‘I’m waiting,’ breathed Kohler.
‘Then wait. Produce the pink slip signed by Directeur Turcotte and I will carry out his instructions to the letter!’
Ah Gott im Himmel, this idiot was but one of the occupied!
The Walther P38 was taken out and lain on the desk with its muzzle pointing the right way.
‘Accidents …’ managed the custodian, swallowing tightly as he stared at that thing.
‘They happen all too often in wartime. I’ve tried my damnedest to get our armourer to fix the safety on that weapon but you know how things are.’
A Gauloise bleue was hesitantly fingered but quickly set aside. ‘Two copies were sent to Berlin. Don’t ask me to whom. It was before my time.’
The lying son of a bitch! ‘Hey, Gaspard – that is your name in bronze, isn’t it, and bronze is needed in the Reich? – you’d better tell me or I’ll help myself to your cigarettes and say the accident happened as you were taking them out of your jacket pocket. Everyone here knows too much benzedrine has made me jumpy. Everyone will tell that to your wife and kids at the funeral.’
‘Herr Goebbels. He and … and Herr Himmler expressed an interest in viewing the films, as did Gestapo Mueller.’
Pour Louis, poor Marianne. Nothing could be done about the copies in Berlin. Uncoiling canister after canister, Kohler struck a match. ‘Idiot!’ cried the custodian, darting for the metal waste basket in which to catch the ashes, such as they were.
‘Now get me the negative, or whatever it’s called. We wouldn’t want to leave temptation up there on that shelf.’
Marianne had been a Breton. Blonde, blue-eyed and a lot younger than Louis, she’d had a gorgeous figure and yes, she had succumbed to that little love affair, had been so lonely. But all such things must come to an end. Even Giselle and Oona? he asked himself, and yanking a final spool from a waiting projector, pulled out its leader to hold the film to the light and sadly shake his head. ‘Gaspard, what’s become of this once proud nation of yours? Such dishonesty can only bring its own reward.’
He made the bastard torch the last copy and, with the pistol pointed at his head, swear there were no others. It felt good to burn the bridges down behind himself, terrific to be rid of those films. Everyone would be thoroughly pissed off but now if only he could find Louis a bottle of pastis, a last present before the firing squad, a tin of pipe tobacco too …
‘Oeufs a la Duchesse,’ whispered Gabrielle, tears starting from her for it was the simple things in life one valued most and this … why this meal had far exceeded her modest request. ‘Poached eggs on little rafts of potato cakes which have been baked a golden brown,’ she said in fluent deutsch. ‘The whole to receive its delicate rain of veal stock and butter. Oh Mein Gott, Jean-Louis, I …’
Bathed and wearing pyjamas and a pale blue silk dressing-down, her hair put up in a towel, she looked much better, thought St-Cyr. But at no time could he warn her that Herr Max had let the Gypsy out of jail and that what she and the others had thought was London answering at the last, had also been a Funkspiel, a Gestapo Mausefalle, a souriciere. ‘Eat,’ he urged. ‘The questions can wait.’
‘No they can’t! snapped Herr Max. Boemelburg had obviously been afraid of offending too many, and Berlin, who should have known better, had reluctantly agreed that she should be brought here. ‘We haven’t time. Too much is at stake.’
‘Of course, but as one experienced detective to another, might I not gauge when the moment to begin is appropriate?’
‘Gestapo Mueller will hear of this! I’ve got you and Kohler pegged, so don’t forget it!’
‘We could hardly do so.’
Jean-Louis sat down and took up the proces-verbal she had given and had signed on Thursday afternoon at the Invalides Commissariat de police on the rue de Bourgogne. Gabrielle started to eat – she would have to, she told herself. The room grew quiet. The one from Berlin lighted a cheroot but did not take his eyes from her. What was he thinking? she wondered. How much does he really know?
The Neuilly villa at the corner of the avenue Victor Hugo and the rue de Rouvray was reserved only for the most special of suspects. Surrounded by a tall fence of Louis XIV ironwork, and behind a facade of substantial pillars, its ten bedrooms, three salons, library, office, billiards- and dining-rooms came complete with a cook and his two daughters who doubled as kitchen help and chamber-maids.
A kitchen garden behind the house and a spacious lawn, with chestnut, lime and fruit trees and shrubs all round, gave ample privacy even in winter. There were guards but these were unobtrusive. ‘Guests’ were allowed an hour’s walk out of doors and at times could even meet informally. Like the eggs, thought Engelmann bitterly, they were treated with the greatest of respect so as not to offend their respective powers that be but would such a courtesy make any difference to this one who so delicately sipped her Moselblumchen?
He thought not. ‘Berlin are demanding answers,’ he said, curtly flicking ash aside.
She set her knife and fork down and dabbed at her lips with the napkin. ‘I would not have willingly reported the theft of those explosives had I been a terrorist. My car, yes – yes, of course I could have told the police only that it had been stolen. But I didn’t, did I, Herr Engelmann? And I can assure you, I thought most definitely I would soon be dead.’
‘A pretty speech. The Gypsy tries to kill Kohler and St-Cyr. He leaves their booby-trapped auto directly below your friend’s flat yet he lets you go?’
‘Herr Max …’
‘VERDAMMT! How dare you interrupt me?’
‘He … he said he had no quarrel with me, that I … I had been of great service to the … the cause.’
‘The cause?’
‘That … that is correct.’
Fists were clenched. The grey-blue little eyes darted hatred at her. ‘Herr Max,’ interjected St-Cyr. ‘Her statement of the twenty-first is very clear on the matter. Six terrorists …’
‘Then bitte, meine franzosische Buroklammer, ask her how the hell she knew of the quarry’s location in the first place?’
‘I didn’t! He told me where it was. I’d never been there before. Me? How could you even think a woman such as myself would visit a place like that or even know of it?’
Verdammt, the bitch! ‘He came to the Club Mirage and entered via the courtyard?’ seethed Engelmann.
She swallowed hard. ‘Yes, at just after the curfew had ended. I … I was preparing to leave for home. It’s all in my statement.’
‘Mein Schatz, I want what isn’t in your statement.’
A little too quickly Gabrielle said, ‘Someone must have told him where I worked and that I had the use of a car.’
Not the Theleme woman and not the veterinary surgeon, but some as yet unknown person! snorted Engelmann inwardly.
His tie was yanked down. The buttons of his blue serge waistcoat were undone, the jacket removed. Ah nom de Jesus-Christ! thought St-Cyr.
‘So,’ breathed Engelmann softly, ‘a man who can steal an ambulance at will, and who can move from robbery to robbery with complete assurance, suddenly finds it necessary to have you as a driver? Surely, Fraulein, it was the Theleme woman who told him of you? At least let us have the benefit of knowing that much?’
‘She … she hasn’t seen him since before the birth of their son. You … you must know this as well as myself. You have questioned her, haven’t you?’
Alarmed, Jean-Louis was about to intervene. Was there no way she could stop him?