They had reached the main road, such as the traffic was at nearly midnight. ‘Kerjean and the shopkeeper argue violently,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Le Trocquer then catches the noon bus to Lorient. That bus, as everyone knows, takes its time but not only does it pass by here, Hermann, it sometimes calls in at Kerouriec and would have done so on the 1st.’
‘So, having delivered messages to the woman himself, he sat there in the bus waiting for it to carry on,’ breathed Kohler.
‘Did he spit towards her with hatred? Did he silently curse her for some reason – what, exactly, was his relationship with her? A woman who would not think of going into his shop even if down to her last centime?’
Kohler suggested they share one of the cigarettes from the shed and, once he had it going, continued. ‘Ahead of le Trocquer, and in that little Renault of his, Kerjean drops in to see Madame Charbonneau long before the bus ever gets near the place. He warns her of trouble – what, exactly, we don’t yet know, but then fragments of a doll are found and it’s not one of the Captain’s. It’s from a Bru or a Steiner perhaps, but most likely a Jumeau, though we’ve only the Captain’s word on this.’
‘Cigarettes are left in the shed as is a woman’s crumpled handkerchief and her bicycle – was it really sex under duress? She tells us Préfet Kerjean arrived at the house at 1 p.m. but he probably got there at noon or very close to it.’
‘She denies knowing where the husband was,’ went on Kohler.
‘Yet the daughter contradicts this. While the woman says she was not at the clay pits, the child offers proof her stepmother was.’
‘That kid has to be blaming the stepmother for what happened to her mother, Louis, but she must also believe her father killed the shopkeeper and that the only hope is to show us the woman did it.’
‘Perhaps but then … ah mais alors, alors, it is very difficult, isn’t that so? The child prowls about at all hours of the night. The father is often away for days on end and there cannot be any guarantee of when he will suddenly turn up. The Captain visits, the Préfet visits …’
Kohler handed the cigarette over with a nudge and a sigh that was so deep, exasperation was implied. ‘She denies ever having had sex with Kaestner. She even told me to tell the child she hadn’t been screwing around though she and the husband had yet to consummate their marriage.’
‘But is it the truth?’
St-Cyr searched the darkness of the road for any other sign of life. He would have to go carefully now. ‘There is a telescope with which a couple on the beach could easily be observed if in certain places.’
‘Did the Préfet know of that telescope?’ asked Kohler swiftly.
Hermann never missed such things! St-Cyr held the smoke in to warm the lungs and stall for time, deciding that, while the woman might not have used tobacco, she would quite willingly have accepted the cigarettes for her husband.
‘Louis, I think I asked you something. I haven’t kept anything from you, not this time and not on that last case either. Fair’s fair.’
Must God do this to him? Surely Hermann could be counted on not to tell the SS and the Gestapo?’
‘Louis…’
‘All right, I’ll trust you. Kerjean knew of the telescope. According to the child, he used it to watch the sardiniers.’
‘And the U-boats? Christ, that’s all we need. The fucking Resistance!’
‘Now wait. Please do not be so hasty. Victor has a son. Just before the bombing raid, Angélique hinted that I should ask her how many sardiniers had been gathered. Unless I am very mistaken, that son left here for England aboard one of them. That still does not mean Victor didn’t fall in love with the woman and become very jealous of the Captain’s attentions to her. It simply means that he and Madame Charbonneau had to be very careful. This the child, in her own way, understands and yet she is not fully cognizant of the consequences nor of the hell the stepmother has been going through.’
‘Your logic’s perfect, Chief. There’s only one thing you forgot. The money, eh? Money to pay some fart-headed little runt in tattered canvas for the ride.’
From far along the road to Plouharnel and Quiberon, a lorry sped towards them with unblinkered lights. Even from such a distance, Kohler knew it was the Freikorps racing to Lorient to help with the clean-up.
‘Please don’t say anything about it, Hermann. Yes, I’m begging you, and yes, I will owe you whatever you think is necessary. Victor’s a good man. He has only one son among five daughters. Don’t blame him for wanting the boy out of France, if that’s how it was.’
