Sandman

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘What is it? What has happened?’ she anxiously whispered into his ear, breaking the rule.

  He trembled at her touch. He found a scrap of paper he would destroy as soon as possible, and wrote: A child is missing. An heiress. A voyou a Nazi has picked up. He may already have killed her.

  ‘Ah no. The Sandman?’ she asked, a whisper.

  He gave a nod and wrote: We’ve a suspect in another killing and must keep him some place safe for a little.

  ‘A little? Here? Are you crazy?’ she whispered urgently.

  A bargain, he wrote. I bring information.

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  He shrugged. He wrote: The SS over on the avenue Foch may want him. We have no other choice

  No choice …

  As chanteuse, Gabrielle Arcuri received 10 per cent of the take of this place, a fortune that would be of no use in her defence. None at all. Nor would her ‘friends’.

  Tall and willowy, she was a good head taller than himself. A White Russian who had, as a girl named Natalya Kulakov-Myshkin, fled the Revolution in 1917, and arrived in Paris at the age of fourteen, having lost her family on the way. But she hadn’t done what most girls in such circumstances would have had to do. She had been a singer right from the start. A widow now, whose husband, a captain, had been badly wounded at Sedan during the invasion of 1940 and had died in the late summer of that year. She had a son, Rene Yvon-Paul, ten years of age. How was he? he wondered, and saw her in the stunning sky-blue sleeveless silk sheath that, with the scent, was her trade-mark. Thousands of tiny seed pearls in vertical rows from hem to diamond choker made the thing opalescent, shimmering and electric every time she strode on stage under the spotlights or stood, as now, under his scrutiny. Very aristocratic, very finely moulded, the nose aquiline, the brow and cheeks so smooth, the lips magnificent, the hair, the soft, soft shade of a very fine brandy and piled up in waves and curls.

  She had the voice of a nightingale, was astute, clever and courageous if a trifle bold—had got the drop on him completely with an ancient fowling piece. It had taken place in an abandoned gristmill on a small island in the Loire near Vouvray, not far from the chateau of her husband’s family. She’d been a suspect then, and they had shared the simple meal of a crottin de chèvre, a small round of goat’s cheese, very strong in flavour, very dry and dusted with chopped dill and chives. A real treasure perhaps four weeks in the aging That and crusty bread and real coffee. All from her rucksack.

  The Resistance had sent her one of the little black coffins they present to collaborators who have been marked for death. He, too, had received one and she had been trying ever since to clear his name.

  There were scattered Resistance cells, tiny groups—two or three persons each, perhaps five at the most—he really did not know. Others, too, outside and working in and through Paris, chains of them, he thought. But making all aware of the truth about an individual was far too difficult and dangerous. He was still on several lists, still marked for death by some.

  Finding another scrap of paper, he sat down and quickly wrote: Antoine Vernet, industrialist, accidentally revealed this during questioning. The Relève is definitely to become the Service de Travail Obligatoire next month. Lists are being drawn up naming those in each factory who are expendable and those who must remain. The selection will perhaps begin with students or simply all remaining young men of the ages 18 to 22, but eventually they will take all able-bodied males up to the ages of 45 to 55.

  ‘Ah no,’ she said and covered her mouth. Tears filled her eyes, which were not blue, as he had first thought, but a lovely shade of violet. Hermann’s Giselle had eyes of that same shade. Was it merely coincidence, he wondered sadly, or was God trying to tell them something? A warning perhaps? A last look before the Gestapo descended and swept her away.

  Hermann was on very, very dangerous ground with this one.

  She tried to kiss Jean-Louis, but he was still far too timid, still feeling the loss of his wife and little son and blaming himself for what had happened to them, though worried also about her. Ah yes. ‘We should have spent Christmas and New Year’s at the chateau as you said you would,’ she whispered, damning the microphones. ‘We may never get another chance.’

  You know I wanted to but couldn’t. Will you see that the Rivards take care of our suspect? he wrote.

  ‘The cellars,’ she whispered, wishing they could be together in peace, if only for a moment. He needed that and so did she.

  It was Hermann who brought the prisoner in from the court-yard. She objected to the lion. She refused to sing any more. ‘I quit,’ she seethed at Rémi Rivard, the mountain. ‘That thing stinks too much!’

