Clandestine (29 page)

‘Or it's all a lot of hot air, eh?'

Merde
, but what would break the bastard? ‘There was an embroidered handkerchief with a name on it. “Anna,” I believe—wasn't that what your husband said, Évangéline?'

‘Anna, yes, and … and something beginning with a
V
, he thought.'

‘Really, Kohler, it wasn't kind of you to have got the Kommandant von Gross-Paris to consign that PPF hit squad to shovelling concrete on the Channel Islands, but even so, we are willing to let bygones be bygones. We've had the shop of those two old lesbians repaired, as asked, and have even left them with 250,000 francs in case anything was missed or stolen.'

There was only one way to stop them, felt Kohler. Reaching for the envelope, taking the letter out of his jacket pocket as if from it, he said, ‘Then perhaps you'd better read this. It's from the Reichssicherheitschef and definitely tells you or anyone else to leave Louis and me alone to do the job we've been assigned.'

Putain de merde
, even Heinrich Ludin couldn't go against such an order. ‘
Ah bon, mon ami
, we'll do as requested, of course, but continue to look ourselves, and if we should find her, why you can be sure we'll ask a few questions before turning her over to the proper authorities.'

‘
Monsieur Figeard, c'est moi
. I'm back. How have you been? The chest, that cough, the sacroiliac? Did you go to Madame Duclos, the
masseuse
, as I told you to?'

Several broken matches attested to his having finally got his pipe alight. Startled, he looked up. ‘
Ah Sainte Mère
, is it really you, mademoiselle? A week, you thought. Ten days at most, and now the fourth of the month? Your dear mother … The funeral … Come in and sit down. Tell me everything. Let me have it while it's still fresh. Lean the bike against the corridor wall. No one will say a thing.'

‘It's not mine. I borrowed it from a friend and must return it.'

A friend … A bike that had been made in Liege, but with a Paris licence that would have taken weeks. ‘Did she suffer?'

‘
Maman?
No, not at all. Indeed, she has recovered fully. That's why I'm late. The doctors all said it was because I had come to see her again and had stayed constantly at her bedside that she made such a miraculous recovery. Me, I'm just happy all my prayers were answered. Now tell me, please, how have the rabbits and the chickens been? Have they missed me?'

‘Your hand … What have you done?'

Zut
, she would forget, and like the good friend he was, he
would
notice. ‘Ah, it's nothing. I just fell and cut myself on some gravel. It's fine. The stitches are to come out tomorrow.'

Stitched but not with cat gut, with what looked to be fishing line, but what should he do? wondered Figeard. Continue the charade or tell her what had happened in her absence?

Setting his pipe aside, he said, ‘That boy, mademoiselle. That subdeacon, he's been here time and again and claims he intends to ask you to marry him.'

‘Marry … ? Pierre-Alexandre? But … but I hardly know him.'

‘My thoughts exactly. I tried to tell him, but the Russians, they can be very persistent. Apparently subdeacons must decide whether to marry or not before they are made deacons and never thereafter.'

‘And all because I was able to obtain a little rosemary from one of the gardeners at the Jardin des Plantes? It's insane, Monsieur Figeard. We have hardly spoken.'

‘And not even at those dinners he and his father took you to?'

Why had he to ask? ‘Me, I knew it was a mistake to agree to let him and his father take me there. Oh for sure, the food it was magnificent and extremely expensive. Once perhaps, but twice … What
am
I to do?'

‘Tell him he's crazy.'

‘Of course. You're absolutely right.'

It would have to be said, felt Figeard. It simply couldn't be avoided. ‘There was another visitor.'

Another
.

Sickened, alarmed—ready to run if necessary—this girl he had trusted like a daughter, this Annette-Mélanie Veroche, waited for him to continue. ‘A Sûreté. Chief Inspector Jean-Louis St-Cyr.'

Ah merde, merde
, it had finally happened! ‘Why?'

She had even darted a look behind and along the corridor. ‘Please, mademoiselle, there is no reason for you to worry. Apparently they think you must have witnessed the murder of two bank employees and the partial robbery of their van. They will only want to hear what you have to say about it.'

