Carousel, p.25
Carousel, page 25
‘But the good Corporal let her go on the condition she agreed to meet him again.’
‘Yes … yes. He must have examined her papers. He … he must have been satisfied.’
Oona gave a sigh – one too deep, too deep! Kohler moved swiftly away. The bastard had to have a knife, otherwise he’d have taken a shot at him by now. ‘Did the Audit girl show Schraum her false papers?’ he sang out.
‘False papers …?’
‘She had an alias, dummkopf!’
‘I … I don’t know if she used it. I … I think she must have. About a month or so later he made contact with her again and this time she must have told him there was a very large collection and that her friend wished to part with all of it, preferably to one buyer.’
Kohler waited. Of fenheimer continued. ‘Early in September he met with the girl again in the flea markets of Saint-Ouen and this time she agreed to part with one of the coins as a sample. No money changed hands. The coin, we think, was to be returned if the price could not be arranged.’
Kohler cut the belt from Oona Van der Lynn’s ankles and this time she didn’t flinch, a bad sign – was it bad? Ah no …
Offenheimer stiffened. Kohler … Kohler …
Again the Gestapo’s voice came from a distance. ‘How many coins were there supposed to have been in the collection?’
‘Four hundred and eighty-seven. Enough to fill one of those Empire coin cabinets – we know this from the uncle in Stralsund. Schraum … Schraum must have told him of the cabinet.’
‘The coin went to Stralsund, to the uncle, eh?’ asked Kohler from off to the left again. ‘News of a fabulous collection that had never been reported to the authorities.’
‘That … that is correct. The uncle wired back that the coin was genuine and in excellent condition. Schraum was to enter carefully into negotiations.’ The woman gave a sigh and then a gasp.
Again Kohler steeled himself to her. ‘Did the uncle send the coin back as agreed or did greed get the better of him?’
Dealing with Kohler was like dealing with death! ‘The … the coin went to Reichsmarschall Goering.’ Where was Kohler now?.
‘Then what happened?’
‘They … they met, they negotiated. Again and again the girl said her friend wanted to be careful about things, that it wasn’t easy to get him to commit to a price but that he would be willing to part with a further sample.’
‘The thirty coins?’
Offenheimer yanked the woman closer. ‘Yes … yes, the thirty coins. By then we had all independently begun looking into Antoine Audit. We knew he had declared some of his valuables – a few paintings, some antiques. Most of his wealth was in his factories and in property. Bonny … Bonny thought Audit had hidden a great deal and wanted to search the caves in Périgord. Brandl felt there was much to be gained, but then the coins came back and Victor Morande was killed. We closed in on the girl only to find she’d been silenced, then … then Schraum himself was killed and …’
‘And Antoine Audit?’ asked Kohler from very near.
‘AUDIT HAS POWERFUL FRIENDS!’ shrilled Offenheimer. ‘Laval, the Premier; Lindermann a cousin of Martin Bormann, Herr Kohler. Bormann! Von Lindermann is the naval attaché in Bordeaux. Périgord is … is in his department.’
The Abwehr then, but another branch of it. The visitor and his girlfriend who had left the pâté et cetera at the Villa Audit. ‘Anyone else?’ he asked suddenly.
Offenheimer pushed the woman’s head forward. He’d shove her aside as Kohler came at them. ‘Hogenburg, a nephew of the Minister of Armaments. They are all friends of Audit, Herr Kohler. They all think very highly of him and that is why the avenue Foch turned the matter over to the rue Lauriston.’
So much for ‘delicate’ matters. Antoine Audit must damned well know of it too.
Kohler teased the knife from the Captain’s hand. ‘Two last items, my fine. First, are Lafont and Bonny still holding Giselle le Roy?’
Oona Van der Lynn began to sob with relief; Offenheimer hardly breathed. ‘Yes … yes, they still have her. She … she was too badly beaten to release.’
‘Did the kid refuse to co-operate?’
The pistol was pressed harder. ‘Yes, she … she wouldn’t spy on you.’
‘I’m not worth it. Now, did you smash this “Hilda” or not?’
Granny’s boy broke down completely. Kohler yanked Oona to her feet and wrapped his coat about her. She couldn’t find her voice, went all to pieces.
