‘Wait, let me help you with that hamper,’ he called out to a delivery girl. ‘It must be heavy.’
Uncertainty registered in her brown eyes. He was too tall, too big, and there was a cruel scar down his face …
‘Relax. Look, I’m going in and right upstairs. Who’s it for?’
He did have a nice smile. ‘The General Thönisen.’
The boss himself. ‘He’s just the man I have to see.’
‘It’s almost noon, m’sieur. They close for three hours over lunch during the week but on Saturdays, stop completely.’
And this in an Army office? Mein Gott!
Five hundred francs was five hundred more than she would have got as a tip from the orderly on the desk. ‘Merci, monsieur,’ she hazarded, then finally grinned hugely and was gone before he could change his mind.
Silk- and brocade-covered armchairs and sofas made waiting in the hall pleasant. Cigarettes and cigars had been laid on. Helping himself to the freshly opened tin of pipe tobacco for Louis, he went over to the desk, waited his turn, and said, ‘Herr Schlacht. A little something for him but I’d like to take it up.’
‘Third floor, turn right. He’s not in. He seldom is, but Käthe — Frau Hillebrand — should be able to help you. She usually stays for a bit, in case someone has to contact him or one of the others.’
‘Danke.’
A plaque on the door read: Scrap Metals, but that could encompass a lot of things. The foyer was unoccupied, the office small, but with windows overlooking the gardens of the Champs-Élysées, the view nice even in winter.
‘Mein Herr …’ came a pleasant, if hesitant voice from the outer corridor.
‘Magdeburg,’ he said and grinned. ‘You’re from Magdeburg.’
‘Not quite. Schönebeck.’
She had a welcome, if nervous grin, and why, really, was she nervous? he wondered and sighed, ‘On the Elbe,’ as if it was home. And lifting the hamper up, said, ‘These are for Herr Schlacht. I’ll just keep the card.’
Had he really noticed her accent? she wondered. ‘And from yourself?’
‘Two tonnes of scrap lead. We came across it in an abandoned quarry in Charonne, near a graveyard. The leftover coffins they used hundreds of years ago, I guess. All flattened, of course. I thought Herr Schlacht might be interested.’
Coffins! ‘Very, I should think,’ she managed and, turning her back on him, led the way out of the office and along the corridor to her desk, where she sat down and reached for a pencil, had to. hold on to something — anything, she told herself.
Although one of the Blitzmädels, the similarity ended here, thought Kohler. Blonde, blue-eyed, about thirty-five and wearing a soft blue woollen dress that accentuated every curve, she was a Hausfrau who had heard the call of duty and had left child and home to take it up. But somewhere along the line she’d forgotten to wear her wedding ring. A snapshot of her little boy, and one of his father in a Luftwaffe uniform faced her anyway.
‘Your name, mein Herr?’ she asked again.
He had to hand it to the boys of the Procurement Office. She was really very pretty. ‘Look, you wouldn’t know where I could find him, would you?’
‘I might.’
And still tense about it? wondered Kohler. He’d open the hamper and take out a box of chocolates from Fouquet’s, one of the city’s foremost restaurants and over on the Champs-Élysées at number 99.
She shook her head. The offer of champagne was no better.
‘You’re not a businessman, mein Herr, so I must ask myself how would such as yourself really have found a load of old coffins?’
Her fingers were no longer fidgeting; the nails perfectly manicured and as red as her lips. ‘We were looking for something else,’ he confessed and, grinning, offered her a cigarette and lit it for her.
Warily her eyes fled down over him and up again. ‘And what, exactly, were you looking for?’
‘A little badge, about the size of my thumbprint. He didn’t lose one, did he? The letters F.M.?’
Moisture rushed into her eyes. Hurriedly she stubbed out the cigarette and, trying to still the quaver in her voice, blurted, ‘Bitte, how did you know?’
‘I didn’t. I just guessed.’
And you’re from the Gestapo, she told herself, sickened by the thought. He didn’t quite have the manner but sometimes a person couldn’t tell with those types. ‘Herr Himmler presented it to Herr Schlacht on 31 August 1937. Oskar, he … he has worn it ever since.’
‘He didn’t accuse you of losing it, did he?’
‘Me? Why would he?’ she yelped.
The urge to say, ‘when partly undressed and in the heat of the moment’ was there, but it would be best to shrug and tell her something else to ease her mind. ‘Rudi told me about it.’
Everyone who was anyone knew of Chez Rudi’s on the Champs-Élysées, across from the Lido. Both restaurant and centre of all gossip.
‘Oskar may still be at the smelter on the rue Montmartre. It’s near a café called À La Chope du Croissant and is run by some Russians. A narrow courtyard … Lots of little ateliers. If he isn’t there, he might have gone over to the Hotel Drouot to … to look things over.’
The Paris auction house. ‘And afterwards?’
‘Lunch at Maxim’s, I think.’
And a bull’s-eye.
As he turned to leave, she called out desperately, ‘Your name, mein Herr?’
‘Oh, sorry. Denke. Tell him Karl Otto was in. He’ll understand.’
‘And the badge?’ she asked. ‘He … he really did blame me for losing it.’
You poor thing. ‘Then tell him not to worry, eh? Rudi says it’s in good hands for now. No problem.’
The two prostitutes were sisters, and it hadn’t taken a moment to see this, thought St-Cyr, surprised that Father Michel had still not mentioned it. Both had implored this Sûreté to guarantee the sous-préfet and préfet wouldn’t have them hauled in for questioning or worse, a licence suspension. They were really very worried and had kept coming back to the matter so much so, it was abundantly clear the priest had used the threat to get them to the table.
But why that of a licence suspension? he asked himself and sighed inwardly at the intricacies of life under the Occupation. ‘Danielle de Bonnevies trades in many items,’ he said, looking from one to the other of them. ‘Toothbrushes, compacts, razor blades and carpenter’s nails … Two bars of beautiful hand soap. With all of these she must have had help in acquiring them.’
‘Not us, Inspector,’ swore Josiane, the elder of the two, reaching for a sip of the red.
‘Inspector, what has this to do with the murder?’ demanded Father Michel, as if, in having set it all up, he could now claim innocence.
‘Only that the J-threes are very busy these days, Father.’
Everyone knew the teenagers were working the black market for all it was worth. Designated J-threes by their ration category, many were roaming around after classes flashing thick wads of fifty- and one-hundred-franc notes. Five-hundreds also.
‘Danielle deals with some of the local kids,’ admitted Josiane, her auburn hair permed and piled beneath its petite chapeau. ‘They buy and sell, and then she sells for them and splits the profit, I guess.’
‘Lipstick,’ murmured Georgette, not daring to look up from her playing cards, for Père Michel was sternly watching her. ‘Cigarette lighters. I … I have bought one from her. Was it a crime, Father?’ Was the Chief Inspector on to her and Josiane? she wondered.