Kaleidoscope (20 page)

On the corner walls behind the piano were two gorgeous murals, done perhaps in the mid- to late 1700s. Eve caught in the clutches of a giant oak around whose twisted trunk coiled a boa constrictor after the juicy apple in her frightened hand. Succulent breasts uplifted, the torso thrown back and cringing, one arm clutching a branch for dear life as those same branches formed the crude fingers of a brutal and lustful curiosity that had Eve firmly within its grasp. Oh to be a boa.

The other mural was of a sleeping Psyche lifted on a robe of gold among pitch-dark thunderclouds by cupids with smiles and grins and teenaged boys in the buff and up to mischief.

Both paintings drew the eye and he could not decide which he liked better.

‘Perhaps this is what you want?' she said, startling him. ‘But, alas, my poor detective from the Gestapo, I am already spoken for.'

Kohler grinned. The tight-fitting woollen dress was the colour of Moroccan lemons. The stupendous eyes were of a soft amber that matched the hair and the single topaz that hung from fine gold links in the centre of her cleavage.

He took her hand and kissed it. ‘Mademoiselle Suzanne Labrie,' he said. ‘Former proprietress of the Pelican Bar in Caen and now …'

Swiftly she pressed that finger against his lips then kissed him, withdrew a touch. ‘Now the lover of Hugo Ernst Bleicher, better known as the Abwehr's Colonel Henri.'

The hero of German Military Intelligence in France. ‘The man who nailed Brutus and put that one and a hundred of his Interallié escape network behind barbed wire.'

Ever so slightly she nodded that pretty head of hers, still held his hand, did not indicate her part in that affair. ‘Henri, he wishes to talk to you – yes? – but finds the Abwehr's Hotel Lutétia on the boul' Raspail somewhat conspicuous. If you get my meaning.'

Kohler laid a hand on her shoulder. It was a nice shoulder and she did not seem to mind. ‘Henri will be here soon,' she whispered. ‘In the meantime …' She gave that little shrug.

‘Seventeen seconds?' grinned Kohler, nibbling a topaz-studded ear lobe.

‘Coffee, I think, and a glass of marc or would you prefer, perhaps, the pastis of your friend?'

‘I hate the stuff.'

‘Then I can assure you of a very fine cognac but first …' She touched his lips again and listened for the lift. ‘First, I would like another sample for the record book of my memory.'

Kohler slid the Gestapo's dossier on Anne-Marie Buemondi across the antique desk as though through a minefield.

At forty-three years of age, Hugo Bleicher was a specialist in counterintelligence attached to the Abwehr's Group III F. Fluent in French, he was equally and far more notably proficient in Spanish, ah yes. He had the freedom to travel where and when he liked and to employ whomever he wanted in his never-ending search for enemies of the State and for his own advancement. Bayonne? wondered Kohler apprehensively. Had Bleicher been there too?

‘So, Kohler, why show me this?'

The backs of the hands were hairy, the thin brown locks were rapidly receding. The heavy brown hornrimmed glasses did nothing to hide the bleak emptiness of dark brown eyes.

Kohler knew he'd best say something. ‘By rights, Colonel, as a member of the Deuxième Bureau, Jean-Paul Delphane ought to be working for the Abwehr, but we find him under the Gestapo Munk. Maybe you'd like to tell me why that horse has changed its rider?'

‘Then why not ask your superior officer, the Sturmbann-führer Walter Boemelburg?' Bleicher indicated the telephone and took the trouble to move it cautiously through the minefield towards his opponent.

‘Walter's getting forgetful, Colonel. Rumour has it that he's soon to be replaced.'

An accomplished pianist, Bleicher had been the former chief clerk in the Jewish export firm of Bodenheimer, Schuster and Company where he'd dipped the whole lot of them, friends and all, into the net without batting an eye. He had a wife and son in Poppenbuttel, near Hamburg.

‘What can you do for us?' asked the Abwehr's man. ‘Come, come, Kohler, when my little Suzanne found you, you were in Montparnasse on your way to see me so let us not beat about the bush.'

The crunch had come. ‘Give you a link in a possible escape network.'

The thin and shadowed cheeks and chin were favoured in thought. ‘A certain telephone list?' asked Bleicher, deciding to quietly reveal a little of what the local gossip had yielded.

