Mayhem

by J. Robert Janes

  Clément Cueillard judged he could afford to grin. He favoured the scruffy moustache that was raked out at its mottled, greying ends. He touched the chin that was narrow and round, the cheeks that formed their crinkled bowl and extended upwards to the pinched forehead and the mangled dark-brown hair which protruded carelessly from beneath the shiny visor of his dark blue kepi.

  The woman tossed off the brandy, monkey spit or no.

  ‘Talbotte is slipping,’ said Kohler of the cop.

  ‘It’s the war,’ offered St-Cyr. ‘It has brought out the worst in us, Hermann.’

  ‘Do you want me to run this thing for you when I’m finished?’ quipped the flic.

  The man was in his late forties. A father no doubt. A recipient of someone’s largesse in these hungry times.

  ‘That you can eat so well in front of us, my friend, is the shame of our nation.’

  ‘Louis, let’s leave him. Let’s get to work.’

  ‘Is the sausage to your liking, my friend?’ asked the one from the Sûreté. The mouse.

  ‘The cheese is Swiss; the sausage from Alsace.’

  ‘And the beer?’ shot Kohler.

  ‘Alsace also,’ oozed the flic, continuing to eat. ‘You bastards left me out in the cold. What did you expect me to do?’

  ‘Not bring your larder with you.’

  ‘It wasn’t mine. It was his.’ Cueillard jerked a thumb towards the corpse. ‘Since he’s done with eating, my fine detectives, I can indulge myself. There’s more in the centre if you want some. By the boiler. Behind the organ.’

  ‘You weren’t to touch a thing,’ warned St-Cyr.

  ‘The stomach doesn’t touch. Its juices dissolve.’

  ‘A scientist, eh?’ snorted Kohler. ‘A smart-ass.’

  ‘You may start the machine,’ said Louis. ‘Give us the privilege of your expertise. Set your snack on the ground. No one will step on it.’

  ‘Music, maestro?’

  A real card. Talbotte must have given him all the rope he needed. ‘Of course, why not the music? It will help us think.’

  ‘Stand back then.’

  Threading his way among the menagerie, Cueillard disappeared through a gap in the panelled mirrors that surrounded and hid the boiler and its workings. ‘All set?’ he cried from in there.

  ‘Proceed,’ shouted St-Cyr, feeling the fool.

  And the thing began to turn – slowly at first, the stallions rising and falling, the body also. All in slow motion but as if straining to throw off the shackles that had bound them. The glitter, the vivid colours, the wicked eyes of the animals now intent, now in flames enraged, came at them. Faster … faster …

  The lights above, and from the many mirrors, swirled to the music of a stupendous band organ, a grandiose thing of brass pipes and Louis XIV gilded carvings under the name of GAVIOLI, PARIS, 1889. A calliope superb!

  Boom, boom.

  ‘What’s the march?’ shouted St-Cyr.

  ‘That of the Bulgarians,’ came the reply. ‘Punched cards that are fed by a belt of themselves into the machine.’

  The man was obviously something of a mechanic and lost on the police force.

  The band organ passed by them. Eventually the body came up again. The corpse no longer threatened Madame Minou but intrigued her. ‘A chicken?’ she asked with all the incredulity of her years. ‘Why a chicken, Inspector? One of the gondolas would have been far better for a murder such as this.’

  Hermann had gone off some place. ‘Why indeed?’ shouted St-Cyr. ‘It’s magnificent, isn’t it?’

  The carousel.

  ‘Very fashionable in the old days. Perfectly restored by a lover of such things, monsieur, and until quite recently kept in excellent repair.’

  Good for her. She’d noticed it too.

  The march past was completed in four and a half minutes. Now it was the ‘Sidewalks of New York’, and then ‘Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I’m half crazy all for the love of you.’

  Hermann was hanging on to one of the brass poles, going round and round. ‘He’s overtired, madame,’ acknowledged St-Cyr. ‘Things like this tend to make him forget the real world.’

  ‘For detectives, the two of you are a puzzle.’

  ‘We work in mysterious ways. Now please, allow me to experience the turning as it must have been seen by the grandmother who found this one and reported the murder.’

