Rubies and sky-blue sapphires and diamonds … tiny fleurs-de-lis in gold … 150,000 marks? 175,000? Renaissance? Was it that old?
No ordinary priest. The Bishop of Lyon’s secretary? he wondered. A cardinal perhaps or some ambassador from the Vatican? But why wear a thing like this to a film? Surely he must have known robbery was a distinct possibility?
Had he come fearing the worst, the fire, and then knelt to pray it would not happen even as it did?
All around him were the remains of dinner pails, boots, goggles and heavy leather-and-asbestos gauntlets, indicating that some of the men had only just come off shift from the marshalling yards in Perrache, right in the centre of the city not far from here and on the end of the tongue of land that lay between the Saône and the Rhône.
Gestapo HQ Lyon was in the Hotel Terminus facing the Gare de Perrache, an uncomfortable thought. Questions … there were bound to be questions. The Resistance thing if nothing else. Verdammt!
Two women and a priest, but no ordinary cleric. A large handbag woven out of rushes. A bag for the market, though nowadays market pickings were slim unless one dealt on the black market and had things to sell or trade.
A telex from Mueller, an order from Boemelburg. Shit!
Kohler sought the seats where the two women must have sat but, of course, they were now under a pile of humanity. Surely the priest could not have been looking their way. Not at the last. But had he known of them? Could it be possible?
Pocketing the cross, he moved away, found a broken wine bottle and another dinner pail, wondered again at the avidness of the railwaymen. Clearly they’d all agreed to gather to see a favourite film, but since the film had first come out in 1938, presumably most had seen it already.
Then why the gathering? he asked himself. Such meetings could only mean trouble.
He began to search further. Nearly everywhere there was the rubbish of railwaymen or members of their families. The gun he had found weighed on his conscience and he experienced a spasm of cold panic. He saw again that girl in the cellars of the Hotel Montfleury in Cannes, saw the blood trickling from her battered lips and nose to join the swill of vomit and excrement on the floor. Dead … dead at such a tender age. She’d known nothing, hadn’t even been involved. Well, not really.
‘Hermann …’
He leapt. ‘Louis, good Gott im Himmel, what the hell do you mean by startling me like that?’
Ah mon Dieu, Hermann was really not himself! ‘Nothing, mon vieux. Nothing, eh? Forgive me. The fire marshal wants a word.’
‘Then talk to him. I’m busy.’
‘Don’t be so gruff. His German counterpart is present and speaks no French. Kommandeur Weidling requests your presence as interpreter.’
Kohler pulled down a lower eyelid and made a face behind the bandanna. ‘Doesn’t he trust you to do it accurately?’
‘Please don’t give me horseshit, Hermann. Both men are nervous and not without good reason. They are afraid this will happen again and soon.’
‘Then there really is a pattern and there have been other fires?’
‘Ah yes, a pattern.’
‘The Salamander?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Did you find anything?’
A shrug would be best. ‘Just little things. Nothing much. We’ll look again, eh? After the conference.’
‘Piss off! The Feuerschutzpolizei back home can’t know anything about this, Louis. What the hell’s he doing here?’
Again there was that massive shrug. ‘Ask Gestapo Mueller; ask Herr Weidling but proceed gently. We can use all the help we can get.’
‘A visitor from home who just happens to be a fire chief and on the scene of a major fire? The son of a bitch shouldn’t even be here, Louis, not with all those incendiaries the fucking RAF are dropping at home!’
Hermann always had to have the last word. It was best to let him so as to avoid argument, but … Ah, what the hell. ‘Then let us have a look at our surroundings first, so as to have everything in perspective. Please, I think it is important.’
Kohler’s grunt was answer enough. Picking their way past the ticket booth, they stood a moment at the entrance, gazing out across place Terreaux. Bartholdi’s four magnificent horses were caught frozen in their imaginary flight to the sea. Shrouded in ice, the Goddess of Springs and Rivers looked unfeelingly down from her chariot at the corpse of a man who had run to her in flames for help.