Think of yourself advising your sons to emigrate to Argentina in 1938, eh? thought Kohler. Well, what about Kerjean’s sending his son off to fight again?
Always things had to be laid on the line for them. If Boemelburg ever got word of it, Louis and he would be done for this time. Up against the wall or under the guillotine! ‘Hey, what I want to know is was le Trocquer aware of the escape?’
‘That is the question which troubles me the most.’
‘If Kerjean was really watching the sardiniers for that reason, Louis. If That’s the question you’ll have to settle first, and that, my fine patriot from the Sûreté, is an order. Even bumboats like one of their lousy sardiniers seldom sail with only one passenger.’
Ah merde, of course!
5
They had been fighting fires for hours and doing what they could. Lorient had been devastated. At dawn there was silence. It was as if those who remained took stock of things and held their breath lest a shattered wall collapse or a floor give way.
Everywhere there were bomb craters, everywhere the stench of burnt flesh and plaster dust, cordite and burning diesel fuel. Where the street ran downhill to the harbour, fog clung to railway lines whose torn-up tracks were bent and twisted. The tunny fleet was no more. Having been denied the fuel to put to sea, splintered masts and sunken blue hulls cluttered the quays.
The street was littered with granite blocks, broken glass and rag-doll bodies. Miraculously one woman still clung to her purse, another had given birth. A boy of seven would never ride his bicycle again. How had he lasted this long?
There was blood everywhere. Blood and plaster dust and stumps at the knees. And through the haze and the uneasy silence, the dock workers plodded downhill towards a twelve-hour shift in the bunkers, seemingly numb to the suffering that lay around them. Zombies in faded dungarees and black berets – black crudely stitched and tattered shoulder bags. Women too. Women in filthy grey coveralls with backsides the size of plough horses.
Kohler crouched over the boy. Louis said, ‘Hermann, you will only think of your sons.’ He would have to tell him.
‘Kid, listen to me. Just try not to worry, eh? Everything is going to be all right. You’ll see.’
‘It’s too late. He can’t hear you. He’s slipping away. Leave it.’
‘Don’t be stupid. He has what it takes.’
The boy could only watch the man with the big face who tried to tie tourniquets around his legs. Perhaps he noticed the scar down the left cheek. Perhaps that was what caught and held his attention.
‘Louis … Louis, he’s gone.’
‘And he’s left you thinking of your sons.’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re gone too, Hermann. Look, I’m sorry. I knew I had to tell you sometime. Boemelburg left it to me. A telex from Army HQ Eastern Front just before we left Paris.’
‘Missing in action and presumed dead?’
Hermann couldn’t look up. He would deal with it in his own way. He was like that sometimes. ‘What else can I say?’
‘We’d best get to work. Try that, Chief. You sure can choose your times.’
‘I’m sorry. I really am. I didn’t want to have to tell you.’
They shook hands and held each other firmly that way, two shabby, dust-covered weary men from opposite sides of this war. ‘It isn’t right,’ said St-Cyr, seeing the anguish in the Bavarian’s eyes. ‘None of it is. You could go home, Hermann.
Compassionate leave? Surely they wouldn’t deny you that.’
‘I might never be allowed to come back. What would Oona and Giselle do, eh? What would you do without me, a patriot wanted by the Resistance in a land of the Gestapo?’
They had been through so much and Hermann did like to feel wanted and useful. ‘Come on then, let’s see if we can find ourselves a ride back to Quiberon.’
‘The bunkers first, and then Doenitz’s former command post at Kernével. It’s time the Kapitän zur See Freisen coughed up a little information. I want a look at Dollmaker’s report on the morale of U-297’s crew. I want a lot more. I want answers, Louis. Answers.’
*
Kohler pulled up the collar of his greatcoat and tucked his head down further against the cold and the fog. Mein Gott he needed a cigarette, would have to latch on to some soon.
