Salamander (51 page)

‘Louis, I've had the dossiers and the photos copied for you as a gesture of our willingness to co-operate in this matter,' said Boemelburg.

The sad eyes lifted to him. ‘And that of the bank teller, Walter?'

‘That also. He had a wife and two children. Perhaps the wife can tell you something.'

A nod of thanks would suffice. ‘We'll go first to the warehouse of the mover to see what has happened to the furniture from that house, then we'll split up so as to get the work over as quickly as possible and cover more ground.'

‘Bon.
Keep me informed and remember our little agreement.' ‘Our agreement. Of course.'

‘What agreement? Louis, you'd better tell me.'

‘Then perhaps you'd best not drive so insanely. After all, it is
my
car!'

‘Piss off! Don't evade the issue. Boemelburg swore you to allegiance. Otherwise it was fuck Joanne and get on with the robbery.'

‘Please don't use such crudities. The girl has a mother and father.'

‘And
a grandmother!' They were shouting.

So Boemelburg had put it to Louis, the poor sap. ‘Hey,
mon vieux,
if you want it, I'm going to give you the last word to make you feel better!' Kohler tramped on the brakes, hit the accelerator and they rocketed up the hill of Montmartre. No traffic … Well, none of consequence.
Vélos, vélo-taxis,
one miserable horse-drawn carriage, a Wehrmacht lorry and …

‘Ah no!
'

Screech!

‘Ice … the roads are icy, Hermann. Please. God has just granted us a small miracle. Let us proceed more cautiously since the boy was not crushed under our wheels and is now weeping in his mother's arms.'

‘A ball, Louis. Why the hell was a ball rolling out on to the road like that in winter?'

‘The street is narrow. We're in an older part of the
quartier.
The people here have to make do. The boy is too little to play elsewhere. The mother …'

Kohler pulled on the handbrake. The car idled beautifully. ‘Hang on a minute. It's Christmas,' he said and, getting out, went over to the woman who immediately thought she was going to be arrested.

As St-Cyr watched, the Gestapo's Bavarian protector dragged out, from God knows where, a handful of sweets.

The woman was so rigid with fear, he had to take off the boy's hat and leave them in it.

Backing away with the palms of both hands upraised in caution, and looking ridiculous in greatcoat, scarf and fedora, he got back into the car. Breath steaming. Fog on the windscreen.

‘Gimme a fag, Louis.'

‘I haven't got any, Father Christmas.'

‘A
fag, damn it!
Light one for me.'

Hermann was shaking.

The cigarette, retrieved from one of the Gestapo's inner pockets and lighted, began to do its work. At last the giant confessed. ‘I don't ever want to have killed a child, Louis. I could never live with that on my conscience. Two wars and I swear I haven't yet. No women either.'

‘Me also. So let us proceed more slowly.'

The office and warehouses of Dallaire and Sons were in the industrial heartland of Saint-Denis just off the rue du Landy and by the railway tracks. Depressingly grimy windows shut out the grey light of day. The stench of soot and sulphur dioxide was in the air, stares from workmen down the way who were loading sacks of coal into railway trucks …

Bound for the Reich no doubt, but where the hell had they found them? wondered Kohler.

‘Are Dallaire and Sons on holiday, Hermann?'

‘Pardon?'

St-Cyr indicated the place. A front office in one of twin warehouses. No sign of the
gazogènes.

‘Maybe they're out on a job?'

‘Perhaps, but then … Ah
merde,
Hermann, unless I'm mistaken, they're not here.'

The warehouses were empty. There was rubbish—when one had cleared the window glass sufficiendy to peer inside, the litter became all too apparent.

‘Empty since the Defeat, Louis. They probably left for the south during the exodus and simply didn't bother to come back.'

Must God do this to them? ‘Now what?'

‘Someone with contacts enough to borrow a couple of lorries, Louis. Someone smart enough to have known or taken the time to find this place was empty and then to have used the name.'

‘Which will now have been removed from the lorries.'

‘Did that little maid tell you the truth?'

There was that shrug Kohler knew so well but then, ‘She had no reason to lie about this.'

‘Yet she didn't tell you everything.'

‘No, but then did that
mouchard
you beat up tell you everything?'

