Salamander (27 page)

A door closed at a soft word. A light in the hall went out. The blanket slipped from his shoulders as he stuffed the papers back into the briefcase and tried to close the lock … the lock …

‘Johann … Johann, darling, is that you? I … I thought you had gone with the others?'

Kohler switched off the lamp and held his breath. ‘Johann …? Johann, St-Cyr thinks it's me.'

The door was nudged open and, though he tried to see her, his eyes were not so good. They kept on closing.

‘Johann … Johann …?'

Her perfume enveloped him. He remembered the belfry, remembered a street some place and a whorehouse with palms and lights and ostrich plumes. Corsets too.

‘Johann …?'

She would have a gun, a little pistol. She would find him naked and that would be it. Kohler of the Kripo shot for the attempted rape of a fire chiefs young wife. Ah
merde
, Louis … Louis, where the fuck are you when needed most?

The saucer of saccharine was filthy. Dead flies from August were one thing, cigarette ashes from then on, another. And the muck they called coffee in the Café de la Gare was about as tasteless as the water from a pugmill in a brickyard.

Zombies, in from the cold, coughed, hawked phlegm and blew out each nostril with a knuckle pressed to the other. They shuffled as if in giant boots, their breath steaming. Like a dunghill just before the frost had crucified its inhabitants, the Gare de Perrache was crawling with people. Trains to here, trains to there with long waits in between and no one seeming to care that pride, self-respect and
pie de vivre
had once been hallmarks of civilization.

Four German soldiers sought a table in between trains but found none. Their rifles were slung over greatcoat shoulders that no longer bore unit insignia for fear such information might be fed to England via clandestine wireless or courier.

Posters decried waste,
USE THE WATER FROM YOUR NOODLES TO MAKE A NOURISHING SOUP. SAVE THREAD. UNRAVEL WORN-OUT SOCKS TO MAKE NEW ONES. OPEN YOUR CURTAINS TO LET IN THE SUNLIGHT. DON'T FORGET THAT IT IS A SOURCE OF HEAT
. In winter? In Lyon?

WHEN BOILED, BONES RELEASE MUCH PROTEIN AND NOURISHMENT. NEVER THROW THEM OUT BUT ALWAYS THINK OF REUSING THEM THEN SAVE AS A LAST RESORT FOR MAKING SOAP OR POUNDING INTO FERTILIZER.

Make jam without sugar—oh, he knew it well. Do the washing in cold water. It was like a catechism. Use sand for the difficult stains, never mind the fabric!
MAKE SALAD OIL OUT OF WHITE LICHEN, A LITRE OF WATER AND A CRUST OF BREAD
—what bread?
TO TAKE AWAY THE CHEMICAL ODOUR AND TASTE, PURIFY THROUGH POULTICE MUSLIN
—in wartime, with all of it confiscated for wounds on the Russian Front? Ah
maudit!
CONSUME THE OIL WITHIN
48
HOURS TO PREVENT IT FROM GOING RANCID.
Rancid!

TWO HUNDRED GRAMS OF MUSHROOMS ARE EQUIVALENT TO ONE SERVING OF BEEFSTEAK
!

Starved for tobacco, St-Cyr searched the saucer of saccharine for a cigarette butt to no avail. Hermann was taking forever. What could have kept him? Surely he hadn't forgotten they had agreed to meet here?

When a young man in a brand-new suit and open overcoat hesitantly put down a cardboard suitcase to sit opposite him, he wondered apprehensively how long the fellow could possibly remain at large and asked himself if he could not help in some little way.

‘Monsieur,' said the traveller, indicating the chair. ‘May I?'

The schoolboy French was not too bad. ‘Ah, but of course, of course. Going far?' he asked pleasantly.

The boy shook his head and took to studying a grimy pre-war railway schedule that had somehow remained stuck to the wall. ‘Paris,' he mumbled. ‘I've friends.'

‘
Tobacco
?' hissed St-Cyr.

‘What?' yelped the boy in English. His face fell. ‘What?' he asked lamely in French.

St-Cyr told him. ‘I must do some thinking while there is still time, monsieur, but unfortunately with the rationing, I seem to have run out.'

Was he Gestapo? wondered the boy. He looked like a cop …

‘I
am
a cop, a detective, monsieur. A chief inspector.'