‘Yes … yes, I killed my sister, damn you!’ shouted the Captain. ‘She deserved to die!’
The urge to be his executioner was there, a foolish thought. ‘Then live with it. Go and smash another statue.’
‘YOU’LL PAY FOR THIS, KOHLER! THEY’LL NEVER LET YOU AND ST-CYR LIVE, NOT AFTER WHAT YOU DID IN VOUVRAY!’
‘Oona … Oona, hey listen. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to go that far. Honestly I didn’t. Look, I’m going to take care of you. I really mean it.’
She could not walk, she could not talk. Kohler swept her up into his arms and carried her back to the car.
The Club Mirage was on the rue Delambre in Montparnasse. At 2.47 a.m. behind locked doors, the place was jumping. Kohler breathed in the syrup of tobacco smoke, beer, wine, sweat and brandy, and grinned with relief.
Louis was tossing dice up at the zinc. From the balcony there was an excellent view. Eight hundred of the Wehrmacht’s finest laughed, jeered, whistled and clapped or beckoned as they swilled their collective booze and eighteen naked girls and mothers who should have known better stomped, kicked and jiggled their way through the number and the band let them have it!
Oona still shuddered at the memory of what had just happened to her. Hermann Kohler’s coat was rough and far too big. Cringing in her nakedness under it, she looked down to see watermarks where her bare feet had trod.
‘Relax, eh? Hey, try to forget it, Oona. Louis’ girlfriend will have a little something for you to wear.’
‘None of them have,’ she said blankly.
Kohler chucked her under the chin and gave her a grin. ‘She’s not one of those. Just give me a moment, eh? I’ve got to scan the horizon.’
Louis swept up the dice and raised a fist. Once, twice – three times he shook them. There was that little flick of the wrist and crash! the bones hit the zinc to scatter and run. Then the process began again. He was completely oblivious to the racket and to the clamouring herd that tried to reach the watering-hole while thrusting out their fistfuls of bills.
Blind to the eighteen beauties. Crash again. Now the sweep, now the first – always the right one … a taunt, a threat, a toss.
Kohler dragged his eyes along the line of threat and when he found the table, he picked out Henri Lafont, Pierre Bonny and Nicole de Rainvelle.
Giselle was with them. She’d been badly beaten – had had a ‘fall’ as the madams say in the trade. Bruises marred the fresh young cheeks, yellowing up into half-closed eyes. Her nose had been broken, her lips were swollen.
‘Herr Kohler, what is it? What’s wrong?’ Oona yanked at his jacket sleeve, only to hear him swear.
‘Look, I’m sorry. I’ve just seen someone.’
The girl clutched a grey fox-fur coat under her chin just as she was clutching Herr Kohler’s coat. The racket came to an end and the place erupted in a deafening roar as the dancers romped away and the house lights were dimmed.
Then she saw, as all of them were breathlessly seeing, a mirage walk on to the stage in a shimmering sky-blue sheath that was covered with tiny pearls. Tall, willowy, a gorgeous figure, a blonde with shoulder-length hair and what appeared at this distance to be absolutely stunning blue eyes.
There were diamonds on her fingers and wrists. Diamonds at her throat.
‘My dear, dear friends, a little song for you.’ The voice had warmth, depth, resonance and power. Not a man in the place stirred and even Hermann Kohler finally had to tear his gaze away from the little one in the fur coat, and Oona saw the tears running down his sagging cheeks.
A lion in its winter; a man in torment with himself.
She slid an arm through his but he had no time for her, only hatred for himself.
Crash! The dice hit the zinc in irritation. Crash again.
‘This is a song of lost love, my friends. Of a home that is far away, and of things we all wish and hope for. It is of a girl who has lost her lover and yearns for him with all her tender years. Letters do no good – isn’t that so?’
Eight hundred men, many of them sailors on leave, some from the submarines of the North Atlantic, held their collective breath. Gone were the floozies, the big-breasted laughing girls who had sweated and kicked their legs so high. In their places, this one’s voice lifted. It struck to the heart, the soul. It was bell-like, crystal clear, sweet, so sweet and earthy too.
It sang in French, it sang in German and once, just for a few brief seconds, a little Russian slipped in and Hermann Kohler knew the woman had done this especially for his friend.
