There was even coffee, but had these boys had access to one of the warehouses of the Vichy food controllers? Coffee was like gold, the ersatz simply horrible, so at least 500 the half-kilo for the real.
‘This has to suggest someone big, mon vieux,’ he said, though Louis still hadn’t shown up. Moving on, he came to the topic of bread. It was one of those few things that couldn’t be bought on the marché noir, but flour could be and they had four fifty-kilo bags of that beautiful white stuff that would go for at least seventy-five the kilo, since birthday cakes, brioches, croissants and other such things had been judged ‘luxuries’ by Vichy and banned back in the late autumn of 1940.
Yet not only had the killer or killers left all of the provisions behind, they had seemingly left the bundles of five thousands, one thousands and five hundreds and had taken what they could grab of the small bills, the hundreds, twenties, tens and fives.
Placed as it was a goodly distance from the ruins of the monastery’s church and other buildings, and right near what had once been the two-metre high peripheral wall, with plenty of open land left inside, the second ‘herbal,’ felt St-Cyr, must have been a centuries-old throw bed and humus pile. Fully in sunshine, when available, its plants had flourished.
The other victim was lying face down and clearly visible from the ruins of the church, he having all but made it into the thickness of the encroaching forest, having run from the killer. Challenged from behind, he had thrown up his hands in surrender and had immediately been shot in the back of the neck. ‘The Genickschuss,’ St-Cyr heard himself saying with that certain sense of alarm since it was a favourite method among the Occupier no matter which country they were in, especially the SS and Gestapo, but the Wehrmacht also when Banditen—résistants—who had been caught were to be executed on the spot.
‘My partner will immediately think, as I now must, that the pistol was most probably either a Walther P38 or Luger and the killer German. But that doesn’t make much sense, does it, unless whoever fired that pistol was on the run and a deserter? We’ve had some of those coming through, now more since the Russian front is far from a picnic.’
In age this one was the younger, more strongly built and probably, at somewhere between twenty-five to twenty-eight, the assistant. Certainly all those background questions again needed to be asked, then, too. ‘Were you also a father?’ For killings like these always tended to hurt far too many.
As before, the pockets had been emptied. ‘Bien sûr, identity cards and all accompanying papers can be doctored, and there’s a ready market for them, but why bother when you’ve a van loaded with cash?’
It made no sense, even though the price for used identity papers had gone from fifty francs in the autumn of 1940 to 250, the supporting documents extra.
‘This inflation of ours is terrible, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Seventy percent since the autumn of 1940, with most wages frozen at prewar rates, my own included.’
Covering the victim, he added, ‘And now for the challenge, eh, especially as I’m all but certain your killer was the same as that of your boss.’
Left to itself, fennel could grow in great profusion and here it was so tall and thick, the dill was threatened as was the recovery of that cartridge casing. Down on his hands and knees, forcing his way into the thicket, he said, ‘There are limits to my patience, Hermann. Maybe you should be here instead of myself!’
Leaves, old stalks, the refuse of the forgotten years didn’t make the task easy. Taking a break, he went to harvest a little dill. Letting that wonderful astringency and aroma come, he again went down on the hands and knees, was now soaked through and with no easy way of getting dry.
The ground wasn’t just spongy. The knees sank in, the hands too. Sunlight, if God had granted it, would have made the job easier. In all it took an hour and by then he had, of course, repeatedly heard Hermann calling for him and at the last, a more vehement, ‘Verdammt, Louis, where the hell are you?’
Disregarding the summons, sheltering the 10x lens the years had given him, he scanned the two casings side by side. ‘Ah bon, there’s little doubt. Similar scratches imply that it was the same gun, the killings done by a decisive individual who, for some reason, didn’t hesitate to silence both of you.’
The pungent aromas of juniper and rosemary were here, the taste of those and of sage, thyme and oregano in scatterings, and had the day been different, he would have spent happy hours harvesting. ‘There’s even a stonemason’s mark,’ he said, tracing it out on a large rectangular block. Though several hundred years old, it was still as fresh as the day it had been cut. ‘A circle with inwardly pointing arrowheads on the single horizontal line that cuts it exactly in half and is parallel to the bedding planes of the limestone. As to its meaning, mon ami, it’s somewhat like a murder investigation. One should consider that the job must be compassed round and studied carefully from every angle. This one was a master builder. No names are ever in any of the history books, hardly a mention even, and yet … and yet they have left us so much.’
