‘Louis, we were speaking French. Please let us continue. Your German may be excellent and admirable but my secretaries have ears, or hadn’t you noticed?’
Irritably a hand was passed over the all-but-shaven grey and bristly dome. ‘Kohler, use your brains and close the door. This is serious.
‘Kempf …’ he went on without turning from the rain. ‘How could you have asked the Sonderfuhrer and his friend, this … this French newspaperman, to file daily itineraries with my office each morning at 0700 hours?’
Hermann made the mistake of grinning and said, ‘I thought it a good idea at the time, Sturmbann …’
‘You thought it a good idea but you didn’t consult me? Me who has the power to send you to join your sons? Ah Gott im Himmel, dummkopf, Kempf’s wife …’
‘She’s dead, Sturmbann …’
A fist was clenched, the weather outside forgotten, the voice like steel. ‘Dead or alive it makes no difference. Kempfs wife was once a favourite of the Reichsfuhrer.’
Shit! ‘When the Sonderfuhrer showed up at 0700 hours with his little bit of paper and his grin, Hermann, I called Gestapo Leader Mueller for some background. Since we’re old friends, Mueller very kindly filled me in and asked me to consider the Russian Front for you and Louis.’
In these overcoats and shoes? wondered St-Cyr ruefully. Must God always frown on a poor but honest and hard-working detective?
Kohler saw Louis idly fiddle with a button that had come loose. He heard Boemelburg quietly saying, ‘This had better be good. A bank was robbed. The Resistance may be involved. The murders of those girls, no matter how close any of them were to you, Louis, cannot intrude.’
It was now or never thought St-Cyr, and always such things were a gamble. ‘The two are connected, Sturmbannfuhrer, if only through the woman who watched the street for the robbers.’
‘Droolers!’ stormed the Chief. ‘Did you not think Talbotte would come running to me? Did you have to assault-yes, assault-the prefet of Paris? Don’t hide your hand like that!’
‘Walter, may I remind you that over the past two years fourteen girls have been taken from their simple lives, brutally assaulted, mutilated and ruthlessly murdered!’
Boemelburg placed both hands on his desk among the mounds of papers. ‘And what do you want me to do about it? Let the two of you make a fool out of me?’
He sat down heavily. Everyone knew the word was out that he was to be retired soon, that he was becoming forgetful, and that in a policeman, a former detective and Head of the Gestapo in France, such a thing could not be tolerated.
But Walter was far from forgetful. ‘Kempf and le Blanc exactly fit the descriptions of the robbers, Sturmbannfuhrer,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Forged papers were made out using assumed names but bearing their photographs.’
‘Have you seen them?’
‘No, not yet but …’
‘But, what, Louis?’
‘But the boy who made the papers gave Hermann their descriptions and we have no reason to doubt his word.’
‘Then bring the boy to this office and let me hear what he has to say before we put him up against a wall and shoot him.’
‘He’s already dead, Sturmbannfuhrer,’ interjected Kohler. ‘Someone called the anti-Jewish squad and they nailed the son of a bitch and his lousy father.’
‘Good! No forged papers, no proof. Only the word of one who could well have been lying to put you off.’
‘And if we can produce the papers, Sturmbannfuhrer?’ asked St-Cyr quiedy.
‘Then I’ll agree to study them but will reserve my decision on the matter until I’ve consulted Berlin.’
Dede was standing in the rain getting drenched. The peaked hat, with its big earlugs, let the water pour off into the upturned collar of the heavy, grey, herringbone overcoat that didn’t fit too well and had been handed down several times.
He wore no gloves or overboots, just watched as the Citroen came slowly to a stop on the rue Laurence-Savart. A side window was rolled down. ‘Dede …’
The boy’s expression was grave. ‘Monsieur the Chief Inspector, I have a message for you. A velo-taxi came to deliver it from a shop on the place Vendome. Two ladies, I believe.’
‘Old friends, yes.’ He took the hurriedly passed envelope. ‘Dede, the news isn’t good.’
‘Not good?’
Ah damn it! The hollow eyes, that gaunt look of despair … ‘No, not good. Joanne is dead. I’m sorry. My partner and I, we … we were too late.’
‘Too late.’
It’s … It’s one of those things, Dede. We hoped, we prayed, we tried hard to find her but …’ St-Cyr held him by the lapel lest he run away. ‘But we were still on the train from Lyon when it was done.’
‘How?’
Why must God do this to him? Why? ‘By the rope. By strangulation. Joanne, she has …’
‘Died quickly, Monsieur the Chief Inspector? Is that how it was?’
‘Don’t hate me for failing you. Joanne, she has left us two very important clues and with these we will soon find her killers and bring them to justice.’
‘Clues …?’ asked the boy desperately.
‘An ear-ring and a hair. We have also established that an older woman watched her in the rue Quatre Septembre and then followed her but lost her in the Bibliotheque Nationale because Joanne was far too clever for her.’
‘A spy?’
‘Ah, no. A woman who wanted to warn your sister of the danger but couldn’t find the courage to do so.’
‘Then she’s as guilty as are the killers!’
‘Yes, every bit as guilty.’
The boy didn’t run home with the news. Shoving his hands deeply into the pockets of his overcoat, he trudged up the street, pausing often to look back at that great big beautiful black car. ‘Ah merde, Hermann, could I not have told him more gently?’
‘Go and get changed. I’ll see what I can do.’
‘No. He needs to be left alone.’ St-Cyr tore open the scented envelope and quickly read the note from Muriel. ‘Luc Tonnerre, Hermann. In the early thirties he handled the jewellery some of his confreres in les baveux made for a living. Among the pieces were those whose motif was that of ancient Egypt. These pieces were exceptional and of eighteen carat gold and very expensive, but they came on the market too late and found few buyers.’
Luc Tonnerre had not made things easy for them. Ruefully St-Cyr sat in the car and stared at the entrance to number 48. Like so many others in the maze of narrow, Louis-Philippe passages just to the north of the boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, this one had an iron-and-dimpled-glass fanlight above a heavy stone lintel, and an open slot of a doorway no wider than two wheelbarrows.
Rain screened the far end of the cluttered passage, a trap if ever there was one. Plugged drains created innumerable lakes. A broken downpipe gushed a torrent half-way across the lane. ‘Ah nom de Jesus-Christ, Hermann, number 48 F(e) will be at the very back. Will he be watching for us?’
Ateliers faced on to the passage. A bookbinder’s, a bootmaker’s- these could barely be discerned from their ancient signboards. A plumber who would be hard pressed to find lead pipe and solder these days and would just have to make do. ‘There are lots of doorways, Hermann. Perhaps if God is willing we can pick our way along unnoticed.’
Louis didn’t sound convinced. They started out, the rain came down. Dinner-jackets that should remain dry beneath trench coats began to feel umbrella douches. Polished black shoes were quickly filling. ‘Son of a bitch!’ grumbled Kohler, fingering the Walther P38 in his pocket. ‘We’re dead men if he sees us!’
Dodging puddles and leap-frogging from doorway to doorway, they advanced quickly up the passage. The lace curtains were tattered, the flat on the second floor. Geranium pots relieved themselves through the holes in their bottoms. A dilapidated lean-to covered the entrance. Three steps led up to a cramped landing, then there were more of them off to the right.