Hermann, walking as quickly as he could, had reached the first of the staff cars and had given the Nazi salute. St-Cyr turned his back on Ackermann – he’d have to take that chance. He began to walk diagonally across the grounds towards the cars and Osias Pharand.
The fog was everywhere. Ackermann would wait until he’d reached Pharand and had turned to watch him just like the rest of them.
‘Louis …?’
‘A moment, Chief. A general must do his duty.’
Ackermann looked so very alone out there, standing rigidly to attention in his black uniform and giving the Nazi salute like that.
St-Cyr began to count silently. The muzzle of the Luger went into Ackermann’s mouth. No one moved. There was a hush broken only by the whirring flight of a small covey of pigeons.
The shot, when it came, tore the roof off Ackermann’s head and echoed from the surrounding walls.
It was Hermann who led them to the stables and who said in all seriousness, ‘They tried to arrest him, Herr Sturmbannführer, and he killed them.’
‘With a pitchfork?’ asked Boemelburg blandly.
‘With a pitchfork, Herr Sturmbannführer, and a pistol.’
Boemelburg studied this man who was an outright liar and a thief at times but a damned good cop.
Kohler took a chance and turned aside. ‘Offer the Generals von Schaumburg and Oberg a deal, Herr Sturmbannführer,’ he said quietly.
‘A deal…?’
‘It’s in the interests of all of us.’
‘Yours in particular, Hermann?’
‘No, Herr Sturmbannführer. The honour of the Reich.’
Boemelburg nudged the corpse of Jensen with a toe. The prongs of the pitchfork would have made a mess of the kidneys. ‘Proceed,’ he said, indicating they should go outside.
‘The price of that honour has been paid and guilt fully admitted, Herr Sturmbannführer. Tell them the whole matter should now be forgotten. Berlin will want the trowel of racial purity to smooth everything over and hide the defective mortar.’
In other words, shut up about it. ‘Neither you nor I can tell generals anything, Hermann. What’s in it for von Schaumburg?’
‘Peace, I think, with Berlin first but also with yourself and the General Oberg. Let’s face it, Herr Sturmbannführer, all three of you must know you have to coexist somehow. No more taps on the General von Schaumburg’s line. No more watching his men – especially those like his nephew of which nothing whatsoever will be said. It’s really a very small price to pay.’
‘Steiner … Yes, yes, I can see that might help. There is one small matter for your tender ears, Hermann. Glotz was in charge of the investigation into that Resistance business with St-Cyr. He caught the lot of them and they’re in the Cherche-Midi but will soon be transferred to Dachau and Mauthaussen. St-Cyr’s pair of broken shoes proved useful. Louis will, of course, be upset.’
‘Is that all he’ll be?’ asked Kohler warily.
Boemelburg didn’t flinch from it. ‘Glotz, being under Herr Himmler’s patronage, was a little over-zealous, Hermann. They had uncovered a tripwire attached to the front gate but had failed to remove it or to defuse the bomb.’
Kohler swallowed hard and blinked his one good eye. ‘Louis’s wife and kid?’ he asked. In the name of Jesus, would this madness never end?
The Head of the Gestapo in France nodded. ‘Only pieces of them, Hermann. The house is a mess.’
Outrage came from deep inside him. ‘Did Ackermann and his boys wire it?’ demanded Kohler, looking off towards the body which still lay out there in its no man’s land. ‘That bastard would have said nothing of it to Louis in hopes the poor schmuck would go home and blow himself to pieces.’
‘Let’s just say Glotz has been sent to Kiev, Hermann, filling the place you were to have taken.’
Then Glotz had left the bomb to pay them back. ‘I’ll try to tell Louis when we pick up the monk’s confession. I’ll leave it for now,’ said Kohler.
Boemelburg studied him. ‘Just don’t become too friendly with your partner, Hermann. Louis is far too loyal a Frenchman. The girl with the shoes … Apparently Louis came face to face with her in a café. He told the proprietor that whole business with the Resistance was a terrible mistake.’
‘I’ll watch him. I won’t let him get in the way and I won’t let him get into any more trouble.’
