The curfew would end at 0500 hours, but because of its imposition, the farmers couldn’t do the usual and arrive at Les Halles in the early hours, and the belly of Paris had become a mere shadow of its former self.
Given the lack of traffic, the control on the Porte d’Aubervilliers had far too many heavily armed men. Again Hermann had to pause, and when he came back, he was clearly unsettled. ‘It can’t be for us, Louis. It has to be for that passseur’s gazogene. Kriminalrat Ludin’s been waiting for hours to have a word. Oona’s with him in the car and desperate. Stay up front in the van and use the lockdown so that no matter how hard the boys here try, they won’t get in.’
Acorn water lay between them on the linoleum-topped table. Nicotine- shy;stained, Ludin’s thick fingers lit yet another, a Juno from home this time, that gaze of his behind those steel-rimmed specs unfeeling.
‘Kohler, must I remind you that a few answers are necessary?’
This eingefleischter Nazi was even wearing the Goldenes Parteiab shy;zeichen shy;, given especially to the very early members. ‘Maybe first, Kriminalrat, you’d tell me what you think you were doing by terrifying Oona and bringing her here or anywhere else at any hour?’
Trust Kohler to think of the well-being of such.
‘Ach, when I called round to the flat and found she didn’t know where you were, I thought to ease her mind both by telling her you’d be arriving soon-my mistake, of course-and that I would be only too glad of a little company en route. Unfortunately we soon had to follow a convoy on its way out to Drancy. A child, wanting to feel the air, kept parting the rear truck’s canvas tarpaulin and shoving an arm out, which upset her greatly, and for this I apologize profusely, but that fog … Liebe Zeit, I even had to rip the blinkers off my headlamps. Is it always so thick in Paris?’
‘Usually it rises from the Seine to smother everything, but this one is different.’
Like himself, was that it? Matches were as if of gold and when Kohler set the box aside and didn’t return it, the thought was to see if he would really attempt to steal it. ‘Tobacco and that first drag, eh? Already things begin to look a little better, so let’s make a bit of peace between us. What did you find in such a godforsaken place?’
The rumpled, grey prewar suit with the egg-stained tie and handkerchief that definitely needed laundering had obviously seen everything far too many times, but still he’d have to try. ‘Maybe first you’d tell me what you and that colonel were looking for, and while you’re at it, give me his name. He does have one, doesn’t he, or did his parents deliberately forget?’
Insubordination was one thing, and Kohler was certainly noted shy; for it, ridicule something else. ‘Please don’t continue to be difficult. Just give me whatever evidence you managed to find.’
‘Two bodies, both with a nine-millimetre Parabellum, the gun perhaps a Walther P38 or Luger and probably sold on the schwarzer Markt by one of our own. It happens all the time now, Kriminalrat. The Fuhrer ought to pay our boys a little more.’
‘And you’ve concluded the killer was French, have you?’
‘Was he?’
Verdammt, did Kohler suspect otherwise? ‘Money was taken, was it?’
‘Plenty, but until we get that bank to go over everything, we won’t know the exact amount.’
To this, the grizzled fleshy cheeks and sagging jowls were favoured before sucking on that cigarette until only the smallest of butts remained.
‘And this cash, Kohler, was it carried away on a bicycle or in a farmer’s cart?’
‘Instead of a truck? Is that why this crowd of imbeciles in uniform is hanging around looking as if waiting for one?’
Kohler was never going to learn. ‘All right, there was a truck, one of those that uses a firebox and the resulting charcoal or wood gas. It depends. They don’t usually burn both together unless shy; desperate since it can cause problems.’
‘And you’ve been chasing it?’
But from where and for how long-was this what Kohler wanted? shy; The Netherlands perhaps? ‘Looking for it would be better.’
‘Why? Because they’ve robbed someone else?’
Again Ludin found his cigarettes and lit another, but would this irritating pest swallow what would have to be said in order to get him to cough up the necessary yet keep him from the truth? ‘Human trafficking, Kohler. The Reichssicherheitshauptamt are concerned and want it stopped.’
The SD’s Security Office. Ernst Kaltenbrunner was head of it, a drunkard and a sadist, but sending one Standartenfuhrer and an aging Gestapo after a single passeur didn’t make sense. ‘Have you and that colonel got similar reception committees stationed at every entrance to the city?’
The Hoherer SS und Polizeifuhrer of France, Karl Oberg and his deputy, Helmut Knochen, had warned them of Kohler’s penchant for honesty bordering on intransigence, but an answer would have to be given with the curtest of nods.
It was, felt Kohler, hard to believe that Berlin’s SD knew so little of how things worked in Paris they would unwittingly broadcast their interest in such a way. ‘And who was this still unnamed Schmuggler trafficking?’
Had Kohler and St-Cyr found evidence of that girl? ‘That I can’t reveal, but was there any evidence of someone other than the killer?’
Finally the chips were down, and with Oona waiting in the Citroen. ‘None. Far too much rain. No tracks, not even a whisper of that gazo truck you’ve been chasing.’
‘Did I not say, “looking for?” Ach, mein Strudel at last. Are you sure you wouldn’t like half of this? Illegal for most others in France, of course, but my Hilda was a remarkable cook. Every morning, six days a week, and even seven far too many times, there would be a little extra in the briefcase for lunch. A slice of her marvellous strudel, Kohler-I’m partial to the apple-and-raisin. Though the latter are so difficult to find these days, she still managed somehow. A few of her Lebkuchen …’
The cakes of life. ‘Meine Oma used to make them.’
His grandmother! ‘Spicy, Kohler, as life should be now and then, yet sweet as it always was before I was forced to identify the Bombenbrandschrumpfleischen.’
The heat-shrunken corpses the firestorm had left, but must that God of Louis’s keep smiling at the partnership?
‘The wife, Kohler, our eighteen-year-old house-daughter, Inge, too, and my Hilda’s parents and their four dogs, the ones I always hated because they’d piss on my shoes and trousers if they could. Now I will have answers from you, mein lieber Kamerad, or that Netherlander out there in my car will end up exactly like them.’
And to think that 40,000 of these in the Reich could control a nation of 80 million at home largely through voluntary denunciations. ‘Let me talk to my partner. Let us take that van to the bank and settle a few things. We can’t interrupt a murder inquiry just to fuck about with something Berlin’s SD might or might not even know, and if you question it, mein Freund, think of all the shouting that must be going on about the Resistance getting the better of us. Von Rundstedt, eh, and the Kommandant von Gross-Paris, to say nothing of the avenue Foch and Oberg and his deputy.’
‘Then take the woman with you. Maybe she’ll be reminder enough.’
Oona was silent. She didn’t even respond when held in the partnership’s Citroen. Instead, she pulled away from him, felt Kohler, and through the darkness between and around them said, ‘First he told me that should I ever find my children, I must remember that they were half-and-halves, Mischlinge, crossbreeds, and that their fate would soon be decided, that Seyss-Inquart, the Austrian SS who runs my country, is determined to include them, as is Darquier de Pellepoix, Vichy’s commissioner for Jewish affairs, but that Herr Kaltenbrunner and others in Berlin are still mulling the question over. But with myself, because of whom I had married, there would be no such problem. All of my hair would be shaved off and I would be deloused, and if fit for work, would be made to, if not, the furnace. Is that what those people would have done to my Martin, Hermann, and my Johan and Anna?’