Free Tapestry by J. Robert Janes Page A

telephone caller—and as yet they had no idea of what else had happened last night. More victims, further killings. The attacks were escalating, the wives and fiancées of POWs were being targeted, mistakes made, of course, the hair taken in some cases, the handbags in all—identity papers, ration cards and tickets—and wedding or engagement rings, especially if worn.
    ‘Five crimes in one night, Hermann, when invariably we get one or two at most, and certainly these can’t all be connected, and yet … and yet we are …’
    ‘Kept busy as hell but not supposed to have been assigned to the stamps and not to Lulu either?’
    Had some overzealous despatch officer been having fun with them? ‘Not one assailant but several, and though there is still some question with the Trinité attack, certainly in the academy abduction and killing, the Au Philatéliste Savant robbery and the Drouant attack, information must definitely have been known beforehand.’
    Especially as certain things had been left in that safe! ‘Noëlle Jourdan, Louis.’
    ‘There, too, for how, please, did the press know she could be tempted and would be on the night shift and looking after Madame Guillaumet?’
    ‘And why did she consider it her duty to let those bastards photograph the woman?’
    Rudi, who had been watching them, could no longer contain himself. Surprisingly agile on the balls of his little feet, he was all purpose and swift to it. A plate crowded with Salzstangen , the small salt rolls, was in one meaty hand, a tankard of beer in the other.
    ‘Werte Herren,’ my dear sirs, he whispered conspiratorially as he lowered himself into a chair and spread over the table, ‘our Soldatenheime , our troop hostels, are being watched, our boys tailed on their evenings out. Pigalle, eh? Those bare breasts they love to get their hands on. The Bal Tabarin with its sacrificial virgins or the Naturiste with its snake charmers. Lovesick boys, Hermann. Boys who are easy to tail since like dogs, they return to those they think are in heat.’
    Gossip was like flour to Rudi.
    ‘The Soldatenkino, my Hermann. Those are also being watched. After each film, don’t the street girls with the sweetest voices troll the pavements even though they know it is verboten to approach any man and forbidden also for the men to pick them up and not use one of the licensed brothels that are reserved entirely for us?’
    Out of Paris’s 120 legalized brothels, 40 had been taken over by the Wehrmacht but … ‘ Ach, mein Gott, Rudi. Tailed through the blackout? You’re being paranoid.’
    Stung, the battering ram of a challenging fist was thrust at him only to calm itself and wag a reproving finger.
    ‘This is serious. There are whispers among the brass and visiting big shots that Gestapo Boemelburg is not just due his retirement but beyond it and that someone with far more muscle even than our Walter is now needed.’
    He would let them digest that little mouthful, thought Rudi. He would offer each a salt roll and suggest they take two, since it was entirely due to Boemelburg that they had been allowed to continue fighting common crime and hadn’t been put up against a wall and shot.
    ‘The French—excuse me, Herr Oberdetektiv—are beginning to doubt us, Hermann.’
    A pull at the tankard was necessary, the thick, wide lips pursed, the beer no doubt judged more than acceptable.
    ‘Things are changing,’ went on Rudi as he fingered a Salzstange before biting into it. ‘Some of those who openly supported the Führer and his many legitimate and necessary causes, and saw those as their own, have begun to drift away. Verdammte Verräter, Kotzscheisser! ’
    Damned traitors, nauseating shits. He was really worried. The Battle for Stalingrad had been the Reich’s first defeat that had been publicly announced and followed by three official days of mourning.
    ‘The Propaganda Staffel, Hermann. My informants there tell me that they have been ordered to constantly