  Rivard pointed to the hidden microphones and shrugged before drawing a forefinger across his swarthy throat.

  God knows what Gestapo Paris’s Listeners made of the exchange or of the lion’s greedy licking of the salty ersatz things Hermann had sprinkled on the floor near one of the microphones.

  Rébé kept silent and, once on stage, the chanteuse clasped her hands before her with childlike innocence and, giving the crowd the warmth of her smile, said, ‘Mes chers amis, I have a little song for you of love—the love one feels right from the soul, yes? It is such a terrible longing, isn’t that correct? So intense, one wishes only to lie down in the soft, sweet clover of home and kiss the earth.’

  She sang for them J’ai deux amours, ‘Two Loves Have I’, France and Paris, and followed it with Paris sera toujours Paris, ‘Paris Will Always Be Paris’.

  A foolish, foolish gesture of defiance. Few seemed to notice anything out of place. Stolidly Germanic, they watched the stage, and when she sang Lili Marlene for them, there wasn’t a sound other than that of her voice. It filled the club and they were spellbound for the sound transcended all carnal thoughts. It took them right out of themselves and made them yearn desperately to pack up and go home.

  ‘Come on, Louis. We’ve got to find Hasse before he kills that child.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I understand.’

  9

  TO DRIVE THROUGH THE CITY DURING THE blackout was to have its map in mind at all times. One ticked off the major intersections, counted the streets, computed speed, distance and compass bearing, searching the memory always for landmarks, the darkness for their silhouettes. A blue-washed lamp whose bluing needed replenishment, another which had been done too much, the outline of a métro entrance, a roof, a sculpture, a mothballed fountain.

  On the boulevard Raspail the vélo-taxis, those ridiculous bicycle contraptions, were like gulls migrating along a river of black ice and snow. In the faint pinpricks of the headlamps, and those of the autobus au gazogène and lorries, they showed up suddenly, their drivers frantically trying to get out of the way and not hit one another. Breath steamed in the fifteen degrees of frost. Their eyes were harried, desperate, their passengers laughing, making a great joke of it all or simply not caring as they kissed their girlfriends and tried to do other things beneath the heaps of throw rugs, old scraps of carpet, or blankets.

  Hermann turned on to the boulevard Saint-Germain. They were making for the quais and the pont de l’Alma. Then it was straight north up the avenue George-V to the Lido, the Champs-Élysées and Number 78.

  Hasse had been under psychiatric care for some time. There had been repeated visits to the escort service, weekends with a Mademoiselle Monique Reynard at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. A qualified psychotherapist, or so they had been told. Everything had been laid on by Oberg of the avenue Foch, the Butcher of Poland. ‘One has to learn to live again,’ Hasse had said, ‘that’s what they tell people like myself. Personally, I think it’s a waste of time.’ Of time …

  No matter how hard St-Cyr tried not to think of it, the sketch of Nénette they had found in the Grande-Chaumière was seen in memory against those of Herr Hasse’s storeroom, sketches of naked schoolgirls whose screams the Attack Leader had once heard and still did.

  It has to be him, he said to himself, dreading the thought, b
ut then … then why did that child get into his car today, as Rébé has claimed?

  Had she been that desperate? Had she not thought him the Sandman? And why, please, had Liline Chambert agreed to let those girls pose for him? Why? Why?

  Hasse had told them the girl had found it hard to reconcile him as an artist with his killing of children, but by then he had known Liline was dead and could simply have said it to protect himself.

  He had felt it necessary to be forthright. He had admitted the killings in Poland, the clandestine taking of photographs in Paris, the Lycée Fénelon. A soup kitchen in its cellars. Bare knees, bare thighs, skirts flying as they skipped and played hopscotch and other games. Soup kitchens elsewhere …

  ‘The artist seeks only the absolute truth of each moment,’ he had said.

  In snapshot after snapshot he had captured young schoolgirls of the same age as Nénette and her little friend. ‘I want you to find the person responsible for the killings, especially those of Liline and Andrée.’

  Had he a death wish, then, a need to be found out? He had paid Liline a total of one thousand francs in return for convincing the girls to pose for him. She had not seen his sketches from Poland, the nightmares. She couldn’t have.

