CHAPTER ONE
Paris, France
December 31, 1940
5:17 A.M.
The tall man turned onto rue Jacob and moved silently along the sidewalk toward the building, and the specific apartment, detailed in the letter tucked into the breast pocket of his heavy wool coat. He clicked a flashlight on every few seconds to illuminate his path in the darkness; he didn’t want to trip and thereby make noise to alert people he was coming.
He didn’t mind the blackout, though; in fact, quite the opposite. Flitting around Paris doing a dirty job for the Germans was a despised but lucrative endeavor, so the fewer people who saw him the better. That was the best reason to do this at night, or early before the sun rose, but he’d discovered another good reason to go first thing in the morning: to catch his suspects unaware, to surprise them when they were too groggy or hungover to lie. Or to lie well, anyway.
It wasn’t that he liked his new job, not that exactly. But he’d lost his old one at the bank when the Germans took over the city, and he had no other way to provide for himself and his aging mother.
And it was challenging in a way his bank job wasn’t, he had to admit that, because he’d never thought of himself as an intimidating man, despite his height. He was too thin, and his mother had always described him as baby-faced. She still did even though he was almost fifty. He wasn’t scary-looking, no, but he had the sandy hair and blue eyes that the Germans liked.
Of course, the gun and black leather wallet with official credentials dosed him up with a lot more confidence to knock on doors, to ask questions. To get aggressive. One aspect of the job he did enjoy was the look of respect in the eyes of the people he visited. Or maybe it was fear, which was even better.
These people deserved to be afraid. They looked down on him, but those he talked to were the worst of the worst. Writing letters to the police and to the Germans, snitching on their neighbors, their friends. Even their own family members sometimes.
He’s violating curfew every night.
She’s having sex for money.
That illegitimate child is Jewish.
They’re both buying and selling on the black market.
In school they called it tattling. On the streets it was called snitching. In Paris these days it was at a new level, people taking out their petty jealousies, exorcising resentments that had built up for years. People were using the strict German regime to get their neighbors fined, beaten, or jailed for years of grievances, real or imagined.
That’s why he was stalking down rue Jacob before dawn, to investigate one such claim. A neighbor had written to the authorities about a woman buying food and clothing over and above her allotted rations. The snitch claimed she was some kind of princess, which could make it interesting, the man thought.
He’d never met a princess.
He wondered if she’d be intimidated when he confronted her. He needed a few more details from the snitch, but then he’d go straight to her—
Ah, wait, here’s the building, he thought. He was there already. And who is this coming toward me? It’s still curfew, so I will make a note of that!
“Do you live in this building?” the tall man demanded of the stranger, in his most authoritative tone.
“Who are you?” the
stranger replied.
“My name is Guy Remillon, and I’m asking the questions.” He adjusted his new hat, which was still a little tight. “Do you live here?”
“None of your business.”
“If I’m the police it is.”
Remillon didn’t like the look of disdain he was getting, and liked even less the rude response he got.
“You’re not police, of that I’m sure. Now leave me alone.”
He was about to reply, and forcefully, when the door swung open and a man stepped out.
“Who are you, and what are you doing at this hour?” Remillon asked.
“I would like to know the same from you,” the other man replied. “Don’t tell me you’re here on official business.”
“Oh yes, most definitely.” Remillon straightened to his full height. “A very serious allegation against a woman in this building.”
“Is that so? What allegation?”
“Black marketeering. She could be transported for that.”
“Yes. She could.”
Remillon looked past the other man and into the lobby of the building, which was why he didn’t see the gun until the last second. Didn’t see it until it was too late. Remillon’s eyes opened wide, then his mouth did the same, and he felt a punch to the chest before staggering backward into the middle of the street. He was confused for no more than a second, then his already-dead body crumpled to the cobbles. The new hat that he’d bought with his first paycheck from the Germans rolled away as his head hit the ground, making three wobbly revolutions before coming to rest upside down in the gutter.
CHAPTER TWO
December 31, 1940
10:17 A.M.
