Reluctantly the industrialist sat in the chair by the windows and right away realized why they had put him there. The rare sunshine of Paris in winter gave plenty of light. Though he couldn’t see it, that damned dog of Bernadette’s would still be hanging out there behind the house above a blood-spattered circle in the snow.
They had to break him, these two flics from opposite sides of this war. It would not be easy—they did not have much time and must find Nénette before it was too late. How deeply would they cut? he wondered. St-Cyr was still studying him; Kohler was debating whether to light a cigarette in a room where everything was pristine and there were no ashtrays but that of his own hand.
‘Did you force your attentions on Liline Chambert?’ asked the Sûreté swiftly.
‘You raped her, didn’t you, and in this room,’ sighed Kohler. ‘When … when did it first happen, eh, monsieur? Soon after she arrived to take up her studies—was it then?’
‘Was it after that first attack that she had the room done over?’ asked Louis.
‘Look, we had an understanding, that is all.’
‘She refused you,’ breathed Kohler. ‘She “tempted” you, eh? You’re a man of position and power. You’re used to having your way.’
‘An understanding, is that what you called it?’ asked Louis.
‘All right, I had to have her. She was everything that wife of mine was not. Can you imagine what it’s been like living with that woman? My father couldn’t stand her. He warned me. He … Look, I didn’t mean to …’
‘To say that?’ asked Kohler. ‘Hey, he refused to leave the business to you and chose instead your brother who was much younger, “a brilliant designer”, you said, and also well married.’
Bâtards! he wanted to shriek at them but said levelly, ‘Father thought Bernadette corrupt. He felt that once I had passed on, she would sell everything and get out.’
End of family, end of name. ‘So a flat was needed,’ sighed Louis, drawing them right back to the matter at hand.
‘Liline struck her own bargain. She would let me choose the location and arrange for the flat but would decide on the one to live in it. We would not come together here but only there. It was far too awkward, she said.’
‘Too damned dangerous, you mean,’ snorted Kohler. ‘A wise girl, but not clever enough, since the boy she chose would never have slept with her, and that wife of yours found this out.’
‘What’s Bernadette done?’ he hissed, his voice harsh and breaking at last.
Kohler let Louis handle things.
‘Please, monsieur, a moment, yes? and I will tell you how it must have been so that we understand each other. You forced that girl into an affair she did not want but was afraid to refuse for fear of disgracing her family and losing her father his job with your firm. Don’t pretend otherwise. This room of hers was designed to reflect it. Like all good art, it speaks from a soul in torment striving to reach out and touch the hearts and minds of others. She became pregnant, and you told her this was what you wished for more than anything. After the divorce, the marriage—with money, friends and power, even divorces can be arranged and quickly. But she was astute enough to realize Nénette, whom she adored and who trusted her implicitly, was the rightful heiress. So, what was to become of Nénette, please, once you and Liline were married and the child you had given her had been born?’
It had been a good attempt, he’d have to give the Sûreté that. ‘Nénette would continue to live with us and inherit everything when she came of age. If she married, her husband would then take over and administer the estate. That’s the law.’
Kohler found he couldn’t sit still. A fidgeter always, he got up to move around, took out his cigarettes and lighted one. ‘But Mademoiselle Chambert was not so certain Nénette would inherit a thing, eh? She feared you would put the child on a train to nowhere.’
One must remain unruffled by such insolence, ‘I beg to differ, Inspector. I thought of doing no such thing.’
Ah mon Dieu, mon Dieu, he was tough. ‘Then why, please, in her desperation did Mademoiselle Chambert turn to the one person she could trust the least?’ asked Louis.
‘Your wife,’ sighed Kohler, flicking ash. ‘The girl panicked. She knew exactly what you’d do to your niece.’
‘When confronted by Madame, Mademoiselle Chambert told her the truth and begged for help,’ said Louis.
‘Help she got!’ swore Kohler, crossing to the candelabrum to rattle its strands of beads as he snatched up the police photograph.
Thrusting it into Vernet’s hands, he said, ‘Look at it, you smug son of a bitch, and start talking or we’ll see you in hell.’
‘You will never be able to prove a thing.’
