It was not far in any case from the rue Polonceau and the Church of Saint Bernard to the Cafe Noir on the avenue de Laumiere and the parc des Buttes-Chaumont. Ah yes, the park. The carousel.
Smoke rose from the chimney pipe in the centre of the marquee. The music had stopped, the thing did not go round and round or up and down. There’d be no more dreams, no more terrifying nightmares. Hermann and he would either solve the case or fail.
‘Personally, I do not fancy the latter,’ he said, the park silent as the city was silent.
Clement Cueillard would be alseep beside the firebox, cosied up with Joujou the monkey. Morning would come. The music could begin again and with it the turning, turning, always the turning and the going up and down.
The Cafe Noir opened at 5 a.m. just as the curfew ended. The first stragglers were three labourers in for their breakfasts of ersatz coffee, no milk, saccharin, and no croissants with jam or butter.
A sleepy shopgirl wearing a leather jacket was next, her ‘Good morning, Monsieur Philou,’ given with a yawn that was reflected in the copper coffee machine. Her slip hung below the back of her dress. The lines on her bare legs marking the seams of non-existent stockings were crooked. Some of the beige wash had rubbed or been scratched off.
There was only one place from which to observe such things unnoticed and that was from the front left corner. When Charles Audit and Rejean Tourmel entered, there was hesitation – the proprietor had been warned not to look their way, but of course such a warning in itself had been enough for them.
‘Please do not move, Rejean. I will not hesitate to use the gun, not these days, eh?’
The bracelets came out of the overcoat pocket. ‘Easy,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Now your right wrist, Monsieur Charles. Please, it is necessary.’
They’d have their coffee and he’d have a look at them. ‘Now the knives on the floor and carefully, my friends. Now the guns.’
‘What makes you think we’re carrying?’ asked Rejean.
‘Nothing, but I wish to be certain.’
He’d allow them a cigarette but sit well back and to the side so as not to receive the table in the face.
‘You’ve come alone. Where’s your partner?’ asked Charles Audit.
‘Outside. We often work this way. Myself to make the arrest -’
‘For what?’ hissed Rejean. ‘For cutting you up?’
‘Perhaps, but then …’ He’d leave it for the moment. He’d take his time to study them. Charles Audit was as his concierge had said, swarthy, of medium height and strongly built. No shoe salesman and shop owner this. Not any more.
The black beret covered a wide head of bushy grey-white hair, thatches of which protruded over the tops of robust ears. The grey-blue eyes were large and, though filled with watchfulness, full also of sadness. Ah Mon Dieu, such pain. Years and years of it.
The nostrils were large and flared.
‘May I?’ asked Audit, indicating the long-stemmed pipe that protruded from the breast pocket of his black corduroy jacket. The bristly cheeks were ravaged by creases, the skin around the eyes looked as if he had had to squint whenever the sun was high.
Their coffee came and there was both milk and sugar, and it was freely given. ‘I am sorry, my friends. This one’, the proprietor indicated the Surete, ‘threatened to have me arrested if I did not co-operate.’
‘Think nothing of it,’ said Rejean. ‘Cows are always flapping their tongues.’
‘Quit seeing flames, Rejean. Hey, listen, eh? We know all about it – everything. By now the quartier will be swarming with Gestapo. It’s useless to be so stubborn.’
The dark-brown eyes of the Corsican were swift. Tourmel would have another knife, a bit of wire; he’d have already begun to assess not just one way out of things but two or three.
‘How’s Madame Van der Lynn?’ asked Tourmel, giving the Surete a grin. They’d flip the table and use their feet. Coffee in the face and fists, the bracelets around that throat of St-Cyr’s. Flames! They’d show him flames like a cow had never seen before.
Kohler pushed open the door. ‘Louis, – Gott im Himmel, don’t you know where to eat breakfast yet? Chez Rudi’s, Louis. It’s hands down over a dump like this.’
‘Me, I wondered when you’d show up, Hermann.’
‘So this is the son of a bitch who took advantage of Madame Van der Lynn, and this … by God it is, Louis. Charles Audit himself. The brother. Diamonds and emeralds, my fine, and gold coins.’
‘Suck lemons. We know nothing.’
Deep inside the carousel, the faint glow from the firebox threw shadows on the punchboards of the calliope. Clement Cueillard wiped breakfast soup from the strainer of his handlebar moustache. The monkey, huddled on his shoulder, was edgy.
‘I have found them when I was raking out the ashes, Inspectors. Such clinkers … It’s shit, that soft coal. It does not burn well. We’re running out.’ He gave the two of them the look of one who has lived with unpleasantness in what should have been a place of joy.
A tin pie plate held a sand of cinders. Six molars, two incisors and the shattered lower left jawbone were all equally charred. ‘Weren’t there any more chips of bone?’ asked the Surete uneasily.
‘A few – smashed to smithereens, Inspector. Did they extract the marrow, eh? That’s what Joujou and I want to know, not that marrow isn’t nourishing in these times.’
Rejean Tourmel snorted lustily. ‘So, my fines, another dead one, eh? Who was it did this one? Myself or Charles?’
‘Piss off. I’ll deal with you in time,’ snarled St-Cyr.
‘It’s Roland Minou,’ quipped Charles Audit. ‘Hey, Rejean, you remember that little pimp. A real smart-ass. They should have saved the blood for his mother.’
So much for depths of sadness in the eyes of ex-convicts from Devil’s Island. ‘Look, you two, speak only when you’re spoken to and not before then.’
Tourmel tossed his head. ‘Nervous, eh, Jean-Louis? What’s it to be? The Abwehr, the SS or the rue Lauriston, or are they all after you?’
‘Louis, this puts another twist on things,’ said Kohler, covering the two of them with his pistol.
‘Not really, Hermann. No, it only reinforces what we have already come to believe.’
‘The mackerel and Schraum killed Madame Minou’s son for wanting too much and interfering when he shouldn’t have,’ said Kohler grimly. ‘Morande then cut up the body and disposed of it in the firebox.’
Joujou flitted nervously off Cueillard’s shoulder, knocking over the coffee in its tin mug.
As the puddle grew, Cueillard sadly shook his head. ‘That was the last of the real stuff, Joujou. It’s the end for us then, is it, Inspectors? Back to the beat for me, eh? What’s to happen to my carousel?’
‘Who’s he?’ snorted the previous owner.
Charles Audit stood to Hermann’s left, Rejean to the right, the two ex-convicts linked by bracelets, yes, and by fraud, murder and revenge. ‘He is the man you should have hired to run your carousel, my friend. But since Rejean had a score to settle with Victor Morande, and since Morande was an outsider among the criminal milieu and a small-time hood the Germans would ignore, Victor had to be chosen for the job.’
‘Go on, we’re waiting,’ breathed Charles Audit.
St-Cyr shrugged. ‘Since you ask it, my friend, then I will tell you. You could not entrust the carousel to just anyone, eh? Rejean agreed to help and you made a deal so that he became the new owner.’
‘There was nothing illegal in that.’
‘Ah no, of course not, except for the lack of registration and licensing. But no one cared, the Germans were far too busy. You waited. You bided your time. The desire for revenge only grew with your brother’s continuing successes, the scheme developing as an orchid does for that one brief moment when the flower will open to accept the bee.’