Chief Louis Proulx barged into my office without so much as a knock on the door, which would have given me a moment to swing my feet off my desk and maybe even open my eyes.
“Detective Lefort?” he said, emphasizing the word “detective.” “It is Homicide Detective Henri Lefort, isn’t it?”
“You know perfectly well—”
“Are you seriously telling me you didn’t hear a thing this morning?” He slapped my report, which was a blank piece of paper jammed into a manila folder, onto the desk where my feet had just been. “No shouting, no screaming? How about the shot itself, for God’s sake?”
“I’m a heavy sleeper.”
“You were drunk.”
“Someone can be both drunk and asleep,” I pointed out. “But either way I was off duty, and when I’m off duty, my liver is none of your business.”
He shook his head, apparently not wishing to debate either philosophy or my off-duty prerogatives. “What are you working on?”
“A bottle of Irish whiskey.”
“Here, Henri, for Christ’s sake. At your job.”
“Ah. Not so much, as it happens. When the Germans corralled most of our young men for war or work, they also removed the majority of our criminal population. I hope that’s going terribly for them, by the way. They should employ their own criminals.”
“Their own criminals are wearing military uniforms and are busy stinking up our city,” he said, but I noticed he lowered his voice. Sensible, too; it was starting to seem like you couldn’t trust the people that you used to.
“The truest words you’ve ever spoken.”
“Right, then.” He perched himself on the edge of my desk. “Since you didn’t see or hear a damn thing, you’re not any kind of witness.”
“Oh, is that how that works?”
“Funny. How it works is that if you’re not a witness, you can be the lead detective.”
“And by lead you mean only, right?” He started to speak but I cut him off, knowing what he was going to say. “Resources don’t allow for more than one … I get it.”
“Correct.” He stood and smiled. “At least you won’t have to travel far to the crime scene.”
“Who was the mec?”
“The dead man? No idea. But he had a gun and some German credentials on him, so either a thief, an informer, or … something else.”
“Any idea why he was at my building?”
“Did you just want me to solve the whole thing so you can sit here with your feet on your desk snoozing?”
“Can’t say I’d mind, honestly. Cold and dangerous out there, much nicer in here.”
“Sorry to disappoint, but I’ll be the one staying warm and dry. Maybe our dead man had something more on him that will tell his story.” He opened the door
and flashed that insincere smile at me again. “If not, I’m sure you’ll figure it all out. Have fun at the morgue.”
“And by morgue, you mean…?”
I was asking because the authorities had taken to using the jail cells in our building, the Préfecture, as the morgue. The combination of a high death rate since they’d come to town and some faulty ancient plumbing at the actual morgue had required the sausage-eaters to find extra space. They’d settled on the dank, cold jail beneath us, figuring that we’d want victims of murder close by for our investigations. I didn’t see the logic, myself, since in my experience the absolute worst witnesses were dead people.
He pointed downward. “I do, yes.”
“So no autopsy, or are they doing those here now, too?”
“They are not, but he was shot once in the heart. We don’t need a medical professional to tell us that.”
“Did someone at least dig the bullet out for me to look at?”
“You’re assuming there’s one inside him.”
I couldn’t tell if he was irritating me on purpose. “Well now, I wouldn’t have to assume if someone had done a goddamn autopsy, would I?”
“Very true.”
“Well, maybe next time.” But my sarcasm was lost on him.
“Probably not, if the cause of death is obvious.”
“Great. Back to my bullet, can you get someone to have a look at least?”
“I suppose we could arrange that, if they didn’t find one at the scene.”
“Well, did they?”
“There you go again, asking me to do your job. Have fun in the morgue.” He gave me a cheery wave and didn’t wait for my reply before shutting the door.
“You already said that,” I muttered, for no one’s benefit but my own.
I stood next to the naked body of a tall, sandy-haired, and slightly emaciated man who had been shot once, right through the heart.
“Here you are, sir.” A uniformed officer who looked to be in his late teens handed me a folder, which I opened and quickly scanned. “Also, someone from the German High Command is here, wanting to see the body. I don’t know why.”
