Tapestry (22 page)

Walter’s door was closed but never locked since none would dare enter without being asked and the duty sergeant was keeping an eye on this Sûreté.

But not long enough.

Quickly letting himself into the spacious office Pharand had had to vacate after the Defeat, he closed the door and listened hard to this place he’d once been proud to be a part of. The blackout drapes had been drawn—Walter often worked late. The green-shaded desk lamp he’d brought from a distant past as a salesman of heating and ventilating systems would be sufficient. Before making the career change to detective, Walter had worked in Paris in the twenties and had learned the language so well as Head of the Gestapo’s Section IV he spoke it like a native of Montmartre.

Boemelburg and he had liaised on IKPK matters before the Defeat and on that infamous day no surprise had been shown at finding this Sûreté upstairs in Records destroying sensitive files the Gestapo and SS wanted. He had merely wagged a reproving finger and had said to cooperate or else, since some appearance of fighting common crime, no matter how limited, would be useful in calming the public. ‘But I’ll delegate someone to watch over you.’

Questions … there wouldn’t even be time for those when the end came and the Occupier had to leave. Hermann and himself wouldn’t have a chance. There were only about 2,400 German Gestapo and SS in the country but there were more than 50,000 working for them: the French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston—gangsters who had been let out of prison and put to work; the Intervention-Referat, the Bickler Unit and other gangs, and as if these were not enough, now there was Vichy’s newest paramilitary force, the Milice française. Then, too, the Sûreté and the Paris police—all 15,000 of these last—and every other police force in the country, even the
gardes champêtre
, the rural police. Certainly not all were bad—ah no, of course not—but orders were orders and often the only choice a
flic
or village cop had was to follow them to varying degrees, some more than others.

But civil war would erupt when the Occupier pulled out. Caught up in things—trapped—Hermann wouldn’t have a chance, never mind himself.

A metronome drew his attention—such a lovely thing conjured thoughts of childhood piano lessons that had been hated until, wonder of wonders,
Grand-maman
had stopped having earaches.

Next to it was a phial of bitter almond, the smell like that of potassium cyanide. Walter was now constantly searching for improvements: the incessant
tick-tock
of the one during an interrogation, the smell of the other in a war of nerves that was only going to get far worse.

Sonja Remer’s name had been written and encircled on an otherwise blank sheet of paper beneath which there was a telex from Gestapo Muller in Berlin but prompted, no doubt, by an enraged Heinrich Himmler.
ACHTUNG
. IMMEDIATE END TO BLACKOUT CRIMES IMPERATIVE OR FACE RECALL AND COURT-MARTIAL. HEIL HITLER.

Berlin were seldom happy. Though Von Schaumburg might be counted on, Walter was really this flying squad’s only supporter. By his word alone did they continue to exist.

In the top drawer there were blank identity cards, blank ration cards with next week’s colour-coded tickets, blank
laissez-passers
and
sauf-conduits
, all rubber stamped and signed not only by Préfet Talbotte but also by Von Schaumburg. Lots and lots of them, each type bound by an elastic band. French-gestapo plainclothes and others often had to go under cover to trap
résistants
or to locate hidden works of art and other valuables.

Five sets would be needed, but Gabrielle could never be persuaded to leave her son, so six would have to be taken. Giselle, if still alive and safe, simply wouldn’t want to step off her little corner of this planet. ‘And I know I’m not a thief, not even now,’ he breathed. ‘It’s far too dangerous anyway and I really must stay.’

Behind the desk there was a large wall map of Paris. Immediately apparent from the colour-coded flags and their brief notations was the fact that Hermann and this partner of his had merely scratched the surface. Not only had there been a huge increase in the usual sort of blackout crimes, there had been this other aspect.

While some of the sexual attacks would have been against females simply because they had cohabited with the Occupier, one group, as they had discovered, definitely had been targeted: those who were married to, or engaged to, prisoners of war.

There were close on three hundred of these flags, but the earliest of them dated only from 1 December, so the numbers would be much higher. Of those who could be interviewed, all had lost their wedding rings if they had had these with them. Some had lost their hair and/or their clothes. Not all had been raped, some only threatened with such, others beaten but not severely, still others savagely, some even to death and … and recently.
Ah, merde!

