‘You know I can’t. Gabi, listen to me, please. It’s not safe for you to be seen with me. The SS, the Milice, will only cause further trouble.’
‘Avignon was unpleasant?’ she hazarded, not looking up from her needle.
‘A handful of madrigal singers. The Cagoule caused difficulties.’
‘And Gestapo Boemelburg is not happy with the result?’
Still she hadn’t looked up. ‘We’ve been warned to behave. An explosion on the tracks, then what happened to Oona. Boemelburg wants us to do one thing; the Kommandant von Gross-Paris another.’
The Cagoule had many friends and supporters among the Milice, thought Gabrielle. Others were members of it, and their lines of communication throughout the country were tragically getting better. ‘Then that must explain why an SS major wanted to talk to Hermann but got those people to haul him in.’
There was a sadness to her voice that said much more. An aching for France and what had happened to a once splendidly humane nation. Refilling his glass, she told him to drink it neat. From a silver cigarette case he knew well, she took two Russian cigarettes, the tobacco black and much stronger than he liked, but …
‘For me, for you,’ she said on lighting them. ‘For the first time we met, and for the times since then.’
‘For my partner, too, wherever he is.’
Would Jean-Louis and Hermann live to see the end of the Occupation; would she herself, or Oona and Giselle? wondered Gabrielle.
Rolling his shirt sleeve down, she buttoned it. ‘You know I want us to have a life together.’
‘Don’t be difficult. It’s impossible. It’s far too dangerous for you.’
‘For you also?’ she asked.
‘For all of us,’ he said and did not offer to brush her tears away, just looked so steadily at and through her, one instantly saw Sûreté!
‘Then you had better come to the house anyway, Monsieur l’Inspecteur principal,’ she retorted acidly. ‘You see, my concierge telephoned here last night and then discreetly came to see me rather than give the news to Gestapo ears, even though those salauds are still probably aware of it since they constantly watch the club and I could not tell her this. Apparently I have acquired, through no effort of my own, you understand, a new maid. Sixteen years of age and very capable, so much so, among her references it is stated that she was trusted implicitly, Inspector — implicitly — by her former mistress and made four trips a year to Switzerland with her. Heavy suitcases in; light ones out, in spite of the desperate need for canned goods here. Speaks more than a smattering of German which will be helpful, you understand, since the girl can’t possibly stay in Paris and must go underground immediately. Giselle brought her to my place. Giselle, Jean-Louis.’
‘Not Oona?’
He was desperate. ‘No, not Oona.’
‘Arrested also?’
‘Oui.’
The Citroën had remained in darkness in front of the club. No one had touched it or tried to steal it, thought Gabrielle. Things were so bad, word had spread rapidly and it had been avoided like the plague, but left by the arresters so as to give the other half of the partnership wings.
Reaching under the driver’s seat, Jean-Louis soon found what he wanted, and dragged them out. ‘As keeper of our guns until needed, Hermann is, at times, careless,’ he confessed.
She knew his would be the 1873 Lebel Modèle d’ordonnance, six shots, the calibre 11mm. Hermann’s was a Walther P38, a semiautomatic 9mm Parabellum, with eight cartridges in the clip.
‘Jean-Louis, I meant what I said about your sleeping. You can’t run on that stuff like your partner does.’
‘I will if I have to.’
Digging into the side pocket of the door, he found a spare phial of the little grey pills of Benzedrine the German night-fighter pilots took to stay awake, and downed how many? she wondered.
‘Four,’ he said. ‘After a while the system grows accustomed to them, so one must increase the dosage.’
‘Mon Dieu, will you not listen to me? Where … just where do you think you’re going to find him?’
‘At a smelter. You know it and so do I, so why try to hide the fact? Just take care of that new maid you’ve acquired. Let me drive you home and then forget about us.’
‘I can’t. I won’t.’
‘You’d best, for the sake of your son.’
The furnace was white hot. The Alsatian guard dogs were restless and had had to be chained.
Awakened in the dead of night and forced from their garrets, the Russian smelter workers and their families huddled in grey nightshirts and nightgowns. Teenagers, kids, thumb-sucking toddlers with runny noses, grandparents and parents mutely watched from the rickety, soot-encrusted staircase that climbed above the wall of cages.
Frantic, one of the guinea pigs was dangled by a hind leg over the gaping mouth of the furnace. Heat roared up, smarting its glistening dark eyes and causing it to madly squirm.
Sweat poured from Kohler. Blinded by it, he tried to clear his eyes. His wrists ached like hell. The bracelets — his bracelets — were cutting into them. Strung up, stripped naked, he hung from a chain and hoist pulley near the furnace. Only his toes touched the floor.
There were six miliciens and one of them had removed his tunic and beret to don goggles and asbestos. The others, their expressions dark with hatred, waited. There was no sign of the SS major now. No sign …
When dropped, the creature didn’t even squeal. It simply flashed to steam with little smoke, and this rushed from the furnace, white and sudden and carrying still-glowing bits of its fur.
Frantically Kohler searched for a way out. These bastards weren’t just angry about the loss of two of their own. They’d had word from Avignon and were out to put an end to him!
Goggles removed a gauntlet and took from a small, slag-encrusted crucible, a fine gold neckchain and locket.
‘Don’t! Please don’t,’ managed Kohler. There had, as yet, been no sign of Oona.
The locket was opened. The hoist was released a little, and now his feet could rest flatly on the floor. In relief, he shut his eyes tightly, then opened them.
‘Look, be reasonable, eh? It’s the only picture she has of her two children. They were lost during the blitzkrieg in the west — killed, she believes, on the trek from Holland, and I … I can’t make her see that there could still be hope. I can’t.’
‘Half-Jewish,’ grunted Goggles. ‘Johan would have been nine years old now; Anna, seven. The father, Martin Van der Lynn, was a Jew the woman you shelter tried to hide in Paris.’
‘The French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston killed him in the Velodrome d’Hiver.’ The cycling arena.
‘And good riddance,’ said Goggles.
The locket was dangled over the furnace. The photograph began to turn brown, to curl and finally to burst into flame.
‘Gone,’ wept Kohler. ‘Ah, Oona … Oona, forgive me.’
Blood and sweat trickled from his left eye to run down the scar the rawhide whip of an SS had left a good two months ago at the chateau of Gabrielle Arcuri’s mother-in-law near Vouyray, and overlooking the Loire. Yet another murder investigation whose outcome had definitely not been appreciated.
Blood and sweat found the one that cut diagonally across his chest. ‘Maudit salauds!’ he cried. ‘What the hell have you done with Oona?’
‘That’s not for you to know.’
Godonov was summoned and told to charge the furnace. ‘We need enough to bathe this one’s feet.’
Scrap silverware, sand, charcoal, lead oxide, bone ash and the yellowish peroxide of sodium were added.
‘Now we must wait,’ cautioned Godonov. ‘Please.’ He ducked his shaggy head to one side in deference. ‘A little vodka, mes amis. Pickled cucumber and beetroot will be served on blini, the small pancakes we usually eat with caviar. There is coulibac also, and made in the old way, you understand. A superb cabbage pie whose origins date from the sixteenth century. Pel’meni sibériens, too. These are a kind of ravioli that we have stuffed with a delectable forcemeat of guinea pig.’