They’d trace the dynamite – this would cause them some delay but she really didn’t know how she could possibly stop them from doing so. She still could not understand why Janwillem had left such a device below the apartment of his son, the little boy he’d never seen.
Had the bomb gone off, it would, at the least, have sent flying glass inwards, perhaps killing Jani and herself.
Letting the edge of the velvet drape fall from her hand, she stood a moment undecided – wished then that she had not been trying on the loose-fitting, rose-coloured, striped silk chiffon trousers with their long waistcoat of rose and gold lame and the outer one that came to just below her waist but was of many vibrant colours and much fine needlework. She wished she had not had her dancing shoes on. The heavy, black high-heels with their sturdy straps gave her height, strength and that overt alertness and suppleness of body she did not want at the moment.
St-Cyr was studying her. He’d remember that her hair was still loose and that there was the look of the gypsy about her. He’d see the gold ear-rings, the heavy gold bracelets and rings. He’d think there was more to her than met the eye.
Tshaya … A fly in amber. Vadni ratsa. Why had Janwillem asked for such a thing as that cigarette case? Was it to have been her final insult?
No. No that was the bomb in the car below.
‘Louis, the Resistance have to be involved. They’re the only idiots desperate enough to fool around with stuff like that. We’ve got to find the quarry and quickly, and then trace the stuff to whoever took it.’
The Resistance and Gabrielle, and was this not the reason Herr Max wanted a certain Sûreté’s head? ‘Perhaps but … ah mais alors, mon vieux, is it that others wish simply to make it appear as if the terrorists are involved?’
The SS of the avenue Foch, the Gestapo of the rue des Saussaies, or the French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston. Louis couldn’t know he had talked to Boemelburg. Not yet. ‘I’ve thought of that too. Engineer a crisis, eh? so that you can then have all the authority you want to stamp it out.’
The relief of Leningrad, the defeat at Stalingrad were excuses enough but so, too, were increasing acts of ‘terrorism’ and related evasions of the forced labour draft, the hated Service de Travail Obligatoire which was sending so many workers to the Reich but also driving the young men to swell the ranks of the maquis.
‘Knock off a few places to make sure the loot taken more than compensates for the effort, eh? since if the plan works,’ said St-Cyr, ‘all those involved in it will be handsomely rewarded with a lot left over for the bosses.’
‘But it isn’t working, is it?’ said Kohler sadly. ‘He’s buggered off on them.’
‘And now they have to have him back.’
Louis dragged out his pipe, only to ruefully examine the meagre contents of his tobacco pouch and, momentarily furious with life, put both away. ‘There’s no denying his parking the car outside her flat can do nothing but cause her trouble.’
‘He can’t be happy with her but is he with anyone?’
‘Someone’s been helping him and not just with that uniform and ID he got in Tours,’ muttered St-Cyr. ‘He knew Wehrle’s safe would be loaded. He knew all about Cartier’s, knew the Gare Saint-Lazare kept its receipts too long, and knew enough of the house on the rue Poliveau to take the keys to it.’
‘He had to have help getting from the Gare to that house. Two suitcases, a large rucksack … The patrols, the risk of being stopped … He was carting dynamite too, wasn’t he?’
‘A bicycle would have been sufficient, Hermann. He has all the recklessness and nerve needed to ride one when fully loaded and on ice. No problem.’
Louis was just evading things. ‘A car,’ breathed Kohler sadly. ‘Who do we know in the Resistance who has one?’
Hermann had finally got to it. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t ask, but even Gabrielle can’t drive about after the curfew without a laissez-passer.’
‘I’ll check it out. I’m going to have to, Louis. Someone had to haul that dynamite around. Someone had to find it first and then store it. Boemelburg and Herr Max will expect it of me. I’m sorry, but I have no other choice.’
‘Tshaya … we have to find her too.’
*
‘Lucie-Marie Doucette. I know nothing of her,’ said Nana Thélème. ‘The name, it is unfamiliar to me.’
The flat grew still.
Herr Max had arrived at the departure of the bomb squad. Furious with her, and with Kohler and St-Cyr, he said quietly, ‘Nothing, Fräulein?’
