. She'd begun to figure things out for herself. Kohler knew he was impressed. ‘You make “friends”, madame, and you hope you've hidden that wealth so well they won't get a sniff of it.'

‘And if someone else knows you have that hidden wealth and doesn't particularly like you?'

‘Then you're in trouble.'

‘This place is too close to the avenue Foch. ‘The rue Lauriston is practically around the corner.'

Kohler grinned to ease her mind. ‘Boys with their toys have to gather near one another, madame. The trouble is, they seldom play together. One always wants what the other has and, like boys everywhere, they often get nasty.'

‘Do you want me to wait in the car?'

He shook his head. ‘I've already lost someone that way. I'd just as soon not lose you as well.'

She seemed to take frugal nourishment from what he'd said, and he knew she'd asked herself, Does he really mean it? Was she safe with him? Could
anybody
be safe these days?

‘The rue Lauriston will want to question me now that Martin is dead.'

‘Not if you're with me. Just try to keep that in mind and
don't
bolt until I can find a safe place for you.' She flashed him an uncertain smile that was at once sad and realistic. ‘Look I really will see you're okay. I mean it.'

‘For your partner's sake?' she asked, not looking at him but at those two fine houses that flew no flags, remaining unmarked except for a small bronze plaque:
The Bureau Otto.

‘For Louis' sake. Yeah, that's right. I owe the Frog. Now come on. Look your best. Let me do the talking.'

A grey mouse, one of the fräuleins who had volunteered back home for the typing pools and the sacks of their bosses, held fort at the outer desk of the string of offices they were ushered to. Abwehr blue was everywhere. Telephones, teleprinters, secretaries, accountants, purchasing agents, two rows of stiff, unsmiling businessmen sitting with knees together and briefcases hiding them. Hats in their hands and goods to sell. After all, this was practically the only place a fellow with a couple of factories could keep hand to mouth short of the black market, which they'd dabble in anyway. And money they made. Lots of it. Buckets. One Frog trying to outFrog another, the little flies that were so tasty being tossed to them by the Chief Toad, one Hermann ‘Otto' Brandl.

The grey mouse looked up sternly. ‘Herr Kohler?' she said, distastefully fingering his Gestapo's shield.

‘A collector of stuffed canaries,' he grinned. ‘They said you'd know where he was, seeing as he's the one who's in charge of silk, glass and explosives, and as his office is empty.'

Kohler drew her attention to a fact she already knew. The offices she guarded were posh, nothing stinted. Leather and antiques and lots of them, all tastefully arranged.

‘Kapitän Offenheimer is
out,
' she said, consulting a diary.

‘Didn't Brandl tell you to open your lips?'

The buttons of her zinc-covered bosom were tight. Her blue eyes didn't leave his. ‘Look, your boss collects stuffed canaries. He's got a passion for this one. I'd like to give it to him.'

‘A moment then. I will see if Kapitän Brandl is still willing for you to be tolerated.'

She rang through and listened sharply as a tadpole should. ‘He asks if you know who killed the mackerel Victor Morand.'

Blandness would be best. ‘Réjean Turcel, a Corsican, the new owner of the carousel. Address changed, the new address not yet known but we're working on it. He's the prime suspect but there are others.'

This she relayed to Brandl, who replied that they must be getting warm. ‘Kapitän Offenheimer and his personal secretary are at one of the warehouses in Saint-Ouen. You may see him there.' She scribbled the address on a slip of paper. ‘Is this the canary?' she asked of Madame Van der Lynn. ‘I thought she was already dead.'

Outside in the car Kohler said, ‘Don't let her bother you. It's a world in which no one tells anyone anything more than they absolutely have to, madame. A world of lies, half-truths and utter deceptions, where greed is conqueror and petty jealousies reign supreme.'

‘Did Réjean really kill this … this mackerel?'

‘Like I just said, I don't know. Let them
think
he did. For now that's good enough. Don't panic, eh? Just try to keep calm. I think we've made a tiny breakthrough. We've let Brandl's side know that we'll play by their rules.'

‘But you won't.'

‘Not really. No. That's half the fun of it, but it's also what they'll be expecting.'

The sounds of charcoal being scraped on drawing-paper came up to St-Cyr, here a cough, there a muted exclamation that served only to emphasize the intensity with which the various pieces of work were being executed.

The studio, one of several in the École des Beaux-Arts, was cold and poorly lit. From the observers' balcony he had the best of views. He'd been to the hospital, had had his hand stitched, had had a little something to eat.

Among the students there were several Germans on leave, corporals, sergeants, even a lieutenant or two. The Kriegsmarine, the Luftwaffe, the Wehrmacht, all dedicated to improving their talent.

The French students were a mixed bag, some old enough to be grandfathers, others young enough to have been their grandchildren. There was a noticeable lack of young men, painful because the war had stripped the youth of France of them.

Marianne St-Jacques sat on a
chaise longue
on a small dais in the midst of the students. There was a white woollen blanket under her. The ankles were crossed. One arm rested casually over the back of the
chaise;
the other hand held a red silk rose.

This she was smelling.

St-Cyr looked down on her as that God of his looked down on him and the dice of fate were thrown in the back alley of life.

The urge to photograph her was overpowering. The cinematographer had to start the cameras but he took the film back to the rue Polonceau, to the morning after they had found the body of Christabelle Audit. 0500 hours and darkness, the end of the curfew.

And he heard this girl saying to Georges Lagace, the baker, ‘Until tomorrow, my love, I die with waiting and hunger.'

She was not overly pretty or striking in any particular way but had many positive anatomical attributes. The brown hair was thick and cut short, bobbed in waves and curls with one pronounced wave over the right side of the brow. The legs were not too long or too slender, a girl of perhaps some fifty or so kilograms with small but nicely shaped breasts, the nipples turned slightly outwards. A slim waist, good hips that would grow bigger with time – in many ways a lot like Christabelle Audit. Very positive, very proud shoulders, high collar-bones, a slim neck and sharply jutting chin, a chin of character. Ah yes, this one would not take no for an answer.