Hermann was now madly waving both arms, only to finally point toward the muddy lane they had taken to get the Citroën in as far as possible.
Top down, for the rain must have miraculously stopped, a Wehrmacht-camouflaged tourer flew drenched swastika penants. The one at the wheel had stood up to better see them and signal that they both should come near. No need, then, for anyone else to muddy their boots or shoes.
‘Merde, visitors no one wants, and with no time for us to first talk things over.’
Apart from the silver skull and crossbones on the cap, and the braiding, the one in the back with the open topcoat looked like Rommel in the desert war that had finally been lost on 12 May of this year after so many successes, while the one in the dark-grey fedora with down-pulled brim and topcoat collar up who was sucking on a cigarette in the front seat beside the driver and polishing his steel-framed specs, looked the epitome of an aging Gestapo gumshoe.
‘God always smiles when least expected, Hermann.’
‘Why a Standartenführer, Louis?’
That, too, was a very good question: a colonel in the SD, the Sicherheitsdienst, the Secret Service of the SS and Nazi Party. ‘Ours is but to ask, but let’s keep things to ourselves. You to do the talking, me to play the conquered subordinate with Gestapo detective overseer.’
‘Don’t rub it in. Let me just tell you that things are definitely not right with what’s happened here and that bastard under the grey sombrero who’s still sucking on his breakfast teeth is someone we simply don’t want meddling in our business.’
‘Ah mon Dieu, mon vieux, it gets deeper and deeper, doesn’t it?’
‘You really do want the last word so I’ll let you have it while that garde champêtre of yours cooks his own little goose and fails to show himself at such a time.’
Orders were orders. Taking up his position, Rocheleau stood guard with bayoneted rifle behind the van. If the rain didn’t return, he would be all right, but these old boots … The wife would insist that he wear them to remind that salaud St-Cyr of the battle, but of course a person like that would make no mention of his having been saved by anyone, let alone a corporal he had apprehended. Indeed, getting a medic to attend to him had not been easy, nor without extreme danger. ‘He would have died had I not done what I did, yet still he fails to thank me. Well we shall see, won’t we, Monsieur l’Inspecteur principal de la Sûreté Nationale? When the end is near and all you collabos get what’s coming to you in the purge, me I will rejoice! The blindfold, eh? The priest perhaps, but I don’t think the Résistance in Reims or Laon or even in a little place like Corbeny will ever allow one. Rather it will be that the soul, it goes straight to hell.’
St-Cyr and that Gestapo partner of his were now standing in the mud beside the car that had arrived, but … Ah merde, Herr Kohler hadn’t returned the Heil Hitler salute that the one in the back with the
officer’s cap had given.
There were no medals on the colonel. There didn’t need to be, felt Kohler, for this one was a behind the scenes man, a non-entity, a shadow unless he, or his superior officers in Berlin, wanted it otherwise.
He was also, of course, one of Heinrich Himmler’s ‘Teutonic Knights.’ And as for the ruffled dumpling in the nondescript fedora and years-old grey topcoat who was now sucking on a fresh fag, that one had the look of Hamburg and the age and experience of a pending retirement that simply wasn’t going to happen, not with the war in rapid retreat.
The adjutant, knowing his place, sat down behind the wheel and said nothing, neither did the Gestapo. Mud had, however, splashed the right sleeve of the colonel’s coat. Livid, that one’s gaze leapt.
‘Kohler, who did this, where are they, and why have you not apprehended them?’
Louis would be taking in everything while smiling at his partner’s discomfort, but Berlin couldn’t possibly have any interest in what had happened here. ‘Ach, Colonel, those are excellent questions, but might we have your name and those of the others, just for the record? And while you’re at it, could you tell us who found the bodies and when? We’ll assume they then reported the crime.’
‘Lieber Christus im Himmel, verdammter Schweinebulle, are you to remain defiant of authority even when I am in charge?’
Pig-fuzz, was it?
