Trembling, he dropped the matches and had to pick them up. He put them and the candle stub and the excelsior into a pocket and stood up slowly. The message was all too clear: See what we can do to you or to anyone at any time.
Two women … had there been two of them? Had he frightened them off?
Clearly they were dealing with a case of madness.
Shadows flew about or were pinned to the walls. Robichaud, the fire chief, looked up into the belfry timbers and sharply drew in a breath. The beam of his torch faltered, then came back to settle on the jerry cans. Dull brown and pale green with their camouflage, each was still slowly dripping a trickle of gasoline. Stolen … they must have been stolen.
‘Regulation issue,’ he grunted. ‘The fuel depot at Delfosse or one of the others over in Croix Rousse, the Fort Saint-Jean or the Saint Vincent along the quai.’
All fuel was under German control. The two jerry cans had been lashed to timbers that ran above the bells. Each would have weighed a good twenty kilograms. Who could have done such a thing? ‘Ah mon Dieu, Bishop, this … this …’ He swung his light down to indicate the trail of gasoline that crossed the belfry floor and ran to the empty can Herr Kohler had found at the top of the steps. ‘This is the trailer from the storeroom downstairs. Light the lower one, Bishop, and the flames, they race along this trail and right up to those.’
Stains from the dripping cans high above them had spread down other timbers to the floor. ‘It’s a miracle the Salamander didn’t set it off,’ said Guillemette, the Prefet of Lyon.
‘My pumpers …’ began Robichaud. ‘The lines up here on Fourviere Hill-oh for sure, Bishop, my men can fight a normal fire but this … this? Ah no, no. It’s impossible. Impossible! The mains would collapse, isn’t that correct, Guillemette? Well, isn’t it? For years I’ve been trying to tell you all that new and far larger water mains are needed. More pressure. A new station up here, two new crews. Men! Where am I to get them, eh? Where? They’re all off in Germany either in the prison camps or the forced labour brigades.’
‘Easy, Julien, go easy, eh?’ snorted the prefet. ‘We all know how much you care but you are not the only one to consider when the budgets come round.’
The light swung, pinning shadows to the walls as Robichaud turned on him swiftly. ‘Then what about you stopping this one, eh? You have yet to visit the temporary morgue we have set up in the Lycee Ampere. Ah, you’ve not thought it necessary to inform the children who have lost their parents, is that it? How are we to find them, eh? Lists … that bastard Weidling demands lists? Let him pull the limbs apart himself. Let him examine the teeth and hope for dental records.’
Bishop Dufour stepped forward. ‘Julien, go down to my study. Have some of the port, then take a glass of the Calvados my sister sent me. Please, I must insist. You’re exhausted. There is no need to be ashamed. Your tears are quite understandable.’
‘Are they, Bishop? Are they?’ The beam of his light fell to the floor at their feet.
‘Now, now, Julien, control yourself. Please, I beg it of you. Say no more. We have enough trouble as it is.’
Patting him on a shoulder, the bishop led him to the top of the belfry stairs. ‘Auguste and Philomena will wash this down and be most careful.’
‘That old caretaker and his wife? Don’t be silly. My men will handle it.’
‘Then do as I say. You need to sleep. Look at you, you’re still dressed for a fire. Have you forgotten time? Please, I promise I’ll awaken you in a couple of hours. At least do that for me.’
Robichaud started down the stairs then swung his light back over them before settling it on the prefet.
Blinded by it, Guillemette said nothing, only waited.
‘Hermann, go with him,’ said St-Cyr quietly. ‘See that he does as he’s told. You’ll find me on the terrace in front of the church. I’ll be looking out over the city trying to figure out what has happened here and where our Salamander could be hiding.’
‘If it was those two women from the cinema, Louis, they know all about how to start a fire.’
‘It’s the mark of a professional!’ hissed Robichaud. ‘Surely our prefet must have the names of all such people. Ask him to provide them. Give that list to Herr Weidling when you join him for breakfast!’
St-Cyr drew the bishop aside. ‘A small problem,’ he said, glad that the edge of light from his torch just touched the bishop’s eyes. ‘Three fires in 1938, Bishop, in the Reich, and now this. Was it to have been number two, I wonder, or was Father Adrian the target and our Salamander did not realize he had been killed?’
‘I … I don’t know what you mean, Inspector? N … no one would have wanted to kill Adrian. No one.’
‘Good. I just wanted to hear you say it, but it is odd, is it not, that the Salamander should know the workings of the Basilica so well? None of the other towers were touched. Only the one with the paintings.’
‘An insider …? But … but …’ Desperation haunted the bishop’s eyes until, at last, he said, ‘It’s not possible. No. No. Absolutely not.’
Again the detective said, ‘Good,’ but this time he grunted it as he abruptly turned away in dismissal and went down the stairs before another word could be said. Ah merde, the paintings …
The city was in silence but now the skies had cleared. Up from the rivers came an icy ground fog to hug the streets and blocks of flats in silver-grey and hide the infrequent pale blue lamps.
St-Cyr stood alone. Christmas … it was Christmas Day! Ah maudit, what were Hermann and he to do? Lyon-old Lyon-was a rat’s nest of narrow streets and passageways, the traboules that darted from a side entrance down a long and arched tunnel, up a spiralling flight of stairs, through buildings three and four hundred years old to yet other streets and lanes and other passage-ways. Dark and filthy, most of those passages, with doors here and there and iron-grilled windows and cries in the night. No lights. Not now, and not much evident in the past either.
Though old and venerable, its citizens more Swiss-like in their attitudes than French perhaps, Lyon was also very much an industrial city. Its railways linked it to every corner of the country. One could come and go so easily if one knew how-oh for sure there were the controls, the sudden spot checks, the Gestapo or the French Gestapo, the German and the French police too, and the harsh demands to see one’s papers. Papers, please. Your carte d’identite, your laissez-passer-the ausweis, the pass! all travellers had to have to go anywhere-anywhere-outside their place of domicile. The work permit too, and ration tickets-books of these each week, the colours constantly being changed so as to confuse Allied agents and foil counterfeiters. The letters of explanation, too, that one had to carry at all times. Those that freed one from ‘voluntary’ labour service in the Reich; those that gave the medical history if needed. A valid military discharge for being wounded at the front in 1940. Papers and more papers.
If one hesitated, the suitcase or handbag or both would be ripped from one’s hands and dumped out on to the street no matter what the weather, the crowd, the traffic, time or place, or even if one was in a hurry and would miss their bus or tram-car or the Metro.
But forged sets of papers were now becoming much, much better and far more commonplace. Those two women … the Salamander … could have provided themselves with false papers. They could come and go, and could already have left the city, having left their warning here, if such is what it was.