‘Péguy? He can't have known anything about the house. We dealt only with the robbery.'

‘Then perhaps this is the link we're looking for? The name of a firm that is no longer here but which would cause no suspicion if its lorries were seen by the neighbours.'

‘I was hoping we would find the negatives. More photos— other things than we're permitted to see in the prints they left us. Shadows, an arm, a leg—the woman who helped out'

‘But why empty the house, Hermann? Oh,
bien sûr
there may well have been thoughts of their leaving fingerprints we would find, but all the furniture? And three days later? It doesn't make sense. Even if interrupted, as obviously they were, why clean the place out like that?'

‘Maybe the stuff was simply stolen.'

‘By someone else? Is this what you're thinking?'

‘Or by the kidnappers who'd become used to having such nice things around them, or simply moved by the drooler, the owner's son.'

The drooler … ah,
merde … ‘We
never thought to check the photos, Hermann, but for myself, I don't think we'll find any fingerprints other than our own.'

‘Let's see where the bastards from the robbery dumped the getaway car and its chauffeur.'

It was not far. Just back into Montmartre a little way.

The courtyard of 9 rue des Amiraux was so close to the goods yards, they could hear the constant shunting of locomotives. Various small ateliers gave on to it. A carver of tombstones, an ironworker who threaded bolts for the railways … All were at it behind closed doors and shutters for it was winter and damned cold.

Only a woman of forty or so, with a thick and tattered black shawl over her shoulders, stared impassively at their entry from a distant doorway.

‘No one will have seen a thing, Hermann. It's useless to ask and will take much time.'

‘But why this courtyard, Louis? Why not any of the countless others?'

It was a good question for which there were no ready answers, except the nearness of it to the warehouses of Dallaire and Sons, its obscurity and a knowledge of the area. ‘Two men, two very fine suitcases crammed with banknotes which were hastily emptied, then left for someone to steal,' said St-Cyr.

‘While the chauffeur, bound and gagged, was out cold,' snorted Kohler.

‘Why didn't they kill him? A perfect witness?'

‘Maybe they were afraid to, seeing as he was a member of the Occupying Forces.'

‘Then who freed him?'

‘Perhaps the mistress who borrowed the car can tell us, Louis. Perhaps the chauffeur himself. And if not either, then the owner of the car and the guy who's fucking her, the Sonderführer Franz Ewald Kempf of the Propaganda Staffel.'

‘Have fun. I'd best return to the house of Monsieur Vergès for another look around and a quiet think.'

‘Do you want the photographs with you?'

Good for Hermann. ‘Some of them. Please drive by the house you have so kindly had repaired for me. I'll collect my briefcase but make the selection elsewhere, I think. Yes, that would be best.'

‘Chez Rudi's then, for breakfast. Hey, I can smell the coffee and the croissants, and to hell with ration tickets and your principles. The soul needs to be fortified before tackling the ass of the mistress!'

Hermann always had to have the last word. One ought to object. Privation was a national pastime and heroic but … ah, heroes were not always so and the meal would be good. Perhaps a simple thermos could be provided and a few sandwiches? He would leave the details to them.

‘You okay?' asked Kohler.

‘Yes, I'm okay.'

‘Those photos the Chief laid out for us, they're not bothering you, are they?'

‘A little.'

‘Hey, we'll find her. She's going to be okay. I've got a feeling about it, Louis. Joanne's alive but only because the house had to be emptied in a rush.'

A feeling … How comforting. St-Cyr stared out the side window at the bleakness of what Paris and France had become. A cinematographer at heart and fascinated by the cinema, he could not help but see with the camera's clear eye the last and final moments of those girls.

He heard them begging for their lives, their frantic screams and saw their pathetic struggles as they tried to escape. It was now nearly ten o'clock. He and Hermann hadn't been on the case twenty-four hours, yet could he not do more? Had the lack of vitamins numbed his brain?

The car had stopped outside his house. ‘A moment, Hermann. I'll just dash in. Please tell Dédé we're on urgent business and can't delay.'

Kohler dug into a pocket as the boy came down the street towards him but found the sweets all gone.

The boy was ashen.