‘Monsieur, we will prove everything,’ said Louis sadly. ‘We have a habit of doing so no matter who is involved or how powerful.’
‘You’re hated by the SS of the avenue Foch. Even Gestapo Boemelburg, who depends on you to combat common crime, says your days are numbered. I have only to turn to either of them.’
‘Then do so and accept the scandal of your wife’s affair,’ snapped Kohler, trembling a little.
‘Tell me what you want.’
‘The Sandman,’ said Louis so gently it was but a breath. ‘Only you can help us. That wife of yours refuses.’
‘Then ask her in and I will get her to confess.’
All along the corridor there were panic-thoughts of running, but where could she go? Where? wondered Bernadette Vernet. The detectives with Antoine were waiting for her in that room of Liline’s, that room where so much had gone on. All the years of bitterness would erupt. She would throw herself at him, would try to tear his eyes out, eyes that had mocked her, defied her, passed over her to another and another. He had done it in this house … this house that was rightfully hers, not Nénette’s. Things would be shouted. Things no one else must ever hear. Her rage, her pent-up jealousy, the sly and wicked rejoicing of her fornicating with a boy from the gutters just to get back at him, the triumph at last that it had been settled … all settled, only to find that a stupid, stupid mistake had been made.
She came to the door and tried to stop herself. Her bare toes dug into the carpet. What are they thinking? she demanded, her heart racing. That she could not see herself cast out on the street in favour of another and one so young? That the Vernet wealth would no longer be hers and that she had had to stop it from happening, that she could not let him marry that little bitch!
Antoine would be smugly sitting in one of the armchairs. Would the pleasures of possessing Liline be there in memory, her breasts, her thighs, her beautiful cunt …? Was it beautiful, Antoine?
With a scream no one heard, she roared into the room and there he was standing between the two detectives. Antoine … Antoine …
He slapped her so hard and so swiftly that she ducked away in shock. ‘Bâtard!’ she swore.
‘Putain! Fille de joie! Paillasse!’ he hissed. ‘Horning yourself with a stableboy. Hah! did you not think I would discover what you had been up to?’
‘Pardon?’ she shrilled and ripped her nightgown open. ‘Roué! Fornicateur!’ She grabbed her breasts and held them out to him. ‘Suck … go on and suck them for nourishment, eh, or is it that hers were a little bigger, a little softer since we were both with child? Your child.’
Ah merde … ‘Madame …’ began Louis, only to hear Vernet laugh tauntingly at her.
She shrieked, ‘It has to be his—HIS!’ and held her belly, distending it in mockery of him.
Both detectives were taken aback and that was good, yes, good! thought Vernet viciously. He’d heap scorn on her. ‘It’s impossible, Bernadette. Please don’t make a mockery of yourself. Be dignified. You’re a Vernet. isn’t that right, eh? Walk to the guillotine with pride.’
She withdrew a little, planting her feet more firmly apart. ‘What have you said to them?’ she said gratingly, cocking her head sideways to hear him. ‘Well?’ she shrilled and yelled, ‘Debaucheur! Maudit
salaud! Liline was not the first, messieurs. Ah no, no. There have been others. Tender little things. Two former maids he had to pay off. Schoolgirls if he could get them—yes, yes, I swear it! He did not use the brothels for fear of disease. He concentrated on the inexperienced because with them they gave him that feeling of immense power a man such as he requires.’
‘You always were unsatisfactory, Bernadette. With you there were never the cries of joy.’
‘Or despair.’
Ah nom de Dieu, de Dieu. ‘Monsieur—’
‘Piss off! Don’t interrupt. Let me finish this bitch once and for all!’
Kohler rolled his eyes up at the ceiling. Sex was the great leveller. High-class, low-class, sophisticated or not, they all went down into the sewers to fight it out. Every time.
Quivering, her face livid, she drew in a breath. Her dark brown eyes flashed hatred, hesitation and then uncertainty. ‘Well, what is it then? What have I done? Put holes in your condoms? You did that, Antoine. The little rips, the simple tears. What did you tell that shameful slut? That the rubber wasn’t so good these days?’ she mocked. ‘You got the poor thing pregnant. She was so stupid and naïve she didn’t realize what you were up to until it was too late. Did you offer her marriage when she discovered she was pregnant, eh? Well?’
