Tapestry (42 page)

Dieu merci,
her shoes didn’t make that horrible clip-clopping of the wooden-soled hinged ones most had to wear these days since there were no others available to them. Hers were of leather but they
did
squeak and would give her away—was someone following her?

Step by step she became more certain of being followed but when she turned suddenly and started back defiantly, there was no one.

‘I KNOW YOU’RE THERE!’ she heard herself shrill. ‘LISTEN, YOU. I’M A WAR WIDOW. MY HUSBAND WAS KILLED DURING THE INVASION.’

There was no answer. Was there more than one of them? Denise … Denise, my love …
‘Please,’
she heard herself saying. ‘I have two children.’

She waited.

‘Listen, you, I’m one of Abélard’s people. You can have my jewellery and handbag, just don’t hurt me or cut off my hair. I won’t resist.’

Again he said nothing. Again she wasn’t even sure he was there.

Retracing her steps, Germaine at last found the car still parked beside the fountain. Forced by nature to urinate, she did so in the gutter like a common prostitute, had never had to do such a thing before, was both ashamed and embarrassed.

The smoke from a Gauloise bleue filled the car. Herr Kohler was sitting behind the wheel.

‘Get in and behave yourself.’

‘Please, I … I didn’t think. I should have. It’s … it’s horrible out there on those streets.’

‘Just tell me everything you can about Jeannot Raymond and the others. Leave anything out and you really will be finding your own way back.’

He’d do it too. She knew this.

‘They came and they took Oona, mademoiselle. Maybe it’s that they couldn’t find Giselle le Roy and needed Oona as bait, maybe it’s that they’ve the two of them, but they took the woman those kids of Madame Guillaumet’s had come to depend on as I knew Henri and Louisette would because they needed her desperately.’

They didn’t use the lift in this house on the rue La Boétie where Denise’s father kept a flat, had been told by the maître d’ at the Tour d’Argent that this is where they had best go. Germaine winced when she saw the broken seals around the door. She knew it was a reaction she couldn’t have avoided. Herr Kohler noticed it, as he did everything. He didn’t remove the handcuff that bound her to him as a common criminal.

‘You’re hurting my wrist, damn you.’

‘Be quiet. Speak only when spoken to.’

He checked his gun, said, ‘Don’t make me use it.’ Was very upset and worried about this Oona Van der Lynn but wouldn’t let such concerns interfere in the slightest with what he had to do.

He opened the door and made her walk in front of him, nudging her when she paused to pry off her shoes. ‘My coat,’ she said. It now dangled from that wrist. Her dress was ruined, her hair, her everything. How could he do this to her? Did he not
know
who she was?

Abruptly he stopped her in the entrance to the
salle de séjour
and she knew he would not let her go any further until he wanted her to. He must be looking around the room at everyone, must be taking it all in.

Broken glass littered the carpet at Louis’s feet amid the shattered wreckage of the mantel’s theatre poster. Denise Rouget had looked up suddenly, the daughter sitting tensely on the edge of a distant settee with that mother of hers whose hands were bandaged but who showed every sign of being about to leap up and smash something else—the vitrine? wondered Kohler.

Judge Rouget couldn’t find the will to even notice green eyes or this Kripo or that wife of his, nor was he enjoying the cigar whose smoke must cloud the thoughts when clear thinking was demanded. He’d been told exactly where things stood and hadn’t liked what he’d heard. Undying loyalty to the Führer and the Reich even if things were beginning to look doubtful and the Allies might just possibly invade en masse as so many were now hoping.

The Standartenführer Langbehn simply remained supremely confident with knees crossed and cigarette in hand. Sonja Remer, having gone into the kitchen to get herself one of those chairs, sat by that exit with handbag in lap, intently watching the proceedings without expression beyond a blankness that unsettled because one had still to ask, as always, was there
nothing
that could be done to change her mind?

‘Hermann …’

‘Louis, this one told me Madame Rouget arranged and paid for the killing of Élène Artur.’

‘I did no such thing,’ spat Vivienne, sucking in a breath and darting a look at everyone but her daughter.

‘Kohler …’

‘Standartenführer, don’t get in the way of a police officer exercising his duties.’

‘A moment,
mon vieux
…’

‘Not now, Louis. Just let me handle this.’

‘There is no body, Hermann.’

‘Cleaned it up, did they?’

