Mayhem (46 page)

Chez Rudi's was on the Champs-Élysées just across the avenue from the Lido through the naked branches of the chestnut trees. Right in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe itself – well, almost. A bustling place, now in its mid-morning quietude.

The ham-fat fingers stopped their scribbling. The small, pale-blue eyes blinked up and out from their red rims under thatches of ripened flax.

At 166 kilos Rudi wasn't losing any weight. Paris had been good. So, too, his little Julie and Yvette who took such care of their ‘big' Rudi. Big in the loins.

Greed and larceny brightened his eyes. A student of the black market, Hermann could usually be ‘touched' when necessary, but Hermann had cut himself. Mein Gott, the whip, it could do wonders!

‘And for your “friend”, my Hermann?' fluted the mountain, enjoying the sight of the stitches and the gossip they'd entail. ‘I regret there is no asparagus.'

‘What? No limp asparagus?' shouted Kohler. ‘
Gott im Himmel
, Rudi, I thought all things were possible under the Third Reich?'

The cook-proprietor let his voice fall to caution. ‘Some little things are beyond us, Hermann, but the Gestapo could always oblige?'

‘And change the seasons?' roared Kohler. ‘Give Louis the hero food, damn it! He needs feeding up.'

Another whisper came. ‘Or cutting down to size.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?' asked Kohler darkly.

The grin was huge; Chez Rudi the centre of all gossip, a minefield of it. ‘That you are to enjoy your lunches, or your dinners.'

Or your breakfasts for that matter.

‘Hermann, must you?' groaned St-Cyr when the man had departed. ‘You know how I hate coming to this place. I cannot eat in any case.'

‘You'll eat because you have to, and that's an order.'

‘The Resistance … one of these days they'll hit it. Me, I would not like to have to scrape you off the walls.'

‘Relax. Rudi's okay. Try to get on his good side, eh? Use your charm, Louis. Oberg's on top of the wave, remember?'

‘He doesn't
eat
here.'

‘Of course he doesn't but we need to. Besides, you're out of ration tickets. Remind me to get you some.'

Two eggs on horseback … unheard of these days unless one ate in places such as this.

A few of the regulars sat about. An SS major was slumming with his coffee and
Berliner Tageblatt
, fresh in on the morning's Junkers JU-52. Were the papers getting thinner yet again?

A girl in a short black skirt, red silk jacket, cream blouse, gloves, chic grey-blue angora cloche and black stockings was sitting all alone over by the windows.

A girl with short, straight jet-black hair, strong, decisive brows, good hips, lips, legs and all the rest. About twenty-two or twenty-three. On her third or fourth cup of coffee and watching the street as if the window was a mirror.

‘She's waiting for me, Louis. We'll let her wait.' Kohler dragged out a vial. ‘Want some?' he asked.

Messerschmitt Benzedrine. ‘Take a couple and we can go for a full forty-eight.'

‘You'll not be of much use to her without them. No wonder you threw up your guts!'

‘Quit suffering. That
rafle
had to be. It was fate, Louis, just like I couldn't avoid meeting her. Here, come on, at least take them with you.'

He shook four of the capsules on to the red-and-white chequered tablecloth. ‘Two for you and two for me.'

With beer. Rudi was in the kitchen. His youngest sister, Helga, slung the suds, giving Hermann a knowing leer and tossing her round milkmaid's eyes towards the windows. Blonde braids and all. ‘She's nice, my little
liebling.
Very nice and anxious.'

‘Tell her to go away then. Louis and I have to talk. We're for it if we don't.'

‘Then let her wait.' Helga trailed teasing fingers over the collar of his coat, then, wetting her ruby lips, touched the wound across his cheek. ‘I like it, Hermann. When it heals it will look exactly like a duelling scar. You'll be able to lie about it.'

Her ample bosom rose. Everyone would know exactly how Hermann had received the gash.

She departed with a saucy flick of her chunky hips, the pale-blue workdress hugging her behind. One
did
have to get a man, a husband! And what better place than Paris? So many of the German women came.

‘They certainly know you here,' sighed the Frog.

‘And you too.'

