The Cyclist

by Fredrik Nath

  Auguste took Brunner’s damp hand and realised the German was sweating. He wondered why. He had no power over this man. Brunner had the SD rank of Major but this was equivalent to a full Colonel in the SS. He was immune, inviolable and he knew it. It showed in the smile drawing his pink, sickly lips across his face and in his eyes, from the steel of his gaze.

  ‘Auguste,’ Brunner said, ‘how nice to see you.’

  ‘My pleasure too, Helmut,’ Auguste said.

  ‘And what brings you here to see me?’

  ‘We need to discuss the mechanism of the internments.’

  ‘The internments?’

  ‘Yes, I have a promise of one or two members of the gendarmerie to go with the trucks but if they are unarmed, then they will be of no more use than my men. Can we modify the orders?’

  ‘None of this concerns me. I am content to leave it up to you. I trust you, Auguste. Your men carry guns so there is no objection from the SD whether the gendarmes do as well. I don’t really care if they appear naked for that matter.’

  The smile again. What was he hiding?

  ‘Have you been in a fight?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘The scratch on your cheek,’ Auguste said indicating a diagonal cut on the Major’s left cheek below the cheekbone extending to the corner of his mouth.

  Brunner touched his face. He said, ‘this? Oh, it is nothing.’

  ‘Looks painful.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I fell into a hedge, please don’t tell anyone. A little too much of your French Armagnac, a little too much wine. You understand.’

  ‘Of course,’ Auguste said.

  ‘You French have such wonderful wine and brandy it is hard to be moderate.’

  Brunner spoke in a slow rhythm, blinking his eyes and avoiding eye contact. Auguste thought he would have to be stupid not to realise Brunner was lying.

  ‘Who has a need to be moderate in such things? Why when we were in La Bonne Auberge, we drank so much wine and brandy...’

  ‘Yes, yes, I remember tumbling into bed and wondering what we had been up to.’

  ‘And the entertainment. Such a beautiful girl Bernadette. What a shame?’

  ‘A shame?’

  Again traces of moisture on Brunner’s brow. It made no sense. Brunner was impenetrable.

  ‘Yes.’ Auguste said, ‘It seems you were right about her moral fibre and her clothing fibre.’

  ‘Fibre?’

  Auguste feigned a laugh.

  ‘Yes, sorry it was a forensic joke. No, she was murdered the night before last. She must have been plying her trade in the streets and someone killed her. Pity, don’t you think?’

  ‘Terrible, such a young flower of French womanhood.’

  The look in Brunner’s eyes changed to one of confidence now.

  ‘I am surprised. Did no one tell you? I thought the SD knew every little thing happening in Bergerac, every tiny event.’

  ‘I am sure there will be a report about it somewhere. I just haven’t seen it. You said fibres?’

  ‘Yes, forgive me, it was a joke. The murderer left fibres of his clothing and some hair on the body. It will take no time to find out his clothing and a great deal of where he may have come from.’

  ‘How astute.’

  ‘Yes, I thought you were police, like me.’

  ‘No. I am a security policeman, we do not pursue criminals.’

  ‘Of course not. You will understand, I do. I am also very, very good at it.’

  ‘No doubt. Was there anything else? I have to read some reports you understand, my friend.’

  ‘Of course, Helmut. I have learned all I needed to learn. You are very kind to give me the time.’

  Auguste rose. He made for the door.

  Brunner said, ‘Will you find her killer?’

  ‘I never fail. Don’t worry my friend, you will be safe enough to fall into your hedges without molestation once I have caught him, and I will.’

  They smiled their insincere smiles to each other and Auguste left.

  He made for his car and realised it was the only comfortable place where he could now rely on privacy. So Brunner had a scratch. Bernadette had fought back. Good for her. Like a Frenchwoman, she fought and did not go quietly. A hedge? Who did Brunner think he was fooling? Bernadette had fought for her life. It gave him an idea. He touched the ignition and smiled again with satisfaction. It was the first time in months the little tin-pot car had started first time and Auguste, like any superstitious man, thought it meant something.

