His sister … His sister … came the echoes.
‘You killed a comrade, monsieur,’ charged the Sûreté, catching a breath. ‘You robbed the corpses of your officers.’
‘And that … that, mon fin, was said exactly as one of them would have!’
Leroux began to move forward, feeling always the porous texture of the knuckles in the walls, the skulls also, and recalling every change so as to guide himself.
He’d have to kill this Sûreté. There couldn’t be any more than one of them. This one had come alone, and would therefore vanish without trace.
‘Monsieur, I’m warning you,’ said St-Cyr.
‘INSPECTOR, PLEASE HELP ME!’ cried the woman.
Help me … Help me … The chambers resounded with her terror.
Taking out his box of matches, he tried to light three or four of them.
He hasn’t moved yet, said Leroux to himself. The spring is to his left …
The matchsticks broke, the Sûreté swore and tried to take others from the box. Silently he stepped away from the spring and soon the sound of it was far behind him, for he had reached the corridor Héloïse had taken. Yes, yes, said Leroux to himself, silently following.
Try as he did, St-Cyr knew it would be impossible to hear the exit door being opened. They were just too far from it. Turning back, he felt the draught on his face — searched the impenetrable darkness, smelt the musty damp air, the fetidness of bone meal, the taint of anise, too. Anise and garlic and onions … Where … where the hell was Leroux? How close now? How close …?
When the iron bar cut the air, it struck the wall, shattering the stone and raising sparks. The woman shrieked as the custodian gave a savage grunt, a stab with the letter opener which flew out of his hand and hit the floor.
‘Bâtard!’ he rasped. ‘Let me kill you.’
Each man waited for the other to make a move. The one must back towards her, the other must advance, thought Héloïse, hastily wiping tears from her smarting eyes. If she could hold the Sûreté, Jean-Claude could kill him and then … then maybe he would let her go.
You fool! she said. He will only smash your head in, too.
Franctically her fingers fled over the bones — she was in another of the chambers. If only she could find its exit. If only she could make her way from chamber to chamber and then … then climb the stairs back up to the street. This place exits on the rue Dareau*, she told herself. Please, God, help me.
God would only damn her. ‘God can’t forgive you yet, my child.’ Father Michel had said this to her in the afternoon. Today … No, yesterday. Saturday …
‘Candles … I lit a candle for our Lady, Father,’ she had said.
‘God is kind. God is generous. God provides,’ he’d answered.
Candles … did the Inspector know who left them on the steps of the church? Could she use the information to barter for clemency?
The iron bar was savagely swung. Distant from her, she heard the Sûreté gasp in pain and cry out, ‘ARREST, DAMN YOU!’
The bar clattered at his feet. Perhaps he held Jean-Claude in an arm-lock, perhaps he had thrown him up against a wall and was now fastening the bracelets on him.
Perhaps … perhaps … But Jésus, merde alors, what the hell has happened? she wondered. And crawling forward, found the exit, bowed her head into her hands and wept.
At 5 a.m. Berlin Time, the Club Mirage was all but deserted, the air heavy with stale tobacco smoke. Up on stage, in a feather-trimmed pink housecoat that dragged its hem, the wife of one of the brothers pushed a broom but avoided the soiled heap of a Wehrmacht greatcoat. Her slippers didn’t match, and the Gauloise Bleue that was glued to her lower lip had a good two centimetres of ash clinging to it.
Silent, the Rivards were giving the zinc a final wipe.
‘Jean-Louis …’ said Gabrielle, coming along the corridor from her dressing room to find him staring at the coat. ‘Jean-Louis, what has happened to your arm?’
They kissed on each cheek, first the right and then the left, and then the right again, as was her custom. He drew in the lovely scent of her perfume and momentarily shut his eyes, wishing for a calmer time. ‘Perhaps you’d best tell me,’ he said, indicating the coat on the floor. ‘Dead Caucasian bees, bits of willow twigs … Buckwheat honey, unless I’m mistaken. That of lavender, too …’
‘Remi,’ she called out softly. ‘A pastis for our friend. Please leave the bottle and a pitcher of clean water, then let us have the place to ourselves. This is private.’
‘Oui, madame.’ They often called her that out of respect. She brought in the money and took ten per cent of the take, had the voice of an angel, was regularly heard over wireless broadcasts that reached the front lines of both the Reich and the Allies.
‘Arlette, we can do that tonight,’ said Léon to his wife who hadn’t stopped her sweeping to greet the visitor.
Left alone with Louis, Gabrielle made him remove his own overcoat. ‘There is blood,’ she said. ‘Ah merde, you’ve really been hurt. Is it broken?’
He shook his head, suddenly ached to be at peace. ‘I’d like to go fishing with René Yvon-Paul.’
‘He’d like that, too.’
She peeled off his suit jacket and the woollen cardigan his mother had knitted for him perhaps ten … no, fifteen years ago. There were holes in the elbows, mismatched buttons …
‘It’s a part of me,’ he said apologetically. ‘Hermann complains.’
‘And is that a hint, because if it is, I have to tell you I want to look at this first before letting you know who took him away.’
‘Away …?’
She nodded. Tears moistened her eyes, sharpening their violet shade. ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘I’ve missed you terribly and now don’t know what’s to become of either of you. The Milice dump Oona’s purse out on the street while you are still on your way home from Avignon. They scrutinize her papers which are not so good, as you know very well, and now …’
‘Has he been arrested?’
‘Later. In a moment.’
‘Just what the hell has he been up to, Gabrielle? He was to question a Frau Schlacht, nothing else, and then return to the Salpêtrière to pick me up. A … a woman with two small children had stopped us in the street. Hermann … Hermann and I gave them a lift to the soup kitchen at the Gare d’Austerlitz. He was going to …’
‘Calm down, please. For now I need you to keep still.’
The gash in his upper left arm was deep and ragged, and of about ten centimetres in length. ‘Who did this?’ she asked.
He sighed heavily. ‘I tried to arrest two murderers. One was difficult. Both got away and can now await a little visit. There’s no hurry even if they should happen to kill each other.’
‘There is for this, and you know it.’
‘Then please telephone the morgue and ask if Armand Tremblay is going through the autopsy notes on the corpse of Alexandre de Bonnevies and doing his own as I requested. Armand can patch me up. I need, also, the analysis on the bottle of Amaretto.’
‘Don’t be an idiot. I’ll do this myself. Now be quiet.’
Everything that was necessary was kept behind the bar. Deftly she cleaned the wound and refilled his glass. ‘I’ve done this lots of times,’ she said.
‘You continue to surprise me.’
Her hair, worn loose at this hour, was of shoulder length and not blonde as he’d first thought, but the soft shade of a really fine brandy, and it spilled forward as she set to work. Her hands were slender, the fingers long.
‘Hermann was taken by the Milice but we still do not know where to. Remi has asked two trusted friends to quietly find out. For now you are to rest and keep out of it.’
‘You like giving orders. I could sleep for a year.’
‘With me, I hope.’