J. Janes - Tapestry

‘Just tell me why the one or ones who are after her also left it out for us?’

Up from the cobblestones came the mist, down from the heavens that first sprinkling of the usual.

The stable door was open, the stench of horse piss as present as the centuries of it.

‘Are you okay?’ whispered Louis.

‘I’ll just go up its ladder. I won’t be a minute.’

‘Giselle, Hermann. Remember, please, that Noelle Jourdan really does look a lot like her.’

Made of poles, hammered together with hand-forged spikes, the ladder’s rungs were worn and slivered in places, and on one of these the girl had caught her skirt and had pulled a thread.

On another, she had caught the heavy, cable-stitched pullover she must have been wearing, but of course detectives can’t climb such a ladder with gun and torch in hand. It’s either the one or the other.

‘Hermann … ?’

‘Louis …’

He had reached the loft and had swung himself up on to it, the beam of that torch of his cutting a quick swath across time-darkened roof timbers.

The light was gone-Hermann knew its brightness would only destroy his night vision when needed and had switched it off. Back pressed to one of the timbered uprights, St-Cyr waited. Merde, it was dark. Leaking, the roof let water piddle on the stones of the floor, increasing the stench of the years.

‘Louis …’

It wasn’t a cry, wasn’t even a gasp, seemed only to embody despair. ‘I’m coming, Hermann. Please hold on. Watch out, too, eh? We’re not alone. He …’

Time had no meaning. Time had suddenly evaporated. One moved only when absolutely necessary and then solely by feel. One didn’t dare to show a light.

Hermann called out, ‘Louis!’ once again and louder. No answer was possible because none could be given. The stalls were not empty but cluttered with the parsimonious hoarding of the stable’s owner or past owners, the building no longer kept under lock and key, and yet things that could have found use had been left in place. Wooden water buckets, a scythe … Had one of the gardeners once stored things here? Frayed rope, a shovel, another and another-the police academy killing? St-Cyr had to ask-a rake, an axe and the instant relief of having found it first.

Had the owner a son? he wondered. Though Matron Aurore Aumont had stated that she hadn’t known if the girl had had any friends, Noelle Jourdan had obviously known of the stable.

A side door gave out on to a slender passage , but did this lead to another courtyard, another house and then to the rue de Birague?

A breath was taken … Ah, sacre nom de nom, Hermann, our killer is standing in this passage , not a metre from me.

Down on his hands and knees in the loft, Kohler tried to steady himself. The blood was still hot and rushing from the throat, the wound from ear to ear. He knew her eyes would be open in shock, felt her nose, her lips. Giselle? he had to ask, for her hair had been worn short, worn just like this one’s, the shoulders were just as fine, the back, the seat, that gentle mound, all still clothed, the girl lying face down in a puddle of her draining.

I’m sorry, he tried to say but knew he mustn’t. Louis hadn’t answered him. Louis …

Softly St-Cyr drew back the Lebel’s hammer to full cock, knowing that this would be heard by the killer, knowing too that he had but one chance.

Plank by plank, he traced out the boards from that door to where he and the killer were standing, only the wall between them. Had the killer come alone? Had a Surete the right to shoot without first giving the challenge?

A breath came and he heard it, but it was closer now, much closer, and with it came another sound but …

‘IT WASN’T A CUTTHROAT, LOUIS!’

The hammer fell on a damp, dead cartridge. The hammer had to come back and fall again. The flash of fire momentarily blinded as boards splintered, the sound of the shot rolling away …

‘LOUIS!’ cried out Kohler.

The acrid stench of spent black powder filled the air. ‘I missed him, Hermann. He realized he’d been given a reprieve and took it. Those cartridges you got me from stores …’

Up in the loft, Louis took one look at her under torchlight and said, ‘You’re right, that was no cutthroat. Blood has shot a good metre from the end of that knife as he swung it away. Has he slaughtered sheep? She was on her hands and knees and trying to scramble away, was taken from behind, grabbed by the hair, the head yanked back as the throat was cut, and then … then was held down, clamped firmly between his knees as if on a farm or ranch until all motion had stopped.’

All quivering even. ‘Otherwise she might still have run for a little.’

Good for Hermann. Such a thing was definitely possible. ‘But she would never have made it down that ladder.’

‘Could well have pitched off the edge of the loft.’

‘He wanted us separated and realized that if she had fallen to the floor below, we wouldn’t have been.’

‘He’s trouble, Louis.’

‘Most definitely.’

‘And now?’

‘We must find him, but first the Jourdan flat again.’

‘He might have gone back there …’

‘Having anticipated that we would realize we had to.’

Ah, merde , trust Louis to have seen it: ‘If we are ever to find out how that girl came by the things she did.’

‘And what, exactly, that father of hers has been stating in his letters to former compagnons d’armes . Jourdan praised the girl for having let the press in to photograph Madame Guillaumet and cursed the hospital staff for admitting such women. He was all too ready to blame them for betraying their husbands.’

‘Spreading the gospel, was he?’

‘Enlisting support?’

‘But letters only within the zone occupee , Louis. It’s still forbidden to send anything south into the former zone libre .’

Even though the Occupier now occupied the whole country. ‘A campaign against wandering wives and fiancees of prisoners of war. Matron Aumont felt the girl’s attitude was that of the father who had raised Noelle from the age of five, Hermann. Apparently when asked about her mother, the girl would only state that she was dead, but such hatred on the part of the father demands answer.’

‘As does everything else. Just what the hell are we really up against?’

It had best be said. ‘The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg. Noelle Jourdan must somehow have been getting things from one of their warehouses, as must Delaroche. Where else could that girl have picked up those figurines, where else, the colonel, that Ysenbrant painting and other objets d’art in his office?’

The Rosenberg Task Force, the Aktion-M squads, the plunderers of the household furnishings and other items of deported, transported individuals. Whole families, many of them, and certainly not all had been poor. ‘But why steal the stamps back?’

‘Especially as we were not to have been assigned to that robbery.’

‘Chance having been allowed to play its part, eh? Chance, Louis.’

‘Fate, Hermann. Was it fate?’

‘But we were told to head on over to the Restaurant Drouant.’

‘Having been assigned to it and the Trinite, should assaults take place at both, which they definitely did.’

‘The Agence Vidocq must have learned of Boemelburg’s assigning us to blackout crime even before we did, Louis.’

‘They’re very well connected and have more than adequate sources of information …’

‘Boemelburg has always kept us busy and has so far been able to counter SS and Gestapo rank-and-file hatred of us, simply because he has to display some semblance of law and order but now Berlin aren’t just being adamant. They’re demanding his recall should he fail.’