Mannequin (27 page)

With perfect timing, God used the coarse sieve and turned on the tap. Raindrops drove themselves into the snow and pretty soon they were seeping into a poor detective's shoes whose soles, with all the exercise, had opened, lacking as they were for glue and stitching thread due to the extreme shortages of labour and materials. It was the last straw.
‘préfet, don't give me shit and muscle! I want full details of the robbery! Everything you have!
'

Talbotte's fist was raised. His voice erupted. ‘
You idiots smashed up my best mouchard! I would sooner co-operate with the Devil! The Devil!
'

‘Ah, merde, I have thought that is who you were!
'

A fist lashed out through the darkness. The rain came down. St-Cyr ducked, feinted left, right … tried to shout at himself
No, idiotl He's the préfet of Paris. Don't try to defend yourself. Don't let Joanne's death get in the way of common sense!
‘Look, why can't we co-operate for once, eh? A few small questions. They're really nothing. Boemelburg has assigned Hermann and myself to the case.'

‘To the robbery!
' roared the préfet.
‘There can be no connection with the murder of that little cunt!
'

‘Ah yes, the girl in the tower, préfet. A connection.'

‘There is
none
and therefore you and that … that turd of a Bavarian have no authority here. None, Jean-Louis! Absolutely none!'

‘Oh but there is a connection, préfet, and because of this, we need your help.'

‘I'll kill you!
'

‘Some other time.'

‘I'll tip the Resistance off and they will complete the job!
'

‘And Boemelburg will learn a few things, eh, about a préfet who co-operates but hides the truth.'

‘Such as?
'

‘Ah, don't be so impossible! Gold bars, louis d'or, diamonds and fur coats—two mistresses, one in Clichy on the rue de Neuilly, the other in Les Lillas on the rue de Paris, an Italian, a sweet little thing not twenty, eh, préfet? Eighteen and the same age as the one in the tower! Hey, those girls of yours are expensive even for a well-paid civil servant such as yourself who has not been doing his job.'

A hand was tossed. ‘You have no right to make insinuations! No right! Everything was turned over to the authorities, the SS of the avenue Foch!'

Valuables from Jews who were then deported! Twelve thousand of them had been rounded up by Talbotte and his men and their safe deposit boxes opened. ‘Almost sufficient for your retirement and expenses, préfet. I have a list. After the round-up of last July, I made it my business to find out exactly what you had personally misappropriated.'

‘Bâtard!
' came the shriek. Talbotte lunged at him. St-Cyr crashed into the side of a police van. Fists pummelled him, a head bucked and slammed him in the face. His chin went back … The eyes … Talbotte's fingers were ripping at his eyes …

The fist …'Ah Jésus, préfet,
give it a rest
! We're
not
trying to take your job away or show you up!'

Blood poured from the préfet's nose. One eye was closed and rapidly swelling. The lower lip was bleeding profusely. A tooth had come loose.

Kohler held the lantern a little higher so as to get a better view of the damage. Grinning hugely, he asked how St-Cyr's hand was and said, ‘Hey, I think you've done a job on him. Why not let me do the talking?'

‘No!
He will answer only to me since I have not yet applied the shoes, Hermann. A few simple answers to show that our two police organizations really do work in harmony.'

A real tiger. Ah
Gott im Himmel
… Kohler set the lantern on top of the van. Clearly Talbotte felt very threatened about the future, the war in Russia perhaps. ‘Start talking then. I'll stand between the two of you and listen.'

Cigarettes were called for and these made it imperative to sit in the préfet's Citroën even though the leather would get wet.

A bottle of brandy was found under the front seat, nestled between two machine-pistols with spare clips. ‘Well, what do you know?' enthused Kohler. ‘Nervous, eh, préfet? Louis, the fucking car's an arsenal! He must be expecting a little surprise from the Resistance. A road-block!'

He took out two stick grenades and, setting one on the floor at his feet, fiddled with the wrong end of the other. ‘A simple twist, a yank, drop and run. No car, no préfet. An accident,' he said. ‘Now talk. My partner in the back seat is about done in.'

St-Cyr stared at the back of the préfet's head. ‘Full details of the robbery,' he said breathlessly. ‘Everything you have, you lousy son of a bitch. My hand, Hermann. My left hand! Always it is the left side that gets injured!'

