‘The hidden wealth of Antoine Audit.’
‘Of Perigord, Lyon and Saint-Raphael.’
‘The same, but you won’t find any of Audit’s silks here. Schraum was too careful for that.’ Offenheimer ran a finger across the ledger. ‘He swapped coal with an accomplice in Saint-Denis who was in charge of the warehouse where the silk is stored. There’s only the requisition for the coal, nothing else, but I know silk changed hands. It was sold to some of the dress designers. Another deal gave him access to the foodstuffs of Audit and Sons.’
‘Pates with truffles and walnuts,’ said Kohler. ‘He got to know his man a little better. Did he send samples to the uncle?’
Men like Offenheimer cannot shrug; it’s a gesture that would only have been punished. Instead, the Captain settled for a sip of coffee.
‘The uncle passed the word back to the avenue Foch when the coins turned out to have been forged.’
‘After having first hired a hit man to do away with a nephew who’d turned troublesome? A Corsican? Hey, I didn’t think they had any of those in Stralsund. Dumb of me, I guess. It just goes to show you what can happen when a fellow’s overworked.’
Kohler was trying to make a mockery of things! Very well, it would be best to teach him a lesson. ‘The avenue Foch could have supplied the killer, Herr Kohler. The rue Lauriston are not always as tidy as they should be, nor are the Intervention-Referat.’
Paul Carbone then, was that it? ‘Where’s this put Antoine Audit?’
‘Under suspicion for not declaring what he should have, but he has friends in high places so one must go carefully. It’s a little like hunting for Easter eggs. There’s a crowd of others to be beaten. Each leaf must be carefully turned and none of the eggs trampled until they’ve been examined to see if they are to taste.’
‘Lest the wind of the Gestapo blow all of the leaves away, eh? Hang on a minute, will you? Where’s the head? I have to drain the battery.’
Oona choked. The coffee scalded her throat and made her eyes water. Herr Kohler had left her alone with him!
The Kapitan Offenheimer refused to look at her or speak. He broke off a piece of cookie and dunked it in his coffee. Then he ate the thing fastidiously, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together quickly as if in guilt and under watchful eyes.
He was staring at the left corner of his desk. The hackles on the back of her neck began to rise, the muscles in her legs to tighten. She was making him nervous, afraid … ‘Have you been in Paris long, Herr Kapitan?’ she hazarded, trying to break the silence. A mistake.
Ignoring the question, Offenheimer reached for his coffee and blew on it before taking a sip. ‘Have you slept with him?’ he asked, still not looking at her.
‘I beg your pardon? Paris … I asked you about Paris.’
‘And I asked if you’d slept with him.’
An avalanche of coal outside jarred her nerves. ‘Yes … yes, I’ve slept with him.’
‘Did you enjoy it?’
Why in God’s name couldn’t he look at her? ‘My husband was arrested by the rue Lauriston. I thought … Herr Kohler asked … He demanded I undress. I – I had to! Don’t you see, I had to?’
The coffee was perfect. Five teaspoonfuls of the finest grind to three cups of boiling water over the filter, then one and a quarter teaspoons of granulated sugar, a touch of cognac to sharpen the taste, and cream, rich cream. Just as at home, just like auntie used to make it and grandmother too.
Deep in the warehouse behind them, Kohler was impressed by what he’d found. There were tins of tomatoes, pears, peaches and peas, bottles of pickled walnuts a la Perigord, tubes of walnut cream, or was it paste? Truffles in wine and in honey – Christ, Audit and Sons must have been desperate to think up something new. What hadn’t they tried?
Behind the coal and under canvas there was enough pate with truffles to keep the hogs at home happy for years. Cases of Bordeaux, bottles of walnut liqueur. Gifts from Antoine Audit to keep a certain corporal quiet, or merely samples to be sent home to the uncle?
By the look of the loot, Schraum had shown great promise, a real wheeler-dealer in his element. A pity to have been such a disappointment.
Shoes, good ones, too. All size ten and a half. Uncle had big feet. Luggage, cosmetics, perfume and soap – friend Schraum had used his authority over the lifeblood of coal and cordwood to choke the pipeline to his uncle.
There were small antiques, even a cluster of oils on canvas in gilt frames. Porcelains in straw. But did the corporal really have any taste? Louis would have known. In any case, the bugger had had deals with everyone who had counted. No wonder the barracuda had got uptight.
But the barracuda had been caught sleeping all the same. There’d be questions now and that’s what Old Shatter Hand, the Kommandant of Greater Paris, had wanted. Questions, questions and more of them. Another scandal.
This one on the Abwehr, which didn’t make a lot of sense on von Schaumburg’s part unless someone in the Bureau Otto was also working for the SS over on the avenue Foch and hadn’t said a thing about it. Oh yeah.
Snorting at the thought, Kohler pocketed a jar of pickled walnuts for Louis just in case the Frog was still around and pounding the pavement. A crock of the famous pate went into the other pocket. The guns were getting in the way and were too heavy, but he’d manage somehow to swipe a bottle of the Cream of Walnut liqueur. Just a taste. What the hell.
The woman who had made the coffee was Offenheimer’s personal grey mouse and by God she was grey! A grandmother from the Teutoburger Wald yanked out of retirement. They couldn’t have come of sterner stuff. She’d be well into her sixties and she had to make him wonder.
‘Tell Madame Van der Lynn that the Inspector Kohler is finished here for the time being. Extend my thanks to the Kapitan. Sorry about the canary, but she’s spoken for.’
Son of a bitch! Louis … where the hell was Louis? He’d not believe it either! A granny, when everyone else voted for the young ones and saw that they got them.
7
By mid-afternoon a light mist had replaced the rain. Round the Etoile and the Arc de Triomphe the traffic had the sound of wet cornflakes in cream.
German direction signs were everywhere. Bicycles … there were so many of them. Ve1o-taxis pedalled by eager young girls or grim-faced men in their middle fifties and older. Now a Daimler edging through the cream, now an army truck coming abreast of a cornflake, a blonde in a red coat and matching beret pedalling like the damned. German officers laughing at her. German corporals looking on with lust or disinterest, the whole mass swirling in the mist, undulating as it went round and round … The Benzedrine? asked St-Cyr. The panic? The carousel of what Paris had become? Ah Mon Dieu, this thing was fast becoming a nightmare!
He squished his toes together. Memories of the rue Benard kept coming back. Memories, too, of that girl Marianne St-Jacques and her foolish, foolish bravery, and of thirty hostages. Thirty of them!
He’d been to headquarters in search of Hermann only to find closed doors. Osias Pharand, who should have been screaming with territorial rage, had refused to see him. Walter Boemelburg had been ‘busy’.
Reports seemed unwanted, advice not freely given, the streets of Paris left waiting only for the assassin’s knife. Vouvray had made them outcasts. Hermann and he had been pitched into the maelstrom and told to find the loot or else! Never mind the murders. M Antoine Audit must be running scared and not just because of an insignificant Resistance cell of young and dangerously careless hotheads.
No, my friend, he said as the hard-boiled eggs of the velo-taxis passed through the eerie mist, Antoine Audit has much to lose.