  But had Nénette found her way to that storeroom unnoticed? Was that not why she had taken the badges, the pencil case, the crumpled empty tube of paint? Then why, please, had she got into his car today? He had drawn a map of the Bois … a map!

  ‘Louis, we’re here. His car’s parked just ahead of us.’

  So it was, and when they shone their unblinkered torches in on the front seat, they saw the dust of crumbled oak leaves where the child had sat. Her sealskin hat was on the floor. There were breadcrumbs, even a curled shred of ham. A half-eaten biscuit lay there, too, a forgotten stick of chewing gum. ‘Banana,’ breathed Hermann sadly. ‘Ah nom de Jésus-Christ, Louis, I had hoped and even prayed it wouldn’t be him.’

  ‘We can’t touch him if it is.’

  ‘We’re going to have to.’

  Hasse was waiting for them. He had run to his psychotherapist and now stood behind Monique Reynard, who sat at the desk in the foyer, all business, all seriousness. A woman of thirty-four, thought St-Cyr, the cinematographer in him recording detail after detail, her manner, her straight back, hands folded on the bulging dossier of her patient, the nails beautifully manicured and clear-lacquered, the eyes so blue, the hair so blonde, a wave of it successfully hid from all but the most careful scrutiny the birthmark on her brow she must have hated as a child and probably still did.

  ‘Messieurs,’ she said, and he noted the Alsatian accent. ‘Messieurs, what you think is so very wrong. Herr Hasse would not have harmed that child, nor has he killed anyone in Paris, in France even. Indeed, he is most distressed and wants only to assist your endeavours.’

  A man of conscience, was that it, eh? snorted Kohler inwardly. Rouge and powder hid the scars on her pleasantly plump cheeks—burns there, he thought. Were they cigarette burns? Ah merde … Those on her throat were all but hidden by the soft blue scarf that went with the clean-cut, very stylish business suit.

  She would choose her words most carefully, she thought. ‘If you persist, it can only destroy all we’ve accomplished. Is this what you wish?’

  ‘He must answer some questions, mademoiselle,’ said Louis gruffly.

  ‘It’s “Doctor”, please. Dr Reynard. You may examine my certificates if you wish, Inspector.’

  ‘It’s Chief Inspector,’ said Kohler. ‘He’s the Chief, I’m the Inspector.’

  ‘My degrees are Swiss and from Berlin. Jung and Freud, with extensive research into the theories and the work of von Krafft-Ebing.’

  This was not easy ground, and it must have been hard for her to admit to such tainted learning even though the Nazis had found a use for her. ‘The child was in his car today, Doctor. Where is she now? What has he done with her?’

  Hasse took out a cigarette, but his fingers shook so much he had to say, ‘Monique …’

  She turned. She tossed her hair back a little as she looked up at him and smiled so softly it had an automatic calming effect. ‘It’s all right, Gerhardt,’ she said in German. ‘Everything will be fine, you will see.’ And taking the cigarette from him, she lit it and blew smoke up at the ceiling before handing the thing back to him. ‘Tell them, Liebling. You must,’ she said earnestly. ‘Go on. You’ve nothing to hide, nothing to fear. Not any more.’

  The stork took a nervous drag on the cigarette and then another. ‘Nénette complained of her scalp itching. I took her to the convent school—she refused to go to her house and said she mustn’t do that. I left her in the care of the Mother Superior. They will have bathed her and put her to sleep in the infirmary.’

  ‘But … but did the child not also object to being taken to the sisters?’ managed Louis.

  ‘Very much so, but it was for her own good.’

  Ah damn, the stork was too wary. ‘Then why, please, did you draw that sketch of her at the Grande-Chaumière?’

  The woman stiffened. ‘What sketch, please?’ she asked, alarmed.

  ‘Yes, what sketch?’ asked Hasse, forgetting that his cigarette was telegraphing agitation.

  ‘Oh, come now, Herr Hasse,’ enthused the Sûreté as if they were old friends, ‘a sketch of Nénette Vernet in her leaf-padded overcoat but without the sealskin hat we found in your car.’

  ‘Ah no … What hat?’ demanded the woman, sickened perhaps by the thought of what might have happened.