Louis wasn't going to like it but …
ah, Gott im Hitnmel
, something had had to be done. If Suzanne hadn't intervened, Kohler would have gone to Bleicher anyway. Besides, the bastard had known it and had prepared himself in advance. He'd seen the airman's body, then. He had known all about it. Shit!

‘All right, I'll give you the list once my partner and I are satisfied about Delphane and his part in the murder of that one.'

‘This partner of yours, could he be used to our purposes?'

Ah damn! Bleicher must be only too well aware of the maquis link. He was smelling blood so hard, had he been a dog after a bitch in heat, his nose would have been running. ‘Louis and I are buddies, Colonel. You know what it's like. You work so closely with a guy, you step right into his shoes. If you don't, then the bullet or the knife that's coming could well be your last.'

When Bleicher didn't respond, Kohler said lamely, ‘The Frog trusts me, Colonel, but yeah, we can use him, only he mustn't know I'm feeding you things.'

Kohler was known to be untrustworthy and defiant of authority. He had disgraced the SS in front of his superiors, defying all of them in his search for the truth.

‘What's in it for yourself?' hazarded Bleicher, closing the dossier and noting the stamp of the Gestapo Cannes.

Kohler knew exactly what had just run through Bleicher's mind. ‘I've two sons at Stalingrad and a wife back home on her father's farm near Wasserburg.'

‘Let's dispense with the wife and sons.'

‘I want to clear my name, Colonel. I'm a good German. I can't help the indiscretions of others. Like yourself, I …'

‘Dislike the traditional officer class?'

Bleicher was an NCO and had never risen above the rank of sergeant. ‘No, Colonel. Like yourself I was in the last war and taken prisoner.'

‘But did not try to escape?'

Ah merde
, the bastard was tricky! Four times Bleicher had busted out of a camp near Abbeville only to be taken back because he'd enjoyed the intellectual exercise of beating his captors again! ‘Look, we need help. Delphane smells just about as badly as the corpse he let us find in that woman's house in Bayonne.'

‘What corpse?' asked Bleicher quietly. One could not reveal too great an interest.

Kohler dreaded what he was about to say, but knowledge of the corpse could not have been kept back for much longer. Someone in authority had had to be informed, otherwise the charge of hiding evidence and sympathizing with the enemy would have stuck.

In his heart of hearts, Louis would have agreed. Kohler could hear him saying, ‘One must take the lumps with the rest of the custard, Hermann, if the dessert of life is to be digested.'

He told Bleicher what the bastard must already know. ‘A British airman, Colonel. Dead for at least two or three weeks.'

Bleicher exhaled exasperation slowly. It would be best that way. ‘And you come to see me with such as this when you know the Buemondi woman was involved?'

‘We don't know that, Colonel. Not really. Instead, we and others – yourselves and Gestapo Cannes perhaps – are being deliberately led into believing it.'

‘An escape line, Kohler. Is there anything else perhaps?'

Let's have the whole of the dirty laundry, eh? ‘A whisper of the maquis in the Alpes-Maritimes but it's not definite either.'

‘Suspicions have always been good enough in the past for the Gestapo?'

‘But not for the Abwehr, Colonel. For some reason the Wehrmacht still prides itself on doing things correctly. That's why I'm asking you.'

This was heresy on Kohler's part. So be it then. ‘Jean-Paul Delphane no longer works for us. Yes, yes, that one is of a good family, he's a “good” Frenchman and of the Action Française but …' Bleicher shrugged. ‘Perhaps it is that he felt he could better serve the Reich by working for the Gestapo Cannes.'

Or that of Bayonne? wondered Kohler. To ask more was to ask for the impossible. A man like Bleicher never laid all his cards on the table. But sure as that God of Louis's made little green apples, the Abwehr had seen Delphane going into or out of that house in Bayonne and at some point – earlier perhaps – had put the skids under him. ‘You make me feel like I've just been taken to the cleaners, Colonel.'

One should not yield to flattery yet it was gratifying to know one's reputation had spread even to the dingy corridors of the rue des Saussaies and what had formerly been the Headquarters of the Sûreté Nationale but was now that of the Gestapo in France.

Bleicher motioned to the lovely Suzanne who'd drifted into the study at some point in the discussion but had remained unobtrusively in the background. ‘Please show the Inspector out, my dear. We've taken up enough of his valuable time.'

