Setting the dove back on its perch, he shifted the contents of his overcoat pockets and patiently gathered the loot, carefully noting each item as he tucked it away.
Everything in him said to cover her, to ease the knitting needle out, to say, Forgive us for letting such a thing happen to you or to anyone else. We will see that it does not happen again. On this matter, you have my solemn promise.
Four other girls, he reminded himself. All killed in essentially the same manner, though this they would have to check. But for now there was at least a definite difference. Now it was two girls together, both of whom must have thought they knew what they were doing. You poor thing,’ he said. ‘We don’t even know your name, do we, or where your parents are. Nor do we know where your little friend is.’
The heiress …
Carved among its oak flowers, the signboard said: THE GAMEKEEPER’S COTTAGE. Kohler hit the door with the flat of his shoe. The shock tore the feathers from the dove in the custodian’s hands, causing them to flutter before a miserable fire of ill-gotten twigs.
The bird was dropped to join the row of others, all naked of their feathers and lying on the hearth. The hands crept up to throw their shadows on the tiled floor and timbered ceiling.
Stepping into the otherwise darkened room, Kohler used a heel to close the door behind him. Now only the sound of the fire and the gentle hiss of chimney droplets came to him as tears coursed from very worried, wounded eyes behind rimless glasses.
‘So, a few questions, mon fin. Don’t even think of lowering your hands. Hey, it makes me nervous, eh? Grab warmer air. Stretch for it.’
Gilbert Amirault was half-Italian by the look of him and rounded about the middle from knees to neck. The tattered black leather jerkin was buttoned up so tightly two of the buttons had been lost forever. The plum-dark corduroy trousers had birdshit so ground into the knees they were irretrievably bleached.
‘Getting ready for a banquet, are you?’ asked the Gestapo’s only honest detective. ‘Tasty, are they?’
More tears were shed. The flabby lips quivered. Sweat—was it really sweat?—was gathering on his forehead beneath the thatch of untidy black hair.
‘I … They …’ The man swallowed and, farting harshly, grimaced at the accidental outburst and waited for a rebuke that never came.
Instead, Kohler spoke the sad truth. ‘No potatoes, eh? And those lousy rutabagas again. Cattle feed while the spuds of France go to the Reich and the hospitals here are so overcrowded with bowel complaints and cases of appendicitis they are even parking them in the corridors. Look, tell me who shot the doves and when. This afternoon, eh? At about three o’clock—was it three o’clock and right when that poor kid was being murdered?’
Amirault’s left hand dropped so fast Kohler yanked out a pistol and made the bastard wince as he waited for the coup de grâce.
It never came. Hurriedly the custodian made the sign of the cross over his barrel chest, then his hand crept upwards. ‘Monsieur …’ hazarded Amirault. His neck was so short his chin rested in the slot of his open collar.
‘It’s Inspector. Show some respect, and while you’re at it, hand over the change purse you stole.’
Ah merde … ‘The … the purse, it is on the table for safekeeping, yes? I … I was just plucking the pigeons …’
‘Doves … they’re doves.’
The change purse was swept up and stuffed into the giant’s coat pocket. ‘The doves, Inspector, they are for … for the one who has shot them this … this afternoon.’
Ah! Now we’re getting somewhere. And who might that have been?’
The … the General von Schaumburg.’
Ah nom de Jésus-Christ! what the hell was this?
‘I am to see that they are delivered to the head chef at the Ritz tomorrow morning. They … they are for a little dinner party General von Schaumburg is throwing in honour of General Halder’s visit.’
How cosy, and no wonder Old Shatter Hand wanted a certain two detectives right under his big Prussian thumb and no questions asked. Shit!
‘All right, you can lower your hands, but put the last of the sticks on the fire and break up one of the chairs. I have to see you better.’
‘The chairs … but … but they are from the reign of the Sun King?’
‘Hey, he won’t mind. Oh, all right, just the sticks. Turn sideways to the light. I want to see if you’re not just a petty thief but a liar also.’
A liar … Ah merde, he had meant it, too. ‘Please, I did not steal the purse. It had fallen from her pocket—the left one—and was lying there when I found her. I was afraid the cows—the police … ah! forgive me—would steal it.’
