Tapestry (2 page)

‘You’re learning. That’s good. Being with me helps.’

The safe, ancient and of cast iron, was hidden behind a faded curtain that had dutifully fallen into place even though the door was wide open. One of its little legs was missing, a half-brick having been substituted years ago.

The obvious had best be given but it wouldn’t hurt to use Louis’s rank. ‘Two medium raps with the sledge, Chief Inspector,’ said Kohler deferentially. ‘One to knock the dial off and the other with the chisel to punch in the spindle and tumblers.’

Good for Hermann. Together they’d unsettle this
flic
. ‘But … but, Herr Hauptmann Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter of the Gestapo’s Kripo, the contents can’t have been touched beyond a desired item or two? Three thick wads of old francs kept in the faint hope of their amnesty? Folios and envelopes too precious to leave out after hours, the owner’s private collection as well? A half a baguette made from white flour, at least three hundred grams of Camembert, which, like the flour, can only be obtained on the
marché noir
?’

The black market.

‘An open tin of Portuguese sardines and a quarter litre of milk, these items to be shared with …’ Louis paused. ‘The cat, where is it?’

‘Gone to where all such cats must go when released by a sudden noise and an open door,’ said Bélanger.

A poet! but horn-rims must be feeling confident. ‘Milk,’ grumbled Kohler, ‘when mothers haven’t been able to find it since the winter of 1940–41.’ But had used postage stamps been bartered to provision this one’s larder? Absolutely! Even among the Wehr­macht’s grey-green-uniformed soldier boys, its “Green Beans,” there were avid stamp collectors and guess who were the black market’s biggest dealers?

Taking hold of the hand that held the light, he lowered it a trifle before reaching deeply into the safe.
‘Saucisson de Lyon fumé,’
he said appreciatively. ‘Homemade, Louis, and hung for at least ten days in the chimney.’

Now, of course, such a practice could only be done late at night, prolonging the finishing time and keeping the news from neighbours, but possessing smoked sausage was illegal in any case. ‘Agent Bélanger, have you notified the owner?’ asked St-Cyr pleasantly enough.

‘My orders were to await yourselves, Chief Inspector.’

‘The
préfet
is being considerate, Hermann.’

The chief of police and an archenemy.
Merde,
were they in for another dose of Talbotte’s ‘consideration’?

‘The owner, M. Picard, has lived in the Hôtel Ronceray for years, Inspectors. If it is your wish, I’ll ask the concierge to awaken him.’

Such politeness from a
flic
had to have its reasons and Louis knew it too but said, ‘Let him sleep. He’s going to need it. Stay here and seal this off and we’ll come back when there’s no need for the electric lights we could have used. Ah, I almost forgot. Your pocketknife.’

Taken aback as to why such a lengthy trust should suddenly have befallen him, Bélanger dragged out the knife. ‘Inspectors …’

Ignoring him, Louis scraped a bit of clay from the dial and put it into a handkerchief. ‘Rags, Hermann, were used to muffle the sound. Rags still heavy with their mud.’

‘And from that same sewer as was used on the clapper, Chief?’ Horn-rims was now panicking at being ignored but as if on cue to save him, the bold clanging of a call box started up. Again and again, it shrilled.

‘Answer it,’ said St-Cyr with a sigh. ‘It’s all right. You can leave us. I have a torch whose batteries I was budgeting.’

Now only the sound of ice hitting the roof of the Jouffroy came to them. ‘The driving will be a bugger, Louis.’

‘Especially with the absence of road salt. Wasn’t it all requisitioned and sent to the Reich?’

‘It’s not my fault.’

‘Our
flic
is hiding something.’

‘The sausage,’ retorted Kohler. ‘He cut off a thick slice and ate it. You would have smelled it on his breath if you hadn’t been so busy playing detective.’

‘The Camembert on that breath was overly ripe and there were breadcrumbs glued to the knees of his trousers, Inspector, but if
you
had really been alert, you would have noticed the instant of panic that greeted my telling him to stay.’

‘He lifted a little something else from the safe,’ said Kohler.

‘The bank notes were left untouched,’ mused the oracle.

‘But our safe-cracker passed up …’

‘The paper twists of gold louis our M. Picard would most certainly have set aside.’

‘And not declared as they should have been?’ quipped Kohler. These days everything more than one hundred thousand francs in value had to be registered, if one was fool enough.

