Sandman (28 page)

Antoine would be smugly sitting in one of the armchairs. Would the pleasures of possessing Liline be there in memory, her breasts, her thighs, her beautiful cunt …? Was it beautiful, Antoine?

With a scream no one heard, she roared into the room and there he was standing between the two detectives. Antoine … Antoine …

He slapped her so hard and so swiftly that she ducked away in shock. ‘
Bâtard!
' she swore.

‘
Putain! Fille de joie! Paillasse!
' he hissed. ‘Horning yourself with a stableboy. Hah! did you not think I would discover what you had been up to?'

‘
Pardon?
' she shrilled and ripped her nightgown open. ‘
Roué! Fornicateur!
' She grabbed her breasts and held them out to him. ‘Suck … go on and suck them for nourishment, eh, or is it that hers were a little bigger, a little softer since we were both with child?
Your
child.'

Ah
merde
… ‘Madame …' began Louis, only to hear Vernet laugh tauntingly at her.

She shrieked, ‘It has to be his—HIS!' and held her belly, distending it in mockery of him.

Both detectives were taken aback and that was good, yes, good! thought Vernet viciously. He'd heap scorn on her. ‘It's impossible, Bernadette. Please don't make a mockery of yourself. Be dignified. You're a Vernet. isn't that right, eh? Walk to the guillotine with pride.'

She withdrew a little, planting her feet more firmly apart. ‘
What have you said to them?
' she said gratingly, cocking her head sideways to hear him. ‘
Well?
' she shrilled and yelled, ‘
Debaucheur! Maudit salaud!
Liline was not the first, messieurs. Ah no, no. There have been others. Tender little things. Two former maids he had to pay off. Schoolgirls if he could get them—yes, yes, I swear it! He did not use the brothels for fear of disease. He concentrated on the inexperienced because with them they gave him that feeling of immense power a man such as he requires.'

‘You always were unsatisfactory, Bernadette. With you there were never the cries of joy.'

‘Or despair.'

Ah
nom de Dieu, de Dieu
. ‘Monsieur—'

‘
Piss off!
Don't interrupt. Let me finish this bitch once and for all!'

Kohler rolled his eyes up at the ceiling. Sex was the great leveller. High-class, low-class, sophisticated or not, they all went down into the sewers to fight it out. Every time.

Quivering, her face livid, she drew in a breath. Her dark brown eyes flashed hatred, hesitation and then uncertainty. ‘Well, what is it then?
What
have I done? Put holes in your condoms? You did that, Antoine. The little rips, the simple tears. What did you tell that shameful slut? That the rubber wasn't so good these days?' she mocked. ‘You got the poor thing pregnant. She was so stupid and naïve she didn't realize what you were up to until it was too late. Did you offer her marriage when she discovered she was pregnant, eh? Well?'

His gaze must be like the guillotine before it falls and she must see this. No quarter, only triumph. ‘In Rouen I had time to think, my dear. What must she do? I asked myself, and put in a call to my solicitors. They've been with us since the days of my grandfather, Inspectors. Vrillière et fils, Number six, place de Valois and long ago they learned the art of discretion, especially in matters between husband and wife.'

It was coming now, and she could only hate him all the more. He gave her a moment to savour it. He ran his eyes over her forgotten breasts not with pity, ah no, but with utter contempt.

‘Last Wednesday, Bernadette, you told Monsieur Charles that the affair between myself and Liline had ended and that I wanted no trouble and wished to settle the sum of two hundred and seventy-five thousand francs on the girl. This sum, which you gave them on condition of silence, they were to hold until Monday at nine a.m., as it would be picked up then by a close friend of your family, a priest who would act as intermediary. A Father Eugène Debauve, who would present them with a sealed envelope for me containing some letters I had written to her. This he has, unfortunately, done. How could you have been so stupid?'

A sum of 275,000 francs in cash … ‘Madame …' began the Sûreté, only to hear her say, ‘Nénette can answer all your questions, but I greatly fear she will not be able to. Will it be the Sandman who kills her, Inspectors, or my lover, since both must now know she intends to accuse them? Not me. Never me.'