The pouch contained a coarse-grained mixture of Vichy-blended pipe tobacco that, given the circumstances, was quite acceptable. ‘
Merci
. Have your coffee … no, no, please do not worry. For the moment, the three Gestapo who were watching this place have gone after other fish. Try to stay close to those soldiers—strike up a conversation in broken French. Be quite loose about it, not rigid, so that they can grasp a little. And when you get to the barrier, they will walk on ahead but you will shout
auf Wiedersehen
to them as you hand your papers over. The Swiss border is a good day's journey and it will be closely watched. Have you a friend, a contact—no, please don't give me a name or password. Just nod.'

‘Is it that easy to spot me?'

‘Try to relax a little, eh? Ditch the suitcase and steal another that is not nearly so new. Keep the overcoat buttoned up. Everyone despises suits like that, even the Nazis and especially their Gestapo. Use common sense. It's always best.'

‘The … the woman I stayed with thought it would be best if I were dressed properly.'

‘Forget you ever saw her. Just concentrate on looking like one of the crowd. Don't hesitate when you come into a place like this. Walk right up to the counter as if you know it well and are only intent on going some place else that is equally known to you.'

‘I—'

St-Cyr held up a cautioning finger and shook his head. ‘Enough. I'm a perfect stranger and such people seldom talk to others. We've discussed the weather and now will brood over our coffee in silence. You're a gunner or a pilot that has been shot down, monsieur, but I know nothing of such things or would, of course, most certainly have to turn you in for the reward.'

The detective took forever to pack his pipe and when he lit it, he gazed off into space with moisture in his eyes, and one knew that he was saying thanks for having come over, that this war could not last forever.

One by one pieces kept coming from his pockets with a disgruntledness that said he was angry with himself for having been such a fool as to have even said a thing. The spiked iron shank of a woman's high-heeled shoe troubled him. A bent and twisted compact and charred cigarette case were then firmly laid beside it as if he knew to whom they had belonged. A little slip of paper with a name …

The boy left the tobacco pouch on the table and his coffee only half drunk. In the fashion of the times, and to cover himself in case anyone was watching, St-Cyr swept up the tobacco and emptied the coffee into his own no matter what germs it might contain. He'd damned well drink it in a toast to freedom!

Three women had gone into that cinema. Claudine and another had arrived late, and she had then left her seat to find the washroom key and spend her time with the projectionist. Frau Weidling had also been in the audience—she'd been recognized by the ticket-booth operator. And while Claudine was upstairs, her companion left the rush bag on the seat and went in search of someone else perhaps, and/or to lock the door to the toilets in anger, perhaps, at not finding her there but finding several others. Everything pointed to Frau Weidling being the person to be met, but had they both returned to those seats to start the fire?

Madame Rachline had said she and Claudine had been to the pharmacy, but Mademoiselle Martine Charlebois said she herself had given Claudine a bottle of friar's balsam that very afternoon.

He drew on his pipe in earnest contemplation. The trip to the pharmacy could simply have been cover for the cinema they had left in such haste, but had it really been Ange-Marie who had returned to the flat with her friend as the concierge maintained, or had it been Frau Weidling or someone else? The other woman? The later absence of the concierge must also be considered as a factor in getting into and leaving the flat.

Oxalic and sulphuric acids release carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide in equal volumes when mixed and warmed a little. Both gases will kill, but the carbon monoxide was, of course, much faster and far deadlier. Depending on its concentration, the sulphuric acid might fume when poured out, and such fumes would have had to be cleared away lest they warn the victim. The balsam would give a strong enough and pleasantly sweet aroma. The residue could then be disposed of without a trace by simply washing it down the drain. Death by natural causes then. Pneumonia in wartime under the Occupation and who would care? She had been a prostitute anyway.

But how had the Salamander come by such things, and the phosphorus, if indeed it had been used to start the tenement fire?

Henri Charlebois would not have used oxalic acid to clean metal antiques. Ange-Marie Rachline could not have had such a working knowledge of chemistry.

Leiter Weidling would know only too well the reputation of the silent killer and perhaps, too, the making of those gases in the laboratory. His wife had had Claudine's name in her purse and that of La Belle Époque, but would she have understood the intricacies of mixing the two acids and of warming them? Had he taught her how to do it? Were the two of them working together?

