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news or filed away another bit.
    The Sûreté had never thrown a thing out. Second only to the records of the Gestapo in Berlin, the whole damned place had been taken over lock, stock and barrel in June 1940. A treasure trove of criminals and their crimes to which, as a measure of Germanic efficiency and consolidation, had been added the files of the Prefecture of Paris. Talbotte had seen fit to keep copies for himself but had been reluctant to object. He had known his place and still did only too well.
    In addition to the ten or fifteen million dossiers and cards dealing with outright crime, there were the millions of other bits and pieces that might eventually prove useful. One never knew. Apply for a passport or a visa in pre-war days, or even now, or a new set of papers, and you got a card here. Apply for a hunting licence in days past when such a thing was possible, and you got a special card, complete with registration number. Nice for the Occupier. No problem in finding stray rifles and shotguns that should have been turned in. Apply for a marriage licence, birth certificate or divorce—yes, here divorce had been legal before the war, though now Pétain and the government in Vichy frowned on it, the hypocrites. Age, date of birth, sex, race, colour of eyes, nose, height, weight, religion, address and those of the closest relatives, place of residence, job, education … it was all here, locked up in silence until the wheel was spun, a drawer opened or the pen taken up.
    The labyrinth of missing persons was discouraging. To all those who had been listed because of suspected or proven crimes, were added those who had simply walked away without telling anyone. Then there were the thousands who had died or become separated from their loved ones during the blitzkrieg, when the roads had had to be ‘cleared’ of refugees for the advancing Panzers and the boys in their Messerschmitts and Stukas had had a field day.
    Ã‰mile Turcotte was lord and master here, a hawk-eyed, miserly little bastard with no sense of humour, the rake of a guardsman’s moustache and, too often, the defiant gaze of a wounded librarian. They’d got through all the usual refusals far too quickly. The préfet had tipped him off and had told him to co-operate or else, so as to bleed this Gestapo of information.
    Well, that was fair enough, though Turcotte was not a servant of the préfet but one of their own and ought to have known better.
    â€˜Shall we spin the wheel again?’ quipped the librarian.
    Kohler snorted and sadly shook his head. It had taken them nearly an hour to find this one. For now he had enough on what must have happened to the other girls.
    And Joanne? he wondered. Would there yet be time to save her and if so, what would they find?
    â€˜Look, I need a bit on that robbery. For a start, give me what you have on the manager of the main Paris branch of Crédit Lyonnais.’
    This, too, the préfet had warned of. ‘That is not possible.’
    â€˜It had better be. I’m not used to threatening my fellow workers but if I have to …’
    The acid seethed. ‘The last time you … you tried to steal my tobacco tin for Louis!’
    That had been about a month ago. ‘Then this time I’ll simply requisition it.’
    The dark olive eyes flicked away in uncertainty. Kohler was trouble. ‘A moment,’ grumbled Turcotte. The préfet, he … he wouldn’t like it but …
    â€˜No moments,’ grinned Kohler, clapping a hand firmly on a thin shoulder. ‘Hey, mon fin, I think I’d better come with you in case you run into an accident.’
    Such records were in another section, and even that God of Louis’s could never have found them, but Turcotte had a nose for it and the memory.
    When he pulled the file, right away the banker’s name came up: André-Philippe de Brisson, the address: 35 rue de Montpensier, almost directly across the