‘You did it, Victor.’
‘Then give me my gun and let me finish myself.’
He shook his head. ‘You would only kill Herr Schultz so as to gain his silence and then try to kill my partner for the same reason. Lastly myself and …’ he paused, ‘since there are only four cartridges, it would be a toss-up between the couple but as Monsieur Charbonneau, with all his bicycle riding and digging, is the far stronger of the two, you would kill him and then deal with Madame. Even Angélique would not survive. The cause you support is greater and while one can sympathize, one cannot condone your actions. That, please, is from another police officer.’
‘Schultz will only tell the others, Jean-Louis. Hélène has no chance and neither have Yvon and the child.’
‘But Schultz will not say anything? Please, he’s far too intelligent and far too loyal to his captain. He’ll keep the secret so that U-297 can put to sea with their Dollmaker. Only then will they stand a chance of coming back.’
It was Kohler who said drily, ‘He’ll also make a bundle, Louis. Unless I’ve missed my guess, our cook put all his money on the Préfet.’
The lark’s glimmer was there. Schultz fanned out the betting slips he took from a pocket. ‘That’s good,’ he said, ‘but I still want our money back or it’s no deal.’
‘Hermann, shoot him. I’ll kill Kerjean and we’ll say it was a toss-up. Doenitz won’t care so long as he has the Captain.’
They would do it too, thought Angélique. She just knew they would. ‘Messieurs,’ she managed, ‘is the rest of the money not in Monsieur le Préfet’s car?’
The kid should become a detective, thought Kohler but he wouldn’t wish it on anyone, especially not these days. Schultz just wasn’t going to budge. Ah damn.
Pulling out his wad of bills, Kohler peeled off a few thousand francs for possible expenses and reluctantly slid the rest across the table.
Schultz pocketed everything and said, ‘Now take care of him.’
Kerjean hesitated. He got up and lunged for the pistol. He had his hand on it. The shot rang out. The child shrieked. The stepmother yanked her close. The pianist held the woman.
Blood ran from the Préfet’s forehead as he lay on the table before them.
‘Madame, I am sorry it could not have happened outside,’ breathed the Sûreté. ‘He was a good man, caught in a vice, and I will regret for the rest of my life that I had to be the instrument of his death.’
So might the Resistance. ‘Merde, Louis I need a drink.’
Hermann always had to have the last word and it would be unkind to remind him that it was not a day for alcohol. Or was it?
The train to Paris was again delayed. St-Cyr, his feet up on the opposite seat next to Hermann, eased his back and shut his eyes. One slept when one could. Hermann unfortunately was a resonant snorer. The Benzedrine had finally worn off.
‘He mustn’t take any more of it,’ he said softly. ‘He’ll never make it through this lousy war if he does.’
U-297 had not put to sea on Thursday as scheduled and they had had to wait a full twenty-four hours after that before the boat had gone out with the tide to disappear at last beneath the waves.
Though far from the complete sum, the money had put the cook back into favour with the men. The C.-in-C. Kernével had accepted their report as had Doenitz. Perhaps they liked its tidiness, perhaps Herr Freisen simply was relieved at not having to go to sea and the Admiral pleased that the Dollmaker would.
They hadn’t seen Kaestner, and the Captain hadn’t bothered to find them. With luck U-297 would go down with man and mouse and the woman and her husband and the child could at last live in peace. For now, though, all they could do was wait. They could not go back to Paris in hopes of losing themselves in the crowd, they dare not ask to leave the Forbidden Zone for fear of arousing suspicion.
Like so many these days they were trapped, never knowing if and when the rifle butts would smash against the door to cries of, ‘Raus! Raus!’
The Bavarian’s eyes half opened at some sudden thought and he murmured, ‘Is it really okay, Louis? Is the kid happy?’
‘Yes. She’s with the stepmother and her father, Hermann. They’re together at last.’
‘Good.’
Hermann took a deep breath. He sighed and said, ‘I can hardly wait to get home. I hope Giselle hasn’t left me. I hope Oona’s still there.’
He drifted off and was lost to him again, and St-Cyr had to wonder about his partner’s use of ‘home’.
