Flykiller

St-Cyr must have leaned over the back of the front seat to get closer to her, for she felt a breeze as if he’d waved a hand before her eyes.

‘And once again, mademoiselle, you have a ready answer,’ he said, ‘but if you know anything at all that is useful, now is long past the time to have divulged it.’

When she said nothing, he turned back. ‘Hermann, see that she leaves that valise of hers with the concierge. Then it’ll be one less thing to get in the way.’

I will never leave it now, Inspector, she silently vowed. They checked their weapons, and she could hear St-Cyr flick open the cylinder of his Lebel, Kohler removing the clip from his pistol and jammed it back in with the heel of a hand to then retract and release the slide.

Both weapons would be left at half-cock.

‘Menetrel wanted them dead, Louis. He told the boys to do it or else.’

‘Or Charles-Frederic Hebert, but then … Ah mais alors, alors, Hermann, our killer or killers knew everything that would happen and were ahead of us at every step of the way. Ahead of Menetrel, ahead of Bousquet and even Laval – they’d have had to have been, n’est-ce pas?’

The telex to Boemelburg, the identity card, the dress and the billets doux, that copy of L’Humanite that had been left on the stairs for Louis to find, the Resistance graffiti also.

‘Surely for all those things to have happened, every scrap of information would have had to have been funnelled into one location, collated, plotted and used,’ said St-Cyr.

Herr Kohler started the car and they drove the short distance around the corner to pause outside the old PTT, to gaze at it through the frost-covered windows, to get out and stand in the cold street and to stare at its darkened silhouette.

‘The room, Hermann, and then the source, I think,’ said St-Cyr.

‘I warned you, Louis. I told you, you shouldn’t have let him go.’

And me? wondered Ines. Am I to be victim number five? Betrayed just as Celine was; killed just as she and Lucie and the others? Removed to silence; left secure?

*

At a glance, Kohler took in the dimly lit foyer that was such a sugar cake of dusty ornament, and had once been the watering place and campground of kings, counts and visiting courtesans. Gilded putti clamoured for seashells or shot arrows from above draperies and columns of variegated marble. Bathing sirens soared to a well-muscled Neptune who stood with trident upheld and a dolphin curled about bare toes, atop a tiered heap of drained Vicenza stone, where buxom mermaids cradled once-spouting cornucopia. The vault of the ceiling rose through several storeys of railed galleries to cavorting bathers among still more horns of plenty.

‘It is, and must once have been, stupendous, Hermann,’ exclaimed St-Cyr in awe of what they found themselves in, for the wives and Madame Petain had given no such indication. ‘Magnificent, mon vieux. Neo-baroque, 1870 at least, and a national treasure.’

As if that were all they had to worry about! snorted Kohler inwardly. Everywhere there were bas-reliefs of bathers, of amphorae, fruit, helmets, horns, shields, masks and lutes; everywhere the health-giving powers of taking the waters, but all gone dry. ‘Just where the hell is the receptionniste, Louis? The concierge, if it’s another dosshouse!’

‘Mademoiselle, wait by the desk.’

‘Don’t leave me!’ shrilled Ines.

‘Louis, stay with her. I’ll find him.’

It didn’t take long. ‘The salaud was on the telephone to Menetrel,’ shouted Kohler. ‘We’ve trouble, Louis, but this one has lost his tongue!’

Dragged from the switchboard’s little room, thrust up against the Carrara marble desk where half-sized copies of Carrier Belleuse’s La Source emptied amorini from the shoulder while supporting the rest of the structure, the concierge threw a terrified glance at each of them, then apprehensively wet his lips and let his faded grey eyes settle doubtfully on herself, Ines noted. He was hoping for sympathy no doubt.

‘Verfluchte Franzosen!’ shrieked Kohler. ‘Ein Gestapo Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter, Dummkopf Schnell! Schnell!’ Hurry! Hurry! ‘Open up that can of worms of yours and spill out everything the doctor said!’

The echoes came. The echoes rebounded. Hermann was really very good at this play-acting of his when necessary, but something would have to be said. ‘Herr Hauptmann der Geheime Stattspolizist, please go easy on him. He’s too old to be shoved around like that and can’t understand a word you’re saying.’

‘Comfort from a Surete, eh? Then you shoot him and we’ll claim he tried to escape and died of a heart attack!’

Herzlahmung – would they really do so? panicked Ines. Cardiac arrest was a favourite excuse of the Gestapo of the rue des Saussaies, the SS of the avenue Foch, and the French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston. ‘Monsieur, these two …’ she blurted. ‘They’re in a terrible hurry.’