‘You fail to return my salute, Kohler? You give me no answers? Living with a Dutch widow whose husband was a Jew? Living also with a French whore who is young enough to have been your daughter? Well, we shall see. Now answer me, damn you.’
Louis would have urged caution, but an answer had been demanded. ‘Definitely, Colonel, but let me clear the air. The widow lost her two children during the Blitzkrieg’s exodus and still hasn’t found them, and the husband was later rounded up and killed, she then needing help. The “whore,” as you’re calling her, is now lead model at a very fashionable shop on the place Vendôme—it’s right near the Ritz and sells female undergarments, perfume, soap and other rare and very expensive unmentionables to generals and visiting dignitaries from the Reich. As to your questions, when my partner and I have the answers, we will be only too prepared to give them to you after first checking everything out with Gestapo Boemelburg, my superior, and Major Osias Pharand, my partner’s. Now liebe Zeit, back off and tell us who found the bodies and when, and while you’re at it, if you know something we should, then spit it out.’
This Scheisskerl wasn’t going to like the answer to that simplest of his questions. ‘Untersturmführer Ludwig Mohnke and Oberführer Wolfgang Thomsen, his senior officer. Brigadier Thomsen wanted to show the young man the Drachenhöhle, to go over tactics he had used here during the Great War.’
La Caverne du Dragon had been a quarry on the other side of the Chemin des Dames. Enlarged into a bunker, the Wehrmacht had then made rooms and rooms for the boys to sleep, relax and take their meals in until the French had finally mined their own way in and the two sides had bricked off each other while still shooting. It wasn’t any more than a kilometre or two to the south of the ruins, but that second lieutenant was related to the SS Major General Wilhelm Mohnke, the commander of Heinrich Himmler’s bodyguard.
‘They came on here yesterday afternoon, Kohler, and found the van and the bodies at between 1430 and 1530 hours, reporting it to the General Hans von Boineburg-Lengsfeld directly on their return to Paris, since the van’s head office is located in his city.’
Louis would be thinking, Merde, now they really were in it! That Kommandant von Gross-Paris had been a cavalry officer in the Great War and was a stickler for protocol, a dyed-in-the-wool Prussian of the old school just like his predecessor.
‘Kriminalkommissar Ludin will be your liaise, Kohler. At 0800 hours tomorrow, you will present yourself at 84 avenue Foch. A full report.’
And never mind the Führer’s having put France on Central European Time in June 1940 and recently having added an hour of daylight saving time in autumn and winter, making that 0800 really 0600 the old time. ‘Not if we have to spend the night here, Colonel, and haven’t finished our preliminary examination and are still awaiting Coroner Joliot and his clean-up crew.’
The first sprinklings of the next deluge had arrived. As if he had plenty of tobacco, this ‘Ludin’ passed his cigarette over.
‘Contact me when you’re ready, Kohler, but don’t leave it too long. Full details, nothing left out, everything to myself.’
‘Then be so good as to tell us why the hell you lot should even be interested?’
‘That’s for us to know, and not yourselves. Just do as I’ve said and we’ll get along fine.’
Skidding in the mud, the tourer departed, and as they watched, that feeling of being alone against the world returned. In spite of the partnership’s desperate need, Hermann crumbled the cigarette and let the deluge take it.
‘Merde alors, Louis, what has Boemelburg dropped us into this time?’
‘A fetid shell crater full of water and hidden by barbed wire. Let’s deal with our garde champêtre while there’s still some semblance of daylight. We’ll visit his campfire, pick up the necessary, and let him stand guard while we question him from the shelter of the van.’
‘Why hasn’t the bank shown up?’
‘A good question, but perhaps no one has thought to tell them or they simply got word of the other visitors and decided it would be better to wait. That Kriminalrattenfänger is trouble, Hermann. Didn’t the RAF firebomb Hamburg on the night of 27 July last, and the USAAF during the day, the two then carrying on the visit for a few more nights and days?’
