‘Then why the tears?’ asked Engelmann. ‘Is it that you are afraid for them?’
She clasped her mouth to stop herself from vomiting and turned away. ‘Because you can’t control a man like that! Because wandering is not just a way of life, it is life! Lock him up and he’ll go crazy. Crazy! do you understand? That is what you have to deal with now.’
‘And is she helping him?’ said Herr Max.
‘She must be!’
‘But … but you were the only one other than the Generalmajor Wehrle who knew the contents of his safe?’
Stung, she turned back to face him. ‘No! that is incorrect. Everyone who sold diamonds to Hans knew those things were in his safe. Others, I don’t know who, would have known he made his shipments to the Reich once a month or even once every two or three months. It all depended on how much there was.’
‘Where will she go?’
When Nana Theleme shrugged, Engelmann hit her. Shocked, dazed and bleeding from the nose and mouth, she stumbled back and fell to the floor.
He stepped between her legs and she waited defiantly for the kick he would give.
Doucement! ‘Now just a minute, Herr Max,’ swore St-Cyr. ‘Janwillem De Vries has at least one bottle of nitroglycerine. If we waste any more time here, Berlin will be certain to question the delay.’
‘The Spade, Louis. Let’s go and have a talk with the son of a bitch!’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Herr Max, grinning at them for having given him exactly what he had wanted from them. ‘Perhaps she should join us. Then if Doucette says something she disagrees with, she can clarify the matter.’
‘I’ll have to change,’ she said, sucking in a breath while silently cursing him.
‘No you won’t. You’ll come just as you are. It’ll do you good. It’s never warm in the camps in winter.’
‘Buchenwald … is it that you are going to send me there?’ she blurted.
He did not answer. Shattered, she found she could not move.
Louis took her gently by the arm and quietly confided, ‘For now we must do as he says. Here, be sure to put on your overcoat and boots, a scarf and hat. Mittens … have you no mittens?’
‘I’ve done nothing.’
‘That won’t matter.’
Buchenwald … Why not any of the other camps? Why had she said it if not knowing, too, that Tshaya’s father had been sent there?
Deporte 14 September 1941.
* crap.
4
The silhouette on the unwashed wall threw a right that would have killed a man. The Spade ducked and weaved. A right, a left, an uppercut. Murderous that one too. Then back, moving always lightly on the balls of his feet. Another left. A left, a left. Feinting, weaving, now a drop to the right to block the punch.
Sweat poured from the tattooed shoulders and grizzled Fritz-head. The muscles glistened, tightened. Doucette didn’t let up. The shadow of him threw a punch. He ducked, went in on himself hammering hard. At the age of forty, he was still far better than most. An army, a battering ram. ‘ll a le style armoire a glace,’ snorted Kohler. He has the build of an icebox.
Crisscrosses of sticking plaster had come away from the back of the swarthy neck to reveal two gigantic boils, flame red and hard against the sweat. Another was in the small of his back where the skin was pink from exertion and glistened. There was pus in the crater of that one and it, too, was ready to burst.
‘Erysipelas in the offing,’ said St-Cyr drolly. ‘An acute streptococcal infection if not careful. A very high fever. Nothing to eat for four days. Champagne is the only thing. One tosses and turns in delirium. Five weeks for a full recovery if nothing intervenes, namely death. It’s highly contagious.’
‘He’s contagious,’ hissed Nana Theleme softly under her breath, her dark eyes filled with hatred in spite of all her anxiety.
Herr Max good-humouredly lit a cheroot and, pausing to unbutton his overcoat, dropped the spent matchstick into a waiting bucket of sand and announced, ‘Henri, some visitors.’
The black satin shorts were tight over the muscle-hard buttocks. Unwashed, the webbed elastic band of the boxeur’s athletic support absorbed the constant sweat. The gym was busy, noisy, hot and heavy with body odour. Here a Wehrmacht sergeant pounded a punching bag, there another. An SS-Obersturmfuhrer skipped to beat hell in competition with two of the local toughs. The girls watched. The girls oohed and aahed and laughed or threw kisses.
A fight was in progress in the ring, two middleweights were working each other over. No referee.
‘Henri … Henri …’ The bells rang.
The punching bags came to a stop. The skipping was silenced. The match ceased. Towels were grabbed, faces wiped, wine or water taken and mouths rinsed before spitting it on the floor. Perhaps thirty were in training. Others sat or stood around. Spectators mostly.
Rushed in by laughing SS in uniform, two teenagers were dragged up into the ring – mauled until their overcoats, sweaters, shirts, shoes and trousers were off.
Given gloves and shorts, they were forced to wait as Henri Doucette, ignoring his visitors, climbed dutifully into the ring.
‘The bicycle pumps,’ sighed St-Cyr ruefully, and when Nana Theleme threw him a questioning glance, he said, ‘Surely you’ve seen the SS and other officers remove their ceremonial daggers to hang them up in the coat-check rooms of the clubs and restaurants? Having followed them in, the kids haven’t daggers, so they hang up their bicycle pumps to enrage the Occupier. This, apparently, is to be their punishment.’
‘Tant pis pour eux,’ she said softly. Too bad for them.
Teeth-guards were lifted, dripping from a bucket of water, to be crammed into reluctant mouths. Afraid, confused – uncertain still of what was to happen – they listened as the Spade began to give them lessons.
They were to fight each other and he’d take on the winner. It had to be a good fight. ‘Ten rounds!’ cried one of the SS. There was laughter, cheering, clapping from delighted females.
The kids tried not to hurt each other, and when no blood was produced, Henri stepped in. ‘Hey, I’ll show you how.’
‘They’re too little, Henri,’ cried one laughing blonde with sparkling eyes. ‘Make men of them. It’ll save me the trouble.’
‘I don’t think I can watch this,’ said St-Cyr, and pulling off his overcoat and fedora, thrust them at Hermann before climbing into the ring.
He took the boys aside. He said, ‘You must avoid his right and always try for the left side. He’s partly blind in that eye – a fight he lost in 1928 perhaps because the gypsy wife who hated him fiercely by then had come back briefly to sap his strength. He tries to hide it. Shame him. It’ll anger him. Then dance away and don’t let him hit you.’
They came together, their manager and the Spade. They spoke, but what was said could not be heard.
Then Louis turned away only to turn back so swiftly his left connected hard. There was a crack.
Poleaxed, Doucette tried to shake his head and Louis let him have it with a right.
He dropped like a stone.
There were boos, there were cries of anger but the kids were allowed to leave the ring and to get themselves dressed, the Surete saying to them as a father would, ‘Now, no more of that, do you understand?’
A hush descended over the gym. Tension crackled. Kohler knew he’d have to defuse it somehow. Firing two shots into the sand, he yelled, ‘Clear the place! We’re on a murder investigation.’
‘Who’s been murdered?’ asked the pugiliste from the Surete and once champion of the police academy, but years ago.