Kohler … thought Talbotte. Kohler wasn't liked by several in Gestapo circles. The Resistance could finish him off easily if word was passed that an exchange could be made and one or two of their people allowed to ‘escape'. No one would care too much.

‘Préfet, you of all people shouldn't even think of it,' breathed the Gestapo. ‘You'd only get caught in the middle. Why not cooperate? Hey, we'll even agree to give you all the credit and half the cash.'

‘The money … the eighteen million? Is it hidden here? It can't be. Those girls … Ah, you can't possibly link their disappearances to that robbery.'

Nursing his hand, St-Cyr took it away from his lips long enough to hiss,
‘I think I can!
'

‘Then the money's here?' demanded Talbotte, wiping blood and rainwater from his lips.

‘No. No, it never left Paris.'

‘Louis, how can you be so …?'

‘So sure, Hermann? Ah, nothing is certain until all the information is in.'

Talbotte told himself he had had enough of this shit! ‘Those two men abandoned the car and made a run for it, idiot! The Gare de l'Est, the Gare de Lyon … who's to say once they're gone?'

Louis sat up and leaned forward quickly. ‘Yes,
yes,
préfet, but has there been any word of their having been seen taking the train?
Any
train?'

‘Louis, what about the …'

‘The lorries full of furniture? They're certainly a possibility.'

‘Yet the money isn't here?' said Talbotte, wondering what Kohler had been about to ask Louis.

‘No. No, I do not think the money is here,' said St-Cyr, grateful at having stopped Hermann.

Kohler told himself to let Louis handle things now that the two of them had calmed down. Quite obviously the préfet knew nothing of the forged papers Marie-Claire de Brisson had had made.

‘The girl in that tower?' demanded Talbotte darkly. ‘What has she to do with the robbery?'

‘Nothing,' said Louis.

‘Then there is no connection!' snorted Talbotte, only to regret having used his nose so thoughtlessly.

‘A connection … ah yes, préfet, that is a quite different matter and for this we need to know more about the woman in the street'

‘The one who stood look-out for the robbers?'

‘Yes, that one.'

Talbotte saw Kohler fiddling with the stick grenade. The Bavarian was only bluffing but … ah
merde,
he had a reputation for doing just such things! ‘She was not so young as thought at first. She was well dressed—that is to say, the overcoat, scarf and hat were of good quality. Not overly expensive, but good. Prewar. Leather gloves also. Dark blue.'

‘Eyeglasses?' asked St-Cyr.

‘Yes.'

‘Age?'

‘Perhaps fifty, perhaps a little more.'

‘Try sixty?'

‘If you wish.'

‘Now tell us about the hat?'

‘Felt, grey-blue with a feather. The brim not so wide as the hat you have left out in the rain.'

‘My hat? Ah
maudit!
'

St-Cyr looked out at the rain, then ignored the loss. He'd find the hat later. ‘Before the robbery she was seen watching the one who is now in the tower, préfet. Was she seen following her after the getaway?'

‘Yes, but before this she approached the girl two or three times, always from behind. The woman was very nervous and seemed to have recognized the girl but they didn't speak. It's felt she was about to warn the girl of something but … but then couldn't bring herself to do so.'

‘Good!' breathed St-Cyr. ‘Then what?'

‘The girl hurried east along the rue Quatre Septembre. The woman hesitated and then followed. They turned south on the rue de Richelieu and went into the Bibliothèque Nationale. Only the woman came out and was seen trying to find where the other one had gone. The woman then went south and entered the garden of the Palais Royal and walked along the west arcade.'

Past the shop of the engravers …‘And her name, préfet? Come, come, let us in on it'

The moment must be savoured. ‘That we do not know. My informants …'

‘Are excellent, préfet. Péguy was most certainly not the only one, nor the best of them.'

‘Péguy … Ah yes, Jean-Louis, that is a little matter you and I will have to settle another time.'

‘Of course.'

‘Louis, I'm going to arm this toy for him. Why not get out and ask him again. Hey, I'll meet you after the bang.'

St-Cyr got stiffly out of the car to stand in the rain and wait for the préfet to roll down his side window. ‘The name?' he asked. He would not beg, though everything in him said to.

