J. Janes - Salamander

Maudit ! ‘But to where, Hermann. Where ?’

Though dressed, Louis was still shaky. The house on the park. That’s what the children say but me, ah, I don’t think so. The dress she was working on is gone, Louis. Did she deliver it to the Hotel Bristol? The kids don’t know why she’d have done a thing like that, given what’s happened, but me, I think it’s possible. There’s also a spill of Cs on the floor over there. A box from next door was ripped open and a few handfuls taken.’

‘Cs?’

‘Riding coats,’ blurted the boy, hastily wiping his eyes only to release more tears. ‘Did you think we would not know what has been going on next door for nearly all our lives? A whorehouse, Paulette! A brothel! Our mother!’

Condoms, ah merde ! He got down on his knees before the children and took their hands in his. ‘Now listen, your mother was forced into this. I cannot tell you why because we do not have the time, eh? We must know where your Uncle Henri might have gone. She will know of it. That is why the shears have been taken again.’

The shears … the scissors!

The girl screwed up her face in tears and doubt. ‘The … the Marche aux Puces, then. In Villeurbanne, monsieur. Uncle … Uncle Henri, he … he always goes there on Sunday afternoons to hunt for things.’

‘He … he has a warehouse,’ blurted the boy. ‘It is the one with … with the bust of Nero above the door.’

‘Caesar, Rene. It is the head and shoulders of Caesar Augustus but … but there are many of these and … and all of them, they look much the same.’

St-Cyr’s heart sank at the prospect of what might lie ahead. ‘The flea market, Hermann. It is on the Rhone well to the other side of the Parc de la Tete d’Or.’

They managed to hire a fiacre but it was drawn by a bronchial horse and would not go fast enough. Out on the pont Alphonse Juin, they commandeered a gazogene , a farm lorry laden with produce for black-market restaurants, only to have Hermann leap from behind the wheel to tell the driver of the fiacre to steam his horse and use some friar’s balsam. ‘Here … here, take this bottle my partner had in his pocket. Use a bucket of hot water and a sack over the head, and do it or I’ll come back to give you the full treatment myself.’

‘Me?’ asked the terrified old man. The driver of the lorry was starting to sit up in the road.

‘You, you son of a bitch!’ snarled the Gestapo’s Bavarian protector. That mare of yours has a bad chest. A cold, eh?’ With the ham of his good hand, Hermann shoved the poor bastard’s nose up into the air and slapped him soundly. ‘Gestapo,’ he breathed. ‘Don’t forget it!

‘You French !’ he cursed as he got back behind the wheel. ‘How can you people treat animals like that? It’s no wonder you lose all the wars you drag other people into!’

Ah nom de Dieu , what was one to say? At the height of a crisis, the doctoring of a horse!

The gazogene crawled by the streets, the velos had plenty of time to get out of the way when the horn was honked. The ice lay in treacherous sheets that sometimes helped and sometimes didn’t. And when they got to the park, Hermann didn’t bother with the roads any more but drove straight overland. Ah merde ! Merde! ‘Not across the lake, Hermann! The ice, it will not be-’

‘Hang on, Louis. We’ll go round it.’ Bump … bump … bump …

The Marche aux Puces looked like a medieval fairground. Replete with heraldry and bunting, it was at a bend where the Canal de Jonage met the Rhone. There were gazogenes and velo-taxis , fiacres , wagons, sleighs and tram-cars, those vehicles of the Germans too, for several in uniform could be seen. Tents and marquees, kiosks and more permanent structures in rows, and people … people everywhere. Crowds of them. All colours of clothing. All sorb of faces. Perhaps four … maybe five or even six hectares and, rising right in the middle of it, the blue-washed, glass-and-iron cupola of the main building. Verdammt! ‘Let’s stick together, Louis,’ said Hermann, exasperated by what lay before them. ‘We’d better this time. Barbie won’t have had time yet to get the troops out in force. Charlebois …’

‘Will be dressed as a woman?’ asked the Surete.

‘A woman?’

‘Yes. It is what I think must have happened at the cinema on the night of the fire.’

‘And at those other fires in the Reich?’

Only the barest nod was given as the crowd was surveyed. ‘Claudine Bertrand would be bringing a special friend for Frau Weidling to play with.’

‘A Salamander,’ grunted Hermann, checking the Walther P38 that was still miraculously with him in spite of the dunking in the river. ‘Louis, hand me your Lebel.’

‘Is it that your weapon is all gummed up, Hermann, and you have need of mine before the shooting starts?’

‘No, but I’m going to have to strip it down and oil it later on.’

‘Good! My Lebel is in the river. Me, I am sorry for the loss but still have my bracelets.’

‘Then let’s get going. I’ll cover you.’

‘Hours, Hermann. It has been hours since we came so close to the Salamander and last saw Madame Rachline.’

Was it a warning of some kind? ‘And in about another hour this place is going to be swarming with Gestapo and it’ll be dark.’

‘He’ll have friends.’

‘Associates.’

‘Those who might offer help in exchange for a little something.’

‘Enemies too.’

And then from Hermann also, as they got out of the lorry, ‘Frau Weidling, Louis?’

It was one of those times when the soul had to be searched. The Suretes little Frog cast a doubtful glance up to that God of his for assistance, only to see that the sky was grey and threatening snow.

‘Yes. Ah yes, Hermann, the Salamander could well have called Frau Weidling to him since she did not die in the cinema fire as planned.’

‘Locked in the toilets?’

‘ Yes! ’

Above the constant murmur of the crowd came the shouts of the various vendors. Above these, the sounds of an accordion, a child who played a tambourine and another, the violin. Then in the distance somewhere there was a steam calliope.

It was a madhouse. No one would understand the urgency because they were all here to enjoy themselves and it was the holiday.

There were wicker baskets of used cutlery, stacks of old china-cups, saucers, tureens and platters in some of the booths, old glass, old pots, butter churns no one could possibly want these days, bits of tinware … ah, so many things. The images flashed by as Louis shouldered through the crowd and finally shouted, ‘Surete, Surete!’ and blew his whistle-stopped suddenly right in the middle of the Alley of the Old Maid’s Most Precious Possessions and gave it another blast.

The shrill sound of the police whistle was met with a stunned silence that gradually extended outwards from them as each person halted to look apprehensively his way.

‘Good! Now step aside,’ he shouted.

Ah, Gott im Himmel , another Bismarck! ‘Louis, why not ask where the Alley of the Caesars is?’

‘Because I already know where it is. On the other side of that.’

The main building.

The warehouses were down along the canal. They were not big. Indeed, they varied in size according to the needs of their owners, yet before each of them was a scavenged marble statue, a bust, a headless figure, all Roman, all of Caesars perhaps, it was hard to tell.

‘They remind me of Provence, Louis, of walking through the ruins of that hill fort,’ grumbled Kohler uncomfortably.

‘There were no statues that I recall. The Saracens must have taken care of them.’