‘That’s good, Hermann. I knew I could count on you but there is, of course, always a place for you in Kiev. Please see that you deliver the diamonds to my office when you file your report. They will, of course, have to be confiscated.’
‘And the countess?’ asked Kohler.
‘Perhaps she would be able to offer coffee and the services of a small burial detail, all of whom will be sworn to silence. It’s a pity the horses were killed. They both looked like decent animals.’ Horses … ‘Oh, by the way, that reminds me, Hermann. Osias Pharand has a small job he’d like you and Louis to handle. A carnival operator in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, one of those guys who runs a carousel. Some bastard tied him to one of his painted horses or something and slit his throat from ear to ear. They found him in the morning. An old woman noticed that the thing was still going round and round when it should have been mothballed for the winter. She wanted to give her grandson a ride and was quite pissed off when they wouldn’t let her. It’ll keep Louis busy and give him a rest from all this.’
‘But … but that’s a matter for the Préfet of Paris and his boys?’
‘You leave Talbotte to me. Scrape the surface, Hermann. Find out what’s underneath.’
‘Full reports?’
‘Yes, yes, full reports. The son-of-a-bitch had a girlfriend.’
The bell that summoned the monks from their toil rang hollowly in the ice-bound air but struck a note of urgency. Kohler looked up the hill towards the monastery whose stone walls seemed to drift eerily out of the fog like the prow of a derelict ship. ‘It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, eh, Louis? A place like that. No gloves – no woollies either. Must be a bugger at night without a woman to cuddle up to.’
‘God wraps His cloak about them, Hermann. He is their Great Protector.’
‘How’s the tobacco supply?’
A note of warning, that? ‘Fine … Yes, fine, Hermann. I’ve hardly had a chance to use it.’
‘Not thinking of home are you, Louis? That wife of yours, eh? Gabi’s sure some chick. I couldn’t help noticing how she tossed you little looks of gratitude.’
‘She’s a chanteuse and a lady, Hermann, and me, I suppose when all is said and done, I’m a dry old stick who hungers for his slippers by the fire.’
‘There’s no coal in Paris, unless you’ve …’
‘Hermann, what is it? What has happened? Ever since you and Boemelburg had your little chat, it’s you who have been giving me the funny looks.’
‘Nothing. I just wondered. Gabi would suit you, Louis. You couldn’t do better – you know that, don’t you? You both work nights – no sweat about that. You could sleep in the odd morning and … well, you know. A fag?’ offered Kohler lamely. Things simply weren’t going well.
They trudged onward, steadily climbing the road, as the bell continued its lament.
Louis stooped to pick up a pebble of flint. Still had his mind on the case probably – a rehash of things. He hefted the stone and cleansed off its surface.
‘A small souvenir, eh, Hermann? A good murder case. A close thing, eh, my friend? Glotz giving you all that trouble. Me running into a girl whose shoe was broken …’
‘Look, let’s just find out what the hell that bell’s for.’
Had something also happened to Marianne and Philippe? ‘It’s not for the Angelus, Hermann. It has the ring of something else and, unless I am mistaken, that is the Brother Michael coming to meet us.’
They both waited as the monk strode towards them in his cassock and sandals.
Bare feet no less! Gott in Himmel, hard as nails … ‘Brother,’ began Kohler by w
ay of greeting.
There were no tears in the wine maker’s eyes, only a savage, unrepentant discipline. ‘Please follow me, Inspectors. The Reverend Father has commanded that I be the one to lead you.’
Were there onions or leeks on his breath? wondered St-Cyr. All things came to him in a rush then. The set of the monk’s shoulders, the strength of his stride – the utter defiance of Nature in the splayed footpads, bare ankles and clenched fists. No boots today.
The way the rocks, some broken by the frost, crowded both sides of the road yet thinned rapidly upslope in the pastures. The way the sheep cried out as if lost and in despair. Lonely … did the place have to engender such a desperate feeling of loneliness, of memory? Marianne …
The slope increased substantially once they’d left the road and taken a path into the hills. The breeding hives,’ grunted the monk without stopping or turning. ‘We are going up to the hives where the queen bees are bred in isolation. Brother Sebastian was a lay brother, an amateur scientist, a naturalist.’
