‘Merci. Doctor, please ask him how he felt in Poland when he used that same tooth-brush?’
‘I didn’t mean to upset Nénette,’ blurted Hasse. ‘She must have realized where it had come from and that’s why she left it behind.’
‘Gerhardt, please don’t distress yourself. Please listen to me,’ urged the woman, turning to take him by the hands. ‘No, you must look at me, my darling. Forget them. They are nothing. They are mistaken, yes? We both know this. We were in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, isn’t that so? My parents, Gerhardt. You visited them. They had moved there in forty-one so as to be close to me.’
‘It’s not the death of Andrée Noireau they’re interested in,’ he said sadly. ‘It’s those of all the others.’
‘Did Nénette say anything about the Sandman?’ asked Louis. ‘DID SHE?’
‘Please don’t shout. Please,’ urged the woman, trembling.
Hasse straightened. He became in that one brief instant the Attack Leader he had once been. ‘Only that she hoped you would catch the criminal before there was another killing.’
Kohler leaned on the desk and all but shouted, ‘Do you fantasize about little girls, Herr Hasse? Schoolgirls, eh?’
‘How dare you,’ swore the woman. ‘You cannot ask such things. You will only undo all we have accomplished.’
‘Then ask him where he left her body,’ sighed Kohler. ‘Let’s make it plain and simple.’
Hasse tried to object, but she silenced him with a touch. ‘He isn’t lying. He did deliver the child to the sisters. Please avail yourselves of the telephone. I’m sure the Mother Superior will be only too glad to tell you the child was exhausted and is now soundly asleep.’
‘Who watches over her, then?’ managed Louis anxiously.
‘One of the sisters.’
‘Which one?’
‘This the Mother Superior did not say.’
‘Then tell us where Debauve is. Tell us, damn itl’ shouted Kohler.
‘Not here,’ she said, her gaze unwavering. ‘The good Father seldom visits. Our clients are mainly businessmen and officers from the Reich. Many are veterans of the campaigns in the East, yes, and North Africa. The Freikorps Dönitz also, the submarine service-we get quite a few of those-and lots from the Luftwaffe. They are here for either rest and recuperation or simply business. Relaxation is needed, and this we provide.’
She must have a damned cold heart not to care about that child, thought Kohler bitterly. He wanted to take her aside and breathe a few words into the shell of her ear, just to remind her the end was coming, that the war was going to turn sour someday. ‘Then why is a psychotherapist needed?’ he asked, shoving stuff aside to sit on a corner of the desk.
Was it to be just between the two of them now? she wondered, smiling inwardly. ‘A therapist decides what is best for all, but is really only needed for the special cases,’ she said, taunting him further.
‘There are others like him?’ he asked, nodding at the Attack Leader.
How stupid of him. ‘Of course. Like Herr Hasse, they require sensitivity, understanding and a willingness to listen, to believe and to guide their steps down the path to healing.’
Verdammt, the bitch! ‘How much does Oberg pay you?’ he asked, knowing Violette Belanger had told them they were spying for Oberg, sucking up blackmail details for him to use. Those juicy little things that are whispered, confessed to some defrocked priest or simply revealed in a moment of bravado over a meal, a glass of wine or in bed.
Herr Kohler was trembling ever so slightly. The avenue Foch had said he was on Benzedrine and that he was dangerously close to becoming addicted if not already so. The voice of a robot would only further torment him. ‘Our rates are set. Consultation is voluntary on the part of the patient. The reports and diagnoses are strictly confidential.’
‘Bananas! Since when has anything the SS ever had a hand in been confidential if they thought they could use it? Just why, please, meine gute Frau Doktor, have you taken this out?’
He thumped the dossier she had in front of her.
‘Because Herr Hasse has asked me to allow you to peruse it, since he has nothing to hide. His is not an easy past to reconcile, but with persistence, determination and hard work, a full recovery is quite possible, though I must say he does not believe this. We have constant debates about it. They are healthy, yes, Herr Hauptmann Detektif Inspektor Kohler? He’s come a long way, believe me.’
‘But you’ve not slept with him yet, have you?’
Hasse put a restraining hand on her shoulder. ‘I didn’t kill the child, Inspector. Nénette can easily tell you this herself, and as for Andrée and the others, and Mademoiselle Chambert, I have already told you I want the person or persons responsible apprehended.’
‘Ah yes,’ interjected the Sûreté, ‘but, please, did you and Nénette discuss the killing of her little friend?’
‘She said only that the Sandman could not have done it.’
‘And she did not cry? She did not burst into tears at the mention of her friend? You did not enquire further? Well?’
There was no need to answer any of their questions, but he would do so. ‘Why should I have asked? I was just glad to have her safely with me. I didn’t want to upset her any more than she already was.’
He’s lying, said St-Cyr to himself. The woman felt it, too, and nervously pressed her hand flat on the dossier as Hasse spoke. ‘And where, please, did you pick her up?’
Monique Reynard dreaded the answer that was to come and averted her eyes from Hermann and himself.
‘On the allée de Longchamp,’ said Hasse with all the dignity he could muster. ‘I admit I had been searching for her. That was why the sketch map was in my studio.’
‘But you didn’t take it with you,’ said Kohler sadly.
‘I forgot. In … in my anxiety to … to find her, it completely went … went out of my head. Can’t you see I was-’
‘Gerhardt, please! It’s all right. Just tell them how it was.’
Ah Gott im Himmel, they were a pair, the two of them. How often had she tried to sleep with him and failed? wondered Kohler. Far more times than five lost weekends in the countryside.
‘I wanted to help,’ confessed Hasse, silently cursing the two of them for doubting him. ‘Then there she was, running out of the woods to flag me down and scramble into the car. She … she said she was being followed and … and had no other choice. “Quickly,” she said, “before she sees you’ve got me.”’
‘She?’
‘Yes.’
St-Cyr took the two of them in at a glance before letting his gaze settle on the woman. ‘Whom did she mean?’ he asked Hasse.
‘She didn’t say.’
‘And you did not ask?’ demanded Kohler fiercely.
‘I knew she was distressed-I feared for her. She was safe. I thought perhaps it had been one of the sisters. I knew that all things would be revealed in due course.’
All things … A solid citizen, then, simply doing his duty, was that it, eh? thought St-Cyr. A woman … A woman … ‘Exactly where along the allée de Longchamp did you come across the child?’
‘Near the Carrefour de Longchamp and the Grande Cascade.’
Kohler heard Louis suck in an impatient breath. ‘Almost at the Hippodrome, Hermann, and quite some distance from the Jardin d’Acclimatation. A good two kilometres to the southwest of the stables. From there, a kilometre farther to the children’s restaurant and salon de thé. Why, please, do you think you found her so far from the Jardin?’
Again Mademoiselle Reynard betrayed how much she dreaded the answer.
‘I’ve already told you,’ snapped Hasse. ‘She was being followed.’
‘By whom? Come, come, monsieur, you know all about who was following her. You’d done so yourself many times before-isn’t that correct? Well, isn’t it? You had secretly taken photographs of her and Andrée Noireau. You knew she was being followed by others, yet you did nothing about it. Nothing. I want to know why!’