Mannequin Read Online Free

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    Ah merde … ‘My chief wants me to look into things,’ sang out Kohler so that his voice would echo too. It was a lie of course.
    â€˜Your chief …? Piss off. You’ve no jurisdiction here. Boemelburg …’
    â€˜Cash is cash, Préfet. The Resistance may have knocked off this little nest egg to buy guns and explosives from naughty boys who shouldn’t sell them.’
    â€˜The terrorists?’ snorted Talbotte, doubling a fist. ‘Don’t be an imbecile, Haupsturmführer. It was a straight gangland snatch and shooting. The coup de grâce at one metre for misbehaviour.’
    In other words, pushing the right bell at the wrong time! ‘Done with an eleven millimetre service revolver, Préfet?’ sang out Kohler like a buzzard trying to pick the bones before the lions closed in.
    Talbotte shrugged magnanimously. Yielding a little information could not matter. A gram or two of the flesh so as to discover why Kohler had shown up unannounced. A little of the blood.
    â€˜Yes, yes, an eleven millimetre most probably. Ballistics are still working on it.’
    â€˜After four days? Hey, that’s a typical Resistance gun, my friend. I’d better jot that down and let the chief know of it.’
    â€˜Nom de Jésus-Christ, now wait a minute! We are not sure of this.’ Talbotte turned to the others and raked them with a hiss. ‘A moment, you understand? Let me deal with this one personally.’
    Clapping his fedora on one of the Venuses and throwing his overcoat over the other, the préfet launched himself down the stairs with both fists at the ready. Blue serge suit and tie and all the rest. Dressed like a banker too.
    Of medium height, square and tough … ah Gott im Himmel, yes … the préfet was nearly sixty years of age. There was Basque blood in him somewhere …
    The swift, hard dark eyes of a gangster savaged the intruder. The bully, the street bastard and top cock of the dung heap, roared up to the mincemeat from Wasserburg and snorted garlic at him.
    â€˜Why are you and that fart of yours not in Lyon?’
    â€˜Oh that. We wrapped it up in style and slept all the way home on the train. Smooth as silk. We’re raring to go.’
    â€˜So, where is Louis?’
    A smile would be best and the offering of a cigarette. ‘Busy.’
    â€˜You shit! I don’t smoke with traitors, Kohler. Traitors! ’
    The insult echoed. It crashed all around them, shocking Kohler. It referred to a previous case, a lesson he had not quite learned …
    â€˜What happened in Vouvray was justice, Préfet. Justice! If you were anything of a cop and not so fucking corrupt and in bed with the SS and their friends, you’d know all about it.’
    This was heresy. The cigarette was still shaking. Clearly Kohler was terrified his confrères might still wish to punish him for far too zealous an attention to ‘justice’, especially when one of their own had been involved.
    And just as clearly the Resistance still thought his partner and friend—a known patriot—was a collaborator, ah yes!
    Talbotte wagged a reproving finger. ‘You should not have got the Organization Todt to repair Louis’s house, mon fin. This Resistance you speak of may well have planted the little bomb that accidentally killed Jean-Louis’s fornicating wife and child instead of himself but they will come back if I should give the nod, eh? The nod.’
    The shit. Louis’s wife had been fooling around behind his back but had decided to come home.
    â€˜The explosion took out all the windows,’ breathed Kohler, ‘to say nothing of smashing up the front of the house and getting his neighbours angry at him for costing them their windows too.’
    â€˜Which you had the Todt replace as well, and at cost to yourself.’
    â€˜So what? It was personal.’
    Talbotte lit up and blew smoke through flaring nostrils.