‘When she gets the usual, eh?’
The death notice, but had Hermann seen him talking to Serge de Lenz, was that the cause of the trouble?
‘Well?’
‘Who am I to question what the brass decide?’
‘But you did tell them the boy was anxious to prove himself in battle with eyesight like that?’
Such a concern had to be but a diversion. ‘Doesn’t one say what one has to before such people?’
The shit! ‘There’s the matter of a coin you should have told me about. You let that Schmuggler through the Porte de Versailles at 0810 hours this morning and didn’t feel it necessary that I should hear of it. Instead, knowing you as I do, you would have dropped everything here and personally hand-delivered that Spitzel’s little calling card to Heinrich Ludin and Standartenfuhrer Gerhard Kleiber at the avenue Foch.’
‘But … but what else was I to have done? Countermanded an order from Kaltenbrunner?’
‘How much did they pay you?’
‘Nothing. I was told I was just doing my duty.’
While repeatedly taking half of every load he could in exchange for the grease, oil and gasoline needed, Kleiber having put it straight to him, no doubt. ‘And the coin?’
‘Of silver, but as to my not having immediately sent word to yourself, perhaps if you were to ask that “source of all gossip” he would tell you that I most certainly did.’
‘Rudi?’
While not yet true, such things could always be fixed, especially as Hermann was far too anxious to pull fish from the river. ‘I immediately sent word to Herr Sturmbacher at his restaurant. You can’t have been in to see him, but now that we’ve got that little problem settled, tell me what this pigeon they’re all after knows and is carrying?’
‘It’s nothing but a lot of hot air.’
‘The two biggest diamond gatherers in the Reich arrive and everyone talks of a half-Jew submarine from the Netherlands, a bank van, two killings, a Spitzel, a Schmuggler and a Sonderkommando? Anyone who is anyone says she’s carrying a fortune and knows where the black diamonds are hidden, Hermann. Billions, I tell you. Isn’t it up to us to grab a piece of it?’
Ludin would have told Werner to report any further contact with himself but Dillmann wouldn’t have said a word of a little something else, namely: ‘Fifty-fifty, eh, so long as I pay Rudi his share out of my own?’
‘Is not a deal a deal when cut?’
‘Having wiped the slate clean for you once, don’t expect me to this time.’
‘Ach, is it threats now, Hermann? If so, please don’t forget that Rudi also has friends and friends of friends and a telephone, and no doubt our Rudi also loves diamonds, so let us make a little piece between us. You to let me know, as agreed; me to help as promised, and no one else the wiser.’
This one had told that other Rudy everything he had said to him during that first encounter here: the festering wound, the need for that first-aid kit, et cetera, but these days everyone lied, so another lie wouldn’t matter. ‘Agreed, but if Louis and I do manage to get our hands on the diamonds, shouldn’t we use one of Bolduc’s vans?’
‘Is that one in it so deeply?’
Werner hadn’t known. ‘Just answer. Don’t complicate life.’
‘My truck.’
‘And here, Werner?’
‘Where else, but you’ll have to let me know ahead of time and I have to ask, are you going to let me know?’
‘With a gut like yours and that moustache and connections, what else could I do? Just keep using this place and checking in with that gossip fountain but don’t be telling anyone else. That would only spoil things for yourself, and we wouldn’t want Kaltenbrunner to know of it, would we?’
‘I’ll just help Weiss open the doors, and we’ll all look forward to seeing you again.’
‘Louis, we can’t eat in a place like this. I’m hungry!’
‘We can and must, so don’t be worrying about my car that you’ve let me drive. Just relax. This is one of those restaurants a Parisian would be proud to call his place.’
A categorie D* in the 13th on the boulevard de la Gare* and right across from the massively sprawling Gare aux Marchandises and just to the south of the Gare d’Austerlitz-Orleans.
‘Ach, in an age of mystery meat and leavings’ soup, what is it we’re to get, eh? Stewed roof rabbit and mashed rutabaga?’
In the Reich, cats were called that and Goebbels offered tasty recipes, while in France, Petain warned of eating them, since they killed rats and might carry disease. ‘Patience is required, mon vieux, and we can’t do what we have to at Chez Rudi’s. There are things I need to show you and talk over and they require uninterrupted peace, not Occupier after Occupier with their petites amies and Rudi or that sister of his leaning hungrily over our shoulders. Which you’ve guaranteed, by the way, as has Werner Dillmann.’
‘I was thinking of Rudy de Merode and Sergei Lebeznikov barging in to find out what we’re up to.’
‘Even they wouldn’t dare. Not here unless they want repercussions.’
Uh-oh. ‘Then there’s more to it than peace and quiet?’
‘Oh for sure there often is, but Agnes can be trusted, as can her second husband, myself having been the first.’
‘So now, at last, I know her name too, eh? You told me she had run off with a travelling salesman, or was it a truck driver?’
‘Neither. Agnes felt she would be happier with a chef who wanted a place of his own to which I contributed 10,000 francs. Since the money was as much hers as mine, it was a present, and yes, I attended the wedding.’
The things one hadn’t known even after all the time together since 13 September 1940.
‘Guy Beauchamp is an excellent husband and marvellous cook, Hermann, especially as every day he has to leave their kitchen to seek out and buy the necessary. They’ve two boys, now seven and ten, and a daughter who is five. I was the mistake; never Agnes.’
Who couldn’t stand not knowing if he’d ever come home in anything but a coffin.
‘That’s another thing experienced detectives have to deal with, Hermann, but since we really do need that quiet, let’s not worry about my car. No one will dare to touch it here.’
‘Is Beauchamp an FTP, seeing as the railway yards are close by and railwaymen frequent this place?’
‘Ah bon, you’re beginning to understand.’
A brunette who was plump, short, bespectacled and busy, Madame Beauchamp stopped cold when she saw Louis raise a cheery hand. Swiftly she set the loaded plates aside, pointed to other customers to deliver them to still others, and came on like a rocket. Kisses on both cheeks were out of the question.
‘Jean-Louis, you said you would never come here with that one. Are you not to be trusted?’
‘These days, ma chere, necessity causes even the most trustworthy to occasionally break their word. A quiet table, the prix fixe but without the ration tickets since I haven’t been able to stand in line for new ones, and if that’s not possible, the soup. Coffee as well, and since it’s not a day without alcohol, a pousse-cafe,* but first the vin rouge ordinaire. It’s always excellent, Hermann, for the Halle aux Vins* is but a stone’s throw away.’
‘You …’ she began, only to change her mind and shout with a toss of a hand, ‘This way then, Chief Inspector. Who am I to deny a Surete and his Gestapo partner no matter how decent the first says he is, but you may not sit with everyone else. This I insist. Vite, vite, the table at the back where I normally do the accounts, a task that I hate with a passion.’
Younger than Louis by a good ten years, she must have been a lot of fun whenever he happened to be home, but a hand had been laid on that Surete’s forearm.