Sandman

by J. Robert Janes

  Verdammt! Whatever footprints there were looked old and were being rapidly obliterated by the cursed snow. ‘The cemetery,’ sighed Kohler, not liking it at all. ‘The vaults, Louis. The crypts, that mausoleum where the kid bedded down.’

  And wrote in the fine dust of spilled cremation ashes, Andrée, you must forgive me. Liline is also dead. I went to the place where she was and I saw them taking her out.

  Steps led up to the mausoleum, but the bronze doors, with their shattered stained-glass panels, had been wired tightly shut. Kohler shone his torch inside only to find that the words the child had written had been rubbed out. ‘Debauve,’ he said. ‘A man’s handprint, Louis. I’m certain of it.’

  The silk flowers still rested in another mausoleum among the broken coffins and scattered bones, but here, too, the doors had been wired tightly shut.

  In every place she could have run, steps had been taken to thwart her escape. The snow hid all tracks. It was impossible to find any. It beat against the face and stung the eyes. It said, Give up. Let it be. There is nothing you can do.

  While they had been at the house on the rue Chabanais, Debauve must have been searching for the child, but had he finally caught her? Had he? It was not pleasant hunting for her corpse among the rows of tombstones, some broken, others pushed over. Behind the mausoleums among scattered bushes there were places she could have hidden had she got away, places she could have been caught and killed, but she wasn’t there. And as for looking in the rest of the cemetery, there simply wasn’t time.

  When they got to the tenement house on the quai du Président Paul Doumer, it was to find the door haphazardly repaired after Hermann’s splintering of it. Pounding did no good, so he broke it in again, using one good kick and the flat of his shoe.

  Yvette Grégoire, the concierge, lay at the foot of the stairs to the cellars. Her false teeth had popped out when her head hit the stone floor. The faded blue eyes were bloodshot and glazed, the hairy lips split.

  Hastily St-Cyr crossed himself and said, ‘Dead for several hours. Why has no one reported it?’

  ‘Too afraid, probably. Each waiting for someone else to speak up, all thinking that tomorrow would be best. They’ll have seen and heard nothing. An accident, eh, but what else could be expected since the stair runners are so old and torn?’

  When they got to the Villa Vernet there wasn’t a sign of the child. Not in the folly, not in her room or anywhere else. Madame Vernet paced the floor, smoking cigarette after cigarette under the watchful eyes of a severe, grey-suited young woman with a pistol. Vernet brooded in his study.

  There would be time enough for them later.

  ‘The Jardin, Louis. The children’s zoo or the puppet theatres.’

  ‘The cage of doves, the stables … Ah merde, merde, mon vieux, why can God not give us some sign? Has she been taken, or is she still on the run?’

  God couldn’t see them. Like the bedsheet the sisters used to hide the nakedness of their girls from Him, the sudden blizzard hid virtually everything. It froze the windscreen wipers to the glass. It made the car skid. Somehow they reached the Jardin, somehow they managed to get out of the car, but would they ever be able to return to it in this, would they ever find that child?

  ‘She knows this place too well,’ said Louis grimly. A voyou Sister Céline had called her, a guttersnipe, a brigand of the forest.

  Very quickly, and totally without intention, they became separated. Each felt at once the other wasn’t there. Each thought to call out but knew it would be quite useless.

  The child, whether by design or mistake, had put things squarely on her own footing. If still free, this wearer of a tea cosy, a leaf-padded overcoat, sealskin boots and mittens would try to hide where no one could find her.

  And if not free? asked St-Cyr and knew he must not ask such a question until they had found her.

  A shutter banged, a large cage of wire appeared out of the blinding snow. Faltering, his torchlight shone on a signboard and, brushing the snow away, he read: OLD WORLD MONKEYS. Poor creatures. They must be frozen stiff or huddled in their little house wishing they could hibernate.

  The Enchanted Garden, the Miniature Autodrome, the statue of the naturalist Daubenton, the aviary, the lions’ den—past each of these he forced himself, into the wind that brought snow and freezing cold until he thought he might just as well be in the Yukon with Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush and saw himself picking nails out of a pair of boiled boots on which he was dining.

