Bundled in her fur coat, hands in the pockets, Frau Weidling stood apart, the rich, dark auburn hair free of any hat, the dark grey-blue eyes alive with intense excitement. Quick to follow every detail, she searched the roof-tops where men with hoses clung precariously. She held her breath at a shout as one of them slipped-gasped in awe along with the crowd as he dangled over the edge, hanging by the thread of a slack hose.
As the man was pulled to safety, she gave another gasp, more of a sigh perhaps and hunched her shoulders, hands pressed against her thighs, hugging herself.
Then she made her way through the gap in the crowd until she stood in front of it to watch her husband at work.
Leiter Weidling basked in the flashbulbs of the Propaganda Staffel. They caught him pointing up at an adjacent roof and motioning the men to direct their hoses more steeply downwards. They had him holding brandy to the lips of an exhausted Robichaud who looked like a drunk that had been rolled in the gutter, blood running from his injured hand. They caught him with his beautiful wife and then they dragged Kohler into the limelight and thrust the child back into his arms.
Baffled and looking like a vagrant on the run, Hermann stood stupidly beside the still-collapsed form of Robichaud. Not satisfied, the Propaganda Staffel had him risk life and limb to stand with the kid between the bodies of its parents.
Another and another photograph. ‘Now crouch, please. Ja, ja, that is good, Herr … What’s his name? Make sure you get it down.’
Then one of the hero with Frau Weidling and her husband, and a final shot of the detective with the child he had just ‘adopted’.
‘Is it a boy or a girl, Hermann?’ asked St-Cyr.
‘Piss off or you’re its uncle, eh? The Hotel Bristol, Louis. Weidling insists. An emergency meeting. They’re taking Robichaud with them for the fireworks. Frau Dazzle’s car is at the foot of the street near where I left the bishop’s.’
Hermann thrust the child into the arms of the woman who had wanted it and said he was sorry the flics had roughed her up and stolen the money. ‘Hey, I’ll get it back for you, okay?’ he shouted, but by then she had turned away to vanish into the crowd.
Eighteen had died. Eighteen. At 4.10 a.m., the grand salon of the Prince Albert Suite was in an uproar. Perhaps twenty of the powers that be in Lyon had been called to the meeting. Waiters came and went while she, Frau Kaethe Weidling, stood with her seat pressed against the door between times, stood in a deeply V’d, long-sleeved dress of black silk Charmeuse that was covered with black sequins.
Like bantam cockerels or little boys whose play had erupted into battle, they cursed each other finding blame where there was none. They shook their fists, gesticulated violently, got very red in the face as only middle-aged and older men will do. Spilled drink, dropped half-eaten sausage on the carpet. Squashed olives, bread, oysters, pate, cake and anchovies underfoot without caring in clouds of tobacco smoke.
And all the time she watched them, one or another would flick a glance doubtfully her way to see her trapped with her hands pressed flatly against the door on either side of her. They’d see the cleavage of her dress open to them. Lust and consternation in their startled glimpses, the bumbling fools. Johann’s wife, yes, yes, my little men. Leiter Weidling’s beautiful young wife!
Johann, in his dark blue uniform with all its ribbons and medals, was right in the midst of them. Johann was not going to back down one millimetre, so good-yes, that is good, my liebling. Fight for what is only right and best for the both of us. The interpreter was to one side of him; Herr Kohler, showered and draped in a blanket, was to the other, looking very sleepy now. A hero of the moment, soon to be forgotten once the newspapers had gone on to other things. Would Berlin want him home on a visit, to cheering crowds and an adoring wife?
Herr Kohler of the Benzedrine tablets whose wall-eyed gaze from too much cognac had demonstrated extreme exhaustion as he had tried to take the tablets from her bedside table where she had shaken them out of the bottle he had had in his jacket pocket. Had had among other things, yes, such as those he had taken from the cinema fire, those the Obersturmfuhrer Barbie would be most certainly interested in. Incriminating papers. Railway schedules, the locations of tunnels … Resistance papers.
Kohler had been naked and hadn’t cared if she saw the long red welt from a rawhide whip, the shrapnel scars and old bullet wounds or the thumb that had recently been bitten and stitched. He’d known she couldn’t have cared less about his nakedness, that for her it had meant nothing.
His friend, St-Cyr, had removed the pills and had refused to let him take any more of them. It was only as St-Cyr had brushed past her that she had realized he’d been in Johann’s room all along, looking among her husband’s things. And now? she asked. Why now he studied everyone, herself especially, with an intensity that frightened. What was he really thinking? That she had caused the fires, that she could only attain sexual arousal and orgasm through fire?
There was a sudden lull in the uproar. Fragments of talk were broken off and then … ‘You’re dismissed! Dismissed!’ shouted the mayor, furiously wiping his moustache as the translator gave it all loudly to Johann. ‘Incompetent! Another fire and then another, eh? Ah yes, Robichaud, me, I say it to your face. You are out!’
The blanket slipped from Herr Robichaud’s shoulders as he leapt from his chair past Johann to shake a wounded hand in the mayor’s face, and she didn’t know whether to laugh out loud or clap. ‘Always you side with Guillemette, Antoine. Always you are in the pocket of someone. Well, to hell with you both! That fire was not the same. It had too hot a start. How many times must I tell you?’
Too hot a start …
‘Hot or cold,’ shouted the mayor, ‘what is the difference? You have not stopped the Salamander.’ This, too, was translated.
‘Me? Me?’ shouted Robichaud, using both hands to indicate himself as the blanket slipped completely away to reveal the barrel chest, chunky hips and stalwart stance. ‘Hey, my fine collabos, it’s my job to put the fires out!’
‘And to prevent them,’ snorted the prefet, smirking viciously at such a stupid, stupid burst of patriotic idiocy. ‘Collabos, Julien? Come, come, we have invaluable assistance at hand. Let us use it.’
Several grunted agreement. ‘Never!’ shouted Robichaud. ‘Not while I draw breath!’
‘Then stop breathing,’ shouted Charette, a councillor from the Croix Rousse.
‘Yes!’ shouted another. ‘Leave the room and let us get on with things!’
His muscles rippling, Robichaud pushed his way through them and when he reached the man, the buttocks and thighs tightened as the feet were planted. He didn’t hesitate but flattened him with a fist.
Then he turned on them all, a naked savage in a rage, blood running freely down his arm. ‘Bastards!’ he shouted. ‘You want a scapegoat, eh? Then begin by asking why that fire began after the concierge had checked the building for the night? Did the Salamander hide inside and then leave or was a starter planted that would do the job?’
‘Wasn’t there gasoline?’ shouted someone derisively.
Robichaud ignored him. ‘The fire began in the attic, in an unused room that had been let to a young woman the day after the cinema fire.’
A young woman …
‘And the gasoline?’ asked Johann through the interpreter-she could see how determined he was to let Robichaud hang himself just like the ridiculous fruit of a flaccid little penis that dangled between the marble-hard thighs of the Frenchman.
‘There was gasoline, perhaps,’ grunted the savage begrudgingly. ‘Ah, it’s too early to say. When morning comes, we’ll have a look.’