Mayhem (51 page)

‘My apartment,' said the florist apologetically. ‘These days …'

‘The Thirties too, and the Twenties,' said the detective, taking it all in. How in the name of God had he managed to sleep and cook under that thing without hurting himself?

The pot was huge, the main column of the cactus bent where the ceiling had given it no more room. A secondary column leaned directly over the unmade bed. Another scratched the wall; a third caressed the photograph in glass of a dancer who'd forgotten her clothes and had shyly turned her back to the camera.

‘
Cereus Peruvianus,
' enthused St-Cyr with admiration. ‘It's perfect, my friend. Perfect!'

‘You can't mean that. You're just saying it. You
flics
are all the same! None of you buy a thing but you all come here …'

‘Please, I did not hear that, monsieur. If I buy, I pay.'

‘You can't want my Titan.'

He'd even named it. ‘Oh but I do.'

‘It'll take four men to move it,' seethed cat's fur. ‘Men are in short supply these days and costly.'

A real tiger. St-Cyr drew out the black leather billfold his mother had given him thirty years ago. ‘I have little time to negotiate. Here is three hundred francs. Deliver it to Number 93 the rue Lauriston, and see that you do or I will come back to haunt you.'

Number 93 the rue Lauriston … ‘I will need the vélo-taxi, monsieur.'

‘Keep it warm. Enclose a card. Say it's from Louis. Use two vélos if necessary but don't break it. Me, I want this thing just as it is.'

He pulled out a further hundred-franc bill. ‘Does stroking cat's fur really help to make the hands warm?'

The man tucked the finances away. ‘The plants used to, but now …'

St-Cyr thought to ask him if it had been his cat but left it unsaid. There was no sense in pushing his luck. ‘Use a couple of blankets to keep the cactus warm in transit. If anyone bitches, tell them you're doing a little job for the Sûreté as it used to be.'

Bilodeau watched the cactus-buyer walk away. There was a briskness, a looking-up to see his God perhaps. A smile, a wave to the heavens. All the world was crazy these days. Cat's fur! Of course it helped to keep one warm. How the hell else could half the population of Paris exist and half the cats have died if not to be eaten?

Locking the shop, he prepared to go and negotiate the help, but the cactus-buyer came rushing back.

‘Talbotte – you know him?'

The Préfet, the sourest bastard in France! ‘Of course, m'sieur.'

There was one poinsettia that had lost all but two of its leaves. ‘Send this to him. Gift-wrapped! Say, I hope you're feeling better.'

‘A coffee without milk or sugar, please.'

A polite one at last, a man of great sensitivity.

St-Cyr threw his hat on to a chair, then dumped his overcoat on top of it. Pipe, tobacco and matches were arranged. The view was suitable, the water of that grey-brown shade it always seemed to acquire in winter. Silt from Troyes, from Châtillon-sur-Seine, from upstream anyway, and more murders, rapes, muggings – crimes of passion than he'd care to remember.

There were no barges and the river, with but a few old men breaking the law along the quays to fish, looked desolate and empty.

He wondered if he'd ever see it from freedom's eyes again. In the autumn of 1940 the Germans had taken the barges and the larger of the tour boats for the invasion of England that had never materialized.

Russia would be their nemesis as it had been Napoleon's. Winter was everyone's curse in these wretched latitudes; ice and snow, the punishment rain had forgotten.

The tobacco was good – pre-war and Belgian, a gift from Hermann, for whom he could not, even with all his inner rage against what had happened to France, find in his heart of hearts anything but a wary affection. But would Hermann be forced into choosing loyalties again, as he himself had been forced?

It was a particular punishment God had laid on detectives these days.

The coffee wasn't ersatz, and the taste brought tears to his eyes. Ah Mon Dieu, what were they missing?

He knew the waiter would be watching for some sign and that he'd have seen the cup hesitate and been held out as if a chalice of holy wine or water.

Nothing more was needed, no further demonstration of appreciation.

The spires of the Church of Saint-Gervais-Saint-Protais were just visible, submerged and set against the ramparts of the rooftops. The Hôtel de Ville flew the German flag of course, but if one did not look that way it was almost as it once had been, except for the absence of the barges.

