Carousel (42 page)

Madame Minou was surprised to see them, but they could not stay long.

Kohler drained his shoes and put them on. At 2 a.m. the Villa Audit was now quiet. Only faint traces of perfume remained to mingle with the stench of cordite.

‘The perfume is Mirage,' said St-Cyr sadly. ‘Nicole de Rainvelle has been in to have a look.'

‘Lafont and Bonny won't touch Gabrielle, Louis. They wouldn't dare.'

‘They will and they probably have by now, Hermann. In any case, we must pry Giselle le Roy away from them and try to save the hostages.'

‘There's a telephone in the
bal musette
on the corner. Why not call the Club Mirage and warn her? She might still be singing.'

‘That would only let them know where we are. The lines are constantly monitored, eh? No, we will simply have to tough it out. Two things remain to be done before we can lay our hands on those blasted coins.'

‘Find Roland Minou and find Charles Audit and Réjean Tourmel.'

‘The latter two first, for I'm beginning to believe I know where Madame Minou's son must be.'

‘In Hell?'

‘Or Heaven.'

‘I'll see that the car's repaired, Louis. No problem.'

‘Good. So, a small journey for me, Hermann. Let's agree we meet at the carousel in …' he glanced at his watch ‘… in about three hours.'

‘You're sure you don't want me to come along?'

‘Positive. Madame Van der Lynn will need constant attention.'

‘You talk as if Giselle was ancient history.'

St-Cyr looked at his partner and friend. ‘Let us just say that I hope I am wrong. Without the car, our hands are tied. In any case, Father Eugène and Father David have only one bicycle.'

‘Enjoy yourself then. Take care.'

‘You too.'

The night was cold but fortunately there was no rain. It would soon be Christmas. Christmas 1942, and what?

Father Eugène had not gone to sleep, nor, indeed, would he pass the night in anything but prayer.

The bicycle was wheeled from the vestry lock-up, the loan granted without surprise or comment. Muffled thanks were accepted with but a toss of the hand, dark in the darkness of the night.

As with the animals of the carousel, so with the pedals of the bicycle. As they went round and round, they went up and down. Each moment, each facet of the case appeared before St-Cyr. The streets were empty and if not, if the sound of an approaching car or patrol were heard, sufficient time was allowed for cover.

It was not far in any case from the rue Polonceau and the Church of Saint Bernard to the Café Noir on the avenue de Laumière and the parc des Buttes-Chaumont. Ah yes, the park. The carousel.

Smoke rose from the chimney pipe in the centre of the marquee. The music had stopped, the thing did not go round and round or up and down. There'd be no more dreams, no more terrifying nightmares. Hermann and he would either solve the case or fail.

‘Personally, I do not fancy the latter,' he said, the park silent as the city was silent.

Clément Cueillard would be alseep beside the firebox, cosied up with Joujou the monkey. Morning would come. The music could begin again and with it the turning, turning, always the turning and the going up and down.

The Café Noir opened at 5 a.m. just as the curfew ended. The first stragglers were three labourers in for their breakfasts of ersatz coffee, no milk, saccharin, and no croissants with jam or butter.

A sleepy shopgirl wearing a leather jacket was next, her ‘Good morning, Monsieur Philou,' given with a yawn that was reflected in the copper coffee machine. Her slip hung below the back of her dress. The lines on her bare legs marking the seams of non-existent stockings were crooked. Some of the beige wash had rubbed or been scratched off.

There was only one place from which to observe such things unnoticed and that was from the front left corner. When Charles Audit and Réjean Tourmel entered, there was hesitation – the proprietor had been warned not to look their way, but of course such a warning in itself had been enough for them.

‘Please do not move, Réjean. I will not hesitate to use the gun, not these days, eh?'

The bracelets came out of the overcoat pocket. ‘Easy,' said St-Cyr. ‘Now your right wrist, Monsieur Charles. Please, it is necessary.'

They'd have their coffee and he'd have a look at them. ‘Now the knives on the floor and carefully, my friends. Now the guns.'

‘What makes you think we're carrying?' asked Réjean.

‘Nothing, but I wish to be certain.'

He'd allow them a cigarette but sit well back and to the side so as not to receive the table in the face.

‘You've come alone. Where's your partner?' asked Charles Audit.

