The marble on which she lay was blue and cold and sloped at her feet to an ugly drain. It was all too evident that she bore the scars of innumerable liaisons. She had been touched again and again by fire. The smell of sweat, urine, vaginal secretions and perfume would have mingled with that of male or female tobacco smoke, candlewax and searing flesh. The biting back as fear raced to the exquisiteness of orgasm.
He would ask it softly. ‘What really happened on the beaches at Concarneau? Did one of you hold her down while the other burnt her, or did she beg you both to do it and did you then find pleasure in it?’
‘How dare you? She’s dead!’
A reaction at last, a shattering of Madame Rachline’s impassive emptiness. Colour racing to join that of the frost, her dark eyes blazing fiercely.
‘Inspector, is this really necessary?’ asked Charlebois. ‘It’s Claudine. We’ve identified her and her mother. Now will you kindly let us go on our separate ways?’
‘Please do not be so polite, monsieur. I only want to know which of you killed her. Was it you, Madame Rachline, or was it yourself, Monsieur Charlebois, or the two of you together?’
It was Ange-Marie who smirked and said sarcastically, ‘Or neither of us?’
‘Madame, you were the last to see her alive. The concierge will swear to it!’
‘She died in her sleep, Inspector,’ said the antique dealer. ‘You’ve no proof she was murdered. No proof whatsoever that either of us was involved.’
Ah nom de Jesus-Christ, how could Charlebois remain so aloof and calm? ‘Then tell me, monsieur, exactly how it was at Concarneau and why, please, your grandfather thought it necessary to leave such a valuable thing as this to Father Adrian Beaumont?’
Ah, damn him! The detective dangled the cross of the Family Rouleau above Claudine’s middle. He was deliberately trying to unsettle them, thought Charlebois.
‘She … she was …’ began Ange-Marie.
‘Special?’ asked the detective, tossing his head back a little in agreement. ‘She was your friend, Madame Rachline. Since when does one treat one’s friend in such a fashion?’
‘Ange-Marie, we don’t need to stay here. I was in Dijon, Inspector!’
He would let them think about it. He would take out his pipe and begin to pack it. Yes, yes, that would be … ah merde! No tobacco when most needed!
They watched as he self-consciously tucked pipe and pouch away. They stood at the foot of the slab, at each corner, brother and sister perhaps. The resemblance was uncanny but, had he not seen them like this, doubt would most certainly have crossed his mind. The same dark eyes, the same finely boned features. Both tall and thin, both with essentially the same build and the same jet-black hair.
‘Inspector …?’ began Madame Rachline.
Reluctantly he had to say it. ‘Yes, yes, you may go for now. Please do not leave the city.’
Outside the morgue they could not fail to notice the orange-red glow in the sky above Croix Rousse nor the billowing plumes of smoke and sparks. Both held their breath and let their pulses race. Both were fascinated-mesmerized-yet deeply troubled and uncertain.
It was Charlebois who started off toward the fire though it must be nearly two kilometres away. It was Madame Rachline who said, ‘Now are you satisfied?’
‘Of what?’ demanded St-Cyr hotly.
‘Of his innocence, Inspector. His innocence.’
The building was tall and narrow and sandwiched between others. Five storeys high and a raging inferno. No trucks could get close enough to use their turntable ladders so hand-ladders had had to be used. There were men on the roof-tops, men half-way up the front of the building pouring the water in and trying to contain the fire or climbing higher and higher. Some on the staircase at the back, some inside in the smoke-filled corridors. People being rescued, some still ready to jump. A child was dropped, the little bundle falling … falling … Kohler began to run. He didn’t think, he just ran and slipped and ran and slipped and threw out his arms yelling, ‘Please, God. Please, God,’ in German at the top of his lungs.
The kid hit him in a smothering cloud of flannelette and he went down hard hugging it to himself only to hear it crying.
Stunned, he got up, drenched and cold and tripping over the hoses. A canvas tarpaulin was being stretched but would the parents jump?
Bathed in the terrible light, he held the baby up to them and watched as the woman squeezed out of the attic window to plummet like a stone, her night-dress billowing above her head to leave her naked until she missed the net. Ah damn.
Then the husband leapt. His legs and arms seemed so useless, the hairy scrotum and bare ass almost comic. He took no time at all and he, too, missed the net.
Kohler touched the kid’s forehead. The little tyke seemed only to wonder what all the noise and excitement was about. ‘Monsieur … Monsieur,’ said a young woman, ‘please let me have him. I knew them a little, yes? Both were not from these parts, you understand, but from Belgium, from Brugge, I think.’
He understood and nodded sadly. Ah merde, to have come all this way through the blitzkrieg of 1940 only to die like that. ‘Look after him, eh? Here, wait. No, no, I insist.’
He thrust a roll of bills into her hand and would not take no for an answer. Then he went back to the fire to help with one of the hoses. Louis … There was no sign of Louis.
Later, and with a roar, the roof of the tenement caved in and everyone turned in shocked surprise to back away, for the men up there in the floodlights had disappeared to the muffled gasp of the crowd.
Robichaud coughed blood and vomited. Down on his hands and knees near one of the pumper trucks, he doubled up to drag in a breath. Flashbulbs popped as he pitched over. His mouth opened and closed in agony. He was wallowing on ice, desperately trying to get up, desperately trying to breathe.
Again there was a cough, a ragged drawing in of the chest as he lay among the hoses, two of which had sprung leaks and now pissed streams across him. One of his men pushed through the black leather trench coats and jackboots of the Propaganda Staffel to sit him up. Another tore at his things and got his chest and shoulders free of the heavy garments.
He looked at them once, his eyes drifting numbly up into the flashbulbs before he passed out.
Then the flames began gradually to die as those who were left refused to leave their stations. Sweat sharpened the tension in their faces, etching the streaks of soot, grease, ashes and tears. One man had broken his right hand which was now useless to him, the hose tucked under that arm. Another had received a gash on the forehead. There was blood in his eyes and it kept blinding him. Two were burned by hot coals under their gauntlets and threw these off to seize the nozzles with bare hands. No one had had time to remove the bodies of the child’s parents or to cover them.
Water rushed away and down the street, cascading over stone steps to freeze elsewhere, carrying charred wood and plaster, feathers, too, and straw ticking that had failed to ignite until caught in the updraught and charred to settle slowly among the constant rain of ash.
Mirrored in the water were the flames and the moving shadows. And when he lifted his head to look uphill again, Kohler first saw the drain down the centre of the street, then the stone stairs going up to the next level, the crowd, some in blankets huddled against the walls, then the rest of it, a shell.
His view was momentarily blocked and he saw Frau Weidling staring raptly at the blaze. He knew she loved it, knew it so clearly it angered him and he began to move toward her only to be held back.
It was Louis.
‘A moment, Hermann. Please, mon vieux. It gratifies me to find you alive.’
‘Me? But I thought you were-’
‘Later, eh? For now let us observe.’