In Deutsch, he said, ‘I understand, Fraulein, that your fiance was killed in Norway during the invasion. Please accept my condolences.’
Did this verfluchter Franzose think to engage her in conversation to soften her resolve? wondered Sonja. The Standartenfuhrer gave her the curtest of nods and she must do exactly as indicated, responding curtly as ordered but not in Deutsch. ‘Oui, mon Erich.’
Nothing else. The lift stopped, the cage door was opened by Langbehn who indicated the corridor.
The seals were all there, but Hermann had a system. Sometimes a hair would be placed across the crease between the door and the jamb and exactly two centimetres below the lowest hinge, sometimes a clot of household dust or pocket lint and with only a touch protruding, sometimes the tiniest bit of paper.
Never white or brightly coloured, this last was there but much, much closer to that hinge than it should have been.
Uncertain still of what to expect from this Kripo, Thibodeau indicated the corpse on its pallet in the morgue of the Hotel-Dieu.
She had been wearing a hospital gown, but such things must be in very short supply and she’d not have needed it in any case, had been beaten to hell. The left shoulder and wrist, Kohler knew, had been badly sprained but not broken. There’d been blood on her lips and chin when Louis had taken her from that taxi and this Kripo had had to carry her to the car, she having passed out.
The lips were now a deep, dark plum-purple and slack, no rigor yet. An upper front incisor had been broken, the rest all stained by nicotine, a heavy smoker …
‘A fingernail was recovered,’ he heard himself mutter, and then, as Louis would have done, ‘Forgive me, madame, but I have to look more closely.’
She was cold, smelled of death and of the cheap, ersatz perfume with which she had regularly dosed herself. The skin of the right hip didn’t rebound, of course, when pressure from his fingers was released after having nudged her side up a little.
The forehead had been opened in a five-centimetre gash but what the hell had done it? Blood would have blinded her in that eye. The nose had been broken, the bony, pasty knees and thighs badly scraped. Fibres from her skirt or coat were still glued to the legs, black hairs also, black pubic hairs …
‘TAKE A LOOK AT HER, DAMN YOU,’ he cried. ‘COME ON. SEE FOR YOURSELF WHAT YOU AND DENISE ROUGET AND THOSE MOTHERS OF YOURS HAVE HELPED TO CAUSE!’
Germaine de Brisac turned away and had to be caught. Dragged back and forced to look, she gagged. Madame Guillaumet’s eyes hadn’t yet been closed, the darkness of the lips matching that of the bruises on the neck of this … this officer’s wife who would sell herself to another, her head forced back as the rapist had …
She coughed, she cried, she threw up the pommes d’amour flambees a l’Amaretto, the salade d’endives de Belgique, canard a la presse, caviar russe malossol et bisque de homard a l’armagnac et huitres a la florentine, the Romanee-Conti also, or Nuits-Saint-Georges and the champagne, mustn’t forget that, thought Kohler. They’d a fabulous cellar at the Tour d’Argent. Legendary, Louis had once said, though he’d never been able to afford such a place.
Her throat still stinging and eyes still watering, Germaine could see that the woman’s mascara had been smeared by the rain and the rapist’s fingers. The pencilled eyebrows were grotesquely crooked. There were scars from two Caesarean births, that of an appendectomy. Moles, warts, the red blotch of a nasty birthmark … Ah, Sainte-Mere, what the hell was this?
‘Smell her,’ demanded Kohler.
‘No! I refuse!’
‘INSPECTOR!’ shouted Thibodeau. ‘PLEASE EXHIBIT SOME RESPECT!’
‘I am.’
‘Inspector, please. I beg you …’
Herr Kohler grabbed the corpse’s toe tag and she heard him reading it out. ‘Location: Pigalle, eh? Date: the thirteenth; Time: 1020 hours? This isn’t-I repeat, isn’t-the body of Adrienne Guillaumet, you idiot, so tell us where the hell she is and don’t keep us in suspense any longer?’
‘Not her? But …’ managed Thibodeau. Something would have to be said, some rational explanation given. ‘Since her name was known, Inspector, the remains must have been consigned to the funeral home of the next-of-kin’s choice or …’
‘Cremated-is that what you’re saying?’
‘There is no necessity to raise the voice!’
Ach, mein Gott, the French sometimes! ‘There is every right, mein Lieber, but just tell me. I thought the Hotel-Dieu put them into no-name coffins.’
‘Ah, oui, oui, certainement, especially those without known names, and certainly bureaucratic mistakes are unfortunately made from time to time, and certainly the earth will, perhaps, be frozen or soaking wet and inopportune for such excavations. As a consequence, and with due process, I assure you, some are despatched to a crematorium.’
Ach, mein Gott, Louis should have heard him! ‘Which one?’
To suggest something close would not be wise. ‘La Villette’s. I have it on good authority that there is one there, I think. The greater the distance from the city centre, the greater the economies, since the state and taxpayer must …’
‘La Villette.’
‘Oui.’
And out by the abattoir and just to the northeast of the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, home territory to the boys on that street of Louis’s. ‘Would the family have been notified?’
‘Of course.’
Oona would really need him, if only for a few minutes. ‘Come on, you, and don’t argue.’
‘I won’t,’ managed Germaine, her lower lip still quivering. ‘I … I’ve seen enough not to.’
‘Good. Then you can be the one to tell her kids who was responsible.’
The others had gone on ahead in this flat, this place Denise knew she had heard so much about over the years but never seen until now, but why had the chief inspector not wanted to follow? Surely he must realize she would be needed? Maman would continue to say things that must never be said. Maman would tell Papa to look closely at that dead lover of his and understand what he had caused her to have done, that she could no longer have lived with his philandering and squandering her family’s fortune, that he had to stop if for no other reason than his own safety and position but that he must also think about those he ought to love and protect. Things could not continue as they had. These days one had to be so very careful.
‘No sound comes from that innermost bedroom, does it?’ said this Surete. Having deliberately packed that pipe of his, he now lit it but watched her closely through the smoke before saying, ‘Sit down, Mademoiselle Rouget.’
Must he stand in front of the mantelpiece so as to further draw attention to the framed poster of that … that dancer Papa had been so infatuated with, he would have had children by her had it not been for Maman’s having had the slut arrested and convicted of theft? Une nuit a Chang-Rai, 7 Mai 1926 at the Magic City. Chantelle Auclair, ‘Didi’ to her friends. ‘Une sacre bonne baise,’ Papa had yelled at mother once too often: a damned good fuck! A handbag containing jewellery and banknotes to the tune of 250,000 old francs had been found in this ‘Didi’s’ dressing room, found, ah, oui, oui, by Colonel Delaroche and then by the police he had summoned. Prison hadn’t been good for the career, and the long absence of even those three years had put an end to the affair, especially as brief encounters had been readily found for Papa by that same colonel.
But the inspector would know none of this. At last he waved out the match and, having wetted it with spittle, tucked it away in a jacket pocket-a creature of habit? she had to wonder.