Salamander (6 page)

‘Louis …?'

‘Hermann, it is time for us to leave.'

Outside in the freezing cold and darkness along the quai, the memory of those four men came clearly. ‘Four Burgundian trenchermen, Hermann, with merchant hearts of stone. They would as soon cut each others' throats if advantageous yet are solicitous of our friend. Now each of the others will begin to think it best to leave our fly alone on the wall and he, in turn, will tell us everything or try to run.'

‘A murder?' asked Kohler, his breath billowing.

Yes. One of the tenants. We shall want to know exactly where Monsieur Artel was at the time of the fire and perhaps for the hour or two prior to it. Also, of course, the whereabouts of his insurance policy.'

‘There was a priest, Louis.'

‘Yes, yes, I saw you take a cross. Valuable, was it?'

‘Quite.'

‘Then find us a taxi, Hermann, and we will pay the Bishop of Lyon a little visit. Use your Gestapo shield if necessary but do not tempt fate.'

‘Not Barbie's then?'

‘Ah no, that would be most unwise. One of the
vélos
perhaps, if its driver has legs strong enough for Fourvière Hill. We must attend the late-evening Mass.'

‘You really do want to have the last word. Hey, me I'm going to let you have it!'

‘Good!'

‘Then tell me how you knew beforehand who each of those bastards was at that table?'

The Sûreté's sigh betrayed impatience. One had to do that now and then with Hermann. ‘It was more in their posture than in anything else. The banker carries himself well and has his corset and breeding to thank for this. When he sits, his back is stiff and his food taken with precise movements. He is more vain than the others. A man who knows women and manipulates them. Shrewd, calculating, determined and believing success is his right due to birth. His nursemaid introduced him to sex and ever since then he has favoured the employer-employee relationship. Were I a woman, I should not wish to work for him. Were I his wife, I would employ a straight razor!'

‘And the notary?' snorted Kohler. It was good for Louis to get it out of his system. The Frog needed that every once in a while.

‘Secretive—oh they all are—but this one the more so. He's used to property deeds, to wills, to marriage contracts in which each packet of linen or towels or cutlery, no matter how old or worn, is recorded in the most meticulous detail. His is a safe of secrets, Hermann, and he could well know things about the others they themselves do not know or have forgotten. He strained his soup through his teeth in case of a misplaced fish-bone. His wife is miserable. They rarely if ever refresh their marriage vows because he is too tired. She dreams of taking a lover but knows he will discover the expense, no matter how trifling.'

Kohler longed for a cigarette. ‘You're cruel. You're enjoying this.'

‘But of course! And why not, since you have asked? The insurance agent was nervous but tried well to hide this, though the others were all aware of it. Several million francs are riding on this policy he was fool enough to have written for his friend. How could he have listened to such a one? The director will be certain to rake him over the coals. A demotion at the least, Hermann, an outright dismissal if he is not fortunate. He alone does not have a mistress—that would be far too risky. Instead, he contents himself with infrequent visits to one or two of the city's most discreet houses. He insists only on the cleanest girls and slips the doctor who visits them a little something for the inside information. He also has a slight catch between his upper eyetooth and his first premolar. This traps food and he has become so accustomed to sucking at it, he does so even when there is no need.'

Kohler shattered the air with expletives. ‘Come on! You couldn't have seen all that! How'd you really know which was which?'

‘Experience. When you have had to examine people as much as I have, Hermann, you learn. Have patience. That banker sat and ate like a banker; the insurance agent like one of his kind; so, too, the notary.'

‘And the owner?'

‘Ah yes, Monsieur Fabien Artel. The fleshy lips and closely shaven cheeks blue with shadow. The dimpled chin, eh? and the puffy eyelids whose eyes were hooded beneath arched, dark brows that were not thick. The rapidly receding hairline, the touches of grey that have been patiently hidden. The arrogance of that nose, the corpulence—the wedding ring that should most certainly have been cut off and expanded to prevent loss of circulation were he not so parsimonious and busy. Whereas the banker's eyes might hold a momentary trace of sympathy for a needy client, untrue of course, this one's could never hold any. He views the world as a notecase and asks only how much is in it for him?'

