J. Janes - Tapestry

‘Had she a pimp?’

‘The concierge didn’t think so. “She was too independent,” he said, and claimed she “wasn’t like a woman of the streets or houses.” ’

No pimp could only mean, as Hermann must have realized, that the academy victim definitely hadn’t been hers. ‘And on the night of her murder nothing was heard?’

‘Not a thing. Earlier though, on the previous visit, the girl “thought she might have done something that had offended the judge.” She couldn’t understand how Rouget could possibly have found out about it. “He’s too busy,” she said to Louveau. “He never goes there. Not anymore and certainly not with me, not since last October and only once then. Others would have seen us together.” ’

‘What others?’

‘She didn’t say.’

‘But where? The location, Hermann?’

‘I couldn’t establish that either.’

‘But others must have seen them. Others who went to the same place regularly …’

‘And guess who must have discovered she was carrying his child?’

Another cigarette was needed. Dieu merci, it was like old times.

‘She would have had to tell the judge, Louis, but who else found out? Rouget isn’t just a member of the Cercle Europeen. He also belongs to the Cercle de l’Union Interaliee.’

God had definitely not smiled at them. ‘Your Petain-look-alike general could well be a fellow member, as could, perhaps, the former captain I may have uncovered in the taxi theft, if indeed he was a captain, but let me hold that one in reserve. Please continue.’

‘Are you sure you want more?’

‘You know I don’t like to be kept in suspense.’

‘Good. At the repeated insistence of Henriette Morel who believes that husband of hers is having a torrid affair with her stepsister, that one’s social worker hired a …’

‘Permit me, mon vieux . A detective prive who impersonates a Surete and who calls the pipe he is fortunate enough to constantly smoke, his little friend.’

‘Monsieur Flavien Garnier of l’Agence Vidocq?’

‘The Arcade de Champs-Elysees. It’s a small world, isn’t it? Adrienne Guillaumet had asked the owner-operator of Take Me to drive her to the Ritz.’

And more generals but definitely not French. ‘Did Garnier find this out?’

‘He must have. Three men were involved in her assault. One to set it up and get the timing down-that’s my “captain” who is the same, I’m sure, as was at the police academy and who lost his little red ribbon, though it wasn’t his to lose, and two to carry out the taxi theft, one of whom made certain that the other did. These last two were of medium height, the other almost as tall as the General de Gaulle, the Trinite rapist having broad shoulders like a wedge.’

‘And the one with the gut and smelling of fish oil?’

‘Our Drouant assailant, no doubt, and from Montmartre, but both likely wearing worn oilskins that must have needed a little help on such a night. A supply of Norwegian margarine, Hermann, that obviously didn’t need its ration tickets.’

Quicksand, were they stepping into it? ‘Now tell me why not this “captain’s” own Legion d’honneur ribbon?’

‘Because I’m all but certain I’ve encountered the owner of it in Noelle Jourdan’s papa , but for now the judge’s flat, Hermann. Let’s stick to that.’

‘Two assailants, one of whom must have been to the flat often enough since he was tidy even after what they’d done. When he went through her handbag, but didn’t take it, he spilled cigar ash and took time out to try to wipe it away but failed entirely to find her wedding ring. I did.’

Ah grace a Dieu , this was definitely the old Hermann. ‘Do you want me to have a look at the flat? We’re pressed for time as it is.’

‘Aren’t we always?’

This, too, was the old Hermann, hedging his bets but still, one had best be cautious. ‘Wait for me. Have a stroll. It’ll do you good. That sun should be with us for a while.’

‘Then let’s hope Giselle is alive and looking at it and that Oona doesn’t try to join her children by throwing herself in front of a train.’

‘Oona didn’t say that. She’s far too level-headed.’

‘Well, maybe she is, but I thought it and that’s enough for me.’

‘St-Cyr, Surete, to see the passage de l’Hirondelle victim. Hurry.’

‘There’s no hurry where that one’s going.’

‘Is it that you fancy working in the salt mines of Silesia? That is where Gestapo Boemelburg usually threatens to send me if I don’t work fast enough. Ah! I’m late as it is for our meeting. Merde! Shall I tell him you delayed me and that, as a result, I might get lonely unless I had some company?’

‘It is this way, Inspector.’

‘It’s Chief Inspector, and I know the way.’

‘Clothing-do you want to look at it first?’

‘Was any of it taken?’

‘Scattered, I think. No boots or shoes. No ID, no handbag either, or jewellery of any kind.’

It had been raining hard in the late afternoon. Though darker in the passage, there would still have been sufficient daylight. Giselle would have known of the route as a short cut through to place Saint-Michel from the rue Git-le-Coeur. Rapes, muggings, murders, births, deaths from old age, the plague or other natural causes-sex by the moment and paid for or not-the passage had seen them all and yes, her native instinct would have caused her to dart into it, though it was also one that could easily have been blocked off at its other end. Trapped, she would have had to turn to face her assailants.

Giselle’s dark-blue woollen overcoat, with its broad 1930s lapels and flaps over the pockets, had been thin and a little threadbare. Hermann would never use his position as one of the Occupier to better the state of his household or himself. Stubborn … mon Dieu , he could be stubborn.

Folded, the coat had lost four of its buttons and had obviously been torn open. The soft grey tartan scarf that had set off the colour of her eyes was wet and cold, the grey-blue knitted mittens also. The angora cloche she had been particularly fond of was drenched and filthy.

A girl with short, straight, jet-black hair, half Greek, half Midi-French.

‘Is there nothing else?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘Time of death?’

‘Late yesterday afternoon probably.’

Friday. ‘Found when?’

‘At just after eight last night, the new time. Someone tripped over her.’

‘Who?’

‘It doesn’t say.’

‘Witnesses?’

‘None.’

‘Examining flic ?’

A name was given but it meant nothing. Paris’s police force had expanded so much and now there were also ‘auxiliary police’ and ‘order police,’ neither of which needed the full qualifications of the first.

‘Leave me. If Herr Kohler comes looking for me, don’t let him in. If you do, I’ll hound you until you die.’

Mud-grey to brown, the river moved swiftly. Upstream there were no barges; downstream it was the same. Der Fuhrer, in his wisdom, had had them all taken in the early autumn of 1940 for the invasion of England that had never happened. Now, of course, they lay rotting in the north, cluttering up the harbours unless dragged away and beached or sent to Belgium and elsewhere, and the citizen-coal that should have come to Paris, didn’t. Even the compressed dust of its poorest briquettes.

Louis wouldn’t be able to identify Giselle, not if they’d done what they had to the police academy victim. She’d a thumbprint-sized mole in the small of her back he wouldn’t know of, a blemish she had constantly worried about.

‘Giselle,’ he said, looking off across place Mazas to the morgue. Louis was taking far too long and that could only mean …