Gypsy (8 page)

Hermann's face fell. ‘Mecklenburg, Louis. 20 November 1932. The estate of Magda Goebbels's ex-husband. An unknown quantity of gold bars and jewellery. How can anyone have an “unknown” quantity in a safe?'

‘That is none of your business,' countered the visitor.

‘The manager's office, the Kaiserhof Hotel in the Wilhelmstrasse, 17 March 1934. “Cash in the amount of 25,000 marks but also 8000 American dollars and one gold pocket-watch. Property of …” Ah
verdammt
, Louis, der Führer!'

‘Read on,' sighed Engelmann. ‘It can't get worse but then …'

‘The residence and office of the Köln banker, Kurt von Schroe-der, 5 May 1935, a strong supporter of the Party, I think,' said Kohler lamely. ‘Jewellery to the value of 7,000,000 marks; cash to that of 28,000,000. Do you want me to keep going?'

‘Of course,' grunted Engelmann.

‘The villa of Alfred Rosenburg in the Tiergarten, 15 December 1937. Documents …?'

Again they were told it was none of their business, but there had been some loose diamonds, gold coins and banknotes, though no values were given.

‘The residence of Prinz Viktor zo Wied – Berlin, too, the Kurfürstenstrasse, 17 January 1938, then Joachim von Ribben-trop's villa in the suburb of Dahlem, 18 January, the same year.'

Von Ribbentrop had been made foreign minister of the Reich on 4 February, just seventeen days after the robbery. Kohler felt quite ill. How had the Gypsy pulled off those jobs in a police state? Why had the idiot taken on the
Nazis
, for God's sake? None of the robberies would have been mentioned even to the IKPK's member countries, let alone the press, yet the hunt must have gone on in earnest.

‘And in Oslo we finally had him,' sighed Herr Max. ‘That's when all the pieces came together for us.'

‘Correction,' said Louis. ‘The Norwegians had him.'

‘But soon we had Norway.'

Not until 9 June 1940. ‘Then why didn't you have him extradited? Surely there was room enough in the Moabit?'

Berlin's most notorious prison. ‘Because his willingness to co-operate was absent. Because we had other matters to concern us.'

‘You finally made a deal with him,' snorted Kohler. ‘You let that son of a bitch out of jail but he didn't keep his word and now you want him back.'

‘Correction,' interjected Boemelburg. ‘We have to have him back.'

‘
Ah nom de Jésus-Christ, Louis, why us
?'

The stairwell resounded with their taking two and three steps at a time. ‘Because we're common crime. Because the quartier de l'Europe, that favoured haunt of
les Gitans
, was once my beat long before I was fool enough to become a detective.' St-Cyr caught a breath as they reached a landing. ‘And because,
mon vieux
… because, why
sacré, idiot
! they're up to something.'

Kohler stopped so suddenly they collided. ‘
What
?' he demanded, looking his partner over.

Louis's heart was racing. ‘Either to rob for them or to set a little
souricière
for someone.'

A mousetrap … ‘But he's decided to rob for himself – is this what you're saying?'

‘Perhaps, but then … ah
mais alors, alors
, Hermann, is it not too early for us to say?'

Unsettled by the thought, they went up the stairs more slowly. Hermann wouldn't use the lifts, not even in a place like this. Caught once and left hanging by a thread, nothing would change his mind, not even the most modern and best maintained of elevators.

When they reached the sixth floor, the only sounds they heard were those of their shoes. No longer was there that din of hammering typewriters, telexes and the constant ringing of telephones. No one hurried past. No one shouted in German or French. Even from the cellars, there were no sudden screams of terror.

Records occupied the whole of the top floor. Its grey labyrinth of steel filing cabinets, card-index drums, shelves and mountains of dossiers was separated from all outsiders by the brown and unfeeling plateau of the linoleum-topped counter all such governmental edifices held.

Turcotte and every one of his clerk-detectives, all thirty or so of the day shift, were standing rigidly to attention, grim-faced, some with tears.

‘
What the hell has happened
?' breathed Kohler – he couldn't believe it. Usually Turcotte fiercely guarded his domain and acidly fought off all requests to hurry.