She kissed her lover on the head and passed a lingering hand down over the back of his neck while smiling the Gestapo's way. They made a lovely couple. The Abwehr and his collaborator. Ah yes. Kohler was glad Louis hadn't been with him.

At the door she handed him one of the Abwehr's small brown pay envelopes and when he thought it was money, held his fingers and his eyes. ‘Show it to that friend of yours, that Frenchman you so admire. Tell him that Colonel Henri wishes to express to you both this small token of interest.'

The thing had been licked shut and stapled for good measure.

‘Open it in private, yes? There are eyes everywhere.'

‘Is Louis being followed?'

She moved closely to brush her lips over his. Put his hand on her seat and pressed her middle against him as she leaned away. ‘Not by me. You were sufficient. Me, I have enjoyed our little affair and might wish for more, were you not so very worried about that partner of yours. Bring Hugo what he wants and me, I will see that you are justly rewarded.'

‘I'll bet,' said Kohler, giving her bum a pat. ‘
Auf Weidersehen, Fräulein
. Sweet dreams.' Louis … where the hell was Louis?

She caught him by the arm. ‘Your friend is in Pigalle, Herr Kohler. If you look hard enough, you might just find him there.'

‘Then give me a lift, damn you. Delphane may be out to kill him.'

‘To stop him, I think, from finding Josette-Louise Buemondi, isn't that so? Pigalle, Herr Kohler, the meeting place of the mannequins and others, too, of course. The Lorettes, the prostitutes.'

The city was dark.

St-Cyr threw his back against a wall and swore. There must be several of them after him. In spite of his going over the roof-tops of the rue du Terrage, they had picked up his trail as he'd come out of the
métro
. Now what was he to do? They had torches. They were the ones who shone them over the faces of the crowd. French Gestapo! Traitors … searching always for him. Running, shoving people aside … three … four torches. The leather trench coats and fedoras … others following them. Yes, yes …
Ah Nom de Dieu
! Were there still two groups, the one following the other and both of them after him?

He ran. He made it to the entrance of Les Naturistes and bowled the doorman out of the way. ‘Police!' he cried. ‘
A raid, eh? Out! Out! Vanish while you can, my friends
.'

The girls screamed. The Wehrmacht's soldiers, stunned into inactivity, hesitated then surged towards the exit. ‘
Gestapo
!' he cried. ‘
A raid! All leave is to be cancelled if you are found on the premises
!'

He fought against the mob. Naked girls were being passed overhead from hand to hand. Screaming, shrieking … yelling at the top of their lungs. ‘
Fire
!' shouted one of them as she was flung up into the tobacco smoke, her plump breasts jostling, then being squished by soldiers' hands who honestly believed they were helping.

He reached the stage and ducked behind the curtains. He made it to a dressing-room that was all but empty.

‘So, my fine, what's up, eh?'

The woman was in her mid- to late thirties. Tall and with the stretchmarks of several difficult children.

‘Madame, the revolver … Please, I … I am from the Sûreté. I'm on a murder investigation.'

She was totally naked and dragged off her blonde wig as she tossed her head. ‘The Sûreté? Hah! That's a new one. Just what's your game?'

‘That gun is illegal, madame. There are those looking for me who will arrest you.'

‘But you're from the Sûreté?' she said, scratching a thigh. ‘Why should they chase one such as yourself? Why should they not reward me for stopping you?'

A dangerous woman when unarmed; a menace as now.

‘The revolver,' he reminded her, catching a breath and trying to hear beyond the deafening commotion in the club. ‘The badge,' he said. ‘I have the identification but please … I cannot explain. I must get away. A young girl's life is in grave danger.'

The painted eyes grew dark. The generous bosom swelled. ‘Which of my girls? Come, come, my little weasel, which one of them has been up to mischief?'

A shrug would be best but he didn't have the energy, was suddenly exhausted. ‘None of them. A mannequin. The twin sister of a girl in Provence who is suspected of killing her mother.'

The revolver lifted slightly to nudge the air. ‘And someone wants to kill her?'

‘Yes. I am so very afraid that is exactly what will happen.'

She screwed up her face in doubt. ‘Why did the other one kill the mother? It's not a very nice thing to have done.'