Again there was that curt little nod but was he satisfied? It was so hard to tell. ‘I can let you have the last address, Inspector. It is a few weeks old and she may well have moved since then. The mails … these days they are not so good, isn’t that right?’ She gave a shrug when he didn’t respond and said, ‘In any case the girl can tell you nothing since she never came home to see us.’
‘Not the father?’ he asked.
She didn’t blink – he was certain of this. Cold, was she that cold towards the father? Did the hatred cut so deep?
‘Not even her father, Inspector. Not since she went away to school as both her mother and I had done before her.’
‘At the age of twelve?’
‘Yes, after Josianne-Michele contracted the encephalitis and began to have the fits, we sent Josette-Louise away. It was only fair that we do so.’
Fair to deny the one sister the love and help of the other? St-Cyr took a chance – a gamble. ‘Mademoiselle, I am not of the Germans, though I must work under them. If there is anything you should confide in me, do so now before you encounter my partner.’
‘My papers are in order, Inspector.’
‘But you are English. You, yourself, have admitted this. By rights you should be in the internment camp at l’lsle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse.’
She did not move. Her gaze never wavered. ‘If you wish to check, you will find that I am Irish, Inspector, and since the Irish, they are not at war with the Reich, my papers really are in very good order.’
‘Yet you must tread carefully, mademoiselle. Me, I am not so stupid as to miss such an obvious thing. Your accent is like broken glass to those whose ears are in tune.’
‘All right. I have a friend who arranged for me to get a proper set of papers but I really have lived in France nearly all my life.’
‘This friend, is he the one who made sure Madame Buemondi would have a proper laissez-passer for the travel to Bayonne and return?’
‘Yes … yes, he’s the same one.’
‘Good. Now tell me why she had that pawn ticket in her hand.’
‘What pawn ticket? Me, I know of no …’
‘Mademoiselle, please! Time, it is of the essence! Jean-Paul Delphane is also on the case.’
Jean-Paul Delphane … Ah no. This one, he had remembered Chamonix.
Tall French windows overlooked the city and the sea beyond the spacious grounds of the Hotel Montfleury. Kohler sought the yacht basin only to see that most of the boats had been beached due to the Occupation. He felt time ticking by and knew he’d have to say something.
The Gestapo Gerhardt Munk, a hard, quick, bitter little man of thirty-six, irritably fingered the pencil that lay lost among the papers on the ornate desk behind which no one sat.
‘Well?’ asked Delphane. ‘We’re waiting, Herr Kohler. We can’t wait long.’
‘It’s Hauptsturmfuhrer Kohler, or Inspector to you.’
‘The notebook!’ hissed Munk. ‘These … these …’ He snatched it up and thrust it under the Bavarian’s nose. ‘Telephone numbers!’ he shrilled. ‘Communists! Agents provocateurs!’
‘Come off it, don’t make me laugh.’
‘This is no laughing matter!’ seethed Delphane. ‘We have the necessary proof. The woman was carrying that notebook when found.’
Kohler returned the leaden gaze, was shocked again at the near-image of himself. Only in the hair and the eyes was there difference. A shrug would irritate – he did so and noted the stiffening of the ramrod back, the swift determination to return the slight with good measure. ‘Removing evidence from the scene of a murder is against the law, monsieur. Both here in France and at home in the Reich.’
‘You’re a fine one to talk,’ snorted Munk, watching them both.
‘Then why call Louis and me in, eh, seeing as you’ve got it all figured out?’
‘All right, all right.’ Delphane tossed a pacifying hand. ‘So, my friend, it is more than a list of telephone numbers.’
‘But you don’t know how much more and you’d like us to find out,’ sighed Kohler, reaching for the cigarette box only to have Munk place a hand firmly on top of his own.
‘Not so fast, Herr Kohler. There is a small matter the Inspector, here, wishes to settle.’
Delphane did not like being put on the spot by anyone, let alone a divisional head of the Gestapo. Hesitating, he took up a folder, then found the hornrimmed glasses his sixty years had made necessary.
When he glanced at Munk only to receive the curt nod of suicide or else, his eyes were like ripe olives in oil. Ah yes.
The Deuxieme Bureau’s agent began to read, the voice gruff with the humiliation he himself had only just received. ‘Kohler, Gestapo Central, Paris. Has recently moved out of free room and board among his associates at the Hotel Boccador to take up lodgings at Number 44 rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts in the Latin Quarter with the young prostitute Giselle le Roy.’
‘The flat’s right across the street from the lycee. I was hoping she’d take the hint and go back to school.’
‘At twenty-two years of age?’ scoffed Munk. ‘Come, come, Herr Kohler, the address is not far from that of the bordel of Madame Chabot on the rue Danton.’
Once a whore, always one, was that it? ‘I was afraid the kid would get homesick. She’s half Greek, half Midi French and doesn’t know the city all that well.’
Delphane ignored the lie. ‘But … but she has Madame Oona Van der Lynn to take care of her? Forty years of age. Tall, blonde, blue-eyed and …’
Munk let Delphane say it. ‘And a Dutch alien, Herr Kohler. An illegal immigrant.’
The bastards.
‘Are you fucking them both?’ asked Munk, breathing in so tightly his nostrils pinched. ‘If so, we can supply you with condoms. We found eighteen cases stashed among the wine bottles in the cellars of the American consulate.’
The man from the Deuxieme Bureau waited; Munk sucked in a little breath and allowed the merest vestige of a grin.
‘So, okay,’ sighed Kohler, ‘you’ve made your point. Now what seems to be the trouble besides that notebook?’
Again at a curt nod, Delphane was delegated to speak. ‘No, my friend, I have not made my point. The Sturmbannfuhrer Boemelburg has offered the Deuxieme Bureau the full co-operation of the Gestapo in this matter and I want it. I insist!’
‘It’s too early to tell you anything. If you want another look at the body, she’ll be over at the morgue just as soon as our driver can get her there.’
‘That driver of yours must be watched,’ said Munk fastidiously.
‘And where is Louis?’ asked Delphane. ‘Why is he not here with you?’
Kohler shrugged. He wasn’t used to being told he’d have to work under a Frenchman. It hurt. It was humiliating and that was exactly what Munk had had in mind.
Delphane was terse. ‘Don’t get your ass in a knot, my friend. If you wish me to do so, I will tell Gestapo Paris to keep the child from returning to her profession.’
‘She’s not a child.’
‘Then we will leave her to her own desires and get on with things.’
A buzzer was pushed. An orderly brought in a roll of maps and they moved over to a table that had been cleared.
‘The maquis,’ swore Delphane. ‘Bayonne to Marseille to Cannes, the mountains and the Italian frontier.’
‘Where they no doubt have joined up with the Italian partisans who’ve been fighting Il Duce’s Fascists since the late twenties? Come off it,’ snorted Kohler. ‘That woman had nothing to do with the Resistance.’
‘Nothing? But … but what is this?’ demanded Delphane. ‘Has Louis not told you of the Cross of Lorraine the woman was wearing under the lapel of her overcoat?’
‘Ah merde! You bastards …’
‘Bastards we may be, Herr Kohler, but you will find the truth for us or else.’
Again Munk had let the Deuxieme Bureau say it.