Sandman

by J. Robert Janes

  She must have a damned cold heart not to care about that child, thought Kohler bitterly. He wanted to take her aside and breathe a few words into the shell of her ear, just to remind her the end was coming, that the war was going to turn sour someday. ‘Then why is a psychotherapist needed?’ he asked, shoving stuff aside to sit on a corner of the desk.

  Was it to be just between the two of them now? she wondered, smiling inwardly. ‘A therapist decides what is best for all, but is really only needed for the special cases,’ she said, taunting him further.

  ‘There are others like him?’ he asked, nodding at the Attack Leader.

  How stupid of him. ‘Of course. Like Herr Hasse, they require sensitivity, understanding and a willingness to listen, to believe and to guide their steps down the path to healing.’

  Verdammt, the bitch! ‘How much does Oberg pay you?’ he asked, knowing Violette Belanger had told them they were spying for Oberg, sucking up blackmail details for him to use. Those juicy little things that are whispered, confessed to some defrocked priest or simply revealed in a moment of bravado over a meal, a glass of wine or in bed.

  Herr Kohler was trembling ever so slightly. The avenue Foch had said he was on Benzedrine and that he was dangerously close to becoming addicted if not already so. The voice of a robot would only further torment him. ‘Our rates are set. Consultation is voluntary on the part of the patient. The reports and diagnoses are strictly confidential.’

  ‘Bananas! Since when has anything the SS ever had a hand in been confidential if they thought they could use it? Just why, please, meine gute Frau Doktor, have you taken this out?’

  He thumped the dossier she had in front of her.

  ‘Because Herr Hasse has asked me to allow you to peruse it, since he has nothing to hide. His is not an easy past to reconcile, but with persistence, determination and hard work, a full recovery is quite possible, though I must say he does not believe this. We have constant debates about it. They are healthy, yes, Herr Hauptmann Detektif Inspektor Kohler? He’s come a long way, believe me.’

  ‘But you’ve not slept with him yet, have you?’

  Hasse put a restraining hand on her shoulder. ‘I didn’t kill the child, Inspector. Nénette can easily tell you this herself, and as for Andrée and the others, and Mademoiselle Chambert, I have already told you I want the person or persons responsible apprehended.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ interjected the Sûreté, ‘but, please, did you and Nénette discuss the killing of her little friend?’

  ‘She said only that the Sandman could not have done it.’

  ‘And she did not cry? She did not burst into tears at the mention of her friend? You did not enquire further? Well?’

  There was no need to answer any of their questions, but he would do so. ‘Why should I have asked? I was just glad to have her safely with me. I didn’t want to upset her any more than she already was.’

  He’s lying, said St-Cyr to himself. The woman felt it, too, and nervously pressed her hand flat on the dossier as Hasse spoke. ‘And where, please, did you pick her up?’

  Monique Reynard dreaded the answer that was to come and averted her eyes from Hermann and himself.

  ‘On the allée de Longchamp,’ said Hasse with all the dignity he could muster. ‘I admit I had been searching for her. That was why the sketch map was in my studio.’

  ‘But you didn’t take it with you,’ said Kohler sadly.

  ‘I forgot. In … in my anxiety to … to find her, it completely went … went out of my head. Can’t you see I was—’

  ‘Gerhardt, please! It’s all right. Just tell them how it was.’

  Ah Gott im Himmel, they were a pair, the two of them. How often had she tried to sleep with him and failed? wondered Kohler. Far more times than five lost weekends in the countryside.

  ‘I wanted to help,’ confessed Hasse, silently cursing the two of them for doubting him. ‘Then there she was, running out of the woods to flag me down and scramble into the car. She … she said she was being followed and … and had no other choice. “Quickly,” she said, “before she sees you’ve got me.”’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Yes.’

  St-Cyr took the two of them in at a glance before letting his gaze settle on the woman. ‘Whom did she mean?’ he asked Hasse.

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  ‘And you did not ask?’ demanded Kohler fiercely.

  ‘I knew she was distressed—I feared for her. She was safe. I thought perhaps it had been one of the sisters. I knew that all things would be revealed in due course.’