  ‘Nénette,’ he called out at last. ‘Nénette Vernet.’

  The wind took her name and threw it away.

  The aviary stank of birds, but it was warm if fetid, and, once out of the wind and snow, all Kohler could think to ask himself was who had opened the door, who had broken the lock?

  There were parakeets and cockatoos, macaws, parrots, budgerigars, canaries and finches. There were violet-eared waxbills, Java sparrows, golden pheasants, peacocks, guinea fowl and one hell of a racket among the drooping rubber plants, the creepers and coconut palm forests. Aisles and aisles of cages demanded attention now that the light from his torch had passed over them to settle on one of the four or five large cast-iron stoves with pots of water simmering and coal fires banked for the night. A furnace somewhere, too, and real coal! Von Schaumburg must have okayed the supply. Tropical birds above children and old people. A sensitive men, a kind heart. A Prussian!

  Violette Belanger sat on the floor beside the stove. There was a small, blue-green parrot in her lap, and this she stroked and fed bits of dried apple. Her knees were bent, her lower legs folded demurely to one side. The woollen kneesocks were pulled up, the pleated skirt of her tunic was pulled down and closely wrapped about her legs. Her shirt-blouse was done up and from somewhere she had acquired a cardigan, much worn and badly in need of mending, an overcoat, too. The shaggy mop of dark brown hair was a tangle though now dry, so she’d been in here for some time; the dark brown eyes were earnest, watchful and very conscious of him as he cautiously approached.

  Her cheeks and the tip of her nose were still red from the wind and the cold, the rest of her was pale.

  ‘She’s out there,’ she said at last. ‘She has to punish that child—isn’t that correct? Schoolgirls shouldn’t think the things Céline thinks they do.’

  ‘Where’s Debauve?’

  ‘Where indeed? He has to find her, too, and Céline. I’m supposed to stay here. I’m to wait for him. My priest. My pimp. My lover. We’re going to Provence. We’re going to buy my little farm.’

  ‘He’s the Sandman, isn’t he?’

  How cruel of him, how harsh. One must be soft and gentle, then. ‘The Sandman. The one who puts things into the mouths and other places of schoolgirls before he kills them. Why, please, then would he use a knitting needle, the weapon of a woman?’

  ‘It can’t be Céline, it can’t be you.’

  Was he so lost, this giant from the Kripo, this detective? ‘Why do you think Madame Morelle made us collect the used rubbers?’

  ‘To count. To make sure her girls didn’t cheat.’

  He tried to shake the snow from himself, and she could see that he wanted desperately to warm his fingers at the stove. ‘We collect the used rubbers for those reasons, yes, of course. All the girls do, but also so that their madams can then sell them to others, to those who obtain the release of their little burden by simply fingering that of others.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  Was it such a revelation? ‘To each appetite there is an answer. To all must be given satisfaction, even to those who cannot touch a woman because they are too afraid. Those types, they stand at the door to the courtyard behind the house. Madame, she treats them very badly. She makes them wait for hours and they do. Ah! they’re so eager, she makes them pay really high prices. Those types, they are beneath her. Well, not any more, I guess, unless there are the maisons de tolérance in hell. But she would often make them kiss her fingers, too, as she stuffed rubbers into the mouths of some of
them. They enjoyed it. They loved it. They were humiliated, very ashamed of their strange desires, and she rejoiced in her hold over them as she wiped her hands on their clothes.’

  ‘Céline can’t have done that to those girls. The semen in those rubbers would have dried and been no good to her.’

  ‘Oh? And is the weather not cold? Can the cloud custard not be frozen first if … if one puts the coffee can out on one’s little balcony, or at least keeps it very, very cold by placing it in the crushed ice of the champagne bucket after first adding a handful or two of salt to the ice so as to make the water colder? Can the custard then not warm in my sister’s cloak pockets even as she finds the rubbers I have placed there for her? Like snakes; snakes through which she must then run her fingers not just in agitation, yes, but in rage, I think. A demented rage.’

  Ah merde, merde, the days of the soup kitchens, the blood groupings of the semen stains, no pubic hairs … It was just not possible.