Female, age 20–25, no identity papers, hair jet-black and glossy, colour of eyes not possible. Beaten, raped and kicked to death. Died of a massive haemorrhage
.

The attack had taken place in the
passage
de l’Hirondelle, a narrow lane off the rue Gît-le-Couer in the Sixth, and so close to Hermann’s flat and the House of Madame Chabot it sickened.

Pinned to the left side of the map, Walter had noted many of the things they, too, had discovered or been thinking.

1) Violence escalating?

2) Attacks not random but chosen so as to give that impression?

3) The work of a gang whose sources of information yield potential targets that are then followed up on?

4) Targets selected by a committee or by one individual? If so, could information be leaked about Giselle le Roy so as to put into action the Höherer SS Oberg’s astute suggestion that we use the girl to bait a trap?

5) Won’t these criminals already have had access to that information? If so, is it their intent to use it before we do?

Had they already done so? St-Cyr had to wonder. Was Oona to be next?

6) Are the press being notified only when felt useful?

A hastily scribbled notation revealed just how desperate things must be.

7) Could the
Terroristen
be contacted and convinced to help in return for lenience and an end to the shooting of hostages or given the offer of treatment, when captured, as prisoners of war under the articles of the Geneva Convention?

The Résistance—had that been behind the Standartenführer’s taking Gabrielle to dinner? To sound things out?

She would not have gone along with anything, and Langbehn wouldn’t have asked. It was total war and everyone knew it, Walter as well.

Beneath Sonja Remer’s name and the telex, there was a slip of notepaper dated 1610 hours, Thursday 11 February and signed by Oberg.

Informants advise possibility of assaults being committed this evening in the passage de la Trinité and outside the Restaurant Drouant. If confirmed, advise assigning Kohler and St-Cyr to those
.

There was no mention of the police academy attack or of the robbery at
Au Philatéliste Savant
, nor was there any of Lulu.

Venetian chandeliers gave light, deep Prussian-blue velvet drapes hid the crisscrosses of sticking paper on the windows. Paintings still hung, but there were now so many, some leaned against others on the carpeted floor: a Dürer, a Frans Hals—all of them stolen, of course, but why had Hermann decided to come here, to Number 72 the avenue Foch? Why hadn’t he met up with his partner first, if for no other reason than to let him mention Sonja Remer’s being assigned such a pistol, any pistol?

Dejected, the spirit totally beaten, Hermann was staring at those big, once capable hands as if he had done something terrible. Ashen, he didn’t look up, not even when this partner of his, caught between two SS Teutons and hustled by them, was suddenly jerked to a halt before him.

In spite of the presence of the guards, one had to blurt, ‘
Mon Dieu, mon vieux,
what has happened? Is it Giselle?’

‘Giselle?’ arched Hermann, flinging up his head.

He couldn’t have known of the
passage
de l’Hirondelle attack—mustn’t be told of it yet. ‘Not Giselle.’

Was it a lie? the look he gave asked, he ignoring the two SS.

‘Here, down this, and have one of these,’ said St-Cyr, ‘then tell me all about it, eh?’

The proffered cigarette wasn’t taken …

‘Rouget. You
didn’t
tell me who Denise Rouget’s father was!’

‘
Ah, merde
, I honestly didn’t connect the two. Now toss off the rest of this.’

‘Is it the Rémy-Martin Louis XIII? Am I to enjoy an El Rey del Mundo Choix Supreme?’

Sacré nom de nom,
what was this? ‘Not at all. Of course the bottle isn’t the Molotov cocktail these two felt before roughing me up. It simply contains the last of the marc we had in the Citroën’s boot.’

‘What the hell are we to do, Louis? Our telephone caller, Élène Artur, was nearly four months pregnant. You know what that
belle-époque
plumbing’s like on the rue La Boétie. Her killers tried to flush the evidence but the cord got caught and I had to pull it out so gently. A boy, Louis. I know it’s hard to tell at that stage, but you
can,
can’t you? A son. She’d been beaten, raped …’

Out it came in a torrent of French the orderly, an Unterschar­führer, and his Sturmmann couldn’t understand—even Oberg, head of all of this, couldn’t speak a word of the language. ‘Leave us,’ said St-Cyr in
Deutsch
.

Unterscharführer Bruno Pruetzmann wasn’t happy. ‘You can’t stay here alone.’

‘Then back off to the other end of the room. This is private.’

