Only the sound-track of the film came to St-Cyr along with the whirring of the fans that sucked air past the lamp to cool it. But that could not be, not now.
The door would have been closed. Yes, it had a simple hook and eye. Would Lantier and his partner have discovered the hotbox that was to keep their beloved locomotive from returning to Le Havre, thus triggering the story? Had the film progressed much further? Had Severine kissed the husband she would later beg Lantier to kill, having first had sex with the engineer in a railway shed among the boxes of bolts and piles of oily rags?
Had the engineer betrayed his true love, La Lison, the locomotive, for that of the innocent though shrewd and calculating Severine?
In Zola’s novel, Lantier had been born with an obsession to kill women-his cousin first. In the film, a passing train had stopped Lantier then, and later, when Severine had asked him to kill for her to cover up the murder she and her husband had committed, the engineer had found he couldn’t. She had told him their affair was over-fini-and he had snatched up a knife and had plunged it into her throat.
La Bete humaine … the Human Beast. An obsession … three fires in 1938 in Germany, two women and now this. A Salamander … The cry of Fire.
The film had been set totally in the world of railwaymen, its scenes so vivid one could still thrill to the power of the locomotive beneath one’s feet and lean out to see the track ahead racing inevitably towards the story’s horrible conclusion.
Even the smell of hot engine oil was still with him, even that of coal dust and the stench of sulphur dioxide.
One hundred and eighty-three deaths-450 in the audience, all with separate stories of hope and desire, deceit and avarice or pain and struggle. Always there were these stories, only the more so in cases like this because the victims’ last moments had to have meaning, the substance of individual lives. That woman and her daughter; the one who sat up here but could well have escaped unscathed; the one who had frantically remembered to replace her wedding ring only to lose it as she fell under the feet of others.
The man who had murdered in his fury to escape; the one who had climbed a dry fountain, hoping its stone goddess would offer succour.
One thing was certain. The cinema was not the usual for railwaymen, its location too expensive, its seats too posh, yet they had come en masse.
Clearing away the ice from one of the portals, St-Cyr peered down into the cinema. There was no sign of Hermann, no sign of anyone but the dead, yet as sure as he was standing here, he felt there had been Resistance people in the audience. A meeting. Ah merde, was it a complication or in itself reason enough for the fire so as to kill the lot of them?
And if so, how did this business of the Salamander fit in? Mere coincidence, or was it that the arsonist or arsonists had known someone in the audience and had wanted to get rid of them no matter the cost?
A Salamander. A person or persons so elusive only a codename could be attached to them.
A directive from Berlin, and now a visiting fire chief who claimed to know all about it. merde!
Kohler nudged the door to the toilets open and shone the light over the ice-covered walls. Four men and two women had been trapped in here-locked in. Yes, verdammt! The key was still in the lock, the bolt sticking out. Out! The firemen had had to use an axe to get in.
The bodies were fully clothed. Overcoats, heavy sweaters, corduroy and twill trousers, beige paint on bare female legs instead of silk stockings, a wrist-watch that had stopped.
Two of the men had their faces crammed over the squat-holes in the floor, hoping against all odds that the sewer gas would contain enough oxygen to sustain life.
One of the women was bent double over the deep wash-basin at the far end, her head still under the faucet she clutched. Purse spilled open on the floor, pillbox hat and veil in ruins.
Another of the men had tried to cling to the tiny air vent high on the far wall but had finally had to let go and was now slumped against the corner.
The last woman and man had lain directly behind the door, trying to cover their faces with handkerchiefs.
Not liking what he’d found, Kohler fingered the lock and key in doubt. One toilet for both sexes, that was the norm, so nothing out of the ordinary there. A three-holer Turkish with trough urinal for the boys and a cracked mirror so they could comb their hair and try to watch the ladies at their peeing. But why lock the door on them? Why? Was the arsonist or arsonists so sick in the head, he or she or they could think to do a thing like that in addition to everything else?
The bodies had been untouched by the flames and lay exactly as they’d been found, except for the two behind the door. He stepped over them and nudged the door closed. He set the torch down on the floor and turned the man over, sucking in a breath as he did so.
There was a rolled-up sheaf of paper in the right hand, the grip so tight it was only with difficulty-a foot pressed down hard on the knuckles-that it was released.
Railway schedules, ah merde. Lyon to the internment camp at Besancon and on to the German border near Mulhouse. Lyon to Paris. Lyon to Tours, to Bordeaux, to Marseille and Toulon …
The locations of bridges, viaducts, tunnels and switching yards … the lines black and clear under the torch beam. A siding at Dijon had been circled with red ink; another at Macon. A water tower at Moulins, a coal depot at Nevers …
Switches … and more of them. The locations of flatbed cranes to lift track or wrecked locomotives and railway trucks out of the way. Verdammt! What had the bastards been planning? To blow up everything?
Were the papers to have been sent over to England?
Dragging the woman back against the door to hold it closed, he went to work. First the identity papers of every one of them, then the contents of the men’s pockets and the women’s purses.
None of the men were over the age of forty-five. The women were in their late thirties. Not young, not old, not beautiful but ordinary … Why did he have to look at them that way?
Madame Madeleine Roget of the passage Mermet in Croix Rousse, the hill between the rivers and home of the silkweavers …
Kohler yanked her head up from under the tap. ‘What the hell did you think you were doing, madame? Plotting terrorism? You were a courier. Come on, answer me! You were going to take those plans to someone else. Two women would split the risk, the one going north, the other south.’
He let her head fall. He tried to get a grip on himself. Louis …? he asked. Louis, what am I supposed to do? Tell Gestapo Lyon or keep silent about it?
Behind the projectionist’s booth, and facing on to the place Terreaux, there were three flats. A corridor led across the width of the building to the now-open doorways and the narrow staircase to the street. St-Cyr hesitated. Ah nom de Dieu, there was no sense in risking life and limb, yet he had the feeling there was something he should see and asked angrily, ‘God, why must you do this to me, eh? A simple detective? Roasted children on the Eve of Christmas! Mothers straining to reach their daughters! How much more do You think a man can take?’
As was His custom, God did not answer. One of the occupants had leapt to his death. The others had either made it down the stairs or had been taken down the ladders.
Gingerly stepping on to a joist, St-Cyr began to pick his way along the corridor, turning first to the right and then to the left when things got shaky.