‘The trinitrophenol, Hermann.’
‘The guncotton, Louis.’
They were following the lorries now. Soon they would be in the outskirts of Kolmar, soon at the Works, Victoria knew. The Obersturmfuhrer would beat the truth out of Martin and Gerard and the others, and then would start in on her. Everything would come out. She’d not be able to stop herself. ‘Chief Inspector,’ she heard herself saying quite calmly, turning so as to face him, ‘how is it that you realized I must have something fragile in my pocket?’
‘You constantly favoured your left side. Whenever I was behind the wheel, you crowded Hermann; myself as at present.’
‘You killed Renee, Victoria,’ said Alain, having realized the significance of the explosives. ‘You went out to the carnival on that Sunday morning. Haven’t you two thought to ask her where she was?’
On the last Sunday of January. ‘I was at church.’
‘You weren’t. I checked.’
‘I was seeing to Claudette’s cat.’
‘Her door was locked and when I rang the bell, you didn’t answer.’
‘Untersturmfuhrer, a moment, please,’ said St-Cyr. ‘How is it that you knew to try at Frau Oberkircher’s residence?’
Hermann sighed as only he could. ‘Sophie was with him, Louis.’
‘Had you taken the bus out to the carnival, mademoiselle?’ asked St-Cyr. ‘It would have dropped you off at the side of the road.’
‘We found her footprints in the snow, Inspector,’ said Alain.
‘At what time, please?’
St-Cyr had again taken hold of her right arm and would move quickly to stop her from crushing the ampoules. Herr Kohler would also try to stop her.
‘At close to 1200 hours,’ said Alain. ‘My train didn’t leave until 1730. My sister said she had to see if Renee had come back.’
‘ “Come back,” Untersturmfuhrer?’ asked Louis.
‘I’d been there on the Saturday, hadn’t I?’ said Alain sarcastically.
‘I only wanted to hear it from yourself, monsieur.’
These two couldn’t be allowed to live, not now, thought Schrijen. ‘We saw her footprints next to Renee’s ski tracks up by that wagon they used as a field office, but when we went inside it, neither of them were there. That’s when we went to the House of Mirrors and found her body.’
‘But didn’t search elsewhere, did you, Alain, because Sophie knew where to look,’ said Victoria. ‘She led you to her. She showed you what you’d driven Renee to do that morning, at 10.00 perhaps, or closer to 11.00. That is as close to the time as I can get, Inspectors. Renee knew he couldn’t let her live, that that father of his had told him what to do.’
‘Invite her to a party. Tell her of the experiments. Drug her to confuse her. Beat the truth out of her and all the rest of it, and when she comes to the next morning, force her to witness an execution,’ sighed Kohler. ‘What did she cry out before you raped her?’
‘That the sluts were moving deserters through from the Reich.’
‘And that she was deeply in love with your sister, Alain. Wasn’t that as much the reason you did what you did to her? You couldn’t stand to have one of those in your family. A lesbian? Sophie has always had to fill two pairs of shoes, Inspectors. Those of her mother and of herself. Always she has had to be proper, to never do anything that wasn’t totally acceptable to that father of hers, to always be on hand for receptions and dinner guests, always to smile and look her best, but never to be herself. She’s terrified of you, Alain. She knew you would tell your father about her and Renee.’
There wasn’t time for him to respond. They had entered the gates, the wire closing behind them. Now steam billowed from the boilers and the smell of rotten eggs intruded.
Unbidden, Victoria crossed herself and saw that the chief inspector also did, Herr Kohler simply staring at the tarpaulin-covered back of the closest lorry. All too soon, though, Meyer and several of the armed SS were rushing them up a steep and narrow staircase where, through the dimly lit haze of each freezing floor, hundreds of men, some of them clad only in grey underclothes, silently watched her. Old men, young men, gaunt, haggard, hollow-eyed and with longing in their gazes, lust too, and fear. ‘A girl …’ ‘A woman …’ ‘Beaten … she’s already been beaten,’ they murmured, the hush of their whispers travelling, she not knowing their languages, yet knowing what they said and thought as their fingers, with dirty, blackened, broken nails, clung to the closely meshed wire that kept them in and kept them so crowded they could longer remember how it had been to live decently.
Under the cobwebbed, soot-blackened roof timbers of another century, the Straf cells waited. One, a box so tightly constructed its occupant could only stand, not turn, was flung open and she was taken, pulled, dragged away from St-Cyr and Kohler toward it until Herr Kohler yelled, ‘Halt!’ and then said more calmly, ‘That’s enough, Obersturmfuhrer shy;. She’s a suspect in a murder case and until that’s been settled, she’s with us.’
‘Questions … there are questions,’ stammered Meyer, obviously stricken by the continued insubordination.
‘You’ll have to be patient.’
‘Patient!’ he shrieked.
‘Why not start with the men you came to interrogate?’
There was no one being held in Straf and Hermann had sensed this but there was now, St-Cyr realized, no sign of Alain Schrijen either.
‘He’s gone to talk to his father, Louis,’ said Kohler, having taken Victoria Bodicker’s hand in his.
No cell had room in which to move more than two paces, no furniture beyond three planks.
‘The head office, I think,’ said Kohler. Only then, as Meyer and the others momentarily stopped, did they realize that beyond the constant sound of thousands and thousands of shuttles, there was the silence of the barracks block, for none below them moved. They only listened hard, all eyes lifted to them.
‘Inspectors,’ wept Victoria, the three of them standing a little apart from the others. ‘Inspectors, please forgive me.’
‘For being brave?’ asked Louis. ‘Mademoiselle, you humble me.’
‘But still will seek the truth?’
‘We have no other choice,’ confided Kohler. ‘We hadn’t when we began this thing, and haven’t now.’
‘His colonel made certain of it,’ said St-Cyr.
‘Alain Schrijen murdered Renee Ekkehard, Louis. It’s what Rasche has always wanted.’
‘Because he, too, has had no other choice, Hermann. None at all.’
With the blackout, the darkness of the Works was often all but complete at ground level.
‘Louis,’ said Herr Kohler softly. ‘Louis, take a look above us. You too, mademoiselle.’
Beyond the billowing, grey-white pillar of ever-expanding smoke that poured from the tall brick chimney of the first of the steam plants, the stars were incredibly beautiful. Pistons throbbed, gearwheels meshed, shuttles endlessly went back and forth, but above them, all seemed as if totally at peace.
St-Cyr and Kohler couldn’t know what Lowe Schrijen had forced Martin and the others to reveal, nor what he had done with them or even if they had also planned to set off explosions here during their escape, but they would have to have answers before being confronted when they reached the office.
St-Cyr was looking at her, not at the stars. ‘Mademoiselle,’ he said, and she felt a shudder go through her.
‘When Alain was with us in the car, Chief Inspector, and accused us of it, I didn’t deny that we had been moving people through Alsace. There would have been no point in my doing so, but we weren’t just moving deserters. Escaped prisoners of war came to us, also politicals and others on the run. We did what we could because we felt we had to.’