8

G
REEN, BLUE AND AMBER, RUBY RED, THE LAST
light of day glowed among the shattered windows high above them while on the floor at Louis's feet the Star of David, drawn by the child in windblown snow, now bore the careless bruises of bootprints. But these were not hers, nor a man's, but those of a woman.

Uncertain and fearing the worst, they followed them from room to room down a corridor, now dark, now brushed with snow. A study, a school where Hebrew and religious studies had been taught, had been turned over to storage. Clothing, blankets, boots and shoes, all to be sent to the needy via the Jewish relief organization, had been left in sodden heaps as if forgotten.

Kohler shone his torch around. Among the rubbish, books littered the floor, sheet music, too. Chopin, Brahms, Tchaikovsky. All of the bundles had been broken open and searched for money. A partly closed door gave access to yet more rooms and then to the cellars, to a dark and forbidding arched brick entrance that shouted up no welcome, only a warning.

Was the child now dead? wondered St-Cyr. Had they failed her, and who, please, was the woman? Sister Céline, Violette Belanger, Madame Morelle or Madame Rébé?

Or was it none of these but someone else, someone who also knew who the Sandman was but had no fear of him?

Had the Attack Leader revealed his darkest thoughts to his psychotherapist?

At the foot of the stairs a river of black ice led to heaps of broken crates, smashed picture frames and jackboot-torn canvases … Raphael … Leonardo … ah
mon Dieu
, Fouquet that master of fifteenth-century French painting … A Madonna and child … A Botticelli, the
Birth of Venus
perhaps … Mould on everything, no time to look closer, no time … all stored for safety … safety …

The smell of coal dust and long-cold ashes came to them. The furnace was huge, the boilers even larger, the coal bins empty, the bootprints clear. Those of the child, too. Her explorings, her sitting on an overturned pail to think things through. Droplets of wax, the stub of a candle fixed to an up-ended coffee can. A wad of chewing gum parked behind a water pipe.

The door of the furnace was closed, its cast-iron draught plate open.

Kohler swung the beam of the torch around, letting it pierce the web of grey-white, asbestos-wrapped pipes, thin coverings of soot on each and on the gauge. Here and there the child had boldly printed her name and those of Andrée Noireau and Liline Chambert in the soot.
ARE WE ALL TO DIE?
she had asked, and had left that question for them.

‘Hermann …'

Kohler switched off the torch and they listened to the silence, breathed in the smell of the place, the frigid mustiness. ‘Block the doorway behind us,' he sighed. ‘This is a dead end except for the hand-operated lift they used to bring the coal sacks down and take the ashes out before the war.'

They waited. They stood their ground but had not brought their guns—ah! it was Hermann's responsiblity to take charge of the guns until needed and they'd been in too much of a hurry.

When he found the hoist well, Kohler looked up it into the night. Already the stars were coming out. It would be clear and very cold.

There was no sign of the child's having been taken forceably up the thing, not even her bootprints, only a notice she had written in soot,
THIS IS THE WAY OUT AND THE WAY IN
.

Whoever had come for her had known of the place but had departed some time ago, having returned the lift platform to the cellars.

It was now 5.27 p.m. Berlin Time, and they had been in the city not quite forty-four hours. Since well before dawn, their only sustenance had been two cups of coffee and a few croissants, courtesy of von Schaumburg, a bowl of the acorn water with Oona and a little of the National bread.

They were hungry and running on Messerschmitt Benzedrine, which could and would fail them if too much was taken and yet … yet the child might still be free.

In the Jewish part of the
ancien
Cimetière de Neuilly behind the ramparts of headstones, the few and scattered mausoleums had been broken into during the desecration. Bronze doors when pushed further inward revealed shattered cremation urns or family burial vaults that had felt the sledgehammer blows until their seals had crumbled and their coffins had been dragged out in search of gold wedding rings and other trinkets.

In one such mausoleum the child had placed silk flowers she must have stolen from Gentile graves. In another, behind a cut-stone menorah and opened Talmud, she had bedded down for a night, having swept the floor clean with a broom of straw she had acquired from God knows where.

In the dust she had written:
Andrée, you must forgive me. Liline is also dead. I went to the place where she was and I saw them taking her out
.

‘The dogs, Louis. We have to ask von Schaumburg to allow us to use them.'