‘We’ll treat the matter with discretion, Hermann, since our
flic
has realized we might well be aware of the absence.’

‘But was he left that little something to silence him?’ asked Kohler blandly.

‘
Ah, bon, mon vieux,
you really are learning. It’s a great comfort to me, of course, for Paris has much to teach a former Munich and Berlin detective, though with such a slow learner, I tell myself patience is required. We can leave him entirely in charge. Indeed, I doubt there will even be another mouthful of sausage taken when we come back for that closer look, and I think we will find the proof of what is missing has been returned and no one will be the wiser for its little absence.’

‘Inspectors … Inspectors,’ bleated Bélanger from out of the ink. ‘Someone at headquarters has made an unpardonable mistake. You were not to have been assigned to this robbery and are to hurry to the Restaurant Drouant. Another sex attack has been made.’

‘Not assigned to this, Louis? Another rape?’

‘Are we to only cover those?’

There was no other traffic but why, please, only the rapes? Murder, blackmail, robbery, arson and fraud were their specialties.

The Drouant, at the corner of the rue Saint-Augustin and the rue Gaillon, had opened in 1880 and become famous for its seafood. Though it hurt to have to admit it, Louis had to say, ‘The clientele is largely French and most definitely Parisian.’

There’d be several of the ‘friends’ of those, felt Kohler, but only the
bourgeoisie aisée
, the really well-off, and the
nouveaux riches
everyone else was bitching about, could afford such a place: the BOFs, the
beurre, oeufs et fromage
(butter, eggs and cheese) boys of the black market and other
collabos
, bankers, businessmen, those of inherited wealth and those who had made it, if only recently.

Candles that had all but vanished from the city since that first winter flickered in the sudden draught as they stepped into the foyer to confront an absent maître d’.

In the silence that accompanied their entry, a nearby glass of the
blanc de blanc
was downed in one gulp by a blonde in an emerald-green suit dress and diamonds. Guilt made her lovely eyes moisten, fear caused her lips to quiver. Like every other female in the place, she’d be thinking she could well have been a victim herself. The forty-year-old stud at her side wore the navy blue of a lieutenant in the Abwehr, the counterintelligence service, and didn’t she look like what some had come to hate and call
les horizontales
?

The place was packed. Several were dressed for an evening at the Opéra, though the performance would have ended early for those who needed the
métro
, and most here would simply stay the night unless they’d a pass allowing them to be out after curfew.

Embarrassed by his continued scrutiny, she finally lowered her gaze. Twenty-two if that, thought Kohler. A gorgeous figure, beautiful lips …

‘The oyster bar is superb, Hermann.
Belons
,
portugaises
and
marennes
.
Ah, mon Dieu,
the
bouillabaisse
is magnificent, the
filet de sole Drouant
a bishop’s sin.’

‘You’ve eaten here?’

‘On my pay? People such as myself only hear about places like this. Monsieur …’

The maître d’ had arrived to shrill, ‘Inspectors, why are you not keeping the streets safe? A mugging? A slashing? A groping? This
homme sadique
has ruined the dinners of everyone and has upset the chef and sous-chef, my waiters as well as myself most especially.’

‘Monsieur, just lead us to the victim,’ said Louis. It was a night for sighs.

‘Victims!’
cried Henri-Claude Patout. ‘The hysterics. The splashes of blood on the carpets—how are we to clean them? The oceans of tears and screams? The shameful clutching of a woman’s
parties sensibles
as the ring is torn from her finger and she has thought the virtue, it would have to be sacrificed or else the throat, it would be slashed? Yes, slashed! Monsieur Morel, he has been unable to defend her from this animal. Struck down, he has fallen into the gutter to ruin the tuxedo and has been robbed. ROBBED, DID YOU HEAR ME, of the wallet, the gold pocket watch of his wife’s father, the silver cigar case …’

‘Calm down, monsieur,’ snapped Louis, stopping him on a staircase whose wrought-iron balustrade curved up from ground-floor ears and eyes to sixteen private dining rooms.

‘WHY SHOULD I BE CALM WHEN YOU PEOPLE DON’T KNOW YOUR DUTY?’

‘They don’t appear to have stopped eating.’

‘THE ATMOSPHERE HAS BEEN PLUNGED, INSPECTOR. PLUNGED!’

‘Louis, let me.’

