Tapestry (10 page)

‘Monsieur, you bought on the quiet,
n’est-ce pas
? First, where, really, did the collection come from; second, how much did you pay for it and what was its estimated value to you, the expert with … was it fifty-six years of experience? Thirdly, the name and address of the one who sold it to you, and if you gave that one a sex change, correct your little mistake.’

The
flics
had always been shits, the Sûreté far worse. ‘The name and address she gave must have been false, though I wasn’t certain of this at the time. The price paid was twenty-thousand francs—I’ve not much for a life’s work, as you can see.’

‘And its estimated value?’

‘I didn’t make an exact appraisal.’

‘Monsieur, you had a good look as soon as that “girl” left the shop. You closed up and went to that room you’ve rented for years in the Hôtel Ronceray. Must I ask the magistrate for a search warrant?’

‘Between seven hundred and fifty thousand and one million francs.’

The bastard. ‘Old francs?’

‘Old.’

And enough to retire on. ‘
Bon
. Whose collection was it? Come, come, the name of the owner would have been embossed in gold leaf on the album.’

‘M. Bernard Isaac Friedman.’

‘Address?’

‘Number 14 rue des Rosiers.’

Right in the heart of what had once, and for so many years, been the Jewish
quartier
of Paris, the Marais, where so many of the immigrants from the east had taken up residence. ‘Deported?’

‘He must have been, mustn’t he? All of those people.’

‘The Vel d’Hiv?’ The cycling arena, the
grande rafle,
the first huge roundup of last year.

‘Oui.’

‘And now his stamp collection suddenly turns up. It’s curious, isn’t it?’

‘Inspector, I don’t know what …’

‘I mean? Monsieur, dealing in stolen property is a serious offence.’

‘I didn’t know it was stolen!’

‘You most certainly did!’

‘To steal from those people is no harm. The more taken, the better.’

‘
Ah, bon
, I didn’t hear that, monsieur. Though I must still obtain the warrant, please consider yourself under arrest. Agent Bélanger­, would you …’

‘Inspector, the girl came to the shop a few times. Hesitant always and walking the aisles as if to examine the envelopes while studying myself and the clientele. When she had made her little decision, she then arranged to bring me the collection.’

Even though Picard had ‘never seen her before.’

‘And when was that?’

This one would have to have everything.

‘Two days ago, in the late afternoon. About five or five thirty. I remember it clearly. Angèle was thirsty and I’d poured her a little of the …’

‘Yes, yes. Wednesday, the tenth.’

‘She said she was in a hurry and mustn’t be late for work or else the
surveillante
at the hospital would be upset, and that … that she would take what I could give her.’

A head nurse, a nursing assistant and a bargain but a crime to which they weren’t to have been sent.

In the never-neverland of the Kommandantur, where rain-soaked galoshes, mismatched carpet slippers and ankle-deep coal-black dresses waited in line, there was absolutely no sense in pissing around. ‘Kohler, Kripo, Paris-Central to see the General on urgent business.’

Rock of Bronze to his staff, but damned dangerous at all times even though well past retirement, Von Schaumburg was still suffering the aftereffects of the flu that had struck him a good ten days ago. A towel was tightly wrapped about the throat, the smell of eucalyptus oil, menthol, camphor and boiled peppermint in the air, positively no tobacco smoke. Even the window he had been bleakly staring out of was open!

Taller than himself, bigger too, across the shoulders and replete with Iron Crosses and campaign medals, he didn’t hear at first and only then, as the throat was cleared, did he hawk up a wad of phlegm. ‘Kohler, what is this you’re saying?’

It was now or never and the look in the watery, fever-ridden, pouch-bagged Nordic eyes said as much. ‘My partner, General. He’s found something that could well lead us to one of the chief perpetrators of this plague of blackout crime.’

‘Something … Must I remind you that military men such as myself never like intangibles?’

‘The red ribbon of a Legion of Honour, General. You’re the first and only one to learn of it other than myself and our coroner.’

‘And that’s the way you would like it kept?’

In spite of Boemelburg’s being the boss of all such Kripo. ‘Yes, General. The press …’

‘Those infernal bastards. I’m going to get them this time!’

