Salamander (52 page)

It was a thought, but how long had the romance been going on and how heavily?

The shadow of a woman's wide-brimmed hat was behind and off to the right of the couple. Hats like that had been all the rage this past spring and summer, but not the year before. And hadn't it been a marvel the way the girls had used just any old thing to make hats like new? Amazing really and very chic.

The hat must have belonged to a friend, but not to the photographer, since it would have cast a different shadow.

‘Inspector …?'

Black silk crepe clung to Denise St. Onge like a second skin but below the lower thighs, sheer black see-through lace fell to the ankles exposing lovely legs. Flowered white ceramic clasps held the twin straps of high-heeled, black leather shoes. There were thin straps over bare shoulders—nice shoulders—a nice chest, with a faintly ruffled neckline, long, slender arms, long fingers, thick, dark brown hair brushed and pinned tightly and parted on the left, a high, smooth brow, not a wrinkle, angular face, thinly arched and well-plucked brows and large brown eyes. Deep brown and grave. Could they melt iron or were they always so hard?

‘Inspector, what is it you want with me?'

Mein Gott,
the accent was lovely. ‘A few questions. Nothing difficult.'

‘Then please sit down. An apéritif, or is it that you mustn't drink while on duty?'

‘A glass of wine would be nice. White, if you have it.'

‘Certainly. Excuse me a moment. Jeanne has had to do the shopping, you understand.'

She had deliberately sent the maid away and he was all too aware of this, she felt. He didn't offer to get the wine for her but took the opportunity to study her and was impressed, ah yes. Most men who liked looking at women were. It didn't please her, of course. He was trouble, and trouble wasn't wanted at this moment in her life.

When she came back with a bottle, two glasses and a corkscrew, Kohler watched her hand them to him as her lovely red lips gave a little pout.

There was a diamond-encrusted bracelet on her left wrist, loose and slipping down over a slender hand. Ear-rings to match that dangled, framing arrogance betrayed but only for a moment.

‘The Château Grillet, 1939 … To think they could even bottle anything then,' he said wistfully.

‘Wine must never be wasted, Inspector. Not even if it's a bad year.'

Actually it had been a pretty good year for wine, among other things. ‘It's all the same to me,' he said and grinned and yanked the cork out. ‘I prefer beer. I'm from Bavaria.'

‘Yes, I gathered you were, but how is it, please, that you speak our language so well?'

He tossed his head. ‘Oh that. I was a guest of your country from 17 July 1916 until the Armistice.'

‘Ah, a prisoner of war.' She, too, tossed her head and then, accepting the glass he held out to her, took it without touching his fingers.

Enfolding herself fluidly on to the sofa with knees together and towards him, and one elbow resting on the back so that she sat sideways, she tilted her forehead a little forward in the manner of such women, to study him better.

The hand whose elbow rested on the sofa, plucked at the bracelet of the one that held the glass.

‘So, a few questions, Inspector. Nothing difficult.'

‘It's about the robbery.' She was making him feel like a dolt with that look of hers!

‘Yes, I gathered it would be about the robbery but you see, Inspector …' The lovely shoulders were raised. ‘I couldn't possibly help you since I saw nothing of it.'

‘I thought so. There you are, Mademoiselle St. Onge. That's Gestapo Central for you. Send a poor detective out on a wild-goose chase.
Sacré-bleu,
another waste of time!'

He downed his wine. She wasn't fooled in the least and took but a sip of her own just to wet her throat. Would it hurt to offer him a crumb? she wondered. Would it help or merely cause more suspicion? Ah, what could she say about him but that he was most definitely suspicious.

For this there was no apparent reason, and she put it down merely to his manner. He wished to unsettle her, as he would all others he had to question no matter how innocent.

She took another sip and let him watch her lovely throat. ‘Harald wasn't killed, Inspector, and for this I'm truly grateful and much relieved.'

‘Harald?' he asked.

‘Yes. Franz's driver.'

‘Franz?'

‘Oh come now, Inspector! How else could you have found my name and address if not from that same Gestapo Central who would, I'm sure, have told you of my lover?'