‘They?'

It would be best to just say, ‘The Sûreté.'

Side by side, and looking as if Frans had put them there to mock her, the shoes were in the armoire beneath that incredibly soft and beautiful dress, but the one would lead to the other and that Sûreté would soon find that she had had a part-time job every second Sunday at the
cultural-exchange gatherings of Madame Nicole Bordeaux.

Those would then lead him to Jacqueline Lemaire, mistress of Hector Bolduc whose bank van it had been.

Up on the roof, alone if ever she could be alone now, the nougat tin was still where she had hidden it. Surely if he had come up here and found it, that Sûreté would have taken it, but he
hadn't
.

Opening it, she heard herself gasp.

Black and of wrinkled leather, its braided thongs pulled tightly by those two wooden pegs, the pouch lay atop everything, and beneath it as if to emphasize what had happened, was the still wet, white paper packet of twelve flawless brilliants she had been given for herself. He hadn't taken
anything
. He had done the only thing he could to make her agree and not go to ground so hard all contact with her would instantly have been severed. He had also left the Opinel with which she had tried to defend herself at l'Abbaye de Vauclair, so must know everything.

Mademoiselle, we need to talk. Please agree to meet at the Jardin d'Hiver of the Jardin des Plantes between 2.30 and 3.30 Tuesday or Wednesday the fifth and sixth. You will know me by a brown suede tobacco pouch, which sadly remains empty but bears the scorched hole of carelessness and the letters AMPHORA. It was a gift of Agnès, my first wife, who had aspirations of my emigrating to America with her and becoming a detective there.

He had even known and trusted that great care would be taken with the note, since it could definitely identify him.

A Sûreté, a chief inspector, divorced once and married twice.

Funerals were usually in the morning but burials could be in the afternoon depending, of course, on the scheduling, this one being at 1400 hours, Monday's lunch having been postponed.

‘The quartier
de Bercy's
burials are most often here, Hermann, where the departed can listen to the music of the arrivals. Be patient. It's necessary. God has granted us a reprieve and given us an opportunity.'

‘We won't get a damned thing out of this bunch and you know it. Bolduc will have seen to that.'

Since losing his sons at Stalingrad, funerals had been difficult for Hermann, the lack of cigarettes simply adding an edge. ‘Well, at least I won't have to break the news to the families.'

‘You should have let me tear the heart out of Werner Dillmann!'

‘Later. Even a Detektiv Inspektor from the Kripo should know that compromises are often necessary. Quite obviously I needed you here.'

‘Rocheleau is now your sworn enemy.'

‘But where he belongs.'

In a cell at the rue des Saussaies. ‘I did ask Boemelburg to consider him a hostage but he said he'd have to ask Oberg who will, of course, simply tell him to release the
salaud
. Somehow I'm going to have to get Évangéline out of Rudy de Mérode's clutches before she and that husband of hers sink the two of us for good.'

‘Perhaps she'd be suitable for that one's escort service?'

Arm in arm, Mademoiselle Jacqueline Lemaire—it couldn't be Madame Bolduc—was with the owner and president of the Banque Nationale de Crédit et Commercial. ‘Who provided the gasoline, Louis. Otherwise the Occupation would have made certain those hearses were drawn by horses or a
gazo
.'

The Cimètiere de Charenton was just beyond the Gare de Nicolaï
*
and its marshalling yards that fed directly into those of the far larger Gare de Lyon.

‘Since we're adjacent to the western edge of the Bois de Vincennes,
mon vieux
, there is at least the joy of its autumn leaves.
Bien sûr
, there are a few maples from Canada, other exotics from elsewhere, but by and large and most welcome are the steadfast oaks and beeches that the Prussians didn't cut down in 1871 as they did every last tree in the Bois de Boulogne. Perhaps they had it in mind to leave generations of the wealthy and upper middle-class Parisians thinking they were at a loss and envious, while the rest of us had this park.'

Louis always had to have reasons. ‘The driver of that van did have a large family, just as Yvonne Rouget said. That has to be Madame Deniard.'

