Tapestry (7 page)

* * *

The police academy victim’s fingers were stumps. Shreds of skin and splintered bone suggested that in places at least two or even three jabs with the shovel had been necessary; in others, the severing had been immediate.

Anger? wondered St-Cyr. Hatred? Haste? Unfamiliarity with such an action? A new shovel, an old one? These days, obtaining a new one would have been all but impossible. Had the shovel, then, not been used much and therefore not blunt along its cutting edge?

‘As sharp as shovels go,’ conceded Armand Tremblay. ‘There is rust, Jean-Louis. Oxidized flakes of the metal are embedded in the face and will have to be retrieved later, but for now, an old shovel, long-handled, though one not used much and therefore sharp.’

‘A killer who doesn’t throw anything out or sell it?’

‘Or one who has access to such items. Didn’t you say one of your Drouant victims was involved with … ?’

‘Cement. That one couldn’t have done it. He’d have used his fists or a sledgehammer, but with this one a thumb and forefinger would be most useful. Was it the killer who stamped on the hands to open them, or one of his accomplices?’

‘Whoever it was, he didn’t wear rubber boots. Here and here again, there are what appear to be the marks of hobnails.’

Again they both looked questioningly at the sewer. ‘Jean-Louis, I really must insist. Who needs a drowned detective or one that’s on his deathbed from hypothermia?’

‘You sound like Hermann. You worry too much about the wrong things. Haussmann and Eugène Belgrand, his chief engineer, weren’t idiots when they put such things in place.’

A hundred years ago …

‘But is it a lateral for the runoff?’ went on Jean-Louis. ‘Sometimes Belgrand would have a weir installed to hold back the larger solids, which could then be periodically removed by lifting the grille and using a shovel, a long-handled one, too, at that, I must add. At other times a catchment was installed at the bottom of the shaft for exactly the same reason and also, again, to hold objects that might have accidentally been dropped.’

In an age of pocket watches, wrought-iron keys, flintlock pistols and little leather bags of coins. The end of one era, the beginnings of another.

A glance up the stairwell revealed unabated rain. Out on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré there would be nothing but the hush of hurrying bicycles and the
click-clack
of wooden-soled shoes, the eyes not purposely averted from this scene of horror if the press had indeed brought notice to it, simply gazes that were empty of all feeling.

‘Ours is a funereal city, Armand,’ he said of the Occupation. ‘The sound of laughter is often as rare as that of tears. Instead, there is usually nothing but a numb indifference.’

The area beneath the victim had yielded only the grey granite of the paving stones and iron of the grille. Jean-Louis peeled off coat, jacket, pullover, shirt and undershirt. The thick dark brown hair was pushed out of the way, the bushy moustache tweaked as if he was about to step into the boxing ring.

An iron bar had been obtained to prise the grille open. Lowering it into the sewer, he probed for the bottom and when, perhaps a metre or so below, it was touched, said, ‘
Dieu merci,
perhaps I’ve been spared the necessity of holding the breath.’

The force of the water was not great but because of the quantity, there was backup and the lateral full. Reaching down with both arms fully extended, the walls could be felt and gently probed, each brick’s outline followed.

‘
Ah, mon Dieu
, the things one has to do!’ he shouted. ‘If Hermann could see me now, I’d never hear the last of it!’

Up he came again, to catch a breath. ‘We’ll probably have to wait for help,’ he said, his teeth chattering.

There were no fingers, there was no weir, no catchment either, it seemed. Repeated attempts failed to yield anything, thought Tremblay, ready with a towel.

‘It’s not later than Haussmann,’ Jean-Louis was forced to admit after a last dip. ‘It’s definitely not recent. The weir is of cast iron and has rusted through but has held back a little something.’

Like a secretive schoolboy of ten, a frozen fist was opened. Hadn’t Napoléon been the one to say men were ruled best by baubles?

‘Vanity?’ managed Jean-Louis as he rushed to dry off and get dressed. ‘Pride? The joys of possession, eh?’

Not just any award, but the thin red ribbon of the Légion d’honneur.

‘Was it ripped from the lapel of his killer’s overcoat?’ he exhaled. ‘Caught on the barb of a decayed weir.’

The ribbon was more often worn on the lapel of the suit jacket.

