Only Herr Max breathed a little easier, for in those last few words room had been cautiously made for him to proceed. Von Schaumburg was only covering his own ass. These days everyone did so if possible.
Had it been daylight, Hermann would have said he didn’t like the look of things. At six minutes to curfew, and with the rue Nollet in utter darkness and its tardy citizens prevented from hastily entering or leaving the area, he said nothing, a sure sign he was deeply troubled.
All attempts to find Henri Doucette had failed. Boemelburg’s Daimler, with the General’s Mercedes in front of it, was parked just ahead of the Citroen. All engines were silent. Wehrmacht lorries had sealed off each end of the street. Troops were deployed, some to the rooftops, others to watch the adjacent streets.
Searchlights would be used, torches too, and headlamps. If Tshaya tried to make a run for it, she would be stopped.
‘But is she alive, Louis? Has the Spade already taught her a little lesson in obedience?’
‘He has a temper,’ sighed St-Cyr. ‘If she’s dead, he will simply have left her for us to find and will claim he knows nothing of it.’
The rue Nollet was perfect. Les Batignolles was in the seventeenth arrondissement and largely industrial. One of the city’s garment districts, it had formerly been a quiet little village but had suffered repeated incursions of slum-housing.
The huge railway depot and switching yard that serviced the whole of the Occupied North was but a street away and offered unparalleled chances for escape. Not far to the south, and in line with the yards, were those of the Gare Saint-Lazare. The quartier de l’Europe was to the east; the Club Monseigneur not far.
‘The citizens of this district have a total allergy to authority and a complete aversion to the police,’ sighed St-Cyr. ‘That is why all attempts have failed to find her.’
Even the reward of 100,000 francs hadn’t been claimed, Je suis partout were co-operating but could only say that they had received the news by telephone.
‘He knocks off the Ritz on the night of the eighteenth, then fades up the rue de la Paix to Cartier’s where Tshaya is waiting for him,’ snorted Kohler. ‘Then the two of them knock it off and hit the ticket office of the Gare Saint-Lazare.’
‘After which they simply fade away to here and let the police and everyone else hunt for them.’
‘Then the son of a bitch boldly hangs around the Gare Saint-Lazare waiting for me to blow myself up!’
That had been in the small hours of Wednesday, and afterwards the Gypsy had gone on to the Gare de l’Est to knock off the pay-train before the curfew had ended.
Fifteen or so hours later, they had emptied the wall safe of the villa in Saint-Cloud.
‘Their timing’s perfect, Hermann.’
‘And they still have plenty of explosives.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No you won’t. You’ll try to look after Giselle and Oona if anything happens.’
A knock on the windscreen was soft, though it had the sound of finality about it.
‘Au revoir, mon vieux,’ breathed Kohler.
Hermann’s grip was far from firm. ‘A bientot, mon ami. Bonne chance.’
St-Cyr got out of the car to silently close its door. Standing in the darkness and the freezing cold, he looked up at the house and wondered what awaited his partner. Another tripwire, another bomb?
Gabrielle and Nana and Suzanne-Cecilia were now all being held at the Neuilly villa. They would not be allowed to talk to one another and would be kept completely separate.
‘But will they try to escape?’ he said quietly to the night. ‘If so, Herr Max will be waiting for just such a thing.’
From where she stood behind her door, Gabrielle could see the head of the main staircase. The corridor was well lit. There were lights on in the foyer below. Apparently the house slept, but she could not understand why she hadn’t been locked in.
It was suicidal to try to escape, suicidal to stay. Jean-Louis and Hermann would find the house at 15 rue Nollet. Both would be only too aware of what Henri Doucette would do to Tshaya. And then? she asked, and closed the door to let its bolt click softly back in place. ‘And then they will find the truth but will they accept it?’
Henri Doucette would want Tshaya to tell him where the Gypsy was hiding, but more than this, he would want her to tell him where the loot was hidden. And Tshaya, Jean-Louis? she asked. What will Tshaya do if she wants to get back at that husband of hers before she and the Gypsy vanish into thin air?
Would she not have notified je suis partout, knowing such a notice would be certain to bring him to her and that he would have been forewarned of it by one of the reporters and would tell no one of it until he had had a chance to get to her?
The house at number 15 had been condemned, the notice on the door was all too clear. For the acts of terrorism committed by the son, Andre Lemercier, in place Bellecour on 14 and 17 October in the city of Lyon … All members of the boy’s immediate family had been taken. The house had been sealed, and so much for the folly of committing terrorism.
There was no mention of what the boy had actually done. Kohler tried the door and found it opened easily. Nudging it, he stepped inside.
Freezing, the place smelled of mould and dampness. All the furnishings had been taken. The bastards had even unscrewed and removed the coat-rack in the foyer and the light fixture. A door led straight ahead, another to his left, a third opened on to a staircase whose steps, when he shone the torch up them, looked uninviting.
He searched the wainscoting for tripwires, searched for steps whose boards had been pulled loose and put back, turned the torchlight so that it shone up at the ceiling above himself. There was nothing up there … not a damned thing that he could see, ah merde …
The first step was solid but deeply worn. The faded wallpaper was peeling. The second step was as solid as a rock, and so was the third one. Confident, he found the fourth step suddenly giving way beneath his weight. He was caught and dropped the torch, cried out softly, ‘Verdammt!’
No bomb exploded. Apprehensively he looked up the stairwell, thinking Tshaya or Doucette would be up there but no one came. No one.
The door up there was still closed, half lost in the gloom.
He ran his fingers over the next step, felt the nails in place and chanced it. Progress was painfully slow. No flask of nitro dangled from the ceiling of the stairwell. No detonator had been wired to sticks of leaking dynamite. There wasn’t the smell of it. Was the place clean of explosives?
The Lemercier family had occupied the first storey. Making his way from room to room, Kohler picked out those in which they had eaten, slept or relaxed. He could imagine the heavy, stuffed armchairs with their lace antimacassars, the ashtrays. The outlines of the pictures that had hung on the walls were there, those of the crucifixes too. The water closet was nothing but a bucket under the kitchen sink. Ah Christ!
There was a second and a third storey which had been let to others and in their rooms the smells were different.
Now only the garrets remained. Louis, he said silently to himself. Louis, I don’t like this.
He heard a noise below him. He thought that it must be his partner but neither of them had a gun. Those had been taken from them at the Ritz’s swimming pool.
The garret at the head of the stairs, he told himself and, looking up at the attic’s door, shone the torch fully on it. But was there a bomb? Had she wired herself in? And who the hell had let Je suis partout know about her hiding here? Who unless … Ah maudit! had it been herself who had told them?
St-Cyr could hear nothing. The darkness was absolute. The fronts of opposing houses on either side of the street tended to shut one in. No stars shone from above.