‘Suffers from a crisis of the liver, does he?'

‘And the misused prostate!'

Good G
ott im Himmel!
‘Don't hate him, Louis. Don't let all those bodies get to you. It's best not to.'

‘Then ask the mother who tried to reach her child, Hermann. Ask the woman who was tied to a bed she had probably slept in every night of her life. Ask your priest who it was that lit the fire. Ask him why he was in the cinema and not about his duties at such a busy time.'

‘Ask the Bishop, Louis. Ask the one who employed him.'

‘That is exactly what I intend to do when he gives me the wafer, Hermann. You're learning, eh? A few more months with me and I will consider you polished enough to go home.'

Normally Hermann would have risen to such bait and loudly proclaimed the Thousand Year Reich was in France for ever. Instead, he walked away into the night and when he commandeered a carnage, he asked first if it was waiting for the Préfet of Police and the Obersturmführer Klaus Barbie. ‘Then we have need of it, my friend,' he said. ‘Gestapo Central, Paris. Don't argue or you will face the wrong end of my pistol.'

The carriage was only of limited use and that was probably just as well. Dropped at the foot of the montée des Chazeaux, St-Cyr made excuses—the terrain, the height and steepness of Fourvière Hill, the narrow, medieval streets of Vieux Lyon, the impassibility to carriages beyond certain points, the Roman origins of Lugdunum and prior need to defend the city from them by fortifying the heights. ‘Ah, so many reasons, Hermann. Please, it is but a little climb up to the Basilica.'

‘
Little
? I see nothing but a steady stream of penitents bundled in black on a pitch-black night and mumbling over their beads with regret.'

‘The funicular is closed. A power failure of Germanic origins—
i.e.
, punishment for some slight. Probably graffiti splashed on some wall in stolen white paint that ran
Vive le Général de Gaulle
,
Vive la France libre
, or some such thing.'

‘If you French had guts you would have levelled this hill! I can't understand why the Romans didn't. Christ, it's cold!'

They started up the 242 steps of the montée, no sand on the pavement as a special treat in these frozen times. Shuffling old ladies, old men grinding their false teeth and carefully budgeting their cigarettes, coughing, spitting, hawking up their guts, boys, girls, babes in arms, single mothers, grass widows, war widows and older men with younger wives, one of whom was painfully pregnant and could no longer button her overcoat. Triplets? wondered Kohler anxiously. The rope around her belly was frayed. She'd worn three aprons beneath it to help keep the cold at bay. Piety shone in her eyes and the
flic
on duty hadn't the heart to warn her to extinguish her candle.

‘
Gott im Himmel
, you French are stupid!' seethed Kohler. ‘If it isn't ten thousand steps up to some rathole of a fucking flat in Montmartre or Saint-Denis, it's an elevator with a two-strand cable that ought to have been replaced ten thousand years ago!'

‘We are going up to the Basilica, Hermann. Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not think they had elevators then, though I am
positive
they came into use about 1850.'

‘Another lecture, eh? Then let me tell you, you French have been using the same goddamned elevators ever since!'

Hermann hated using the elevators in Paris or anywhere else. He had been caught once, left hanging by a hair, and the memory of that near-catastrophe was always fresh. Always! Now he would use the stairs but, as he
hated
them too, there was no solution short of parachuting him in. And he hated heights more than anything.

As if ashamed of his behaviour, Kohler mumbled, ‘Madame, permit me, please, to offer you and your husband a little assistance. The steps are steep and I gather there are far too many of them.'

In alarm she dropped her candle, let out a shriek, gasped, ‘
Georges!
' and fainted. Christ!

It took fifteen minutes to bring her round and get her back on her feet. In all this time the shuffling stream never stopped, but only pinched down as it passed them, then opened up again. Shoulders rubbing shoulders. Coughs chasing coughs. Step after step. Christmas Eve, 1942.

‘Your face, Hermann. She saw your face. The mark of that whip, eh? The scar, it is still too fresh. The frost must have made it glisten.'

‘She knew I was Gestapo, Louis. She was so damned scared, she practically dropped her babies right there. Could we have delivered them?'

