Gypsy (14 page)

‘
Tant pis pour eux
,' she said softly. Too bad for them.

Teeth-guards were lifted, dripping from a bucket of water, to be crammed into reluctant mouths. Afraid, confused – uncertain still of what was to happen – they listened as the Spade began to give them lessons.

They were to fight each other and he'd take on the winner. It had to be a good fight. ‘Ten rounds!' cried one of the SS. There was laughter, cheering, clapping from delighted females.

The kids tried not to hurt each other, and when no blood was produced, Henri stepped in. ‘Hey, I'll show you how.'

‘They're too little, Henri,' cried one laughing blonde with sparkling eyes. ‘Make men of them. It'll save me the trouble.'

‘I don't think I can watch this,' said St-Cyr, and pulling off his overcoat and fedora, thrust them at Hermann before climbing into the ring.

He took the boys aside. He said, ‘You must avoid his right and always try for the left side. He's partly blind in that eye – a fight he lost in 1928 perhaps because the gypsy wife who hated him fiercely by then had come back briefly to sap his strength. He tries to hide it. Shame him. It'll anger him. Then dance away and
don't
let him hit you.'

They came together, their manager and the Spade. They spoke, but what was said could not be heard.

Then Louis turned away only to turn back so swiftly his left connected hard. There was a crack.

Poleaxed, Doucette tried to shake his head and Louis let him have it with a right.

He dropped like a stone.

There were boos, there were cries of anger but the kids were allowed to leave the ring and to get themselves dressed, the Sûreté saying to them as a father would, ‘Now, no more of that, do you understand?'

A hush descended over the gym. Tension crackled. Kohler knew he'd have to defuse it somehow. Firing two shots into the sand, he yelled, ‘
Clear the place! We're on a murder investigation
.'

‘Who's been murdered?' asked the
pugiliste
from the Sûreté and once champion of the police academy, but years ago.

‘You, unless I can prevent it.'

The
ventouses
, the suction cups, were of plain glass and red hot, and each time one was applied, Henri Doucette shrilled and wept like a baby. Flat on his stomach in the dressing-room without a stitch to cover him, he clenched his still-taped fists as the boils burst, and so much for the Gestapo of the rue Lauriston and one of its key members.

‘I'm saving you from agony, Henri,' said the Sûreté. ‘One day you'll thank me. We can't have you ill when we need you.'

There was another in a very tender place and this the surgeon had left to the last.

‘Hold him, Hermann. Take him by the wrists. You, the ankles, Herr Engelmann. It's all in a detective's work.'

The scream filled the room and brought the latest pigeon to gape in panic from the doorway. She was all dressed up in plunging green velvet and emeralds to match her wounded eyes and breasts.

‘
Petit
, I'm here,' she said. ‘
Chéri
, don't cry. It's for the best and when we're alone, your Nathalie will comfort you.'

‘
Piss off
, Putain!
Can't you see I'm busy
?'

She leapt and turned away in tears. ‘You're always saying things like that. A whore … I love you, Henri. I
want
you!'

‘
We're finished! It's over. Over, do you understand? Slash your wrists if you must but don't come crying to me if you mess up! Make a good job of it this time
. Complet,
eh? Fini and
au revoir.'

Nana Thélème took charge, urging the girl to leave. ‘Give him time. They won't be long.'

‘He means it,' the poor thing wept. ‘He's been so cruel to me. Always it is like I am a dog at his feet!'

‘Then why not give him up?'

The sea green eyes that were so large and innocent blinked their tears away with candour. ‘I have to eat. I have to have a place to stay. He buys me things and yes, I love him. I like it. Can you understand that? I can't.' She shrugged her slender shoulders. ‘I've tried but always the inner self, it fails to answer me except with temptation.'

There were stares from the others in the gym, looks that were not nice. The SS who had brought the teenagers still hung around, spoiling for a fight.

‘Sit down. Here, have a cigarette.'

‘I've plenty. Let me give you one.'

Her fingers shook. Grabbing the hand, Nana steadied it. ‘Inhale. Fill your lungs. Count to ten and then exhale.'