‘Paris has become that to him,’ he said to himself. ‘The divorce will go through. His wife will leave him for another. His sons are dead.’ He paused.
‘The megaliths remain.’
He let his mind linger on them but they had not been the dawn of European civilization. For that, one had to go back in time much further to the caves of the Dordogne and to those of Spain, to Lascaux and Altamira and other places. Yes, other places.
And a shabby trunk full of artefacts that had been discovered by an all-too-willing buyer in a shop in Paris.
And a woman of thirty-five and a boy, a young man of twenty – had he been twenty? One spoke of both boys and young men in the same breath – bathing at twilight beneath a waterfall and all but hidden by the trees.
Naked, the woman had reminded him of Marianne. An absolutely gorgeous figure but … but a sensuousness, an earthy desire, a hunger that had troubled deeply for he had never thought of Marianne as being like that. Never.
Yet his dead wife had revealed it with another, though that had happened a little later on and he had been too busy and away too much to have noticed that the sands of his second marriage were rapidly sinking under him.
Again he thought of that woman and the boy. Like forebears of another time, they had welcomed the water to their splendid bodies and had let it pour over them, laughing, kissing and fondling each other until, up from the ground, the smell of old leaves and mould had grown damp.
Then he had heard them making love in the cave and again it had made him think of Marianne who was now but a memory.
When he awoke with a start, it was just as a stone hand-axe was descending on his forehead. He cried out, ‘Hermann!’, scaring the hell out of his partner.
‘Last summer,’ he gasped. ‘That business of the cave and the film crew. That actress.’
‘Verdammt! You don’t want to give me a heart attack, do you?’
‘No.’
‘Then go back to sleep. How many times must I tell you that business is over and done with and best forgotten?’
But it would not leave. Had they arrested the right person? Had they settled it as they should have? A stone-killer … a stonekiller …
Rudely he was shaken awake and frantically he searched for his ticket only to be confronted with a telegram.
Swallowing, he read it.
SANDMAN STRIKES AGAIN. BODY OF HEIRESS FOUND IN BIRDCAGE AMONG DOVES NEAR CLAY-PIGEON SHOOT BOIS DE BOULOGNE. REQUEST IMMEDIATE ACTION. REPEAT ACTION. IMPERATIVE VILLAIN BE APPREHENDED. REPORT 0700 HOURS DAILY. STURMBANNFÜHRER BOEMELBURG CONCURS AND PLACES YOU BOTH DIRECTLY UNDER MY ORDERS.
HEIL HITLER.
My orders …
It was from General Ernst von Schaumburg, Kommandant von Gross-Paris. Old Shatter Hand himself. Rock of Bronze to his staff. A Prussian of the old school.
A birdcage, sighed St-Cyr. Was it coincidence or simply God laughing at him?
Author’s note
Recent radiocarbon dates give ages of up to 4000 BC for some of the megalithic remains of the Carnac area. Within the time frame here, however, a maximum of 2000 BC was generally accepted.
The real U-297 was sunk on 6th December 1944 off the Orkney Islands by HMS Loch Insh and HMS Goodall. The characters in this novel are totally fictitious as are the events, and none were drawn from that boat or any other, though I do hope they have that sense of being.
Acknowledgement
All the novels in the St-Cyr-Kohler series incorporate a
few words and brief passages of French or German. Dr Dennis Essar of Brock University very kindly assisted with the French, as did the artist Pierrette Laroche, while Ms Bodil Little of the German Department at Brock helped with the German. Should there be any errors, they are my own and for these I apologize but hope there are none.
Turn the page to continue reading from the St-Cyr and Kohler Series
1
AMONG THE BROKEN SAPLINGS IN THE CENTRE OF the glade, sunlight trapped the blowflies. Now they rose above the corpse which was still hidden from view, now they settled on it. And in the stillness of an early summer’s afternoon, their sound was constant.
Alarmed, St-Cyr held his breath. Nothing stirred but those damned flies. ‘Hermann, a moment,’ he breathed.
‘Be my guest,’ softly grunted the Bavarian in guttural French that was still improving. ‘She’s all yours.’
‘She?’
