‘You okay?’ asked Kohler.
‘Yes, I’m okay.’
‘Those photos the Chief laid out for us, they’re not bothering you, are they?’
‘A little.’
‘Hey, we’ll find her. She’s going to be okay. I’ve got a feeling about it, Louis. Joanne’s alive but only because the house had to be emptied in a rush.’
A feeling … How comforting. St-Cyr stared out the side window at the bleakness of what Paris and France had become. A cinematographer at heart and fascinated by the cinema, he could not help but see with the camera’s clear eye the last and final moments of those girls.
He heard them begging for their lives, their frantic screams and saw their pathetic struggles as they tried to escape. It was now nearly ten o’clock. He and Hermann hadn’t been on the case twenty-four hours, yet could he not do more? Had the lack of vitamins numbed his brain?
The car had stopped outside his house. ‘A moment, Hermann. I’ll just dash in. Please tell Dede we’re on urgent business and can’t delay.’
Kohler dug into a pocket as the boy came down the street towards him but found the sweets all gone.
The boy was ashen.
He rolled the window down and managed a grin. ‘Hey, kid, she’s alive. We’re going to get her soon, eh? Unharmed. Not a hair touched.’
Without a word, the boy stood watching him, unyielding in denial until at last Dede said, ‘You’re lying,’ and turned away.
Coming quickly from the house with his briefcase, St-Cyr caught him by the shoulder. The boy swung on him in tears, in rage, but stopped himself from cursing the only one who could help them.
‘Dede, listen to me. It’s serious. We’ve had a major setback this morning but are working on it and hope to have something positive very soon.’
The flat was three storeys above the boulevard de Beausejour, not a stone’s throw from the Bois de Boulogne and the apartment of Louis’s chanteuse, which was just to the north on the boulevard Emile Auger at number 45. A tidy neck of the woods that smelled all too evidently of old money and young inheritors with too much time on their hands.
Gabrielle was an exception.
Kohler finished his cigarette in the car at the side of the road. Becker of Gestapo Central’s internal records hadn’t liked fishing for details on the Sonderfuhrer Kempf. ‘Betrayal of a sacred trust’ and all that shit. Money had had to change hands. Lots of it- 5000 francs to put it blundy.
One could never quite get used to paying for information that ought rightly to have been given freely by one’s own associates and subordinates, but what the hell? It was the Occupation. All the rules had had to be rewritten. Paris was expensive.
He thumbed open his wallet and saw that he had exactly 20 francs left for house money and everything else. Pay-day had been and gone and would not come again until 5 January at the earliest, unless the Fuhrer decided to make it later.
Mademoiselle Denise Celine St. Onge was twenty-seven years of age, a graduate of the Sorbonne with a degree in Ancient History and French Literature, absolutely useless to her should she have to earn a living as a riveter.
There was a villa in the south of France at Le Lavandou where the parents had retreated for the Duration. A brother resided in the Reich as a guest at a POW camp. Another fed the daisies in summer.
The Sonderfuhrer didn’t live with her but sometimes stayed the night. Her place or his, whichever was convenient or gave that added little thrill.
It was nearly noon and time she was up. A maid noticed the Gestapo shield in his upraised palm, a finger to his lips as well, and let him in.
Flustered, she went in search of her mistress and left him to a tapestry-hung salon with sofas, deep armchairs and throw cushions in cream and gold silk on Persian carpets. Bibelots were scattered like pleasureful playthings, bronze-green trinkets from ancient tombs-were they Sumerian? Venetian glass beads-he knew a little about very old glass from a recent case in Provence. Gold signets with hieroglyphics, clay tablets too. Egyptian. Falcons, slaves and snakes among other things.
There were books, of course-mostly on ancient Egypt. Hell, who really wanted to read about the present? A linen-draped table was in a corner by a sofa that still held imprints for two. There were snuffed-out candles on the table, late-night caviar and champagne probably and, with the drapes open as now, a view of the night sky over the Bois. How lovely. Heat on. No shortage of coal. Soft murmurings of passion.
Amid the clutter on the mantelpiece, there was an invitation to an auction of works of art at the Jeu de Paume, 31 December, viewing from 2.00 to 5.00 p.m., sale at 8.00 p.m. and a late supper afterwards at the Ritz.
Hermann Goering had done the inviting. Well, not actually. An assistant of course. But, still, the Reichsfuhrer himself and supreme commander of the Luftwaffe.
Probably flying in for a little bit of fun in spite of the disaster at Stalingrad. A busy man and an avid collector.
The heavy and embossed bond had the deckle edges of quality. The gilding and black lettering were really very nice.
There was a discreet logo on the back. ‘Our engraver,’ he said, a whisper …
Nearby there was a chummy photo of Kempf and his lady friend outside the Alcazar, 8 rue du Faubourg-Montmartre and in daylight of all things. Kempf was a typical blond Aryan in uniform with a nice grin. No battles for this one. He had come in after the blitzkrieg. Thirty-two years of age and married, with the wife and kids back home in Koln and under the ashes, incinerated by the RAF’s firestorm of last May 30 and 31.
The grin must have been from before the loss, the photo taken in the early spring. A man from an old and well-established family who had suddenly lost everything in that fire. A man then, wondered Kohler, with a grudge to bear and a need to recoup his family’s fortune?
It was a thought, but how long had the romance been going on and how heavily?
The shadow of a woman’s wide-brimmed hat was behind and off to the right of the couple. Hats like that had been all the rage this past spring and summer, but not the year before. And hadn’t it been a marvel the way the girls had used just any old thing to make hats like new? Amazing really and very chic.
The hat must have belonged to a friend, but not to the photographer, since it would have cast a different shadow.
‘Inspector …?’
Black silk crepe clung to Denise St. Onge like a second skin but below the lower thighs, sheer black see-through lace fell to the ankles exposing lovely legs. Flowered white ceramic clasps held the twin straps of high-heeled, black leather shoes. There were thin straps over bare shoulders-nice shoulders-a nice chest, with a faintly ruffled neckline, long, slender arms, long fingers, thick, dark brown hair brushed and pinned tightly and parted on the left, a high, smooth brow, not a wrinkle, angular face, thinly arched and well-plucked brows and large brown eyes. Deep brown and grave. Could they melt iron or were they always so hard?
‘Inspector, what is it you want with me?’
Mein Gott, the accent was lovely. ‘A few questions. Nothing difficult.’
‘Then please sit down. An aperitif, or is it that you mustn’t drink while on duty?’
‘A glass of wine would be nice. White, if you have it.’
‘Certainly. Excuse me a moment. Jeanne has had to do the shopping, you understand.’
She had deliberately sent the maid away and he was all too aware of this, she felt. He didn’t offer to get the wine for her but took the opportunity to study her and was impressed, ah yes. Most men who liked looking at women were. It didn’t please her, of course. He was trouble, and trouble wasn’t wanted at this moment in her life.
When she came back with a bottle, two glasses and a corkscrew, Kohler watched her hand them to him as her lovely red lips gave a little pout.