Flykiller

Maman had always had something to say about everything. ‘Corpses should be removed immediately, Inspector,’ he said testily. ‘It’s unsanitary to leave them for so long. The room is needed also.’

‘Nom de Dieu, don’t you listen? Stop at each floor. Open and close the cage door and don’t bother to tell me you haven’t an operator’s licence or that you’re not paid to run that thing!’

This Boche, like the others, just had to have the last word, snorted Rigaud silently. Well, he’d see about that!

When the lift started, it went down into the cellars and there it stayed. ‘Salaud!’ muttered Kohler as he went up the back stairs. He’d find Lucie Trudel’s floor and start there. He’d wait, he’d listen. Some may not have made it out yet, he told himself. And trying door after door, silently went along the narrow halls.

Even Louis was listening to the hotel. Caught like a thief with an empty record sleeve in hand, he was startled when the door opened without a sound.

Then he brought a finger to his lips and pointed to the room above.

Hermann indicated he would go left. A nod would suffice.

Louis softly closed the girl’s door and eased its key around in the lock before pocketing it.

Guns drawn, they started out.

The staircase was old, the carpet thin and faded. Wincing, cursing the pain in his left knee, Kohler took the steps two at a time. There wasn’t a sound but then, distant and deep below him, came the metallic clunk of a spanner, the noise rocketing up the lift-well from the cellars.

BANG! BANG! came the voice of a bloody great hammer hitting the spanner to jar the bolt and make it come loose.

‘You’ll bugger your tools, idiot,’ he breathed and, going up the last of the stairs, saw Louis at the far end of the dimly lit corridor. He was pointing to the floor above. Ah merde, this was serious.

Again the hammering came, again it sent its shock waves through the hotel. Old Rigaud began to curse the imbeciles in Paris to whom instructions for repairs should have been sent had the ancestors of the members of the Ministry of Housing not been sired by incestuous Royalists and priests in the pay of the Sun King himself!

The gears to the lift had jammed, as Rigaud had known they would!

There was no sign of Louis in the sixth-floor corridor. Had he gone up to the attic, to Celine Dupuis’s room? Had he met the assassin or assassins on the stairs between the fifth and sixth floors?

They’re here, he said to himself. They’re waiting. Ach, it wasn’t good. No matter what the outcome, the Resistance would only think Louis was trying to protect the boys. A collabo.

Going up to the attic, he found all the doors were closed. Crossing the hotel, he started down, listened, heard nothing even from the cellars, but now the lift began its painful ascent. Straining, he waited for it to reach the ground floor which it did, the thing not stopping afterwards until the fourth floor and the end of its ride.

Still the cage doors didn’t open. Still there was no further sound.

‘Louis?’ he asked under his breath. Had they come for Louis? Early last December he’d been put on some of their hit lists. They’d even sent him one of the little black coffins they reserved for those they felt were due special attention.

A patriot. And sure, Gabrielle had tried to intervene and tell her contacts in the Resistance that Louis was innocent and at one with them, but such communications were difficult at best.

Silently he descended the stairs only to find Louis sitting on the top step to the sixth floor. A copy of L’Humanite, the clandestine newspaper of the communists and Francs-Tireurs et Partisans, was in his hands.

Liste Noire Numero 10, he indicated. The Black List. It began with a blocked-out Definition of a Savage, implying brutality, cruelty, child butchering and all else, and then in heavy type that sickened: ST-CYR, JEAN-LOUIS, CHIEF INSPECTOR OF THE SNRETE, DOMICILED AT 3 RUE LAURENCE-SAVART, BELLEVILLE, PARIS, AGENT OF THE GESTAPO CURRENTLY OPERATING IN VICHY AND ITS ENVIRONS.

There were a good fifteen other names but Louis’s was right at the top of the list. ‘Almost fresh ink,’ mused Kohler softly. ‘It’s dated Tuesday, 2 February 1943. Boemelburg hadn’t even sent us on our way.’

Were there ears everywhere? Were the walls also watching? ‘But it was left for me to find, Hermann, not you. Did our assailant or assailants know the very staircase I’d use?’

It was a good question, but something had best be said. ‘Dummkopf, it’s simply coincidence. It can’t have been anything else. Come on, we’d better see about the lift.’

‘Monsieur Rigaud was certainly pissed off by your ordering him around. You did, didn’t you? How many times must I tell you there’s a way to ask and a way not to?’

‘But has he paid for it? Have we another body on our hands?’