  The woman hunched her shoulders. ‘It turns. It goes up and down in time to the music. It is loud, brassy and bright, and for children.’

  ‘And whores,’ snorted Hermann, leaping off the thing. ‘Louis, I’m going to have to invite the girls from the Lupanar des Oiseaux Blancs.* Madame Chabot will be intrigued by its possibilities.’

  ‘The chicken, Hermann. He’s tied to the chicken, remember?’

  ‘Two men?’ asked Kohler.

  ‘Perhaps, but then the girl was killed by one, isn’t that so?’

  ‘Almost certainly, and almost a day later.’

  Kohler offered a cigarette. St-Cyr struck the match and held it out for him. ‘The girl this evening, Hermann, the killer quite possibly knowing we were heading home to have a look at this one.’

  ‘Two killings, Louis, separated by at least twenty-four hours. Us to take care of things because Pharand had spoken to Boemelburg and the Sturmbannführer had said we should.’

  St-Cyr nodded grimly. ‘Talbotte accepting the arrangement, a thing he would never do unless he knew there’d be egg in his trousers if he meddled.’

  ‘Egg in his trousers … I like that, Louis.’

  ‘Then tell me, please, are we supposed to think the girl was this one’s chicken?’

  The man a pimp, a mackerel. ‘It’s not possible, Louis. She was too …’

  ‘She was what, Hermann?’

  ‘Too much the lady; too much the … well, the innocent.’

  ‘Precisely! It’s what I have felt myself.’

  ‘Perhaps, then, the two murders are totally unrelated, or are bound only by the third party?’

  The ‘client’ of the girl.

  ‘Then why the fake gold coins?’

  ‘They’d been tested with nitric acid, Louis.’

  ‘Not brown? Not a trace of that discolouration?’ Gold would turn brownish under the acid.

  ‘As green as a gardener’s thumb.’

  Bronze – the copper.

  ‘So why the canary?’ asked Kohler.

  St-Cyr took the thing out of a pocket. The music had changed to the ‘Gypsy Fortune-teller’. There was now no sign of Madame Minou.

  Lost in thought, Louis fingered the bird. The galloping menagerie came at them, going round and round as the music blared and the lights played their magic on the mind.

  ‘Was it a talisman, Hermann, or merely a reminder of a lost friend?’

  ‘Let’ s take a look at the corpse.’

  Madame Minou had gone to sleep in one of the gondola cars. There was no need to disturb her. Indeed, it would be best not to stop the music.

  ‘So, the jockey rides a chicken and has two chicken-catchers from the slaughterhouse to puzzle over him.’

  Pacquet, the city’s Chief Coroner, had come to do the job himself. Yawning at 2.30 a.m. and inclined to be touchy.

  ‘You’re looking well,’ enthused St-Cyr.

  ‘Sarcasm I don’t need. Did you stick a thermometer up his rectum?’

  ‘He’s been dead for well over twenty-four hours. Rigor’s set in like concrete.’

  ‘An expert, eh? What about the girl? Did you shove one up hers?’

  ‘We are not permitted to do such things. Besides, Hermann broke the thermometer on a prostitute and Stores have not been willing to release another to us. This war … the shortages …’ St-Cyr gave a futile shrug. In truth, Pacquet had always made him feel out of place.

  ‘Can’t you stop this bloody thing?’

  Hermann gave a shout and the music began to unwind as the carousel beat its wings to tired submission.

  Cruis
ing to the last. Up and down.

  ‘Want the lights left on?’ shouted Clément Cueillard.

  ‘Idiot! Of course,’ screamed Pacquet, his narrow cheeks jerking.

  Fastidiously, the Chief Coroner took the small, round, wire-rimmed spectacles from their pocket case and carefully worked them on to the bridge of his angular nose and over his pinched ears. A frizzy mop of greying dark-black hair protruded behind and from under the speckled tweed cap Pacquet wore both when at the races and when not. In all the years St-Cyr had known him, he had never worn anything else up there.

  That he was bald over the crown of his head was understood. That the rest of the hair, the tangled bush of a moustache in particular, had been grown long and thick in defiance of that baldness was silently understood.

  One didn’t dare cross Pacquet on that subject, or on anything else.

