Reluctantly she agreed. Ah merde, how easily women were taken in, thought St-Cyr. First they are afraid, then not afraid, then suddenly afraid again.
She asked what kind of shop he kept and for a time they were lost in a crowd that quickly vanished. Maudit, where had they gone? The infrequency of dim blue streetlamps gave futile guidance. Against the night sky, St-Cyr made out the stumpy branches of the trees that lined the quai des Celestins on the river side. There would be benches, places to hide-steps down to the water’s edge where the ice had now gathered.
Lovers were caught in frozen embrace. Somewhere across the river, a car started up and he watched, as all others would, for the glow of the headlamps. And when it came along the quai Romain Rolland, he, too, saw that it was a German staff car.
But then it disappeared up the rue de la Bombarde and for a moment, anyway, the city dropped back into its silence and he heard the stirrings of the river as it flowed beneath the ice.
Another couple kissed, and at first he thought he’d found them, but then this girl whispered, ‘Albert, I love you. Albert, I must go home! Until tomorrow, then?’
The boy swore he’d see her at church and they parted, he to hurry one way and the girl another. Teenagers …
Left alone and to the river, St-Cyr searched the half-light and the deeper darkness. Night was seldom so dark things could not be seen. With ice and snow on the ground, it was much lighter still. Out over the river, threatening dark stretches of water lapped razor-thin ice near upwelling pools of sewage. Along the bank, the ice tended to thicken except right at the sewer outlets. In these places gaps were kept open and vapour rose thickly from them.
Had Charlebois already killed the girl? Had he left her body for him to find?
When a shrill scream came, he began to run. When she shrieked and fought and cried, ‘No! No, please! I cannot swim!’ he saw her spinning drunkenly out across the ice, throwing her hands this way and that as she tried to stop herself. She went down hard. She went right through but did not cry for help. Ah merde!
He pitched down the frozen steps to the water’s edge. As he raced out over the ice, he tried to fling off his overcoat.
A fleeting glimpse revealed Charlebois etched against the night sky, standing in the middle of the footbridge.
She bobbed up like a cork just beyond the edge of the ice, only to disappear suddenly. Where … where was she? ‘Mademoiselle,’ shouted the Surete. ‘I’m a police officer. No, no, please do not give up. Here, I am coming to help you.’
‘Louis, I’m right behind you!’
‘Hermann? Ah grace a Dieu, thank goodness you are here. The current is too fast for her.’
‘She’s downstream against the ice. She’s trying to smash her way in but will never make it.’
They ran. Louis slid himself flat on the ice and worked his way out to her. He grabbed and grabbed again and again, but each time she slipped away.
‘You or me?’ shouted Kohler desperately.
‘I must be wetter than you,’ said the Surete’s little Frog. ‘Hang on to my ankles this time.’
The ice broke and it nearly took the two of them. When Louis grabbed the girl, she cried out and tried to fight him. Now both of them were yelling and spluttering. Kohler ran. Working his way downstream, he hunted for a place where he could get out to them and use his overcoat as a lifeline. Louis threw up a hand but missed it. ‘Verdammt! Must I jump in there too? Hang on. Don’t let go of her!’
A sleeve was caught, then a wrist. ‘Pull!’ shouted Kohler. He grabbed the girl by the scruff and hauled her out, was now soaking wet and freezing rapidly.
‘Louis …? Louis, where the hell are you?’ Downstream … downstream.
His head was just above water. He was swimming in a pool some fifteen metres away.
Leaving the girl, Kohler crawled out on the ice. Thin … it was so thin. He felt it give, heard it crack and sigh and crack again. Ah merde …
They touched hands, and he managed to get Louis out. With fifteen degrees of frost, they had but a few minutes and they knew it. Dragging the girl, they forced themselves to run. They made it across the footbridge and past the Palais de Justice, were slowed to a crawl in the rue des Trois Maries and could barely pound on the door of La Belle Epoque.
In rosewood, ebony and gold, the green baize-covered armchairs and peacock-hued faience cockerels began to change their places, thought St-Cyr. And the maidenhair ferns flew languidly with the storks on their pots, while the water-lilies on the walls kept trying to go round and round.
Vaguely he was aware of many hands tearing at his clothes, of corseted and uncorseted bosoms, lace, perfume, much flesh, powder, eye shadow and rouge. Of black-meshed silk stockings, garters and urgent voices that demanded rum and blankets and hot water. ‘Blue … they are so blue, madame,’ cried a girl with sunset hair that spilled over bare and gracefully moving shoulders. ‘She’s more frozen than those two,’ said another, rubbing the arms of the girl they had rescued. ‘The bath, madame. Upstairs. Quickly! Quickly!’
Four of them pushed and heaved him up the stairs. His legs, they wouldn’t work. Ah merde, what was the matter with him?
Hands were everywhere, with sponges. Earnest faces drew close, only to dissolve as they receded.
Gradually warmth returned. The tub was huge and there were at least five of them in it. Hermann’s eyes were closed. The girl they had rescued was being turned on to her stomach so that her seat and back could be sponged and rubbed. One of the others was holding the girl’s head and shoulders just above the water.
A last glimpse revealed Madame Rachline with three glasses and a decanter of dark rum. Rum … rum … Mustn’t touch it … mustn’t touch it. He shut his eyes and, giving himself up to the ministrations of her girls, allowed himself a momentary lapse into sleep and warmth … much warmth …
‘Drink,’ urged someone sternly. ‘Ah nom de Dieu, come on, Inspector. Open the mouth like a little bird in orgasm. Swallow!’
The rum burned his throat. Like liquid fire, it spread its warmth to his loins and he knew he was slipping off into oblivion, knew that he could no longer stop himself.
‘Don’t drown them,’ said someone harshly. ‘Put them to bed and keep an eye on them.’
Grey-white, and with a crust like Brie, the phosphorus shone in the brilliant glare of the torch but it had not yet burst instantly into flame. A forest of undressed, upright timbers no more than a metre high separated him from it. The posts were stubby, had splintered surfaces that were coated with coal dust and webbed by spiders. Absolutely bone dry and excellent fodder … fodder … And the space between the floor above and that below was crammed with the rubbish of a theatre. Stage props and steamer trunks on their sides, suitcases left in haste or arrears ten, twenty-fifty years ago. Was there no end to the space, no end to the distance between him and the phosphorus?
Frantically St-Cyr scrambled among the timbers, ducking under bracing cross-timbers, banging his head on the floor joists above. An arm was caught, an ankle … Savagely he yanked them free and cried out in pain, snarled at God. Said, Why can You not stop mocking Your little detective just this once, eh?
Probing anxiously in the pitch darkness, the torch beam picked out only more and more of the same. Then he saw it in a far corner. A bag of some sort hanging from one of the joists by a bit of string. It was dripping water … water … slowly, steadily. Would there be time to reach it before all the water was gone? Was he now too late … too late? He must try. He must!
The bag was plump and soft and smelled mildly of garlic, and where the water seeped out to gather into each droplet, there was a small protuberance, stiff and with an aureole of little bumps around it.