‘Kohler …’

‘Be quiet, you. An SS-Gestapo
Mausefalle
, eh, and two honest detectives dead because of the marksmanship of this one? Try it and see what happens, Standartenführer. Madame Rouget? Madame Vivienne Rouget of the rue Henri Rochefort?’

Hermann gave the house number and said that his partner would take down her
procès-verbal,
her statement.

‘I arranged nothing. You have no proof, not now.’

‘
Ach,
but I have.’

‘Let’s see it, then,’ she said in French.

‘
Aber natürlich. Bitte,
though …
Merci, un moment
.’

Hermann was flying on Benzedrine—taunting her with that mix of languages. Nudging Germaine de Brisac ahead of him, he went over to the
Blitz
and took the handbag from her at gunpoint, tossing it on to the carpet some distance from her. ‘That’s to even things up,’ he said and nudged her with the Walther P38. ‘Just try to get it,
mein Schatz
, and you’ll never try another thing.’

Tucking his pistol away, he dug deeply into a pocket, had to finally release the Mademoiselle de Brisac but told her, as only he could, not to sit down. Fist clenched and then opened, he let Vivienne Roget look at what had, no doubt, been promised her by the killers but hadn’t been found until later.

‘Have you a collection of them?’ he asked. She didn’t answer but only glared. ‘I’ll give it to you later, then. For now it’s all the evidence we need since my report is on the Kommandant von Gross-Paris’s desk, awaiting his perusal at an hour you wouldn’t understand.’

Grâce à Dieu
, Hermann had realized that his partner would have used just such a lie, but had they grown so close, their lives, their very beings were now welded into one?

Squeezed, Louis, Hermann would have said. Like
canards à la presse.

‘Mademoiselle Germaine de Brisac?’ he said, using his Gestapo voice.

Terrified, she looked at Hermann, who continued. ‘Tell them what you told me of Jeannot Raymond.’

Her overcoat fell to the carpet, her wrist was favoured. Alone before them, she knew her dress clung to her, that she mustn’t pluck at it, mustn’t even try to tidy the hair that was plastered to her brow, that to do such would only be considered unseemly of her, betraying a cowardice she didn’t wish to expose.

‘Abélard knew him from before the Defeat, from that other war, I think. The victory then. The Cercle de l’Union Interaliée, too, in the early thirties when he … he was living there and Monsieur Raymond had come home from Argentina to stay.’

‘But always the cool one, that right?’ prompted Herr Kohler, nudging her, she drawing away from him sharply. ‘Never anything else,’ he continued. ‘Dangerous—wasn’t that what you said when I asked it of you? Damned dangerous?’

Again he touched her. Again she pulled away. ‘Well?’ he demanded.

‘Dangerous and brave. When flying over the Andes Mountains, he and … and the other pilots of that airmail service he worked for had to draw their own charts and make their own repairs if forced down by bad weather or engine failure.’

‘Or walk out, Louis.’

‘He … he had two ranches. The one much nearer to Buenos Aires was for cattle and horses, while the one far to the southwest in Patagonia was for sheep. He …’

‘Had a wife and two children,’ said Madame Rouget, sucking in a breath and waiting to see their reactions. ‘A wife who betrayed him.’

Had she tasted it? wondered Kohler, Louis too.

‘
Maman,
that is only a rumour,’ blurted Denise. ‘You know he mightn’t have done what Abélard told you and Madame de Brisac.’

‘He did! He didn’t make that night flight he was supposed to, but returned to his cattle ranch, Inspectors, and took care of that wife and the lover she had taken behind his back!’

‘He … he cut Rivière’s throat first as that one slept and then … then made her watch as he cut those of the children,’ said Denise, unable to keep the sadness from her voice, the heartache of it, thought Germaine. ‘Rivière was his boss. Only then did Monsieur Raymond cut her throat and burn the hacienda to the ground.’

‘She … she had repeatedly begged him to let her and the children return to France, was terribly lonely and didn’t even speak Spanish, but he … he wouldn’t listen,’ said Germaine emptily.

It was Denise who said, ‘He refused to give up everything for her.’

‘A rancher, Louis. Sheep and cattle. Successful and then broke, a naturalized Argentinian who had adopted the country as his own and then had to run because he was unable to stay.’

‘And what of Flavien Garnier, mademoiselle, and Hubert Quevillon?’