A catwalk had been laid across a bomb crater full of filthy water where the tracks had been torn up, and the long line of shuffling dockworkers had to cross this in single file to get to the checkpoint. Damage crews were everywhere – picks, shovels, cars, lorries, ambulances and pumper trucks – yet through the chaos and the fog, the Keroman bunkers rose like megaliths of their own. Long, grim, tall and menacing with huge black armour-plated doors for each of the forty or so bays and grey, rust-stained concrete. Concrete that had resisted even the 2,000-pound bombs. There wasn’t a scratch. Seven metres of ferroconcrete on the roof and walls – concrete with iron filings in it plus reinforcing rods – had allowed work to go on non-stop inside. ‘The bloody things will still be here a thousand years from now,’ he snorted lustily to no one but himself.
So savage was the Admiral’s penchant for dealing with spies, the warning signs had been among the first things to be replaced or straightened. One stark poster near the guardpost showed a goitred little dockworker hanging by the neck. His sobbing wife and children knelt in prayer under the steel-grey Schmeissers of jackbooted heroes who, everyone knew, were just about to pull the triggers.
The SS had put that one up. The Sturmscharführer with the snappy cap and snazzy uniform reminded him of Klaus Barbie and Lyon, a recent case of arson and a naked woman on her hands and knees under torture. ‘I spit on you,’ breathed Kohler, standing back to take it all in. ‘My sons are gone because of types like you.’
No letter writer, he would have to write to Gerda – she’d be crying her eyes out and remembering. Like Louis had said, he ought to go home for a visit but after nearly two and a half years, he wasn’t Bavarian any more or French but something in between, a pebble that had been thrown into a pond to make its own ripples.
‘I even forget myself and swear in French half the time.’ Merde, what was he to do?
‘Get on with it,’ he said grimly. ‘Admit that deep down inside, you’ve known for some time the boys weren’t coming back.’
Verdammt! but it was a piss-assed life. ‘I really have had it,’ he said, trying to probe the fog to find the end of the bunkers. No tears yet. ‘Concrete coffins to hold the iron ones,’ he snorted. ‘Like Baumann, death is with me all the time. I see it in Oona’s eyes sometimes and in Giselle’s too, and I worry about them both because when this war turns sour, it’s going to do so with a vengeance.’ Both would be classed as collaborators.
Louis would be thinking of him and worrying too. He would have seen the Admiral’s signs and automatically understood that for him the bunkers were off limits. He would find the Sous-Préfet and then head back out to the clay pits for another look.
Louis seldom missed things. They had both been lucky to be assigned each other. Boemelburg had known of Louis from before the war. A Gestapo watcher had been needed for the Frenchman, someone to take care of the guns and hand one over when the shooting started.
He had wanted detectives and that’s what he had got.
It would be best to use the badge and shield. ‘Kohler, Gestapo Central, here on the orders of Gestapo Mueller.’
Kohler … Kohler of the Kripo, that most insignificant arm of Herr Himmler’s police force, Common Crime. The whip scar was there, the graze of a bullet wound on the forehead, the shrapnel scars from that other war. ‘fa, it is him, Heinz.’ The Feldwebel with the bulbous nose, the warts and the blackheads thumbed the ID and shrugged, then plucked a notice from a clipboard on the wall and proceeded to read it slowly.
‘Good Gott im Himmel, Dummkopf, I’m on a murder investigation! Let me through or Gestapo Mueller will have your ass.’
The puffy blue eyes blandly surveyed him. The nose, with all its curly black hairs, was pinched in thought, the fleshy chin grasped. ‘Herr Mueller’s in Berlin. We’re here, or hadn’t you noticed?’
‘Nom de Jésus-Christ! I only want to have a look at the place, eh? A bit of background to flesh the thing out and get the Dollmaker off.’
‘Heinz, our detective even swears in French and is both judge and tribunal. It was the woman’s husband who did it, Herr Kohler, or the Captain. At the moment we’re undecided and the odds are about fifty-fifty. You can, if you like, put your money where your mouth is.’
‘How much?’
Herr Kohler had understood only too well the price of admission. ‘250 Reichskassenscheine, 5,000 francs.’
‘Now look …’
‘Take it or leave it. The Captain had his eel into the bone-digger’s wife. The shopkeeper found out there wasn’t enough grease and tried to put the squeeze on him. The husband was jealous. Money was missing, a lot of money, so it’s all quite simple, yes? The Dollmaker should have left that cunt alone and gone for the less sophisticated but some men, they need a challenge. They need to climb the highest mountains, those with the peaks that are always cloaked in snow and ice.’
