Murder on the Quai

by Cara Black

  “Look,” Marc said, “I’ve got clients to serve. That’s all I know.”

  But she couldn’t give up. Never leave without a name, a contact, her father said.

  “One more thing, Marc. Remember anyone here in the bar that night who Bruno talked to?”

  Another shrug. “Regulars, I’d say.”

  “Any chance you can give me their names?”

  “Not if I want to keep my job. I only helped you since it’s hard for his family. And Bruno is—was—un gentilhomme.”

  Marc moved away to the end of the Art Nouveau bar. Put that in the tried and failed column, she thought. She’d pushed him too hard and he’d shut up. Lesson learned.

  She felt eyes watching the back of her head. When she turned around, all she saw was a waiter arranging pots of hothouse orchids in the foyer.

  So the rest depended on corroborating Bruno’s dinner companions’ story. Who were they?

  On the foyer’s right, the maître d’s podium stood unattended. Never leave a place without noting as much detail as possible, her father said, even if you discount it later. She sidled up close to scan the open reservation book, flipped to the previous night’s reservations—so many names listed. Merde. No way she could remember a page of names.

  Impossible to rip the page out. What would her father do? She reached in her bag, palming her camera as she saw the maître d’ approaching. Merde again. She lifted her bag as a shield, aimed shots at what she hoped was the right angle.

  “May I help you, mademoiselle?” The maître d’ was polite but cold. “A reservation perhaps?”

  She had to think quick. “Merci, maybe you can help me.” She gave a small smile. “I think friends of my relative, Monsieur Peltier, dined here last night.”

  “Peltier?” He gave a quick scan. “But there’s no reservation in that name.”

  She felt he deliberately misunderstood.

  “Monsieur Peltier’s deceased, but he used to meet his friends here every month. If I could get in touch with them—”

  “We’re closing soon, mademoiselle,” he interrupted. His eyes had narrowed. “If you’ll excuse me.”

  He put the reservation book under his arm and gestured her to the door.

  Pah, she’d been thrown out of starred places better than this. Once.

  She mentally put Marc in the plus column, and in the minus went the maître d’.

  Bon, she’d write up her notes, craft a report with billable hours. Get the film developed to back up her report. Then return to studying.

  She’d enjoyed the thrill of acting detective for a few hours—the break from her books. And she wasn’t half bad at it. Now with Elise in her debt, hopefully, she’d call in a favor and get those photos of her mother.

  Yet, standing out in the crisp night under the blanket of stars fading into the fog, she couldn’t ignore a hunch. It was telling her to go take it one step further—to retrace Bruno’s route to the quai. View the spot at night. If she could make anything out in the drifting mist.

  Her Tintin watch, a sixteenth-birthday present, read 10:30 p.m. Glad of her wool gloves, she shifted into first. The headlights wobbled as she drove over the cobbles and the sidecar bumped along Avenue Gabriel. On one side, she passed a palatial mix of Haussmann buildings and older hôtels particuliers; on the other, the Théâtre Marigny—how often her grand-père had taken her to the puppet theater there on Saturdays, treated her to barbe à papa, the sticky, pink spun sugar on a cone, strolled through the stamp market.

  By the time she reached the Seine, the charcoal mist curled under the bridges like an outstretched hand—like the Greek sea sirens beckoning the unwary to a watery grave.

  Think like the murderer, her father would say. How would he lure his victim down here unless he knew him? Or had him in a car? There had to be a driving ramp to the quai. No law against driving here, she hoped, but she didn’t have a license, so if she got caught . . .

  A perfect moment for the bike to stall. Merde.

  Better to come tomorrow when she could see, take a better look.

  But voices and the thrum of an outboard motor drifted up through the mist. She made out a faint blue, quivering glow—the distinctive light of the Zodiac police boat.

  Those overheard words from the Le Soleil d’Or came back to her . . . “another floater”? A siren wailed. Could something be happening right now?