‘We’re only after his statement,’ said Kohler who was second in line.
‘That you shall have,’ spat the monk fiercely. ‘God is Grace and God is all-forgiving but will God provide us with another beekeeper as wise and experienced as the Brother Sebastian?’
It was as though the monk were blaming them. The hives stood about on an upper slope like miniature alpine huts in the fog. There were no trees from which the good brother could have hung himself, so that was ruled out. St-Cyr hunted the shrouded terrain until he found the sandals and the cassock well to their left. The sandals lay on top of the cassock which had been carefully folded. ‘Brother Michael,’ he hazarded, glancing quickly at Hermann, ‘what has happened here?’
‘Not another murder, I hope,’ breathed Kohler exasperatedly. ‘My chief won’t stand for it. He’ll dear the area and turn it back to desert.’
‘Look for yourselves,’ said the wine maker, anxiously crossing himself before dragging out his rosary and beginning to mumble prayers.
‘Louis …? Shall you or I go over the ground?’ asked Kohler.
‘I think we walk carefully, Hermann, me treading in your footsteps until we can both have a look at him.’
The path became a goat run. The hives were perched on protected ledges and on flat slabs of rock that had been laid solidly atop small platforms of boulders.
There was blood beneath the fast-dwindling rime of ice on the boulder that was clenched in Brother Sebastian’s right hand, bringing reminders of the death of Jérome Noel.
The monk had hit himself so hard in the face that he had broken his nose and most of the front teeth. He was doubled up as if in pain. The face also bore the mask of agony.
A small pewter cup lay on top of one of the two hives between which the Brother Sebastian had crawled while still clutching that boulder as if he couldn’t give it up.
St-Cyr looked at the boulder, at the body again, and then at Hermann. ‘First the poison and then the rock.’
‘But why take off his clothes, Louis?’
‘Why indeed?’ said St-Cyr sadly. ‘Unless he had been disowned.’
He reached for the cup and, swirling the dregs, gingerly brought it to his nose. ‘Conium maculatum Lumbelliferae, Hermann. Commonly called Mother Die or Poison Hemlock. Death is from paralysis and asphyxia due principally to the alkaloid coniine which attacks the central nervous system. The mousy odour is particularly strong, suggesting perhaps that the draught was made from the fresh grinding of dried seeds, which are the plant’s most toxic part. The question is, did the abbot grind the seeds or did the Brother Sebastian?’
They both turned to look at Brother Michael who had found reason to study the soles of his sandals.
Back came the words, ‘A lay brother turned amateur scientist, a naturalist.’ Had they been given on purpose?
‘Let’s leave it,’ said Kohler.
‘Yes … yes, I think that would be best, eh, Brother Michael? Death by his own hand.’
‘May God forgive him.’
‘And be your Judge, I think, Brother. Please make sure he is buried in your hallowed ground.’
‘Yes … yes. To this the Reverend Father has agreed.’
‘Inspector, I must speak with you.’
St-Cyr absently tossed the stick he’d been fiddling with into the river. She’d found him at last, sitting with his back against the wall of the mill, staring into the past.
‘It’s not a good time for you to be alone, Inspector. You need friends. Me, I know that I should not intrude, but I would like you to consider me as a friend.’
Still he continued to look at the river. He wouldn’t turn – he reminded her so of René when he was like this, hurting inside and tearing himself apart over something.
‘I hardly knew my son, madame. Night after night I was away. Bank robbers, car thieves – murders … ah, murder, it became my specialty. Me, Jean-Louis St-Cyr, became “Monsieur the Detective”, to the boys on my street. “The famous detective.” So stupid a man, he could not see what was happening to his wife and son, that day by day they were growing more distant from him.’
‘Don’t blame yourself. It’s this lousy war, the Nazis … ah, Mon Dieu, it’s everything these days. Everything.’
She sat down beside him. ‘Was she pretty?’ she asked.
St-Cyr nodded. ‘I think I still loved her. I know I once did.’
‘And she you, also. Otherwise she wouldn’t have come home.’
