Flykiller

Merde, this town, this investigation! ‘And was Celine Dupuis there?’

No hint of triumph passed her lips.

‘Monique de Fleury was her best student. A dance from the Ballet Russe. It was marvellous. Madame Dupuis played the piano.’

Sacre nom de nom, the acid of that put-down! But did everyone know everyone in this town? ‘And were Madame de Fleury’s daughter and Celine Dupuis close, as a teacher and her prized pupil would have to have been?’

‘Very. So you see, Inspector, Celine did not just betray Elisabeth, but her daughter as well!’

The kid with the pigtails was uneasy and with good reason, felt Kohler. In November, when the Wehrmacht had suddenly taken over the zone libre, her boss had been recalled to Berlin. Urgent consultations, questions about his loyalties and loving the French and all things French too much. Abetz’s wife, Suzanne, came from France’s de Bruyker family and was a sensation when the couple had taken up residence in Paris in July 1940, never here. Mein Gott, who’d want to live near Vichy in a draughty old chateau in a winter like this when the City of Light beckoned? France and Germany together in happy alliance and marital bliss in the showcase of showcases. Reception after reception, designer dresses, jewels, champagne and all the rest, the races too. Abetz and Fernand de Brinon, that pedlar of laissez-passers and Vichy’s ambassador to the Occupied Territories, had been old friends from the mid-thirties when Abetz had got de Brinon and other like-minded collabos to join his Comite France-Allemagne. A hotbed of sympathizers, some of whom had willingly spied on their own country and helped to place Sicherheitsdienst agents in France.

But now, as could happen with the most loyal of former drawing instructors – and Abetz had been one of those – there were doubts.

And this little Madchen fur alles, this bonne a tout faire, had been up to more than mischief and had realized he knew it.

‘Look, relax,’ said Kohler and grinned. ‘All I want is a little information.’

‘Sicherlich!’ – I’ll bet! she swore and pulled away to stop in the corridor with her back to him. ‘I only did what I was told.’

‘Befehl ist Befehl, eh?’ An order is an order.

‘All of us used to report to Herr Schleier who came from Paris once every so often, but now … now we have yet to be informed of who our new contact will be.’

Schleier – who was Abetz’s assistant and, at forty-one, the embassy’s oldest member and most senior Nazi of the 568 Paris staff, of whom 367 were from home – was now temporarily in charge.

‘Ach! don’t worry so much,’ he said, chucking her under a chin that could, no doubt, be soft and tender when necessary. ‘Gemutlichkeit prise useful information. Rudolph won’t forget that such cosy friendship with the Occupied is useful and that your loyalty is beyond reproach. He’s just busy. Mein Gott, doesn’t he like uniforms, medals and official receptions even more than Herr Abetz? He’ll delegate someone. Just give him a chance to put his glass down.’

‘They’ll close this place and send us home. I know they will!’

To live like God in France had been everyone’s dream, except that this kid was Alsatian and her bilingualism had been deemed useful.

‘Show me your room and tell me what went on.’

‘My room …?’

‘We’ve lots of time. That partner of mine’s a bird-lover.’

As she stabbed at the photos, Sandrine Richard sucked in a breath and said, ‘A bordel, Inspector? A maison de tolerance? Oh for sure in such places these things go on, but here? Here in an official residence of the German Ambassador?’

‘Calm down, please.’

‘Why should I? Look, damn you! See for yourself what those bitches were up to with our husbands. Feathers … torn pillows? Does she have to pee? Is that why she holds a fistful of feathers against herself and also blows them from her lips?’

Jesus, merde alors, Bousquet and Camille Lefebvre had been caught in a state of total undress and more than a little drunk, their laughter frozen by the camera’s intrusion!

Deschambeault and Lucie Trudel were tout nus also, the shorthand typist stretched up on tiptoe, her wrists bound tightly together to an iron ring in the wall of a tower room or dungeon, the sous-directeur with the riding crop raised to fiercely strike her shapely but already welted buttocks. Fear, tension, excitement and apprehension – lust, that pent-up urgency for the grand frisson, the great shudder – were only too evident in her expression as, puzzled that her lover had paused, she had looked over a shoulder past him and into the camera.

Honore de Fleury and Celine Dupuis had been caught on their hands and knees on a leopardskin throw before a roaring fire, the Inspector of Finance having taken the dancer and instructress from behind while tightly gripping her breasts, her hair in his teeth and her head thrown back as if in ecstasy.