J. Janes - Mayhem

‘Tour other …?’

‘Yes. It’s always best to get three or more appraisals before selling, isn’t that so?’

Of course it was.

Out on the rue du Faubourg St-Honore they climbed back into the velo-taxi and told the girl to take them to the Kommandantur. ‘As fast as you can, eh?’ said St-Cyr.

Kohler was all shoulders and arms, the twin wicker baby carriages just big enough for one of them. ‘Louis, I’m sorry about the diamonds. I really do apologize.’

St-Cyr shrugged. ‘Think nothing of it, my friend. What are a few little things like that between partners? But the woman’s address book, Hermann … That I should most certainly like to see.’

‘It’s in my room at the Boccador, under the carpet.’

St-Cyr shook his head in wonder. ‘And you’re supposed to be a Gestapo detective. Care to tell me about it?’

The girl’s rump was going from side to side, the jacket creeping up above her slender waist to reveal a pink sweater and blouse. ‘Later, perhaps. Look, I still want to think about it, Louis. This thing …’

This little murder. ‘Yes, I know it’s trouble.’ Mon Dieu, he wished Hermann wasn’t so big across the shoulders!

The wheels of the velo-taxi breathed over the rain-slicked stones, adding their lack of sound to Paris’s general hush. Apart from the few German cars, and occasional Wehrmacht lorries, there were no other motorized vehicles in sight. Only bicycles and more and more of them, and the inevitable velo-taxis of course.

It was like riding through creamed soup on a spoon.

The girl signalled a left as she turned on to the rue Royale and the grey light made greyer still and more majestic the splendid Corinthian columns of the Madeleine.

St-Cyr wept for France when he saw the church. Always it was like this. Dry tears and unspoken thoughts, a tightening of the throat.

The girl was wearing trousers of heavy twill and, with a start, he realized they’d been dyed and that they were from among the leftovers at Dunkirk.

British Army fatigues – sometimes half the nation was partly dressed in them. ‘She looks quite good in them,’ confided Kohler with an appreciative grin. ‘Cute, wouldn’t you say? Gott in Himmel , Louis, I’d like to see those trousers down around her ankles.’

‘Don’t get any ideas, Hermann. We’ve work to do.’

The Kommandantur rose out of the near end of the Place de l’Opera, one of twin buildings on either side of the avenue de l’Opera. A great big, black-and-white signboard was curved above its entrance to fit the curve of the wall.

No one could have missed it, but German road signs gave the directions anyway.

Every Parisian who wanted to do anything had eventually to turn up here. It was the house of papers and rubber stamps.

The girl pulled into the kerb and swung breathlessly around to smile at them. What the hell, one had to. ‘So, one hundred and fifty francs, if you please, messieurs.’

‘Your name?’ snapped Kohler.

She lost the pretty smile. ‘My name …?’ she began, looking for a fast exit.

‘And the address,’ announced Kohler, dragging out his notebook.

St-Cyr found two one-hundred-franc bills and said, ‘Come on, Hermann, we’ve better things to do.’

Unfortunately the clock on the wall above the entrance gave the bull’s-eye of ten past eleven.

Von Schaumburg wasn’t pleased. In fact, he wasn’t even there.

‘He’s gone to the morgue. The general has suggested that if you two gentlemen can spare him the time, he’d be glad to meet you there.’

Out on the Place the girl with the velo-taxi had vanished.

The corpse was only one of many. Three nuns were weeping over the shrouded bier next door, while a priest thumbed his prayer book as if unable to decide which page to use for cigarette paper.

Cold … it was so cold, the condensation had frozen on the walls. Great yellowish-grey-green curds hung like snot awaiting a thaw.

Sounds echoed. White-coated, solemn grey men, their pill-shaped white box hats often smeared by bloody thumbprints, moved about the place as if butchers drifting through ether. Some dragged rubber hoses, others pushed brooms or pulled window wipers across the puddled floor. One carried a meat saw, another a clipboard.

There was a cough, and then a cloud of filthy cigarette smoke.

The grizzled moon-face of their attendant turned to them and the fleshy lips parted to betray a set of rotten teeth. ‘So, my friends, do you want the shroud removed or merely pulled back?’ He indicated the nuns.

Kohler said, ‘Remove it.’

‘Entirely?’ asked the man, with surprise.

‘We’re detectives,’ came the answer.

The nuns turned away in horror. The youngest one stole a further glance. The boy was beautiful – like Christ in alabaster, rigid with rigor and so pale.

‘I was right,’ breathed Kohler. ‘The bugger’s been circumcised, Louis. Will you take a look at that.’

‘I am. How many times must I tell you that little surgical procedure is as much for hygiene’s sake as for religion’s? He’s no more Jewish than you are. Now cover him up.’

‘Frightened by the sight of death, eh?’

St-Cyr shook his head, but as the priest and the nuns had fled, there was no sense in fussing. ‘Where’s the general?’

‘Talking to the Chief,’ replied the attendant.

‘Then tell him we’re here.’

The man departed, leaving them alone with the corpse. The boy was slight, he had an angel’s build. Bluish shadows had grown beneath the eyes which were now closed.

The lips looked cold.

‘Let’s tell the general the boy’s Jewish. It’ll go a lot easier for us, Louis. Don’t be a stick about it.’

‘Von Schaumburg’s a Prussian of the old school, Hermann.’

‘A real Junker’s bastard. He hates you French.’

‘And you Gestapo, so we’re even.’

‘Then you handle it, eh?’

‘He won’t let me.’

‘He’s a dyed-in-the-wool bachelor, a real shit when it comes to protocol and morals – marital fidelity and all that crap.’

‘He won’t have heard about Marianne.’

‘He probably has. Nothing much gets past him. Look, I’m going to show him the boy’s wanger. I’ve got to.’

‘Scars … are there any scars?’ asked St-Cyr loudly, as the sound of highly polished jackboots broke from across the marble floor.

‘One under the left arm, across the upper ribcage. Looks to be about five centimetres long. An old scar. Not stitched. Probably a fall as a child.’

St-Cyr wrote it all down. The steps grew closer. ‘Anything else?’

‘Right nipple has a small nick below it. Recent, Louis. The wound’s not even closed. Now what the he … e … ll?’

‘Attention!’

Kohler crashed his heels together without even thinking. St-Cyr let the hand with its notebook fall to his side. ‘General …’

Von Schaumburg was taller, bigger than Kohler. The shoulders of the open greatcoat betrayed none of the advanced years, the peak of the military cap shone sharply through the perpetual gloom.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ he demanded – not quite a shriek.

Rock of Bronze to his staff, Old Shatter Hand to others, von Schaumburg waited. Kohler began.

The general listened. One meaty hand crushed black leather gloves that could be swung. The other hand irritably stuck the monocle over its eye, magnifying the blue intensity. ‘You … your names?’ he demanded. ‘Gestapo,’ he spat. ‘Imbeciles. Who is he, why did he die, and who killed him?’

Kohler began it all again only to be interrupted by, ‘His name, damn it?’

‘We don’t know that yet, General.’

‘Why?’

Round and round it would go, sighed St-Cyr inwardly only to have the thought interrupted by, ‘The Fuhrer should never have let you people into France. I warned him there’d be trouble. The Army are perfectly capable of looking after things. This could have been settled in an instant.’