‘There’s only one problem, Armand. Well, two, no three,’ he went on. ‘First, of course, it may not have been the killer’s, but if it is, he could have been awarded it for honest reasons, either civilian or military, and therefore his arrest might be difficult, especially these days if he’s a friend of the Occupier.’

‘Or?’

‘You know the answer as well as I do.’

‘It could have been awarded by a friend or associate for services rendered to that friend or an associate of said.’

‘Or associates of both.’

Scandal had also plagued the Légion d’honneur. Hadn’t Daniel Wilson, the playboy son-in-law of Président Jules Grevy caused that one’s downfall only hours after he had been returned to office­ for a second term in 1885?

Wilson had sold Légion d’honneur medals and ribbons to retire gambling debts and other loans. ‘Yet still we all aspire to it,’ said Jean-Louis with a sigh, ‘and nearly everywhere it’s worn it brings profound respect and a willingness by others to give assistance and even to obey.’

The boulevard du Palais separated the Préfecture from the Palais de Justice. Kohler stood in brief shelter by the main entrance of the latter and under a stone lintel that still carried the carved motto of the Third Republic:
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
, freedom, equality and brotherhood, but had been bolted over by a white wooden signboard with black Gothic letters that gave Vichy’s and the Maréchal Pétain’s
Travail, Famille, Patrie
, work, family and homeland.

Two
paniers à salade
—Black Marias, salad shakers with individual wire cages inside—had pulled in to the kerb. Emptied, girls of all ages tumbled out, raising voices to the rain. Unchained and then linked up again, these ‘submissive’ girls, who probably hadn’t had licences and certainly looked like repeat offenders, were lined up: no hats, all shades of hair now drenched, the dye, mascara, rouge and eye shadow streaming on some, while the open-toed high heels of several were disintegrating. One aged daughter of the night had been pinpricked by cobbler’s tacks that had held the red felt uppers to their white wooden soles. She cursed, gestured, shrilled at the
flics
,
‘LÉCHE-BOTTES! LÉCHEZ MON CUL, ESPÈCES DE PORCS À LA MANGUE!’
Boot-lickers. Kiss my ass, you worthless pigs.
‘Voilà, mon cul!’
she shrilled and flared her bare bottom at them only to be given a clout she’d remember. The stocking seams she had painted up the backs of her legs had smeared.

Herded by their guardians, they were marched along the rue de Lutèce towards him, convicts already, since under French law a suspect was considered guilty until proven innocent and that could take years. The Police Correctionnelle, the small crimes court, wouldn’t be in session until 2.00 p.m., a long wait. Afterwards they’d be taken to the Petite Roquette over in the Eleventh on the rue de la Roquette, and wasn’t that prison, like all the others, vastly overcrowded? Hadn’t one French citizen in every fifty been deprived of their liberty? In November of last year the courts here and all over France, for the whole country had been fully occupied then, had begun to submit copies of every verdict and sentence to the Gestapo. One never knew, as Louis had said at the Drouant, when something useful might turn up, and the Gestapo knew it as well and that even the most incidental thing might lead them to a
résistant
or network of them or to valuables that should have been declared.

The Police Judiciaire, known colloquially as the quai des Orfèvres—Préfet Talbotte’s criminal investigation department—was in this massive warren of buildings and courtyards. Detectives were on the third floor, those who kept tabs on visiting nationals on the fourth via Staircase D, if one had a mind to find it. The Bicycle Brigade was in an entirely different building, so if one had to track a stolen bike’s owner who had been murdered, one had not just to go from floor to floor, but from building to building. There were almost two million bicycles in the city, the cost of a new one impossible, if one could be found, and weren’t
vélo-taxi
licences on file over there, too?

Of course they were. And of course the racket in stolen bikes was huge, but first he had to find the owner of a certain dog.

Records was at the far end of one of the courtyards and in under a stone arch that must date from God alone knew when. The notice board at the head of the stone staircase, whose steps were worn, was cluttered. A reward of one hundred thousand francs was being offered for turning in the names and addresses of those engaged in criminal activities, i.e., the Résistance and those who were trying to avoid the forced labour call-up. Hadn’t Louis’s housekeeper two sons in that age bracket? Hadn’t Yvon Courbet, a veteran of that other war, made damned certain his boys would avoid this one and now that much-hated call-up by finding essential jobs for them in a munitions factory?