‘It’s just a thought. Rape and then silence, eh? That hangdog truffle hunter who reported this should have taken a closer look.’
‘Perhaps he did but was afraid to admit it.’
‘Perhaps that sow he uses to find his truffles stuck her snout into something she shouldn’t have.’
Ah merde, must Hermann? ‘In the Dordogne, as elsewhere, my friend, the fall is the time for truffles. Don’t tempt the pig before the fungus is ripe. That hunter might just have been checking the ground but not with his pig!’
The forest canopy had opened, ferns giving way to saxifrage and vetch whose soft blue and pale purple flowers were tangled among the tall grass, swaths of which had been beaten down. Burdock grew here too, and goldenrod, fly honeysuckle and elder. But everywhere the ferns had crowded closely, holding to the shade of limestone shelves beneath dark humus, holm oak, walnut and chestnut, one of which had fallen many years ago to open up the glade.
St-Cyr stopped suddenly and said, sadly, ‘Ah no.’
Kohler heard the flies as they rose in a dense blue cloud to shimmer in the sunlight and give pause to their egg-laying. The wounds, the lacerations and punctures were all puffed up, dark and oozing. Dried blood was glued to blades of grass and broken wild flowers. The pale and flaccid buttocks were blotched by putrefaction. The stench hit him and he turned suddenly away.
‘I warned you!’ hissed St-Cyr. ‘Piss off now. Vite, vite, dummkopf! Go and have a cigarette if you have any left!’
‘I haven’t,’ came the whispered confession. ‘I gave the last of them to that girl I met on the train.’
Ah yes, the one with the nice calves she kept trying to hide. ‘She knew you were Gestapo, idiot. She was terrified.’
‘I told her I was a salesman of polished gemstones and ashtrays from Idar-Oberstein. She was convinced.’
You were old enough to have been her grandfather! Just because there are so few young Frenchmen around doesn’t mean you can take advantage of their absence.’ Furiously a crumpled packet of Gauloises Bleues, the national curse if one could get them — if — was snatched from a slightly ragged jacket pocket and thrust into the Bavarian’s hands.
Shaking, Kohler lit up and inhaled deeply. Retreating quickly across the glade into shade, he shut his eyes and silently cursed the French. Why did they always have to kill each other in such horrible ways?
It was Friday 21 June 1942. Jean-Louis St. Cyr — Louis — the Sûreté’s Chief Inspector, was now firmly planted just outside the cloud of blowflies. A cinematographer at heart — such a lover of the cinema he would take time out if possible to see again a film he had already seen nine times — Louis would memorize every detail. A gardener, a reader of books when time allowed, he was fifty-one years of age, married and with a little son he seldom saw. The wife, too, and she was pretty and all alone in Paris. A worry, ah yes. Sooner or later there’d be trouble, and who could blame her if she wanted a little something on the side?
Unaware of his partner’s thoughts, St-Cyr let his gaze move slowly over the victim’s back. The dress had been one of her best, if not the best — he was certain of this. It was of a vivid dark blue seersucker, pre-war, and must have been very chic for these parts. It was belted at the waist but the fabric had been torn and cut to shreds. There were no undergarments. The legs were spread and slack and at odd angles — clumsy looking but that was common enough in death. Had she family? he wondered. There’d been no missing-persons report. Not one word, a puzzle.
The wounds were many and, though most were shallow, some were far deeper and had been worked at. The flies descended en masse and began to worry the flesh. Bruises that might have lightened had she lived were everywhere but hard to define due to the discolouration. Often the weapon had struck her bluntly, not breaking the skin until the second or third attempt. Had her killer been unfamiliar with it? Could it have been a jagged stone? Were there still traces of rigor?
He crouched over the corpse. Disturbed, the flies rose up, buzzing unhappily at the intrusion of dispersing hands.
‘Married,’ he said. The wedding band was wide and at least of eighteen carat gold, and it caught the sunlight and glowed warmly from between its puffy edgings. Perhaps some well-off relative had donated the ring — this was often done in the country. Life was closer, more solid, more meaningful than in the large cities where a girl from the country would only feel out of place. But the dress was at odds with the country. It really was. Ripped to shreds as if hated.