Louis started forward. Kohler grabbed him. Still she stood defiantly in those all-but-Ali-Baba trousers – that was the way Engelmann would see her – with arms tightly folded across her chest. And all around her, the Turkish and Afghani leavings of the Marché aux Puces, the flea-market stalls in Saint-Ouen, threw back their throw-rug colours and kilim-patterns. Dark reds, blues, greens and yellows, the geometry of their patterns and the pseudo-mid-Eastern attire so foreign and repulsive to him, they could only bring anger at her obstinacy.
‘Nothing,’ she said.
The hammered brasses glinted. Gilded, carved neo-Gothic chairs were caught in wall-mirrors that must have come from some circus, the beautifully sculpted head and shoulders of a gypsy patriarch too, a Rom Baro, a ‘big man’, a leader with a fiercely bushy moustache that drooped at its ends. The Rassenverfolgte, the racially undesirable and here she was keeping images of them.
Herr Max removed his bifocals, letting his gaze pass myopically down over her. Untidy wisps of hair fell across his brow. ‘Tshaya?’ he asked again.
All around the room, watercolours gave scenes of gypsy encampments and caravans. Portraits too. The smoke, the scent of camp fires, of women and young girls washing clothes in a stream, of an ancient matriarch pouring Turkish coffee from a superb brass jezbeh, of another wearing heavy necklaces and earrings of gold coins. Holland, Belgium, Normandy, the Auvergne … Provence, Spain and Andalusia, where hadn’t Janwillem De Vries travelled with them?
The paintings were exceptional and St-Cyr realized then that De Vries could so easily have become an artist of a far different sort but … she had got the message.
‘All right, I … I did know of her once,’ she said sharply.
Engelmann gripped her by the chin. She yanked her head away. ‘But … but your former lover slept with her, Fräulein, with this marhime lubnyi you hate so much? That unclean whore took him from you, yes you! She could have had any man she wanted, but chose instead that which was forbidden by gypsy law. A Gajo. Always it was your Gypsy she wanted right from when she was seven years old and he but a boy of eleven. When marriage to De Vries was refused absolutely by her father and all the others of the kumpania, she ran away to Paris to find him. Age fifteen then, in 1922.’
Her nostrils pinched. The smile she gave was swift and cruel. ‘She found she had a sudden likeness for muscles, for the smell of male sweat and the thrill of being splashed by blood during a fight!’
Oh-oh, thought Kohler.
‘Henri Doucette,’ sighed Herr Max, pleased that he had got her to respond with such acrimony. ‘The Spade, Fräulein, a guest at that party in your villa a week ago Monday. Her husband, her conductor. She was his mouton, his informer. Tell me, please, did he applaud your singing?’
Dear Blessed Jesus, help me, she said silently and then acidly, ‘He was too drunk and loud to have noticed.’
‘But had brought her along?’
‘Yes.’
‘And she knew who you were?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you were forced to sing gypsy songs in front of her, knowing you were no gypsy yourself but that she had taken the father of your son from you?’
Her voice leapt. ‘What would you have had me do? Refuse those loudmouthed, arrogant pigs?’
His eyebrows arched. ‘The SS? The Gestapo and the French Gestapo who were their guests?’
‘It was my house! Doucette deliberately tried to humiliate me. They thought it a gre
at joke. They were drunk. There was food everywhere. On the walls, the ceiling, the carpets – my carpets! They threw it. They encouraged their whores to do so and when one of them tried to dance naked on the table, they clapped and roared and slapped her behind.’
‘No. No that is not quite correct. Tshaya danced for them fully clothed as a gypsy. While you remained silent, your little orchestra played for her. She showed you how it was really done. If anyone humiliated you, it was her.’
‘He … he had sex with her on the table afterwards while they all shouted encouragement. He … he stripped her naked and she … she spat in my face when I tried to cover her.’
Ah Gott im Himmel, swore Kohler silently. Louis was thinking the same. Debauchery – her villa, everything she had once owned and had taken pride in but for these few things, the paintings …
‘I don’t know where either of them are, nor do I know if they are hiding together or who, if anyone, is helping them.’