“Paperwork.”
“I’m sorry, sir?”
“Paperwork. The Germans are all about papering everything, and that includes documenting each and every murder of their new subjects. You can show him in.”
“Yes, sir. He said he doesn’t speak French, but I can translate.”
“German speaker, eh? Probably one of the reasons you got this job.”
“Yes, sir. Lucky me.”
The officer disappeared and came back a moment later with a nasty-looking piece of work. He was as tall and emaciated as our victim, but also had the misfortune to be bald, gaunt, and appeared not to have been exposed to
the sun for the past decade.
“Good God, man,” I said. “Did you come to see the body or check in as a corpse?”
The German fixed his eyes on me, and they were brimming with contempt. “Quoi?” he said, establishing that he knew at least one word in French, even if that word was only “what.”
“I was merely wondering, how long since you yourself died?” I looked him up and down. “A couple of weeks, I’d guess. Maybe a month?”
The flic declined to translate word-for-word, I noticed, probably because he was busy turning bright red with the effort of not laughing.
The Kraut decided to ignore my question and instead grabbed the file from my hands. He perused it for maybe five seconds and then spent a moment looking from it to the corpse. He finally handed the file back to the officer and asked something in German. He nodded at the response, and turned on his heel and left.
“What did he say to you?” I asked.
“He thanked me for my time and professionalism, and said you would be arranging for me to do some real policing based on my excellent work assisting with this matter.”
“I can only assume from your glib attitude and baseless optimism you’ve not been with the Paris police for very long?”
“Six weeks, sir. It was either the police or some Kraut factory in the Rhineland.” He looked around the dank room with a grimace. “And I’m still not sure if I made the right choice.”
“You did, son. What’s your name?”
“Renaud. Paul Renaud.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty.”
“I could use an impertinent flic from time to time.”
“Impertinent?”
“It was a compliment. You remind me of me, when I was young and stupid.” He bristled and opened his mouth, but I clapped him on the shoulder and grinned. “Also a compliment. You’re gonna need a thicker skin, though.”
“I’m guessing you can help with that,” he said with a smile.
“Oh, most definitely.” I turned to the body. “Flip him onto his side for me. Facing away.”
Renaud grimaced again but did as I asked. The dead man had a few large moles and more hair than I expected on his back, but no holes in it.
“What are you looking for?” Renaud asked, and let the body fall back to supine when I nodded for him to do so.
“An exit wound.”
“And since there wasn’t one, the bullet is still inside him?”
“Exactement.”
“And that means…?”
I liked his eagerness to learn, so I didn’t mind the questions in the slightest. He really did remind me of me at that age: equal parts ignorant, curious, and appropriately disrespectful of authority.
“Whether or not the bullet is still inside him only matters because it means it’s still retrievable. If we can get it, we might be able to tell what kind of gun he was shot with.”
“And if we find a suspect who has the same gun…”
“Right.”
He leaned over the body, peering at the neat hole in Remillon’s chest. “Where inside do you think it is?”
“No clue. Bullets bounce around inside a human body like a rubber ball. Could be anywhere above the waist. I’ve seen someone get shot in the chest and cough the bullet up as he died.”
“Merde.”
“Not pleasant. Even less so for him, of course. Anyway, I’ll arrange for a doctor to come by and have a look. In the meantime, where are his things?”
“In my office.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward a desk that was bare save for a pile of clothes and some other bits and pieces. I walked over to inspect everything.
“Ration cards, identification,” I murmured, mostly to myself, “ah, and look at this, a Luger P08.”
“Technically a Mauser.”
“I’m sorry?”
“It was a Luger P08, but Mauser took over production after the last war.” He shrugged. “Same weapon though.”
“You’re a firearms expert, are you?”
“Just a hobby.”
“Good one to have for wartime. You happen to know whether the gun was found on him?”
“Where else would it have been?”
“If it was tucked into his pants or in a pocket, that tells a different story than if it was found on the ground beside him.”
