Von Schaumburg, too, the Kommandant von Gross-Paris.
‘Maybe it was the way he’d fallen to his knees that caused the flics to brand him a homosexual,’ said Kohler.
One just didn’t mention them these days if possible. Invariably they kept a low profile. ‘I’ll check his temperature, shall I, Inspector,’ came the reminder to bugger off. Lieber Christus im Himmel how could Louis do it? Shaking down the mercury like that while shielding it; peering at the gradations to make sure he got it right, then easing the thing inside?
Cold weather would speed the cooling but nowhere near what was commonly thought. Each corpse had its own rate-even the time of day and the weather could influence it, but on average a corpse lost heat at a little over two degrees Centigrade an hour-that was the figure Louis often used. And from thirty-seven degrees this one’s had fallen to …
‘Nineteen and close enough.’
Death had occurred at between eight and nine last night, though the coroner would have to confirm it. ‘Did the evening’s entertainment begin with him?’ asked Kohler sadly.
Was it a portent of things to come? wondered St-Cyr. ‘And then the girl who telephoned?’
‘Was this one her pimp?’
‘Perhaps, but for now we must wait.’
One of the lanterns was reached for. Dutifully Hermann started up the stairs to get a blanket.
‘I’m going to have to watch over him,’ confided St-Cyr to the victim. ‘He was forced to witness some terrible things only a day or two ago, was showered with broken glass and has been hating himself ever since when no blame should ever be attached to him. He’s not responsible for Hitler and the Nazis, or the Gestapo and the SS, or what the Wehrmacht are doing in Russia and have done elsewhere. As a detective, he had to belong to the Kripo-one couldn’t have resigned in protest. He has never had anything to do with any of them, has always been apart and himself and, since coming to France, has become a citizen of the world to whom a little polishing is necessary from time to time.’
At 7.45 a.m., the light was pitiful and the sleet had changed to such a heavy downpour one had to be mindful of the marker that was along the quai de la Tournelle, right where there was a fabulous view of the Notre-Dame on warm, sunny days. Normally the river’s level stood at two metres, Kohler knew. At four, all traffic had had to stop before the Defeat, though now that was, perhaps, less of a problem, but anything beyond that level and the city would need its water wings.
‘When this quits, Louis, there’ll be fog for days,’ he grumbled. In war, as in this Occupation, there wasn’t any sense in getting sentimental about anything.
The Lido had yielded zero about the caller of last night. No one had mentioned anything about anyone having been forced to telephone the police, nor had anyone gone missing.
It wasn’t good. It was terrible, and yes, at least three-quarters of the audience of last night or any other would have been of the Occupier, the rest their friends. And that, too, wasn’t good, for both Louis and he knew damned well that the Occupier craved female company and could and did commit murder or any other common crime.
While they’d been there, the quartier’s commissariat had found them and now, more than soaked to the skin and freezing, they were standing in the rain, waiting. The warden of the Parc Monceau, one of the city’s loveliest and not far from the prefet’s school or the Lido, had found freshly dug earth and hastily replaced flagstones under the shelter of an arbour and had let the flic on patrol know about it.
‘The fingers can’t be here, Hermann. The gates to the park would have been locked at the time of the killing.’
Yet chance could and did play a part in things these days. Bourgeois-wealthy beyond mention, some of the quartier’s residents-the park was second home to the establishment.
‘Financiers, Hermann. Bankers, lawyers, men of commerce but writers too. Proust lived nearby and loved this park. It comes out in what he wrote of it. Old money, new money …’ Brusquely Louis indicated the surrounding hotels and mansions as if even within les hautes there were substrata that did not mingle.
It was tough being a Socialist, thought Kohler of his partner. They were standing near the northeastern end of the park, overlooking the naumachia where frozen, moss- and ivy-covered Corinthian columns formed a horseshoe at the far end of an ice-clad pond atop which water had rapidly pooled. Rose beds in winter’s burlap, were to the left. Pigeons-perhaps the few that hadn’t yet been trapped and eaten-suffered atop the colonnade. Beyond them, the trees were tall; beyond those lay the fence and some of the hotels particuliers of the very wealthy. Nice … it must be nice to live there and overlook the park.
Beyond these residences lay the boulevard de Courcelles and the boulevard Malesherbes.
The warden, in his cape, hat, rubber boots and faded blue coveralls, was watching as two of the underwardens carefully removed the earth. ‘Inspectors …’
Ten fingers-were all of them here to remind him of the trenches of that other war? wondered Kohler.
The grave was shallow. ‘A dog’s ear, Hermann.’
There were mutters of consternation. ‘I can see that, Louis. A terrier’s. Irish probably. Is there a tattoo?’
All dogs with a pedigree, and this was a quartier for them, would wear their registration number inside an ear.
The fur was rusty coloured and more shaggy than wiry but still, the ear was long and pointed as it should be and there were two of them and the tail and paws as further proof, and not dead that long, thought Kohler. Maybe a day, maybe two or three, given that it was still winter. ‘Number 375614, Louis. Skinned, the pelt sold or kept, but in either case to be tanned for further use, the rest consigned to the stew pot or soup.’
Dog snatching had become rife, felt St-Cyr. Household pets of all kinds were at risk. Notices, posted on walls, warned of the dangers of eating cats, since the vermin they might have consumed would surely carry disease. And hadn’t the average family or individual already seen nearly 80 percent of their wage packet’s prewar purchasing power vanish? Hadn’t those same wages been frozen at 1939 levels? Wasn’t the Occupation’s horrendous inflation one of its most tragic curses, the consequences being suicide and lawlessness? ‘I’ll just bag these, Hermann, and we’ll be on our way.’
The passage de la Trinite, that of the Jouffroy, the Restaurant Drouant and the police academy … A velo-taxi theft and the beating-rape of its passenger and purse-snatching, a safecracking with clay from the sewers, a brutal mugging, slashing, deliberate humiliation and another handbag snatch, a violent murder and a missing pet.
‘Assignments that are given on purpose and others that are not, Hermann.’
‘The stench of fish oil. A man with a gut.’
‘Grease, and two wedding rings. It’s curious, is it not, that both the Trinite victim and one of the Drouant victims have absent husbands.’
Who were languishing in prisoner-of-war camps in the Reich or farther to the east-they’d found this out when they’d taken Giselle and Oona to the Trinite victim’s flat to look after the children. ‘Did the assailant or assailants know beforehand where each of the victims would be, Louis?’
That, too, was a good question for which there could, as yet, be no adequate answer.
2
When the boys heard the sound of the Citroen at 8.42 a.m., they knew absolutely who it was. That big, black, beautiful traction avant slid to a stop down there at number 3 rue Laurence Savart in Belleville. Antoine Courbet’s mother did the cleaning but never the washing-up. Hadn’t Monsieur Jean-Louis once said that such a humble activity was the best way of relieving tension and that he’d better keep doing it so long as the pots hadn’t burned the dinner. What dinner?