‘Of course. Under the Third Reich all things are possible.'

‘I did once. Did you know that? She'd been knifed and was dying, Louis, and I held her little boy up for her even as she closed her eyes and smiled. Berlin, 13 June 1939, right after one of the rallies. Always there were the rallies. Thinking he'd be safe in the crowd, some son of a bitch had to let her have it for no other reason than that she looked a trifle Jewish, I guess. We never knew the reason and we never caught him.'

‘Remind me to buy you a drink and a bit of supper, eh?'

‘Those ration tickets Marianne left for you are now at least a good four weeks out of date, idiot! I'll find us a place. I'm not hungry anyway.'

‘That priest just knelt and let it happen, Hermann. He didn't try to save himself like all the others.'

‘Did he tie the woman to her bed? Is that what you're wondering?'

‘Or did he know the Salamander would strike and is that why he was in the cinema?'

There were so many questions, so little time in which to get things done. At the top of the montée they began yet another steep climb, the switchbacks of the Sacré Coeur snaking through scant woods where the nubby branches of the trees reminded Kohler of battlefields long passed and of sanctuary woods after weeks of constant shelling.

The French always pruned their trees too much. They liked them wounded into stumps and fingerless fists.

‘That priest was going to sodomize the woman, Louis. Guilt stopped him and he went downstairs into the cinema only to find the flames of hell had descended upon him.'

‘We'll ask the bishop. We'll tell him the Church's secret is safe with us.'

For some time now the litany of the Mass had had a lulling effect. There was far less coughing and clearing of the throat or blowing of the nose. More rhythm to the responses, more unity of intonation and automatic signing of the Cross.

Prayers were offered for the victims of the fire, pleas for the arsonist or arsonists to give up and come forth to receive God's forgiveness. Prayers for those who had been badly burned and disfigured—somehow they must find it in their hearts to forgive. So, too, all those who had lost their loved ones.

Yet had it been wise to hold the Mass? If ever an opportunity for disaster presented itself, it was in this packed congregation. Each person's shoulders touched at least one other's. It was now so hot and stuffy in the unheated church, overcoats had been unbuttoned, mittens, gloves and scarves removed to cushion bended knees. A simple cry of Fire would cause untold panic and the Salamander, if he or she or they were bent on another disaster, would know this.

St-Cyr sat nearest the right aisle, about a quarter of the way from the altar and beside one of the blue-grey marble columns that rose to the vaulted ceiling high above where gorgeous frescos were sumptuously gilded. Consecrated in 1896, the Basilica exemplified the very soul of the merchants and bankers who had built it. Gold was everywhere, so, too, polished semiprecious stones. Its altar was immense and resplendent with silk and silver and gold. There were paintings and mosaics, beautiful stained-glass windows. Everywhere there was candlelight or the warm glow of scented oil lamps.

Clearly the Bishop of Lyon had spared nothing on this eve of eves. In defiance of the black-out, the Basilica must glow like a beacon. Not content, he had insisted on holding the Mass at midnight as had been the Church's custom for centuries.

With the curfew at midnight, and all tram-cars and
autobuses
stopped at 11 p.m., he had forced each and every person before him to break the law, which would drive the German authorities half crazy trying to arrest them all should they so choose.

Resplendent in his finery, Bishop Frédéric Dufour was a man to be reckoned with. His wrists were strong and bony, the hands big, shoulders wide and square, the feet always braced as if God were up there some place on the mountain and he but a humble shepherd. The short, wavy hair was iron-grey, his brow and face wide as if cut from granite, but he was still a man who could enjoy a good time among simple people, a man much accustomed to circulating in the world of salons but one who always remembered his roots. No fool, he must have gauged the metal of the Nazi High Command and gambled they'd say nothing beyond a mild rebuke to himself.

But, again, one had to wonder if it had been wise to hold the Mass? All eyes would be closed in prayer or on the hymnal or the Bishop and his assistants, the altar boys, the swinging censers, the choir that sat among stupendous columns of rose-red marble, the Cross above the altar, the Virgin to one side.