‘Mort aux vaches, eh? [Death to cops.] The left pocket. You’re sure of this?’ In searching for her ID, the killer must have dragged the purse out.
There was a nod. When approached, the custodian stank of sour wine, no bathing whatsoever, lots of garlic to ward off hunger, and those damned rutabagas. Bad teeth showed nicotine stains, but glimpses of gold gave a hint of better times. ‘Was von Schaumburg alone at the clay-pigeon shoot or were there others with him?’
Things would not go well, thought the custodian. The greatcoat was huge, the fedora fierce, the face … Ah, gentle Jesus, help this sinner … ‘Alone. Just the Kommandant von Gross-Paris and myself. The time, it had been reserved, you understand Fifty of the clay pigeons and then … then the doves. I … I visited the cage twice, Inspector. Taking eight birds first because the General, he has thought they would be enough, then another four after he had explored the breasts of the others and had decided more meat was needed.’
A connoisseur. ‘Did you see the child? Was she anywhere near the cage? At exactly what time?’
‘From two-thirty until three-thirty, the shooting. “An hour of sport to tame the eye and calm the blood,” the General has said. But at the last, the doves to fill the casserole, since one cannot eat clay pigeons, can one? It’s impossible. I … I would have been at the cage from three-ten until three-fifteen—one does not keep a general waiting, so I ran from here to there and back and the doves they are very tame and unsuspecting usually.’
‘Hey, that’s interesting. And then?’
‘Again at three-twenty perhaps, or three-twenty-five, the … the new time. Berlin Time.’
The birds looked in excellent shape, not torn to pieces by birdshot that would only break the teeth if left. ‘A four-ten shotgun?’ asked Kohler curiously.
‘The sixteen gauge, the full sweep so as to lead them on the wing and spread the pattern, letting only a few of the pellets caress the necks and kiss the heads.’
‘And the child?’ The fire was dying. The hearth was littered with white feathers …
‘Well?’ shot the detective suddenly.
It would do no good to lie to him. The slash down his face, the graze across his brow … ‘I … I did not lock the cage as was my custom, Inspector. The child, she … she would have run in there to hide at … at about three-thirty. Or perhaps it was after I had first gone there, so at three-fifteen.’
The custodian shrugged as if to say, How is one to know exactly when one is occupied with other matters and does not even suspect such a thing of happening?
Kohler hauled out a packet of U-boat cigarettes and tossed it among the feathers. ‘Okay, I think you’re telling me the truth, but I’m still going to need your help or it’s no deal with the change purse. Try to remember who else was about. The riding stables are just over there on the other side of this cottage, the route de Madrid passes behind the fireplace. There are woods in front of the clay-pigeon shoot. The allée de Longchamp is to my right and not two hundred metres away. Were there other children?’
Such an eye for detail demanded answer. ‘Yes. Walking in the woods.’
‘With the nuns?’
Nuns? I saw no sisters of the cloth, Inspector. ‘They do not like to come near here when … when the doves of peace are being slaughtered.’
‘The doves
of peace? There’s no signboard proclaiming that.’
‘Ah no. No, Inspector. It is only that since we are a … a defeated nation that …’ Ah, why had he said it? wondered Amirault desperately. ‘It is only since the war in Russia has turned against you … you people that … that some have taken to calling them such.’
Was it yet another sign of the growing discontent? wondered Kohler. People were beginning to think the end of the Occupation might come. Their only question was when. ‘Okay, so a man … the Sandman. The child is running. She sees the cage and that the lock is off. She darts in there, but …’
‘But he finds her, this sadique. He opens her clothing, pushes it up but … but there is no time. He kills her. Black … Ah now, a moment, please, Inspector. I did see something black out of the corner of my eye, but the General, he has told me to gather in the doves he has shot and I … I have done so.’
‘The first or the last batch?’
‘The first. Yes, Inspector, I am positive, because there were eight of them and one had flown into the forest and I had trouble finding it. The General, he has insisted he had taken it on the wing and has cursed me for doubting him. He was correct, of course.’ The custodian ducked his head in deference.