Calmed a little, the girl sat back on the bench but shrank into herself. ‘I hate this place. Every time I come here I feel as if they are going to rape me. All of them and all at once in the ring. I want that too, don't you understand? Secretly I'm so afraid of it and this … why this gives me great pleasure.'

‘Relax. They're nothing.'

‘You were at the party. You were the one who came to sing.'

Though the eyes were dark brown, the left one was cloudy, and when Doucette looked directly at a person, it was not quite on a level with the right eye, but tilted up a little.

‘
What do you want with me
?'

He had never liked the police but was from Belleville. ‘A few questions. Nothing difficult,' said the Sûreté.

The Spade threw the visitor from Berlin a questioning look only to see that one nod curtly in agreement.

‘
What about you putting me down like that, eh? Why should I do anything to help you
?'

‘Ah! easy, Henri. Easy,' soothed St-Cyr. ‘Forget it,
mon ami
. Be magnanimous. Everyone will know it wasn't fair. They'll say I tricked you. It's me they'll blame, not yourself.'

Again the visitor nodded.

‘Okay. Shoot. Let's have it.'

‘
Bon
. Take us back to last Thursday, the fourteenth. You and your wife went to Tours.'

‘She's not my wife. I disowned the slut the day I used her father's whip on her, since he wasn't man enough to do it. She'd been running away from me all the time. Weeks, months … She deserved it.'

‘But you're her conductor now?'

Again he looked to Herr Max for guidance. ‘Okay, so I took her to Tours. It was all laid on. She was to bump into the Gypsy. Perhaps he was suspicious, perhaps not, who's to say? She was to call in on a regular basis. She was to tell me everything he planned and did, and who he met, but she's buggered off with him and I haven't heard from her since Monday when she called in to warn us of the robbery at the Ritz.'

Hermann was translating for Herr Max. ‘But is she with him now?' asked St-Cyr.

Dumbfounded, Doucette threw Engelmann another look, and wiping sweat from his chest, asked, ‘With who the hell else could she hide?'

‘That's what we want to know.'

‘Then think again, cow. Her family's gone. She has no one else she can trust, no friends, eh? She knows no one and yet she still evades us? How can this be?'

The Gestapo and the French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston had people out looking for her, then. A city-wide search in addition to that of the police and the Wehrmacht. ‘You do the thinking, Henri. You took her to a party on the eleventh. She danced.'

‘That one was there.' He pointed to the door beyond which were the gym and Nana Thélème. ‘You brought her here. Why did you bring her?'

Nervous now, Doucette used both hands to grip the towel that was draped over his shoulders. He was sitting on the edge of the table, dangling his feet into space, and looked evasively down at his boots.

‘Why did we bring her, Henri?' said Louis. ‘You tell us. I think you'd better.'

‘Her … her
bonne à tout faire
was …' He threw Max a tortured look.

Engelmann understood enough of what had gone on to help him out. ‘On 15 December last, her maid of all work was arrested. It was nothing. A week in the women's cells of the Santé.'

The Santé … Paris's largest and most overcrowded prison. Population 12,000 normally but now about 18,500, since it varied from day to day and there was always a desperate need for space.

‘She wept most of the time,' said Doucette. ‘The others had to beat her to shut her up. Two of them fell in love with her and wouldn't leave her alone except to fight over her.'

Ah
merde
… ‘And what, please, did this girl tell your ex-wife a month ago?'

‘That her mistress was mixed up in something and that she was afraid she had been arrested because of it.'

‘Henri knows a lot about you,' confided Nathalie. ‘There are things he hasn't told that one in there from Berlin, things he is keeping quiet even from his friends at the rue Lauriston.'

Sitting before Nana Thélème on the bench, the girl in green velvet paused. The noises of the gym grew. The skippings, the punchings …

‘What things?' asked Nana warily.

‘Things a
petite oiseau
told him. Well, actually, it was a
mouton
.'

‘
Tell
me, damn you!'

The girl looked up. Her cleavage dropped to reveal bruises, scratches and bite marks. ‘Tshaya. The one he … Well, you know,' she shrugged.

‘Am I the reason she was invited to that disgusting party?'