  Kohler dragged off his mittens and then the gloves Louis had pinched for him at Chez Rudi’s. He warmed his hands at the stove while still keeping the beam of the torch on her knees. He let her look up at him and met those deep brown, innocent eyes with concern.

  She stroked the parrot. She opened her sweater and shirt-blouse and carefully tucked the bird down her front, saying, ‘Don’t scratch like the men who have pawed me so many times and sucked my nipples. Just keep warm.

  ‘He’s going south like me, Inspector. I’m going to name him but have not yet decided. Perhaps you have a suggestion?’

  He had no time for dreams, he had only time for Céline and that child, that child. She’d have to tell him. She’d have to keep him here as long as possible. ‘You see, Inspector, when my father took me, Céline, she got very jealous, very angry and blamed me. To her I was a little cunt in heat and awakening to it. No longer was she the favourite, no longer papa’s little schoolgirl.’

  ‘And now?’ he asked.

  ‘Now she hates me for what I do but condemns all girls of that age. To her they have the devil in their bodies just like me. To her they think of doing things they ought not. Can you imagine how it must torture her to have to teach them? It agitates her. It drives her to a frenzy, and the little bitches feed this by making fun of her. She becomes insane. She has to visit me again and again, sometimes twice in the same day. I have to listen to her. The least little thing sets her off A stolen zebra, was it?’

  ‘A giraffe.’

  ‘An elephant. A baby, but that was taken on a last dare, I think, and much later, and by then, why then, the identity of the Sandman, it had been discovered by that child. My sister. My Céline. A nun.’

  ‘You’re lying. You’re only trying to protect your priest.’

  Even now he could not believe it of a nun. ‘Then wait and see. Find what you can. Please close the door Henri and me, we wish to be alone.’

  ‘Henri?’

  ‘Yes. I have decided to name him after my father. It’s the least I can do, but if he scratches me, I will have to kill him.’

  The barn of the Norman farm was not warm—no, of course not, thought St-Cyr. Hay had been forked out for the two milch cows and the nanny goats, and he could hear them softly chewing and moving about in their stalls. There was a loft above, and from this the sound of wayward chickens, disturbed at their roosting, came to him. Others began to stir down here. He waited. He pressed his back to the wall and rubbed the muzzle of the ancient mare the Germans had not thought fit enough to send to Russia.

  The chickens up there didn’t want to be disturbed. The rooster objected. When the child hissed, ‘Shush!’ he began in earnest to seek the ladder that must lead to the loft.

  Someone else sought it, too. Unfortunately, the Sûreté did not have the use of his torch anymore. The batteries hadn’t liked the cold weather. Having taken them out, he was trying to rejuvenate them with body heat in his trouser pockets.

  Ah merde, but it was dark! A button or clasp hit a rung of the ladder. After this there were only the sounds of the chickens, the cows, the goats and the wind, which found every chance to enter the building. Paris seldom saw such storms. Hundreds would freeze to death.

  ‘Nénette … Nénette Vernet, is that you?’ asked the nun. ‘Attend to me, child. You are in great danger and should not have left the infirmary. We would not have harmed you.’

  Steps sounded above him. Bits of straw filtered down and these were caught by the wind and blown into his eyes …

  ‘Child, stand up. Don’t you dare hide from me. Now, come along. You must be frozen. Here, give me your hand. Why have you taken your mittens off?’

  The beam of the sister’s torch flitted around up there. He climbed. He tried to reach them unnoticed. He …

  ‘You did it. You killed them.’

  Ah no, go carefully, he cried out inwardly to the child, carefully, please, and grasped another rung.

  ‘I did no such thing. It is despicable of you to think this. Those girls were hungry. I fed them, as did the other sisters. We gave them love. God’s love.’

  The child must have swallowed or tried to look for a way out, but then he realized she had simply been screwing up her courage. ‘Not in the belfries of the Notre-Dame. Not there, Sister,’ she shrilled. ‘After that girl was killed, I … I found some things in the pockets of your cloak on the very same day. I did. I really did. After the murder in les Halles also.’

  ‘What?’

  It was almost a scream.

  The smell of the stables came to him strongly, the sound of the wind and something else, something down there at the entrance Had someone come into the barn?

