Flykiller

There was no answer. None at all. The unmade bed looked lonely; the bevelled mirror threw back his reflection and he saw himself grey and dissipated, the shabby greatcoat undone, his scarf dangling as if to slip away, fedora pulled down hard and gun in hand.

‘Louis …’ he said, feeling caught, trapped, the moments ticking by too fast.

‘The fire alarm,’ he told himself and, rushing out on to the gallery, threw a look along it both ways beneath gilded plaster grapes, seashells and putti blowing horns before shattering the glass with his pistol butt and yanking on the little bronze lever.

‘Nothing …? Scheisse! No fire inspectors?’

Again he yanked on the wretched thing and again, cutting himself, the blood pouring from a forefinger to race down his hand. ‘Verdammt!’

Back in Room 3-17, he ripped a pillowcase apart, wound and tied the bandage tightly; saw a clutch of hairpins; remembered Celine Dupuis’s bed, that other room and the depression she’d left there in her mattress at the Hotel d’Allier on waking; knew that here, too, on that last day of her life she’d had to hurry, that she must have fallen asleep after the lovemaking.

Picking up the Walther P38, he headed for the door again, the mirror throwing back a glimpse of him that popped, blinded – seared its image on memory as the lights went out and the sound of the lift … the Christly lift … ground to a mid-floor halt!

‘Merde,’ came Louis’s muffled curse from out of the pitch darkness of the shaft. How many times had he been warned by his partner never to trust the lifts of France?

Other voices were heard both from above and below, some old, some middle-aged, some male, some female; complaints were muttered. The door to one of the rooms opened. A head and shoulders were stuck out. Neighbour began to question neighbour even from gallery to gallery. ‘An air raid?’ ‘I heard no siren.’ ‘Les Allemands?’ ‘As a punishment for what, please?’ ‘They often do this in Paris. Arrondissement by arrondissement if necessary, quartier by quartier if during a rafle.’

A house-to-house round-up with searchlights ready on the streets below to nail those on the roofs above.

Steps sounded – boot cleats on the marble floor of the foyer, rushing cleats …

The voices ceased, the doors were silently closed. Like hotels the world over, news of trouble travelled quickly and silence was often the best and only defence. Lock bolts were gently eased in place.

The bars of the lift-well were criss-crossed, their bronze cold. ‘Louis … Louis, it’s me. Stay where you are,’ he whispered. ‘Ferbrave and the Garde Mobile are here. I’ll find the hand crank in the cellars and try to ease you down.’

‘Madame Ribot, Hermann. The clairvoyant may be their first target, though I’ve already taken what they want. Her suite is to your left.’

‘Three doors and then the one just after you get to a life-sized terracotta wood nymph with garland, by Fremin,’ said Ines faintly. ‘I know because I … I have always now to memorize such things. Both breasts are exposed; the left arm is missing at the shoulder, and she is stepping forward with that foot.’

The furniture was old, the suite musty, but what Kohler couldn’t understand was why the door had been left off the latch and ajar because Louis wouldn’t have done that. Had the clairvoyant managed to slip away in the short time he’d been at the lift, or had it been left that way for a cat who liked to stray?

Ferbrave and the others had gone into Room 3-17 but had soon left it. He’d have to let them find the door of Madame Ribot’s flat just as he had, would have to let them enter and notice, as he now did, that a faint light shone out into the darkness of a distant corridor.

Maybe that would draw the moths and he could come up behind them …

The pungency of burning black tobacco came to him. A Gitane – one of Laval’s? he wondered as the door was swung softly open and a single torch beam penetrated the frayed carpet first, with its floral patterns in dark blues and red, then a small round table, carved at its edge and with a lamp and photos in silver frames, then a chaise, a fauteuil, a landscape on the opposite wall and, finally, the distant corridor.

‘Henri, is she alone?’ whispered one, only to be silenced.

‘Messieurs,’ she called out. ‘Entrez, s’il vous plait. I have, I think, what you’ve come for, since Monsieur le Premier has telephoned to ask that I get them from the files.’

There were three others, with Ferbrave in the lead, and all were wearing black, hobnailed boots, white gaiters, black trousers, black three-quarter-length leather jackets and black berets.

Schmeissers, Bergmanns, Lugers with drum clips, and stick grenades – the much-coveted weapons of the Occupier – were carried, yet still they were careful, still they touched nothing, knocked nothing over, smashed nothing. Were careful, considering they could well have instantly wrecked the place and should have done. A puzzle.