Flykiller

‘Inspector, surely you are aware that family is everything to a man in my position and that what I say to such women is of little consequence? She knew it was impossible but couldn’t resist making the taunt.’

‘And your wife?’

‘Spat in her face, slapped her hard, and left.’

‘Then I’m going to have to interview her.’

‘That’s impossible. I can’t allow it.’

‘You will whether you like it or not, and that is final.’

Six of those little grey pills of Benzedrine the Luftwaffe’s night-fighter pilots took to stay awake were shaken from Hermann’s inexhaustible supply, to lie like gravel on the linoleum-topped table.

‘Down those, Louis. You’re going to need them.’

‘Six! We’ve been up for nearly forty-eight hours! You know those won’t sit well on a stomach that has had only beer or pastis to wet it!’

Unsteadily Herr Kohler got up and, a head and shoulders above nearly everyone else, picked up his two empties and began to make his way back to the bar.

‘He’ll be awake all night now and asleep tomorrow when I need him,’ grumbled St-Cyr.

‘Don’t you two ever stop?’ demanded Richard caustically.

‘Never. Now where were we? Oh yes, the older scratches and bruises the coroner noted on Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux and this supposed threat to assassinate les gars.’

*

Caught unexpectedly, their voices low and urgent only to be suddenly silenced, the cabaret troupe remained motionless in their dressing room. ‘Oh, sorry,’ quipped Kohler. ‘I was looking for the toilets.’

Still the three of them didn’t move, nor did they grin or laugh at such an obvious lie. They’d left the stage, he the bar and right after them. Now they knew he’d deliberately invaded their privacy and they didn’t like it one bit.

Their gazes taking him in, their black velvet chokers setting off the kind of women men imagined them to be, their expressions were, as one, cold, and silently demanded, why is it that you want us to be the way you do? But then … each, in her own way, realized why he must have come.

‘Kohler,’ he heard himself saying, his throat still dry at the accusation but also at having interrupted something he should have quietly listened to from the corridor. ‘Kripo, Paris-Central.’ The dressing room was crowded. Underthings, skirts, blouses and winter coats hung on wooden pegs even around the much-stained mirror. Stage make-up, grey rolls of unbleached toilet paper, lipsticks, et cetera, cluttered the shared dressing table. In a far corner, a rusty iron hole in the floor with stirrups, a pull-chain and one hell of a rush of icy water – a Turkish – was not only wet and slimy but reeked.

‘A detective,’ croaked the one with the clarinet, moisture rapidly filling wounded dark brown eyes that only moments ago had wantonly gazed down the length of that instrument she had blown into and fingered on stage. Her thick chestnut hair was long and still shaken out but now it fell forward, for she was lying, tummy down, on a lumpy, moth-eaten day bed and had had to turn her head his way. Ass up a little, legs slightly parted, knees dug in and waist bare, the off-white satin bra no doubt binding her so tightly it pinched and chafed her nipples.

Unbidden, Herr Kohler’s faded blue eyes fled emptily over her body, Aurelienne told herself – Madame Tavernier to you, Inspector. He didn’t pause at her frill-clad bottom and black-meshed legs, but noted the holes in her stockings and, realizing that they couldn’t be mended because they helped to create that seedy, sluttish, twenties look of Berlin that was so in demand, especially now, paused only at her black high-heels and cleats. Was he thinking of footprints in the snow? Was he? she wondered desperately.

He blinked as if a little drunk and tore his gaze from her to look suddenly at Carole – that’s Madame Navaud to you, Inspector – who stood with lighted cigarette poised. The flowered grey silk kimono was thrown well off that bare left shoulder, that hand placed firmly above a provocative hip, while the barbed tattoo of a wild rose climbed from her belly button and the equator of pink peekaboos to just below her satin bra. Black garters and black net stockings too, and her long, light brown hair all over the place and all but hiding the hard hazel eyes that looked sideways at him.

‘Kohler,’ Carole said in that way she always did when forced to caress some bastard’s quiverins cheek. ‘Here to find a killer or killers.’