  2

  By the time he knocked on the door of the pathologist’s office, it was late morning. The tap of his knuckles on the scratched and worn surface gave a hollow tone. Auguste reflected it was worn so by countless undertakers and relatives of the dead. The smell was more of formaldehyde than bowels this time, he noted with relief. The mortuary was one of the least pleasant places in the realm of his police work.

  ‘Come,’ commanded the voice through the door.

  ‘Dr. Dubois,’ Auguste said.

  ‘Very formal today Auguste? Come in.’

  ‘I’m here on formal business, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I wondered if you examined her fingernails. Took scrapings and the like.’

  ‘Well, I looked at her hands, but took no samples. I have to be economical with my materials these days. I can’t get hold of anything, so the little I have is precious.’

  ‘The body is still here?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Can we have a look?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Don’t be ill this time.’

  ‘No,’ Auguste said.

  He followed Dubois into the mortuary and to Auguste’s relief the Pathologist had reassembled poor Bernadette’s body. He knew from experience, they would have replaced her internal organs and closed the incision. They had wrapped the body in a white sheet. Dubois unwrapped her body enough to pull her hands out and looked with care at the fingers using a magnifying glass.

  ‘Hm, here maybe,’ he said, indicating the right middle finger. ‘Under the nail. Maybe just dirt, but we will see.’

  He took a small blade from the sink top and obtained a scraping from beneath the darkened nail. Auguste watched as the doctor smeared it onto a glass slide and he followed as Dubois shuffled back to his office.

  Placing a thin glass cover slip on top of the sample the doctor popped the slide under his microscope and began to hum to himself. Time passed and Auguste grew impatient.

  ‘Do you see anything?’

  ‘What? Oh yes, naturally. There are some cells here that could be blood, some that could be skin cells, but it is hard to be sure.’

  ‘But why hard? I thought you could see the difference.’

  ‘One has to fix and stain the sample. Then it needs to be incubated in the stain for a while, to tell what cells are visible. The nucleus stains dark blue and the cytoplasm…’

  ‘If it is blood you can test it for blood groups?’

  ‘No, no, no, my friend. Impossible with such a small sample. I would need a much bigger specimen. And stop interrupting me.’

  ‘But you’re sure it is blood?’

  ‘You police are all so impatient. This is not like surgery. Pathology is an art. One has to take care in preparing a masterpiece. Well, look, I’ll have to stain it. I don’t have any eosin and just a little haematoxylin.’

  ‘What?

  ‘Never mind. They are stains we doctors use to examine the cells. I may have a little giemsa. I made it up before the war. It can be used for blood I suppose, though you may know, it’s better for white blood cells. A pity. I cannot now get the reagents. No one accords priority to pathology these days. It’s almost as if with so many dying or being killed pathological or forensic examination counts for nothing.’

  ‘How long before you can give me an idea?’

  ‘Auguste, I’m sorry but it will be at least tomorrow morning. The stains take twelve hours to light this path for me, I’m afrai
d. Come back in the morning.’

  ‘If I told you I met a man whom I suspect of this murder and he had a cut on his face, on the left side as if she had defended herself, what would you say?’

  ‘I would say, don’t count on my evidence. You cannot prove the injury was caused by that girl.’

  ‘The murderer does not know that. If anyone asks you, it would be a great help if you suggested you could tell.’

  Dubois smiled.

  ‘Of course Auguste. If a murderer telephones me and asks, I will say we are jointly solving the case and an arrest is imminent.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far; just say we’ve identified fibres of clothing and blood samples. It may be enough.’