Must he carry that thought with him always? Wasn’t it a time to be honest, eh? ‘She had no other place to go, since Quimper, the home of her parents, is in the Forbidden Zone near the coast.’
Gabrielle tossed her hands as if in a shrug. ‘It’s the war, just like I told you then. War throws us together or tears us apart. Me, I only know I’m glad I found you here, that it’s indicative you should have chosen this very place from among all the places you could have. Charles loved the river. We used to sit here so quietly, not saying a thing to each other, simply basking in the gentleness of its quietude and communicating in silence. We understood each other, Jean-Louis St-Cyr. It’s so rare to find that in two people, isn’t that so?’
‘The Germans buried what was left of them, madame. I must visit their graves as soon as I get back.’
It would do no good, of course. A simple gesture, that was all. What was done, was done.
He’d not listen but she’d try. ‘The front of your house is a wreck. You’ll have to stay in a hotel. Your friend has suggested we be practical, as your wages will not be stepped back up to those of a chief inspector until the end of the month.’
‘Hermann ought to keep that Bavarian nose of his out of my business.’
‘Ah, it was only a suggestion. Please don’t take such offence. For myself, I would appreciate a little sharing of the rent, for you …’ the hands were quite still, ‘I offer a roof and the use of my kitchen but only until such time as you’re better fixed, of course.’
‘Will you be going back to the Club Mirage?’
Had she made a mistake about him? ‘Me? Certainly! It’s too good a deal to let go.’
He still hadn’t looked at her. Was he afraid to? ‘That makes you sound like a collaborator?’ he said.
‘Or an entrepreneur with brains, eh? But it’s good cover, and the times … ah, what should I say? They will only become more difficult as the war with Russia turns against the Nazis, so me, I think I must begin to help the Resistance.’
She’d let it fall like a bomb. She’d meant it too. He could tell by the stillness of her, the watchfulness, that she was constantly reassessing him. She’d deliberately laid her life in his hands. To say such a thing … Thank God they were alone.
St-Cyr found the pebble of flint in his pocket and, taking it out, ran a worried thumb over it. ‘The Resistance, eh? Hermann is a good friend, madame. When this war is over I shall hate to see him go.’
Was it a warning then? ‘If you were careful …’ s
he began.
‘Oh, I’m careful, but with Hermann, he is like something out of a magician’s box. He has never lost someone he has set out to tail. Never! That one has glue in his blood when it comes to tailing someone.’
‘Then the Resistance is a bad idea and I must forget about it but only if you agree to stay with me.’
It took him a moment to realize what she’d done. ‘You’re blackmailing me. If I don’t take you up on your offer I might find myself inadvertently helping the Gestapo arrest you.’
‘Or something like that.’ He still hadn’t looked at her. She’d slide an arm through his. They’d sit a while in silence and listen to the river. He’d have to think it over.
‘Let’s help the Resistance and say to hell with it,’ said St-Cyr. ‘It’s time I took a more active part in things.’
There was sunlight on the far shore but then the shadows crept over it, silencing her answer and bringing their chill.
Turn the page to continue reading from the St-Cyr and Kohler Series
1
The coins were Roman and the girl was naked. That there was blood spattered about the room would be an understatement. Hermann was none too quietly rejecting his dinner into the girl’s wash-basin.
The coins had been thrown at the corpse. One had been dipped in blood and placed squarely in the middle of the forehead. The wire, twisted from the right, hadn’t just strangled her. At the last there’d been a sudden, savage twist cutting the jugular and then the windpipe.
She’d drowned in blood and had pressed futile hands against the carpet, arching her body up against the killer.
He’d raped her. The blood had been flung from his hands to speckle the pistachio-coloured walls and mingle with the smears of terror.
‘A pretty mess,’ said St-Cyr. ‘You okay now?’
‘No!’
Kohler shot back to the wash-basin. His ‘Bastard! Bastard!’ could be heard on the floor below and on the one below that. Even on the street perhaps.
Yet no one will have heard a thing, said St-Cyr ruefully to himself. It was always so in situations like this, more so under the German presence, the Occupation.
Mayhem Page 30