‘Outside. We often work this way. Myself to make the arrest –'

‘For what?' hissed Réjean. ‘For cutting you up?'

‘Perhaps, but then …' He'd leave it for the moment. He'd take his time to study them. Charles Audit was as his concierge had said, swarthy, of medium height and strongly built. No shoe salesman and shop owner this. Not any more.

The black beret covered a wide head of bushy grey-white hair, thatches of which protruded over the tops of robust ears. The grey-blue eyes were large and, though filled with watchfulness, full also of sadness. Ah Mon Dieu, such pain. Years and years of it.

The nostrils were large and flared.

‘May I?' asked Audit, indicating the long-stemmed pipe that protruded from the breast pocket of his black corduroy jacket. The bristly cheeks were ravaged by creases, the skin around the eyes looked as if he had had to squint whenever the sun was high.

Their coffee came and there was both milk and sugar, and it was freely given. ‘I am sorry, my friends. This one', the proprietor indicated the Sûreté, ‘threatened to have me arrested if I did not co-operate.'

‘Think nothing of it,' said Réjean. ‘Cows are always flapping their tongues.'

‘Quit seeing flames, Réjean. Hey, listen, eh? We know all about it – everything. By now the
quartier
will be swarming with Gestapo. It's useless to be so stubborn.'

The dark-brown eyes of the Corsican were swift. Tourmel would have another knife, a bit of wire; he'd have already begun to assess not just one way out of things but two or three.

‘How's Madame Van der Lynn?' asked Tourmel, giving the Sûreté a grin. They'd flip the table and use their feet. Coffee in the face and fists, the bracelets around that throat of St-Cyr's.
Flames!
They'd show him flames like a cow had never seen before.

Kohler pushed open the door. ‘Louis, –
Gott im Himmel
, don't you know where to eat breakfast yet? Chez Rudi's, Louis. It's hands down over a dump like this.'

‘Me, I wondered when you'd show up, Hermann.'

‘So this is the son of a bitch who took advantage of Madame Van der Lynn, and this … by God it is, Louis. Charles Audit himself. The brother. Diamonds and emeralds, my fine, and gold coins.'

‘Suck lemons. We know nothing.'

Deep inside the carousel, the faint glow from the firebox threw shadows on the punchboards of the calliope. Clément Cueillard wiped breakfast soup from the strainer of his handlebar moustache. The monkey, huddled on his shoulder, was edgy.

‘I have found them when I was raking out the ashes, Inspectors. Such clinkers … It's shit, that soft coal. It does not burn well. We're running out.' He gave the two of them the look of one who has lived with unpleasantness in what should have been a place of joy.

A tin pie plate held a sand of cinders. Six molars, two incisors and the shattered lower left jawbone were all equally charred. ‘Weren't there any more chips of bone?' asked the Sûreté uneasily.

‘A few – smashed to smithereens, Inspector. Did they extract the marrow, eh? That's what Joujou and I want to know, not that marrow isn't nourishing in these times.'

Réjean Tourmel snorted lustily. ‘So, my fines, another dead one, eh? Who was it did this one? Myself or Charles?'

‘Piss off. I'll deal with you in time,' snarled St-Cyr.

‘It's Roland Minou,' quipped Charles Audit. ‘Hey, Réjean, you remember that little pimp. A real smart-ass. They should have saved the blood for his mother.'

So much for depths of sadness in the eyes of ex-convicts from Devil's Island. ‘Look, you two,
speak
only when you're spoken to and not before then.'

Tourmel tossed his head. ‘Nervous, eh, Jean-Louis? What's it to be? The Abwehr, the SS or the rue Lauriston, or are they all after you?'

‘Louis, this puts another twist on things,' said Kohler, covering the two of them with his pistol.

‘Not really, Hermann. No, it only reinforces what we have already come to believe.'

‘The mackerel and Schraum killed Madame Minou's son for wanting too much and interfering when he shouldn't have,' said Kohler grimly. ‘Morande then cut up the body and disposed of it in the firebox.'

Joujou flitted nervously off Cueillard's shoulder, knocking over the coffee in its tin mug.

As the puddle grew, Cueillard sadly shook his head. ‘That was the last of the real stuff, Joujou. It's the end for us then, is it, Inspectors? Back to the beat for me, eh? What's to happen to my carousel?'