The table was reasonably private. The canary would cause some notice but the desire for a quiet think was too much.

Little birds were among the hardest to mount. This one had been done by an expert who knew both taxidermy and his birds. The feathers were all in place. There'd been a few bald spots – all birds had them. These spots had been carefully hidden as they would have been in life.

The wires that held the skeleton and filled out the shape in unsupported parts had been implanted properly. There'd have been no flesh left to putrefy after mounting. The bird smelled clean but of lavender, and he wondered then if it hadn't been kept in some other bureau drawer for years.

Taxidermists were not having an easy time of it these days. Mementos of household pets were not in fashion but consigned instead to the stew pot and the fur made into gloves and hats or used to rub oneself to keep warm.

There'd been an elastic band around the bird, a reminder perhaps, something with which to hold a little note that was now absent?

The possibilities were there. Always questions and more questions.

The choker of pearls was very fine, from the Belle Époque, that period before the last war. There were six strands of perfectly matched pearls, five millimetres in diameter, all of them curved outwards from a hinged plaque of silver on which were opposing poppies that had lost their petals. The fruit of the opium poppy? he wondered, alarmed, only to remember the avant-garde of that period had often played with it to their detriment and disgrace. The stems of the poppies were sinuously curved and folded in upon each other, though juxtaposed so that the seed heads faced away from each other at the top of the plaque.

Why had the girl had it in her room if not to wear when her clothes were absent, if not to remind some successful middle-class roué of his daughter or his grandmother perhaps? It took all types and a young woman's body usually brought out the worst in most men.

The single strand of pearls was of an even finer quality but much older. Perfectly matched and sized, the stones began with one superb pearl of five millimetres in diameter and then diminished to those of less than two. It made one think of the South Seas, of native girls and cannibals, of drums and rum and firelight and sweat in the night, of mosquitoes, of so many things.

The emerald earrings were indeed from South or Central America, Peru or Colombia perhaps. Very, very old, taken from some tomb perhaps.

Had all the pieces of jewellery belonged to the same person? Had they been from some legacy to the girl who had called herself Christiane Baudelaire, or had Madame Minou's Monsieur Antoine brought them to her?

Pierre Bonny's card-index file on the girl had held the notation, ‘
A Big One
'. – lots and lots of loot to be gained. Ah yes.

The crumpled photograph showed the girl anxious and yet entirely unaware that she was being followed. She'd been in a hurry and had turned away from a cluttered table in the flea market, perhaps to see if the next bus had come in, and if she could possibly catch it.

St-Cyr glanced at his watch. Ah Mon Dieu, it was almost four and he had one further thing to do before the morgue.

With the Benzedrine still floating around inside him, he felt as though he could go on for another forty-eight hours.

The canary lay atop the counter beneath which a lynx from Canada held a Hungarian partridge in its jaws while clinging to the branch of a birch tree.

The taxidermist, M Édouard Verdun, was thin and lofty and not inclined to inspect the work of others, no matter how good. It had been a long time since this one had paid him a visit. A dog that time, a pink ticket for a beagle bitch that had been left for mounting in the spring of 1937, the 15th of April to be exact. Number 603. A wealthy widow in her eighties from Chartres, a customer for years.

The woman had been murdered in her bath and the Sûreté had never paid up. He still had the dog in the window.

‘Look, I know all about it, eh?' grimaced St-Cyr. ‘I put it in my report, an absolute recommendation that the estate be made to pay you, but', he shrugged, ‘such things take time.'

Verdun drew himself up. ‘Patience is not bought with words, Inspector.'

‘It's Chief Inspector.'

‘No matter. As I was saying …'

‘Yes, yes, get on with it.'

‘Do you want my help or not?' snapped Verdun, defying answer until an apologetic nod was received. ‘These days no one hunts or fishes. There are no safaris, Inspector. Only German generals bring me their pets.'

St-Cyr ducked his head subserviently. Why was it that taxidermists – this one in particular – always engendered a whining servility?