His gaze must be like the guillotine before it falls and she must see this. No quarter, only triumph. ‘In Rouen I had time to think, my dear. What must she do? I asked myself, and put in a call to my solicitors. They’ve been with us since the days of my grandfather, Inspectors. Vrillière et fils, Number six, place de Valois and long ago they learned the art of discretion, especially in matters between husband and wife.’
It was coming now, and she could only hate him all the more. He gave her a moment to savour it. He ran his eyes over her forgotten breasts not with pity, ah no, but with utter contempt.
‘Last Wednesday, Bernadette, you told Monsieur Charles that the affair between myself and Liline had ended and that I wanted no trouble and wished to settle the sum of two hundred and seventy-five thousand francs on the girl. This sum, which you gave them on condition of silence, they were to hold until Monday at nine a.m., as it would be picked up then by a close friend of your family, a priest who would act as intermediary. A Father Eugène Debauve, who would present them with a sealed envelope for me containing some letters I had written to her. This he has, unfortunately, done. How could you have been so stupid?’
A sum of 275,000 francs in cash … ‘Madame …’ began the Sûreté, only to hear her say, ‘Nénette can answer all your questions, but I greatly fear she will not be able to. Will it be the Sandman who kills her, Inspectors, or my lover, since both must now know she intends to accuse them? Not me. Never me.’
8
GREEN, BLUE AND AMBER, RUBY RED, THE LAST light of day glowed among the shattered windows high above them while on the floor at Louis’s feet the Star of David, drawn by the child in windblown snow, now bore the careless bruises of bootprints. But these were not hers, nor a man’s, but those of a woman.
Uncertain and fearing the worst, they followed them from room to room down a corridor, now dark, now brushed with snow. A study, a school where Hebrew and religious studies had been taught, had been turned over to storage. Clothing, blankets, boots and shoes, all to be sent to the needy via the Jewish relief organization, had been left in sodden heaps as if forgotten.
Kohler shone his torch around. Among the rubbish, books littered the floor, sheet music, too. Chopin, Brahms, Tchaikovsky. All of the bundles had been broken open and searched for money. A partly closed door gave access to yet more rooms and then to the cellars, to a dark and forbidding arched brick entrance that shouted up no welcome, only a warning.
Was the child now dead? wondered St-Cyr. Had they failed her, and who, please, was the woman? Sister Céline, Violette Belanger, Madame Morelle or Madame Rébé?
Or was it none of these but someone else, someone who also knew who the Sandman was but had no fear of him?
Had the Attack Leader revealed his darkest thoughts to his psychotherapist?
At the foot of the stairs a river of black ice led to heaps of broken crates, smashed picture frames and jackboot-torn canvases … Raphael … Leonardo … ah mon Dieu, Fouquet that master of fifteenth-century French painting … A Madonna and child … A Botticelli, the Birth of Venus perhaps … Mould on everything, no time to look closer, no time … all stored for safety … safety …
The smell of coal dust and long-cold ashes came to them. The furnace was huge, the boilers even larger, the coal bins empty, the bootprints clear. Those of the child, too. Her explorings, her sitting on an overturned pail to think things through. Droplets of wax, the stub of a candle fixed to an up-ended coffee can. A wad of chewing gum parked behind a water pipe.
The door of the furnace was closed, its cast-iron draught plate open.
Kohler swung the beam of the torch around, letting it pierce the web of grey-white, asbestos-wrapped pipes, thin coverings of soot on each and on the gauge. Here and there the child had boldly printed her name and those of Andrée Noireau and Liline Chambert in the soot. ARE WE ALL TO DIE? she had asked, and had left that question for them.
‘Hermann …’
Kohler switched off the torch and they listened to the silence, breathed in the smell of the place, the frigid mustiness. ‘Block the doorway behind us,’ he sighed. ‘This is a dead end except for the hand-operated lift they used to bring the coal sacks down and take the ashes out before the war.’
