‘Only from five to six thousand have so far been licensed and issued the bilingual cards that show they are nur fur Deutsche.’
Registered for use only by Germans and how was one to stop the boys from seizing the moment, especially when forbidden to use the legal, French-only brothels?
‘Hospital maternity wards are full of girls having their love children, my Hermann.’
More beer was taken, the salt rolls again passed. ‘Not even once-weekly visits by the doctor to each licensed house have lessened the VD plague. I tell you all of this, Hermann, so that should the Kommandant von Gross-Paris raise his voice, you will understand why.’
‘But, Rudi, wouldn’t the streets being terrorized at night help to lessen the VD?’
‘Paris is paradise, is it not? Besides, the Fuhrer in his wisdom made a promise to all of our boys that they would each get to spend a little time here.’ Rudi gave it a bit of a pause. ‘Also,’ he went on, the puffy eyelids with their lashes at half-mast, ‘there is one girl, a Blitzmadel, Hermann, whose handbag was unfortunately snatched last Sunday at 1247 hours while she was washing up at a restaurant in the Buttes Chaumont Park. Near the carousel, I think. You know the one, of course. “Some schoolboys,” she has said. Four of them.’
‘Their ages?’ squawked the Surete as he should.
‘Ten. I tell you this, Herr Oberdetektiv St-Cyr, only so that should the handbag and its contents turn up during your investigation, you will know where it came from.’
A salt roll had best be fingered, assessed and then eaten, thought Rudi. ‘A reward of one hundred thousand francs has been offered by this restaurant, since she is a secretary for those over on the avenue Foch.’
The SS General Karl Albrecht Oberg, the Butcher of Poland and now Hoherer SS und Polizeifuhrer of France, and hadn’t chance or fate played its part? No wonder the boys on Louis’s street had hung around and been late for school!
‘A Mausefalle, my Hermann. Your friends in the SS are going to demand that you set one for these criminals and bait it with one of your women.’
A mousetrap.
* * *
They had to take a moment, had no other choice and shared a cigarette as the Citroen idled outside Chez Rudi’s.
‘Oberg can’t yet know about the boys, Louis. Rudi will keep that to himself for a while.’
But would he? ‘The boys will still be in school, Madame Courbet out lining up at the shops. We’ll have to leave it until later.’
Louis was really feeling it and with good reason. ‘Rudi sure knows how to threaten. If anything should happen to his Helga or to his Julie and Yvette …’
‘Tears, a girl from home?’
The boys would steal that one’s handbag. Louis, who had tried so hard to set an example for them and was their hero, could only feel betrayed.
‘If Oberg does find out, Hermann, I’m up against the post and so are you.’
A souriciere … A mousetrap, the floodlights suddenly coming on … ‘I can’t use Giselle nor can I ask Oona.’
‘You’ve used Giselle before and in the blackout too.’
‘ARE YOU SUGGESTING I PUT HER LIFE AT RISK AGAIN?’
‘Not at all. I was merely reminding you of …’
‘That time was different.’
‘Times, Hermann. More than once you’ve …’
‘Face it, I can’t ask either of them any more than you could Gabrielle. They both mean far too much to me. It’s equal, Louis. I could never choose between them.’
A man with a dilemma. ‘Ah, bon, then let’s lose the tail the Propagandastaffel have assigned to us.’
A dark-blue Ford Ten, the 1935 four-door, sat idling behind them, the one at the wheel no doubt the reporter, the other with the flashgun and camera in his lap.
‘Let me go and have a word while you take over here, Louis. We can’t both be in the same place at the same time anyway.’
‘Au Philateliste Savant …’
‘Is all yours.’
‘The place de l’Opera and the owner of a certain velo-taxi?’
‘I’d better do that one and drop in to see Old Shatter Hand.’
‘Then please don’t forget that once a month he makes a point of inspecting the brothels, the legal ones that are nur fur Deutsche.’ A Prussian of the old school, the General Ernst von Schaumburg, Kommandant von Gross-Paris, was a confirmed bachelor and moralizing prude who hated the French almost as much as he did the SS and the Gestapo, and liked nothing better than to stamp out disorder. It was best that Hermann deal with him.
Kohler grinned companionably as the side window was unwound and a blue fug of Gauloise smoke escaped. Two hard brown eyes gazed impassively up at him from beneath the grey snap-brim of a brand-new fedora.
‘Hey, listen,’ he said. ‘There’s been a fantastic development we thought you’d be interested in. A lead, maybe, to the brains behind this whole string of rapes and murders.’
‘The brains … ?’ blurted Jean-Max Privet, taken aback by their luck.
‘If you can give me a lift, your friend here can shoot the brass while you scoop the story.’
Was Kohler just ragging them? Could they chance leaving it? ‘Hop in, then. Where to?’
‘Let’s try place de l’Opera first. Protocol. You know how it is.’
The Kommandant von Gross-Paris, and didn’t everyone know Kohler and St-Cyr worked quickly?
These two were from Paris-Soir, whose aged Alsatian elevator-operator-cum-night-watchman had been the only one left to guard the newspaper on the day the Occupier had marched into Paris and had soon found himself in the boss’s chair running one of the city’s largest dailies. Decisions by the Propagandastaffel had had to be made quickly. Where else could they have found a man who knew the building better, the workings too? He’d been the man for the job and still was, having easily mastered the art of hiring managing editors and others. Now he just read the articles they submitted and gave advice to guys like these.
‘Hector Morand, a votre service,’ said the photographer. ‘It’s good of you to cooperate.’
‘Isn’t St-Cyr going to the Kommandantur too?’ asked Privet.
‘Him? I’m sending him over to the rue des Saussaies to organize a little backup.’
A Gauloise bleue was offered by Morand and accepted, a light too, and why not? ‘This car of yours is nice but not as roomy as I’d like in the back.’
It was really one of the car pool’s. ‘Move things, Inspector, if you need more space,’ sang out Privet with a toss of his head and glance into the rearview as he negotiated traffic.
‘Provisions,’ chuckled Morand. ‘On our way here we had to pick up a few things.’
Two baguettes, one string bag of cooking onions and potatoes, a chain of garlic bulbs, four litres of unlabelled red, one of oil, too, and good by the look, a cabbage, three kilos of carrots and one newspaper-wrapped parcel that had leaked butcher-blood.
‘To think that I almost bought one of these cars,’ said Kohler with a sigh. ‘I was in England on a police course at the time. The British made ninety-seven thousand of them but they were also made in the Reich. Mon Dieu, I could have got one for 145 pounds-that was about 10,875 francs or close to it then.’ And now only about two thousand francs more than the price of a brand-new bicycle if one could find it! ‘Rudi told us the press were going to cover things in detail and that it would be best for us to help you boys, but how did the two of you get chosen?’
‘We drew lots at the briefing this morning and our number came up,’ said Privet.
They were heading for place de l’Opera now. Long queues for permission, lost IDs and complaints, et cetera. ‘Good. I can see that we’re going to get along. Don’t park too close to the barricades. It’s better if we walk a little. That way the sentries won’t get anxious.’