  ‘The child was terrified,’ breathed Kohler. ‘She was screaming her heart out in that sketch.’

  ‘You’ve killed her, haven’t you?’ said Louis sadly.

  ‘Easy,’ cautioned Kohler.

  ‘Herr Hasse has killed no one. He was only trying to help the child.’

  But what had Hasse really done with that child? Disgruntled, St-Cyr tossed his fedora into the empty chair that sat between himself and Hermann. ‘Did you take her to your studio first?’ he asked, his voice deliberately harsh and accusing.

  They had been there, then, thought Hasse. They had found the sketches of the Lodz affair. Somehow he must try to calm himself, somehow Monique must guide the discussion on to more even ground. ‘Why yes, I did. She was hungry, but I had little to offer. Some chewing gum. She said she needed a tooth-brush and asked had I an extra one.’ He would try to smile now, thought Hasse. He would draw on his cigarette and give them a moment. Yes … yes, that would be best. Monique would agree. He was certain she would. ‘I … I found one for her and apologized for its being so used. You see, I’d come across it in Poland. I’d lost mine then and felt the same as she did. The teeth are so important, aren’t they?’

  Ah merde, he really has killed her. ‘The tooth-brush?’ hazarded St-Cyr, a reminder the woman noted only too well.

  Hasse was bitter, the grin he gave, sardonic. ‘She said it didn’t matter that it had been used so much, that anything was better than nothing and that by first melting the snow in her mouth, she would then have the water necessary to clean her teeth. She was very grateful.’

  ‘I’ll bet she was,’ seethed Kohler. ‘So grateful she left the thing behind. I have it here.’

  He tossed it on to her desk. The woman’s eyes flicked anxiously from it to himself and back again. Warily she glanced at Louis. ‘Tooth-brushes …’ she began, only to stop herself and bite her lower lip. Louis let a breath escape.

  ‘The tooth-brush of a raped and murdered Polish schoolgirl. mademoiselle,’ he said flatly.

  ‘It’s Doctor.’

  ‘Merci. Doctor, please ask him how he felt in Poland when he used that same tooth-brush?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to upset Nénette,’ blurted Hasse. ‘She must have realized where it had come from and that’s why she left it behind.’

  ‘Gerhardt, please don’t distress yourself. Please listen to me,’ urged the woman, turning to take him by the hands. ‘No, you must look at me, my darling. Forget them. They ar
e nothing. They are mistaken, yes? We both know this. We were in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, isn’t that so? My parents, Gerhardt. You visited them. They had moved there in forty-one so as to be close to me.’

  ‘It’s not the death of Andrée Noireau they’re interested in,’ he said sadly. ‘It’s those of all the others.’

  ‘Did Nénette say anything about the Sandman?’ asked Louis. ‘DID SHE?’

  ‘Please don’t shout. Please,’ urged the woman, trembling.

  Hasse straightened. He became in that one brief instant the Attack Leader he had once been. ‘Only that she hoped you would catch the criminal before there was another killing.’

  Kohler leaned on the desk and all but shouted, ‘Do you fantasize about little girls, Herr Hasse? Schoolgirls, eh?’

  ‘How dare you,’ swore the woman. ‘You cannot ask such things. You will only undo all we have accomplished.’

  ‘Then ask him where he left her body,’ sighed Kohler. ‘Let’s make it plain and simple.’

  Hasse tried to object, but she silenced him with a touch. ‘He isn’t lying. He did deliver the child to the sisters. Please avail yourselves of the telephone. I’m sure the Mother Superior will be only too glad to tell you the child was exhausted and is now soundly asleep.’

  ‘Who watches over her, then?’ managed Louis anxiously.

  ‘One of the sisters.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘This the Mother Superior did not say.’

  ‘Then tell us where Debauve is. Tell us, damn itl’ shouted Kohler.

  ‘Not here,’ she said, her gaze unwavering. ‘The good Father seldom visits. Our clients are mainly businessmen and officers from the Reich. Many are veterans of the campaigns in the East, yes, and North Africa. The Freikorps Dönitz also, the submarine service—we get quite a few of those—and lots from the Luftwaffe. They are here for either rest and recuperation or simply business. Relaxation is needed, and this we provide.’