Tapestry (24 page)

Identity cards, ration cards and passes …
Ausweise, laissez-passers
and
sauf-conduits
… Five sets, only five? Not one for Giselle—was that it, eh, or was Louis not planning to join them?

There were tears in Hermann’s eyes. His hands shook but he realized the dilemma too, for if Walter Boemelburg had marked his cigarettes, had he not also marked and counted these?

‘You really have been busy, haven’t you?’

It still wasn’t the moment to let Hermann in on everything but a start had best be made. ‘Rouget,
mon vieux
. Give me a little on that flat of his.’

The cigarette was passed. Hermann was always best when kept busy. Out came his little black notebook. Pages and pages—how had he written them, knowing what had happened?

‘Concierge Louveau says that the judge let others use the flat from time to time. “Important people.” Some older than the judge, some younger, but none in the past five weeks—he was certain of this because the last one, a retired general smoked a cigar on the way up at two thirty p.m. on a Wednesday and also at six thirty p.m. on the way out and both times with the same brunette. She’d a nice, if timid smile and “he wore leather gloves, real ones, and had a beautifully trimmed, snow-white moustache and hair just like the Maréchal Pétain’s.” ’

‘A general.’

‘In a French army greatcoat with ribbons and medals. Do you want more?’

‘Give me something on Élène Artur, if possible.’

‘Half Indochinese and not permitted to use the front entrance for fear of upsetting the other tenants. Had a key to the other entrance. Wasn’t to take the lift, either. Used the side staircase. Never came with, or left with, the judge. Had a key to the flat. Both keys used by her assailants who must have known of them.’

Merde,
how had Hermann done it? ‘And?’

Kohler took a deep drag, though God alone knew what Vichy’s state-run tobacco company was using now to cut the tobacco. Last autumn’s oak leaves, pine needles perhaps …

‘Entry at between 0030 and 0100 hours Friday. Dead by 0130 hours at the latest. It can’t have gone on for much longer but they took their time and knew they must have been able to. One of them a butcher, or former butcher—he sure as hell knew how to gut. The knife not the usual—it spurted blood a good metre and more when he withdrew it. A week ago the girl showed up around midnight, but the judge didn’t. Louveau was positive about this. His
loge
is only a few steps from the lift, so he definitely would have heard it, especially as he claims to have stayed awake listening for Rouget.’

‘Why?’

‘Because a week prior to that Friday evening, the judge had done the same thing—not come—and on the following Tuesday and Thursday, and this Tuesday as well. The girl hung around after that last visit to ask Louveau if he thought the judge had been acting strangely. “It’s not like Hercule to pay me in advance and not want me.” ’

‘ “In advance”?’

‘Apparently Rouget had taken to slipping her the money at the Lido, but it definitely wasn’t his usual way of doing things. “Always after he has finished with me,” she said. “Never before.” ’

‘Had she a pimp?’

‘The concierge didn’t think so. “She was too independent,” he said, and claimed she “wasn’t like a woman of the streets or houses.” ’

No pimp could only mean, as Hermann must have realized, that the academy victim definitely hadn’t been hers. ‘And on the night of her murder nothing was heard?’

‘Not a thing. Earlier though, on the previous visit, the girl “thought she might have done something that had offended the judge.” She couldn’t understand how Rouget could possibly have found out about it. “He’s too busy,” she said to Louveau. “He never goes there. Not anymore and certainly not with me, not since last October and only once then. Others would have seen us together.” ’

‘What others?’

‘She didn’t say.’

‘But where? The location, Hermann?’

‘I couldn’t establish that either.’

‘But others must have seen them. Others who went to the same place regularly …’

‘And guess who must have discovered she was carrying his child?’

Another cigarette was needed.
Dieu merci,
it was like old times.

‘She would have had to tell the judge, Louis, but who else found out? Rouget isn’t just a member of the Cercle Européen. He also belongs to the Cercle de l’Union Interaliée.’

God had definitely not smiled at them. ‘Your Pétain-look-alike general could well be a fellow member, as could, perhaps, the former captain I may have uncovered in the taxi theft, if indeed he was a captain, but let me hold that one in reserve. Please continue.’

‘Are you sure you want more?’

‘You know I don’t like to be kept in suspense.’