‘Then why the tears?’ asked Engelmann. ‘Is it that you are afraid for them?’
She clasped her mouth to stop herself from vomiting and turned away. ‘Because you can’t control a man like that! Because wandering is not just a way of life, it is life! Lock him up and he’ll go crazy. Crazy! do you understand? That is what you have to deal with now.’
‘And is she helping him?’ said Herr Max.
‘She must be!’
‘But … but you were the only one other than the Generalmajor Wehrle who knew the contents of his safe?’
Stung, she turned back to face him. ‘No! that is incorrect. Everyone who sold diamonds to Hans knew those things were in his safe. Others, I don’t know who, would have known he made his shipments to the Reich once a month or even once every two or three months. It all depended on how much there was.’
‘Where will she go?’
When Nana Thélème shrugged, Engelmann hit her. Shocked, dazed and bleeding from the nose and mouth, she stumbled back and fell to the floor.
He stepped between her legs and she waited defiantly for the kick he would give.
Doucement! ‘Now just a minute, Herr Max,’ swore St-Cyr. ‘Janwillem De Vries has at least one bottle of nitroglycerine. If we waste any more time here, Berlin will be certain to question the delay.’
‘The Spade, Louis. Let’s go and have a talk with the son of a bitch!’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Herr Max, grinning at them for having given him exactly what he had wanted from them. ‘Perhaps she should join us. Then if Doucette says something she disagrees with, she can clarify the matter.’
‘I’ll have to change,’ she said, sucking in a breath while silently cursing him.
‘No you won’t. You’ll come just as you are. It’ll do you good. It’s never warm in the camps in winter.’
‘Buchenwald … is it that you are going to send me there?’ she blurted.
He did not answer. Shattered, she found she could not move.
Louis took her gently by the arm and quietly confided, ‘For now we must do as he says. Here, be sure to put on your overcoat and boots, a scarf and hat. Mittens … have you no mittens?’
‘I’ve done nothing.’
‘That won’t matter.’
Buchenwald … Why not any of the other camps? Why had she said it if not knowing, too, that Tshaya’s father had been sent there?
Déporté 14 September 1941.
* crap.
4
The silhouette on the unwashed wall threw a right that would have killed a man. The Spade ducked and weaved. A right, a left, an uppercut. Murderous that one too. Then back, moving always lightly on the balls of his feet. Another left. A left, a left. Feinting, weaving, now a drop to the right to block the punch.
Sweat poured from the tattooed shoulders and grizzled Fritz-head. The muscles glistened, tightened. Doucette didn’t let up. The shadow of him threw a punch. He ducked, went in on himself hammering hard. At the age of forty, he was still far better than most. An army, a battering ram. ‘ll a le style armoire à glâce,’ snorted Kohler. He has the build of an icebox.
Crisscrosses of sticking plaster had come away from the back of the swarthy neck to reveal two gigantic boils, flame red and hard against the sweat. Another was in the small of his back where the skin was pink from exertion and glistened. There was pus in the crater of that one and it, too, was ready to burst.
‘Erysipelas in the offing,’ said St-Cyr drolly. ‘An acute streptococcal infection if not careful. A very high fever. Nothing to eat for four days. Champagne is the only thing. One tosses and turns in delirium. Five weeks for a full recovery if nothing intervenes, namely death. It’s highly contagious.’
‘He’s contagious,’ hissed Nana Thélème softly under her breath, her dark eyes filled with hatred in spite of all her anxiety.
Herr Max good-humouredly lit a cheroot and, pausing to unbutton his overcoat, dropped the spent matchstick into a waiting bucket of sand and announced, ‘Henri, some visitors.’
The black satin shorts were tight over the muscle-hard buttocks. Unwashed, the webbed elastic band of the boxeur’s athletic support absorbed the constant sweat. The gym was busy, noisy, hot and heavy with body odour. Here a Wehrmacht sergeant pounded a punching bag, there another. An SS-Obersturmführer skipped to beat hell in competition with two of the local toughs. The girls watched. The girls oohed and aahed and laughed or threw kisses.
A fight was in progress in the ring, two middleweights were working each other over. No referee.
‘Henri … Henri …’ The bells rang.