‘
She
was the reason
you
were invited.'

Nana Thélème looked away in despair. ‘
Tshaya can't know anything
!'

‘She does.'

The dark eyes leapt with fierceness. ‘Such as?'

‘A prospector.'

‘Ah no …'

No, mademoiselle? Despair now, was that it, eh? and Henri knowing secrets which must not be revealed to anyone. ‘
You
made several visits to the prospector's house in Tours. He wrote letters to you. He had something he wanted you to do for him.'

‘Tshaya can't have met him recently. She
can't
! Not in years.'

Sweat poured from the
pugilistes
in the ring. A nose was bloodied. A tooth was spat …

‘She
has
met him recently.'

‘Pardon?'

How shrill of this beautiful Andalusian who had had the Gypsy's bastard and had just recently had her face bashed. ‘A place, a very special place. His favourite bordel.'

‘
The fool
!'

Would Henri beat this Nana Thélème? Would he fuck her, torture her? Between 50,000,000 and 70,000,000 francs were missing. A fortune. Diamonds … lots and lots of those and sapphires too. Pretty things Henri wanted for himself, well, some of them, for his little retirement. ‘A
lupanar
with a
chambre de divertissements détachés
.'

‘The house on the rue de la Bourde in Tours.'

The street of the blunder, the heart sinking at the news. Was all now lost? Was that it, Mademoiselle Thélème? ‘The same. The House of the Hesitant Touch.'

‘
What
?' demanded Kohler, only to see Louis raise a cautioning hand.

The atmosphere in the dressing-room was tense. They were still discussing Nana Thélème's maid giving secrets away in a prison cell.

‘Something about a prospector,' muttered the Spade, wiping sweat from his face.

‘The diamonds,' breathed Kohler.

‘No, not those,' insisted Doucette, resigned to telling them. ‘That was almost settled. It was something she had to take to a place near Senlis, the girl thought. Something bad the Mademoiselle Thélème could then get from there if she wanted.'

The dynamite – was that it? wondered St-Cyr. There were stone quarries nearby.

Herr Max reached out to hand Henri a clean towel. ‘Go
und
have a
Brausebad. Ja, ja, mein lieber boxer
, you have said all that is necessary for now.'

‘Where is she? I want her,' said the Spade.

‘Tshaya?' asked Engelmann.

‘No other woman can fuck like her. No other.'

Frantic, Kohler stopped the Spade on the way to the shower-baths. ‘Which
lupanar
did you find her in, eh?'

‘
Le bordel de la touche hésitante
in Tours.
La grille de la treillis indochinois
. She was the one behind it.'

‘Louis, we're going to have to go to Tours.'

‘Of course, but first there are things we must do.'

Nana Thélème sat in the front seat between the two of them. Engelmann had released her into their custody. It was to be their necks against hers and she knew they were trying to get her to tell them everything but she couldn't do that. She mustn't.

‘Four women,' mused the Sûreté, scraping frost from his side window to stare out into the pitch darkness Paris had become at nine o'clock in the evening. ‘One a gypsy herself. One a singer of their songs. One a veterinary surgeon and zoo-keeper, the mistress, if we are to believe it, of the sous-directeur of Cartier's.'

‘And the last one?' she asked.

‘That is the one who most concerns me, mademoiselle. You see, when we first met, you said you did not know of her yet she has a little car and is allowed that privilege.'

‘And sings to eight hundred war-weary men a night, you said. The Club Mirage is in Montparnasse on the rue Delambre. All right, I do know Gabrielle Arcuri and she did drive me to Senlis to visit the dying mother of Monsieur Jacqmain, the prospector. That was one of his conditions. He and his mother had not spoken in years. He had received a letter from the woman's housekeeper, but by the time we got there, Madame Jacqmain had passed away.'

‘And when was this trip to Senlis?'

Ah damn him! ‘Right after I went to Tours. On … on the following day, on Wednesday, the … the thirteenth.'

‘Then why did you lie to me about not knowing Gabrielle?'

She gave a nonchalant shrug he would be certain to feel since their shoulders were touching. ‘One lies these days. It's an age of them, is it not?'