  Restarting the bike, she popped into first and drove it up on the curb. Her headlight beam lingered and died yellow on the pavers as she switched off the ignition. She pulled the motorcycle up against the wall. From below, voices mingled with the gush and splash of the Seine.

  As she made her way warily down the stairs, the wind was almost strong enough to knock her off her feet. The mist, thick as lentil soup, dampened her cheekbones, her hair, her grandfather’s jacket, blanketed her freezing knees.

  She navigated down the cold stone railing to pick her way across the cobbled quai. Water churned in the wake of a barge that had already disappeared downriver. Shadows filled the crevices, making the quai otherworldly. Her knees trembled. What was it about this place?

  Why had she come down here? Stupid. About to turn around and retrace her steps, she heard a voice shouting from the boat.

  “Shine it there!”

  Ahead on the quai a spotlight clicked on, penetrating a layer of mist to illuminate the damp cobbles. She jumped back toward the wall, into the shadows. Cold droplets of rain pattered on her wrist.

  Then, in the boat’s light, she saw it—a figure floating in the water behind a docked bateau-mouche’s propeller. What looked like a man tangled in the ropes anchoring the boat to the quai’s edge.

  Good God. In the exact location Bruno Peltier was found shot.

  She shivered with fear. Go. She had to get the hell out of here. This had nothing to do with her.

  The police, yelling directions at each other, used a pole to free the body. It bobbed and turned sideways. In that moment of white light, she saw a man with his hands bound behind him, one bare, bloated foot banging the quai’s edge.

  Unlike the cadavers in med school, this one looked fresh. How long had he been in the water? The hair at the back of his head was dark and matted with what looked like blood—a bullet hole like Peltier’s?

  She pushed the fear and revulsion aside. Compartmentalize, they told them in med school. View the body as a study tool, not as the human it once was. Not as a person who lived, breathed, laughed, cried, and loved. She grabbed the camera from her pocket, focused the zoom, and started clicking.

  The wail of a siren echoed off the stone bank. The red glow of a police car barreled up the quai. Rain beat down on her hair, catching in her eyelashes.

  “You! Over there!”

  She ran like hell up the stairs.

  Chambly-sur-Cher, Sologne region, Vichy France

  November 1942

  Cold needles of rain stung Gaubert’s face and his arms ached. It was midnight, and the rising river was barely visible in the darkness, but they couldn’t rest. Mud sucked at his ankles; his right leg, which was shorter than his left, fought for traction. There were four of them from the village—Gaubert, Bruno, Philbert, and Alain—fighting their fatigue to pack sandbags along the old moulin’s bank in the rainstorm. Here, the broad river was the demarcation line, a border dividing German-occupied France from their village, Chambly-sur-Cher, on the Vichy side—free France, la zone libre, or so they said.

  Just a meter behind them, the narrow road topping the embankment was washed out. Their attempts to stave off the river and prevent the flooding of the village wheat fields looked futile. They depended on the winter wheat sown in the fall to feed them next year.

  “Any moment, the water will reach the bridge,” shouted Alain. “Faster!”

  Trees, their roots loosened, slipped and washed away. They needed a
lot more sandbags and stone than they had left in the milk cart. The pair of sopping-wet draft horses pawed their hooves in the mud and neighed.

  Thunder boomed and lightning crackled. Or was it the British planes bombing Vierzon station again? They had been attacking rail lines the past week.

  Through the slanting sheets of rain, Gaubert saw a yellow glow. It came closer, within yards of them on the embankment road. Now he could make out a wobbling pair of headlights. He heard shouts in German.

  Merde. A damn troop truck. Why couldn’t they stay out of la zone libre and keep to their side of the river?

  The truck’s wheels spun in the mud. Gears ground and whined above the distant thudding of the bombing.

  “Achtung. Hilfe . . . uns verloren . . . am zug.” Gaubert couldn’t make out the German. A Wehrmacht soldier was trotting toward them, shouting, his gun over his shoulder. “Wo ist die Brücke?”

  Bruno, Philbert, and Alain kept piling the sandbags, ignoring the soldier. “You speak Fritz, non?” Alain, dripping wet, said. “What’s he saying?”

