His gaze must be like the guillotine before it falls and she must see this. No quarter, only triumph. ‘In Rouen I had time to think, my dear. What must she do? I asked myself, and put in a call to my solicitors. They’ve been with us since the days of my grandfather, Inspectors. Vrillière et fils, Number six, place de Valois and long ago they learned the art of discretion, especially in matters between husband and wife.’
It was coming now, and she could only hate him all the more. He gave her a moment to savour it. He ran his eyes over her forgotten breasts not with pity, ah no, but with utter contempt.
‘Last Wednesday, Bernadette, you told Monsieur Charles that the affair between myself and Liline had ended and that I wanted no trouble and wished to settle the sum of two hundred and seventy-five thousand francs on the girl. This sum, which you gave them on condition of silence, they were to hold until Monday at nine a.m., as it would be picked up then by a close friend of your family, a priest who would act as intermediary. A Father Eugène Debauve, who would present them with a sealed envelope for me containing some letters I had written to her. This he has, unfortunately, done. How could you have been so stupid?’
A sum of 275,000 francs in cash … ‘Madame …’ began the Sûreté, only to hear her say, ‘Nénette can answer all your questions, but I greatly fear she will not be able to. Will it be the Sandman who kills her, Inspectors, or my lover, since both must now know she intends to accuse them? Not me. Never me.’
8
Green, blue and amber, ruby red, the last light of day glowed among the shattered windows high above them while on the floor at Louis’s feet the Star of David, drawn by the child in windblown snow, now bore the careless bruises of bootprints. But these were not hers, nor a man’s, but those of a woman.
Uncertain and fearing the worst, they followed them from room to room down a corridor, now dark, now brushed with snow. A study, a school where Hebrew and religious studies had been taught, had been turned over to storage. Clothing, blankets, boots and shoes, all to be sent to the needy via the Jewish relief organization, had been left in sodden heaps as if forgotten.
Kohler shone his torch around. Among the rubbish, books littered the floor, sheet music, too. Chopin, Brahms, Tchaikovsky. All of the bundles had been broken open and searched for money. A partly closed door gave access to yet more rooms and then to the cellars, to a dark and forbidding arched brick entrance that shouted up no welcome, only a warning.
Was the child now dead? wondered St-Cyr. Had they failed her, and who, please, was the woman? Sister Céline, Violette Belanger, Madame Morelle or Madame Rébé?
Or was it none of these but someone else, someone who also knew who the Sandman was but had no fear of him?
Had the Attack Leader revealed his darkest thoughts to his psychotherapist?
At the foot of the stairs a river of black ice led to heaps of broken crates, smashed picture frames and jackboot-torn canvases … Raphael … Leonardo … ah mon Dieu, Fouquet that master of fifteenth-century French painting … A Madonna and child … A Botticelli, the Birth of Venus perhaps … Mould on everything, no time to look closer, no time … all stored for safety … safety …
The smell of coal dust and long-cold ashes came to them. The furnace was huge, the boilers even larger, the coal bins empty, the bootprints clear. Those of the child, too. Her explorings, her sitting on an overturned pail to think things through. Droplets of wax, the stub of a candle fixed to an up-ended coffee can. A wad of chewing gum parked behind a water pipe.
The door of the furnace was closed, its cast-iron draught plate open.
Kohler swung the beam of the torch around, letting it pierce the web of grey-white, asbestos-wrapped pipes, thin coverings of soot on each and on the gauge. Here and there the child had boldly printed her name and those of Andrée Noireau and Liline Chambert in the soot. ARE WE ALL TO DIE? she had asked, and had left that question for them.
‘Hermann …’
Kohler switched off the torch and they listened to the silence, breathed in the smell of the place, the frigid mustiness. ‘Block the doorway behind us,’ he sighed. ‘This is a dead end except for the hand-operated lift they used to bring the coal sacks down and take the ashes out before the war.’
They waited. They stood their ground but had not brought their guns-ah! it was Hermann’s responsiblity to take charge of the guns until needed and they’d been in too much of a hurry.
When he found the hoist well, Kohler looked up it into the night. Already the stars were coming out. It would be clear and very cold.
There was no sign of the child’s having been taken forceably up the thing, not even her bootprints, only a notice she had written in soot, THIS IS THE WAY OUT AND THE WAY IN.
Whoever had come for her had known of the place but had departed some time ago, having returned the lift platform to the cellars.
It was now 5.27 p.m. Berlin Time, and they had been in the city not quite forty-four hours. Since well before dawn, their only sustenance had been two cups of coffee and a few croissants, courtesy of von Schaumburg, a bowl of the acorn water with Oona and a little of the National bread.
They were hungry and running on Messerschmitt Benzedrine, which could and would fail them if too much was taken and yet … yet the child might still be free.
In the Jewish part of the ancien Cimetière de Neuilly behind the ramparts of headstones, the few and scattered mausoleums had been broken into during the desecration. Bronze doors when pushed further inward revealed shattered cremation urns or family burial vaults that had felt the sledgehammer blows until their seals had crumbled and their coffins had been dragged out in search of gold wedding rings and other trinkets.
In one such mausoleum the child had placed silk flowers she must have stolen from Gentile graves. In another, behind a cut-stone menorah and opened Talmud, she had bedded down for a night, having swept the floor clean with a broom of straw she had acquired from God knows where.
In the dust she had written: Andrée, you must forgive me. Liline is also dead. I went to the place where she was and I saw them taking her out.
‘The dogs, Louis. We have to ask von Schaumburg to allow us to use them.’
‘She’ll be terrified.’
‘But safe.’
‘Unless held hostage.’
‘All right, let’s pay Sister Céline a visit and hear what she has to say.’
‘Madame Morelle, I think, and Violette Belanger, but first the Vernet solicitors. Let us hope they are not now gone for the day.’ Could God not grant them this one small miracle, a conscientious solicitor? wondered St-Cyr and answered tartly, God thinks nothing of solicitors and hasn’t the time of day for them.
The envelope was sealed and soft, the eyes of the elderly solicitor concerned.
With care Louis opened the thing the ‘priest’, Eugène Debauve, had left for Antoine Vernet. Emptily he said, ‘The underpants that were taken from the site of the abortion. But not to sell on the black market, simply as proof so that the last touch Monsieur Vernet would have of Liline Chambert would be this one sad memento from his wife.’
‘Merde, merde, Louis, she must really hate him.’
Like the rest of the city, the house on the rue Chabanais was now in darkness but cigarettes glowed, the line-up was long, boots shuffled, men coughed. And as before, the Feldgendarmen were discernable only because of their size and because they stood in the street, not on the pavement, their breath billowing in the frigid air.