Henri Charlebois had been in Dijon. His sister had lost her keys …

For a woman to understand chemistry so well, and to have access to such things, she would have had to be a chemist, a metallurgist—ah, there were so few females trained in the sciences—a teacher …

Ah
merde
, a teacher of course. A chemistry laboratory …

Sweeping everything into his pockets, he grabbed his hat and made for the front desk of the Hotel Bristol.

‘The Inspector Kohler has left the hotel, monsieur, with Frau Weidling and the Gestapo agents she asked me to summon. I believe the five of them went straight to the Hotel Terminus but I cannot be certain of this.'

‘The five of them …?'

‘Yes. Herr Kohler was under arrest.'

‘
Arrest
?'

‘Naked and struggling, monsieur.'

Maudit!
It had happened again. The Gestapo had taken one of their own. Hermann!

8

R
UEFULLY
K
OHLER LOOKED AROUND AT THE
damage he had caused to Gestapo HQ Lyon. The windows of the third-floor room were broken and splintered, the walls, floor and ceiling scorched—stained by water and flame-retardant too. In the rush to extinguish the fire, the copper bathtub had been dented but the dents had been hammered out and the tub refilled so that it was brimming.
Verdammt!
Were they going to drown the three of them? He was freezing and could not stop shivering at the sight of the water and the memory of Frau Weidling ducking her head and holding it under. She would want to see the real thing. She would want to get her kicks out of it.

‘So now it begins,' snorted Robichaud. ‘The final descent into hell. Élaine, forgive me.'

Tied to chairs, they had been left to think things over.

‘It's nothing, Julien. It does not matter. We're together. That's what counts.'

‘To think we could have agreed to meet at any other cinema, that all we ever wanted was to be together.'

‘Yes but … but now we are,
chéri
, and for me, ah, I no longer care who knows about us. My husband, my children … May God forgive me but I could not stay another moment in that house. When we were together, Julien, those were the best times of my life.'

‘Mine also.'

Good
Gott im Himmel
, they were trying so hard! They knew the room would be bugged! ‘Look, I'll do what I can,' grumbled Kohler. ‘Barbie must want something from me. Otherwise it doesn't make a damned bit of sense my being here!'

They looked at each other and said nothing—after all, he was Gestapo too, and he couldn't expect much else from them. Élaine Gauthier had spent the night in the cellars; Robichaud had, of course, been at the tenement fire and had not known she'd been picked up. Nor would he know what she'd said during the hours of interrogation that had left her gaunt and haggard.

Kohler remembered their meeting in the lobby of the Hotel Bristol and feeling that she had had more to say. Was the truth now to be forced out of her, and himself to be witness to it? A lesson for him perhaps?

She would not look at the bathtub. Robichaud could not help but do so or look up at the meat-hooks that hung above her. ‘I love you, Élaine,' he said, and then again, ‘Forgive me.'

‘For involving her?' shouted Kohler angrily. ‘Ah
nom de Jésus-Christ
,
dummkopf
, come clean and they'll go easy on her. You were at that cinema to meet with Resistance people among the railway workers. You bastards want to unite throughout France. Every fire-fighting unit in every city and town; every railway worker on every train and in every marshalling yard and repair shop.
That's
what Obersturmführer Barbie believes and nothing you or I say to the contrary will ever change this. Can't you see what he'll do to her? He'll have her stripped naked in front of us. Then he'll question her, and if she doesn't speak up, they'll shove her head under in that thing and hold her down until her lungs all but burst!' He dragged in a breath and clenched his fists. ‘Then they'll do it all over again,' he added sadly, ‘and they'll keep on doing it.'

The couple said nothing. They gazed steadily at each other. Kohler pleaded with them even though he knew Barbie would be listening in and that everything he said would be written down and used against him if not today, then later on.

In desperation, he said, ‘Leiter Weidling doesn't stand a fart's chance in a windstorm of stopping the next fire with you out of the way, Robichaud, but the blame for it is going to rest solidly on the Obersturmführer's shoulders. Right about now my partner will be filing our interim report with Sturmbannführer Boemelburg in Paris, who will then call Gestapo Mueller in Berlin. Hey, they're old friends. They're in this together, right? That report will place full responsibility for this fiasco on Hen-Barbie but the sap just doesn't know his balls are for the skillet!'