Overcome by a coughing fit, he grabbed the edge of the window then pushed the damned thing wide open. ‘Air …’ he gasped. ‘My chest.
Verdammt,
Kohler, can’t you see what those people have done to me?
Das Stinkt zum Himmel!
’

It’s an absolute scandal.
Paris-Soir, Le Matin
—even today’s
Pariser Zeitung
—were seized from the desk and torn. ‘
Mein Kirschwasser,
Kohler.’ He flung an arm out to indicate a side table. ‘Gestapo Boemelburg was most kind and sent that bottle over as soon as he learned you and St-Cyr were back in the city.’

A cherry brandy from Alsace and a warning should they come here, but there was only one glass, thank God. Boemelburg would, of course, have to be dealt with later. ‘The press, General.’

The glass was drained, refilled and drained again. ‘Alsace was to your liking?’

The gossip had already reached him. ‘Not entirely, General, but a successful conclusion to a difficult investigation.’

Kohler couldn’t have put it better. For all the dissipation, skirt chasing and cavaliering, this former captain in the artillery hadn’t backed off when challenged, so good, yes, good. ‘A ribbon, you said?’

‘The killer’s, we believe, of the police academy’s victim.’

‘And the rapist who so savagely defiled the Trinité woman, Kohler? How did the one who stole that bicycle taxi know to take it and no other?
Ach,
don’t look so surprised. I’m not without my sources. Was that poor woman seen having a drink over there with one of my officers?
Liebe Zeit
,
kommen Sie her
. I’ll not give you the flu. I’ve been over it for days.’

Across the rain-streaked wasteland of
place
de l’Opéra, where pedestrians scurried or darted down into the entrance to the
métro
and
vélo-taxis
struggled or parked themselves in line to wait for a fare, the Café de la Paix, on the corner of the boulevard des Capucines, looked inviting. A favourite of the staff here and elsewhere, business hadn’t stopped booming since mid-June 1940.

‘Was that woman there, Kohler, to arrange an assignation for later last night and if so, which of my officers was she with and did the one who attacked her see her with him and then overhear her lining up one of those infernal machines?’

‘She still hasn’t said anything beyond a few first words, General. I was on my way over to the café to question the staff and taxi drivers but the press … St-Cyr and myself can’t have them photographing us as we work. Let me leave the identity papers with you of the two who followed me here. Let me borrow their car since I need it more than they do and my partner is busy elsewhere.’

The grey, bristled crown of that massive head was given an irritated brush with an equally irritated hand. ‘Shall I send them to Fritz Saukel’s forced-labour office? By evening they could be pouring concrete along the Atlantic Wall or digging bunkers in the Channel Islands, or would you prefer I ask Herr Oberg to consider them
Sühnepersonen
?’

Expiators held as hostages until needed and then shot to atone for some act of terrorism, i.e.,
résistance
. Wehrmacht through and through, Von Schaumburg really had little use for the SS and Gestapo. ‘Just put the two from
Paris-Soir
to work scrubbing the floors and toilets, General. I know those are spotless but another good scrubbing never hurt.’

And spoken like a true soldier. ‘Find the one who wore that ribbon, Kohler, and bring him to me. I want a Wehrmacht solution to this problem the French have created for us.’

All down the length of the rue des Rosiers not a cyclist could be seen hurrying through the rain, not a pedestrian, a hand-pulled cart or barrow.

It’s as if the ghetto has become a ghost town, said St-Cyr sadly to himself. Repeated roundups since that of 16–17 July of last year had virtually left the
quartier
seemingly abandoned. Eight hundred and eighty-eight ‘teams’ of from three to four—Parisian
flics
and students, yes! from the police academy
—
nine thousand ‘cops’ in all had hit mainly five arrondissements in the small hours of that night. Arrests had, however, gone on all over the city—12,884 had been taken to the Vélodrome d’Hiver and subsequently deported, among them more than four thousand children. And now, of course, there are empty houses and apartments all over the city and country.

The gilded letters of M. Meyer and Sons Vins et Liqueurs de Sion, of Zion, were still in place but the shelves and counters had been stripped. Alone, a black leather shoe, the left, lay on its side among the rubbish and next to a hastily packed suitcase whose contents had been strewn in the search for valuables.

‘Forgive me,’ he said, rubbing a fist across the glass to clear it. ‘Hermann and myself weren’t here when you most needed us and didn’t think such a thing could possibly happen in France. But ever since then I’ve been building a dossier on Préfet Talbotte. He knows it, too, unfortunately, because I was foolish enough to have told him.’