Talbotte shrugged. ‘Find out and then we will deal with it, eh?
Us,
Jean-Louis, not you.'

‘Don't be so miserable. It's just possible the credit will come to you, so why worry?'

‘Why? Because,
mon fin
from the Sûreté, that particular
mouchard
was not nearly as good as Péguy.'

*  *  *

Daylight had come, and with it, solid curtains of rain which screened the open ends of the barn, filling the place with their unnerving sound. Louis was grim. Hands jammed into the pockets of an overcoat that was drenched and cold, he watched impatiendy as the
flics
from Provins emptied the contents of the lorries and stacked the furniture. A harpsichord, a gorgeous but fragile piece, had inadvertently lost a leg and every time the instrument was banged against something, the poor Frog would leap.

One by one the paintings and bits of sculpture were carried out and held before him but he would only nod gruffly, after which they were taken away and stacked.

Kohler went through every drawer and chest but couldn't find the negatives and prints of the photos that had been taken in the Paris house. Worried that they had been destroyed, he searched all the harder but to no avail, then stood beside Louis sharing a last cigarette.

‘All of the paintings and sculptures Mademoiselle Desthieux told us of are missing, Hermann, the tapestries and carpets also. Either Monsieur Vergès senior sold them some time ago to pay for die care of his son, or they were stolen and we will now find them offered for sale at the Jeu de Paume.'

‘Why would he have kept the house in Paris during the twenties and thirties?'

‘To escape the farm and the responsibility. To conduct business, to remember, perhaps, the good times they had once had there. Ah, who knows the reasons behind such things? That house, Hermann, has been in the family for generations.'

‘Angèlique Desthieux and Luc Tonnerre must have had the use of it prior to 3 July 1916.'

‘Those photos of her in the buff … yes. Tonnerre must have had a key of his own, and our mannequin was not so saindy as either she or some of her other photographs would suggest.'

‘That key was then used after the Defeat of 1940.'

‘Unoccupied, the house was perfect,' said St-Cyr sadly.

‘We'll have to find Tonnerre and quickly.'

‘Those two droolers couldn't have come and gone between here and Paris without
laissez-passers,
Hermann.'

‘They couldn't have robbed that bank.'

‘No, of course not, since their faces would have been seen, but is it possible, perhaps, that Madame Lemaire's maid saw Luc Tonnerre in the attic of that house?'

‘Waiting for the photos to be taken downstairs,' said Kohler. ‘Did Tonnerre and Vergès hire the photographer and that woman to help them?'

‘Perhaps, but …'

At a shout, they were forced to run through the rain to the kitchen of the main house where the former help had been brought from their homes and assembled. A cook, a housekeeper, a gardener and caretaker, all were greatly distressed and very afraid.

St-Cyr took off his soaking hat and let it drain over the cluttered sink. Kohler emptied his shoes and squeezed the turn-ups of his trousers, then dragged off his overcoat and draped it over the back of a chair. He, too, drained his hat.

The préfet of Provins had been instructed to report to Talbotte on the interviews, but was now told to leave. ‘We will call you when we need you,' said Louis. ‘Let these good people speak freely, préfet. None of them were responsible.'

It was only in bits and pieces that the truth came out. Monsieur Vergès senior had died in the fall of 1939 and from then on things had deteriorated rapidly. ‘Occasionally, at first, Monsieur Gaetan's friend would come by car from Paris,' said the caretaker, ducking his ancient head and clutching his black beret in deference. ‘They would “talk”, Inspector, in the only way such as they can talk. Very serious, always close. The walks, the fishing, the ether at night—yes, both took it, and the friend brought it in two-litre bottles—three or four of them, sometimes more. The cognac
aussi,
of course. Five or six bottles at a time.'

‘Then the withdrawal,' hissed the cook, a wasp of a woman, thin and tall and nearly seventy. ‘That one,' she spat. ‘He would drive away and leave Monsieur Gaetan without another drop to tide him over. We could not buy ether—how could such as we have done such a thing? The brandy of course. Oh
bien sûr
a little cognac, no matter how rough. But the ether, ah no. Doctor Audet was against it. The liver, the kidneys …' Her hard, little eyes said, You can see how it was. Do you need us to say it?