  Gesturing, the coroner threw the agonized police photographer into battle, held the boys in blue with their canvas stretcher in reserve, and set upon the corpse, flinging his battered black bag down as if fed up.

  ‘Twenty-six years of age.’

  An eyelid was pried up. The shirt collar was teased away to better expose the wound. ‘This one, having successfully avoided the patriotic defence of his country, has succeeded equally in avoiding the forced-labour requests of the glorious Third Reich. He’s reaped his just reward, eh, Kohler?’

  Hermann didn’t get a chance to reply. ‘Who’s the old dear? His mother?’ shouted the Chief Coroner.

  Louis explained things but it was as if Pacquet had already been briefed and had forgotten her. ‘Identity?’ his voice leapt.

  ‘Not yet, Chief Coroner. The papers were stolen. Records will know him.’

  ‘You hope.’

  It was a prayer freely given.

  Pacquet examined the gaping wound that had cut through to the spinal cord. ‘His neck’s been broken. The head was pulled back like this,’ he demonstrated, ‘by cupping the bastard beneath the chin and pressing the knee against the centre of the back. Tied for good measure and then the throat opened. A straightforward gangland killing, Louis. Vengeance! The pinstriped suit, the broad lapels of the typical mackerel – one has only to look at him to know his nature. The candy-striped tie. One ring finger is missing – you would not have noticed that.’

  The little finger of the left hand had been hacked off. The ring had been too tight. A bad job.

  The finger was lying on the floor, stuck to the congealed blood.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I did notice it.’

  ‘Please don’t swear under your breath. The Sûreté’s most infamous murder squad should be more forthcoming with their lungs.’

  The victim’s arms had been pulled down on either side of the chicken’s tail, then tied and roped to the ankles so that he straddled the thing in a most incongruous position. The rope had then been passed up and over the back a few times before being securely knotted to the brass pole upon which the chicken was mounted.

  ‘He’d not have fallen off,’ came the dry comment. ‘The killer must have searched for this among the workings, after he’d dragged the body over to the chicken.’

  The rope was flicked with a forefinger.

  ‘We’re working on it,’ said St-Cyr.

  Sufficient play had been allowed for the chicken and the corpse to rise and fall as the carousel went round. A nice touch.

  Kohler let the two of them fuss. The ticket booth attracted him.

  The cage was just big enough for a girl to stand in. A small seat, hinged to the back, would give momentary ease when lifted up and fixed into place. Rolls of tickets hung handily above, on either side of the brass bars of the wicket.

  Looking out of the cage, he saw the boardings that had been put up to mothball the carousel: lions and tigers leaping through fiery hoops to whips, or standing on hind legs; an elephant, a monkey … The monkey’s cup,’ the flic Clément Cueillard had said.

  ‘Come to think of it, where the hell has the monkey got to?’

  It was a thought.

  The cash box was empty, but that would have been done as a matter of course at the close of each day. Robbery couldn’t have been the motive, not the few sous this thing would take in.

  The ticket booth was fixed to the carousel next to its outer edge, and went round and round with it. At the end of each ride the attendant would step out of her booth to unhook the chain and let the riders off, taking back the tickets and tearing each in half. Then she’d get behind the wicket to take the money in and hand out fresh tickets to the new batch of riders.

  The system had its faults. When the boards were down there’d have been ample opportunity for the kids to jump on and off, snitching rides at will. The little nippers would have driven the attendant and the operator crazy. The success of the venture had depended on the riders being honest!

  ‘Perhaps that’s why the apache was hired to run the thing?’ Or had he been hired at all?

  Kohler ran his hands over the black lacquer of the tiny counter. The attendant’s knees would have touched the iron door. The girl would have chafed her stockings against it and worried about them. If she’d had any left. These days the girls used a wash of beige, drew lines up the backs of their gams and went barelegged. Her shoes would have scuffed the floor. She’d have been like a little bird in a cage.

  A bird that had called herself Christiane Baudelaire? Was that it?

  When he ran his eyes up into the vaulted dome of the booth he found a gold-painted hook, and reaching up, let a finger wrap itself around the thing. A cage within a cage. Christiane Baudelaire.

