Bartering was everywhere. Since this was the only meal served by the Occupier, a daily ritual at 0700 hours Berlin Time, items from Red Cross parcels augmented the fare: luncheon meat and paste, milk powder, crackers, margarine, jam, marmalade. .
‘Inspector,’ someone called out, ‘are Saint-Nazaire and Lorient in ruins? My daughters. . ’
‘Don’t answer!’ snapped Weber. ‘The British bombed the hell out of those towns last night.’
Because of the U-boat pens that would have remained virtually unharmed, but how had that woman known to ask unless one of the guards had told her?
Weber knew the inmates who counted most for him as informants and would find out soon enough, but didn’t speak to any. Instead, he insisted on walking the narrow aisles between the chairs, and as he passed each back-to-back pair, these were immediately shunted closer to their respective tables.
‘It’s like this, Kohler,’ he said in Deutsch. ‘I can point a finger at any one of them or tap a shoulder, and that one must immediately get to her feet and leave the dining room to wait for me outside my office in the casino.’
To illustrate, he began to pick and choose, sending at random fifteen, leaving soup to chill with opened tins or packets as the noise momentarily abated to muttered curses and warnings of ‘Don’t you dare steal my things.’
‘Meine Spitzel are many,’ he said of his informants, ‘but none of the others know exactly who they are, since I always send out more than needed.’
And so much for his thinking none of those present would understand a word of Deutsch.
‘Is there anyone in particular you’d like to question?’ asked Weber.
‘Léa Monnier.’
‘An excellent choice. You must tell me what she reveals, then we’ll compare notes.’
And if that wasn’t an uh-oh, what was?
‘There’s little I don’t know, Kohler, and well in advance.’
Even two murders?
‘Inspector,’ sang out someone nearby, ‘you want to watch our Léa. She has it in for that partner of yours.’
‘He can’t be saying things about her past in France like that,’ said her neighbour, mutton dribbling grease on pudgy fingers, tired brown hair in curlers and faded pink housecoat over cardigan-padded shoulders. ‘She had to run from the coppers, did our Léa, when she left the Old Blighty for Paris.’
‘The Old Bailey?’
‘Blighty. London, for God’s sake!’ shouted the woman. ‘The prison came first, same as for the one she serves, apart from herself.’
‘The one who talks to the asteroid?’ he asked, startled.
They’d teach Léa to lord it over everyone, thought Blanche Gilberte, formerly Blanche Whitehead from Surrey. ‘I’d watch that one too, if I were you, Inspector.’
Cold corned beef was accidentally scattered as she gestured for emphasis. ‘Madame Chevreul?’ he yelled.
‘She’s not the one who led the mob,’ said a tablemate, shaking her head.
‘Which mob?’ asked Kohler. ‘The one my partner and I encountered yesterday or. . ’
‘Another, Inspector? Another they’d best forget?’ asked Blanche.
‘No one crosses our Léa,’ said the tablemate.
‘Inspector. . Inspector,’ someone called out, only to have everyone get to their feet as the sound of ‘God Save the King’ started up in English from the other end of the room, defiantly growing louder and louder until Weber shrieked, ‘Ruhe! Alles hinsetzen!’
Silence. All sit. ‘Their stupid, stupid patriotism is the only recourse they have, Kohler, but they know I’ll cut off their hot water, their food, and even their parcels.’
Yet who but Léa Monnier had ordered them all to get up and sing to stop a few from having it in for her? The Old Bailey and a mob, she and Madame Chevreul then having to leave the Old Blighty for the Continent.
‘Inspector. . Inspector,’ came the urgent call again, ‘are they still serving le canard pressé at the Tour d’Argent?’ The woman had even dressed up for the morning’s dish-out.
‘Nothing’s changed,’ said Kohler with a grin. ‘It’s all the same for those with the money and connections, even the pressed duck.’
‘Paris,’ she said with longing, the accent perfect and of les hautes.
‘Have you people Wunderwaffen?’ asked another.
The V-1s and V-2s, the Führer’s miracle weapons.
Weber pointed at the woman and immediately she got to her feet in tears and left the room, knowing she would have to tell him which of the guards had said such a thing.
An urgent voice rose up from four tables away, the woman in her late sixties and standing now in despair. ‘Monsieur le ministre de l’éducation nationale, un moment, s’il vous plaît. Someone has stolen my stamp.’
Not my soup. Murmurs fled from chair to chair and table to table as Weber led the way from aisle to aisle.
‘Postage?’ asked Kohler, mystified by the illustrious title she’d given him.
Puzzled, the woman began to tremble with indignation. ‘What is it you’re saying, Monsieur le ministre?’
Would an understanding smile help? ‘A stamp for that letter you’ve been writing?’
‘It is not a letter. It is my date stamp, the one that I put at the top of every page in my exercise book. This is the ink pad for which Brother Étienne brings me the ink. Where is my rubber stamp?’
‘Kohler, leave it. She must be crazy.’
‘Isn’t having that ink pad illegal?’
Weber went to snatch it away and it was passed from hand to hand until he backed off and shrieked, ‘You see how slack our former Kommandant was? Letting them keep things like that from which the stamps for false papers could be inked?’
Devastated by the loss, the woman wept. ‘All the girls are being noisy and bad this morning, Monsieur le ministre. The Reverend Mother is going to be very angry with us, but if I had been allowed to start my page, she would have seen that I’ve been busy doing my catechism and not making trouble for her. Now. . oh now. . ’
‘She must think she’s in school, Kohler. School! Colonel Kessler had to be replaced. This is just one more incidence of his slackness.’
Another dreamer, felt Kohler. Well, two of them. ‘Let her keep the ink pad and the stamp when she gets them back. We’ve trouble enough.’
‘You lot,’ he called out in English, ‘return them now.’
A frizzy-haired ginger head was tossed. ‘Or else you’ll think it’s one of us who’s been stealing little things?’
‘Things like a small, oval seashell with teeth, Inspector?’ asked another.
Or a yellow cloth star? Did they know of it as well, and if so, how the hell had they found out?
‘It’s one of those American bitches,’ said yet another, dangling a tinned sardine by its tail. ‘They’ve murdered their own, haven’t they? Girls with girls, eh? Oh là, là, Inspector, that Vittel-Palace is a hothouse.’
‘Lécheuses des chattes,’ roared another, to much laughter.
Cunt lickers. ‘A lovers’ tiff, was it, this latest killing?’ shouted yet another. ‘Both of those girls were upstairs here in the Grand time and again.’
‘Both had plenty of chances to steal things, let me tell you,’ said another with tinned custard on her chin.
‘We don’t do things like that. We’d never steal from her or anyone else,’ said another, wiping a runny nose.
‘But she stole from Madame Chevreul, is that it?’ he tried.
‘Warned. . The first was warned to be careful but failed to watch out, the other. . Well, what was she doing in the Chalet des Ânes? Isn’t it verboten?’
‘Ja, ist verboten,’ said another, nodding furiously.