  He took his leave and returned to his office. The worn desk-chair creaked as he moved in his discomfort. After half an hour, he looked at the desktop. He realised he had been sitting there, staring straight ahead, pondering only the crime and how he could prove who was the guilty party. He wondered whom he could trust. Claude had become so ambitious Auguste felt he could not trust him. Judge Dubois seemed unusually hostile which seemed strange to Auguste. As far as he was aware he had done nothing to irritate him but Auguste was no politician and was not known for his tact, so he could easily have said or done something unwise at some time. He still wondered who had telephoned the Judge about the murder if it was not the pathologist. He did trust Doctor Dubois to a certain extent he decided, and if the doctor had told the truth, then perhaps Brunner had contacted the Judge. Auguste felt he was on the verge of grasping something vital but the plaintive ring of the telephone interrupted his line of thought.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I have Commissioner Tulard on the line.’

  ‘Put him through, please Édith.’

  The receiver buzzed in an unusual way for a few moments in his ear.

  ‘Ran?’ It was a high-pitched voice for a man, but Auguste recognised the Commissioner of Police, based in Lyon. He heard a distinct echo and knew he was not alone with his senior.

  ‘Yes sir,’ he said.

  ‘Ran, I’ve had a request to host a meeting, seminar, you know what I mean.’

  ‘Request?’

  ‘Yes, it comes from high up. One of the German General Staff will be visiting tomorrow and he wants all senior Security Police and Gendarmes to be there so he can address them.’

  ‘I’m very busy at the moment sir. Can I send a deputy perhaps?’

  ‘Ran, your position as Assistant Chief has been called into question. Failure to attend might be a cause of serious disapproval. Not from me of course, I know you, but all the same…’

  ‘Called into question? Who do you mean?’

  ‘Oh I’m not at liberty to divulge. You will be there.’

  ‘Where exactly?’

  ‘At the University. The Medical College.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, afternoon, two o’clock.’

  ‘I wonder if I could mention another matter, sir?’

  ‘Is it urgent? I really don’t have much time, I need to ring Arnaud.’

  ‘It’s about a murder enquiry.’

  ‘Murder? I’m too busy to deal with that sort of thing. I leave it to people like you. Now if you’ve finished?’

  ‘No, sir. A decent local, young woman was raped, tortured and murdered.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Would you back me, whoever was responsible?’

  ‘Back you? Well naturally I would back you.’

  ‘Even against a German senior officer?’ Auguste could feel how he enjoyed saying this. He felt alive for once. He said, ‘The forensic evidence is quite strong and I may have to arrest the man.’

  ‘Well… er… I can’t cause a political scandal can I? Things here are delicate. It would be easy to cause such a mess even Petain’s Government could fall and we would be ruled by the Germans directly. It simply wouldn’t do. No. You can’t go chasing the Germans. It would look as if we trumped up charges. Wouldn’t do. If the case goes in such a direction, I’m afraid you will have to drop it.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘No, my last word on it. Be careful. You wouldn’t want to lose your job over something so trivial, would you?’

  ‘Trivial?’

  ‘Compared to the Government of France, a single death is trivial. Nothing else?’

  ‘No sir.’

  ‘Good. Tomorrow then. I won’t be there, but I’m sure they will look after you. Remember you are representing the department won’t you?’ The line clicked and echoed then died.

  He knew he had Brunner rattled. Why else would the man be listening in on his telephone conversations? It had to be him. But proof was another thing. He had to get him to confess, on purpose or not.

  Chapter 10

  1

  Auguste had no desire to go to Lyon. It would take all morning and he had fears that anything could happen at the Prefecture while he was away. He had lost trust in all of them except Édith, but of course, she was unable to prevent political manoeuvring behind his back. He also hated leaving in the middle of the murder enquiry. He believed such things were best served hot and he had no desire for the trail to dissipate. He was fishing. He was dangling a line in the river and he had baited the hook. He waited only for Brunner to try to take some kind of action against him to bring it all out into the open.

  ‘Why do you have to go?’ Odette said.

  She cleared away plates and cups and Monique and Zara sat at the table with Auguste.

  ‘But I have no choice. What can I do?’

  ‘Who is this great German General? All the Generals are fighting a war. Why do they want to lecture? You are not one of their soldiers anyway.’

