He lay on his back on one of the tiers so as not to be trampled in the aisle that ran along the centre of the bunker. Not young, not old, not tall, not short-ah, mon Dieu, thought St-Cyr, must the images come so fast when one had to ask, had he killed himself?
With hanging it was often impossible to tell if it hadn’t been the victim’s intention. Perhaps forty percent of all suicides chose this method; murderers seldom, for invariably the victim fought back, leaving marks and smashing things unless drugged or drunk, but even then there were often signs of a struggle, noises too.
The face was thin, the dark brown eyes wide open but protruding slightly. Sprays of petechiae, the little blood spots usually found just under the skin of the deceased, seemed all but absent. The bridge of the nose was sharp. He had shaved early on that Friday morning, the razor dull. The tongue wasn’t swollen nor bitten through. The lips, parted slightly, were plum-blue, the slipknot up tight under the right ear, the head canted to the left.
Saliva had drooled in quantity, a vital act. Most probably, then, he had been alive as the rope had tightened. Waste had been voided but if he stank, as he must, there was no hint of this, so masked was the air. Bien sur, there was nothing quite like the smell of decaying potatoes and rotten eggs.
Fully clothed, he still wore the French Army trousers he’d had during the Blitzkrieg, now much patched and crudely mended. The shirt collar was frayed but the clothes were clean, there was no dirt scaled about the throat on either side of the rope, no sign of the too-infrequent bathing one would have expected of a prison camp.
Above the rope, the neck did have its scattered petechiae; at it, the flesh was depressed, but was the ligature too tightly drawn for him to have tied it himself? one had to ask.
The backs of the hands were blotched with slate-blue to reddish-purple patches. The calves, ankles and feet would be the same. As the engine of life had ceased, gravity had simply let the heavier red corpuscles sink to the lowest spots.
‘You know the colonel wants this done quietly,’ he said to the corpse, ‘so where, please, is it best we begin? I’m alone. I’ve told the guard who conducted me to this place that he was to close the doors behind me and return to his post on the gate. Where could I run to, eh, if run I wanted?’
The hands were tightly clenched, the thumbnails that dark, midnight blue all the others would show.
‘You were married,’ said St-Cyr, leaning well in over the victim, ‘but your wedding ring isn’t of gold or silver. It’s been fashioned out of piece of tin and beautifully riveted. Even the edges have been curled inward so that you wouldn’t cut yourself. There’s an engraving-not hearts and letters but something else, something very fine. Had he Gallic and Celtic ancestors, this tinsmith-cum-jeweller? Ah, sacre, my light!’
Shaking the torch, he accidentally banged his head on the rack above, cursed Gestapo stores and the Occupation, said calmly now, yes, calmly, ‘Excusez-moi, monsieur. It’s the times, n’est-ce pas? Spare batteries are seldom available. For each new one back home, two old ones must be turned in. Certainly when in Paris, my partner is adept at substituting ours for those of other gestapistes, but we haven’t spent much time there of late.’
Lighting a candle, taken from his pocket, St-Cyr fixed it to one of the wooden uprights. Looking down at the victim, bathed as that one was in this gentlest of lights, he said, ‘May the grace of God be with you, mon fils. Though I am no priest, I doubt that one will ever see you.
‘My partner couldn’t have joined me,’ he added quickly. ‘Always now I feel I have to explain. You see, he can’t stomach the sight of death anymore. It happens even to the best of us and he’s one of them. I also don’t want him heaving up that magnificent lunch. But why, please, did the colonel provide it and why was that housekeeper of his edgy, his former sergeant-major silent?’
A hanging. An ‘apparent’ suicide when virtually everything seen so far indicated that was exactly what had happened.
The toilet was spotless, Kohler noted, the room no more than a small closet, the porcelain throne massive, for they had sure as hell built them to last in the 1890s when the office and the original mill had begun. The dark walnut seat, lid and brass fittings were as solid as the Rock of Bloody Ages, but Gott sei Dank, the cistern hadn’t pulled away to crush the victim.
Standing in the doorway, he let his gaze sift slowly over everything. It had been good of Louis not to have asked him to help with the corpse, good of him to have tried to keep his partner busy and away from thinking about the wire, but neither of them had realized the size of the Textilfabrikschrijen, the Schrijen Works. It had been almost a two-kilometre forced march just to get to this end of the administrative building. Lagerfeldwebel Jakob Dorsche was now behind him, as were the two the sergeant had delegated to escort this detective. Uneasy-all three of them were that, the guards terrified Dorsche would tear a stripe off them for some minor infraction. After all, it was his job to keep order in the camp and Dorsche should damned well have known something like this ‘suicide’ might happen and would definitely be held responsible no matter what.
Given the size of the factory, and at least three to four hundred POWs, Louis and he would not get anywhere without his help. Dorsche knew it too. Watchful blue eyes behind wire-rimmed specs missed little. The ruddy Burgermeister cheeks were round, the forehead a hard rampart of bone that had rammed many, the nose flat, wide and broken several times, the ears small and tight against the short-cropped, greying bristles under that cap, the fists hammers.
A barrel of a man in jackboots that gleamed, Dorsche took the time necessary to assess his visitor as cigarettes were found in this detective’s innermost pocket and offered, the packet all but empty, the sacrifice evident.
‘Danke, Herr Hauptmann Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter. You’ve seen the notices, have you?’
‘Pardon?’
‘The fire hazard of such practices. Smoking indoors is verboten except in designated areas. The officers’ mess, that of the men, their headquarters also, the-’
‘And here I thought-’
‘That this toilet would be used for such?’
Dorsche had been leagues ahead of him!
‘It’s not often we get someone such as yourself, Herr Kohler. The stride, the set of the shoulders-one can tell a military man at a glance, a police officer also, just as it’s not hard to tell a Kriegsgefanganer once one has been one, but please don’t trouble yourself. I also was once a prisoner of war in that other conflict, the one we lost, so in their wisdom, the OKW, after much deliberation, put me in charge of this camp.’
The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the High Command, and a life behind wire, but this time, his wire!
Now there were only two cigarettes left in the packet. Dorsche indicated the boys. ‘Good fortune doesn’t often come easily,’ he said to them. ‘Beat it. I can take care of him myself.’
A match was struck. Dorsche leaned in, and as he lit his cigarette, he said, ‘A Wills Gold Flake? You impress me, Herr Kohler. Did you shoot the aircraft down or only arrest its British pilot and crew after they had bailed out and tried to escape?’
‘Neither, and so much for this not being a designated area. Look, we need your help.’
‘I would have thought that obvious.’
‘Then I’d be grateful if you would go over everything. Who found him, the time as closely as possible, the position of the body, the rope … ’
‘And anything suspicious?’
‘Even the smallest detail.’
‘Like cigarette ashes in a tin cup and a man perhaps taking a contemplative moment at 2207 hours?’