Offenheimer had not yet turned on the headlamps. He was afraid someone might see him leaving the House of the Silver-Haired. Kohler held his breath. Suddenly the headlamps were switched on. Oona threw up an arm to shield her eyes, a blonde-haired young woman obviously in distress.
The Mercedes crawled to a stop. The window was rolled down.
‘Your name?’ asked Offenheimer. He’d not yet recognized her but his voice … it was like something out of nowhere. Mist continued to fall through the beam of the lights. Oona forced herself to step closer to the car.
‘Please, I … I have lost my way in the fog, monsieur. I know I should not be out after curfew but my aunt, she is very sick, and I had to sit with her until … until it was too late. Now I must get home. My husband … my children …’
Offenheimer switched off the headlamps but said nothing. The seconds ticked away and she knew he was struggling with himself, that something dark and evil must have happened in his distant past.
‘Where do you live?’ he asked at last. Had he really argued with that conscience of his or with the regulations? Had he recognized her?
‘In Auteuil, on the boulevard de Beausejour. My husband, he will be so worried, monsieur. I …’
‘You should not be out after curfew. It is against the regulations and punishable by a sentence of no less than three months if … if all other questions are resolved.’
She was lying and he knew it.
‘Please, I will find my own way, monsieur. Forgive me for having stopped you.’
Afraid … she was so afraid of him. ‘Let us walk for a little. Then I will take you home, Hilda.’
Hilda! Jesus Christ! The car door opened and was shut. The fog soon closed about them. Their steps came and went as the Seine sucked at the stones and gave back the laughter of a river that had seen it all.
Kohler tried not to listen to the river, tried not to think of what he’d done to that poor woman. Where … where the hell had they gone? ‘OONA!’ he called out in desperation. ‘O … O … N … A!’
Their steps came again and he heard them faintly, just a whisper, just a throb.
Then the music came to him from across the river and the tramp of hobnailed boots returned.
The dream was very real, the dream was most intense but the perfume of Revenge kept intruding into that of the Mirage. St-Cyr saw the carousel in midnight blue as if the lights had all been dimmed and the animals, favouring this blue, charged wildly through the night losing all but a little of their own colours. Now the elephant with its trunk high, now the zebra, the camel and a stallion or two. Now a bird in a gilded cage, a rain of female clothing that turned into one of gold coins in sprays of blood … blood … the stallions all snorting wildly at the sight of her naked body as they raced away, the monkey chattering excitedly. Monkey … monkey, blood and gold and wild-eyed creatures crying, ‘Hurry … You must hurry.’
Revenge! A woman … the scream of a motor car out of control … an accident? A mirage? Faster … faster! A young girl’s eyes, her naked breasts sagging as she stared blankly up at him, her lips moving … moving …’ Revenge … Revenge … Mirage … Mirage, monsieur.’ The carousel flying round and round, the light changing to a rainbow of colours under court jester’s eyes that flashed in the mirrors over a naked, strangled, violated girl. ‘Gabrielle! Gabrielle!’ he cried out in despair and sat up suddenly. The face of Marianne St-Jacques dissolving into that of Gabrielle Arcuri. Ah Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu! The scent of Revenge so strong in his nostrils, the intrusion of Mirage was fretful.
Christiane, leave the hotel immediately. Don’t go up to the room. Why had Antoine Audit not tried to warn the girl better than that?
The Resistance had been after the industrialist. The Resistance … the Cafe Noir.
One of the mannequins, a brown-haired girl with nothing on but flimsy, coffee-coloured undergarments, was standing just inside the door looking very worried.
‘What time is it?’ he asked.
‘Just after curfew.’
‘Good. I’m going to have to do something about these nightmares. I am distressed to have frightened you.’
‘Chantal says she is very pretty, this Mademoiselle Arcuri, and very close to your heart, but’, the girl gave a shrug, ‘she is untouchable at the moment.’
‘I did not say she had the curse, did I?’ he asked anxiously of the dream.
‘The curse? Ah no, Monsieur the Chief Inspector. Chantal has said it is because of the rue Lauriston that you have come here. The French Gestapo! But that you must go to Mademoiselle Arcuri, since she is the Mirage of your dreams.’
‘And the Revenge?’ he asked. ‘What does Chantal say of this?’
‘That you will find the answer, Monsieur Jean-Louis, because you are her knight in shining armour, but that if there should be any leftover silk you will know where to leave it.’
Kohler breathed in carefully. The fog was thick, the night like ink, the quai d’Anjou and the House of the Silver-Haired now behind him. Once across the boulevard Henri-IV there was a small park, the square Barye, chestnut trees, lindens and a few shrubs.
A single pot-light on the pont de Sully appeared frosted through the mist, its light suffused too quickly. They’d not have crossed that bridge. He knew it, knew Offenheimer was forcing him to follow them into the park.
Oona Van der Lynn hadn’t cried out in a long, long while, which could only mean the Captain had a knife or pistol. Regulation issue, nine millimetre. A Luger, Mauser or Walther P-38.
Schraum had been killed with one of those. The poor woman would be naked now, lying on the wet grass, her clothes everywhere. Son of a bitch, why had he thought to use her as bait? Had he no feelings, no humanity? Had he sunk into the slime of this merry-go-round?
It took him back to Munich, to the banks of the Isar; Berlin, too, and the Spree, and not all of the victims had been women and young girls, ah no. Lovers lost were target enough; lovers taken quickly in the heat of the moment were often best dispensed with.
Not so tidily either, especially when it came to young boys. The penis and testicles of one had turned up later in a box.
He stepped into the tiny park, could hear the lapping of the Seine from both sides and from straight ahead, for the park occupied the upriver point of land.
Droplets fell from the branches, mist broke against his face and he was cold. He knew he mustn’t think of Oona Van der Lynn any more, that she was just another woman in trouble. That Offenheimer would kill him and then kill the woman if he hadn’t already done so.
Where … where were they?
The grass underfoot changed to gravel and he cursed himself, for the sound of the stones rumbled like thunder against the patient dripping and the fetid lapping of the swollen river.
The Van der Lynn woman had been wearing a trenchcoat with a belt. There’d been a scarf – the one to tie the hands and ankles, the other to gag the mouth. Then the clothes cut off by the knife and the breasts fondled as they became wetter and wetter, the blood mingling with the water from the branches and the slowly failing mizzle.
Would he shove the knife up inside her as some had done? Would he cut out her eyes or drive the thing up her seat as others had done after first having slashed the buttocks in a rage?
When you hate, you hate with a vengeance and God alone probably knew what had really set the bastard off in the first place. An older sister who’d found him playing with that limp thing between his legs and had never let him forget it, eh? A sister who had tied him up and taken down his pants to find out more about the male anatomy.