Kohler wet his throat and tried to think. The song went on, lifting everyone. Not a man’s glass was touched, not an eye wavered. Bonny sulked, Henri Lafont beamed, Nicole de Rainvelle sipped champagne while Giselle lowered her swollen eyes.
One sailor wept openly. Another held him by the shoulders. Shell-shock? Lost comrades? Battle fatigue?
A boy in the olive-grey of the army stood out as if the chanteuse was singing only for him and he’d never been in love before that moment and would die for it.
‘Come on. Let’s find Louis. He and I have to talk.’
‘Is that her?’
‘Yes, that’s her. She gets ten per cent of the gate and she packs them in like this every night of the week.’
‘I meant the other one. The little one.’
They went downstairs quickly, too quickly, but the crowd was jammed and no one would let them through until the song had come to its close on a high, sad note. Hermann dragged her by the hand. He hit the first of the men as they cheered and applauded. He was shouting now. ‘Gestapo! Gestapo! Get the fuck out of my way!’
They reached the bar and he swung her in front of him. ‘Louis, what the Christ is up?’
St-Cyr tossed his head to indicate the table. The Corsicans – the Rivard brothers who owned the place – were keeping their distance.
‘A scratch!’ leapt the Frog. ‘A cat in the dark, Hermann. A Corsican cat!’ He threw the dice at Remi Rivard, the one with the face of a mountain, the one with the dark eyes that were so swift.
‘Sealed lips, eh?’ shouted Kohler angrily.
‘Eighteen stitches, Hermann. My left hand. Always the left side.’
‘Louis, this is Oona. Oona, meet Louis.’
St-Cyr brushed momentary eyes over the woman, nodding sagely. ‘We’ll discuss it later, madame, but for now, my partner and I have things to settle!’
It was a hiss, that last word. Hermann Kohler laid a revolver on the zinc. The one called St-Cyr swept it up and cocked it.
‘Don’t!’
Both of the Rivard brothers had spoken at once. ‘So, okay, my fines. First the dice are to be returned from your floor, and then a few small words of answer to the question I have been asking you for far too long.’
Kohler downed a nearby beer and wiped his lips with the back of a hand. ‘Louis, I think I know what you want. His name’s Réjean Turcel or something very close to it. About sixty-three years of age and tough as hell, good with the knife and good on his feet. He was shacked up with Madame Van der Lynn in the house on the quai Jemmapes. He’s the new owner of the carousel.’
‘Réjean Turcel?’ shrilled the Frog. ‘Réjean Tourmel perhaps, EH?’ he shouted fiercely at the Rivard brothers.
They didn’t even flutter. All grace and fluid motion of their own, they continued serving up the drinks, taking the cash and running their swift dark Corsican eyes over the crowd.
‘Réjean Tourmel, so what’s he done, EH?’ answered the one with the face of a mountain.
These Corsicans were all related. ‘Slashed my hand, I think,’ mused the Frog, now somewhat subdued and trying to figure things out.
Kohler plucked at the mountain’s leather jerkin. ‘Give him another pastis and a little more water. Make it two of them, then leave us alone or we’ll torch the place. I’d like another beer.’
‘Steal one then.’
He took out the Walther P-38. ‘Louis, ten francs a bottle, eh? and fifty says the place will empty in less than five minutes.’
‘Too many would be trampled to death, Hermann. It’s all right. Me, I think I know what’s up.’
Kohler added a touch of water to that filthy yellowish-green muck Louis drank. Insipid, cloying, the taste of liquorice that, after indulging only once, some two and a half years ago, had stayed with him ever since.
Oona watched as the liquor became milky. St-Cyr made room for her and when she hesitated, he noticed she was wearing nothing under the coat.
‘Louis, we had a bit of trouble over on the Île Saint-Louis. A collector of stuffed canaries. She’s okay now, I think.’
‘Good!’ The pastis vanished. The glass was slid the length of the bar. ‘Another,’ said the Sûreté.
The cheering and the applause had subsided again into that breathless hush of expectancy. Again the voice of magic came. ‘My friends, I have a little something for you now that is very dear to my heart. It is a song of a boy in the trenches of that other war. He is standing watch, is he not? He knows the battle will come and that in the morning he and others will die. His thoughts are therefore of home, of a girl he once knew. If only he could have made her understand, if only he hadn’t said what he did.’
