‘Yes, I’m okay.’
It would be best to keep Louis busy. Then why not collate the photos and spread them out? We’ve had a break, eh? Someone was thoughtful enough to leave us the evidence.’
‘But why? That is the question, Hermann, and always with you Germans it’s the blitzkrieg for us. Always!’
Satisfied that he could safely leave him, Kohler tried to be cheerful. ‘Okay, Chief, don’t get tough. I’m on my way. I won’t be long.’
In rank, St-Cyr was above his partner who was only a Haupsturmfuhrer, a captain and inspector. But Hermann had been a Munich detective long before this war and from there had gone to Berlin, so he knew all about what could happen to young girls who were foolish enough to answer such advertisements.
His pipe alight, St-Cyr picked his way over to tall french windows that were touched with frost. Down across the garden of the Palais Royal, the bare branches of regimented lindens threw their shadows on the sleet-encrusted snow. Not a soul stirred or strolled beneath the arcades to browse in dusty, forgotten shops where old stamps, books, second-hand military medals and lead soldiers were sometimes sold. Staid and eminently respectable, the identical, grey-stone facades and windows of the bourgeoisie frowned on intrusion of any kind. Doctors, lawyers, bankers and men of commerce lived quietly in this quietest of enclaves right in the heart of Paris and not a stone’s throw from the rue Saint-Honore, the Louvre and the Bank of France.
Though he didn’t want to admit it, he was forced to tell himself the location was perfect. Who would think it possible such a thing as kidnapping, rape and … yes, murder, could ever occur in a place like this? Two hundred years ago of course, when the brothels were here, but not today and not for the past hundred years.
He and Hermann had obtained an address from the newspaper but only after threats and much baksheesh, Le Matin had run the ad for about a month-a first time for them, so other newspapers must have been used to trap the rest of the victims.
That address had turned out to be nothing more than the box office of the Theatre du Palais Royal. The custodian there had given Joanne her last letter of instruction, but it was only because the girl had opened it right away that the man had overheard her reading it to herself in the lobby and had been able to give them the final address. A stroke of luck in a world where luck was not common.
No other such letters had been left there, though the theatre often received and held mail for the actors and actresses. Hence nothing untoward had been suspected and the letter had simply been put in with the rest of the mail.
As a result, her family hadn’t known exactly where her interview and photo session were to be held and neither had Joanne until the very last moment.
‘A house on the rue de Valois whose rear windows face onto the garden, Hermann,’ he called out. ‘A residence whose owner, I am sure we will find, is still in the south or in the countryside, having felt it prudent to pay off the authorities so as to keep the house, and to stay away from Paris for the Duration.’
‘For eternity, you patriot,’ came the shout. ‘The Thousand-Year Reich is here to stay.’
‘Ah bien sur, if you say so, Inspector, but if I might say so without being thrown up against a wall and shot for heresy, perhaps you are wrong.’
The Fuhrer was an idiot and both of them knew it, but baiting Louis was good for him. ‘Quit feeling your oats, eh? Rommel will turn the Allies back in the desert. Stalin’s armies will collapse at Stalingrad and my two boys will come home safely. My Gerda won’t get the divorce so that she can marry her indentured French peasant! It’s all a cruel joke.’
Hermann was moving from room to room just begging for an answer! ‘A joke God has perpetrated on the two of us because He is punishing me for something I did as an altar boy’, sang out St-Cyr. ‘The stealing of the Blood of Christ and substitution of absinthe. The salting of the wafers with iodine in revenge for punishments received!’
‘Admit it, you were unruly,’ shouted Kohler, delighted to have stirred Louis out of himself.
It was all a game with them, this banter, to hide the horror of what they might find. Hermann must be on the first landing of the staircase but listening for him now would do no good. He could be far too quiet when he wanted, too noisy also, of course, at other times.
The six-acre quadrangle of the Palais Royal garden was bounded on three sides by identical houses of three storeys whose entrances faced not onto the garden but onto one of the adjacent streets: the rue de Montpensier was direcdy in front and to the west of him, the rue de Beaujolais off to his right at the far end, and the rue de Valois was behind him, the house being, like most others on that street, directly across from the Bank of France.
Down at the other end of the quadrangle, the original palace had been bequeathed to the Royal Family by Cardinal Richelieu in 1642. As a boy, Louis XIV had sailed toy boats in the fountain and later had played with the daughters of his servants. In 1715, when Philippe d’Orleans became regent, the Palais Royal acquired a rather risque reputation which only increased during the Restoration when whorehouses and gambling dens surrounded the garden and Balzac wrote of them.
But Louis-Philippe put a stop to it all and gradually the garden and the houses, with arcaded shops below and apartments above, had slipped into that genteel quietude of polite insularity that so characterized the place even under the Germans.
Heavy iron gates kept the public out except at certain hours: 7.30 a.m. to 8.30 p.m. in winter, an hour earlier and two hours later in summer.
The custodian of the gates might have seen Joanne, for the girl would have made certain she had plenty of time to spare before her appointment, even after picking up her final letter unless, of course, she had been delayed.
Back came the plaintive voice of her little brother, Dede. ‘The robbery, Inspector. Eighteen million. One for every year of her life!’
The main Paris branch of Credit Lyonnais nearby had been hit and a teller shot in the face and killed at 12.47 p.m. on that same Thursday. Bundles of 500- and 1000-franc notes had been crammed into two leather suitcases of good quality just waiting to be snatched. Pre-war cases of course. Unheard of now if new, and why would the bank in Lyon not have sent the money in dispatch cases or strong-boxes? Even at the ‘official’ Vichy rate of 200 francs to the British pound, it was at least ?90,000. A fortune.
But had Joanne been a witness to that robbery? Had she been followed by someone connected with it? Had things been interrupted here by them because she could perhaps identify one of the men?
Was that why the house had been emptied in such a hurry?
He’s lost to things, thought Kohler. He hasn’t even heard me come downstairs. Well, I’ve news, mon vieux. News.
Louis didn’t even turn from the windows. ‘She would have got here early, Hermann, and come timidly into the garden to have a look at the place. A girl from working-class Belleville would not have announced her presence at the front door before having a little look around. She would have been going over how best to behave, and fretting about her atrocious accent, the slang of the quartier also, of course.’ He tossed the hand with the pipe in salute.
‘You heard me come downstairs,’ grumbled Kohler.
Again the hand was tossed, ‘It’s nothing. The eyes in the ass of the trousers, just like the reflections in a shop window, are used to see if the coast is clear or to observe a little something like a bank robbery perhaps.’