Oak planks, a metre long, had been used to knock sense into the recalcitrant. After all, the ‘reinforced’ interrogations were done up here, those in which the prisoner had shown signs of withholding information. One of Barbie’s two German shepherds had defecated among the slats.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Louis, it’s this or nothing.’
When the blaze was going, Kohler added the chairs and then the table but drained the bathtub and made certain the ropes would not plug the hole.
He was downstairs in the toilets when the cry of fire came; he was inside Barbie’s office staring dumbly at the bastard’s bull-whip when the alarm bells began to ring.
Of plaited rawhide, the bullwhip lay coiled on top of a dossier that was clearly marked Frau Kaethe Weidling yet he could not touch the dossier without moving the whip! He felt the panic rising inside himself, a mad, totally uncontrollable watery sickness. He heard the crack of the whip as it snapped back, saw it flash forward to rip his chest open from the right shoulder to the left hip. Ahh …
Then it tore open his left cheek and all of that moment came back and he saw the hot flood of urine growing around his left shoe. Verdammt! He had pissed himself again! Son of a bitch, what was he to do?
Barbie had learned of the incident and had left this little reminder for him.
The alarm bells were still ringing. Determinedly he put the lock on the inner door, fought down the nausea to move the whip, and read:
‘Frau Kaethe Weidling nee Voelker, born Schwering 21 April 1913. Father, the banker Karl Ernst Voelker (suicide by shooting, 1921); mother, Gretta Inge, only child of the Kapitan Guenther Horst Ungerfeld, one of the Count Felix von Luckner’s raiders.’ A stern old Prussian no doubt.
‘Married Leiter Karl Johann Weidling 4 September 1938 …’ Right after the Koln fire. Ah nom de Dieu!
The second page gave a full frontal photograph of her as she was today, standing in the nude leaning nonchalantly against a wall. She was holding a small pear, an ornament of some kind, in the cage of her hands and was staring at the viewer as if to say, So, mein Herr, what else is new, except that he did not think she went with men.
The third page was a montage of female victims, and he realized right away that Barbie had had it made from the photographs she had in her bedroom at the Hotel Bristol, and again he could not understand how she had come by them.
The fourth page revealed her holding a lighted match to the breast of Claudine Bertrand. Both women were naked. Claudine was not tied in any way to the ornate iron headboard of the bed, but who had taken the photograph? Who? It could not have been done with their knowledge. Both were far too involved with each other. Claudine had a hand between Frau Weidling’s legs …
Gestapo Lyon, he wondered, or someone else, someone with access to that whorehouse or Madame Rachline herself?
There was talk of matches, of a child so fascinated by fire she would masturbate among lighted candles and brush flame across her skin to heighten sexual awareness.
There was talk of fires, of ‘accidents’ in which ‘no positive proof could be found’. Talk of whippings by a grandfather of the old school, ah yes. Talk of her later searching out other females of a like mind to gratify her unnatural urges, of her visiting whorehouses … but she’d never been a prostitute, had come from too good a family.
Leiter Weidling, a widower, had followed her to Koln. He had personally handled all three investigations and out of fighting those fires had come not only the medals for bravery and the prestige of citations, but also a new and very beautiful young wife.
Had he trapped her into marrying him so as to gain her help, or had she realized that when one wants desperately to hide, one seeks a position of utmost security? What better than the cold arms of an old fire chief, especially if he’d known you had been present at all three of those fires?
The couple had been in Lyon since 10 December. The tenth!
There was no time to go through all the pages. The pompiers were arriving in the Cours de Verdun to put an end to the fire, Christ!
Reluctantly Kohler closed the dossier but could not remember which way the bullwhip had been coiled.
The pastis was not alcoholic but a vile concoction of anise and liquorice that was lime-green and yellow and stayed that way even when a half-pitcher of water was added!
The beer was home-brew, made right in the kitchen sink where they washed the dishes and the pots. Little things swam among too many bubbles. The cheese was not cheese but something of sawdust, powdered milk and synthetic rubber, perhaps; the bread grey and full of asbestos. ‘Louis …’ began Kohler.
They’d been arguing constantly. Both were bitchy, both on the run and in need of a damned good lay and a bit of comforting, not a prolonged spell on the Russian Front courtesy Gestapo Lyon. Shit! ‘Louis, listen to me. Frau Weidling gets a kick out of sadism and is fascinated by fire. Hubby brings her here and she knows a friend from the past, from Lubeck, Heidelberg and Koln. Claudine, mon vieux. Claudine Bertrand.’
‘Yes, yes, but-’
‘Shut up! They have a little fun. They want a little more. And every time Frau Weidling lights a fire, hubby gains in stature and no one thinks to question her.’
‘But … but Claudine was upstairs with the projectionist, is that not correct?’
It was. ‘And Frau Weidling came in alone,’ said Kohler lamely, the steam having suddenly gone out of him.
‘Then there were three women, Hermann. Not two as we have been led to believe. Frau Weidling, Claudine and someone else.’
‘Someone special Claudine had brought along for Frau Weidling to meet. Ah Gott im Himmel, Louis, have we finally hit on it? Gestapo Lyon know all about Frau Weidling and that husband of hers and want to keep on using her but they do not know the identity of this other woman. They think, like Weidling, that it must be a man. Hell, hoisting heavy jerry cans up into that belfry proves it to them, but we both know two determined women can do as much or more than any man.’
Louis nodded curtly and brushed non-existent crumbs from the table. ‘Claudine enters with this other woman but leaves her seat to find the key to the toilets and goes upstairs to the projectionist for it. She then comes downstairs and opens the door but does not stay long. Instead, she returns upstairs for a little visit. Others go into the toilets for a meeting of their own, but leave the key in the lock. Those others don’t return to their seats and the usherette goes to see what is the matter and finds the key but does not check to see what is going on or even if the door is locked.’
Kohler heaved a sigh. ‘When Suzie gets back to her station, the woman who came in with Claudine is now absent from her seat but the rush bag they brought is still there.’
‘Yes, yes. Presumably this other woman went out to meet Frau Weidling.’
There was a terse grunt of acknowledgement. ‘And not finding her in the toilets where expected, Louis, this third woman then locks the door to the toilets, perhaps pouting in anger at having been stood up. We may never know.’
‘Or perhaps she thought Frau Weidling was in the toilets, Hermann.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Trapped, Hermann. Ready to be caught in the fire.’
‘Ah merde …’
‘Claudine is upstairs,’ continued St-Cyr. ‘She remains with the projectionist until after the fire starts. She panics, she loses a shoe-she realizes what has happened, Hermann, and is far more terrified at first because she knows who did it.’
Again there was a sigh. ‘And that, my fine Frog friend, is why she had to be killed, but how the hell was it done?’
St-Cyr gave a massive shrug. ‘Time … Time is what we need. The white powder from Mademoiselle Claudine’s kitchen floor is being analysed. Vasseur will track us down. A careful murder, Hermann, and one that must have been planned well in advance, since she could so easily have been killed in that fire had more gasoline been splashed across the stairs to the balcony.’