  ‘Lots of those … those rubber things, Sister. All sticky. Really sticky.’

  Ah nom de Jésus-Christ! He reached the loft. He saw them against a far corner. Crossbeams separated him from them. The nun had her back to him and seemed to tower over the child, who was scrunched against the walls. Under the light from the sister’s torch, the child’s big dark blue eyes gazed up warily from a pinched face. A fringe of jet-black hair protruded from beneath the crocheted pink-and-white tea cosy.

  The cloak was of coarse black wool. It was webbed with snow. Now it all but hid the child from him. The hood was thrown back. The sister’s hair was as if hacked off with scissors. Closer … he must get closer. Someone … someone else had come into the barn …

  The chickens moved about up here, complaining. The child had several eggs clutched in both hands.

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Nénette.’

  Somehow the child found her voice. ‘I’m not, Sister,’ she quavered. Neither of them realized they were no longer alone or that he was but two metres behind the nun. ‘You didn’t kill Andrée, Sister, but … but you killed all the others and I … I must tell myself not to cry. I must!’

  Something went out of Céline then. Her voice dropped to a weary sadness. ‘Please just trust me, child. There are things you cannot possibly understand, but as God is my witness, I have killed no one. You must believe me. Violette, she … she is not well. It’s the devil who makes her do what she does. She must have put those … those filthy things in my pockets when I was last with her. You had no right to touch them.’

  ‘Then did she put them there also after les Halles?’

  ‘You’re lying! Don’t lie! It isn’t right! It’s shameful!’

  The outburst passed. Again the child somehow found her voice. ‘She gave me the coins the soldiers throw away because they cannot spend them in our country, Sister. She told me all about you. She said you were E-VIL and that we were R-IGHT about you.’

  The beam of the torch wavered but then it came back to shine more fully on the child. ‘Please come to me, Nénette. Let’s both ask God to help us. That man Violette calls her priest will kill you to protect her.’

  ‘And you?’ croaked Nénette all but to herself. ‘What, please, will he do to you?’

  The child was evil. The child was afraid. She could so easily freeze to death, an accident …
‘He will ask to hear my confession. He will try to be the priest he once was.’

  ‘He’ll kill you, too, won’t he?’

  ‘Céline … Céline, is that you up there?’ called out Debauve.

  She switched off her torch. She whispered. ‘Nénette, we must leave here at once!’

  St-Cyr took a step. The child did not throw the eggs. She leapt at the sister and smashed them into Céline’s face, smashed them and smashed them. There was a cry, a shriek, another and another. He tried to wrap his arms about the nun and pull her down, down, tried to stop the child … the child.

  The girl kicked and bit and scratched and smeared broken eggs fiercely into the sister’s face, shrieking, ‘LET ME GO. LET ME GO. YOU DID IT! YOU DID IT!’

  Ah merde, merde, the child had escaped. She ran full tilt into something in the darkness, fell back, scrambled up—dashed across something else, slipped, threw baskets behind her, chickens, anything that came to hand, and when he reached where he thought the ladder had been, it was no longer there.

  ‘Nénette …’ he began. He coughed. He tried to catch a breath. Something touched his back. It sent shock waves through his spine. It made him cry out, ‘H … e … r … mann!’

  He threw out his hands and tried to grab something … anything. He twisted, he turned, and as he fell, he was reminded briefly of himself as a boy falling from the roof of his Uncle Alexandre’s barn. He must never do that again. Never.

  There was a crash, a splintering of flying boards, the stench and taste of manure, hard and frozen in the straw.

  Dazed and in shock, numb all over and then in pain, much pain, he tried to move, and only when he had rolled over on to his good side, his right side, did he see between the canted iron spokes of a barrow’s wheel the first flames being sucked up and teased against a far wall.

  ‘Hermann …’ he managed. ‘Hermann, where the hell are you?’

  The bears in the bear pit were not friendly. Captured in 1934 perhaps, and now unaccustomed to the cold but intuitively rejoicing in the blizzard, they had heard him climbing the fence to he had known not what, and when he had slid and rocketed down into the pit they called home, they had come to find him.