The talk was formal but also animated. There were little asides, little lectures which the Abwehr’s captain always accepted with shyness, he the grandson and the nephew, they the grandmother and maiden aunts, well, at least one of them.
As for sex, there was none. They’d had their coffee – he’d given them the gifts he’d found in the fleas as a boy of ten would do. The tin of marzipan had been opened, the tea cosies lay neatly in a forgotten pile on a forgotten table near a forgotten sofa that should have been put to better use had the ‘girls’ been a lot younger.
Kohler studied the table on which the things lay. There was something under cover, a lamp perhaps. A beautifully crocheted white woollen shawl all but hid it and he could see his own aunt’s swollen knuckles as she’d patiently made some similar thing and he, too, was taken back to his boyhood on the farm.
Oona Van der Lynn nudged him and reluctantly he let her have an eyeful. Lost in thought, he felt her backside pressed firmly against his middle, a good fit but strangely, though he was finding her increasingly attractive, he’d lost all desire, had been robbed of it.
They had wrinkles. They all had them. It was a fact of life and yet … his stomach turned at the thought.
‘How often does he do this?’ he asked of the sous-maitresse against whose generous bosom his arm was solidly squeezed.
‘Twice a week. Always twice, but never on the same nights. He telephones ahead but sometimes is forced to cancel at the last moment.’
‘What about last Tuesday?’
‘He was here. Yes … yes, a good session.’
‘And Thursday?’ he asked, holding his breath.
‘Thursday is always busiest. Many of our clients have to go home to Berlin for the weekends. He knows this but insists. We -’ The Gestapo was deliberately squeezing her against the wall. ‘Yes, he was here on Thursday night.’
‘At what time?’
‘At just after eleven. Monsieur the Captain has come in great agitation, you understand. Me, I have had to tell him the ladies were occupied but he has insisted on the calming. He has said he had to see them.’
‘I’ll bet he did. Was there any blood on him?’
‘Blood?’ He felt her bosom rise and hold itself in dismay. ‘Blood? Ah, no, no, monsieur, there was no blood on him. Only a lost button which I have sewn back on to the jacket of his uniform.’
Kohler felt Oona stiffen. ‘Herr Kohler …’ she began. He shifted her out of the way.
The game of cards had speeded up. Offenheimer had insisted he and his partner had won the hand. The two old aunts were objecting. One of them went so far as to slap the back of the little boy’s hand.
Stunned into tears, the Captain got all choked up.
Then someone must have interrupted things, only no one had come into the room. The one in black pushed back her chair and said something sharply to the visitor. Offenheimer blanched. Anger made him quiver and clench a fist. So much for politeness.
The maiden aunt got up and went quickly over to the table to yank the cloth away. Gott im Himmel, it was a white porcelain nude, a lovely thing, a gorgeous bit of behind with high breasts and splendid young hips.
Shouting erupted. Offenheimer flew into another rage. His chair fell over. The cards were scattered. Tears rushed down the little boy’s cheeks. The old girls were all aflutter now but had stepped back as the captain seized the statue with both hands, only to withdraw from it at once.
He grabbed a hammer! Giving a cry of anguish, the bastard smashed the porcelain to smithereens. Not one blow but several. A real tantrum in which, at the last, his glasses were knocked askew.
Then the aunts and the other one fell on him in a rush of kisses and commiserations and he had it with the grandmother on the sofa in an orgy of lust and ripped chiffon that should have given her a heart attack!
‘Jesus, if I hadn’t seen it, I’d never have believed it. What’d he do? Kill his older sister or something?’
‘It is harmless, is it not, monsieur? Twice each week, always the same thing. First the coffee and the cakes, the tete-a-tete and the exchange of gifts, then the game of cards that is always interrupted by the statue.’
‘Never the real thing?’ he asked, a yelp.
‘Only once. We first tried it with a young girl I had hired especially for the task, but he became …’
‘So violent you had to restrain him?’
‘Yes. Insanely jealous, but with the statue it is much better. When clothed, the thing took too long, for he had to get up the courage to undress it. Naked it is very fast, is it not? He smashes her. The rage is spent and the session exquisite in its completion.’
A grandmother fixation. Offenheimer’s face was still buried in her bosom. The aunts had retired from the room. ‘Those statues must cost him a lot.’
‘Five thousand francs each. Me, I … I have arranged their purchase for him.’
‘And the house fee?’ Oona was trembling.
‘Another two thousand since he requires the same three of our ladies – never any of the others, monsieur. He has chosen them himself.’
From the line-up. ‘And if I were to put this one in there with him, naked?’ he asked.
‘I … would not wish to do such a thing, monsieur. Who knows what he might do.’
‘Strangle her, eh?’
‘Yes … yes, he might do that.’
‘Violate her?’
‘Yes, yes, he might do that also, but’… may God forgive her … ‘only after he had slain her.’
‘How many others have watched him at it?’
When there was no answer forthcoming, Kohler leaned against her.
‘Two men, monsieur. One French, the other from the SS.’
The rue Lauriston and the avenue Foch.
‘The French one brought the SS, and like yourself, there was a young woman with them.’
Nicole de Rainvelle. ‘Okay, I’ve seen enough. When will he leave?’
‘In another twenty minutes, after … after first trying to have it again with his …’
‘His grandmother.’
She’d try for sympathy. It would be expected of her but useless, of course. ‘Some men require the attentions of older ladies, monsieur. It is entirely a matter of taste.’
‘Did Baudelaire really come here?’
The woman sucked in a breath. ‘Baudelaire …? Ah no, monsieur. That plaque belongs to the hotel next door as … as does this building we are in.’
The fog was thick and they were both freezing. Oona clamped her knees together. She’d known it would end this way for her, that ever since they’d met Kapitan Offenheimer at the warehouse this morning Herr Kohler would use her as bait. It was nothing personal. It was simply necessity.
The Seine lapped against the quay, sucking at the stones as each small wave withdrew. The city was so quiet.
A car door slammed! Herr Kohler stiffened. ‘Just stand beside the light, madame. Let the bastard see you. Tell him you’ve lost your way.’
‘And if he won’t stop?’ she asked, bursting into tears.
‘Step in front of the car and make him. Look, I’ve got to know. Thirty hostages are at stake, yourself as well, damn it! Oona, it’s the only way. I’m sorry.’ He gave her a shove and she knew again that Martin was dead and never coming back, that their children had died and that she was now completely on her own. And she wondered, What if Offenheimer tells me to get into the car?
Herr Kohler had parked the Citroen up a side-street. He’d never reach it in time to follow them. God … oh God but it was cold.
She pulled her collar close and, slipping her hands back into the pockets of her coat, began to walk away from him, only to turn to search the darkness and say his name at last. ‘Hermann, must I?’
He gave no answer. He was already lost to her. Droplets of mizzle kept striking her face, each one bursting as it hit her skin.
The smell of the river was rank. The pot-light hissed, and when she reached it, the car came slowly along the quay towards her. Late … it was so late. She threw a terrified glance upriver. There were a few small blue lights, well spread out and far too distant to matter. From the other side came the tramp of hobnailed boots.