‘Hermann, a moment please, and then he is all yours to arrest for obstructing justice. Which of the rooms, monsieur? Come, come. Out with it.’

‘The Goncourt’s.’

The Académie Goncourt had held their meetings here since 31 October 1914 to award the country’s most prestigious literary prize. ‘Take care of him, Hermann. Scrutinize the papers of every­one. Be sure to take down all the necessary details. One never knows when something useful might turn up. And make damned sure those who are allowed to leave have the necessary
Ausweis
and are not required to stay cooped up in this doss-house of the elite until five a.m!’

Thank God Louis had got that off his chest.

‘Messieurs … Inspectors …’

‘It’s Chief Inspector St-Cyr and Detective Inspector Kohler of the Gestapo,’ said Louis.

‘It … it is this way, please.’

And so much for not knowing their duty. ‘We’ll leave the papers for the moment,’ said Kohler, plucking at Patout’s sleeve and using his best Gestapo form. ‘Just see that a little something is sent up from the kitchens.’

Not even an eye was batted, thereby revealing that the house was quite used to such.

‘Hermann, we haven’t time. Besides, you know the stomach, accustomed to those little grey pills that keep the Luftwaffe’s night-fighter pilots awake, will not sit well with such richness.’

The Benzedrine, but still the stomach would like to try.

M. Gaston Morel, victim number three, was not happy. Big in every sense below a blood-soaked bandage, he lifted lead grey eyes from an all but drained bottle of the Romanée-Conti, the 1934 and a superb year, to impassively gaze at Louis first and then at this Kripo.

Grizzled cheeks wore the eight days of customary growth that hid the pockmarks of childhood but served also to make him look like a slum landlord after arrears. The starched shirt collar was no longer tight, the black bow tie having been yanked off in disgust.

‘
Ah, bon
, you’ve at last condescended to show up,’ he grunted. ‘Considering that the assault occurred at eleven fifty-two p.m. yesterday, and that it is now two thirty-five a.m., we should think ourselves lucky, but please don’t bother to claim you were delayed or that the dispatcher fucked up and sent you to the wrong address.’

Compressed, the thin lips were grimly turned down beneath a nose and heavy black eyebrows that, with the stubble, were fierce. Had he been a union buster in the thirties? wondered St-Cyr. ‘Monsieur, mesdames, a few small questions. Nothing difficult, I assure you.’

‘Don’t be an
imbécile
, Inspector. My wife’s stepsister was very nearly murdered.’

‘And the others?’ asked Louis, indicating the wife who sat next to a female friend who was younger than her by a good fifteen years. A former debutante, a tall, auburn-haired, permed and very carefully made-up, sharp-featured socialite who’d be taut when pressed.

‘They stayed at our table while I accompanied Madame Barrault to my car,’ said Morel.

‘You’ve an
Ausweis
?’ asked Louis with evident interest.

‘And an SP sticker,’ came the dead flat answer.

The
Service-Public
sticker that had to be signed and stamped not only by the Kommandant von Gross-Paris but also by the
préfet
, and wouldn’t you know it, this one was a friend of both!

Before the Defeat there’d been 350,000 private autos in Paris and unbelievable traffic jams and smog. Now there were no more than 4,500 and here was one of their owners.

It wasn’t difficult to see what was running through detective minds, felt Gaston Morel, but he’d have to ignore it. ‘The rear tyres had been punctured but due to the rain, we didn’t see this at first. When we did, I sent my driver to telephone for replacements and that is when this bastard struck. First myself, as I was helping Marie-Léon from the car, and then herself to be thrown up against the wall, the overcoat ripped open, the dress down.’

Isolated from the others, Madame Barrault sat in one of the armchairs at the far end of the table. Huddled in a thin overcoat and cradling a bandaged left forearm and hand, she couldn’t bring herself to look at anyone, felt Kohler, was badly shaken, but terrified of something else as well.

‘See to her, Hermann. I’ll deal with the others.’

‘Leave her,’ grunted Morel. ‘She’s in no state to answer anything. He used a cutthroat to free her handbag and when she refused to give up her wedding ring, slashed her arm and the back of her hand before ripping the ring off and then grabbing her by the crotch for a good feel.’

‘
Putain.
… That is what he has called me,’ blurted the woman.

Madame Morel, the arch of a well-plucked, heavily shadowed dark black eyebrow sharply cocked, hung on every word as did her companion.