The shop was full of lions and tigers, the heads of zebras and Thomson's gazelles, their skins, their pelts and more of them, all left to be picked up later. After the war, after the Occupation, or not at all. Out on the rue des Lions a few bicycles passed by and then the staff car of a German general, but it continued on and he heard the sigh of disappointment the taxidermist gave.

‘Look, I will personally see that you get paid for that other job.'

The slender fingers hesitated as they delicately felt the bird. ‘Five thousand francs, with interest.'

Ah Mon Dieu, the pinch was excruciating! ‘Tell me who did this one.'

‘First, the consultation fee is one hundred francs, Inspector. Out of necessity our prices have risen.'

In the name of Jesus, why must God do this to him? St-Cyr smoothed the bill but continued to hold on to it. Verdun moved the canary out of the detective's reach. ‘Usually I can tell whose work it is –
if
he's been in Paris and is long established. Usually, too, there is some sign. A tiny initial on one of the claws perhaps. Birds like this aren't easy, Inspector. If one takes pride in one's work, one likes to leave a little something.'

St-Cyr was impressed. ‘Like the hallmarks on old silver?'

‘Ah yes, exactly. The set of the eyes is another way; also, did he use stock eyes and hand-paint them, or take the trouble to have them custom-made?'

There was no stopping him now.

‘Then, too, is the body padded out with well-chopped tow? Cotton wool is no good, Inspector, and this one didn't use anything but the best.'

He put the bird down. ‘Without opening it up, I can't say more. There's no mark. The work's excellent – so good I have to feel the twinges of envy. Was he not in business here in Paris?'

Meaning he hadn't been. ‘Why would there have been a heavy elastic band around it?'

Verdun shrugged. ‘To remind the owner of something or to hold its ticket, but we would not do such a thing, nor do I think this one would either. No, someone else must have put the elastic there, someone who didn't know, or didn't appreciate fully, the quality of the workmanship, the hours, the labour of love, the …'

‘Good! Enough! So, for now that's sufficient.' St-Cyr swept the bird away and started for the door.

‘You can leave it here. A thought might come. I might be able to sell it for you. I have a general who is very partial to canaries.'

The pavement was narrow. There were two women coming towards him. ‘What general?' he asked, darting back.

‘He's actually not a general. He wears the blue uniform.'

‘Luftwaffe? Their airforce? Come, come, I'm in a hurry.'

Verdun knew he'd missed another 100 francs. ‘It has the anchor. Their navy.'

‘The Kriegsmarine?'

‘Stationed in Paris. The Hotel Lutétia, I think. A moment, please, Inspector. Yes … yes, here it is.'

He held up a white card. ‘The Vice Admiral Guenther Heinrich von Lion.'

Von Lion in the street of lions! Ah Mon Dieu … The Hotel Lutétia was the headquarters of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service – arch enemies of the SS and their Sicherheitsdienst, the SD, the secret service of the SS over on the avenue Foch!

The
pissoir
was rank. A plugged drain gave fjord to the yellow slime that had collected. A few cigarette butts, smoked down to their last toothpick, floated about giving tendrils of nicotine. Some bastard had jerked off against the flaking iron of the trough.

The Abwehr … the Abwehr … the Sicherheitsdienst … A canary.

‘Louis, what the hell's happened to you?' The morgue was freezing.

‘Me? I have just lost my lunch. The Abwehr, Hermann. The canary … It's just possible our Monsieur Antoine is an Abwehr agent.'

‘Jesus, you'd better read this then. It was left on the doorstep of the head juju man up at the Church of St Bernard, Father Eugène Delacroix.'

Louis read the thing, the pallor deepening as the blood drained completely away. ‘Is Christian Masuy also involved?' It was a cry, the bleat of a goat in trouble.

Masuy was also the Belgian, Georges Delfanne, who had invented for the Gestapo and their French counterpart the infamous torture of the bathtub.

‘Paul Carbone is enough, Louis. He and Lafont have been at each other's throats for years, or hadn't you heard, seeing as you were the one who told me of their feud?'

Carbone, a notorious Corsican gangster, worked out of Number 48 rue de Villejust, the Intervention-Referat that was mentioned in the priest's note.

‘But … Carbone and Lafont both work independently for the avenue Foch, Hermann, not the Abwehr any more?'