Salamander (45 page)

He doesn't want to know …?
‘My father, he … he forbade me to go into the army.'

An impatient hand was tossed. ‘Forgive him. That's the only thing you can do. Now listen, I want you to shut up about these forgeries. Sure I know the Resistance must be using you, but I have to walk the knife edge always, so the less said the better.'

Was the inspector involved in something himself? wondered Meunier. Was it best to let him go on thinking that it was the Resistance he had done the forgeries for and not Mademoiselle Marie-Claire de Brisson, the banker's daughter? The nights and nights of patient practice and experimentation until she was satisfied and it was done. Three sets of documents with
laissez-passers
for Provins and Dijon. The travel papers had been the hardest to forge, the others not so bad, and in time, perhaps, the Resistance would be able to use him once a suitable contact was made.

‘Your partner …' began the boy.

St-Cyr told himself the Resistance should never have used this one, that the boy would drag them all down, himself as well if mentioned. ‘My partner, yes. Hermann Kohler of the Gestapo.'

‘Will you … will you be telling him that I …'

‘That you are a forger for the Resistance? Perhaps I will, perhaps I won't. I leave you to worry about it, eh? So watch yourself and don't try to leave the city. Now tell me about Joanne Labelle. Tell me everything. Try to forget about my partner.'

Kohler let a breath escape slowly as he compared the head-and-shoulders photo in one of the card-index drums of missing persons with a photo from the house, then moved on to the dossier Émile Turcotte had pulled for him.

On Thursday, 3 July 1941, a girl named Reneé Marteau had answered an advertisement in
Paris-Soir.
She had been an out-of-work mannequin with nearly two years' experience and had, apparently, seized on the advertisement as a means of getting herself back onto the circuit.

Long chestnut hair and deep brown eyes all right. A bit small in the bust, but what the hell, that wasn't everything when you had smashing legs, a nice smile and a gorgeous posterior.

He turned a page and found the first of six grainy black-and-white police prints that made him turn away and nearly lose his lunch, though that had been eaten hours ago.

On 15 August 1941 her nude and badly battered body had been found washed up downriver in St-Cloud just past the Citroën works. It had caught against the mooring cable of a refuse barge that had been machine-gunned during the blitzkrieg and had sat on the bottom ever since. Weeds were in her mouth and nostrils. Mud was smeared in streaks over pale white skin that looked cold.

She hadn't been in the water long. Perhaps twenty-four hours at the most. A vagrant had found her. Hair all chopped off so that only tufts remained. Throat cut. ‘A slice from the right and savagely,' hissed Turcotte who had never been at the discovery of this corpse or any other, and not even at the morgue. ‘The breasts removed for good measure but we feel this was done before the killing.'

Verdammt!
swore Kohler. What the hell was he to tell Louis?

Records occupied the whole of the sixth and top floor of what had formerly been the Head Offices of the Sûreté Nationale but was now that of the Gestapo in France. Screams in the cellars, dread on the rue des Saussaies and the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré right in the very heart of the city, only whispers and dark looks up here where seventy or so French detective-clerks in grey smocks foraged round the clock in shifts for news or filed away another bit.

The Sûreté had never thrown a thing out. Second only to the records of the Gestapo in Berlin, the whole damned place had been taken over lock, stock and barrel in June 1940. A treasure trove of criminals and their crimes to which, as a measure of Germanic efficiency and consolidation, had been added the files of the Prefecture of Paris. Talbotte had seen fit to keep copies for himself but had been reluctant to object. He had known his place and still did only too well.

In addition to the ten or fifteen million dossiers and cards dealing with outright crime, there were the millions of other bits and pieces that might eventually prove useful. One never knew. Apply for a passport or a visa in pre-war days, or even now, or a new set of papers, and you got a card here. Apply for a hunting licence in days past when such a thing was possible, and you got a special card, complete with registration number. Nice for the Occupier. No problem in finding stray rifles and shotguns that should have been turned in. Apply for a marriage licence, birth certificate or divorce—yes, here divorce had been legal before the war, though now Pétain and the government in Vichy frowned on it, the hypocrites. Age, date of birth, sex, race, colour of eyes, nose, height, weight, religion, address and those of the closest relatives, place of residence, job, education … it was all here, locked up in silence until the wheel was spun, a drawer opened or the pen taken up.

