But apart from them, there was not a whisper of the German presence. Instead, the prefet’s men in dark blue kept order.
Klaus Barbie was using the queue to trap people. Once inside the doors, all papers would be examined and the names recorded to be later checked against the growing list of victims and those other lists: the badly burned who were still in hospital, the not-so-badly-burned who had been treated and released, that of the audience members who had escaped unscathed, and that of all others who in any way had been connected with the cinema of the Beautiful Celluloid.
Barbie had known that those whose sons or other loved ones had disappeared without leaving a forwarding address to avoid the forced labour or to go into hiding for any other reason, the maquis perhaps … all would come in hopes their loved ones had not been found among the dead.
Only in the faces of the curious was there any sign of quickness but even they had had to succumb to the hush of the grieving.
The line crept forward. Occasionally someone would realize what was up and think to turn away, only to see that they dare not draw attention to themselves, that it was better to simply tough it out.
He wanted to shout, Go home. It’s a trap! but could not do so, knowing only too well that like them, he, too, could be hustled away and into silence for ever.
When he found the girl, she was nearest the shop fronts, not far from the corner. And he realized then that she was using the windows to mirror the street and warn her if anyone had spotted her. The collar of the fawn-coloured, double-breasted overcoat was turned up. Muffled in a beige angora beret and scarf, she searched the glass as if looking at the window displays of suits made out of human hair or wood fibre and shoes with soles made out of wood or cork.
He let her believe she hadn’t been spotted. Flashing his badge and holding up a cautioning hand to overcome objections, he slid into line four persons behind her. He hoped she would not panic when she discovered she would have to leave her name and address. He must not do anything that would give her away, must not let the prefet or the Gestapo get their hands on her or get any indication of whom he was after.
It took another hour but by then the girl had gone on to view the corpses amid the stench, wearing one of the regulation cloth masks and forcing herself to do so while the prefet confronted him.
‘Well, Louis, is it that you are so brazen you would show your face to me, eh?’
A brawler, a tough in uniform, Guillemette clenched a fist and shook it threateningly. ‘You and Kohler smashed up one of my best men in the rue des Trois Maries last night. Why have you done such a thing? He was there for your own safety, imbecile! Myself, I personally delegated him to watch over the two of you.’
How nice. ‘But … but, Prefet, we thought he was a robber! There was no light. There was someone with him.’
‘Who?’
‘My partner and I never found out. We were forced to leave your man in the street and-’
‘In the gutter, Jean-Louis! A broken nose that will take months to reset, four splintered teeth, twenty-six stitches about the face and five cracked ribs. No wallet or papers, no gun or knife or bracelets. Come, come my friend, what did you and Kohler do with them?’
No gun or knife or handcuffs … the papers stolen …? Ah merde-someone else had taken them! ‘Prefet, those narrow streets are dangerous after curfew. The next time-if there should be a next time-please ask your men to identify themselves well beforehand.’
Guillemette grunted savagely. ‘Don’t play around with me, you little fart from Paris. What were you doing in the rue des Trois Maries?’
Madame Rachline could not have told him of their visit. ‘Nothing, Prefet. We had simply lost our way in the dark.’
‘Batard, I ought to have you run in! What address were you after and why?’
Some sort of answer was necessary but it was tempting to refuse absolutely. ‘We were trying to find the pont Alphonse Juin so as to cross the Saone and make our way along the quai Saint Antoine to La Mere Aurora. Perhaps you know of it? A little place, of course, but the food, it is excellent. At least, it was before the Defeat of 1940.’
‘Maudit salaud, you were up to something and should not have been in that street!’
‘Then perhaps the one who followed your man should not have been there either, Prefet, nor should she have taken his gun among other things.’
‘She?’ Ah what was this?
St-Cyr nodded curtly.
‘One of the two women?’ demanded Guillemette swiftly.
‘Perhaps, but then … ah, then, Prefet,’ he shrugged, ‘perhaps my partner and I were mistaken.’
‘A woman.’
Guillemette was no fool. He’d put two and two together and come up with La Belle Epoque but … ah, why not tell him a little? ‘A woman, yes. Perhaps.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
It would be best to shrug.
As the prefet turned angrily away in thought, St-Cyr looked down and a name leapt from among the lists on the desk. ‘Martine Charlebois, Apt. 3, Number 12 allee des Villas.’ A flat overlooking the Parc de la Tete d’Or in one of the most fashionable parts of town.
‘Louis … Louis, why are you here?’
‘To see Herr Weidling, Prefet, and to meet with Robichaud.’
‘And Kohler? Where is that one?’
‘Doing his job, Prefet. Keeping himself busy.’
In mirror after mirror Kohler saw himself as he paused in panic among the elegant corridors of the Hotel Terminus. Things never stopped, not even for Christmas. Gestapo Lyon occupied sixty rooms in the fine old hotel. The grey mice and the troops seemed to be everywhere. The bitches from home hammered on their typewriters and teleprinter machines with military precision. Their skirts were hitched up, their backs ramrod stiff, blonde braids pinned into diadems or coiled into buns, and bosoms straining behind grey tunics two sizes too small. Merde, what was he to do? There had been absolutely no chance to get into Klaus Barbie’s office even though the door to that suite of rooms had been open.
Torture was on the third floor and he didn’t want to go up there, not after what he’d seen on that last case. A typewriter stopped. A voice said, ‘Are you looking for someone?’
‘No. No. Just on my way out, fraulein.’
‘Then it is the other direction you want, mein Herr.’
Ducking into a lavatory, he glanced madly about. Grey woollen underpants encircled thick ankles draping themselves over black brogues with heavy laces …
On the third floor it was quiet, a surprise, and when he opened a door, the room he entered held only a plain wooden table, two kitchen chairs and a copper bathtub with a sturdy rod of oak across it.
Uncomfortably he flicked his eyes around the room as he breathed in the mingled stench of excrement, vomit, blood, soap and disinfectant.
There was a poster from home nailed to the beautifully carved panelling, one of those brash soldaten things with Rheinland maidens gazing raptly at the helmeted men of their dreams and the Fuhrer beaming benevolently from among the clouds like God without His Messerschmitt. ‘Morgens Grusse ich dem Fuhrer. Und abends danke ich dem Fuhrer.’ In the morning I greet my Fuhrer. And in the evening I thank him. For this? he wondered sadly. Even the rugs had had to be removed.
Several newspapers were scattered in a corner. Der Stuermer, the Berliner Tageblatt, the Voelkischer Beobachter … Hitler’s own flagship and his magazine, Signal. All light reading while waiting for a prisoner to come round.