They waited. They stood their ground but had not brought their guns—ah! it was Hermann’s responsiblity to take charge of the guns until needed and they’d been in too much of a hurry.
When he found the hoist well, Kohler looked up it into the night. Already the stars were coming out. It would be clear and very cold.
There was no sign of the child’s having been taken forceably up the thing, not even her bootprints, only a notice she had written in soot, THIS IS THE WAY OUT AND THE WAY IN.
Whoever had come for her had known of the place but had departed some time ago, having returned the lift platform to the cellars.
It was now 5.27 p.m. Berlin Time, and they had been in the city not quite forty-four hours. Since well before dawn, their only sustenance had been two cups of coffee and a few croissants, courtesy of von Schaumburg, a bowl of the acorn water with Oona and a little of the National bread.
They were hungry and running on Messerschmitt Benzedrine, which could and would fail them if too much was taken and yet … yet the child might still be free.
In the Jewish part of the ancien Cimetière de Neuilly behind the ramparts of headstones, the few and scattered mausoleums had been broken into during the desecration. Bronze doors when pushed further inward revealed shattered cremation urns or family burial vaults that had felt the sledgehammer blows until their seals had crumbled and their coffins had been dragged out in search of gold wedding rings and other trinkets.
In one such mausoleum the child had placed silk flowers she must have stolen from Gentile graves. In another, behind a cut-stone menorah and opened Talmud, she had bedded down for a night, having swept the floor clean with a broom of straw she had acquired from God knows where.
In the dust she had written: Andrée, you must forgive me. Liline is also dead. I went to the place where she was and I saw them taking her out.
‘The dogs, Louis. We have to ask von Schaumburg to allow us to use them.’
‘She’ll be terrified.’
‘But safe.’
‘Unless held hostage.’
‘All right, let’s pay Sister Céline a visit and hear what she has to say.’
‘Madame Morelle, I think, and Violette Belanger, but first the Vernet solicitors. Let us hope they are not now gone for the day.’ Could God not grant them this one small miracle, a conscientious solicitor? wondered St-Cyr and answered tartly, God thinks nothing of solicitors and hasn’t the time of day for them.
Th
e envelope was sealed and soft, the eyes of the elderly solicitor concerned.
With care Louis opened the thing the ‘priest’, Eugène Debauve, had left for Antoine Vernet. Emptily he said, ‘The underpants that were taken from the site of the abortion. But not to sell on the black market, simply as proof so that the last touch Monsieur Vernet would have of Liline Chambert would be this one sad memento from his wife.’
‘Merde, merde, Louis, she must really hate him.’
Like the rest of the city, the house on the rue Chabanais was now in darkness but cigarettes glowed, the line-up was long, boots shuffled, men coughed. And as before, the Feldgendarmen were discernable only because of their size and because they stood in the street, not on the pavement, their breath billowing in the frigid air.
‘Madame Morelle doesn’t want to see you. She has asked us to keep you away.’
‘St-Cyr, Sûreté. Please step aside.’
Oh-oh. ‘Louis …’
The burly Feldgendarm broke the rules by switching on an unblinkered torch to flood their faces, distracting no one but himself. Louis took a step back. There was a crack, a sigh, a burst of wind. The torch flew up, the lead-weighted baton clattered. A cry of pain was stifled as the knuckles of a left hand were cradled.
The Feldgendarm crumpled to the street. The roar of others descended on them. ‘Who’s next? Well, who is it to be?’ hissed the Sûreté in fluent Deutsch. A tiger.
‘A revolver … he’s got a revolver,’ managed Kohler, a lie. ‘He’s come to make an arrest.’
Arrest … arrest … the word fled down the line, pillaring the Feldgendarmen into indecision while the wise among the clientele sought greener pastures.
‘What arrest?’
‘Please don’t be difficult,’ winced the Sûreté breathlessly. ‘If you want answers, ask the Kommandant von Gross-Paris.’
‘We’re under his order,’ managed Kohler. ‘Orders!’ he shouted.
This they could understand, but it was with regret that they let them pass, for one could never predict the future, and the job of policing the Wehrmacht’s largest brothel had carried certain privileges.
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