“How so?” I didn’t answer, wanting him to figure it out, and after a few seconds a look of understanding seemed to wash over him. “Ah, yes, if it was on the ground, he’d have been holding it. Maybe pointing it.”
“Right. Maybe he started whatever ended him.”
“Whereas if it was in his pocket or waistband … got it.” He nodded, then looked down, as if disappointed with himself. “I’m afraid I don’t know where it was found. I wasn’t here when he was brought in.”
“No way for you to know then.”
He looked up quickly. “Wait a second. I probably should have mentioned this before, but that Nazi who was here just now.”
“What about him?”
“He looked through
the dead mec’s things, too. Only, he found something, a piece of paper, and kept it.”
“Kept it?”
“I saw him put it into his coat pocket.”
“Interesting. And inappropriate. Any idea what it was?”
“No, I didn’t really pay attention to this stuff, sorry. Just looked like a piece of paper folded in half.”
“Just a plain piece of white paper? And did you see any writing on it?”
“Actually, it was blue. And no, no writing that I saw, but it was a quick look so there might well have been, and I just didn’t see it.”
“Anything else you can think of?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, I best track down that piece of paper. I don’t like it when someone hides something from me like that. Then again, it tells me it’s important information, and I do like that. Especially if I’m not supposed to see it.”
“You’re talking about the Gestapo thug who was just here.”
“I was, not this poor fellow.” I looked down at the body of Guy Remillon. “Although you have to agree, that Nazi didn’t look much better than this mec.”
“True, sir.” Renaud grinned. “Perhaps you’d best hurry.”
“Indeed.” I returned the smile. “Did you catch his name, by any chance?”
“No, sir, I didn’t.”
“No, me neither.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “Maybe I’ll try the real morgue. Someone there is bound to know him.”
CHAPTER THREE
My first trip was back upstairs to look for Nicola Prehn, who’d not been at her desk when I rolled into work. Nicola was an early bird and the smartest person in the murder squad. If they ever allowed women to become cops, and given the way the world was turned upside down I could see it happen, well, she’d be running the entire force within a week. She’d be good at it, too, and I knew that for a fact: She ran the operations in the apartment we shared like a major general. Always food for breakfast, even these days, and one or two fresh items for the evening meal.
Except this morning. This morning, I’d gotten up to an empty apartment and, worse, an empty fridge. Not even a pot of coffee on the stove. It didn’t matter to me that coffee these days tasted like sewage water filtered through ground bugs, the point was there was none ready and waiting for me.
I’m aware that makes me sound like either a spoiled brat or an abusive husband. The former might be close to the truth, the latter couldn’t be farther from it. The fact was, Nicola also happened to be my sister. And that was a secret we’d kept from the police, who we both worked for, those same clever people who were trained and equipped to find out your worst secrets. This was definitely ours, because it hid another, and much more nefarious, truth: I’d taken my brother’s name twenty-two years ago after he died on the battlefield in my arms. The police had been trying to pin a murder case on me back then, and in that moment the only exit I saw was through becoming him. Nicola had been happy enough that I survived the ghastly war, and her choices were either to turn me in and lose both brothers forever, or help me shore up the lie. She chose the second, obviously.
I was making my way to speak to Chief Proulx when she stormed into the open office area where she worked as a secretary.
“Henri, may we speak, please?” Her voice was calm but I could see a glint of panic or desperation in her eyes. Her head indicated my office would be the spot for our discussion, so I followed her in there and closed the door.
“I need your help,” she said.
“I can see that.”
“It’s Daniel. He’s been arrested.”
My heart sank at the same time alarm bells started ringing in my head, blocking out what Nicola was saying next. If my colleague and her boyfriend Daniel Moulin had been arrested, I might be next—he’d started to play a tangential role in what people were beginning to call the Resistance. And the Germans were beating, arresting, and shooting people they suspected of being Resistance members.
Torturing them, too, to find out who else was working against the occupiers. I’d played a minor role in freeing someone recently, which had connected me with Daniel’s brother, a major player, and I’d had no choice but to help them with an operation of their own. ...
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