A pair of sheer, dark-blue briefs with lace was dragged out of an overcoat pocket. A corner of the midnight négligé could not help but show itself.

At last Hermann found what he was looking for. Hunching forward, he lowered his voice in earnestness. ‘Louis, listen to me. As God is my witness, I'm going to tell you everything this time. Everything! I took these from the girl's room. I was going to show them to you anyway.'

A pair of gold and emerald earrings – were they really emeralds?

‘And these,' confessed the Gestapo. ‘A choker of pearls and a single strand of the same. That kid would have looked good in them, Louis. Not a stitch on but the pearls and those.'

The earrings.

The Bavarian nodded towards the windows. ‘Giselle, she's perfect for me, Louis. Just what I've been looking for.'

‘Our girl wasn't dark-haired, Hermann. She was a blonde.'

‘But …?'

‘Never mind. For now let's just chalk it up to experience, eh? Why did you keep these from me?'

‘Why else?' Kohler nodded towards the windows again. The girl had noticed the two of them, of course, but had turned quickly away when she saw them looking at her.

Wounded perhaps. Hurt in any case. ‘Go and talk to her, Hermann. It's all right. I, who now have only
three
murders to contemplate and who could be as old as that one's grandfather, forgive you. It's the times. Fighting with death brings out the worst in us.'

He gave the shrug of a priest in difficulty. ‘Oh by the way, my friend, did the other one have a purse too?'

The murdered girl. Kohler shook his head. ‘It must be some place, Louis. Probably with her papers.'

St-Cyr heard him say to Helga, ‘Hold the eggs on horseback. Give me five.'

‘Rudi won't like it. You know they're a specialty of the house.'

The house … Ah Mon Dieu, the arrogance of the Germans …

‘Then tell him to toss them out and start again. He'll understand. I want to watch my partner enjoying them.'

The pain of the
rafle
in the rue Polonceau began to ease. It would, of course, never go away – how could such a thing vanish?

Nor would the humiliation of being referred to as wet, limp asparagus by that Munich Brown Shirt.

Duty called to take him away from all such thoughts and he welcomed this with a sip of beer. The earrings were quite old. In his haste to pocket them, Hermann had failed to notice that they were far more than simply antique. Tiny gold platelets had been linked to each other to flash and dangle to single emeralds of perhaps three or four carats in weight and of a stunning depth of green. The cut was a tabled square, the ancient facets sharp if simplistic.

The gold platelets had been hammered. They were not precisely round, giving further evidence of great age.

Gold never quite lost its lustre. Inca? he wondered. Had the girl's ears been pierced? Ah now, that was a good question.

An anxious tremble passed through him. He wasn't sure about the ears. They'd have to check at the morgue. He hoped the body wouldn't be disposed of too soon. Surely they'd keep it around for a day or two unless …

Hermann was earnestly explaining things to his girlfriend who was trying not to cry. Rudi had come out of his kitchen …

The SS major had taken an interest in things.

Closing a fist about the earrings, St-Cyr slipped them away, adding the pearls too. As if the moment had been suspended, he saw the other girl lying naked on her back in that room with the coins scattered about her.

Christiane Baudelaire had been expecting someone. Madame Minou had been listening to the BBC Free French Broadcast from London.

A Wehrmacht corporal had been killed in the rue Polonceau or was then but a few brief hours from his death.

The operator of the carousel on the slopes of the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont had already been killed and Madame Minou, when forced to witness the corpse, had been worried it might have been her son but had soon got over this.

The girl had kept a stuffed canary in a bureau drawer in that room. There had been a heavy elastic band around its wings but no need for this.

The earrings … why had she had them? A girl like that, in a room like that?

It was a case, a puzzle, a
real
murder – he knew this now. A crime of passion? Ah no, not in the strictest sense, though hatred must have entered into the savagery of her killing and rape.

The two would have occurred almost simultaneously. A matter which must have taken some skill.

An unpleasant thought. Ah yes. Most unpleasant, as was the coin someone had placed on her forehead.

‘Louis, eat your eggs on horseback.'