A poet! ‘You’re full of news but what if neither of them did it?’
The fleshy lips widened in a grin to betray broken teeth. ‘Then you put your money on that and take your chances.’
The son of a bitch had been fishing for news on the Préfet’s involvement. ‘Okay, I will. I’ll mess up the odds and cause you all a tumble, eh?’ He dragged out a wad of bills that would have choked a horse and peeled off the necessary. ‘Oh, by the way, who’s the bookmaker?’
The Feldwebel took his time. ‘Death’s-head Schultz. Siegfried to his mother and father, if he had one. U-297’s cook.’
The acorn-and-barley coffee was full of saccharine and plaster dust but at least an attempt had been made. Suddenly overcome by exhaustion, St-Cyr slumped into a chair and fought to keep his eyes open.
The windows of the Café of the Golden Handshake were gone. The glass had been swept up but he was still the only customer. Across the square, the ruins of the Préfecture revealed the impossibility of fighting crime under such conditions. Requisitioned in the fall of 1940 as a barracks for the U-boat crews, it had been abandoned to the police who had moved back in when the bombing had become too much and Quiberon and the other places in the countryside had seemed better for the Germans.
Of course the Organization Todt had built a bomb shelter in the cellars. Of course it should have been sufficient – how were they to have anticipated that a 1,000-pound bomb would skip and jump and deflect itself right into the cellar? – but now a warped bicycle frame, its spokes fanned out like the spines of a poisonous sea urchin, seemed all that was left of the Sous-Préfet le Troadec.
Yes, the situation was not good. He had counted on le Troadec to tell him things the Préfet would never reveal.
The eyelids were too heavy. The mind drifted off. Sadly he drew in a breath and from deep in a pocket, uncovered a vial Hermann had left on a woman’s night table in Lyon. Exhaustion then, too. A week … had it been as much since then? A case of arson. So constant was the blitzkrieg of Boemelburg’s demands and those of common crime – they had only been on this present case for thirty-six hours, a century it seemed and no sleep! – Hermann had succumbed to the pep-up. ‘He’s addicted,’ swore St-Cyr under his breath. ‘He’s been taking small handfuls and trying to hide the fact f
rom me.’
The pills made the heart race and when a man is fifty-five or fifty-six years of age and inclined to lie a little about it, and is big like Hermann and never wanting to slow down, why a constant harassment. ‘He could drop dead when most needed. I’m going to have to get his heart checked.’
Shaking two of the tablets out, St-Cyr added a third, crushed them up with a spoon and, grimacing, downed them with the coffee. At fifty-two years of age and still a little overweight in spite of the shortages and all the exercise, the pills were chancy. It would take awhile for them to work. He would concentrate on the shopkeeper no one should have chosen as a business partner let alone the Kapitän Kaestner. He would consider the victim’s wife and daughter and the freedom the money might bring to either of them.
When Sous-Préfet Gaetan le Troadec found him, he was fast asleep. The coffee had been tipped across the table – a sudden, instinctive jerking of the left hand perhaps. Everyone hated having to drink that stuff.
A vial of pills had been scattered, the pipe and tobacco pouch forgotten beneath hands whose fists were those of a pugilist. Indeed, the Chief Inspector St-Cyr had won several medals at the Police Academy in his early days and had most recently flattened the Préfet of Paris, an arch enemy. The left hand was still swollen. The fight had not been in the ring, ah no, but on a case just finished, that of a missing teenaged girl, a neighbour, Préfet Kerjean had said. There’d been a robbery too. Eighteen millions, one for every year of her life.
Quietly le Troadec found another chair and sat opposite him. Exhausted, he took off his gloves and hat and signalled to the patron to bring him a coffee.
St-Cyr still wore a gold wedding band. He would understand why the wife and kids had had to be moved out into the countryside, thus saving the life of the Préfet’s assistant. He would understand a lot of things but he would not let them interfere with his pursuit of the truth. Not him.
The coffee was hot, payment signalled on to the account with a cautionary wave. Let this one sleep. I want to take my time with him.
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