Seven children were ranked by age and height, and all looked under the age of twelve. ‘Raymond Paquette, the assistant, had six, two sets of twin girls, and two boys, and all under eight.'

‘The first victim and driver of that van bashed on the forehead with a jagged rock and shot in the chest at zero range.'

‘The second, and assistant, in the back of the neck. Would the coffins have been open, do you think?'

Louis
would
ask. ‘It's amazing what undertakers can do but you can be sure everyone, including that priest, will have had a damned good look.'

‘Grégoire, the operations manager, but not residing in the bank's building, as does Mademoiselle Rouget, still takes her arm.'

‘Steadfast like those trees, eh?'

‘And no sign of Madame Bolduc, Hermann, or her daughters, Didi and Yvonne.'

‘Kids don't like funerals any more than I do, but bankers love to show off their mistresses.'

The clay was gaping. ‘And just like Rocheleau told us of his village priest, this one is adding a final deluge. Let's not hang around for the sprinklings of soil. Bolduc has arranged for a reception to take your mind off things and get it onto what's important.'

‘Like the murder of those two and a whole lot else including why our Anna-Marie didn't want to step into that bank van or any other probably.'

Good for Hermann, Corporal Horace Rivet, custodian of the Berru lookout's ruins having said, ‘I think her heart fell when she saw it and them.'

LES AMIES FRANÇAISES

BUREAU D'HOSTESSES … MLLE JACQUELINE LEMAIRE

DEUTSCHFREUNDLICH, DEUTSCH SPRECHEN

Alone in the corridor—taking a terrible chance to simply stand in front of the frosted glass of that door—Anna-Marie knew all was lost. Everything. The Sorbonne, the job here, the one at the Frontbuchhandlung and at Madame Nicole Bordeaux's.

She had to run, had to go to ground but couldn't, mustn't, would somehow have to work it through and try not to think of the loss of Henk Vandenberg and her parents, but of the promise she had made to Mijnheer Myerhof.

Mademoiselle Lemaire had tried and tried to get her to agree to becoming a ‘hostess' but had led to Madame Bordeaux and Hector Bolduc whose vans had offered routes into and out of Paris without the need for
laissez-passers
and
sauf-conduits
.

Miliciens
, PPF and others—those vans had been freighting them all so why not herself, Aram Bedikian had asked and said, ‘You have to.'

And she
had
on that first trip to visit her ‘mother' in Rethel­ last December though never again, but on the return with Étienne, Arie and Frans, something that no one could have foreseen had happened.
Bien sûr
, a roadblock control, but not a spotter plane and then, there in defiance of her ever having to use one of those again, had been that van at the ruins of the Berru lookout.

Étienne hadn't known, and she hadn't been able to tell him. She had simply said, ‘L'Abbaye de Vauclair,' because she had known of it and a tiny village like Corbeny would have offered dangers of its own, and to do what they'd had in mind, those two would have stopped somewhere before it anyway.

Somehow she had to move her things—she couldn't just leave everything and take only the diamonds and the scraps from home. Yet if she were to take even a suitcase, Monsieur Figeard would know at once that she was not coming back, no matter what she said.

She must ‘return the bike,' as she had told him, must then ‘take the
métro
back but later.'

And that Sûreté? she asked herself.

That decision would have to be up to Félix and Aram and the others—FTP, all of them, and submarines as well.

Bolduc was far from happy to see them at the reception.

‘Inspectors, I trust you are not going to be asking questions on such a sad and very private occasion. Please allow the families, their friends and associates, the decency of honouring their dead.'

‘
Ach
, we wouldn't think of asking anything,' said Kohler, ‘but perhaps you'd be good enough to tell us how much cash was lifted­ from that van of yours?'

‘And why, if I might be permitted, did you, beyond the flimsy excuse given, show no interest in the absence of that van until we happened to tell you of it? Three days later, wasn't it, Hermann?'

‘The porch. Come, come. Not here. Let them have their grief and a little sustenance. Yvonne, make excuses for me to Mesdames Deniard and Paquette. The latter is, of course, pregnant, the former no doubt as well, so the brutal killing of two of my most valued employees is very much on my mind.'