‘The Ackermann business,’ breathed Kohler, trying to gauge the trend of the general’s thoughts and ignoring the hawk-eyed gazes of the prostitutes. ‘His love affair with this boy.’
God help him if it were true and God help him if it weren’t!
‘My nephew wouldn’t dare to touch the wife of another man,’ said von Schaumburg gruffly.
You pious old bachelor! You hypocrite! thought Kohler before giving an inward sigh at the trouble he was creating for himself. ‘He has, General. The woman and her son have moved in with him. Section Ten, the Watchers, have film of the couple engaged in sexual acts I’d rather not describe. They’ve threatened to show the film to my partner if I don’t cough up every little detail so that they can forward it straight to Berlin before either you or the Sturmbannfuhrer Boemelburg hear of it.’
‘Film? Copulation? An invasion of Wehrmacht privacy by the Gestapo? Gott in Himmel …’
Von Schaumburg sized him up. Either way one looked at it, Kohler was a doomed man and so was his partner. Yet was there not a hint of truth in what he’d said about Ackermann?
It would be so nice to know.
‘You have a week, Kohler. Absolute confidentiality. No written reports to anyone. Verbals only to me at 0600 hours, the Hotel Ritz, room 33. My adjutant, the Graf Waldersee, will let you in. Leave Boemelburg and Pharand out of it until we know the worst, then let me deal with it.’
‘And St-Cyr’s wife and son?’
‘No child should be subjected to such a thing as parental infidelity. You leave that business to me.’
A homosexual SS war hero, a holder of the Iron Cross First-Class with Oak Leaves? Himmler would be in a panic, the Fuhrer in an absolute state of collapse! The Gestapo and the SS would be out of France on the next train and the Army firmly back in the saddle!
Steiner … young Erich up to no good and disgracing his family, eh? Well, he’d soon see about that!
The schmuck who controlled the pink entry tickets at Paris Central Morgue was an ox-headed French son-of-a-bitch with a fluting voice, bad teeth and breath that would kill a snake at a hundred metres.
‘Talbotte, the Prefet of Paris himself, has forbidden that you or St-Cyr be allowed to examine the post-mortems.’
‘Post-mortems?’ snorted Kohler, still standing before the bastard’s desk. ‘One died of a boulder between the eyes, and the other of a gunshot wound in the back of the head!’
‘Ah! So you are the expert, eh? Well, my friend, there’s nothing for you here and you cannot bribe me.’
‘Thanks!’ snorted Kohler, dragging out a roll of bills that would have choked a horse.
He peeled off 5000 francs. The schmuck’s eyes flicked to the open door of the office. ‘Another five but not a word, eh?’
‘My lips are sealed,’ swore Kohler.
‘Good! And another five for the boys, eh? It’s hard work pulling stiffs for you guys to run your eyes over. The men will only bitch to the wrong people.’
In the name of Jesus, the economy of Paris was going to hell! ‘You bastards are learning,’ grumbled the Bavarian.
The man grinned. ‘We’ve good teachers, my friend.’ He lifted his fat ass from behind the desk and waddled out into the corridor to seize the first man in white who came by and whisper sweet nothings in his ear.
One 500-franc note changed hands and then, ‘Not a word, Arnold, if you value your job.’
Arnold took Kohler to get the corpses. Both the boy and his sister were wrapped in canvas and submerged in chipped ice.
They’d both been eviscerated and the incisions only crudely sewn. Pity the poor grieving family … Once murdered, one lost all privacy and became the property of the state until such time as the remains could be released.
Yvette Noel was on her back and bluer than her brother. Rigor made her breasts firm, the nipples stiff. She’d once had a reasonable figure – quite petite, Louis had said. But the gash up her abdomen simply turned one off.
‘You want the reports?’ grunted Arnold. Shrouds of ice fog hung about.
‘Yeah, I want the reports and a bit of peace, eh? Go and get them but don’t be too long.’
The man snickered. ‘Enjoy yourself, Inspector. Don’t ride the girl in my absence. That’s naughty.’
Kohler flung a chunk of ice at him. He wished that Louis was here. Louis was better at this. He had the eye for detail and the ability to turn his stomach off.
They had a day perhaps to come up with something really good. Boemelburg wasn’t going to like it when he heard about the meeting with von Schaumburg.
In desperation Kohler moved between the corpses. The girl’s eyes were brown and staring straight up into the feeble light; the boy’s were closed but yes, now that he forced himself to look closely at the two of them, though there were facial similarities, there were marked differences. A coarseness in the girl’s bone structure – petite, yes, but of peasant stock. One hundred per cent, whereas the boy, Jerome, had the mark of the French aristocracy about him.
Then it was true. Jerome had been fathered by the countess’s husband.
Kohler found the teeth marks and, once again, he had to admit they were those of a lover’s nip.
So, too, the tiny nick under the right nipple, though that could have been caused by a fingernail. The pair of them must have been really going at it.
But had Ackermann been the man on his knees? Gott in Himmel, what a fool he’d been to suggest such a thing! His name would be mud around Gestapo HQ. He’d never live the betrayal down. Berlin would ship him off to Kiev and Louis would hit the salt mines no matter what happened. Or there’d be worse for both of them. Yeah, worse.
The girl had a scratch about six centimetres long on her left leg, just above the knee – those briars, that torn stocking? he wondered, remembering the roadside with surprising clarity for a person who’d not yet had his breakfast.
Kohler bent closer. The scratch was thin and flecked with dried blood to which clung tiny threads of silk. So, okay, the girl had climbed the hill up into the forest after finding the body of her brother. She’d torn her stockings on the briars but had she left the purse up there or had she gone to hunt for it?
The right knee was bruised, but that could have happened when she’d been murdered.
Her hair was dark brown like the brother’s but coarser and thicker. She’d a centimetre-sized mole at the top of her left thigh, next the triangle between her legs. A thing for a young girl to worry about, a birthmark the brother didn’t have. She’d clipped the hairs on it.
What else would Louis have looked for? He’d have talked to the corpse of course.
Her fingertips and nails showed seamstress signs: needle pricks, a roughness of the skin and rippling of the closely trimmed nails which had been freshly lacquered with polish. She’d got herself ready.
Was there perfume – the stuff Louis had called Mirage? Had she taken some from her mistress’s dressing table at the club? Had she touched the backs of her ears, done the armpits and shoved a hand down under the briefs?
He had the idea that Yvette Noel wouldn’t have drenched herself like so many Parisian women did but that she’d have touched herself all the same.
Yet who had she met? Who had killed her?
By a stroke of fate or luck the bullet hadn’t scrambled her eyes. She seemed to be trying to tell him something.
‘A virgin,’ snorted the man in white. ‘Her hymen was intact. Brandy – plum brandy – that’s all she had in her stomach. Three shots of it at least and not long before she was killed.’