‘The Sonderführer Franz Ewald Kempf.'

Again there was that teasing little pout and then a shrug. ‘He lets me have the use of his car from time to time.'

The inspector set his glass aside just as Franz had once done while sitting in that same armchair, watching as she had undressed, she touching herself, he searching her splendid body for its every soft nuance, his eyes rapt, the grin of hunger on his lips until at last …

But Franz didn't do that any more, though the detective could not know of this.

‘Tell me about the driver,' he asked, having not read her mind at all.

‘There's nothing to tell.'

Kohler saw her swallow. Her wineglass was forgotten. ‘How often do you have the use of the car, Mademoiselle St. Onge?'

How often were things still going on between her and Franz, was that what he really wanted to find out? ‘Once or twice a week, it depends.'

‘Usually for the day?'

‘Yes.'

He took out his cigarettes and offered her one but she refused. There was a lighter on the side table. SS and of stainless steel. A gift he studied but didn't use. Indeed, he put it down and thought better of having a cigarette himself.

‘Do you often go to that shop in the rue Quatre Septembre?' he asked.

At 12.47 p.m. on a Thursday? Was that what he wanted? It was. ‘Not often. Only sometimes.'

‘Once a week?'

‘Perhaps.'

‘Here, let me refill your glass. The wine's really okay, isn't it?'

He got up so swiftly, he was all but on top of her. He stood there tall and big and brutal, yes, yes—a scar down his left cheek, a duelling scar?

Inwardly she shook her head and told herself this one doesn't do things like that. He has no use for them and is of far too humble a birth. A peasant.

She covered her glass with a hand and said, ‘Ah no, Inspector. I have sufficient.'

‘Then maybe you'd better tell me how often you visit that shop and why.'

To blink her eyes up at him, to fill them with tears, would be of no use. ‘I'm usually there once or twice a week. Sometimes, as at this time of year, far more. You see, I own the shop. It's called quite simply Chez Denise.'

‘That's nice. We're getting on a lot better. What do you sell?'

‘Clothes.'

‘Only clothes at an address like that?'

‘Designer clothes, things of quality.' Again there was that pout and shrug. ‘These days there is not so much and it's very hard to find suitable stock, so we remember.'

‘Soie sauvage?
'

Wild or raw silk. ‘Yes. Yes, I do like to have it.'

‘I'll bet you do,' he snorted but didn't return to his chair. Instead, he remained standing over her with the bottle gripped by its neck. He had big fingers, thick and coarse, fingers that when doubled …

Kohler gave her a moment. She wouldn't back down, was too highborn for that. ‘So, mademoiselle, you would leave the car of your lover outside your shop and there's a good chance you did so often enough that others would see this and note that the car would be available.'

‘I … I don't know what you're implying?'

‘You don't?
Gott im Himmel,
forgive me. You either told a friend the car would be there at 12.47 p.m. with its engine running, or someone else, another friend or acquaintance, knew you would be there because you always were.'

‘The … the times varied.'

‘Oh no they didn't. Your little life is like a clock. Sleep until noon, get dressed and drop into the shop to see how things are going, then off to lunch at Maxim's with your lover.'

‘He … he wasn't in the car. Harald …'

You and his driver were to pick him up at the Propaganda Staffel over on the Champs-Élysées at number 52.'

‘Is … is that so wrong? These … these days, Inspector, what is a girl to do? Make friends, yes? Fall in love. Sleep with her lover.'

‘And borrow his car from time to time. Hey, I almost forgot'

She waited. Her heart was racing. The interview wouldn't stop, not now. Questions, questions, always more and more of them from this one who could know nothing of her and Franz, that Franz no longer loved her, that he only wanted to …

When he handed her the photograph from the mantelpiece, she took it from him with trembling fingers he didn't notice, or did he? He set her glass aside and she heard him say, ‘I like your perfume. What is it?'

Her perfume … ‘Mirage. A little something special from a shop I know of and would wish to have some day on place Vendôme.'

Ambition then, was that it? wondered Kohler. Louis would be intrigued, for Louis not only knew the shop and its owners well but also that same perfume since it had been made especially for a certain chanteuse who always wore it.