  ‘Whatever it is, they will probably need my men to carry it out. It must be big. Tulard said he was informing everyone, including the Gendarmerie.’

  ‘It won’t be for anything good, I can tell you Auguste.’

  ‘Papa,’ Zara said.

  ‘Yes ma fleur.’

  ‘When do wars stop?’

  ‘Well, I suppose it is when one side wins and the other gives in.’

  Monique said, ‘If the Germans win, what will happen to me?’

  Auguste felt his heart sink. He had no answers. Neither Odette nor he had considered what would happen if the Germans took all of Europe. There might then be nowhere for Jews to escape to, unless it was Israel and there was no actual country there anyway.

  ‘My dear little one,’ he said, ‘you will be with us. We will see you safe whatever happens. Even if we have to smuggle you out in a suitcase, like a pair of shoes.’

  He reached forward and placed his big hands over hers. He smiled and then caressed her cheek.

  ‘You are scared?’

  He saw the tear in her eye almost as it formed and he brushed it away with the back of his hand. ‘Come, my little one. I can’t take it away but I can always spare a cuddle for a little girl. He took her onto his knee and she wept into his shoulder. Odette watched, she placed a hand upon Zara’s shoulder.

  ‘How long does she have to stay? I want my Papa back.’

  Zara’s stool clattered on the stone floor as it tipped over behind her. She ran from the room pursued by her parent’s calls.

  ‘Zara, ma fleur. Zara,’ Auguste said, reaching towards the stairs with one hand, grasping the empty air as if by doing so, he could mend the hole Odette and he had made in her life.

  And it was a hole. She had been an only child and the centre of her parents’ universe. In one moment, they had swept it all away. Now there were two little girls and no matter what Auguste or Odette could say, Zara felt pushed aside. No, it was not true; it was the way Auguste supposed a child of nine would see events. Both of her parents knew it now. It was as if they had ignored the obvious, living in another bubble of ignorance. Auguste sat and studied the face of the little girl still sitting on his lap. Her dark eyes and her high forehead, so like but so unlike his own daughter. Her nose, longer than Zara’s, her smile, short,
small and lingering did not match his daughter’s, yet Auguste understood one thing if nothing else in the world he moved in was true. He loved this little girl as if she was his own and he would die for her. His reservations, when Odette had broken the news to him, had passed away long ago now. Like a dead swan floating on the Dordogne, like a vanished memory, they had gone, replaced by a certainty lingering on, cast iron, palpable and true. Auguste had no second thoughts any longer. He would protect this child but he had to make amends to Zara. Zara was after all, his flesh and blood and he knew it was she who mattered most to him, but he also knew he had a duty to do.

  It was another schism stabbing at his soul, but one he took on happily to help his friend’s daughter. Monique, a child he had known all her life, like a favourite niece or a child of his own. Blood runs thicker they say but for Auguste it made no difference.

  One night before Monique came into the world came to mind, how the four of them sat around this very kitchen table and argued over a bottle of wine what Pierre’s daughter should be named. When Pierre had suggested Monique, Auguste had laughed and said it was the name of a grape used in Italian wine. Pierre had risen and threatened to leave and had not Murielle dissuaded him, he might have done so. They argued more but Pierre was intransigent as ever and although they parted friends, he reminded Auguste of the incident many times in the following years.

  He knew he should have pursued his daughter upstairs, told her how much he loved her, reassured her nothing would change, but somehow he felt he had to be there in the kitchen, embracing Pierre’s daughter and he could not do both at once. He glanced at Odette and it was as if she understood his dilemma. She ran up the stairs and he could imagine the scene. She would take Zara in her arms and hug her, stroke her hair, reassure her and absolve him of this strange infidelity, one which circumstance thrust upon him.

  ‘Monique.’

  ‘Yes, uncle?’

  ‘Do you and Zara fight?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘sometimes.’

  ‘You must love each other. There are hard times coming and we must all stick together. If we do not, then we will all fail and maybe die. Do you understand?’