The rumours must be flying. ‘The girl was only someone I met in a street after curfew, madame. I don’t even know her name.’
‘Then you’ll want to sell the shoes?’ asked the woman quickly.
No … No, he wouldn’t want to do that. They must be returned,’ he said, digging an even deeper hole for himself. ‘She was very young, a student, you understand, madame. You know how such girls are.’
Ah yes, she did – who didn’t? A student. Pretty no doubt. Young and stupid and thinking only of a warm bed and a meal. Warm in that house? God forbid.
She rubbed her slippered toes together. So, the girl had come back with him and had left her shoes … They’d have spent the night together. It was just like a man! The wife not gone and he’d taken up with someone younger …
‘Madame Courbet…’
‘Yes?’ she demanded haughtily.
‘The postman … When did he leave that little parcel?’
The girl had sent him a little gift, stolen of course. ‘This morning, Inspector.’
You don’t need to get uptight! said St-Cyr inwardly, resigning himself to more difficulties. ‘And the General Ackermann saw it?’
‘But of course. He picked it up.’
St-Cyr thanked the woman and waited until she’d gone out through the gate before closing the door.
Then he stood facing the darkness of the door while listening to the silence of the house. It was mad – crazy. Mayhem … yes, yes, mayhem! Ah, what the hell was he going to do? Go into hiding? Hermann wouldn’t let the matter lie. Hermann would have to do something about it.
Kohler breezed into the garage at Gestapo Headquarters, number 11 rue de Saussaies, to let the graveyard shift know they ought to take better care of the muffler. Then he went through to the duty sergeant to file a report on the incident.
‘A Wehrmacht dispatch rider’s bike, camouflaged and with the insignia of the Fifth Armoured Division. Bastard’s probably in bed with the sister. He’ll have paid her off by loaning the bike to her brother. A girl rode behind. There was just the two of them. Green as grass and nervous as hell. About twenty or twenty-two years of age – the girl, that is. Short hair, but wearing the usual beret, so the hair could have been longer.’
Porki Schultz lifted lead grey smouldering eyes from his typewriter. ‘Any idea where to look?’
Schultz always liked the young ones. A real sadist. ‘I’d be there now if I had. Tell countersubversion to keep an eye on St-Cyr’s house. The bastards have put the number out on him.’
‘St-Cyr?’
‘That’s just what I said, wasn’t it?’
‘Have you seen Glotz yet?’
There was a grin Kohler didn’t like. ‘I only just got in. How could I have?’
A man of forty-seven winters, one wife and eight children back home, Schultz loved exercising authority. ‘A hot little number. You’d better go and see him. He was hanging around the front door not ten minutes ago.’
‘He’s probably snoring it off in the toilets then.’
‘Not likely. Try the sound room. They’ve set up a projector and matched the film with the recording. Your partner’s wife has an ass like a full moon, Hermann. Round and beautiful. You can see right up it.’
Son-of-a-bitch! ‘I’m getting to like it here less and less.’
Schultz grinned. ‘From what I hear, we won’t have the pleasure of your company for long. Oh, hang on a minute. A note from our boss. The Sturmbannfuhrer Boemelburg will see you at 8 a.m.’
‘I’ve got to see von Schaumburg first.’
‘Orders, my dear Hermann. Orders.’
‘Fuck your orders. I’ve more important things to do.’
‘We’ll be sure to let him know.’
‘You do that then!’
Kohler went down the marble steps to the basement. There was blood and hair on two of them; some poor bastard’s front tooth on a third. A small pool of blood and vomit lay at the bottom.
Screams in the night, the sound of truncheons and then silence. Absolute silence.
As he passed one of the interrogation rooms he couldn’t help but see through the open door. The girl was naked and hung by her wrists from a meat hook. There was blood all over her back and rump. Her face had been badly battered. Her breasts were bruised …
‘The names of your accomplices?’ shrieked the interrogator.
The girl found the will to mumble, ‘Never!’ and they laid right into her. While one grabbed her by the hair and savagely yanked her head back, the other one hit her across the breasts and stomach. You’d think they hated her. You’d think she’d done something to them personally.
‘Dead,’ shouted Kohler. ‘She’s dead. You’ve broken her neck, you stupid bastard. She’ll not tell you anything.’
The eyes were wild. Sweat poured from the brow. ‘Escapists … British pilots … there’s a gang of them operating out of the Gare de l’Est. They send the bastards through from Brussels.’
‘Maybe so, and maybe not, eh?’ snapped Kohler. ‘But that one’s finished, so you’d better cut her down.’
He was glad Louis wasn’t with him. Apart from the interrogator, who was Gestapo, the enforcers were French, real tough guys when it came to wires and ropes and kids.
Glotz was eating sausage and having a beer while watching a rerun of the latest film. He’d just got to the foreplay part. Marianne St-Cyr was still wearing most of her things – an open blouse, a slip whose shoulder strap had been brushed down over the smooth contours of her flesh, no skirt, meshed stockings that went up under the slip, a brassiere and underwear. She was leaning back against something, a table perhaps, a bureau – it was hard to tell. Her legs were spread for a better grip, the feet planted firmly. She had good pins.
Steiner was fully clothed as befitted a German officer, but he wasn’t in uniform. His hands were on her breasts. The couple were kissing, teasing each other.
They weren’t in the bedroom – so Glotz’s boys must have set up more than one camera.
They were in the dining-room perhaps. It was still too hard to tell.
Glotz affected a bored air. ‘The slip’s crimson, the stockings are black, and the brassiere and briefs are white. It’s a pity we couldn’t get it in colour for you, Hermann, but we’re trying.’
Kohler switched off the spool but not the lamp. Glotz dropped the sausage and spilled the beer as he leapt to prevent the film from burning. ‘Idiot! What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
The Bavarian’s pistol was levelled at him. ‘Merely borrowing the film, my friend, for a meeting with von Schaumburg.’
‘You wouldn’t…’
Glotz was aghast. The Wehrmacht would gladly turn back the Gestapo’s clock. ‘Oh, wouldn’t I?’ said Kohler.
‘We’ve copies – two of them. Berlin will hear of this.’
The carp’s eyes were popping. ‘So will von Schaumburg.’
‘A truce?’ blurted Glotz. He didn’t like the look in Hermann’s eyes.
‘A truce? Why? I don’t owe you a thing.’
‘Then perhaps you’d better see what else we have.’
Ah, merde! ‘Weren’t the two of them alone?’
The man from Special Unit X, the Watchers, knew he had the Bavarian by the short hairs but he wouldn’t smile. He’d be serious about it. ‘Why not wait and see? After all, Hermann, if you’re going to blow the whistle on your friends and comrades in the Gestapo, you should know exactly what else we have. Old Shatter Hand will only ask. He’ll want you to be thorough. There’s no sense in your going off half-cocked, now is there?’
Three … had there been three of them in the flat, apart from St-Cyr’s son and the nursemaid? A menage-a-trois? Ah no …
Glotz waited. Somehow he had to find out what Kohler and St-Cyr had come up with on their unauthorized trip. Berlin was insisting they be kept informed. He needed details of the murders, details of Ackermann’s position in things. ‘The girl, Hermann … The wife of your partner … It’s not on that spool of film.’
It was a lie, of course, which the Bavarian was only too quick to sense.