Sandman (42 page)

‘And he was to pick it up yesterday afternoon?'

‘That is correct.'

‘At what time, please, did he come into the shop on Saturday?'

The salesman's expression grew pained. ‘At just before closing.'

‘And were there any other customers?'

‘Seven. We're short-handed. I …'

A breath was taken and held in anticipation of further questions not long in coming.

‘Do you mean to say you left him alone while you served others? You took your eyes from him?' demanded the Sûreté accusingly.

‘Inspector, how was I to know he was looking the place over? He was in uniform. He asked if he might use the telephone so as to get the inscription correct.'

Kohler gave his partner a nudge. ‘The burglar alarm, Louis. The bastard recircuited the wires so that the alarm remained off but the light came on when the switch was thrown.'

The control box was in the office, on a wall. ‘Entry?' asked St-Cyr of his partner.

‘A rear door. A tradesman's entrance – grilled, but no problem. Forced with an iron bar, muffled with a horse blanket.'

‘And the safes out front?'

‘All drilled and punched. Bang on each time, Louis. First the hole to locate and expose the cam of the locking bolt, then the hammer and chisel.'

‘He came equipped but did he come alone?'

‘Apparently, but he couldn't have carried the tools in that attaché case he walked into the Ritz with.'

‘Then did he knock this place off first, Hermann, before leaving his little surprise at the Ritz, or vice versa?'

‘He would have had to come back here to open the front door for the
flics
to find.'

There was a nod. ‘Then he did the Ritz job first, and while we were brushing the dust off ourselves, he took his time with this, having prepared the way well beforehand.'

Clément Laviolette was sous-directeur, a far different person from his sales clerk. Clearly he didn't want the Kripo and the Sûreté asking too many questions. ‘Inspectors, it's nothing –
nothing
, I assure you. Those little safes we have out front are merely for show. Our vault in the cellars is inviolable. Please … a few trinkets are missing. Mere baubles.'

He was positively beaming, and when he sat down in an Empire
fauteuil
to benevolently fold his hands in his lap, he said, ‘Two millions at most when he could have had thirty. The rectangular, chain-linked diamond necklace with matching bracelets. Two rings with step-cut, rectangular,
blanc exceptionnel
stones of 31.98 and 19.53 carats respectively. A wider diamond bracelet than the others – stronger, yes. More distinctive, more of a statement. The latent
pugiliste
in the female perhaps? A pair of ear-rings – single droplets those – he could have had the proper ones to go with the chain-links but passed them up. A ruby pendant, a diamond brooch, an epidote-and-diamond necklace which was exquisite for the delicacy of its platinum lacework and for the warm and enticing combination of its soft green and pale yellow tints.'

He sucked in a breath, never letting his eyes leave them. ‘But it is as if this
perceur de coffre-fort
was searching for something he had had in mind for a long time yet couldn't quite make up his mind when presented with the
confiserie
of our establishment.'

The
bonbon
shop, ah yes. ‘Seven years between sheet metal in Oslo, Louis, the sentence commuted by our friends in Berlin for all we know, but time enough to dream. Then one empty safe and a fortune left behind.'

‘One empty safe …? Ah! messieurs, the vault in the cellars was not touched, as I have only just informed you.'

Kohler let him have it – St-Cyr knew he would. ‘Then why weren't the little safes out front emptied and their contents locked away below? Isn't that the normal procedure at the close of each day?'

There wasn't a ruffle of discomposure. ‘The pressures of business. The shortages of suitable staff. It's understandable, is it not?'

‘Five millions,' grunted Louis.

‘Perhaps a little more,' conceded Laviolette. ‘When we have the final figure we will, of course, be quite willing to divulge it.'

How good of him. ‘Ten at least, Louis.'

‘The insurance, Hermann.'

They turned to leave the office. ‘Messieurs …' bleated the sales clerk. ‘The cigarette case … It … it has only had the deposit.'

‘Tack it on to the rest, eh? Lose it if you have to.' Kohler slid the thing deeply into the left pocket of the greatcoat that, had he worn a helmet instead of a broad-brimmed grey fedora, would have made his appearance all the more formidable.

