‘All well-placed in the Government ministries or doing business with it? Good business?’ asked Kohler.
‘All.’
‘That four or five hundred thousand a week is too little, Louis. Think of the expenses, the buying on the marche noir, then selling on it. Two breaches of the law, of course, but the commissions also, the pay-offs. Travel to and from Paris and other cities and towns. The price of flour alone tells us it has to be more. What’s Henri-Claude Ferbrave’s cut?’
Ah merde! ‘Ten per cent.’
‘And Jean-Guy Deschambeault’s?’ demanded Hermann.
‘Another ten.’
‘And the guards and drivers of those armoured vans of his father’s? Their hush-money?’
Must Kohler threateningly lean over the table and not sit down? ‘Ten again.’
‘Five million a week, Louis. At least five and probably fifteen.’
‘Look, I … I don’t know the details. How could I? Ask Honore de Fleury. He … he oversees the accounts.’
‘Our Inspector of Finances, Hermann. Supplies and rationing, the police, the Bank of France, and finance.’
‘And no income tax because none of it’s reported, since de Fleury makes certain of that, and Bousquet lets him.’
‘Four murders, Hermann.’
‘The threat of further and more important assassinations, Louis.’
Hermann would now leave the rest of the interview to his partner and enjoy his beer and the scenery. ‘Monsieur le Ministre, unless you fully cooperate you will accompany me to the morgue where we will continue our little discussion over the corpse of your former mistress.’
Must the fun, the laughter, the sound of the pianos, the singing and dancing swirl around the island of their little table? wondered Richard acidly. ‘Marie-Jacqueline told my wife that Sandrine couldn’t possibly be any good at making love since I had not only sought her company but had done so repeatedly and for almost two years. They fought. They screamed at each other and tumbled down the stairs and out on to the carpet next to the fireplace and the fire. Sandrine’s coat was torn open, her hair pulled, the dress and blouse ripped and a breast repeatedly grabbed and squeezed; Marie-Jacqueline’s skin was deeply scratched and bled in several places. Threats were shrieked. Fists pummelled one another. Sandrine did cry out several times that she would kill Marie-Jacqueline but it meant nothing, I’m certain.’
‘And that one’s response?’
How cautious of the Surete. ‘She laughed at Sandrine and then cheered the crowd who’d gathered to watch, and turning back to my wife, shrilled, “Why not strip and we’ll see which one of us causes his cock to lift?”’
Ah merde! ‘Had you told the nurse you’d get a divorce and marry her?’
‘Inspector, surely you are aware that family is everything to a man in my position and that what I say to such women is of little consequence? She knew it was impossible but couldn’t resist making the taunt.’
‘And your wife?’
‘Spat in her face, slapped her hard, and left.’
‘Then I’m going to have to interview her.’
‘That’s impossible. I can’t allow it.’
‘You will whether you like it or not, and that is final.’
Six of those little grey pills of Benzedrine the Luftwaffe’s night-fighter pilots took to stay awake were shaken from Hermann’s inexhaustible supply, to lie like gravel on the linoleum-topped table.
‘Down those, Louis. You’re going to need them.’
‘Six! We’ve been up for nearly forty-eight hours! You know those won’t sit well on a stomach that has had only beer or pastis to wet it!’
Unsteadily Herr Kohler got up and, a head and shoulders above nearly everyone else, picked up his two empties and began to make his way back to the bar.
‘He’ll be awake all night now and asleep tomorrow when I need him,’ grumbled St-Cyr.
‘Don’t you two ever stop?’ demanded Richard caustically.
‘Never. Now where were we? Oh yes, the older scratches and bruises the coroner noted on Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux and this supposed threat to assassinate les gars.’
Caught unexpectedly, their voices low and urgent only to be suddenly silenced, the cabaret troupe remained motionless in their dressing room. ‘Oh, sorry,’ quipped Kohler. ‘I was looking for the toilets.’
Still the three of them didn’t move, nor did they grin or laugh at such an obvious lie. They’d left the stage, he the bar and right after them. Now they knew he’d deliberately invaded their privacy and they didn’t like it one bit.
Their gazes taking him in, their black velvet chokers setting off the kind of women men imagined them to be, their expressions were, as one, cold, and silently demanded, why is it that you want us to be the way you do? But then … each, in her own way, realized why he must have come.
‘Kohler,’ he heard himself saying, his throat still dry at the accusation but also at having interrupted something he should have quietly listened to from the corridor. ‘Kripo, Paris-Central.’ The dressing room was crowded. Underthings, skirts, blouses and winter coats hung on wooden pegs even around the much-stained mirror. Stage make-up, grey rolls of unbleached toilet paper, lipsticks, et cetera, cluttered the shared dressing table. In a far corner, a rusty iron hole in the floor with stirrups, a pull-chain and one hell of a rush of icy water — a Turkish — was not only wet and slimy but reeked.
‘A detective,’ croaked the one with the clarinet, moisture rapidly filling wounded dark brown eyes that only moments ago had wantonly gazed down the length of that instrument she had blown into and fingered on stage. Her thick chestnut hair was long and still shaken out but now it fell forward, for she was lying, tummy down, on a lumpy, moth-eaten day bed and had had to turn her head his way. Ass up a little, legs slightly parted, knees dug in and waist bare, the off-white satin bra no doubt binding her so tightly it pinched and chafed her nipples.
Unbidden, Herr Kohler’s faded blue eyes fled emptily over her body, Aurelienne told herself — Madame Tavernier to you, Inspector. He didn’t pause at her frill-clad bottom and black-meshed legs, but noted the holes in her stockings and, realizing that they couldn’t be mended because they helped to create that seedy, sluttish, twenties look of Berlin that was so in demand, especially now, paused only at her black high-heels and cleats. Was he thinking of footprints in the snow? Was he? she wondered desperately.
He blinked as if a little drunk and tore his gaze from her to look suddenly at Carole — that’s Madame Navaud to you, Inspector — who stood with lighted cigarette poised. The flowered grey silk kimono was thrown well off that bare left shoulder, that hand placed firmly above a provocative hip, while the barbed tattoo of a wild rose climbed from her belly button and the equator of pink peekaboos to just below her satin bra. Black garters and black net stockings too, and her long, light brown hair all over the place and all but hiding the hard hazel eyes that looked sideways at him.
‘Kohler,’ Carole said in that way she always did when forced to caress some bastard’s quiverins cheek. ‘Here to find a killer or killers.’
‘Not us,’ whispered Nathalie, her expression unchanged, and still sitting facing the back of that Thonet chair of hers. Its bentwood waist was slender and curved beautifully upwards just like her own, her thighs tightly gripping it, her chin on the hand that was folded delicately over the top rail as if she was caressing the back of a lover’s neck. A chair that she often used as a stage prop and had insisted she must have when she’d arrived in Vichy in the late autumn of 1940. Madame Nathalie Benoist, Inspector. Nathalie who holds us all together and writes our songs and routines and makes us work. She has such lovely shoulders hasn’t she? And yet … and yet her expression can be so hard and uncompromising.