French police and German soldiers kept the crowd at bay behind a rope barrier. The debris of firefighting was everywhere. Pumper trucks, whose snaking hoses were now collapsed and clinging to the icy pavement, were being attended to by exhausted firemen whose disillusionment at having failed to save so many was all too evident.
The square, one of the finest in Lyon and right in the centre of the city, would normally be busy in the afternoon, even under the Occupation. Now the curious and the grieving huddled around its periphery and, in places, beneath shop awnings that had been folded out of the way.
Collectively the mood of the crowd was one of outrage and fear. They’d be blaming the authorities. They’d be whispering How could you let a thing like this happen? Why were the fire doors padlocked? It was that bastard who owned the place. He did it for the insurance. No, no, it was a sadist, a maniac. It’s going to happen again. Oh yes it is!
A murmur intruded, a disturbing puzzle for it was not coming from the crowd. Now and then the sporadic chipping of firemen’s axes broke through the hush and the murmur as the hoses were freed for coiling.
Unsettled that he could not readily find the source of the murmur, St-Cyr scanned the length of the square. The Hôtel de Ville, the city’s seventeenth-century town hall, faced on to it at the far end, with a domed clocktower rising above and behind the entrance. The Palais des Arts—the Palais Saint-Pierre—took up the whole of the opposite side of the square. Eighteenth century. All solid, well-built buildings. Staid but baroque too, and emitting that singularity of purpose so evident in the Lyonnais character. Good business and sound banking: silk and explosives, leather tanning and many other industries. A city of about 700,000, with blocks and blocks of nearly identical, shoulder-to-shoulder buildings from three to five windows wide and from four to six storeys high, as were some of these. The stone grey or buff-grey, the stucco buff-grey to pale pink. The roofs of dark grey slate or weathered orange tile, the chimneys far more solid than those of Paris and of brownish-yellow brick with chimneypots that were rarely if ever canted because the people here would have seen to them.
Mansard roofs with small attic windows and tiny one-or two-room garrets for servants, shopgirls, clerks and students were to the left and right. Below them were ornamental iron railings before tall french windows behind which most of the lace or damask curtains were now parted. Drop-shutters were pulled up and out of the way or, in a few places, lowered to half-mast like weary eyelids, and in one case, closed completely as if to shut out what had happened.
‘The location is perfect, Hermann. Maximum exposure if fear of repeat fires is what was wanted.’
‘Publicity. Someone who knows the city well,’ grunted Kohler. ‘A pattern, Louis.’
‘An uncomfortable thought and an arsonist totally without conscience. But for every fire there is a reason, no matter how warped.’
‘Or sick.’
Again the murmuring intruded but now there was that unmistakable feeling of never knowing if they were being watched by the arsonist.
‘Louis, our visitor is feeding the pigeons. There, over there. Behind the fountain.’
The stiff woollen greatcoat was Prussian blue, the rubber boots, whose tops were folded down, were well used and black, of pre-war vintage. Little more could be seen of him beyond the stallions with their flailing hooves and wild-eyed muzzles, but the murmur increased and became more excited. The black leather gloves had been removed and stuffed into a pocket. The left hand held a torn loaf of white bread—white, no less and seldom seen on the streets these day
s!—while the fingers of the right hand ripped off bits and tossed them to the pigeons, his little friends.
‘Does he keep doves at home?’ hazarded Kohler, baffled that, in the face of such a catastrophe and hunger among the civilian population, anyone could be crass enough to unthinkingly undertake such a sentimental task.
‘Maybe he’s homesick,’ offered the Sûreté.
‘Maybe he wants to show you French exactly how unimportant you are!’
Such inflammatory statements from Hermann were best ignored but why should they be? ‘Is it that he has seen it all so many times before, Inspector, or is it that he needs to find release from the horror in such a simple task?’
Kohler grinned at Louis’s use of ‘Inspector’. The Frog was one up on him in rank and always pulling it. ‘Hey, Chief, cut the crap. He’s budgeting the crumbs. He’s making sure that the weak and not-so-weak get their fair share but like all good Nazis he admires the brave and the strong. See how he flicks the extra bits down at his boots as a reward.’