‘Then the time was between three-ten and three-twenty and you saw someone in black. Black like your jerkin, eh? Black as in a Gestapo uniform? Black as in a woollen overcoat, or maybe it was dark blue like the one she’s wearing?’
‘I …’ Ah nom de Dieu … ‘I cannot be certain. Black, I think, but dark blue, I don’t know. Perhaps.’
‘And the cage?’
‘Please, I … I should have locked it. I will lose my job. It isn’t much, but …’
‘But others depend on your salary,’ came the sigh. Two hundred francs a day, would he be paid even that when a loaf of bread, if he could find it, would cost him at least a hundred? ‘What does the General pay you for the doves?’
‘Twenty francs each.’
‘Mein Gott, the price of bloody crows on the black market is ten and they taste like hell even after hours of boiling!’
‘You must use the mustard sauce.’
‘Never mind the fucking sauce!’
Kohler pulled out the thin remains of a wad of notes that once would have choked a horse had it not been for the cook of U-297 on their last investigation. ‘Here, I’ll pay you one hundred each. You keep them here and I’ll personally deliver them to the General at oh-seven-hundred hours tomorrow, or is it already tomorrow?’
It was. The countdown had begun for their first report. They had about six and a half hours left. No time to telephone Giselle and Oona at the flat to tell them he was home, no time to drop in and surprise them. No time even for Louis to go home to an empty house and a wife and son who were no longer there.
‘The Resistance.’ He let a breath escape in midthought, didn’t really care if the custodian understood. ‘They did it. Thinking my partner was a collaborator, they set a bomb for him. His wife and son came home from the arms of her German lover to an unexpected surprise.’
A month ago—had it been that long? he wondered. A little longer, he thought, and said, ‘We try not to talk about it, and sure someone new has come along—war does that. It speeds up death and love, makes friendships instant but then destroys them. He’s still on the Resistance’s hit lists. Well, some of them, but he’s no collabo. Now forget I said any of that and have the doves ready for me at oh-six-five-five hours. Leave them unwrapped. Just tie a string around each of their necks so that I can dangle them from my fist.’
Without another word he was gone from the cottage, gone out into the night to stand alone under the stars, looking up at them. The custodian could not know the detective had lost his two sons at Stalingrad not quite a week ago, nor that his wife back home on her father’s farm near Wasserburg had just gained her divorce and was going to marry an indentured farm labourer. A French peasant!
They met outside the ring of lights as the police photographers went to work and the members of the press, with angry shouts and curses, were fighting off the truncheons and lead-weighted hems of the gendarmes’ capes and their steel-cleated boots as well.
‘Louis, I need a drink.’
‘Me also. How’s the flu?’
‘Fine. I never felt better.’
Oh-oh.
‘Lend me a fag, will you? I’m fresh out. I left mine with the custodian.’
The first of two paniers à salade was arriving. Clang, clang, and into the iron salad baskets with the press for transport to the overnight cells. ‘Your heart’s too big,’ snorted St-Cyr. ‘As a punishment, I ought to force you to try to roll one from the contents of my little tin.’
Everyone collected cigarette butts, but they had 800 of the best, well, 720 now perhaps. Kohler had lost count. ‘Here, let me have a few of them. Hey, didn’t I find you three tins of Dutch pipe tobacco in that U-boat warehouse?’
A press camera was being smashed and ground to pieces, a nose had been broken. ‘You did, and I am forever in your debt. Please take the packet. I was only saving it for Gabrielle.’
His new and yet to be consummated love affair. A chanteuse. ‘Ah, don’t sound so wounded. I’ll give you another. We’ll make it two. One from me and one from yourself.’
‘Merci. Now, please, reveal to me what you are hiding.’
‘Hiding? Hey, it’s to be a surprise. I’ll tell you all about it when we meet Old Shatter Hand.’
‘The clay pigeons …?’ bleated the Sûreté, leagues ahead of him.
‘Fifty in less than forty minutes and a dozen doves in a little more than ten. The child was killed between about three-ten and three-twenty. The custodian saw nothing out of the ordinary in the cage, though he entered it twice before finding her. Either the killer smothered her cries and is a cool one, or he did it in one hell of a hurry and was just damned lucky not to have caught a blast from von Schaumburg’s double-barrelled wonder.’
