To a man, the Russians and their families ate, lived, slept and worked here. ‘Your papers can’t be very good,’ he said.
Wearily Godunov pushed up his goggles. ‘Herr Hauptmann, is it that you are asking for a little silver or gold perhaps?’
A pay-off, so it would be best to grin and offer a cigarette. ‘Not at all. Just a little information. Has someone been bothering you?’
Was this one really from the Procurement Office as he’d claimed? Only a fool would have believed it. ‘The local Milice. Herr Schlacht is aware of the matter, but says it is entirely up to us to take care of it. What can one do?’
‘But keep silent and roll it around your little finger, eh?’
Thinking it over and remembering it. A Russian saying, so at least the Hauptmann was trying to be polite!
‘How much do you pay them for the privilege of being left alone?’ asked Kohler.
‘Four of the wafers each week. One hundred grams.’
‘Out of how much?’
‘It varies. Sometimes we are busy refining silver only, on consignment for others, you understand. Sometimes Herr Schlacht has sufficient gold for twenty or thirty wafers. Perhaps two hundred at the end of each week. Perhaps and often much less than this.’
Or more. ‘So you set aside a little something to pay off the Milice?’
‘We have to. After all our employer …’
‘Told you to take care of it. So, where does the gold end up?’
It would be best to sigh and say, ‘That we do not ask.’
‘Switzerland?’
‘Perhaps. Perhaps Argentina, too, or Spain or Portugal.’
‘And what’s Schlacht’s take from here?’
‘That, also, we do not ask, but I should tell you he came here once with two SS, a Generalmajor with thick glasses, and an Obersturmbannführer. They were pleased, I think, but one can never really tell with people like that, and they did not stay long.’
Oberg, then, and his right-hand man, the Herr Doktor Helmut Knochen. Christ! ‘Forget I was in.’
‘Certainly.’
‘But let me have the bead, will you? A small souvenir.’
‘Of course. It shall be exactly as you wish. Polished, and like a ball bearing to facilitate its rolling around your little finger.’
Out in the courtyard, Herr Kohler took the birdcage down from across the way and carried it off. Now why, please, would he have done such a thing? wondered Godunov, not that they would miss it.
There were cellars below the smelter, and from one of these there was access to the sewers. An alternate escape route had been fashioned through the attics from house to house and then across the roofs, but would either of them be of any use if they had to escape?’
Sadly he shook his head. The Germans would block all exits and bottle them in. No one would be left alive here, not even the children. There were far too many secrets in the furnaces.
‘Life is like that,’ he said to one of the guinea pigs he had taken from its cage. ‘You just think things are sailing along like the moon when some son of a bitch of a tovarisch decides to tip the old man right upside down!’
He kissed the guinea pig and stroked his bristly, sweat-streaked cheek and damp, grey-white moustache against it. ‘Don’t worry, little one. We won’t eat you today.’
Closeted in the kitchen with the brothel’s cook and two of the girls, Louisette Thibodeau looked up from her soup and choked.
‘Madame,’ said St-Cyr and saw her wince, ‘when, please, was the Salon du cimetière constructed?’
Had he not recognized her? Had she changed so much from the girl he had dragged naked from the arms of her client? wondered Madame Thibodeau. ‘Constructed?’ she bleated. ‘In … in 1919, after Monsieur de Bonnevies came back from the war. He … he said he had felt the need when on the battlefield and had had plenty of time to … to think it over.’
‘And for twenty-four years now he has used that room?’
‘Yes. Yes, that is so. Always the tombstones, always those two.’
It had to be said. ‘Yet he never takes Josiane.’
‘Never.’
The whole neighbourhood would have heard of it ages ago, no matter how private the house claimed things were. ‘Your ledger tells me the room was used mostly on Tuesdays and Thursdays, presumably by the victim, but there are also visits on Saturdays, in the afternoon, and on Sundays.’
‘By him, but not at the times of the Masses,’ she said swiftly. ‘This is a God-fearing house.’
‘Of course, but on Sunday evenings, once a month and late, the room is used. Charlotte attends.’
With Father Michel — was this what he thought? Well let him! she told herself and, shrugging, set her soup spoon aside. ‘Charlotte is always in demand.’
‘She’s pretty,’ said one of the girls coyly, ‘and pretty young, too.’
‘Eighteen,’ said the other one.
‘Milou, please leave us this instant! Élène, go with her. Some coffee, Inspector?’ asked Madame Thibodeau, her words brittle. She’d deal with those two later, and as for this one from the Sûreté, well, now that he had whetted his appetite, one had best feed the leech a few bits of flesh so as to send him away happy.
His kind are never happy, she silently said and steeled herself to meet all onslaughts.
He took out his pipe and tobacco pouch, preparing to stay for as long as necessary. Ah mon Dieu, she thought, it’s just as it was when we last met and my licence had expired.
The cook thought it best to be busy. Setting the steaming pot with its roasted acorn-and-barley water on the table, she took refuge next to the sink where carrots were to be peeled and onions sliced.
‘Louisette Thibodeau née Grégoire,’ he said and sighed at the memory.
Her heart sank. ‘Inspector, what can I do for you?’
‘That depends,’ he breathed and let the threat of silence hang in the air while he stuffed that pipe of his until he had forced her to finally yelp, ‘On what, please?’
‘On your reading of history, I think.’
Nom de Jésus-Christ, he hadn’t changed a bit!
She’d been an ample woman in her late twenties and not beaten by her pimp as so many he had encountered. But down on her luck and with a five-month-old baby boy to nurse. ‘We both know the beekeeper’s use of that room must have attracted the attention he wanted, madame. Save my partner and me a lot of time. Help us out.’
For old times’ sake — was this what he thought? Maudit salaud, the nerve!
‘Whoever tried to poison him may poison others, with even more success,’ confided St-Cyr. ‘It’s just a thought — please don’t trouble yourself. But my presence here … Our having talked things out.’
The bastard! ‘All right, it is as you have ascertained. Some of our clients — the female ones, too — ridiculed his strange desire. Others tried out the room once or twice, but found it not to their taste. A few have come to use it on a regular basis, yes.’
He’d want the names of those few; he’d want every little titbit he could get!
Feigning boredom came easily to him. He examined a fingernail, said only two words. ‘Four names.’
‘I … I can’t tell you. I mustn’t.’
‘I think you’d better. While there’s still time, that is.’
‘One was killed at Sedan in 1940. A corporal.’
He waited for her to crucify herself. Had he no heart? Did he not think of the slashed face she would earn, the wrists also, her body stripped naked at her age and dumped into the Seine with ropes and stones? ‘One no longer lives in this quartier but comes by métro when he feels the need.’
‘And takes Charlotte once a month, late on Sunday evenings in that little graveyard of yours?’
May God forgive her for telling him. ‘Yes.’