  Not that the time Gaubert had spent wounded in a German POW camp after the Battle of the Somme made him fluent in German.

  “They’re lost. Something about the bridge,” he said. “The railroad track’s damaged by the bombing and . . .”

  The roar of spitting mud, more grinding gears and barks in German came from the truck. Three soldiers jumped out in the pelting rain, pointing their rifles. They were gesturing toward the horses tethered to the farmer’s cart. They wanted help pulling the truck out of the mud.

  Gaubert noticed how young the German soldiers were. Boys. Like they’d all been in 1916. Now it was happening again.

  The soldiers had stepped closer, were shouting in the Chambly men’s faces.

  “They’re ordering us to use the sandbags to get them tire traction out of the mud. Hitch the horse to pull.”

  “Shouldn’t we inform our great leader Maréchal Pétain,” snorted Bruno, “that some damn Boches—”

  “Halt!” One of the soldiers pointed his rifle at Bruno. Boches, a slur coined in the last war, was still a dirty word. Forbidden.

  “Tell them we’re a little busy and to get back to their own side.”

  Gaubert’s sodden coat weighed on his shoulders. The rain and wind lashed his face. “Shut up, Bruno. If we don’t, they’ll—”

  “Shoot us when they need us to get the damn truck out of the mud?” Bruno squinted, his black hair streaming with rain.

  Another soldier jumped out of the truck, shielding his eyes from the rain. He slipped and fell back against the dark green siding. Wind gusted, lifting the truck’s soaked canvas side panel aside, exposing the rear. No soldiers inside. It looked empty.

  A yellow-white explosion burst in the direction of Vierzon. One of the horses, an old mare, her mane glistening with rain, neighed loudly in fright. Three of the soldiers had pulled out binoculars to look, the other two backed toward the truck, cocking their rifles.

  Right then Gaubert knew they were going to die.

  “Look, there’re only five of them,” said Alain, straightening up, something in his hand. “One for each of us. And a bonus one. Come on, we can take them.” His eyes were narrow in the rain. “They’re guarding something in the truck. Valuable. I smell it.”

  Crazy, that Alain. “Et alors, how can we attack armed soldiers? With sandbags?”

  “Make no mistake, they’re going to shoot us, Gaubert.”

  And what they feared would happen happened: a roll of river water overflowed the sandbags, gushing everywhere, splashing their legs, the truck’s tires, like a tidal wave crashing into the fields. The soldiers grabbed onto the truck’s side rope ties for balance.

  “Now!” shouted Alain, barreling into a surprised soldier’s torso, knocking him down. He raised a knife and slit the soldier’s throat.

  “Halt!” In the chaos of rushing water, only one soldier was still standing without hanging onto the truck for support. He was aiming his gun at Alain.

  “Now, I said!” shouted Alain.

  Maybe it was the relentless rain, his failure to stop the flash flood from ruining their farmland, the hopelessness of impending starvation—or maybe it was his aching leg, and the certainty he’d die in this muddy field after cheating the Somme. But Gaubert didn’t care anymore.

  He grabbed at the nearest soldier’s rifle, knocking it away and fighting him down in the mud, slipping and sliding, rolling in the sludge. The others had also lunged into the fray. Gaubert heard a scream, then another as Alain twisted his knife into another soldier’s ribs.

  Gaubert struggled with his soldier, who was slippery as a river eel. He sputtered, gulping muck. His fist flailed and slapped mud. The German struggled until Gaubert’s hands caught the epaulets of the jacket. Now if he could just grab the bastard’s neck.

  That’s what it had come down to last time. Us or them, him or me—no different from 1916 except this was the next generation. A generation born after they’d fought in the war to end all wars. God, did it never end?

  Gasping, spitting leaves from his mouth, he groped at the man’s neck, found the clammy skin, felt the ropy, pulsing muscles. He had forgotten how rudimentary it was, once he’d gotten two hands around the man’s throat, to choke and strangle someone. The German’s kicking and splashing dwindled until Gaubert had crushed his windpipe.

