‘We could go down to the car. You could take me to the Vel d’Hiv. We could get it over with, protect the guns and see what’s happened to your friend.’
‘I want to think for a moment. Put something warm on. It’s too cold for you up here.’
He felt her uncertain fingers touch his cheek. He heard her saying, ‘They will ask if we had sex. I will try to lie but must confess I don’t think they will let me.’
‘Look, your husband will be okay. They’ll not have killed him.’
She wished he hadn’t said it! ‘You could have made love to me. I needed to forget. I’m so afraid of what we’ll find.’
Kohler took the cigarette from her fingers. ‘Okay, get dressed and I’ll take you to him.’ Louis … where the hell was Louis?
The rue Benard was not so wide that one could not worry about the doorways. The thin blue lamps on the corner of the rue des Plantes had been conveniently extinguished. Not two minutes ago St-Cyr had heard the breaking of their glass.
So, my friends, what’s it to be, eh? A death on cobblestones still slicked with the afternoon’s rain? One to come from behind; the other from the front? They’d probably been holed up in the house next door. That racket with the concierge would have wakened the dead, but these two would have been light sleepers in any case, and only one of them would have been asleep.
What had Hermann and he got themselves into?
Straining, he listened to the street, smelling the dankness of Paris in winter, the Occupation. He’d no knife, no pistol, only his precious bracelets. Would one of them remember these, would that one be out for vengeance, or would both of them?
A warning. A fake gold coin, dipped in a murdered girl’s blood.
He owed it to her to find her killer or killers. These two? he asked, stepping quickly to the left to feel for and duck into the doorway of a shop, cafe or house. It was so dark.
No steps came on. If he could get to the rue des Plantes, he could go up it to the avenue du Maine. He could lose himself among the tombstones of Montparnasse. He could go to ground there.
Not with these two. They were out to kill him. He could only wonder what he’d done in the past, could only think, Why is it that they do not want Hermann and me to learn anything more about this case?
As carefully as he could, St-Cyr opened the box of matches in his pocket and, feeling for their heads, arranged the ten or so that were left into a small bundle.
The stones were wet. The heads would only smear with the dampness.
He’d have to take that chance. Something … he needed something they wouldn’t be expecting.
These two will be expecting everything, he said. Was it Charles Audit and his Corsican friend? Devil’s Island would have taught Audit many useful things.
They’d have no fear of the Germans.
The Carbone gang? he asked, stepping quickly back on to the narrow pavement and then on to the street as if off the edge of the moon.
He floated down on to the cobblestones and went quickly up the street at a run, only to stop suddenly. Ah Mon Dieu, they were so good.
When the knife flashed, the matches tumbled from his fingers. He gave an instinctive cry that echoed up and down the street. ‘Jesus … Jesus … In the Name of Jesus, why are you after me, you bastards? I can help you.’
It wouldn’t have worked. He clutched his bleeding left hand. They waited. They watched. They circled him. ‘Who are you?’ he cried out again in anger now, in fear, in so many things, the wounded stag baited by the hounds of the night.
Two men, two dark silhouettes, a slotted glimpse of the sky beyond the edges of the roofs.
The sound of a single car now, the screeching of its brakes, the leaping throttle of its engine. He tried to hold his hand up. One of them was behind him again, the other in front. Both would have knives, but which would rush him first?
The one behind him leapt! The knife … St-Cyr turned, pivoted again, ducked again, twisted aside. The knife flashed and flashed, tearing his coat.
He threw his back against a wall, licked the sweat of fear from his lips. ‘All right, my fines, all right, eh? Come at me as men. My revolver is out!’
They melted away and they left him there with water in his shoes, ah damn! Two wise men who were not afraid, who would have known he could not have hit either of them in the dark. But they had no need to gamble. There’d be another time and they’d left him with that thought, as with the smile of cruelty.
St-Cyr clamped his eyes shut and tightened the grip on his injured hand. They’d cut it right across the back. It would be stiff for days.
Pressing a thumb against the wound, he continued on up the street. Twice more there was the sound of that car. Hermann, was it Hermann? Then a convoy of trucks started up, and when he reached the rue des Plantes, there was the sound of a patrol.
Had this been what had deterred them the most? Had their hearing been so good, their instincts so much better than his own?
If they had wanted to kill him why hadn’t they simply come to the house, to Belleville and the rue Laurence Savart?
It was damaged. They’d not thought he’d go there to sleep.
They had also known the address of Christabelle Audit’s residence. They’d been waiting for someone to show up.
Kohler finished the last of his cigarette. Oona Van der Lynn waited beside him in the Citroen, where Louis usually sat if not sleeping in the back.
‘Look, I know how you must feel, Herr Kohler. I’m sorry we could not find your friend.’
They’d been to a carousel, to a villa, a small hotel, a church, a house whose front had been blown to pieces by the Resistance. They’d been to so many places. Now the dawn had come and there was nothing more to be said except, ‘You needn’t worry about me any more. I can manage on my own.’
‘You’re a good woman, madame, and I’m sorry for what’s happened to you. Louis wouldn’t want me to leave you in the lurch, not with those bastards holding your husband.’
‘Your friend must be exceptional.’
‘He is, or was. Come on. I’ll take you there.’
The Vel d’Hiv, the Velodrome d’Hiver, looked shut up. The wind fluttered a poster, years old, for a cycling race. The stadium needed a coat of paint.
To the north of them the Eiffel Tower would be flying the flag of the Third Reich. Here on the rue Nelation there was only the reminder of what that Reich could do and had done.
The doors were locked. He raised a fist. They could hear the pounding echo inside the empty stadium. ‘God damn it, open up. Gestapo!’
The flic who unlocked the door from inside had been sleeping in the straw but managed a grin at the sight of them. ‘Ah, the one with the slash. Good morning, Inspector. Your fame, it has spread even to this small corner of the earth.’
‘Go fuck yourself. Where’s Martin Van der Lynn? He’s wanted for questioning in connection with a murder case.’
The turd ducked his pumpkin head in deference. ‘Of course, Monsieur the Inspector. Please come this way. I, Claude Poirier of the fifteenth in the Quartier Grenelle, will escort the Inspector and madame to the gardens, eh? Number …’ he consulted a notebook … Number 100312, Yes … Yes, that’s him.’
Kohler gripped the woman by the arm. ‘Hey listen, eh? Things will be okay. Once we’ve got him out, I’ll see what I can do. Don’t worry.’
They went through to one of the concrete staircases and up this into the grandstands. The cycling track looked bleak and empty under the washed blue of the glassed-in roof high above them. It made one feel lonely to see no one else about. It made one hear the shouts, the cheers as the cyclists hurtled themselves round and round the track in suicidal clusters at the bends.
It made one hear the cries of little children, the hysteria of their parents who’d been taken from them. Cattle trucks to the concentration camps at Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande, the adults straight to Auschwitz, the kids to the one at Drancy and then finally to the same and bugger that crap about no one knowing a thing. Only one of those 9,000 French cops who had rounded up the Jews of Paris had resigned in protest. Only one. Poor Louis.