The labyrinth of missing persons was discouraging. To all those who had been listed because of suspected or proven crimes, were added those who had simply walked away without telling anyone. Then there were the thousands who had died or become separated from their loved ones during the blitzkrieg, when the roads had had to be ‘cleared' of refugees for the advancing Panzers and the boys in their Messerschmitts and Stukas had had a field day.

Émile Turcotte was lord and master here, a hawk-eyed, miserly little bastard with no sense of humour, the rake of a guardsman's moustache and, too often, the defiant gaze of a wounded librarian. They'd got through all the usual refusals far too quickly. The préfet had tipped him off and had told him to co-operate or else, so as to bleed this Gestapo of information.

Well, that was fair enough, though Turcotte was not a servant of the préfet but one of their own and ought to have known better.

‘Shall we spin the wheel again?' quipped the librarian.

Kohler snorted and sadly shook his head. It had taken them nearly an hour to find this one. For now he had enough on what must have happened to the other girls.

And Joanne? he wondered. Would there yet be time to save her and if so, what would they find?

‘Look, I need a bit on that robbery. For a start, give me what you have on the manager of the main Paris branch of Crédit Lyonnais.'

This, too, the préfet had warned of. ‘That is not possible.'

‘It had better be. I'm not used to threatening my fellow workers but if I have to …'

The acid seethed. ‘The last time you … you tried to steal my tobacco tin for Louis!'

That had been about a month ago. ‘Then this time I'll simply requisition it.'

The dark olive eyes flicked away in uncertainty. Kohler was trouble. ‘A moment,' grumbled Turcotte. The préfet, he … he wouldn't like it but …

‘No moments,' grinned Kohler, clapping a hand firmly on a thin shoulder. ‘Hey,
mon fin,
I think I'd better come with you in case you run into an accident.'

Such records were in another section, and even that God of Louis's could never have found them, but Turcotte had a nose for it and the memory.

When he pulled the file, right away the banker's name came up: André-Philippe de Brisson, the address: 35 rue de Montpensier, almost directly across the garden of the Palais Royal from the house.

‘Eighteen million, Inspector,' muttered the old woman abstractedly. ‘Poor Monsieur de Brisson will be beside himself and will forget absolutely to tell his daughter to let the cat in. It is the toughs these days, the police.'

‘Ah no, madame, surely not the police,' urged St-Cyr. One had to speak loudly.

‘Yes, yes, the police.' She would purse her lips and glare at him. She would have to dismiss the girl. One could not have one's days interrupted by the Sûreté. How shameful.

The maid had let him into the house which was next door to the house of Monsieur Vergès. The hour of the apéritif had come and gone with two glasses of well-watered port he had not been given a chance to share.

Little had been accomplished. The bank manager's house was across the garden. ‘The daughter, Madame Lemaire?' he hazarded. ‘Does Mademoiselle de Brisson let the cat in through one of the attic windows perhaps?'

‘The cat …? What cat?'

‘The robbery, madame. You were only just saying …'

The thin shoulders beneath the mound of sweaters and shawls quivered with indignation. ‘Please do not interrupt me, Inspector. I know perfectly well what I was saying.'

The woman drifted off into silence and left him waiting, though not purposely. Fortune had passed by, leaving faded, once plush, wine-purple armchairs with holes in their arms and loose threads trailing to the floor to join frayed tassels.

There were two of these armchairs, one on each side of a smoke-blackened grey marble chimneypiece; no fire, no fuel tonight. A cross, a small ormolu clock, a photo in its frame, two plates of dubious value and a vase from someplace occupied the mantelpiece beneath a gilded Louis-Philippe mirror that had lost the top left corner of its carving. An accident years ago.

A pair of flanking, gilded sconces, mounted on the cracked, pale yellow walls, held stubs of candles in each of their three holders. He felt the stubs had been left for propriety's sake though the thought of melding all six together would have presented a dilemma whenever it registered.

Impatient at the continued delay but telling himself to go easy, he cleared his throat and said, ‘The robbery, madame?' But now the grey eyes that had only this past moment been so fiercely defiant, drifted into memory at the thought of food as she touched the faded menu at her side.