Rudi Sturmbacher waited for the verdict. There was a butcher knife in his right hand, a frown …

Each egg covered a layer of shaved Gruyère whose partially melted nest lay atop a thick slice of
pain miel
, of honey bread, the whole concoction toasted in a very hot oven so as to congeal and firm the white of the egg but leave the yolk loose and molten as a summer's sun.

‘In the Name of Jesus, Rudi, me, I have never tasted better.'

The asparagus had meant it too. ‘From now on you're one of us,' roared the mountain, grasping him by the shoulder. ‘Helga, did you hear that? Louis likes them.'

Sometimes it was so easy to flatter the Nazis.

The split-pea and ham soup came – it, too, was good.
Superbe! Magnifique
! As were the sausages and all the rest, so the flattery had not been misplaced after all.

And he did not regret it. One must be honest in war, even more so than in peace.

Food brought out the sage.

The girl, Giselle, sat quietly between them at the table's side, taking morsels from Hermann's fork between sips of ice-cold Chablis. It was really quite a joy to see the slashed-up detective-grandfather with her. But the girl's magnificent violet eyes were wary, full of moisture, not joy. Guilt drove her to the Chablis; fear to the morsels.

The rosy blush young girls get in winter when excited was not there.

St-Cyr lost himself in the sausage with lentils. He'd leave the cabbage and the borsch. He'd eat a little more lightly now, but damn the girl for spoiling what would have been a decent meal. What the devil was the matter with her? Uncertainty over Hermann? That fear of love lost when the security it provided was so necessary these days?

Had her pimp warned her to seek out Hermann or else?

The Gestapo's detective showed no signs of noticing anything. Sparrow to the proffered fork, the girl pecked at another morsel – a bit of sausage dripping applesauce. Was she eating for two? Was that it? These days so many young and not so young girls ate for two.

The sparrow darted to the Chablis to refresh the lovely milk-white throat. A tiny droplet spilled away from a corner of her glass. Blinking, she touched it with a fingertip and, flushing with embarrassment, said quite shyly, ‘Excuse me.'

For just an instant their eyes met and, Chief Inspector of the Sûreté that he was, he looked deeply into hers until the sparrow ducked away again. Ah yes.

‘Wait for us. We won't be long.'

The anguished look the girl threw from the back seat troubled Hermann.

‘Hey, it's okay,
chérie.
Come on, Giselle. Everything is all right. It's just a bit of business. There's nothing for you to worry about. Louis and I just have to stop in to say hello.'

To the Butcher of Poland, the Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Polizei, the Höherer SS und Polizeiführer of France!

Hermann touched the pale cheek and then the white, white crowns of her front teeth through the slightly parted lips that were so red.

She knew he was thinking she had lovely lips.

‘She's really something, eh, Louis?
Gott im Himmel
, am I glad to see her again.'

They left her then, and though she could not force herself to watch, in her mind's eye she saw them hurrying between the jackbooted sentries who stood under the swastika flags that hung above the entrance.

Merde!
what was she to do? Press her knees together to stop from shaking? Grip her thighs and seek the other side of the avenue? Wait as Hermann had said and as she knew she must? Ah yes.

Even the traffic avoided this place. The rush of bicycles pushed a little harder as the stream of them approached the dreaded Number 72. Those who were on the far side of the avenue Foch looked the other way when passing; those less fortunate came towards her with downcast eyes. Where once there had been so many cars, there were now only those of the Germans and their friends. And she did not know which were the worst, the Nazis or their friends …

Occasionally the sound of a bicycle bell interrupted the agony of her thoughts, once the shout of, ‘Hey, there, look where you're going!' as if she were the one in the road, she the one with the shaky handlebars.

Karl Albrecht Oberg was forty-five years of age and married, with a wife and two children in the Reich. A man from the north of that country. Tall, but not so tall as Hermann Kohler – really just a little over medium height.

A man who had worn thick spectacles with wire rims and who had leaned well back in his chair when he had examined her.

Had she been so offensive to him? Had he been near-sighted, had that been it?

A man with a small paunch. A man who had looked as if the corset he had worn had been a little too tight.

The Butcher of Poland … The Höherer SS.