They didn’t move, wouldn’t move.

‘We weren’t supposed to find her, Louis. The judge was, but Élène Artur’s killing may not have been done by whoever’s been terrorizing the streets.’

‘Chez Rudi’s, I think. We can’t talk here.’

‘I’VE GOT TO LET OBERG KNOW! If I don’t …’

‘Of course, but it can wait since he’s not likely to come in at this hour. Besides, I’ve got a few things to tell you and something in the car that Rudi wants.’

‘Sonja Remer, age twenty-four years, seven months and five days,’ breathed Rudi—had he felt they wouldn’t be able to retrieve the girl’s handbag? wondered St-Cyr.

‘Mädelscharführerin at the age of ten; leader of a
Gruppe
at eleven, a
Ring
at twelve. When a Bund Deutscher Mädel such as this comes along, others take notice.’

He’d give these two a moment to digest the lump they’d been fed, but would the regurgitation of it sink into Hermann? The
idiot
looked like death in a greatcoat and should, for he hadn’t only stolen a car from two of the Propagandastaffel, he had had them consigned to scrubbing toilets! ‘Not for her the
Glaube und Schönheit,
Hermann.’

The Faith and Beauty brigade of the BDMs—girls selected not only for their physical attributes as examples of Aryan Nazism but to be trained further in the arts of homemaking or made to tease secrets from high-ranking civil servants and captains of industry.

‘Untergauleiterin at that same age,’ went on Rudi.

A leader of five or six
Ringe.

‘Only when young Erich Straub was about to leave for his
Heldentod
did she break down and reveal what she’d been up to with that boy whose family her father couldn’t tolerate.’

‘The happy couple became engaged,’ said Louis with a sigh. ‘The third of March 1940, and on the twenty-ninth of April she and the boy’s family received notice of the hero’s death.’

‘
Kommen sie,’
urged Rudi. ‘Sit,
ja.
Helga
, bitte
, the soup first and then the
Eintopf
. Your Hermann needs nourishment. We’re offering the Reichsführer SS
und
Reichskommissar Himmler’s one-pot meal at noon today and nothing else but the soup, the same as is on the menu at Horscher’s.’

On the Lutherstrasse and central Berlin’s famous restaurant, it having apparently escaped the RAF’s nightly bombing raids.

‘Red cabbage from home,
meine Lieben
. Pieces of roast meat—I’m using sausage with Charolais beef and New Zealand mutton that was taken off a freighter bound for England but captured by one of our raiders. Potatoes, of course, and onions and beef stock. The trick is to let the meat marinate in wine and not be impatient. A full day if possible. A decent Bordeaux, a Château Lafite perhaps, but I have used a Mouton Rothschild, the 1929. Baked in individual casseroles to preserve all the flavour and juices. Served with chunks of crusty bread—those French sticks I have to make for the curious from Berlin are suitable enough and will have to do since there are extra and they shouldn’t be wasted.’

To be forced to listen to this with Hermann so upset and needing answers was hard enough for a French patriot, and Rudi knew it too, which could only mean he had more in mind. ‘The soup is excellent, Herr Sturmbacher.’

‘Ich Linsensuppe mit Thüringer Rotwurst.’

Lentil soup with Thuringian sausages. Rudi was giving them time, but for what? Kohler had to wonder. ‘The Tokarev, Rudi.’ It lay all but hidden by the still opened handbag.

‘
Ach, einen Moment, bitte!
First you must see with whom you’re dealing. Helga, bring your big brother what he has borrowed from the library of the Propaganda-Abteilung, which is so close its staff are among my most valued customers.’

And if that wasn’t warning enough, what was? wondered Kohler.

Photo magazines made life easy for readers in the Reich, seeing as they’d just been introduced to full mobilization. The cover of one of last autumn’s
Die Woche
, The Week, revealed a very determined blonde
Mädchen
tying barley sheaves. The Nazi Party’s
Illustrierter Beobachter
gave an even more heroic stance, facing into the morning sun, standing with a sheaf under each arm and all of Russia before her, though she couldn’t possibly have seen it.

‘On the death of her Erich, Hermann, the girl needed time to gather herself and then, after the blitzkrieg’s dust had settled in the west, volunteered for duty with the
Landvolk
. She was sent to Vresse in the Semois Valley to supervise female Belgian farm labourers.’