‘She'll be terrified.'

‘But safe.'

‘Unless held hostage.'

‘All right, let's pay Sister Céline a visit and hear what she has to say.'

‘Madame Morelle, I think, and Violette Belanger, but first the Vernet solicitors. Let us hope they are not now gone for the day.' Could God not grant them this one small miracle, a conscientious solicitor? wondered St-Cyr and answered tartly, God thinks nothing of solicitors and hasn't the time of day for them.

The envelope was sealed and soft, the eyes of the elderly solicitor concerned.

With care Louis opened the thing the ‘priest', Eugène Debauve, had left for Antoine Vernet. Emptily he said, ‘The underpants that were taken from the site of the abortion. But not to sell on the black market, simply as proof so that the last touch Monsieur Vernet would have of Liline Chambert would be this one sad memento from his wife.'

‘
Merde, merde
, Louis, she must really hate him.'

Like the rest of the city, the house on the rue Chabanais was now in darkness but cigarettes glowed, the line-up was long, boots shuffled, men coughed. And as before, the Feldgendarmen were discernable only because of their size and because they stood in the street, not on the pavement, their breath billowing in the frigid air.

‘Madame Morelle doesn't want to see you. She has asked us to keep you away.'

‘St-Cyr, Sûreté. Please step aside.'

Oh-oh. ‘Louis …'

The burly Feldgendarm broke the rules by switching on an unblinkered torch to flood their faces, distracting no one but himself. Louis took a step back. There was a crack, a sigh, a burst of wind. The torch flew up, the lead-weighted baton clattered. A cry of pain was stifled as the knuckles of a left hand were cradled.

The Feldgendarm crumpled to the street. The roar of others descended on them. ‘Who's next?
Well
, who is it to be?' hissed the Sûreté in fluent
Deutsch
. A tiger.

‘A revolver … he's got a revolver,' managed Kohler, a lie. ‘He's come to make an arrest.'

Arrest … arrest … the word fled down the line, pillaring the Feldgendarmen into indecision while the wise among the clientele sought greener pastures.

‘What arrest?'

‘Please don't be difficult,' winced the Sûreté breathlessly. ‘If you want answers, ask the Kommandant von Gross-Paris.'

‘We're under his order,' managed Kohler. ‘
Orders!
' he shouted.

This they could understand, but it was with regret that they let them pass, for one could never predict the future, and the job of policing the Wehrmacht's largest brothel had carried certain privileges.

They hoped it wouldn't be Madame Morelle. They had heard no police vans turn into the street, so knew it was not a raid.

The place was crowded, full of tobacco smoke and ripe with the stench, and through this boozy haze, and seen against the overflowing, bulging pulchritude, the voluminous black lace of Madame Morelle circulated. To her, arrest was the furthest thing from her mind. These two could prove nothing. Ignoring them, she sat down and spoke softly to an SS major, offering pleasures he could not find in one of the two houses the Generalmajor und Höherer-SS Oberg had reserved for his kind.

‘Ah!' she said, as the two of them strode into the waiting room where the girls waited, too, until enlivened by this little interlude. The din from the staircase only grew louder.

‘Madame Morelle?' began the Sûreté, using the voice of Judgement.

Her pudgy, be-ringed left hand lingered on an SS-trousered thigh to get the feel of it, then patted the knee sharply as if to say, Leave this to me. ‘Brigitte, please take the Major up to Violence's room. Ask her to let him watch. It's all been arranged. If he likes what he sees, he is to enjoy himself and we will discuss things further.'

A schoolgirl, was that what the smirking son of a bitch was after, wondered Kohler, or was he a reminder sent to them from the avenue Foch via the escort service on the Champs-Élysées and an urgent plea for help from Debauve? Ah
merde
, that must be it. ‘Just a minute. No one visits Violette.'

‘
What's she done?
' hissed Madame Morelle, raking them with kohl-rimmed eyes. She wet her ruby lips. ‘Well, eh? Come, come, my fine messieurs,' she shrilled. ‘I demand an answer. I have a right to see the magistrate's order, and please do not tell me you haven't one!'

Snap, snap went her fingers.

‘Look, we only want to talk to her about a missing child,' sighed Kohler.