Mannequin Read Online Free Page A

Kohler’s French was really very good. ‘So out of charity to the two of you, let us agree to co-operate a little, eh? Let us show the good will among police forces so that your Führer will be pleased.’
    The hypocritical bastard! Kohler chanced an uncertain glance up the stairs to the spellbound audience. The préfet’s gaze never left him. Hooded under thick black brows, the eyes waited.
    A shrug would have to do. Louis wouldn’t like it but … ah what the hell. ‘So, okay, let’s co-operate. How many held the place up?’
    Still the eyes didn’t shift.
    â€˜First you tell me why you are interested in this affair?’
    â€˜My chief …’
    Talbotte flicked ash at him. ‘Your chief, as you call him, was just here. The Sturmbannführer Boemelburg is convinced the terrorists had nothing to do with the matter because, Inspector, I have said so and what I say goes.’
    â€˜Bon. So, how many were involved? Three … was it three? One to watch the street, one to hold the gun on the employees and the last to …’
    â€˜I’m still waiting, Inspector. Why have you such an interest in something that can concern you not in the slightest!’
    The sparrows on the mezzanine hadn’t moved. The Venuses gazed sublimely down upon the world … ‘All right. A small affair. A girl is missing. She may have seen something.’
    â€˜A girl. So, good. Yes, that is good. Now a little more, I think.’
    â€˜Her name, eh? You first. Were there three men or was there a woman with them?’
    â€˜This girl, perhaps?’ asked the Chief of Police pleasantly enough. ‘Please, is this what you wish to know, Inspector?’
    Ah Gott im Himmel, the bastard … ‘Just, was there a woman with the men who robbed this bank?’
    Talbotte filled his lungs with smoke and held it in only to release it slowly through the nostrils as a dragon would before eating a peasant and his pig.
    â€˜Then ask someone else but do so in the street.’
    The fingers were snapped, the voice thrown back over a shoulder and up the stairs. ‘You and you, accompany the inspector to his car and switch on the ignition for him. If he resists, give the sieve to his brand-new radiator and abort the tyres to remind him that in Paris it’s not only the gangsters who do things properly!’
    The birds took wing, drawing their guns as they came down the stairs.
    The banker blinked and wiped sweat from a worried brow. Now why was that? wondered Kohler. A banker in trouble after the fact!
    Out on the street, he grinned and said, ‘Okay, okay, you win, eh, until we meet again.’
    The custodian of the gates to the garden of the Palais Royal couldn’t remember seeing anyone remotely resembling Joanne Labelle. ‘In here, a girl like that?’ he said. ‘Ah no, no, Inspector. I would most certainly be aware of such a one.’
    You snob! grimaced St-Cyr, disliking the man intensely for looking down on the citizens of his beloved Belleville but nodding in agreement several times. ‘How stupid of me. A girl like that in a place like this …’ He waved the snapshot Dédé had given him. ‘Other girls perhaps but not such a one as her, especially as there were ten degrees of frost and the garden would have been all but deserted.’
    Vincent Girandoux drew himself up until his dark blue cap with the gold braid and badge of authority all but touched the roof of his tiny kiosk. ‘Inspector, the domestics aren’t appreciated in the garden. Nannies are, of course, and the nurses, the companions of the elderly ladies who live here but …’ He teased a cuff of his dark blue greatcoat with gold braided epaulets and brass buttons down a bit. ‘But if the tenants thought for a moment …’
    â€˜That you were disloyal? Now listen, she was not someone’s mistress. She was …’
    The dark