Touching a forefinger lightly to his lips and shaking his head, he whispered, ‘Don't even mention it to the detective out front. It would only upset him.'

The vault was indeed inviolable. Even tunnelling under it would have been of no use. ‘He had to have known the staff had become complacent, Hermann, and that things were being carelessly left overnight in the safes upstairs.'

‘Someone has to have looked the place over for him. A woman, no doubt. One who could have made several visits. This piece, that piece …'

‘See if there's a record of the clientele. Try for a singer, for Mademoiselle Thélème. The shop is on her way to the Ritz.'

‘Done, but why did the son of a bitch leave the cigarette case behind? He must have known they'd have it ready? He'd have had access to the office and to the sous-directeur's desk during the robbery.'

‘Perhaps our Gypsy was too busy. Perhaps it was only a means to his looking the place over and to hot-wiring the burglar alarm.'

‘Perhaps he simply forgot it in the rush,' said Kohler, lost to it.

‘Then why have it inscribed in such a manner?'

‘That's what I'm asking myself, Louis. Why did he deliberately go out of his way to identify himself with the Rom while wearing the uniform of those who must at least officially hate them?'

The house at 3 rue Laurence-Savart was in Belleville, on a street so narrow, the canyon of it threw up the sound of the retreating Citroën.

As Hermann reached the corner of the rue des Pyrénées, the tyres screeched and that splendid
traction avant
grabbed icy paving stones. Then the car shot deeply into the city St-Cyr loved, and he heard it approach the Seine – yes, yes, there it was – after which it reached place Saint-André-des-Arts and coasted quietly up to the house on the rue Suger. Five minutes flat, from here to there. No traffic. There seldom was at any time of day or night, and in ten minutes one could cross the city from suburb to suburb. The cars all gone. 350,000 of them reduced to 4500 or less; 60,000 cubic metres of gasoline a month reduced to an allocation of less than 600.

As one of the Occupier, control of the Citroën had passed instantly into Hermann's hands. They were capable, of course, and occasionally Hermann did let him drive his own car just so that he wouldn't forget how to. And yes, they had become friends in spite of it and of everything else. Two lost souls from opposite sides of the war, thrown together by the never-ending battle against common crime.

‘War does things like that,' he said aloud and to no one but the darkness of the street. ‘We're like a horseshoe magnet whose opposing poles agree to sweep up the iron filings. All of them.'

The city proper held about 2,300,000; the suburbs perhaps another 500,000 and yet, even with 300,000 or so of the Occupier, on any night at this hour or just after curfew it was so quiet it was uncomfortable. And at 4.47 Berlin Time, it was all but ready for the first sounds of those departing for work. Not a light showed, and the time in winter was one ungodly hour earlier than the old time; in summer it was
two
.

Boots would soon squeak in the twenty degrees of frost. The open-toed, wooden-heeled shoes of the salesgirls, usherettes and secretaries would click-clack harshly, though most had long since lost interest in how they looked or in trying to find a husband, what with so many of the young men either dead or locked up in POW camps in the Reich.

After more than two and a half years of Occupation, nearly three and a half of war, hunger was on everyone's mind unless some fiddle had been worked, or one slept with the enemy or had one living in the house. The system of rationing had never worked and had been open to so much abuse, most existed on less than 1500 calories a day.

Yet they had to get up at 4 a.m. the old time, six days a week.

He turned his back on the city. He went into the stone-cold house, saying softly, ‘Marianne, it's me …' only to stop himself, to remember that she was not asleep upstairs but dead. ‘Ah
merde
, I've got to watch myself,' he said. Fortunately there were still a few splintered boards left from the explosion that had killed her and their little son. Hermann had had the Todt Organization repair the damage. With pages torn from About's
The King of the Mountains
– a tragedy to destroy it – he lit a fire in the kitchen stove.

And searching the barren cupboards found, at last, one forgotten cube of bouillon.

‘Things like this build character – isn't that what you always said,
maman
?' he cried out for it was
her
house. It had always been hers even after she had passed away, and hadn't that been part of the trouble with the first wife
and
with the second?

‘No. It was the long absences. The work. The profession, and I was determined to succeed, but if one does not climb the ladder, one soon slides down it.'

