Much of the loot that filled the avenue Foch had come straight from the rue Lauriston.
The brim of his hat was crumpled, the felt stained, the sweat-band rather too grimy to look at.
Pigeon droppings were at his feet and, in the background, the steady rumble of a German Army convoy broke the patient silence of bicycles.
All points radiated from the Arc de Triomphe. The rue Lauriston was a narrow, straight artery next to the avenue Victor Hugo, a street of the wealthy, the upper class. Less than a kilometre of it lay between him and Number 93.
There was a small cafe across the street from the unassuming three-storeyed grey house. Empire-style railings protected the tall windows of Number 93’s ground floor; Nazi bars, those of its second and third floors, the third most especially. Ah yes.
‘A pastis without water.’
The crook who ran the cafe was obviously an informer for the avenue Foch and a friend of the rue Lauriston.
‘Large or small?’ he asked, not grinning.
‘Large. A double.’
The humiliation had begun. There were a few tables near the street, time enough to toss one’s hat on the fake marble and have a smoke.
Number 93 rue Lauriston – some called it the offices of the French Gestapo and they had every right and reason to do so. The servants’ quarters on the third floor had been made over into cells so as to keep the sounds of torture a little farther from the street. The bars up there were to prevent people from leaping to their deaths. The offices were on the second floor, with others on the ground floor, together with the storerooms.
Though hidden from the street, there was an inner courtyard, a small garden. How nice.
Up to now he’d managed to keep clear of them. He’d avoided that confrontation he’d always known must inevitably come to pass.
Henri Chamberlin, alias Henri Normand, now Henri Lafont, had been born in 1902, a child of the Paris slums. In the thirty-eight years leading up to the Defeat he’d been arrested for a host of crimes – burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, fraud, arson, swindling, the pistol-whipping of a young girl he’d tried to force into prostitution.
On 16 June 1940, he’d been evacuated along with the rest of the convicts from the Cepoy Prison and had escaped during the confusion of the invasion.
A tenure with the Abwehr had followed – he’d kept good company in prison. His cellmates had been Abwehr agents caught for spying. But it hadn’t all been easy. The Abwehr had wanted proof of his abilities. His trapping the leader of the Belgian Resistance who’d been hiding in the South of France had suited well enough. Nearly a hundred patriots had been taken as a result of that little escapade.
Sensing that the Abwehr would fall from grace and the Sicher-heitsdienst rise to far greater heights, Lafont had gone over to the other side, to the SS. He still had friends in the Abwehr, friends in very high places, a German citizenship now and a certified German Police card, Number 10474R.
Early in 1941 he’d moved into the rue Lauriston. Recruitment while with the Abwehr and here, too, had been from the jails, the cream of France’s underworld. Lafont had personally chosen them and in May of 1941 Pierre Bonny had come to work for him. A nice touch. An ex-inspector of the Surete joining forces with a hood. Partners in crime without restriction.
The pastis was good – pre-war stuff. He took the two Benzedrine tablets Hermann had given him, telling himself they were for the morgue and not for the house across the street.
‘Another,’ he shouted, ignoring the, ‘With pleasure,’ but lifting moist, warm, doubtful eyes at the proferred, ‘It’s on the house, Inspector. They’re expecting you.’
‘Then do me the honour of announcing my arrival.’
Pastis was no joke, but its 90 proof suited him. In the early afternoon the street was all but empty, the wind unkind.
‘St-Cyr to see the boss.’
‘He’s on the third floor. You can take the lift. It works.’
‘I’ll walk up. Tell him I’ll wait in his office.’
‘They’re sweating someone’s cherry. It might be fun.’
‘Get lost, scum. Don’t talk to me like that.’
‘Swallow gasoline, my fine Inspector. Monsieur Henri will be only too glad to light the match.’
The stairs were hard. The girl gave a scream. No lonelier sound could have been heard. She cried out again and again in terror, and he didn’t know if he could stand to hear much more.
Weeping when she wept, clutching his heart when she stopped in panic, he waited as she waited, then heard the blow, the cough, the gasp, the choking as vomit spilled from battered lips and nose.
‘I won’t tell you. I won’t!’ she shrieked.
Unable to control his hands, St-Cyr clutched the stuffed canary in one overcoat pocket and the pearls in the other.
Again he was forced to listen. Again a shrill scream ripped through the upper halls. She hit the floor above him; the boots were being applied! He knew he had to go up there to put a stop to it, that this was what the bastards wanted of him.
And yet … and yet, he knew he could not do so. And they had known it too, and had shown it to him.
‘Louis, it’s good to see you.’
‘You’re sweating, Henri. Is it because you have had such a hard time with that one upstairs, eh, or are you still afraid I’ll put the bracelets on you?’
Once a cow, always a cow! Lafont roared with laughter. The high falsetto that was so incongruous in that tall, muscular handsomeness, shocked as it bounced off the walls, the paintings, the sculptures and objets d’art.
‘Still the same old Louis. Well, my fine, things have changed. Sit down or stand, it’s all the same. Nicole, a glass of the lime for our friend.’
Polite custom? An attempt at manners? ‘I refuse. I’ve had sufficient. I’m not thirsty.’
‘But you will drink it anyway.’
The girl, a dress designer’s mannequin in off-white cashmere and gold with generous cleavage, moved quickly away to an antique cabinet.
Lafont sat down behind the desk he’d looted from one of the Rothschild villas. ‘So, Louis, a small matter, eh?’
At forty, he’d gained a bit of weight – all that high living these days. The face was incredibly not what one would expect in a gangster, more that of a film idol. Good, clean-cut, clean-shaven cheeks, a wide, strong jawline and admirable chin. The wide and slightly sensuous lips were what a woman might have wanted – and many of them did. The eyes … only in the eyes was the lie of it given. Even the dark-brown hair, well cut and brushed towards the left, was what one would have expected in a banker or an investment dealer.
Which was what he was, in a sense, these days.
The brows were neither thick nor too thin. The nose was long and prominent but the eyes … the eyes: these were small, round, hard, glistening, watchful things. The eyes of a falcon just before it takes the sparrow.
Lafont examined his fingernails. He would have to gauge the wind the avenue Foch had put into St-Cyr’s sails. Nicole had turned from the cabinet and remained with her back to it. The glass of lime was in her hand.
‘Louis, you’re going to need our help. No, my friend, don’t get your ass in a knot. Just listen, eh? Sometimes it is necessary.’
At a nod the girl came forward. There was mischief in her lovely brown eyes but more than this, a feral excitement St-Cyr found disconcerting. She fairly breathed it. The fine nostrils were pinched. The pinkness of her tongue touched the crowns of her slightly parted teeth. The mop of auburn curls was short, cute, saucy, so many things. Perfume … What was that scent she was wearing? Mirage – could it be Mirage? Ah no. Why? Why must God do this to him?
‘Your drink, m’sieur.’
St-Cyr met the look she gave with a steadiness and cruelty he hated in himself.
There was a boldness in her eyes, no shame, lust … was there still lust? Had she …?