It was St-Cyr’s turn to grin. ‘You’re learning, mon ami. Being stuck with me is good for you. Let’s hear what he has to say.’
‘Let’s ask him exactly why the fuck he’s here and what he intends to do about it!’
The grunt of acknowledgement from the fire chief was terse, the bread summarily ripped into four large chunks and thrown among the pigeons so as to equalize the fight. ‘Leiter Weidling at your service, Herr Kohler. Lübeck, Heidelberg and Köln. This one’s done it all before. Same technique, same pattern. Gasoline poured on the floor to run under the seats and around the shoes and boots of the unsuspecting. Then across the entrances to the foyer or across the staircase. Then the match or cigarette lighter.’
‘But … but the usherette has said there were two women …?’ began St-Cyr in German that was far from rusty.
Unimpressed that a Frenchman could speak his native tongue, Weidling fastidiously brushed crumbs from thick, strong fingers before pulling on his gloves. Again he spoke only to Hermann. ‘Lübeck first, in late May of 1938. A cinema in the student quarter near the university.’
The blue eyes were lifeless in that rosy, apple-cheeked countenance. A man of sixty or sixty-five, a father probably and a grandfather. The lips were thin.
‘Heidelberg in early July of the same year, a crowded lecture hall, a Party meeting. The first fire killed sixty-seven, the second only twenty-eight. Then Köln and a night-club in mid-August—again the same technique, again a good number—sixteen to be precise—but most escaped through the stage doors and I count the thing a failure.’
Was he really telling them everything? ‘Two women?’ asked Kohler, watching him intently.
Weidling returned the look. ‘Perhaps, but I happen to think not.’
‘And since those fires?’ hazarded the Sûreté.
Again he was ignored. ‘Nothing of a similar nature, Herr Kohler. Other arsonists, of course, but now this, yes? A student perhaps who visited the Reich in 1938 and then went home to Lyon. My people are checking into things and will send me the case files. You can read them yourself.’
A student, a citizen of Lyon …
‘Leiter Weidling is to become a professor at the Fire Protection Officers’ School in Eberswald. We are fortunate to have him with us. He’s the only fire marshal in the Reich to have been decorated three times for bravery beyond the call of duty.’
This had come in French from Lyon’s fire marshal, Julien Robichaud.
‘On holiday, is he?’ snapped Kohler in French, for that was the way one got things done quickly.
Weidling grinned, for though he hadn’t understood a word, he had understood only too well the drift of Herr Kohler’s thoughts. Hero firemen sometimes lit their own fires. ‘Here for the International Fire Marshals’ Convention and staying on a few days.’
It was Kohler’s turn to be unimpressed, but he tried hard to hide his feelings by offering precious cigarettes all round and insisting Louis take one. ‘A coffee, I think, and a glass of marc?’
Robichaud strode over to the nearest pumper truck and returned with a thermos jug, four tin cups and a bottle. ‘Emergency rations, messieurs,’ he said, gritting his teeth self-consciously. ‘It’s not a day for alcohol but …’ He gave the shrug of a man uncertain of his position and definitely worried about it. ‘But one has to have a little something, eh? to settle the stomach.’
Kohler took the bottle from him and uptilted it into his mouth, shutting his eyes in blessed relief. ‘Merci,’ he said, wiping his lips. ‘Louis?’
St-Cyr shook his head. ‘In the coffee, I think. Yes, yes, that will be sufficient.’
They were a pair, these two detectives, thought Weidling. Gestapo Leader Mueller’s telex from Berlin had said to watch them closely. Gestapo Boemelburg in Paris had been emphatic: St-Cyr was a patriot and therefore untrustworthy; Kohler a doubter of Germanic invincibility. They’d been in trouble with the SS far too many times. They had made disparaging remarks about some of its members and had held them up to ridicule.
Weidling helped himself to the bottle. The coffee was good—the real stuff—the brandy barely passable, the French fire chief nothing but a nuisance to be got rid of quickly. ‘You will need a list of all those who were in the cinema, Herr Kohler, both the victims and those who escaped.’
