She got the hint. ‘The Club Monseigneur,’ she said and swallowed tightly. ‘The Scheherazade also, but only sometimes.’
He tossed his head in acknowledgement but let her say, ‘They’re in Montmartre, on the rue d’Amsterdam and the rue de Liege, but tonight is my night off.’
‘Everyone needs a break,’ he said, scratching a scruffy cheek and nodding sagely.
Again Louis, his brown ox-eyes still intrigued, was forced into the reluctant role of translator.
‘A sweep of what’s left of the gypsy warrens, as I was saying,’ went on Engelmann. ‘Montmartre, near the railway yards and the Gare Saint-Lazare. Belleville, too, eh, Herr St-Cyr – that is where you live, isn’t it? Those little streets where the tenements are so close, the rats can get across the gaps without hitting the paving stones below or getting tangled in the laundry lines after fucking someone else’s wife, with her consent, of course.’
My wife, monsieur? Is that it, eh? raged St-Cyr inwardly. How could the bastard say such a thing? ‘The Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est – the Canal Saint-Martin and Bassin de la Villette,’ came the cold retort, ‘but if I were you, I would look further afield. Saint-Ouen perhaps, and Saint-Gervais.’
The whole of Paris perhaps, and St-Cyr still touchy about a pretty wife – his second and much younger than himself – who had made love repeatedly to the Hauptmann Steiner, the couple’s naked antics secretly recorded by Gestapo Paris’s Watchers and kept on file for posterity. Steiner’s uncle, the General von Schaumburg, was still Kommandant von Gross Paris – that was why they’d been watching the nephew – and everyone knew the Gestapo didn’t exactly hit it off with the Wehrmacht. ‘The industrial suburbs, I think, and the flea markets,’ grunted Engelmann. ‘Bagneux as well. There are Russian exiles in those high-rise pigsties the thirties brought.’
Ah damn, thought Kohler. The two of them were really at each other’s throats and some son of a bitch down at Gestapo Paris-Central had let Herr Max know all about Louis’s wife. Had the visitor from the IKPK viewed the films? He must have. Then he would also know that the Hauptmann had been sent to Russia by his uncle, and that he had later died there. Marianne St-Cyr had been coming home with Louis’s little son when she had tripped over a wire, a Resistance bomb that had been meant for Louis. Not two months ago and a mistake if ever there was one – he was no collabo but like many, had been forced to work for the Occupier. One would never know how she had felt, repentant or otherwise, least of all poor Louis who had forgiven her and the Resistance, and had been trying ever since to get back the films he had never seen, thank God.
Herr Max tossed the woman’s papers on to the coffee table, glanced at his wrist-watch and said, ‘The metro and the buses. Have them shut down.’
‘They’ve already stopped. It’s 2333. They grind to a halt at 2300. No diamond bearings, I guess,’ quipped Kohler to lighten things and get her back her papers.
‘VERDAMMT! Don’t you ever do that again. You and this Teichfroch of yours are under my orders. Mine, Kohler. Orders, do you understand?’
This pond-frog … ‘Okay, I’ll call the Chief.’
‘And you will ask him, ja? to define for you just what I have said.’
Though the woman, like each of them, had been startled and had leapt at the shrillness of Herr Max, she had somehow calmed herself only to be unsettled again by the whispered exchange that had followed.
Without waiting for her to recover, Engelmann grabbed her by the wrist, hustled her to a chair, and told her to take off her coat, hat and gloves. ‘You won’t be needing them. It’s warm enough.’
‘Und in den Zellen, mein Herr?’ she asked defiantly.
Startled, poor Louis took a step forward only to think better of it. Herr Max was only too aware of him and now grinning, since she had betrayed a knowledge of the language she would rather have kept to herself.
‘In the prison cells, Fraulein?’ breathed Engelmann softly. ‘But … but what is this you are saying? Have you been in prison before?’
She took a little breath. Her deutsch, when it came, was cold and fluent. ‘Never. Now am I to be placed under arrest for assisting the Third Reich? Hans, do something.’
That icy contempt would have to be shattered. ‘He can’t, Fraulein,’ said Engelmann. ‘He mustn’t. You see, your diamond buyer has just realized it would be imprudent. He has, meine gute Dame, cast you to the wolves, to me.’
To the Gestapo …
‘That’s not true! Nana, these people … One has to be patient. Things take a little time. Questions are only natural. You’ve nothing to hide.’
Or have you? wondered St-Cyr with a sinking feeling that would not go away.
‘Und now we begin it, Fraulein,’ sighed Engelmann. ‘You let the Gypsy into these quarters. You either left the lock off or gave him a key. You told him where your lover had written down the combination, and then you went to have your … Was it washed and dried? Please, I must touch it.’
‘Don’t! I know nothing. I’ve done nothing.’
Her hair was soft. He let it fall. ‘Then you have nothing to fear.’
‘Herr Max …’ began Louis only to see the visitor glowering at him and hear him saying, ‘Please, she is all yours. You first with the questions as agreed, and then myself.’
Once away from them, Kohler took a moment to steady himself. Verdammtl Max Engelmann reeked of trouble. The IKPK? and now here it was resurrected and squatting on their doorstep, especially on Louis. Poor Louis.
The Gypsy, ah merde. A plague in the late twenties and the thirties but then someone had given him away – betrayal and jail in Oslo, 17 May 1938. Seven years of hard labour on a diet of cold hardfiskur,* no mayonnaise, and torn chunks of ruqbraud,* only to turn up as free as a bird in Occupied Paris.
The cable from Heinrich Himmler via Gestapo Mueller in Berlin via Gestapo Boemelburg in Paris had been terse, MOST URGENT. REPEAT URGENT. IKPK HQ BERLIN REPORTS INTERNATIONAL SAFE-CRACKER GYPSY REPEAT GYPSY HAS REPORTEDLY SURFACED. LAST SEEN TOURS 1030 HOURS 14 JANUARY HEADING FOR PARIS. APPREHEND AT ONCE. HEIL HITLER.
Like most of the Surete, Louis had heard of the Gypsy, but why bring in Engelmann, why put them under that bastard’s orders when he couldn’t even speak French and couldn’t know the city or the country for that matter, or did he? And why, please, had he deliberately insulted Louis with that crap about unfaithful wives?
Was someone playing with them? Were their loyalties being ‘investigated’ again? Louis was a patriot; himself a conscientious doubter and objector of Nazi infallibility, brutality and all else. Everyone knew both Louis and himself were kept on by Boemelburg simply because they produced results. One hundred percent.
In an age of officially sanctioned crime, they were virtually the only honest cops left to fight common crime. But as sure as that God of Louis’s had made safes to crack, there was an IKPK card-index file with the Gypsy’s profile for the SS in Berlin to peruse at their leisure. Were they using the Gypsy? Was it all a sham?
Deeply troubled by the thought, Kohler went along the corridor, round a corner and up a small flight of stairs until he had what he wanted.