He rolled the window down and managed a grin. ‘Hey, kid, she's alive. We're going to get her soon, eh? Unharmed. Not a hair touched.'

Without a word, the boy stood watching him, unyielding in denial until at last Dédé said, ‘You're lying,' and turned away.

Coming quickly from the house with his briefcase, St-Cyr caught him by the shoulder. The boy swung on him in tears, in rage, but stopped himself from cursing the only one who could help them.

‘Dédé, listen to me. It's serious. We've had a major setback this morning but are working on it and hope to have something positive very soon.'

The flat was three storeys above the boulevard de Beauséjour, not a stone's throw from the Bois de Boulogne and the apartment of Louis's chanteuse, which was just to the north on the boulevard Emile Auger at number 45. A tidy neck of the woods that smelled all too evidently of old money and young inheritors with too much time on their hands.

Gabrielle was an exception.

Kohler finished his cigarette in the car at the side of the road. Becker of Gestapo Central's internal records hadn't liked fishing for details on the Sonderführer Kempf. ‘Betrayal of a sacred trust' and all that shit. Money had had to change hands. Lots of it— 5000 francs to put it blundy.

One could never quite get used to paying for information that ought rightly to have been given freely by one's own associates and subordinates, but what the hell? It was the Occupation. All the rules had had to be rewritten. Paris was expensive.

He thumbed open his wallet and saw that he had exactly 20 francs left for house money and everything else. Pay-day had been and gone and would not come again until 5 January at the earliest, unless the Führer decided to make it later.

Mademoiselle Denise Celine St. Onge was twenty-seven years of age, a graduate of the Sorbonne with a degree in Ancient History and French Literature, absolutely useless to her should she have to earn a living as a riveter.

There was a villa in the south of France at Le Lavandou where the parents had retreated for the Duration. A brother resided in the Reich as a guest at a POW camp. Another fed the daisies in summer.

The Sonderführer didn't live with her but sometimes stayed the night. Her place or his, whichever was convenient or gave that added little thrill.

It was nearly noon and time she was up. A maid noticed the Gestapo shield in his upraised palm, a finger to his lips as well, and let him in.

Flustered, she went in search of her mistress and left him to a tapestry-hung salon with sofas, deep armchairs and throw cushions in cream and gold silk on Persian carpets. Bibelots were scattered like pleasureful playthings, bronze-green trinkets from ancient tombs—were they Sumerian? Venetian glass beads—he knew a little about very old glass from a recent case in Provence. Gold signets with hieroglyphics, clay tablets too. Egyptian. Falcons, slaves and snakes among other things.

There were books, of course—mostly on ancient Egypt. Hell, who really wanted to read about the present? A linen-draped table was in a corner by a sofa that still held imprints for two. There were snuffed-out candles on the table, late-night caviar and champagne probably and, with the drapes open as now, a view of the night sky over the Bois. How lovely. Heat on. No shortage of coal. Soft murmurings of passion.

Amid the clutter on the mantelpiece, there was an invitation to an auction of works of art at the Jeu de Paume, 31 December, viewing from 2.00 to 5.00 p.m., sale at 8.00 p.m. and a late supper afterwards at the Ritz.

Hermann Goering had done the inviting. Well, not actually. An assistant of course. But, still, the Reichsführer himself and supreme commander of the Luftwaffe.

Probably flying in for a little bit of fun in spite of the disaster at Stalingrad. A busy man and an avid collector.

The heavy and embossed bond had the deckle edges of quality. The gilding and black lettering were really very nice.

There was a discreet logo on the back. ‘Our engraver,' he said, a whisper …

Nearby there was a chummy photo of Kempf and his lady friend outside the Alcazar, 8 rue du Faubourg-Montmartre and in daylight of all things. Kempf was a typical blond Aryan in uniform with a nice grin. No battles for this one. He had come in after the blitzkrieg. Thirty-two years of age and married, with the wife and kids back home in Köln and under the ashes, incinerated by the RAF's firestorm of last May 30 and 31.

The grin must have been from before the loss, the photo taken in the early spring. A man from an old and well-established family who had suddenly lost everything in that fire. A man then, wondered Kohler, with a grudge to bear and a need to recoup his family's fortune?