Kohler paused to take a drag. ‘His coat was either dark blue or black, or it was the child the custodian saw but briefly. A blur.’
They could compare notes later, but he had to say it. Something is not right with this one, Hermann. I’ve asked for Bel ligueux to be brought in for the autopsy. He’s by far the most difficult but can’t be bought or silenced. She’s to go straight to the place Mazas and on to ice. No one is to uncover her until we have either spoken to him or done it ourselves. He will make himself aware of the other victims so that we can discuss them with him.’
‘Good. Now we need some transport. Let’s borrow the sous-préfet’s car until we can pick up the Citroën.’
‘The sous-préfet’s car? Is that wise?’
‘Wise or not, that little runt is far too shifty and needs a damned good kick in the balls.’
Ah merde, sometimes Herman didn’t think of the consequences, but it would be useless to argue. Where once there had been more than 350,000 private automobiles in Paris, to say nothing of the lorries, there were now fewer than 4,500, and most of those belonged to doctors, high-ranking civil servants, bankers and industrialists or to the police, the Germans and the gangsters.
It was a city without wheels in a nation without gasoline. Well, almost. One could not forget the bicycles.
When the engine coughed to life under crossed ignition wires, the Sûreté threw his eyes up to God in despair and said, ‘You would have made an excellent car-thief, Hermann. It’s a pity there’s a war on.’
‘What war? The Führer, in his wisdom, thought it necessary to occupy the rest of France on the eleventh of November of last year, my fine Frog friend, or had you forgotten? Now stop grumbling and let me floor this thing while the sous-préfet sucks lemons. Hey! the tyres are bald. There’s ice. Hang on.’
And pray.
2
BEYOND THE TALL IRON FENCE, AND IN DARKNESS, the softly falling snow gave to the Villa Vernet the caress of a moth. Beech, oak and plane trees graced an open parkland which, with formal ga
rdens, overlooked the Bois and were but a kilometre and a half from the cage of doves, and right in the northwestern corner of the city, quite close to the Seine.
‘It is perhaps the most prestigious address in Paris,’ said St-Cyr, his voice hushed and uneasy, for they were not going to reveal the mistake in the identity of the victim right away and could not know where such a lack of forthrightness would lead. ‘There will be no communal soup kitchens here, Hermann. The route du Champs d’Entraînement is home to but a chosen few.’
The powerful and the useful. Those who’d been allowed to keep their wealth and position. Those the Occupier hadn’t kicked out so as to requisition their villas. It was money, one hell of a lot of money, that kid had inherited. The house, built in the style of Louis XVI, of Chantilly limestone blocks that softly glowed and sharpened shadows, was of two storeys. A narrow balcony, recessed around the upper storey, made access to the roof and chimneys easy. Here, too, the ceilings were much lower than on the ground and first floor. ‘The servants’ quarters.’ Kohler nodded uncomfortably. ‘A couple probably, or a cook, maid and housekeeper. A governess, too, perhaps, even though the kid goes out to school. Louis, maybe we had better tell Vernet the truth and get it over with. He’ll have connections other than von Schaumburg.’
The SS perhaps.
‘Let’s take a little look around first. If we ask, we will not be given the chance. Indeed, it may be our only opportunity.’
‘And the other?’
‘We keep silent for now, no matter what.’
‘Then don’t blame me if we get our asses in a sling!’
‘Hermann, this killing was different. Don’t be an idiot! Something must be very wrong. There were two girls, not one, and the victim could not have been randomly chosen.’
Leaving the car some distance away, they headed up the circular drive and were soon standing behind the house Footprints that would have been made less than fifteen minutes ago were now all but buried.
‘A dog,’ breathed Kohler, puzzled. ‘A poodle probably, and the one who came out with it. A woman in her bare feet, I’m afraid.’ He indicated a far corner of the garden where Doric columns stood beyond the dark grey granite edges of a snow-covered pond. ‘You or me?’
Sandman Page 3