The intercom brought answer via Radio-Vichy and the shaky voice of the aged Maréchal Pétain, now in his eighty-seventh year. ‘Mesdames et messieurs, it is with deep regret that I must report the nine-hundred-day siege of Leningrad has been lifted. Though the population has been dying at the rate of twenty thousand a day, this is expected to lessen in the weeks ahead.'

‘Effort brings its own reward,' whispered Kohler, giving a well-known phrase of the Maréchal's. ‘
Les Russes
are no longer food for the fish of the Neva and the Teutonic generals of this war are being taught a damned good lesson.'

Hermann was still bitter but seldom showed it. He had just recently lost both of his sons at Stalingrad where von Paulus was about to surrender the last remnants of the Sixth. He had tried to convince the boys to emigrate in ‘38 to Argentina but being young, they had replied, ‘You fought in the last one; let us finish it in this one.'

The moment of silence following the broadcast was rigidly observed. Not a one of the clerks would have broken it. They were all terrified of their boss and afraid of being sent into forced labour or worse. ‘A far different response than last Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, eh, Louis?' he whispered. ‘They're not patting each other on the back and saying, “I told you so.”'

The Wehrmacht, on a violent whim of the Führer, had dynamited the whole of the Vieux Port of Marseille, evicting thirty thousand souls with but a two-hour notice, and sending most of them to camps at Fréjus and Compiègne. An altercation in a whorehouse had started it all, the Resistance shooting up the place and others paying for it. So many, no one could have predicted it.

‘Well?' demanded Turcotte, lord of his empire.

Kohler winced. ‘We're having trouble, Émile, and need a little help.'

‘Such subservience is rewarding but we can do nothing for you today.'

‘Oh, sorry. Berlin were asking. It was Berlin, wasn't it, Louis?'

The little ferret got the message, but when the wheels were turned, the index cards of most gypsies had been stamped with one big black word and Turcotte had his little triumph. ‘
Déporté ou fusillé, c'est la même chose
.'

Deported or shot, it's the same thing.

‘We're looking for a
mouton
,' said St-Cyr, hauling him out of harm's way. ‘A female. Last seen in Tours, Thursday the fourteenth, but also a regular of the Santé or the Petite Roquette or the cells here and over on the ave' Foch if her conductor feels she needs a change of air.'

The SS or the Gestapo … The lark-eyed gaze flew evasively over the warren. ‘I know nothing of this.'

‘We didn't think you would,' came the soft response, ‘but of course when one has been seen buying sugar and white flour from the green beans to flog it to the butter-eggs-and-cheese boys, one must be careful, isn't that so?'

The German soldiers in their grey-green uniforms, the black marketeers …

St-Cyr the cuckold. St-Cyr the friend of the Resistance who had mistakenly put him on their hit lists but had blown up his wife and son instead.

‘Start talking, Émile, or what I have to tell those same people you are thinking of will include the denunciations of old enemies.'

‘You bastard …'

‘Just give us what we want. It will save us all time.'

The drum was spun, the card turned up and accidentally ripped from its wheel of fortune to be then spat upon in fury and thrust at them.

‘
Une roulure rumaine. Une fille de la duperie, la superchérie et escroquerie
!'

A Rumanian slut. A daughter of deception, trickery and swindling.

‘Now leave us,' said St-Cyr. ‘Go back to your weeping.'

‘The end's coming, Émile,' breathed Kohler, giving him a parting shot. ‘You had better prepare yourself for the worst by sealing your lips. Hey, maybe if you behave, Louis could fix it so that you'll get the Médaille Militaire and Croix de Guerre with palms.'

‘Up against the post,' muttered St-Cyr under his breath.

‘Not until we've had breakfast.'

The file card Turcotte had torn from the drum was replete with entries which went right back to when the Gestapo's
mouton
had been ten years old. A charge of stealing two chickens and a round of goat's cheese had been compounded by the laying on of curses. Sentenced to six months in Bucharest, she had escaped in less than two weeks. A guard was found to have been fooling around with her. Even then she had known how to convince men she was ripe for plucking only to deceive them.