Had this Sûreté asked it thinking the worst of her, having seen it so clearly? ‘I felt more comfortable with Garnier than with his subordinate. Garnier is very direct, very thorough and businesslike. He … he doesn’t try to force himself on a woman, has a wife and grown children, is very professional and is not in any way …’

‘Threatening?’ prompted Louis gently.

Denise leaped to her feet, the look she gave pleading with her not to say anything, thought Germaine.

‘We know,’ grunted Rouget, tossing his cigar hand in dismissal. ‘What you two do in private is disgusting, in public …’

‘Hercule …’

‘Vivienne, that daughter of yours had best deny it right now. No men in her life beyond those first few unfortunate and fleeting attempts at normality? Mixed swimming parties and afternoon dances she didn’t want to attend and was mortified when she had to suffer through them and was pawed by some boy who only wanted to get his fingers sticky? Did you actually believe I wouldn’t notice her tears? A daughter of mine?’

‘Papa …’

A fist was clenched, the cigar stubbed out. ‘Just deny it. Don’t and I will disown you.’

Homosexuality wasn’t only against the law but a definite no-no, especially if admitted in front of an SS. ‘Garnier’s not like Quevillon, Louis, but is a veteran like the others. So where has the Agence Vidocq got Oona Van der Lynn, Standartenführer, or are we to read about it in the press?’

Kohler’s attitude would never change. ‘That you will have to find out for yourselves on Monday at 1000 hours, the avenue Foch.’

They were now alone in the judge’s flat. ‘Oona, Louis,’ said Hermann. ‘The boys on your street. Your boys, mine too.’

They had perhaps a day, didn’t even know where any of the Agence Vidocq lived.
Bien sûr,
Delaroche must have been told by Oberg to take Giselle, and when Garnier and Quevillon had failed—if they really had—Oona had been necessary.

‘Let me have that Sûreté blunderbuss of yours and the spares. Don’t argue.’

Fingers were impatiently snapped. Clearing things away on the judge’s coffee table, Hermann broke the Lebel and emptied it
and
the ‘brand-new’ packet of 11 mm, black-powder 1873s whose cartridges rolled about until silent. Spreading them, he muttered, ‘Verdigris. No wonder you people lost this war.’

It wasn’t a moment in which to disagree. It was 0422 hours Sunday, 14 February 1943 and they had until 1000 hours Monday. Shoving most of the cartridges to one side, Hermann chose six to reload and that … why that, of course, left only five as spares. A folded handkerchief was produced, a girl’s, a woman’s—clean, white, ironed and decorated with a diligent bouquet of beginner’s needlework.

‘Lupins,’ he said, smoothing it out. ‘Oona dropped this in the foyer of Madame Guillaumet’s building. She left it for me, Louis. Deliberately.’

It was the handkerchief her two children had presented to her on her birthday, days before the Luftwaffe’s Stukas had repeatedly bombed Rotterdam on 14 May 1940. ‘You’re in love with her and deeply, I think.’

‘Just don’t relay that to Giselle if we find her.
If,
Louis. Germaine de Brisac let it slip that there had been two involved in the kidnapping of Adrienne Guillaumet outside the École Centrale. One to wait with the bicycle taxi and, though she didn’t say it, to later commit that assault, and one to call out Adrienne’s name as classes were let out and to lead her through the crowd to that very taxi.’

‘Two at
place
de l’Opéra and now another two, one of which was common to both.’

‘That one having a wedge of shoulders and big hands. She also made a point of telling me that Delaroche could call on some of the municipal sewer workers.’

‘Most of whom are decent, hardworking men who consider themselves a breed apart, but the Church of Saint-Nicholas des Champs is very near to the École Centrale and opposite it, one of the main entrances to the sewer system. Boats can be hired …’

‘Men can come up and go down at will and later rob a stamp store, eh? Two and two and two, Louis, the one down under the streets gathering a little mud while the other one was attacking Adrienne Guillaumet in the
passage
de la Trinité. Old soldiers, admit it!’

‘With another to undertake the Drouant mugging, having first assisted with the taxi theft. Veterans, yes, it’s quite possible, but I don’t think the two who isolated the owner of Take Me in
place
de l’Opéra’s street urinal and then stole that taxi were sewer workers. They’d have had their waterproofed suits and hats and have had no need of using fish-oil margarine.’

‘Unless wanting to keep their identities to themselves.’

‘Walter uses the Agence Vidocq from time to time, not knowing they’ve been working against him and are on their own agenda.’