‘Who's he?' snorted the previous owner.

Charles Audit stood to Hermann's left, Réjean to the right, the two ex-convicts linked by bracelets, yes, and by fraud, murder and revenge. ‘He is the man you should have hired to run your carousel, my friend. But since Réjean had a score to settle with Victor Morande, and since Morande was an outsider among the criminal milieu and a small-time hood the Germans would ignore, Victor had to be chosen for the job.'

‘Go on, we're waiting,' breathed Charles Audit.

St-Cyr shrugged. ‘Since you ask it, my friend, then I will tell you. You could not entrust the carousel to just anyone, eh? Réjean agreed to help and you made a deal so that he became the new owner.'

‘There was nothing illegal in that.'

‘Ah no, of course not, except for the lack of registration and licensing. But no one cared, the Germans were far too busy. You waited. You bided your time. The desire for revenge only grew with your brother's continuing successes, the scheme developing as an orchid does for that one brief moment when the flower will open to accept the bee.'

The monkey, flitting back and forth on its bit of chain, eyed its former master with guilt, suspicion and outright anxiety.

‘What scheme?' asked Audit.

‘Don't say anything more, Charles. Let St-Cyr pull all the teeth he wants.'

Réjean had been tough, so tough. One should adopt a tired attitude with these two. ‘A scheme of revenge, my old ones. Revenge so deep and sinister, I myself find it hard to accept, but then, after more than thirty years of crime, very little surprises me.'

Kohler sucked in a breath. Louis had used the familiar ‘my old ones'. He'd got to know them better and damned if he hadn't let them know it!

‘Clément,' said St-Cyr, ‘could I ask you to stand by this morning to operate the controls if necessary? Let us show these two a real artiste, eh?'

Cueillard was too smart to be margarined, but knew what was wanted.

‘The turtle and the pig, Inspector. The rabbit and the panda,
and
the black stallion in the fourth row, that one most of all.'

The monkey stared viciously at its former master, who stared emptily back at it.

‘Louis, what the hell's Cueillard on about? Black stallions, pigs, turtles?'

‘My nightmares, Hermann. The ups and downs. I only hope they don't come true.'

‘You've heard it then,' sighed Kohler. Moving swiftly, he shoved Charles Audit and Réjean Tourmel out on to the platform and handcuffed them to one of the brass standards.

The throb of engines grew – a race! ‘
Lafont
, Louis, and
Brandl
!'

‘The first of many perhaps,' snorted Réjean.

‘At least let us help you,' urged Charles Audit. ‘With the four of us, you might stand a chance. They are no friends of ours.'

Headlamps flung their lights over the darkened carousel and, as a sliver of illumination pierced the inner darkness, it touched the monkey's cup.

‘Louis, go left. Let them come to me.'

‘Hermann,
no
! Cueillard, my friend, be ready at the moment's notice, eh? The roundel lights, the music, the works.'

No sound betrayed the detectives' sudden disappearance. One moment they were there beside him, the next they were gone, ‘Joujou …' began Cueillard, nervously wetting his throat. ‘Joujou, we must stay at the controls as ordered.'

A woman screamed in terror, the shrieks lifting the hair and causing the monkey to tug at its chain.

One by one, each pair of headlamps went out, and where once the stallions' eyes had been bright and flashing in the dusky light, now there was not even the silhouette of the animals poised suspended in their charge.

Kohler crept among them anyway. The rain came down, thrumming on the canvas roof, reminding him that this whole affair had begun with rain. Paris in winter. The merry-go-round of it. They'd be over by the entrance now. Would Lafont have the Schmeisser with him?

‘Hey, Louis, don't play games, eh?' shouted Bonny. ‘Just give up the coins and we'll let the girls go.'

A muffled answer came from off to Kohler's left. ‘Pierre, you were never one to be trusted. Why should we do so now?'

‘Brandl's here.'

‘Did he bring the Captain Offenheimer?' asked Louis.

‘Hey, what is this, eh? You hold no cards, my friend.
Nothing
!' shouted Bonny.

‘Me, I know who did the killings and I know where the coins are hidden.'

‘THEN GIVE THEM TO HIM!' shrieked Gabrielle Arcuri. ‘Jean-Louis, please, I beg it of you. This bitch has a straight razor. She is going to
slash
my face!'