J. Janes - Tapestry

Semen had trickled down the left thigh to be smeared as she had run, but there were only traces of this that could be seen, hidden as it was by the rest, but definitely rape beforehand.

‘Elene Artur,’ he said yet again. She’d been dead for about twenty-four hours, would have been brought here from the Lido at about what? Eleven forty? Twelve midnight, maybe? The call to the district commissariat had been made at 11.13 p.m. She had first been forced to contact the press. Here, then, at half after midnight, or maybe 1.00 a.m. at the latest, the concierge sound asleep. Had they known this too?

The face was swollen, livid and blotchy. There were deep bruises on the neck where she’d been held during the rape, showers of petechial haemorrhages under the eyes and across the bridge of the nose and the cheeks. Some of the slate-blue to reddish-purple blotches on the lower parts of the left buttock, thigh and calf were due to postmortem hypostasis and would have to be sorted from the bruises. There were abrasions and scratches-several cuts as well, the flesh having been laid open, the assailant darting in with a cutthroat?

‘A knife-but what kind of knife, damn it? That was no cutthroat.’

The right breast had been cleanly and deeply sliced open by one slash that extended down through the nipple. That shoulder had also been opened and then the forearm as she had managed to pull free and had tried to fend him off only to have that arm grabbed again by the other assailant, the one who had come up behind her. The knife had been pulled away after she’d been cut open. Blood had shot from its blade, lots of blood that had, only at the last, dribbled from it.

Had the bastard known how to butcher? Had he been a butcher?

‘That knife, it’s not the usual.’ Louis and Armand Tremblay would have to see her just as she was, but Judge Rouget wasn’t going to like what had happened in his little nest. Hercule the Smasher would have to run to Oberg to beg that one’s help in hushing things up. Oberg would love it, since the judge, the judicial system and the night-action trials would then be even more within that grasping fist, the police too, and wasn’t that really what Oberg wanted most?

Yes, Oberg would have to hear of it but first from this Kripo. There wasn’t any sense in trying to avoid the issue or prolong the agony. It would be expected of him and he had best do that, but first, a little look around so as to have the background needed to save one’s ass if possible.

‘But what sort of knife would leave a spurt of blood that long when withdrawn?’ he asked. ‘A blade but not like butchers use even for the smaller cuts, since the thing must have collected one hell of a lot of blood in a groove or something to have had it spurt off the end like that when removed.’

The washbasin was clean, the floor as well, but one had to ask, Why so tidy when one had left such a mess? Why not simply flick ash on to the floor? Impulse, had that been it? One of long familiarity and care?

They hadn’t taken her handbag. One of them-the one with the cigar-had dumped it out on a side table in the salle de sejour and had dropped a little ash, which had been quickly but not completely wiped away. Again a tidy man. Well dressed? he had to ask. One who knew the judge and had used the flat before and perhaps often?

ID, ration cards and tickets had been taken as with other victims but also to slow identification, though here there had been just too many holes in the sieve for them to have plugged and they hadn’t figured on Didier Valois forking up the address and name of the judge’s petite amie , had thought instead that Hercule the Smasher would have found her first. Not Louis or himself, but Rouget who would then have run to Oberg-had they known that’s what he’d do? Had they understood him and the use of this flat so well they had counted on it and felt supremely confident and safe from honest detectives who might just start asking questions?

But why empty the handbag, why not simply take it as with other victims?

When Kohler found her wedding ring, he instinctively knew it was one of those little breaks every detective longed for and that her killers must have wanted it as proof.

The ring had fallen to the malachite top of the table and had bounced on to the carpet, there to roll out and across the parquet before hiding itself under the far corner of the radiator.

Opening the valve, Kohler bled off the entrapped air to silence the radiator’s pinging he must have been hearing all along. ‘I haven’t any other choice, Louis,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry but I’m going to have to go to the avenue Foch and might just as well do so now and get it over with while I still have what it takes.’

But first, he would have to take a look in the toilet. That, too, couldn’t be avoided, especially as the parquet had been mopped but not completely.

Numero 11 rue des Saussaies was as blacked out as the rest of the city at seven minutes past midnight, now Saturday, 13 February 1943-how had Hermann and himself lasted this long? wondered St-Cyr. Leaving the Citroen at kerbside where it could be more easily located if in a hurry, he avoided the front entrance. Heading up into the courtyard, he felt his way by running a hand along the inner wall, all the while listening to the streets and to the rain.

The cellars were ice cold. Water lay in pools. Dimly lit at the best of times, the corridors ran every which way. The first cells were starkly empty. Scratches gave names and dates-one couldn’t help but notice. A poem-sometimes beautifully composed; a message, if but brief; a curse that could only have made things more difficult. A ‘reinforced’ interrogation brought its echoes. Cringing with each blow, he hurried-Hermann and he had agreed to spend as little time as possible in the building, in that ‘office’ of theirs on the fifth floor.

The women’s cells were at the back, down yet another corridor. French or Occupier, did it matter who was in authority here? Often the former liked to show they were better at it than the latter, but would they really have to answer for their actions when spring came? Wasn’t Pharand, head of the Surete, a past master at blowing the smoke screen and hiding behind it? Wouldn’t those such as himself and Hermann, too, be left to answer for the crimes of others?

Blood, pus, human waste and vomit made the air rank. Suddenly a man shrilled a name. Other names rapidly followed, then a penetrating silence, then a sickening blow to which the whole of the cellars would have listened.

Upstairs, on the ground floor and above this, there was much activity. Questioning the duty sergeant brought nothing more than a knowing smirk and then an uncaring shrug.

There was no mention in the docket of Giselle’s having been picked up. The morgue then? he had to wonder. If so, how could he possibly break the news to Hermann? Hadn’t it been hard enough having to let him know of the deaths of his two sons? Hadn’t Boemelburg deliberately left that duty to this partner and friend of Hermann’s?

Walter’s door was closed but never locked since none would dare enter without being asked and the duty sergeant was keeping an eye on this Surete.

But not long enough.

Quickly letting himself into the spacious office Pharand had had to vacate after the Defeat, he closed the door and listened hard to this place he’d once been proud to be a part of. The blackout drapes had been drawn-Walter often worked late. The green-shaded desk lamp he’d brought from a distant past as a salesman of heating and ventilating systems would be sufficient. Before making the career change to detective, Walter had worked in Paris in the twenties and had learned the language so well as Head of the Gestapo’s Section IV he spoke it like a native of Montmartre.