With winds said to have been at temperatures of up to 1000°C and speeds of 240 kph, there had been more than 40,000 dead, up to 100,000 injured and countless left homeless. And since Kriminalkommissar and Kriminalrattenfänger meant the same, the latter’s shortened form of ‘criminal rat-catcher’ would do. ‘Maybe that Kriminalrat is just out for blood, Louis, and feels we’ll slake his thirst, but whoever killed those two didn’t bother with the big bills and left virtually all of the food and wine, the champagne and black truffles.’
‘But took time to empty the pockets and take the identity papers of the victims, even the small change? That doesn’t make sense.’
‘Not unless we’re dealing with something very different.’
Rocheleau hadn’t just stolen a few coils of sausage and several other items. His makeshift satchel, tucked as it had been behind yet further blocks of stone, betrayed something in the clutter they definitely didn’t want to see. Sickened, Hermann said, ‘Where the hell is she, Louis? Out there somewhere lying naked with her throat cut?’
A forearm was grabbed to steady him. ‘It’s only a pair of shoes. There could well have been a perfectly logical reason.’
‘You’re hedging. Me, I can always tell. High heels like those? Dark blue leather like it used to be? Hardly ever worn? Kept for good? Those were kicked off so that she could run when those bastards up front brought her here and she realized what they were going to do. They hadn’t gone into lockdown. That back door would have been locked from the outside with the key they use when collecting cash or delivering it. She wouldn’t have known what the hell to do to open it and they damned well wouldn’t have told her, not with what they had in mind.’
Sometimes Hermann jumped to conclusions, but was that really the case, considering the forehead of the first victim and the Opinel that had been thrown aside? Yet there had been a robbery. ‘She could have been a decoy.’
Must Louis examine everything from every angle? ‘A plant who then found she had to run? Did those two grab her?’
‘Or find her too fleet of foot, and then find a little something else? A nine millimetre in each, Hermann, the Genickschuss in the second, the chest up tight in the first.’
‘Then why not empty that bloody van? Why take only the
small bills, cut two wedges from a Brie, snap off the neck of a bottle of Moët et Chandon and drain but a mouthful?’
This definitely wasn’t good. ‘She can’t have been a decoy unless the robbers and the killer intended to silence her too. We’ll both have to search, you to the ruins, myself to where I think she might have headed, since its cover is somewhat better. Rocheleau is to remain on guard.’
‘I’ll take that bayonet and rifle and lock them in the van.’
‘Not without its keys, Hermann. The killer must have taken them.’
‘So as to break into something else?’
The bank’s depot, garage, offices or vault? Had Hermann hit on it? ‘Let’s leave that one for now.’
Louis headed off toward the Chemin des Dames with determination. Young or old, corpse or no corpse, it was always the same, a detective through and through, felt Kohler. ‘And an example to us all,’ he muttered, ‘but lieber Gott, mon vieux, is she lying up there in those woods, naked, splayed out, pegged down hard like the one I found in Munich on a Sunday, 6 May 1939 at 0540 hours?’
Ilse Grünwald had been fifteen, the throat cut so deeply, the head had all but been severed, the flashlight glinting from her eyes.
He paused. He had to, and when done, said, ‘Verdammt, I can’t be throwing up anymore. I’m just going to have to press on like the chief, and he knows it too.’
When he found the ashes, though soaking wet, they lay in the tall grass but a couple of metres from the ruins and ten along from the van. Almost side by side were two arched doorways, the farthest with an empty ocular that gazed with suspicion, as rampart by rampart the ruins descended until almost shoulder height next to the ashes. Incompletely burned charcoal lay amid what had to be the ash of starter wood and charcoal, suggesting that the robbers had come in the usual: a gazogène with firebox well dampened to make the producer-gas with which to feed the engine instead of gasoline or diesel fuel.
When he saw what looked to be metal, he began to sift the ashes, and when the corners of identity photos came up and then some coins, he fortunately found the keys to the van and set them all aside in a cluster on the nearby wall, only to find a little something else too. It was just lying there, yet tobacco was in such short supply, most collected cigarette butts and thought nothing of picking them up in the streets and bars, and this just had to be the mégot tin of that firebox’s feeder. On its lid was an enraptured, free-spirited fin-de-siècle nude lying back on a divan, sampling one of the honey-and-absinthe throat lozenges and declaring it perfect while admiring a diamond the size of a pigeon’s egg on her finger.
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