J. Janes - Tapestry

‘The left shoulder and wrist, Inspector …’ began Dr. Paul-Emile Mailloux. ‘They are badly sprained but fortunately not broken. He must have wrenched the arm behind her back as he … Well, you know.’

If the Trinite victim thought anything of this, she gave no indication.

‘Scratches?’ asked Kohler.

‘Of course, but mainly between the shoulders and on the buttocks and hips. The assailant tore a fingernail. We found it lodged in …’

‘We?’

It would have to be said. ‘Dr. Rheal Lachance is the senior physician who oversees such cases. This woman isn’t the only one we’ve had to admit. She’s number thirty.’

Lachance, but ach mein Gott , so many? ‘In how long?’

Had the detective been away from the city or had the matter simply been hushed up even within police circles, the authorities too afraid to admit that such things were happening? ‘In the past four months, Inspector. Three so far this week, two last weekend.’

And there were twenty-four hospitals in Paris.

‘She’s one of the worst,’ said Mailloux, ‘though we only get the serious cases, of course.’

‘Have the attacks been escalating?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘ Verdammt, either you think it or you don’t!’

‘Then, yes, especially since the … the defeat of your Sixth Army at Stalingrad on the third of this month. Not all were raped, you understand.’

‘Robbed of their handbags and papers?’

‘Yes. Some were completely or only partly stripped before …’

‘The hair?’

This one would know all about such things from that other war. ‘It was first hacked off some of them before the beating. With others, they were beaten and then it was cut off, and since there is a market for it, the hair was probably stolen and sold.’

‘But not all lost their hair?’

‘Not all. With this one, perhaps there wasn’t time. Punishment, yes, but not continued to that point.’

Though they were all too aware of blackout crime, Louis and he hadn’t fully realized the severity of what was now going on, but with so many victims, how could they possibly interview enough to get a clear picture of things? ‘Their wedding rings?’ he asked.

Had the detective been defeated by the thought of so many? ‘The rings, ah oui , from those who were wearing them.’

‘Meaning that some had deliberately removed them before the evening out, eh? Were all of them married to absent POWs?’

‘Not all. Those whose fiances are prisoners of war did not have such rings to wear, unless the engagement one.’

Which few couples could afford or even give a thought to. ‘But fiancees of POWs have also been targeted?’

‘That is correct, at least in so far as we here at the Hotel-Dieu are aware.’

‘And not others? Single girls, unhappily married nonmilitary wives, those of veterans from that other war or those that simply need the money to feed the kids?’

‘Occasionally but perhaps as mistakes. Most of the victims we get are wives of prisoners of war or fiancees of them.’

And targeted, but everyone would be saying the streets were unsafe at night and would be avoiding them if possible. ‘Okay. Now tell me about that fingernail.’

‘Lodged in the upper right hip. The nail must have been torn or cracked beforehand. Tweezers were used to remove it. There’s her blood, of course, and skin, but also some kind of grease.’

A torn, folded corner of newsprint yielded its little treasure. The nail was a good centimetre-and-a-half along the curve, and from two to three millimetres at its widest. The middle right finger, and dirty. Big hands too-a big gut, eh? wondered Kohler but said, ‘ Bon . Now tell me why that door was locked and you had to ask the matron for the key?’

Would this one miss nothing? ‘The press.’

‘What do you mean “The press”?’

‘Inspector, let’s go into the corridor. They came. Two of them, you understand.’

‘I’m trying to.’

Was there nothing for it but to reveal what had happened? ‘They photographed her late last night.’

‘They couldn’t have, not without help.’

Lachance would just have to admit to having failed to foresee such a possibility. ‘One of the nursing assistants was bribed, Inspector. Two thousand francs. The girl tried to deny it, of course, and has been dismissed. She’ll never get another job in this or any hospital.’

But others would have been bribed and Mailloux set up to take the fall. ‘Okay. Now tell me what photos were taken.’

‘The back and the front.’

‘Then watch her closely. If she kills herself, I’ll have you up for murder.’

‘I wasn’t even on duty when the press got here at three fifteen last night. I wasn’t even getting out of bed so that I could catch the metro to work at five a.m. I live in Montrouge.’

And not far from the Porte d’Orleans, but one never offered such information these days. At the very least, one waited to be asked. Mailloux damned well knew he had been set up but it would be best to go easy. ‘Which paper?’

‘Le Matin.’

And but one of the dailies, all of which were collaborationist and, with varying degrees, loved to ridicule segments of the populace and to show the citizenry what animals they harboured and that their police needed not only to be strengthened yet again but placed entirely under the competent control of the Occupier.

The headline said it all: RAPE-BEATING NARROWLY MISSES CONJUGAL MORTUARY SLAB OF ECOLE DES OFFICIERS DE LA GENDARMERIE NATIONALE’S MAQUEREAU.

Berlin would be in an uproar, the Fuhrer demanding reprisals and deportations, his shining example of an open city badly tarnished. Boemelburg would be beside himself and expecting the early retirement everyone whispered about, the Kommandant von Gross-Paris, Old Shatter Hand himself, utterly unapproachable, Prefet Talbotte bent on revenge and covering his own miserable ass, Louis and this Kripo accused of thoughtlessly letting it all happen or better still, of having taken money from that same press who would be only too willing to admit that they had. And as if that were not enough, Pharand, that arch little Fascist, head of the Surete and Louis’s boss, would see to it and urge Talbotte on while scheming all the time.

‘Get her dressed. Whether you agree or not, that woman has to be with her children.’

The bastards hadn’t just taken a simple head-and-shoulders shot. They’d had her stand, had had the smock removed so that full frontal and back views, with the regulation little black triangle in place of course, would hit the page.

And next to them, as if she were in some way connected to him, was the police academy’s victim, identified as her pimp and with his bare ass up and all the rest, if not blacked out.

‘Moving her today is just not possible, Inspector. Whoever did that to her also used an object.’

The academy’s victim had been struck hard on the back of the head, not once but twice, thought St-Cyr. A smooth, blunt instrument, a truncheon perhaps, but a period of time had elapsed between the blows, he was certain.

The pomade was not so much ‘greasy,’ as Hermann had thought, but oily, sweet-smelling and of sandalwood, giving a reminder of Indochina, a significant source, and the final moments of President Paul Doumer in this very building.

But had the victim been brought here simply to draw attention to the ineptitude of a police force that now had fifteen thousand flics in Paris alone and should have done something to prevent such crimes?

‘Hit first an hour or so before he was brought here, Armand?’ he asked of the coroner. ‘Perhaps thrown into the back of a gazogene * lorry to lie there unconscious.’