The finger was slack. ‘Dead at least three days,’ he murmured. ‘Maybe four or five, Hermann,’ he called out.
‘Four, you idiot! Four! I could have told you that hours ago. I’m going to take a look around. I’m going to leave the details to you.’
‘Good! Look for little things, eh? Things our truffle hunter might not have touched.’
‘Or taken.’
Ah yes. These days, especially, one could never tell what had been removed to be saved for later use or sold on the black market. A lipstick, a compact, a pair of underpants, even a set of keys to a flat someone else would briefly go through.
She had worn matching gloves but these had been taken off and folded neatly over the belt — he could just see them. The belt was tight and the gloves didn’t appear to have been disturbed. Few if any signs of a struggle then — yes, yes, but her strand of pearls had been broken. The pearls were scattered in the grass about her head. Good ones too and old, yes, old.
A woman, then, who had dressed as if to meet someone, a lover perhaps, but had found death instead.
She must have worn a slip, underpants and a brassiere but of these there was still no sign. A disturbing puzzle. Had she taken them off elsewhere and then come on here? Where were her shoes, her hat?
Questions … there were always questions, but he didn’t think she had snatched up the gloves at the last moment. No, they must have been intentional. The dress, the belt, the pearls and the gloves but nothing else.
Instinctively St-Cyr looked up and across the glade, realizing that he was still not alone. Hermann was a big man, a giant with the pugnacious nose, lower jaw and jutting chin of an ageing storm-trooper, though he swore he was but three or was it really four years older than St Cyr. Shrapnel scars glistened about the ragged, dissipated countenance whose puffy eyelids drooped and bagged from faded blue and often expressionless eyes.
The shrapnel scars were from that other war. They’d been enemies then, in 1914. God did things like that to detectives, this one in particular. Ah yes, of course. Necessity and nearly two years of fighting crime together — arson, murder, extortion and kidnapping, et cetera, et cetera — had welded their partnership so that now, though they were still discovering things about each other, they each knew how the other thought and worked. Hermann was wanting to walk through the woods. He hated death. He was afraid of it always though he’d been a Munich détective long before this lousy war, long before Berlin and his ascendancy to Paris, and had seen lots of similar things. Well, not like this. No, not quite like this.
He was standing among the ferns, reading t
he woodcraft signs. The big, strong, stumpy fingers were delicately touching a broken leaf as if it was a tripwire or the timer of a bomb he had to defuse.
‘Louis.…’
‘Yes, I know. Follow her trail. See where she came from but don’t go too far and don’t get lost.’
‘Sarlat isn’t too far. The Dordogne is close.’
‘Yes, yes, and the woods and valleys are thick and many.’
‘I’ll shout.’
‘You do that.’
‘I’ll find the railway line and follow it out to the road, dummkopf. She must have come along it. She can’t have gone far in her bare feet.’
Somewhat chubby, somewhat diffident, the Sûreté’s détective was broad-shouldered, not tall but not short either, a solid trunk of a man whose dark brown hair was thick and carelessly brushed to the right. Unlike so many of his contemporaries who tarted themselves up in ersatz cloth of human hair or cellulose or in black-market suits and shoes of good quality, Louis depended on things from before the Defeat, from before the Occupation.
The dark brown moustache was thick and wider than the Fuhrer’s and had been grown long before that ranting little corporal had ever wet his pants over Czechoslovakia. The bushy eyebrows and large, brown ox-eyes sought Kohler out again.
‘Ah mon Dieu, Hermann, why hang around? You know I need to be alone with her. It’s always best, isn’t that so?’
‘Was she raped?’
‘How could I possibly tell?’
St-Cyr watched as his partner and friend slowly picked his way through the woods until, at last, he had disappeared from view.
‘He desperately needs a holiday,’ he said apologetically to the corpse. ‘He’s got a new girlfriend in Paris but she’s playing hard to get and he hasn’t yet introduced us or said much about her. If you ask me, I think he’s planning to set up house even though he has a wife back home on her father’s farm near Wasserburg, and when he is forced to see someone like yourself, this causes him much concern.’
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