  All things … A solid citizen, then, simply doing his duty, was that it, eh? thought St-Cyr. A woman … A woman … ‘Exactly where along the allée de Longchamp did you come across the child?’

  ‘Near the Carrefour de Longchamp and the Grande Cascade.’

  Kohler heard Louis suck in an impatient breath. ‘Almost at the Hippodrome, Hermann, and quite some distance from the Jardin d’Acclimatation. A good two kilometres to the southwest of the stables. From there, a kilometre farther to the children’s restaurant and salon de thé. Why, please, do you think you found her so far from the Jardin?’

  Again Mademoiselle Reynard betrayed how much she dreaded the answer.

  ‘I’ve already told you,’ snapped Hasse. ‘She was being followed.’

  ‘By whom? Come, come, monsieur, you know all about who was following her. You’d done so yourself many times before—isn’t that correct? Well, isn’t it? You had secretly taken photographs of her and Andrée Noireau. You knew she was being followed by others, yet you did nothing about it. Nothing. I want to know why!’

  ‘Inspector, please! You don’t know what you’re doing to him. All I’ve worked so hard for may well be lost. Lost, do you understand?’

  She was finally in tears, not sitting now but standing in front of Hasse, prepared to keep them from taking him.

  Several seconds passed. The detectives wanted to find the Sandman before another young girl was raped—yes, raped—and then killed. ‘He’s … he’s incapable,’ she said. ‘I … I’ve tried. He … he simply cannot do it.’

  ‘Do what?’ breathed Kohler.

  ‘Idiot! Have sex, damn you! Sex in any way, shape or form. There, now are you satisfied? Are you?’

  It was Louis who did the sighing. ‘Then please inform him that he was seen following the child this afternoon in the Jardin d’Acclimatation and that it was there, not near the Hippodrome, that Nénette Vernet got into his car.’

  ‘Seen by whom?’ she cried.

  ‘That is not for you to know. For now, it’s confidential.’

  ‘Ah, damn you, damn you. Flics, that’s all you are. Lousy flics!’

  Louis reached for the telephone. Sadly he watched the two of them. Was he convinced? wondered Kohler. Was he now prepared to call Old Shatter Hand and request that an arrest be made? Sometimes it was so hard to tell with Louis. There’d be a thousand questions in his mind and he’d have to go over every one of them before deciding on the truth, nothing but the truth. He hadn’t been wrong yet, well once perhaps and not really. Not in the nearly two and a half years they’d been working together.

  ‘Inspector,’ she pleaded, hastily wiping her eyes and cursing her tears. ‘We knew of his association with Mademoiselle Chambert and thought it a good thing. We encouraged it, yes. If he could get those two young girls to accept him as he was, we felt it would make such a difference.’

  ‘There were others he paid to go up to that flat of his,’ said Kohler harshly.

  ‘Others?’ She was sickened by the news and turned quickly away.

  St-Cyr got through to the convent instead of the Kommandantur. It took several rings before a harried voice, just awakened, asked who it was and told him Nénette Vernet was asleep. ‘I’ve only just left her, Inspector. The poor child is safe at last.’ A yawn was heard. ‘You need have no more fears. She had a bowl of warm milk with bread dipped in it. A few drops of laudanum were felt best.’

>   A tincture of opium … Ah merde, merde! ‘Are the doors secured between the convent and the church?’ he asked and heard her say, ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then please have three sisters watching over the child at all times. Please do not let her out of your sight.’

  They ran. They tried to make it to the convent before it was too late. Banging on the heavy oak door did no good. Pulling on the bell chain produced only an utter refusal to answer.

  Against the loneliness of distant stars, the frozen sickle of a new moon stood as if grinning in judgment.

  ‘Debauve and Violette!’ cursed Louis. ‘Madame Vernet figured it all out from the trash in that child’s coat pockets. She knew who the Sandman was.’

  ‘A crucifix and a Number Four knitting needle in the child’s desk,’ swore Hermann. ‘A map of the Sandman’s murders. “This one is next”.’

  ‘A used condom in her change purse.’

  ‘From the coffee can of a whore.’

