Used tyres give comfortable rides, he reminded himself. He must stink of pastis, but wasn’t the fear of a puncture a part of the excitement, eh?
So, okay, he’d cross the street and introduce himself. He’d tell her he hadn’t forgotten the shoes.
He’d do no such thing, and he knew it. Shyness perhaps, he admitted. Fear too. She’d been so young and eager.
There was a cafe on the corner, a place much frequented by the locals, a good sign. Chaining the bicycle to a lamppost, he straightened his tie and marched into the place. A good morning’s work demanded a reasonable feed but … ah! damn it, had he remembered to bring his ration tickets?
Deep down in an inside pocket he found the cursed things Marianne had left out for him. They were now out of date! Would the colour have been changed?
The bar was crowded with workmen all standing shoulder to shoulder. The tables were filled. There was only one vacant chair. Green tickets were still being used, so that was okay in so far as the colour was concerned. The things one had to do these days! Ah Mon Dieu, it was a pain in the ass, this war.
He took off his hat, nodded to the proprietor and made his way among the tables.
A girl was sitting right at the back and at first this puzzled him because she’d have a good view of the door and the street, of the whole place, even of the telephone … but she’d have had no reason to watch such things, would she? A friend perhaps? The table was too well chosen just for that.
The pile of books spelled student; the swollen right jaw spelled tooth.
She sipped her ersatz coffee – no milk of course. She dunked the bread into it.
‘Mademoiselle …’ he began.
Watering suddenly, her brown eyes fled anxiously to the door, the street, and back up to him. ‘This chair,’ he said, ‘would you mind if I …?’
‘The chair …? Oh! Yes, yes, of course. I was just leaving.’
‘But… but you’ve not finished?’
The bowl with its coffee shattered on the floor, the books spilled about as she made a grab for them and the beret. The proprietor called out, ‘Liline, is anything the matter?’
‘My tooth, Monsieur Henri. I’m sorry about the mess. I have to rush. They’re fixing it at the Dental School’s clinic. Those guys, you know how they are. No freezing any more – straight in with the drill or the hammer and chisel. It’ll take three of them to hold me down.’
She paid up and darted out the door. Twice she looked back, and then a third time from the street.
It’s her, said St-Cyr to himself. The girl with the shoes. And she had known him but that was not possible …
The night came back … the feel of her in his arms. He ordered a coffee and some bread – there were no croissants to be had any more, not in the places of the common people. ‘Some jam if you have it, please,’ he said.
That night … that street… the girl and her boyfriend … the patrol …
Out after curfew … out last night on a borrowed motorcycle? Was it possible? Had they come to collect her shoes or to kill him?
At that hour, it could only have been the latter. But she was such a pretty thing – most girls of that age were. It’s what attracted the bees, wasn’t it?
The furrowed brow, the swollen jaw, the anxious eyes … these all came rushing back to him and then the chin with its touch of swelling, the turned-up nose, the kissing lips, good lips, wide and sensual, the long lashes, the fine brush of her brows … A girl not unlike Yvette Noel but a student.
And a member of some fledgeling Resistance cell? he asked. Was it possible?
It would explain the kiss, the eager thanks for his having saved her life, the panic …
The mess at his feet was cleaned up. Bread, margarine, a dab of blackcurrant jam – pre-war perhaps – and coffee were set before him. There’s no milk,’ said the proprietor with a shrug.
St-Cyr asked him how many tickets he needed.
‘Two – one for the kitchen and one for the bread. And thirty-five francs.’
‘That young girl, what was her last name?’
‘Marleau. She comes in here sometimes.’
‘She lives across the street at number 23, doesn’t she, with her sister and brother-in-law? They’ve two kids?’ asked St-Cyr.
The proprietor put his back to the crowd and his hands firmly on the table. ‘So, what’s she done, eh?’ Was this guy a cop?
‘Nothing,’ said St-Cyr. ‘I just happened to meet her one night, after curfew. A close thing for both of us, you understand. That’s how I came to know her address.’
The man’s face broke into a wide grin and then into laughter. ‘Hey, you’re the one who rescued her, eh? And the two of you sat here face to face and didn’t know each other? Ah, Mon Dieu, that’s life! Liline has told us all about it.’
St-Cyr gave him a moment before quietly saying, ‘Look, is she involved in something? Her boyfriend ran off and left her to face the music.’
‘He’s one of those. He dodges the labour round-ups and makes trouble.’
St-Cyr reached for his bread. ‘Has he the use of a motorcycle – you’d have heard it in the night perhaps?’
The proprietor had. It was written all over him, in the doubt, the anger at himself for having been such a fool as to have placed the girl’s life in danger and that of everyone else, himself and his family included.
‘It’s okay, my friend. I only wanted to ask,’ said St-Cyr, ‘but now you must tell her something for me, eh?’
The man nodded grimly.
‘Tell her that I’m on her side and that she must not let the others make a mistake about this. There’ll come a time when they’ll need me again and I’ll be there.’
‘Why not tell her yourself, at the dental clinic?’
St-Cyr shook his head. ‘She’ll have avoided it like the plague even though that tooth is killing her. Besides, I have another matter that is far too important to leave. Tell her also that I will have her shoes repaired and returned just as soon as I can. She’s not to worry.’
The proprietor slid the thirty-five francs back across the tablecloth. ‘Let me see if I can’t find you a little something else.’
He hadn’t even bothered to touch the tickets. All along he’d known they were out of date.
But how had the girl known who he was?
*
Boemelburg was waiting for him when Kohler tried to slip into number 11 rue de Saussaies by a back door. Osias Pharand had been livid and screaming that it was all a matter of honour! St-Cyr had betrayed his chief and so had a certain Bavarian.
As he entered the office, Boemelburg remained standing with his back to him, looking up at the Army ordnance map of the Loire he’d had fixed to the wallspace immediately behind his desk.
‘Hermann, let me tell you something.’ He took a pin and stabbed it into the location of the Chateau Theriault. So much for a certain countess, the distant cousin of the SS General Hans Ackermann. ‘You will go to Kiev, my Bavarian friend, if I’ve anything to do with it. It’s only a matter of time.’
The chief seized another pin and drove it into the location of the Monastery of Saint Gregory the Great. So much for monkish things!
Kohler still hadn’t been told to sit down. ‘How much time …?’ he began, only to blurt, ‘Herr Sturmbannfuhrer, I can explain the von Schaumburg business. I…’
Still the chief didn’t turn to face him. ‘I think you’d better explain, Hermann. You took an oath of allegiance when you joined the Gestapo. To the Fuhrer, to the Party and the State but most of all, Hermann, to us, your associates and superior officers. Herr Himmler, Hermann. We must all answer to him, even myself.’
So it was to be like that? Kohler began. Boemelburg moved aside to study the map of France. He stuck pins into Fontainebleau Woods – the location of the girl’s body, then that of her brother. He stuck one into Paris and stood back a little to eyeball the distances someone would have had to drive. Not satisfied, he pulled a length of thin yellow ribbon from a pocket and measured them off before fixing the ribbon to the three centres of this stupid little affair.