Louis grimaced and shut his eyes as he gripped the edge of the zinc.
Oona Van der Lynn tried to understand these two men. Quite obviously there was a bond between them that went much deeper than that of mere friendship.
The pistol was put away. The song reached into their hearts. All around them fistfuls of new francs which had to be spent in the occupied country were lowered into waitfulness.
The zinc was wiped. The taller of the two Corsicans let his eyes sift over the crowd, looking always for trouble.
‘Réjean Tourmel, Hermann. Now I know why that coin was left on Christabelle Audit’s forehead. I put that one away for seven years. Robbery with violence and extortion. The attempted murder of a police officer and a detective from the Sûreté. This one!’
‘Devil’s Island?’ asked the Gestapo.
St-Cyr shook his head. ‘Not me, someone else. Ten years, from 1905 until 1915, Hermann. I put him in the Santé.’
Right here in Paris. ‘Along with Victor Morande?’
‘Perhaps. In any case, Lafont and Bonny both knew of Réjean’s association with me. Pierre will have been the one to leave the coin. He’ll have thought it funny.’
‘Actually, he got Nicole to do it for him.’
Louis clucked his tongue and downed his pastis neat. ‘Salut! my old one. Let’s go and have a little talk with them.’
To approach the table was not easy due to the crowd, but as they neared it, Hermann Kohler automatically went to the right and the one called Jean-Louis St-Cyr went to the left. There was no signal, no word or sign one to the other. They simply moved as extensions of one being.
Oona did her best to follow first Kohler, then St-Cyr, only to find they had left her to approach the table on her own.
They had their hands on their guns. Because they and she were standing, they blocked the view of some and there were objections. One soldier said, ‘Here, you can sit on my lap’; another pulled at the coat and she had to wrench it away from him.
The spotlight was concentrated on the stage. The chanteuse sang her heart out.
When Oona reached the table, Hermann Kohler was still some distance to the right; St-Cyr well off to the left.
‘You … you killed my husband,’ she said, but knew her words could not possibly have been heard. He was incredibly handsome, this man she’d spoken to. Tall, virile, clean-cut and well groomed. A film star, a banker … polished, so polished but with small, dark, round eyes that were hard and glistening with hatred.
‘Sit down,’ he said, indicating a chair that had been taken at another table but whose owner now stood giving applause.
She hesitated. The German owner of the chair would not know it had been taken … Lafont gave a high, falsetto laugh that startled her and made her skin crawl. ‘Take it!’ he hissed, and the girl in the canary-yellow dress who sat beside him, the girl with the shaggy mop of curls and the lovely eyes, watched with a tenseness that was both carnal and demented.
The pasty-faced older man, the one with the receding hair and the heavy cheeks, had no interest in this … this Madame Van der Lynn. To him, she was already dead.
The battered girl wept and cowered in her overly large fur coat. Kohler took a chair; St-Cyr, one also.
‘So, my friends,’ began the one called Henri Lafont, ‘a little progress report, eh, Louis? Then the latest ground rules.’
St-Cyr cocked his revolver and took aim at the banker. Kohler pressed his pistol into the fleshy stomach of the balding one.
‘No rules, no game,’ breathed the Sûreté’s detective. ‘Hands off, or you get nothing. I know where the gold is hidden.’
‘Louis …?’ began Hermann.
The falsetto laughter was harsh against the songbird’s voice. There were angry shouts – threats from the audience.
Lafont pushed St-Cyr’s revolver aside, leaning heavily over the table as he did so. ‘Listen, my fine, you hold no cards. That one’, he indicated the stage, ‘is mine. Cough up and we’ll see if we can find the right syrup for you.’
The one called St-Cyr could barely contain his rage. Hidden beneath the table, the battered girl’s hand reached out to hers and Oona took the trembling fingers into her own.
The guns were put away. The Corsican brothers fluttered closely. Two magnums of champagne had been brought. ‘They’re on the house, Monsieur Henri,’ said the one with the face of ground meat. ‘If anything else is required, just ask,’ said his brother.