  Kohler gave the door a last kick. They’d have to get the army to batter the thing in. ‘Idiot! You would warn them. Now they’re so darned scared they won’t let even us in!’

  The nuns weren’t just scared, they were desperately afraid, and when at last, after much deliberation within, entry was allowed, nearly all were on their knees crowded into the infirmary, gathered around the child’s bed. Nearly all were in tears and praying.

  The bed was empty, the child was gone.

  ‘She left us, Inspectors,’ seethed the Reverend Mother, yanking the pillows away to reveal the soggy stains of milk and mush of uneaten bread. ‘She dumped the laudanum into the sisters’ mugs of tea. Look at the two of them. Just look!’

  Sister Dominique, her mouth wide open, slept the sleep of dreams in a nearby chair; Sister Edith, under whose care the infirmary lay, that of nightmares perhaps.

  ‘And Sister Céline?’ he asked hesitating. ‘Was she the one I spoke to on the telephone?’

  Anxiety, pain and grief—ah, so many things filled the deep blue eyes of the Reverend Mother. ‘Céline, Inspector? You see, she, too, has left us.’

  ‘Was she out this afternoon?’

  ‘In the Jardin d’Acclimatation?’

  ‘Searching for that child—Reverend Mother, you know this is what I mean.’

  ‘Céline … Céline thinks all girls of that age have the devil in their bodies, Inspector. She doesn’t really mean to say such things. It’s her past, that father of hers. It’s Violette and … and the life that one insists on leading. The constant shame of it, the ridicule of our girls, the whispers, the secretly passed notes with filth written on them. Shameful things the girls themselves cannot possibly understand.’

  ‘Let us go into your office, Reverend Mother. Let us take a moment.’

  She would have to tell them and beg God’s forgiveness for doing so. ‘Céline Belanger has … has very bad thoughts, Inspectors. They come and go. There are times when she is quite calm, times when very upset and agitated. She is constantly visiting Violette not only because she feels it is her duty as an older sister but also because she secretly blames herself. I’m certain of it, certain, too, that she knows very well what their father did to Violette because he’d done the same things to her. Oh yes, this, too, I am certain of, but each visit seems only to reinforce the hateful thoughts. They are like the migraines. They come on suddenly and stay for days.’

  He must go gently. ‘Does the sister think bad thoughts of your girls, Reverend Mother?’

  ‘She sees flames.’

  ‘Flames, but …?’

  ‘Yes. I know the milieu are fond of saying that when they see the police but Céline’s flames, they are different. They are of girls of Nénette’s age letting men do filthy things to them. Wanton things. Things they themselves don’t anticipate but have secretly encouraged simply by a smile, a desire to feel wanted, a need to get attention. To Céline their unawareness of the danger is just a lie hiding base desires to know and experience everything about sex even though desperately afraid and ignorant of it. She … she has tried many times to suppress all such thoughts. We have prayed constantly for God’s help but you see, recently our girls, they only made it worse. They sensed Céline did not just dislike them but felt them guilty of such things. They became convinced she wanted to punish them.’

  The age of innocence shattered by a nun. ‘Did she try to find Nénette this afternoon? Was she following that child only to have her turn up here?’

  ‘Céline’s cloak was torn. Her face was scratched—a branch perhaps, or a briar. Sister Dominique came back early in great distress to tell me Céline had deliberately left her.’

  ‘Where will she go, if she finds Nénette?’

  To the Notre-Dame, was that what he was thinking? To Suresnes or Aubervilliers, to some run-down tenement? Or was it to les Halles and empty stalls where no food is brought for sale because there is so little of it getting into the city? ‘She will try to find Nénette, Inspector, to save her from what Violette and that … that “priest” of hers would do to the child. She will take her to the house on the rue Chabanais because only then can she confront the child and Violette with the truth.’

  It was now nearly 11.00 p.m. The métro would soon stop, as would the city’s much diminished bus service. Céline could know nothing of what had happened to Madame Morelle or that Violette had run from the house.

  ‘What was the child wearing?’ he asked and she could see how very concerned he was that Nénette might freeze to death.

  ‘The overcoat that is padded with leaves. The sealskin boots and mittens. A tea cosy for a hat. She found her things in the larger of the kitchen stoves, where Sister Céline had placed them to burn but had been distracted by your telephone call.’