  In the headlights’ glow, Gaubert got a better look at his victim. The chubby-faced soldier looked eighteen.

  “Quick, catch them!” shouted Bruno.

  Gaubert looked up. One of the bodies was about to float away; the other’s arms flailed and splashed in the light. On the pinky finger of his clenched fist was a gold signet ring. Still alive. And then he floated away. Two of the other bodies had lodged against the tires. Gaubert looked back down at the German he’d killed, at his dead blue eyes open to the rain.

  What had they done?

  Gaubert struggled to his feet, blinking, wiping the rain from his eyes and scanning what he could see of the horizon to see whether another truck followed. Crackling static issued from the truck’s radio, interrupted by the occasional German word—eerie in the rainy night.

  “What do we do now?” Alain asked, panting. “This truck could be part of a convoy.”

  They had to move fast.

  “Grab the rope holding the canvas and tie the bodies before they—”

  “Non, throw them in the back,” said Philbert. He was the thinker among them, a lanky wheat farmer. “We’ll use the mill’s timbers to leverage the truck. Shove it in the river. Sink it here, by the mill wheel—the deepest part.”

  What seemed feasible in theory—they only had to push the truck a short distance—took time. Time in the driving, relentless rain. The field around them had sunk into the overflowing river.

  The men worked silently. Unspoken among them lay the knowledge they’d be shot if they were discovered. What choice did they have?

  Gaubert prayed to God the fifth soldier who had been swept downstream drowned before anyone discovered him.

  Gaubert, Alain, and Philbert wedged wood under the wheels, and Bruno started the engine. They made slow progress, laying plank by plank under the truck’s wheels with Bruno in the driver’s seat, shifting gears and gunning the accelerator. For every meter or so gained, the truck slipped back half a meter, sometimes even more, on the submerged sandbags.

  Soaked, shaking, and frozen to the bone, Gaubert collapsed on his bad leg as he carried the last plank.

  “You want to die here, fine. Not me.” Alain’s chest heaved as the truck hovered by the bank’s edge. Silt eddies swirled below. “Get up, Gaubert. Think of what will happen if we don’t submerge this.”

  Gaubert couldn’t think of anything else.

  “For an empty truck it’s damn heavy,” Gaubert gasped. Panicked by what they’d do
ne, they hadn’t thought to look inside the wooden boxes in the back of the truck, or check the contents. “What if there’re arms or mortars in there? We should give them to the Maquis.”

  “You want to check, be my guest,” said Alain. He talked big, but Gaubert had no desire to go scrounge in the back of the truck where they’d piled the four German bodies.

  “He’s right,” said Bruno, the chicken farmer, his wet sweater plastered to his stocky frame. “They must have been guarding something they couldn’t leave behind. Come on, Alain, you started this. Your big idea.”

  Philbert had climbed in the back. “Give me that crowbar, Alain. Hurry up.”

  Gaubert shook with cold; the damp and wet seeped into his bones. His bad leg had gone numb. At forty-five, he was the oldest among them. This bunch of hayseeds who’d never seen the trenches thought they knew everything.

  Thinking of his wife and small son, Gaubert was filled with mounting dread over what they’d done—this spontaneous stupidity. At the possible German reprisals.

  They’d be found out. Shot.

  “Mon Dieu.” Philbert shone a soldier’s flashlight. “You won’t believe it.”

  “Believe what?”

  “Get the cart, Alain. Back it up to the truck’s edge.”

  Lights bobbed on the opposite bank of the Occupied German side. The bridge’s metal struts glistened in the light, beaded with rain. Rain and more rain. But the French sentry box was dark. Deserted.

  “Forget it. There’s activity across the river by the bridge . . .”

  Gaubert’s words died as he looked inside. Philbert’s beam illuminated a small wood crate with leather handles, marked with a swastika. Inside were gold bars stamped with serial numbers and the word Reichsbank.

  “Looks like fifteen or so crates like this,” Philbert said. “Lend me a hand.”