‘Who took the photo?'

‘A man. He's of no consequence. I don't even know where he is now.' She could tell that Herr Kohler hadn't cared about the one who had taken the photo, that he wanted something else …

‘Whose was the hat?' he asked.

She could shrug and say she didn't know. A passing girl perhaps, a casual acquaintance but, ah it would be of no use. He had that look about him, that look of … ‘A friend. Inspector, is this necessary? She had nothing to do with that robbery. My God, that photo was taken months ago!'

He would wait until she gave the name to him. He had that same look about him. Not brutal as so many of the Gestapo were, but unyielding in resolve. Like concrete.

‘Her name is Mademoiselle Marie-Claire de Brisson, Inspector. We … we were at the university together. The … the Sorbonne, of course.'

The banker's daughter …
Jésus, merde alors!
‘Don't leave the city. I may want to talk to you again.'

Without another word he showed himself out and only after he had gone and she was replacing the photograph, did she notice the invitation and realize he would have seen it.

Hurrying over to the windows, she watched the street and saw him think better of getting into his car. He looked both up and down the street, then chose the direction which offered the most potential, and went after her maid. Ah no.

Kohler found the girl shivering in the Jardins du Ranelagh, but over on the avenue Chemin de la Muette. She was looking off down the avenue past an old man and his dog, straight towards the Bois de Boulogne in the near distance.

She didn't turn when he came up behind her. Christ, it was bleak. Normally quite lovely in summer, the gardens reminded him of Siberia, though he had never been there.

‘Mademoiselle …'

The girl was shattered. She thought it was the end for her. ‘I know nothing, monsieur. She tells me
nothing!
'

He turned her towards him. She wasn't any more than eighteen. The face was thin, the eyes afraid. ‘Look, Mademoiselle Jeanne, I'm not going to hurt you. I only want the answer to one question. Does your mistress loan things from that shop of hers to a friend?'

‘Sometimes.'

Kohler gently lifted her chin so that their eyes met. ‘Which friend? Mademoiselle Marie-Claire de Brisson?'

‘Yes.'

He nodded curtly. He took her by the arm and walked with her the short distance to the tearoom on the avenue Raphaël but he had no money or time for such things.

She saw that his thoughts were far away but then, having decided, he said, ‘Jeanne, go in and have a cup of that stuff they call tea. Take your time, then go back and swear to that mistress of yours that we never met.
Never,
do you understand? It's very important. I'll do my act for her if she's still watching my partner's car. I'll help you out, kid, so don't forget.'

Louis, he said to himself. Louis, I think I know where Joanne is. If I need help, you'd better come running.
Mein Gott, mon vieux,
I only hope I'm not too late because I'm going to have to take the time to walk up to that car of yours as though I couldn't find her maid. I'm going to have to drive slowly away even though I know I haven't a moment to lose. The banker's daughter, Louis. I can't have Mademoiselle St. Onge telephoning the woman to warn her. I can't.

From time to time as he moved about the empty house, St-Cyr looked out on to the rue de Valois to see the austere facade of the Bank of France. It was there as if to remind him of the robbery, yet was that event but a distraction hiding what they needed most to know?

‘Two men and a woman,' he said aloud but softly to himself. ‘It doesn't fit with what we know must have happened here. Bank robbers don't fool around taking pictures of kidnapped girls. In any case, why the delay of three days? Why
wait
until then to leave? Why clean out everything?'

As always these days, crime had to be viewed through the Occupation's prism, warped though that was most certainly. A crime such as the robbery could have been perpetrated by the Germans for their own ends but they could have used French gangsters so as to disguise the fact.

It could, of course, have been done by those same gangsters for their own ends but without them letting their German masters in on things.

It could have been a straight crime unconnected to either of these parties, in which case each would want to know who had done it.

Then, too, the Resistance which, a year or even six months ago, need not have been factored in simply because they were such a very, very tiny element, had now to be considered since the war in Russia had driven the Communists in France to actively resist the Germans. Though not all of the Resistance was Communist, a good part of it was to the shame of everyone else.