Flames lit up the room and, cursing himself, he ran to draw the black-out curtains Madame Courbet across the street had thoughtfully left open to brighten the place while cleaning it.

The Gypsy had done the Ritz robbery between 8.15 and 8.47 p.m., Monday, but the
flic
who had found Cartier's front door open had not done so until today at 0127 hours. Lots of time, then, for the Gypsy to have been as thorough as possible, yet he had left things behind, had definitely
not
taken all he could have.

‘And that', breathed St-Cyr, ‘is a puzzle, unless he was trying to tell us something.'

The bouillon cube was old and so dry he had to remove a shoe to smash it with the heel, only to worry about damaging the footwear. Scraping the crumbs into a hand with the blade of a dinner knife, he fed them to the pot from the surface of whose cup of water rose the first tendrils of steam.

More wood was added to the stove, and from his pockets, guiltily now, the half-dozen lumps of coal Hermann had pilfered unseen from the cellars of the building that housed Cartier's.

Hermann had kept six for himself – he was like that. He wouldn't take what was his right as one of the Occupier, the Citroën excepted, and certain of his meals. He would go without but ‘borrow' from those who had.

Idly St-Cyr wondered if his partner had picked up a little bauble or two for Giselle and Oona. Underwear, yes – silk stockings if they could be spared and the victim found in such a state only one pair would be necessary for the funeral if the coffin was to be left open. If.

‘But why Cartier's?' he asked himself, removing his overcoat at last but keeping the scarf tightly wrapped around his throat, the chest covered thickly. The flu … one never relaxed one's vigilance for it was serious. So many had died of it last winter.

Cartier's was close to the Ritz but Van Cleef and Arpels was on place Vendôme and much closer, other world-famous jewellers too, yet the Gypsy had settled on that one.

He had left the cigarette case for them to find – St-Cyr was certain of this but as yet had no proof. ‘Tshaya,' he said, and blowing on the cup of bouillon, ‘
Vadni ratsa
.'

Kohler heard the telephone ringing its heart out in the hall downstairs. The sound rose up the stairwell floor by Christly floor until, tearing himself out of bed, he ran to stop it. Down, down the stairs, he pitching through the darkness rather than have Madame Clicquot bitch at him any more. The rent, the lack of coal – ‘Why will you not see that we receive our proper share?' Et cetera.

They collided. The candle stub flew out of her hands; the stench of garlic, onions and positively no bathing was ripe with fortitude. ‘Monsieur …' she exhaled.

‘Madame, forgive me.
Allô … Allô
… Operator, put the bastard on. Gestapo … yes, I'm Gestapo, eh? so don't take offence and hang up.'

‘Louis … Louis, what the
hell
is it this time?'

A moment was taken. And then, ‘Cartier's, Hermann. The Opéra, June of 1910 and Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. The Schéhérazade. The Thousand and One Nights, The Arabian Nights.'

‘I'm listening.'

‘I was there with my parents. It was magnificent!'

‘I'm still listening.'

‘Bakst put such colours into the décor. Nijinsky was the black slave.'

‘Continue.'

‘Louis Cartier, the grandson, was so impressed he revolutionized Cartier's style and the way we see gems and semiprecious stones. He and his assistant, Charles Jacqueau, began to create what were then very daring combinations of onyx, jet or pearl and diamond, with malachite, jade and amethyst or lapis lazuli. That's why he hit Cartier's.'

‘You're not serious.'

‘The Club Schéhérazade, idiot! Tshaya, Hermann. Nana Thélème. She was wearing a dress with stag-horn buttons and a belt of goid links. Those are gypsy things. Their most powerful talismans are not man-made but natural. A polished bit of antler, a beach pebble bearing its tiny fossil …'

‘A plaque of amber with its entrapped fly, eh? Hey,
mon vieux
, I'm going back to bed. Your French logic is just too much for me!'

Tshaya was Nana Thélème? Ah! Louis was crazy. Too tired, too overwrought.

The flat was freezing. Giselle wore three sweaters and two pairs of woollen trousers, kneesocks, gloves and a toque. Oona also.