Tapestry

Начало книги

Each stood in a doorway, out of the rain, and when the slit-eyed, blue-blinkered light from Louis’s torch found the blocky faces, Kohler saw that impassive gazes were returned.

Each then evaporated into the blackout, the click-clack of the Occupation’s wooden-soled shoes earnestly retreating along the passage de la Trinite, a lane so narrow and old, water rushed down its centre finding the shoes first and sewers second. Rain, an icy, bone-numbing rain: Paris, Thursday 11 February 1943 at 11.47 p.m.

It gushed from downpipes to fountain across the passage, blocking all reasonable access to the velo-taxi that had been crammed into a doorway. A bicycle taxi across whose backside bold letters gave … Ach, mein Gott, could a better-chosen name have been found? PRENEZ-MOI. JE SUIS A VOUS. Take me. I’m yours. And stolen too!

‘HERMANN, LET ME!’

Jesus, merde alors, how many times had he heard Louis yell it like that? A rape, another grisly murder probably and they not home more than an hour. Dragged off the train from Colmar, Alsace shy; and now the Greater German Reich, ordered here or else. Two honest cops, one from each side, and fighting common crime when everybody else was in on it. ‘She’s all yours, mon vieux. I would never have found her without you.’

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