‘It’ll be impossible to get a complete list.’
‘Nothing is impossible. Get one. Also the employees, the night-watchman and the cleaners, the concierge if that’s what they call him, the manager and the owner and their closest relatives. Also all previous employees over the past four years. Grudge fires are not uncommon.’
Kohler grinned. ‘I thought you said it might be a student? Lübeck, wasn’t it?’
‘Or Heidelberg or Köln. Ja, ja, you will still require the lists. It’s best that way. Find out if the staff have been turning anyone away. Sex in the back rows. Some filthy Frenchman or Algerian exposing himself to women and little girls or boys. Some black or brown bastard making suggestive remarks. A woman betrayed by a husband with a lover. A Jewess. Those are always possibilities but you are correct, Herr Kohler, hero firemen could very well become ‘hero’ arsonists to advance themselves, but not this one. You will find me at the Bristol. Inquire at the desk. Get a list of the tenants too. There were apartments above the foyer and behind the balcony and projectionist’s booth.’
Brusquely he shook hands with Robichaud and made excuses about having to tidy up for dinner. ‘The wife,’ he grunted. ‘She’ll have purchased the last of her silks by now and I must examine them. Have the lists compiled, Herr Kohler. You can bring them over at dawn. Gestapo Mueller wants this solved before it happens again and wishes me to give the matter my fullest attention. Even here in France people have a right to know they are safe under our administration. Heil Hitler.’
Shit!
They watched as he strode the short distance to his car. Robichaud sucked grimly on his cheeks and held his breath in exasperation.
It was Hermann who said, ‘You have our sympathies.’
Lyon’s fire chief nodded. ‘But you have not had to introduce him at far too many banquets, monsieur, and you do not have to answer for your sins or blame yourself for letting this one happen. You see, messieurs, I was in the cinema. It was myself who turned in the alarm and unfortunately he knows of this.’
There was dead silence but only for a moment. St-Cyr took the bottle from him and cautiously filled the fire chief’s cup. ‘Two women?’ he asked, pleasantly enough.
There was a hiss. ‘Of this I am certain! I saw them vanish into a tram-car right over there.’
Right across the square beyond the fountain and obscured by it at the moment of escape, right in front of the Palais des Arts.
It was on the tip of St-Cyr’s tongue to ask, Why did you not blow your whistle and summon a gendarme to chase after them? but he let the matter rest. Obviously Robichaud had had his hands full.
Finishing his cigarette, he careful
ly put it out, then handed the butt to Hermann for his little tin. These days tobacco was in such short supply it was the least he could do. The crowd seemed intent on their every move. Again he cautiously looked around the square—always there was the possibility that the arsonist would hang about to watch the fun and come back again and again. Sometimes they would offer help or pitch right in unasked. Sometimes they would even turn in the alarm and make suggestions as to how the fire might have started. But not Robichaud, never him. Other things perhaps but not arson.
No one seemed out of the ordinary until St-Cyr spotted a lone girl with a bicycle. She had only just arrived and now stood uncertainly where Herr Weidling’s car had been. She had come up the rue Paul Chenavard. Her carrier basket held a cloth bag that was square and no doubt full of books. About twenty-five or-six but looking a little younger. Still a student? he wondered apprehensively, but thought not. Of medium height, with short, light brown hair and a fringe. The deep, wide-set eyes earnestly searched. The pale oval of her face was not wide or narrow but something in between. There was no lipstick or rouge that he could discern from this distance. A bookseller? he asked. A librarian? A girl in a cocoa-brown beret and long white scarf that was tied under her chin and thrown over the shoulders of a fawn-coloured double-breasted overcoat. A grey plaid skirt and dark grey woollen argyle socks that would come to her knees. Flat-heeled, brown leather walking shoes, not winter boots. Knitted beige gloves gripped the handlebars. Gloves were not so easy to knit, and he wondered if she had made them and thought that perhaps she had. Trained in those arts, then, he said. Yes, she has that capable look about her. Not beautiful, not plain. Does she keep house for someone in addition to her job? Two women …
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