Salamander Read Online Free Page A

list.’
    â€˜Nothing is impossible. Get one. Also the employees, the night-watchman and the cleaners, the concierge if that’s what they call him, the manager and the owner and their closest relatives. Also all previous employees over the past four years. Grudge fires are not uncommon.’
    Kohler grinned. ‘I thought you said it might be a student? Lübeck, wasn’t it?’
    â€˜Or Heidelberg or Köln. Ja , ja , you will still require the lists. It’s best that way. Find out if the staff have been turning anyone away. Sex in the back rows. Some filthy Frenchman or Algerian exposing himself to women and little girls or boys. Some black or brown bastard making suggestive remarks. A woman betrayed by a husband with a lover. A Jewess. Those are always possibilities but you are correct, Herr Kohler, hero firemen could very well become ‘hero’ arsonists to advance themselves, but not this one. You will find me at the Bristol. Inquire at the desk. Get a list of the tenants too. There were apartments above the foyer and behind the balcony and projectionist’s booth.’
    Brusquely he shook hands with Robichaud and made excuses about having to tidy up for dinner. ‘The wife,’ he grunted. ‘She’ll have purchased the last of her silks by now and I must examine them. Have the lists compiled, Herr Kohler. You can bring them over at dawn. Gestapo Mueller wants this solved before it happens again and wishes me to give the matter my fullest attention. Even here in France people have a right to know they are safe under our administration. Heil Hitler.’
    Shit!
    They watched as he strode the short distance to his car. Robichaud sucked grimly on his cheeks and held his breath in exasperation.
    It was Hermann who said, ‘You have our sympathies.’
    Lyon’s fire chief nodded. ‘But you have not had to introduce him at far too many banquets, monsieur, and you do not have to answer for your sins or blame yourself for letting this one happen. You see, messieurs, I was in the cinema. It was myself who turned in the alarm and unfortunately he knows of this.’
    There was dead silence but only for a moment. St-Cyr took the bottle from him and cautiously filled the fire chief’s cup. ‘Two women?’ he asked, pleasantly enough.
    There was a hiss. ‘Of this I am certain! I saw them vanish into a tram-car right over there.’
    Right across the square beyond the fountain and obscured by it at the moment of escape, right in front of the Palais des Arts.
    It was on the tip of St-Cyr’s tongue to ask, Why did you not blow your whistle and summon a gendarme to chase after them? but he let the matter rest. Obviously Robichaud had had his hands full.
    Finishing his cigarette, he carefully put it out, then handed the butt to Hermann for his little tin. These days tobacco was in such short supply it was the least he could do. The crowd seemed intent on their every move. Again he cautiously looked around the square—always there was the possibility that the arsonist would hang about to watch the fun and come back again and again. Sometimes they would offer help or pitch right in unasked. Sometimes they would even turn in the alarm and make suggestions as to how the fire might have started. But not Robichaud, never him. Other things perhaps but not arson.
    No one seemed out of the ordinary until St-Cyr spotted a lone girl with a bicycle. She had only just arrived and now stood uncertainly where Herr Weidling’s car had been. She had come up the rue Paul Chenavard. Her carrier basket held a cloth bag that was square and no doubt full of books. About twenty-five or-six but looking a little younger. Still a student? he wondered apprehensively, but thought not. Of medium height, with short, light brown hair and a fringe. The deep, wide-set eyes earnestly searched. The pale oval of her face was not wide or narrow but something in between. There was no