Posted dead centre of the notices was an open-fold from the IKPK’s
**
magazine,
Internationale Kriminalpolizei
. Even the Swiss were decrying the explosion of blackout crime:

The problem is, of course, not nearly so rampant as in Paris where Gestapo Boemelburg, head of Section IV, blames French decadence and immorality. When asked to comment, Herr Boemelburg has declined beyond saying emphatically that the problem has been blown out of all proportion and that the inves­tigation, though under tight wraps, is rapidly drawing to a success­ful and gratifying conclusion
.

Horseshit! But even back in September 1940, Boemelburg had known he’d have to have at least one flying squad he could count on to fight common crime and be honest about it. A shining example of law and order in an age of officially sanctioned crime on a horrendous scale.

The dog registry wasn’t even here. Uncovered as he removed the article so that Louis could have a read, a card stated that it was now to be found in another building.

Dry as a bone, Louis was waiting for him. Vacillating, shifty-eyed and dark-shadowed, the clerk behind him was as withered as the apple that one was saving for dessert, once the lunch of thin soup and a half-bulb of garlic had been consumed.

‘The
préfet
has been most kind, Hermann. Everyone wishes to assist us but,’ he confided softly, ‘the offer of ten francs for turning away while I had a look was most appreciated.’

Unknown to the clerk, Louis had pulled and palmed a file card from one of the rotary drums, but even so, had best be told. ‘Just you wait, then, until Talbotte sees the newspapers. We’re never going to hear the end of it!’

The card was for an Irish Terrier bitch named Lulu. The clerk, whose salary couldn’t be any more than his prewar twelve thousand francs a year in this age of rampant inflation and frozen salaries, could easily have taken this Kripo for a thousand, which just showed the difference between Louis and himself.

‘It’s what the card reveals that’s important, Hermann, but for now we’d best find a little peace and quiet.’

‘I know just the place.’

‘I’m not going there. I absolutely refuse.’

‘Don’t be an idiot. You’re as hungry as I am. Besides, it will give us a chance to tap the street if nothing else.’

He was right, of course. These days
radio-trottoir
was often the only source of information. Pavement radio, gossip but prolific, and what better place to go than the fount of it all? ‘Then I had best tell you that though the theft has yet to be set down in stone by Records, that
vélo-taxi
must have been stolen from
place
de l’Opéra. That’s where it was registered to work from.’

And with the Kommandantur itself in full view across the square.

At noon, Chez Rudi’s was packed. Wehrmacht and SS grey-green uniforms were everywhere, Gestapo black too, and Kriegsmarine or Luftwaffe blue, with scattered
petites Parisiennes
and
Blitzmädel
from home, here to do their duty. Beer-hall big under its brightly coloured murals, the restaurant was still such a bit of home, Hermann was forced to swallow tightly.

All talking had ceased, even the hustle and bustle from the kitchens where Rudi had come to stand, poised in the doorway. A fresh apron girded the 166 kilos. Flaxen-haired, his blue eyes small and watchful, the florid, net-veined cheeks round like a burnished soccer ball, this survivor of the uprising of 8 November 1923, the Munich Putsch, was proprietor and owner of this conquering image to a just reward on the Champs-Élysées and right across the avenue from the Lido.

‘My Hermann,’ he called out, the voice beer-hall big. ‘Your table,
mein Lieber
, and yours, too,
mein brillanter französischer Oberdetektiv
.’

They had never had a table reserved for them anywhere in the past two-and-a-half years. The clientele cheered. Embarrassed, baffled and grinning ear to ear, Hermann led the way to the table as Helga, Rudi’s youngest sister, her blonde braids and pale-blue work dress tight, hustled through with two overflowing steins.

‘The Spaten Dunkel, Hermann,’ sang out Rudi. ‘Fresh in on this morning’s Ju 52.’

From Munich, from home. Well, nearly so.

‘
Danke,
Rudi,’ managed the guest of honour, what honour?

There was a nod, a, ‘I’ve made
Lederknödel
for you and
Rostbratürste
, but if the Oberdetektiv St-Cyr would prefer, I can also recommend the
Schneckensuppe
to be followed by the
Geschnetzeltes
.’ Snail soup and veal slices in cream, or liver dumplings in a clear broth, and afterwards, small sausages with the taste and aroma of the beechwood over whose charcoal they would have been grilled.