  Louis was waiting for a ticket. Pacquet had seen enough.

  ‘Dead a good thirty hours, Hermann, so exactly as we’d thought.’

  Nine, nine-thirty, Wednesday night.

  ‘A vengeance killing. Pacquet’s leaving us to sort out the details. He only came here at the request of your boss.’

  The Sturmbannführer Walter Boemelburg.

  ‘What’s Walter really got to do with it, Louis?’

  ‘That I wish I knew, my old one. Ah merde, but I do.’

  ‘The girl had one of those coins placed squarely in the middle of her forehead, Louis.’

  The Frog’s eyes were moist. ‘It is the custom always to pour gasoline on the fire, Hermann. He who holds the can determines the size of the blaze.’

  ‘The avenue Foch?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  The General Oberg, the Butcher of Poland, and his deputy, the Obersturmbannführer Helmut Knochen. The SS at Number 72 the avenue Foch!

  ‘Louis, whoever ran this thing had plenty of coal and firewood.’

  ‘Yes … yes, I am aware of that, Hermann. While virtually the whole of Paris freezes, some have all the luck.’

  ‘The girl’s client?’ asked Kohler, not liking the drift.

  Louis only nodded sadly, then shrugged as he walked away. The chips were down and the poor Frog knew it.

  * The rabbit hutch (the brothel) of the White Birds

  2

  The shutters were drawn, the street was empty. At 5.30 a.m. Berlin time the curfew had broken, but the dawn was still some hours away.

  St-Cyr stood alone on the sidewalk at the entrance of the courtyard that led to the Hotel of the Silent Life.

  There was only a small wooden placard to mark the location of the hotel. They’d not been able to afford bronze when what had once been the villa of a bourgeois merchant had lost its innocence and become a pension.

  Armed with Hermann’s Gestapo flashlight, he’d been searching for the girl’s papers but had come out here to experience the city’s awakening.

  Those that had stayed late had begun to seep homeward or to their places of work. Here in the quartier Goutte-d’Or, on the rue Polonceau it was no different. All over Paris there would be this same indefinable hush. It was as if guilt drove the honest to scurry or to coast one’s bicycle when passing others in the dark, instinct having given warning and the gently ticking breath
of the sprocket answer.

  The wind in a girl’s skirt in summer; the clasp of her overcoat as now.

  The opening of a door directly across the street broke his thoughts. He knew a bicycle was being pushed out on to the road.

  ‘Marianne, take care.’ A whisper.

  ‘I will, Georges. Until tomorrow, my love, I die with waiting and hunger.’

  ‘Until tomorrow.’

  Marianne … Could she not have had some other name? Must God do this to him?

  St-Cyr held his breath. The door softly closed and the girl rode silently away, letting her bicycle gather its effortless momentum.

  Quickly he crossed the street but did not shine the light over the place. It was a shop of some sort – a sign-painter, a tailor, a shoe-repair – Montmartre, like Belleville, was the earth of such things.

  The window glass was cold, the surface a mirrored lake through which the bottom of what Paris had become would be certain to appear.

  He chanced the light but briefly. It was a bakery and pâtisserie in which the sugared almonds were not real but made of pressed paper that had been allowed to dry in the summer sun then had been painted or dipped in glue and covered with a sprinkling of coarse salt.

  The éclairs were as plastic and everyone would know this and no longer bother to ask if they were real.

  The flan with its glazed fruit – fruit like something strange and forbidden – would be as hard as the glass that sheltered it from the window-shopper’s betrayal.

  Marianne …

  He switched off the light. ‘It’s finished,’ he said. ‘God has them and he’s had the great kindness to give me two more murders to solve and quickly.’ But was God laughing at him again so soon? Was He beckoning him to climb up into Heaven to have a little look down at himself?

  God had a way of doing things like that.

  His steps echoed in the courtyard. The hotel was at the far end, perhaps some thirty metres from the street. There was a carpenter’s shop, a printer’s – the smell of ink – a man who bound old and rare books, a seamstress who specialized in wedding gowns few people would want.

  They’d all have to be questioned. It was invariably difficult. One had to be so tactful and Hermann seldom was.