The name on the card, which had been updated in August 1941, was Lucie-Marie Doucette but St-Cyr knew that such a name could well have meant nothing to the gypsies. A mere formality the
Gaje
authorities insisted on to control border crossings, entry visas and issue identity papers and passports.

She was, as Turcotte had so viciously stated, of Rumanian descent – at least, it would have been thought by those in authority that she had been born there. She'd have let them think what they wanted, knowing only that she had again fooled them.

Her real name was Tshaya. She was dark-haired, strongly featured and quite striking, but in the expression she had last given the police camera, there was deceitfulness, wilfulness, hatred … ah! so many things, and a depth of sadness which went well beyond her years.

The hair was parted in the middle, blue-black, long and glossy. Loosened strands trailed provocatively across the forehead, enhancing allure and all but hiding the ears which would have held gold rings or coins, though these must have been taken from her.

The eyes were large and dark beneath strong brows. The nose was full and prominent, the lips not parted. The face was what one would call a medium oval, the chin not pointed but determined, the throat full.

They had put her age at twenty-eight in August 1941. She would not have argued. Again such
Gaje
things meant little. For the gypsies, life was of the present, not of the past or of the future, alas.

Someone – her conductor perhaps – had tersely written in:
Of the Lowara tribe. Daughter of the horse trader, Tshurkina la Marako, deported to Buchenwald 14 September 1941
.

She had stayed behind and they had had their reasons for keeping her. Perhaps she had escaped for a time – there was no record of it. But they had used her.

Colour of skin: dark brown. Height: 1 metre, 68 centimetres. Weight: 62 kilos
. Length of arms, length of legs, bust measurement, waist, that of the hips, the wrists and ankles – all such things were given in the tiniest of handwriting, especially the shape and size of the ears, for like fingerprints, the ears remained the same throughout life.

Signes particuliers: whipmarks on rear of thighs, buttocks, back, shoulders and upper arms
, all dating from the summer of 1928 when she'd have been fifteen years old, if the age of twenty-eight was correct, which it probably wasn't.

Her father? he wondered but thought it highly unlikely. Banishment for a time, perhaps, if the offence, such as stealing the gold of another, warranted it, not a savage beating.

But someone had tied her wrists to a post or tree and had let the whip do the rest.

Hermann was no stranger to this sort of thing and his mood darkened when told of it. Instinctively he gingerly felt his left cheek. That scar was the measure of truth over loyalty to one's peers, and it ran from just below the eye to his lower jaw.

The SS had done that to him. What had begun as a ‘nothing' murder in Fontainebleau Forest, a commonplace murder, had ended at a château near Vouvray as a far different matter not two months ago. The scar was more than matched by the one that ran beneath his shirt from the right shoulder to the left hip. They were still being held accountable for pointing the finger, still reviled, distrusted and held suspect by both the SS of the avenue Foch and the Gestapo of the rue des Saussaies.

‘She's
e gajo rom
, Hermann – married to a non-gypsy, Henri Doucette. There's a notation at the bottom of the card.'

‘Not the Spade?'

‘The same. Once touted as our answer to the Americans' Gene Tunney. A major contender for the heavyweight championship in 1928 though no fight was held that year, and still, I think, the work-out man at the Avia Club Gym over behind the Porte Saint-Martin unless he's found more lucrative things to do.'

The rue Lauriston perhaps? The notorious French Gestapo that was made up of gangsters the SS had let out of jail immediately after the Defeat to make ‘collections' among other things.

‘Let's go and have a word with him. Let's stuff a rawhide whip down his throat before we cut off his balls.'

‘There's no mention of his being responsible for this.'

‘Then he'll tell us, right? and he'll have nothing to worry about.'

Chez Rudi's was just across the Champs-Élysées from the Lido. Everyone knew of it, and those who could not eat here or anywhere else would linger beyond the front windows watching those inside.

It being mid-morning, no meals were being served because lunch was being prepared, but all around them the Occupier came and went, many in uniform, most with their newspapers.
Pariser Zeitung
, the
Völkischer Beobachter
– Hitler's own paper, or
Signal
, his picture magazine.
Le Matin
, too, and others. All controlled because that was the way things were.