‘Good. At the repeated insistence of Henriette Morel who believes that husband of hers is having a torrid affair with her stepsister, that one’s social worker hired a …’

‘Permit me,
mon vieux
. A
détective privé
who impersonates a Sûreté and who calls the pipe he is fortunate enough to constantly smoke, his little friend.’

‘Monsieur Flavien Garnier of l’Agence Vidocq?’

‘The Arcade de Champs-Élysées. It’s a small world, isn’t it? Adrienne Guillaumet had asked the owner-operator of Take Me to drive her to the Ritz.’

And more generals but definitely not French. ‘Did Garnier find this out?’

‘He must have. Three men were involved in her assault. One to set it up and get the timing down—that’s my “captain” who is the same, I’m sure, as was at the police academy and who lost his little red ribbon, though it wasn’t his to lose, and two to carry out the taxi theft, one of whom made certain that the other did. These last two were of medium height, the other almost as tall as the General de Gaulle, the Trinité rapist having broad shoulders like a wedge.’

‘And the one with the gut and smelling of fish oil?’

‘Our Drouant assailant, no doubt, and from Montmartre, but both likely wearing worn oilskins that must have needed a little help on such a night. A supply of Norwegian margarine, Hermann, that obviously didn’t need its ration tickets.’

Quicksand, were they stepping into it? ‘Now tell me why not this “captain’s” own Légion d’honneur ribbon?’

‘Because I’m all but certain I’ve encountered the owner of it in Noëlle Jourdan’s
papa
, but for now the judge’s flat, Hermann. Let’s stick to that.’

‘Two assailants, one of whom must have been to the flat often enough since he was tidy even after what they’d done. When he went through her handbag, but didn’t take it, he spilled cigar ash and took time out to try to wipe it away but failed entirely to find her wedding ring. I did.’

Ah
grâce à Dieu
, this was definitely the old Hermann. ‘Do you want me to have a look at the flat? We’re pressed for time as it is.’

‘Aren’t we always?’

This, too, was the old Hermann, hedging his bets but still, one had best be cautious. ‘Wait for me. Have a stroll. It’ll do you good. That sun should be with us for a while.’

‘Then let’s hope Giselle is alive and looking at it and that Oona doesn’t try to join her children by throwing herself in front of a train.’

‘Oona didn’t say that. She’s far too level-headed.’

‘Well, maybe she is, but I thought it and that’s enough for me.’

‘St-Cyr, Sûreté, to see the
passage
de l’Hirondelle victim. Hurry.’

‘There’s no hurry where that one’s going.’

‘Is it that you fancy working in the salt mines of Silesia? That is where Gestapo Boemelburg usually threatens to send me if I don’t work fast enough. Ah! I’m late as it is for our meeting.
Merde!
Shall I tell him you delayed me and that, as a result, I might get lonely unless I had some company?’

‘It is this way, Inspector.’

‘It’s Chief Inspector, and I know the way.’

‘Clothing—do you want to look at it first?’

‘Was any of it taken?’

‘Scattered, I think. No boots or shoes. No ID, no handbag either, or jewellery of any kind.’

It had been raining hard in the late afternoon. Though darker in the
passage,
there would still have been sufficient daylight. Giselle would have known of the route as a short cut through to
place
Saint-Michel from the rue Gît-le-Coeur. Rapes, muggings, murders, births, deaths from old age, the plague or other natural causes—sex by the moment and paid for or not—the
passage
had seen them all and yes, her native instinct would have caused her to dart into it, though it was also one that could easily have been blocked off at its other end. Trapped, she would have had to turn to face her assailants.

Giselle’s dark-blue woollen overcoat, with its broad 1930s lapels and flaps over the pockets, had been thin and a little threadbare. Hermann would never use his position as one of the Occupier to better the state of his household or himself. Stubborn …
mon Dieu
, he could be stubborn.

Folded, the coat had lost four of its buttons and had obviously been torn open. The soft grey tartan scarf that had set off the colour of her eyes was wet and cold, the grey-blue knitted mittens also. The angora cloche she had been particularly fond of was drenched and filthy.

A girl with short, straight, jet-black hair, half Greek, half Midi-French.

‘Is there nothing else?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘Time of death?’

