‘In the cellars, of course. She’s beyond reproach, Chief Inspector. Me, I have seen her studying by candlelight, if a stub can be found. I once, on taking a little something up to her, teasingly asked if she, like others, had been borrowing them from the Eglise Saint-Philippe-du-Roule.’
At 154 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore.
‘But she shook her head and told me with all earnestness that she had been given them by a subdeacon at the Cathedrale Alexandre Nevesky, a boy no older than herself, the one who mixes the incense, she said, and lights its little fires of charcoal before handing the censers to the priests. She liked, she said, to experience other religions. A good Catholic can have doubts, can’t one?’
Especially since the accent of that second driver who’d been following them this morning had been Russian. ‘Repeated visits, repeated candles?’
‘That I … I wouldn’t know, Chief Inspector.’
‘But assume it’s correct?’
Must he press so hard? ‘Do the young not like to talk to the young, especially these days?’
A centre of the White Russian community and no friend of the Bolsheviks and Stalin, the cathedral was behind the Pleyel and faced on to the rue Daru and its intersection with the rue Pierre-le-Grand. Chez Kornilov, the Russian restaurant that was favoured by many of the Occupier and especially by its black-market dealers and sometimes, too, by the gestapistes francais, was just across the street, but … ‘You’re absolutely correct. At times, I tend to question things far too much. She’s obviously of no concern to myself and my partner.’
‘Then you won’t be needing my pass key?’
‘Whatever for? I’ll just walk back through by the concert hall and let myself out that way. My thanks for your patience. It’s always good to refresh old acquaintances.’
Oberfeldwebel Dillmann had better have some answers for Hermann.
* An industrial suburb in la zone to the northwest of Paris.
* The guillotine.
* Renamed the rue Jean Mermoz.
* Now Rue Ernest Renan.
* Now the Paris heliport.
* Pressed duck, a house specialty.
* A panier a salade, a Black Maria.
* Formerly the British bookshop of W. H. Smith.
4
For one who loved horses and had, felt Kohler, used them often both on the farm and in the artillery of that other war, the Vaugirard horse abattoir was far from pleasant. Rotting offal, horses’ hooves, bones, dung and scraps of hide-vestiges of these were everywhere under daylight until the big sliding doors had been closed by Schutze Hartmann.
Now under the faded light, the bloodstains at his feet appeared darker. The gobs and mounds of fat were still a greasy-yellow, but to everything came the constant dripping of leaky taps, while above him, and thrown into shadow as if waiting for some insane SD, SS or Gestapo to string the piano wire, a railing carried large metal hooks. Had there been any stock, each would have taken a horse, stunned, killed or still screaming, to the knives that would have swiftly disembowelled it, the butchers in full-length rubber shy; being constantly showered by blood and offal shy;. That girl, that Anna- shy;Marie Vermeulen, really couldn’t understand what those types could do to her. Under the SD decree of 12 July last year, ‘reinforced shy;’ interrogations had been given the okay but had already been in use by Rudy de Merode and the other gangs. Oona and Giselle could face the same if Louis and himself weren’t careful, and yet … and yet they still didn’t even know why Kaltenbrunner had sent those two, and Heinrich bloody Ludin would be out there somewhere waiting for him to cough up everything or else!
Mein Gott, but he needed a cigarette. Butchering hadn’t gone on here that long. In 1894, the hog abattoirs, which faced inward from the rue de Dantzig to the west, had been the first, those for cattle in 1897, and finally this one in 1904 and backing onto the rue Brancion. Since the abattoirs were serviced by rail on their southern boundary-the Chemin de Fer de l’Ouest-those two tobacco trucks he had followed had taken the rue de Dantzig north to the rue des Morillons, and then had gone east on it to the entrance. Otherwise there was fencing around the area and only limited foot traffic in and out, but here an ordinary door must lead to the rue Brancion. Directly across from it would be a boucherie chevaline whose golden horse heads advertised the steaks, roasts, sausage, et cetera had the stock not been shipped on the hoof to the Reich. But would that girl know the Vaugirard? Had she hidden in this arrondissement? Waxworks, leather tanning, machinery, pharmaceutics, even the bleach that had given the Quai de Javel its name and every skylight its blackout coat of laundry bluing, dominated the 15th. The Citroen factories were on the Allee des Cygnes in the Seine. Like the 11th and 12th, the Vaugirard was also a warren of narrow streets and passages, low-rental tenements, houses, small garden plots and ateliers and such that would have made it perfect if she could have settled in, especially as it was an area seldom visited by the Occupier unless well armed and in a rush. Even Dillmann would have had to make arrangements with the local BOFs and the pegre.
Pay off the one to pay off the other, and business as usual.
From a farm and fishing family in the old town of Schleswig, Schutze Hartmann couldn’t have been in Paris for more than six or seven months, the Wehrmacht but a few more. Though he had the look of Viking ancestors, the steel-rimmed specs made him appear far from that. Hovering over the four cases of cigarettes that had been dropped off by those tobacco trucks, he was armed with a Schmeisser he might be able to use, though that gave little comfort since ill-experienced trigger fingers could be dangerous.
A teenager whose bad eyesight said a lot about the Fuhrer’s latest recruits, the boy finally opened one of the boxes and asked, ‘Two packets, was it, Herr Detektiv?’
‘Cigarette currency, eh?’ replied Kohler, indicating the loot. ‘And since your pay and that of the average regular is two Reichskassenscheine per day, and equivalent to forty francs, even at one-hundred francs the packet, those four cases hold a fortune.’
This was something he could talk about, felt Hartmann. ‘Ach, ja. Ten to fifteen packets will get you the full night with a really beautiful girl on the Champs-Elysees, but in Pigalle from three to five cigarettes are enough. Most are so desperate, they’ll do it up against a wall, but if you have eight francs for the room in one of those walk-in hotels the French use, no questions are ever asked, no papers demanded, and she’ll do anything you want again and again, and if you give her a few more, you can keep her all night.’
And no wonder the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht were constantly worried about the health not only of the men but especially of those street girls. ‘You boys get time off do you?’
‘Only when the Oberfeldwebel feels we need a break. He treats us well, though, and we’re lucky to have him, that’s for sure.’
And Dillmann, being Dillmann, had made certain of their loyalty. ‘How long has he been using this abattoir?’
‘Not long. For a while it was the sheet-iron horse auction, but when this place was temporarily closed, the Oberfeldwebel felt it would be better since it’s out of the way a little more, but with that high-alert at the Versailles entrance, he had to keep the truck there.’
‘But usually those with things they’re bringing into Paris momentarily tuck the trucks out of sight here and wait for him?’
‘Ach, ja. They give us half the load they’re carrying, and we give them the motor oil, grease and gasoline or diesel fuel they need to get home, collect more stuff and come back.’
‘And that truck of Dillmann’s is also loaded with jerry cans of fuel?’