The punching bags came to a stop. The skipping was silenced. The match ceased. Towels were grabbed, faces wiped, wine or water taken and mouths rinsed before spitting it on the floor. Perhaps thirty were in training. Others sat or stood around. Spectators mostly.
Rushed in by laughing SS in uniform, two teenagers were dragged up into the ring – mauled until their overcoats, sweaters, shirts, shoes and trousers were off.
Given gloves and shorts, they were forced to wait as Henri Doucette, ignoring his visitors, climbed dutifully into the ring.
‘The bicycle pumps,’ sighed St-Cyr ruefully, and when Nana Thélème threw him a questioning glance, he said, ‘Surely you’ve seen the SS and other officers remove their ceremonial daggers to hang them up in the coat-check rooms of the clubs and restaurants? Having followed them in, the kids haven’t daggers, so they hang up their bicycle pumps to enrage the Occupier. This, apparently, is to be their punishment.’
‘Tant pis pour eux,’ she said softly. Too bad for them.
Teeth-guards were lifted, dripping from a bucket of water, to be crammed into reluctant mouths. Afraid, confused – uncertain still of what was to happen – they listened as the Spade began to give them lessons.
They were to fight each other and he’d take on the winner. It had to be a good fight. ‘Ten rounds!’ cried one of the SS. There was laughter, cheering, clapping from delighted females.
The kids tried not to hurt each other, and when no blood was produced, Henri stepped in. ‘Hey, I’ll show you how.’
‘They’re too little, Henri,’ cried one laughing blonde with sparkling eyes. ‘Make men of them. It’ll save me the trouble.’
‘I don’t think I can watch this,’ said St-Cyr, and pulling off his overcoat and fedora, thrust them at Hermann before climbing into the ring.
He took the boys aside. He said, ‘You must avoid his right and always try for the left side. He’s partly blind in that eye – a fight he lost in 1928 perhaps because the gypsy wife who hated him fiercely by then had come back briefly to sap his strength. He tries to hide it. Shame him. It’ll anger him. Then dance away and don’t let him hit you.’
They came together, their manager and the Spade. They spoke, but what was said could not be heard.
Then Louis turned away only to turn back so swiftly his left connected hard. There was a crack.
Poleaxed, Doucette tried to shake his head and Louis let him have it with a right.
He dropped like a stone.
There were boos, there were cries of anger but the kids were allowed to leave the ring and to get themselves dressed, the Sûreté saying to them as a father would, ‘Now, no more of that, do you understand?’
A hush descended over the gym. Tension crackled. Kohler knew he’d have to defuse it somehow. Firing two shots into the sand, he yelled, ‘Clear the place! We’re on a murder investigation.’
‘Who’s been murdered?’ asked the pugiliste from the Sûreté and once champion of the police academy, but years ago.
‘You, unless I can prevent it.’
The ventouses, the suction cups, were of plain glass and red hot, and each time one was applied, Henri Doucette shrilled and wept like a baby. Flat on his stomach in the dressing-room without a stitch to cover him, he clenched his still-taped fists as the boils burst, and so much for the Gestapo of the rue Lauriston and one of its key members.
‘I’m saving you from agony, Henri,’ said the Sûreté. ‘One day you’ll thank me. We can’t have you ill when we need you.’
There was another in a very tender place and this the surgeon had left to the last.
‘Hold him, Hermann. Take him by the wrists. You, the ankles, Herr Engelmann. It’s all in a detective’s work.’
The scream filled the room and brought the latest pigeon to gape in panic from the doorway. She was all dressed up in plunging green velvet and emeralds to match her wounded eyes and breasts.
‘Petit, I’m here,’ she said. ‘Chéri, don’t cry. It’s for the best and when we’re alone, your Nathalie will comfort you.’
‘Piss off, Putain! Can’t you see I’m busy?’
She leapt and turned away in tears. ‘You’re always saying things like that. A whore … I love you, Henri. I want you!’
‘We’re finished! It’s over. Over, do you understand? Slash your wrists if you must but don’t come crying to me if you mess up! Make a good job of it this time. Complet, eh? Fini and au revoir.’
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