Foreign refugees and naturalized French citizens had been amongst the first taken. Sephardim from Spain, Portugal and North Africa who had fled the Spanish Revolution; Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe and the Reich who had fled the Nazis. Then, too, and since, there had been those whose families had been French for generations. Citizen French.

The house at number 14 was empty. Not a stick of furniture remained, not a wall fixture, lamp or lightbulb, faucet or basin. Friedman and his family could be in any of the camps or already ‘up the stack’ as Hermann and he had had to hear an SS say at the Konzentrationslager Natzweiler-Struthof in Alsace.

Above the entrance to the house, the curly-haired, ruff-encircled stone head of a smiling young woman from the Middle Ages gave welcome to all who entered. The street was not that of the rosebushes as commonly thought, but of the
ros
, the teeth along the raddle or wooden bar over and through which the warp was drawn as it was wound on to the beam of the loom to keep its width constant and prevent it from being entangled.

Many other houses and apartments in the
quartier
and elsewhere had been emptied just like this of their furnishings and fittings, even the doors and hinges in some cases.

‘The Aktion-M squads,’ he said. The
M
was for
Möbel,
the
Deutsch
for furniture.

They’d been thorough, those squads of Parisian labourers and their masters. All items thought useful to resettled or bombed-out Germans, especially those of the SS and Gestapo in the newly acquired
Lebensraum
of Slavic countries, had been taken. One special task force, the Sonderstab Musik, dealt only with the musical instruments of the deported. Three warehouses alone just to the north of the city were crammed with pianos; one other, on the rue de Bassano, but a few steps to the east of the Étoile and off the Champs-Élysées in the Eighth and Sixteenth and very close to the SS of the avenue Foch and the French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston, held trumpets, clarinets, violins and violas, et cetera. Last year alone, forty thousand tons of such furnishings had been shipped to that
Lebensraum
, and yes indeed Préfet Talbotte had availed himself of the safe-deposit-box contents of some of those who had been deported and had been threatened with exposure, but had now chosen to be accommodating.

‘Because of what it implies, Hermann isn’t going to like where that stamp collection came from,’ he said aloud and to himself alone, ‘but first, the seller of it, Mademoiselle Noëlle Jourdan of 25
place
des Vosges.’

The Café de la Paix occupied much of the ground floor of the Hôtel Grand, that sumptuous palace of seven hundred rooms that had been opened on the fifth of May 1862 by the Empress Eugénie. A home away from home, the café was busy even though at three forty-seven in the afternoon most should have been working. Wasn’t there a war on?

Of course there was, Kohler silently snorted as another waiter brusquely squeezed past him with a heavily laden tray, and everywhere there was the aroma of real coffee mingled with those of expensive perfume and pungent with tobacco smoke. Nice …
Ach du lieber Gott
, it must be, but if the Führer only knew. Certainly not all here were with their girlfriends; certainly too, though, among the ranks present there wasn’t one below that of a Leutnant, but didn’t the Führer desperately need men at the Russian front?

Uniform or not,
Blitzmädel
or not, the Occupier behaved as if he or she had the world by the balls. Here also there was none of that
Nur Attrapen
, that Only-for-Show nonsense on bar bottles of coloured water as seen in the everyday citizen’s watering holes, none of those demands for ration tickets or the chalked-up pas d’alcools signs that spelled out the no-alcohol days. Though many of the
Parisiennes
glanced up at him from their tables, their men friends seemed not to notice and were too busily on the make or simply couldn’t be bothered even though they damned well must know he was a cop and why he was here clutching a copy of
Le Matin
.

Louis would have said, Look closer still. See how a waiter nods in answer to a male whisper, then gives a curt nod towards a table where someone else’s
petite amie
flashes downcast eyes—pimping, are they, some of these waiters? Hasn’t a carefully passed one hundred-­franc note just been tucked away? Girls and middle-aged women, some with their wedding rings hidden, who hang on every word their companions utter even though some of them can’t understand too many and are doing their best to catch up three nights a week—was it three that Madame Adrienne Guillaumet left her children alone in the flat and went to the École Centrale to teach
Deutsch
to females such as these and to older men? Older, since there aren’t too many young Frenchman around are there?