The head was shaken, the battered brown felt trilby pushed a little further back off that broad brow. ‘There’s no time. None, Hermann. Meet me at my place.’
‘The club, I think. Won’t Gabi be back?’
‘Yes, yes, all right, the club. I must pay my respects.’
To a woman who loved him but to a love that had yet to be consummated.
Kohler thought to have the last word but turned away only to call back up the stairwell, ‘Hey, I’m going to slap a verboten notice on the door and leave you a bit of wire to tie it shut. Okay?’
The hand of acknowledgement would automatically be lifted in salute he knew, the pipe and tobacco pouch taken out with feelings of doubt-short on rations again. Ah nom de Dieu, I’d better find him some, swore Kohler inwardly as he got into that big, black, b … e … a … utiful Citroen of Louis’s.
It had been repaired at last, and repainted. No more bullet holes, broken glass and shot-out tyres. So, good. Yes, good.
As the tyres screeched on the rue de Valois and then at the corner of the rue de Beaujolais, St-Cyr followed him with his mind’s eye and grimaced furiously.
Right to the main branch of Credit Lyonnais over on the rue Quatre Septembre, he grimly followed the sound of the Citroen- there were so few cars on the streets these days, a hush like no other. Then all the way back again to fix a forgotten notice to the door, leave the wire and gather up the photographs to stuff them safely in the boot!
At last St-Cyr was able to pack his pipe and strike a match. Well, strike three of them in succession because they were so terrible but they’d always been that way, war or no war, Occupation or no Occupation. Like taxes, the government made them.
Letting the silent house come to him, he willed away all thoughts but those of Joanne and the other victims and heard in that terrible loneliness their earnest cries for help.
* * *
French banks were a bugger-Kohler was positive of it! They opened and closed at their convenience, took offence when none was intended, and had three hour lunches when they damned well felt like it, even in wartime.
But this one was different. Below stone carvings, in front of bronze plaques, two flics in dark blue kepis and capes stood guard in the snow with iron-cleated boots and black leather truncheons, a bad sign.
Flashing his Gestapo shield and looking grim and determined, he blithely rocketed between them and in through bronze doors too heavy for old ladies to open. Shit! The place was all but empty.
Surrounded by a floor whose sea of mottled grey marble lapped a magnificent staircase of the same and rose in plush red carpeting, he looked up into the frescoed vault above and then slowly brought his gaze down to the mezzanine.
Two superbly sculpted golden Venuses flanked the prefet of Paris, two of his detectives, the suave, bespectacled manager of the main Paris branch of Credit Lyonnais and an assistant. There was a huge tapestry on the wall behind them, a gift no doubt from the impoverished silk weavers of Lyon in hopes of sales.
For perhaps ten seconds the gathering was overcome by the intruder and speechless, then Talbotte ripped himself away and bellowed, ‘What the fuck do you think you are doing here?’
Ah merde … ‘My chief wants me to look into things,’ sang out Kohler so that his voice would echo too. It was a lie of course.
‘Your chief …? Piss off. You’ve no jurisdiction here. Boemelburg …’
‘Cash is cash, Prefet. The Resistance may have knocked off this little nest egg to buy guns and explosives from naughty boys who shouldn’t sell them.’
‘The terrorists?’ snorted Talbotte, doubling a fist. ‘Don’t be an imbecile, Haupsturmfuhrer. It was a straight gangland snatch and shooting. The coup de grace at one metre for misbehaviour.’
In other words, pushing the right bell at the wrong time! ‘Done with an eleven millimetre service revolver, Prefet?’ sang out Kohler like a buzzard trying to pick the bones before the lions closed in.
Talbotte shrugged magnanimously. Yielding a little information could not matter. A gram or two of the flesh so as to discover why Kohler had shown up unannounced. A little of the blood.
‘Yes, yes, an eleven millimetre most probably. Ballistics are still working on it.’
‘After four days? Hey, that’s a typical Resistance gun, my friend. I’d better jot that down and let the chief know of it.’
‘Nom de Jesus-Christ, now wait a minute! We are not sure of this.’ Talbotte turned to the others and raked them with a hiss. ‘A moment, you understand? Let me deal with this one personally.’
Clapping his fedora on one of the Venuses and throwing his overcoat over the other, the prefet launched himself down the stairs with both fists at the ready. Blue serge suit and tie and all the rest. Dressed like a banker too.
Of medium height, square and tough … ah Gott im Himmel, yes … the prefet was nearly sixty years of age. There was Basque blood in him somewhere …
The swift, hard dark eyes of a gangster savaged the intruder. The bully, the street bastard and top cock of the dung heap, roared up to the mincemeat from Wasserburg and snorted garlic at him.
‘Why are you and that fart of yours not in Lyon?’
‘Oh that. We wrapped it up in style and slept all the way home on the train. Smooth as silk. We’re raring to go.’
‘So, where is Louis?’
A smile would be best and the offering of a cigarette. ‘Busy.’
‘You shit! I don’t smoke with traitors, Kohler. Traitors!’
The insult echoed. It crashed all around them, shocking Kohler. It referred to a previous case, a lesson he had not quite learned …
‘What happened in Vouvray was justice, Prefet. Justice! If you were anything of a cop and not so fucking corrupt and in bed with the SS and their friends, you’d know all about it.’
This was heresy. The cigarette was still shaking. Clearly Kohler was terrified his confreres might still wish to punish him for far too zealous an attention to ‘justice’, especially when one of their own had been involved.
And just as clearly the Resistance still thought his partner and friend-a known patriot-was a collaborator, ah yes!
Talbotte wagged a reproving finger. ‘You should not have got the Organization Todt to repair Louis’s house, mon fin. This Resistance you speak of may well have planted the little bomb that accidentally killed Jean-Louis’s fornicating wife and child instead of himself but they will come back if I should give the nod, eh? The nod.’
The shit. Louis’s wife had been fooling around behind his back but had decided to come home.
‘The explosion took out all the windows,’ breathed Kohler, ‘to say nothing of smashing up the front of the house and getting his neighbours angry at him for costing them their windows too.’
‘Which you had the Todt replace as well, and at cost to yourself.’
‘So what? It was personal.’
Talbotte lit up and blew smoke through flaring nostrils. Kohler’s French was really very good. ‘So out of charity to the two of you, let us agree to co-operate a little, eh? Let us show the good will among police forces so that your Fuhrer will be pleased.’
The hypocritical bastard! Kohler chanced an uncertain glance up the stairs to the spellbound audience. The prefet’s gaze never left him. Hooded under thick black brows, the eyes waited.
A shrug would have to do. Louis wouldn’t like it but … ah what the hell. ‘So, okay, let’s co-operate. How many held the place up?’
Still the eyes didn’t shift.
‘First you tell me why you are interested in this affair?’
‘My chief …’
Talbotte flicked ash at him. ‘Your chief, as you call him, was just here. The Sturmbannfuhrer Boemelburg is convinced the terrorists had nothing to do with the matter because, Inspector, I have said so and what I say goes.’