‘Late yesterday afternoon probably.’

Friday. ‘Found when?’

‘At just after eight last night, the new time. Someone tripped over her.’

‘Who?’

‘It doesn’t say.’

‘Witnesses?’

‘None.’

‘Examining
flic
?’

A name was given but it meant nothing. Paris’s police force had expanded so much and now there were also ‘auxiliary police’ and ‘order police,’ neither of which needed the full qualifications of the first.

‘Leave me. If Herr Kohler comes looking for me, don’t let him in. If you do, I’ll hound you until you die.’

Mud-grey to brown, the river moved swiftly. Upstream there were no barges; downstream it was the same.
Der
Führer, in his wisdom, had had them all taken in the early autumn of 1940 for the invasion of England that had never happened. Now, of course, they lay rotting in the north, cluttering up the harbours unless dragged away and beached or sent to Belgium and elsewhere, and the citizen-coal that should have come to Paris, didn’t. Even the compressed dust of its poorest briquettes.

Louis wouldn’t be able to identify Giselle, not if they’d done what they had to the police academy victim. She’d a thumbprint-sized mole in the small of her back he wouldn’t know of, a blemish she had constantly worried about.

‘Giselle,’ he said, looking off across
place
Mazas to the morgue. Louis was taking far too long and that could only mean …

Irritably he lit another cigarette only to fling it away. This war, this lousy Occupation, the terrible loneliness and the shortages that should never have happened, the runaway inflation, too, all of which could and did put decent mothers and wives or fiancées down on their hands and knees or backs and made others hate them.

And if it isn’t Giselle, the detective in him had to ask, then have the bastards got her?

Telephone calls were always listened to by others, but … ‘
Allô? Oui, oui, c’est moi,
St-Cyr. Once pierced but definitely closed up? The Madame Van der Lynn was certain of this?’

She was. ‘
Ah, bon
.
Merci
.’

Replacing the receiver was not difficult, tearing his gaze from it somewhat harder. The call to the commissariat of the
quartier
du Gros-Caillou had been by far the hardest he had ever had to make, the waiting for its return a positive agony.

They had sent one of their staff to the residence of Madame Adrienne Guillaumet, there not being a telephone in that building, up-market though the district was.

‘Please tell Coroner Tremblay that he’s to look for the marks of hobnails and to compare the
passage
de l’Hirondelle’s victim with that of the police academy killing. No one else is to examine either victim, is that clear?’

‘No one. Do you want to see the loose dental fillings?’

It would be best to shake the head. ‘Put what clothing was found with her out of sight in the lockup and don’t release it to anyone other than Coroner Tremblay or myself. Not to Herr Kohler, you understand. Definitely not to him.’

Fifty francs were found in a wallet that had been mended with fishing line, the cash a sacrifice, but would it help to cement the bargain? These days one had to pay for everything.

Hermann had been impatiently waiting but had best be steadied. ‘Not her,’ said St-Cyr, taking him by the arm. ‘This one had pierced earlobes. Age perhaps twenty. Jet-black hair, what was left of it. Now listen, Giselle may have gone to ground.’

‘Not taken? Not abducted and held in reserve?’

He was really rattled. ‘This one was wearing Giselle’s overcoat, cloche, scarf and mittens.’

‘And they followed the wrong one?’

‘They must have.’

‘Then they made a mistake and it went harder on the girl they caught?’

‘Harder, yes.’

‘Rage?’

‘Uncontrolled. Hermann, the sooner we meet with Walter, the sooner we can get back to work.’

‘You leave Denise Rouget to me, then, Louis, and that mother of hers.’

‘Walter,
mon vieux
, but first a little stop en route. Now give me one of those cigarettes. It’s not like me to steal things. Usually you are the one who does.’

‘Not Giselle …’

‘Hermann, Oona will have understood this from what was relayed.’

‘She and the children won’t go out, will they, or open the door to anyone but us or Giselle?’

‘That, too, was relayed.’

‘Then I’ll drive. We’ll get there faster.’

The rue des Francs-Bourgeois was busy, the queues in front of the
mont-de-piété
of the Crédit Municipal de Paris among the longest Kohler had ever seen. The wealthy, the poor, the middle class, all had come to pay homage to that great leveller of humanity, Ma Tante.