‘The ninety-ninth day of the siege, 25 December 1870,' she said, wistfully reading it.

The Franco-Prussian War. The winter of 1870-71. How old had she been? he wondered. Fifteen or twenty, no more …

‘“Hors-d'oeuvre: Langue de kéabau en gelée écarlate. Cervelle d'éléphant. Animelles de zèbre à la crème sur canapés.
”'

Jellied water buffalo tongue, elephant brains, and zebra testicles sliced, in cream, and on little wedges of toast.

The city had been ringed by the Prussians. Napoleon III had been taken prisoner. No food could enter Paris … ‘Madame …'

‘Please do not interrupt me, Inspector. I read this every day to remind myself of the brave and to beg God to let them return since men such as yourself have not stopped the Boches.'

A purée of emu with croutons, a consommé of kangaroo thickened with tapioca, garnished with dried royale and sprinkled with chervil, no doubt. On the ninety-ninth day of the siege, the Paris zoo had been emptied and the contents shared.

The menu was perhaps from the restaurant Le Grand Véfour that was off the north-western corner of the garden with an entrance on the rue de Beaujolais. It had been founded in 1760, was still open and still much the same. A classic. Balzac had eaten there.

Duchess potato croquettes dipped in egg and breadcrumbs and fried in very hot, deep fat … Camel stew, braised shank of antelope … ‘Madame, an important investigation. A girl is missing. To prevent a tragedy it is imperative that we …'

A girl … ‘She is waiting in the doorway. Nanette, please show the inspector out.'

Baked mongoose, stuffed lemur with truffles … As a young woman, madame would perhaps have had the second service and have sipped a Romanée Conti 1856 by candle-light while the city, besieged, prayed for the brave to defend its honour.

‘She's like that always now, Inspector. My mistress is really a very dear lady who has been extremely kind to me. She doesn't mean to be difficult.'

Marianne, his dead wife had been a Breton, thought St-Cyr. This one, too, had the fair cheeks and china-blue eyes, the blonde hair that was like silk and the warm if hesitant manner.

‘What will you do when she passes away?' he asked as they paused by the door to the outer hall and stairs. ‘Please, I know it's a matter you've told yourself many times you must face.'

The girl's eyes were downcast. Moisture gathered rapidly in them.

‘I … I don't know, Inspector. Madame, she has no one but me. No one any more. They're all dead, don't you see?'

He nodded gravely and said, ‘Permit me, then, to give you my card. Please, I'll see what I can do to help.'

‘But me? Why me? Why should you do such a thing?'

She had instantly thought the worst. ‘Because I know what the alternatives are, mademoiselle, and can perhaps find a suitable situation for you with two dear friends who may just be looking for a little help. It's not impossible. Both are older women of great experience and understanding. They have a shop on the place Vendôme. Look, I must visit them soon and will broach the subject so that when the worst should happen, we will have a little preparation.'

She tried to smile but tears flooded from her. He gave her his handkerchief, she muttered,
‘Merci,
' and when her cheeks were dry, her eyes still moist and bringing back such memories to him of Marianne, he said, ‘Did you see who came to remove the furniture from the house next door, the house of Monsieur Vergès?'

It would be best to nod quickly. ‘Four men in two
gazogène
lorries from the firm of Dallaire and Sons last night.'

Sunday evening … Her chest lifted, a breath was held. He would be brief since there was more. ‘At about what time?' he asked.

There was a firmness in his voice that made her realize she would have to tell him. ‘At 6.07 p.m. I had just taken Madame her first glass of port and had returned to the kitchen to see what I could do best to make her supper a little more attractive.'

After dark, then. ‘Some parsley, perhaps?'

The girl brightened. ‘Yes. Why yes, that's it exactly!'

‘And did you call the matter of the movers to her attention?'

‘No. Ah, no. I …' She would lower her eyes because he would not think well of her now. ‘I knew how upset she would have been, Inspector. Monsieur Vergès has always been so very kind to her. Though he doesn't come to his house any more, his presence is still felt. Flowers … flowers are still sent each year on her birthday.'