Old Shatter Hand … Rock of Bronze, the Kommandant von Gross Paris under whose authority the ordering out of the bomb-disposal boys had fallen. An old friend from previous investigations. Well, sort of.
‘Sturmbannfuhrer, we didn’t know the Gypsy would be doing a boil-up. He’s moving far too fast even for us. He’s also leaving surprises.’
‘And the dynamite?’
‘We don’t know how he got it. We’re working on it.’
‘You’re “working on it”, Ja, das ist gut, Hermann. You disobey my orders. You lock Herr Max out when it is he who is in charge. Verdammt! could you not have gone up with the mortar dust to save the lives of those men?’
Furious with him, Boemelburg seized and hurled a Chinese porcelain figurine, a leftover from the days when Louis’s boss had occupied the office.
10,000 Reichskassenscheine went everywhere and even Pharand down the hall would have heard it and leapt.
‘I’m warning you, Kohler. This matter is to be handled delicately. Berlin, you idiot, SONDERBEHANDLUNG, JA?’
‘Chief, your heart.’
‘Fuck my heart. It’s your balls we have to worry about und your neck. Mine too.’
‘We know so little,’ bleated Kohler. ‘We’re not being told everything.’
‘Sit. Light up if you wish and wipe the dust and blood from your face and hands. There … over there, idiot. My basin of water and towel.’
Kohler would see death when he looked in the shaving mirror. He would realize he looked ninety. Damned worried. Too much Messerschmitt benzedrine in his blood and too little sleep. Everyone knew he was popping those pills the fighter pilots took to stay awake and alive.
‘Don’t get careless with this, Hermann. We all have to make sacrifices.’
And wasn’t Louis to be one of those sacrifices – wasn’t that what Rudi Sturmbacher had said? thought Kohler. Had the gossip started here?
His big hands shook when he lighted a cigarette – the aftershock of the rue Poliveau.
‘A brandy, I think, and then some coffee,’ grunted the boss.
A mouton had let Gestapo-Paris know about the job at the Ritz but had failed to get the timing right or mention Cartier’s or the Gare Saint-Lazare. Kohler fished about in his pockets for the cigarette case only to remember Louis had it. ‘Lucie-Marie Doucette. Tshaya,’ he said, ‘daughter of a horse trader. We’re to find her – is that all Gestapo Paris-Central can give us, Chief?’
‘Herr Max can, perhaps, tell you more.’
‘Like who’s her conductor? Is it the Spade?’
The boxer, Henri Doucette. ‘Perhaps. I really wouldn’t know.’
Kohler sighed inwardly with disbelief and said, ‘Herr Max obtained an agreement from the Gypsy in writing, Srurmbannfuhrer. De Vries was then released from the Mollergaten-19 and taken to Tours so that this Tshaya could make contact with him and let her conductor know what was up.’
‘That is correct.’
‘Then her conductor was told by Herr Max what to feed her. She must have believed the Gypsy had escaped from prison. She’d have rejoiced in this and would have lied about the timing of the Ritz robbery in order to save him.’
‘You’re beginning to understand, Hermann. She’s well known to De Vries. They travelled in the same kumpania during the war years and every summer for years afterwards. She’s the daughter of the family that, on seeing how well the boy had come to learn their ways and language and to respect them, took him in and treated him almost as one of their own, even though he was a Gajo and marhime.’
And polluted, as were all Gaje. ‘Is she helping him now?’
‘This we do not know but suspect.’
‘Someone must be.’
‘That’s what we want you to find out.’
‘And never mind her conductor?’
‘You’ll find him too. I’m sure you will.’
The Club Monseigneur’s neon sign was out because all such things had been forbidden. In the greyness of swirling snow and fast-fading light, the rue d’Amsterdam was busy. There were uniforms everywhere among the pedestrians, Velo-taxis and gazogene lorries, and one lonely Citroen parked where it ought not to have been.
The only flic in sight was writing up a traffic ticket for the only car in sight. Enraged, Kohler said loudly, ‘Piss off! Go on, beat it, eh? There may be a bomb under that thing.’
The Fuhrerlike moustache twitched. ‘A bomb …?’
‘That’s what I said. Now don’t try my patience.’
‘But … but the car is not where it should be? It was stolen.’
‘So you’re writing up a parking ticket?’
‘Certainement! The law is very clear in the matter, monsieur.’
Ah putain de bordel! a stickler. ‘Then write it up but don’t touch the car. Not until I’m done with it.’
Reluctantly Kohler got down on all fours to peer under the car, only to find it better if flat on his back. He strained to look up into the engine, got his hands all greasy and had to wipe them on his overcoat. Oona would be furious. She was always trying to keep him tidy. Giselle would back up every word, if not in tears over the baby …
When he lifted the bonnet, he found three sticks of dynamite wrapped with black electrical tape and wired to the ignition. Sickened, he took his time. There was verdigris on the bloody blasting cap. It was too delicate to touch … too delicate …
The cold weather didn’t help. It made the wires stiff. Carefully he tucked the sticks into his overcoat pockets and then dropped the cap down a sewer only to realize he ought really not to have done this.
The flic handed him the traffic ticket and Kohler took it without a word, the injustice of it all building silently within him. The bonnet was gently closed. The keys were under the seat just where he had left them.
He was still counting but there was no nitro lying around loosely in its little bottle, though there had been two of those bottles at least, and the Gypsy had left only one of them on the doorstep of that house in the rue Poliveau.
The flic glared at him from the pavement and Kohler was tempted to say, Why not get in and give it a try? but it was his responsibility, no one else’s.
Though he didn’t want to, he got in behind the wheel and when the engine suddenly came to life, he let it run for a moment while the tears trickled freely down his ragged cheeks.
Switching the ignition off, he locked all four doors and put the keys in a trouser pocket. Then he looked uncertainly up to the Louis XIV wrought-iron balusters of the narrow balconies above the club. He tried to pick out Nana Theleme’s flat.
‘Aren’t you going to move the car?’
The Paris flics could be almost as obnoxious as the waiters.
When Louis found him, Kohler said, ‘Is that bastard up there with her or long gone?’
Hermann was a wreck. ‘He wouldn’t have hung around. He would have known this was one of the first places we would look but if we ask any of the locals, none of them will have seen a thing.’
‘Merde! I’ve got to pee. Hang on. It can’t wait.’
Electrified by his refusal to move the car, the flic yanked out his truncheon and started for them only to ignore the ice.
Louis helped him up and brushed him off. ‘Forget about all this talk of arrest, eh? That one is Gestapo and dangerous.’
‘Asshole, I don’t give a damn if you both are dangerous!’
The left knee bent a little as Louis feinted that way but then the right fist came up and hard. There was a crack.
Unconscious, the flic was put in the back seat and handcuffed.