  ‘Then the child must have hidden in the kitchens until the sister had left the convent?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I am afraid that is how it must have been. Céline will be looking for her; Nénette will be trying desperately not to be found, but the sisters, Inspector, they have been searching so much for her, they have come to know well the places in which the child might attempt to hide.’

  ‘The cemetery, the synagogue, the Bois, the Jardin and the Villa Vernet.’

  Flames, verdammt! thought Kohler. ‘We’re going to have to check out that tenement on the quai du Président Paul Doumer, Louis. The concierge can identify Debauve as the one who came to collect Madame Morelle. Our priest will be only too aware of this.’

  ‘Gloves … I no longer have a pair of gloves.’

  ‘Mittens,’ said one of the sisters. ‘We’ve been knitting mittens and sweaters, Inspector. Take some. Bundle up. Please don’t freeze.’

  ‘There are socks, too, warm socks.’

  ‘A thermos, someone. Quickly. Quickly.’

  ‘No laudanum. No laudanum, please.’ Ah merde, Sister Céline …? Had she drunk her tea? Had that yawn she had given over the telephone been but a sign of things to come?

  High above the synagogue, the moon split the clouds that had come to blot out the stars. As the curfew descended on the city, the night threw up the singularity of its sounds. Everything seemed simply to stop running, to be replaced by a silence so penetrating each footfall was heard, each intake of breath. Though both of them instinctively listened for the feint and ominous drone of distant bombers, each knew the weather had interfered to give a night of peace to cities on both sides of this lousy war.

  Louis would go inside the synagogue to flush them out, if they were in there; he, himself, would watch the exits, particularly that of the lift from the furnace room. ‘Take care, mon vieux. Shout if you need me.’

  ‘You also.’

  And then he was gone—had vanished inside, into what? wondered Kohler, saying, Ah damn, damn, why does it always have to be us?

  When it began to snow quite hard, he knew that God of Louis’s wasn’t treating them very well.

  The cellars would be freezing. They’d be damp—that icy dampness that clings and penetrates e
ven two layers of heavy woollen undergarments, socks and sweaters. The river of ice on the crowded, cluttered floor would be slippery. ‘Let’s face it,’ said Kohler, aloud to himself. ‘I hate like hell waiting for things to happen.’

  In the furnace room, St-Cyr let the beam of his torch dance uncertainly over the maze of pipes, grey-white beneath their dustings of soot. Now the words NÉNETTE … ANDRÉE … appeared, now ARE WE ALL TO DIE? and then … then LILINE with hardly time for her to finish printing the E.

  The firebox door of the furnace had been wired shut. He could swear it hadn’t been like that. Closed, yes, but not secured. Whoever had done it had twisted the wire several times. Was the child in there, then? Had she scrawled in to hide, only to find herself trapped?

  Again he shone the torch around the room. Again he had to be certain he was alone. Hermann … Hermann, he began.

  Setting the torch down on the overturned bucket the child had used as a stool, he tried to untwist the wire, saying softly. ‘Nénette … Nénette, it’s me, Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the Sûreté.’ Had the Sandman killed her?

  The wire had been snipped off with wire cutters. It had been twisted tightly with pliers. Whoever had done this had come prepared.

  He cut his fingers. They very nearly froze to the wire. Leaning down, he caught at his sleeve and used it to slide the draught plate open and shone the torch inside.

  The firebox was huge, the many-toothed bars of the grate, sturdy. A nest had been built in there of leaves last fall and it would have been big enough for those two girls to have used but had been set afire some hours ago. Now there were only its ashes, grey and light against the deeper, older, more solid ash and clinkers.

  There was no sign of the child.

  This is the way out and the way in, said Kohler to himself as he stood with his back against the wall in moon-shadow watching the lift, waiting, hoping, remembering the footprints they had found down there, those of a woman. Violette, he wondered, or Céline?

  ‘It’s been jammed,’ hissed Louis furiously from below. ‘Whoever did it knew the child hid out here. That person may have been waiting for her, Hermann. The child may already have been taken.’