‘And that one.’
‘No, Walter. Please. Not that one.’ The baker was dragging off his apron. ‘That one I need to question.’
Boemelburg looked the man over, nodding as he did so. ‘All right, Louis, he’s yours. You can have him for ten minutes.’
‘Alone, Walter. No one else. Not even Herman.’
‘Louis, don’t. Let me come with you.’
‘Hermann, just this once do as I have asked.’
‘Four men, one room. The men to cover the exits, Louis. Orders to shoot if he makes a run for it,’ grunted Boemelburg.
It was his turn to nod.
They went into the shop, to a back room with a rumpled bed, a table, two chairs – nothing much. A hotplate, an empty wine bottle, two glasses and some cigarette butts. A pair of dirty socks …
St-Cyr offered a cigarette. ‘Monsieur, I am not one of them. No, please do not interrupt me. If you do not wish your girlfriend to be arrested, you will answer what I have to ask.’
The man drew on the cigarette. ‘Marianne had nothing to do with that killing. She …’
‘She stayed here the night.’
How had the cop known?
‘Your papers. Papers, please! Look, I hate myself for having to ask for them.’
The wounded brown eyes looked up at him from the edge of the cot. Georges Lagace was not quite fifty years of age, so had missed even the last of the call-ups in the spring of 1940 and had probably gone underground for a while. He was of medium height and build and totally nondescript.
‘I lost the wife and kids on the road south during the invasion, Inspector. We …’ He gave a futile shrug. ‘I have thought I was taking them to safety, not into the cannon shells of their Messerschmitts.’
‘And the girl?’
‘She lives over in Montparnasse, the rue Boulard – look, is this necessary?’
Reluctantly Lagace gave up the address. ‘Number 37. She has a room on the third floor. She … she rents out the rest of the flat to some friends so as to make ends meet. We … we met quite by accident in the Cemetery of Montparnasse, she to see her husband, me the wife and kids – the stones anyway. Not the bodies. They’re all buried elsewhere but it’s closer here, and for a small charge you can, if you know the right people, have a stone to remember.’
One was always learning. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Marianne St-Jacques. Look, she’s … she’s only twenty-eight. An … an artist’s model, that and part-time in a hat shop, but there’s less of that work now so she has to do more of the modelling. Because there’s no coal, she’s got two days off. We were going to meet to -’
‘Georges, there was a murder.’
‘She didn’t kill him and neither did I. I swear we didn’t, Inspector.’
‘Look, I know that. It’s the other murder I’m interested in.’
‘Oh, that one. Marianne won’t know anything useful. You’d be wasting your time. She didn’t come here all that much. I usually went to her place.’
‘Then what about yourself, eh? Did you see anything that might help us?’
‘Me? I’m far too busy fighting off the bitchers and the forgers to worry about what goes on across the street in that place. It’s full of shits. Misers! who don’t pay their bills.’
The forgers … the ration tickets for the bread, of course. It was happening all the time now.
‘At least I was too busy. Now …’ He tossed his hands in despair. ‘Now I no longer have to care.’
‘Let me see what I can do.’
St-Cyr went back to the street. Twenty-nine of the hostages had been taken. Only the tidying-up remained.
Boemelburg was sitting in the back of the Daimler, Hermann in the front with the driver.
The window was rolled down. ‘Well, Louis?’
‘Walter …’
‘Herr Sturmbannfuhrer, if you please.’
‘Sorry. Herr Sturmbannfuhrer, regardless of what the man knows, he is responsible for supplying the local barracks with their bread. It would be better not to choose him.’
‘Then who do you suggest, Louis? Pick one. Any one, only hurry it up.’
Kohler found the old man with the pigeons. ‘This one, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer. Take this one.’
The car rolled away. The street held its silence, immobile as a carousel before the gears began to mesh.
Louis, poor fool, was crying. ‘Come on. Let’s go and get something to eat.’
The music had begun.
‘Two eggs on horseback, the split-pea and ham soup, the sausage, lentils, cabbage and beer. Bread and borsch on the side.’
Poised on the balls of his tiny feet, Rudi Sturmbacher took the order with gusto. A Brown Shirt from the days of the Munich Putsch, a man with fists – a survivor – he had received his just reward.
Chez Rudi’s was on the Champs-Elysees just across the avenue from the Lido through the naked branches of the chestnut trees. Right in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe itself – well, almost. A bustling place, now in its mid-morning quietude.
The ham-fat fingers stopped their scribbling. The small, pale-blue eyes blinked up and out from their red rims under thatches of ripened flax.
At 166 kilos Rudi wasn’t losing any weight. Paris had been good. So, too, his little Julie and Yvette who took such care of their ‘big’ Rudi. Big in the loins.
Greed and larceny brightened his eyes. A student of the black market, Hermann could usually be ‘touched’ when necessary, but Hermann had cut himself. Mein Gott, the whip, it could do wonders!
‘And for your “friend”, my Hermann?’ fluted the mountain, enjoying the sight of the stitches and the gossip they’d entail. ‘I regret there is no asparagus.’
‘What? No limp asparagus?’ shouted Kohler. ‘Gott im Himmel, Rudi, I thought all things were possible under the Third Reich?’
The cook-proprietor let his voice fall to caution. ‘Some little things are beyond us, Hermann, but the Gestapo could always oblige?’
‘And change the seasons?’ roared Kohler. ‘Give Louis the hero food, damn it! He needs feeding up.’
Another whisper came. ‘Or cutting down to size.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ asked Kohler darkly.
The grin was huge; Chez Rudi the centre of all gossip, a minefield of it. ‘That you are to enjoy your lunches, or your dinners.’
Or your breakfasts for that matter.
‘Hermann, must you?’ groaned St-Cyr when the man had departed. ‘You know how I hate coming to this place. I cannot eat in any case.’
‘You’ll eat because you have to, and that’s an order.’
‘The Resistance … one of these days they’ll hit it. Me, I would not like to have to scrape you off the walls.’
‘Relax. Rudi’s okay. Try to get on his good side, eh? Use your charm, Louis. Oberg’s on top of the wave, remember?’
‘He doesn’t eat here.’
‘Of course he doesn’t but we need to. Besides, you’re out of ration tickets. Remind me to get you some.’
Two eggs on horseback … unheard of these days unless one ate in places such as this.
A few of the regulars sat about. An SS major was slumming with his coffee and Berliner Tageblatt, fresh in on the morning’s Junkers JU-52. Were the papers getting thinner yet again?
A girl in a short black skirt, red silk jacket, cream blouse, gloves, chic grey-blue angora cloche and black stockings was sitting all alone over by the windows.
A girl with short, straight jet-black hair, strong, decisive brows, good hips, lips, legs and all the rest. About twenty-two or twenty-three. On her third or fourth cup of coffee and watching the street as if the window was a mirror.
‘She’s waiting for me, Louis. We’ll let her wait.’ Kohler dragged out a vial. ‘Want some?’ he asked.
Messerschmitt Benzedrine. ‘Take a couple and we can go for a full forty-eight.’
‘You’ll not be of much use to her without them. No wonder you threw up your guts!’
‘Quit suffering. That rafle had to be. It was fate, Louis, just like I couldn’t avoid meeting her. Here, come on, at least take them with you.’