‘Not only is that colonel of yours ruthless, Hermann, he’s shrewd enough to have swindled us to save himself, his daughter and her mother.’
‘Yet he didn’t know what those boys had planned, Louis. Tell me he didn’t.’
‘Of course not, but would have figured it out even as we were struggling to do so ourselves.’
A man who could walk over corpses. ‘Then it must have been Rasche, with or without Werner Lutze, or Werner himself, or …’
‘Ah, mais alors, alors, Hermann!’
‘Louis, it was Rasche.’
‘Finally, even when in the face of great difficulty, he’s beginning to think again as a detective should, mademoiselle, though still not quite clearly.’
‘Sophie, Chief Inspector … Is it that you now believe she killed Renee to save herself?’
Pilot in the Sky, Maze of Darkness, Danceorama-one by one Victoria located them as she waited beside the Citroen. Always at night, the last hours were the darkest; in winter, the cruelest. Beyond the Devil’s Saucer, the tall silhouette of the Ferris wheel’s iron girders could not be seen but even so, she could hear the frost working at them. ‘It’s as though it has to move,’ Renee had sighed on a night like this. They had come out to meet and hide a German corporal the courier had brought through from the Totenkopf. The sounds had frightened Renee who had immediately thought of Martin Caroff’s tales of the Phantom Queen, only to softly laugh at herself when told their origin and say, ‘It wants to turn for joy, Victoria, for all the pleasure it brings, the magic.’ The freedom from life’s cares, from life itself. Renee had often revealed her innermost thoughts, the childlike wonder too, the intense delight and surprise she had immediately felt when presented with some long-sought little treasure.
That earring, Sophie, said Victoria silently. Those lovely greenish-brown eyes of hers, would have widened, wouldn’t they, become incredibly clear, if only to quickly return to the fear and despair that had so often of late shadowed her. The terror, Sophie, of your being followed. Her absolute conviction of what must happen not only to herself but to us-wasn’t that how she felt?
The Noah’s Ark was nearest and just beyond the tourer, behind which Herr Kohler, its ignition and lights switched off, had let the Citroen come to a stop. St-Cyr had opened the door on the passenger’s side and was rummaging about for something. Herr Kohler, having moved a little from her, was now closer to him. They wouldn’t know where she was; would never be able to find her until it was too late. Only Eugene and Raymond would have known there was picric acid, long forgotten at the Works and where and how best to get it. Only they would have had access to Sophie’s keys. They could have brought it out here, little by little.
They must have been terrified it would explode in transit, would have hidden it in the wagon with the torches and all the other pieces of the Jeu de massacre Renee had loved. Renee who had been so special to them.
‘Hermann, there’s no sign of the Mauser. Mademoiselle, you had best …’
‘Louis, she’s gone. I didn’t even get a chance to tell her we’d do everything we could to see that she escaped and wasn’t harmed.’
The two sets of tracks were divergent, the one heading from the tourer toward the House of Mirrors and its wagons. The other was elusive: now to the ruin of a round stall between the Noah’s Ark and the Salon Carousel, a ruin whose once candy- shy;striped canvas tilt had shed rain and sun from the suckers who had attempted its hoopla of square pedestals which would have been but a whisper shy of being too big for the hoops to drop over. These little posts littered the snow-covered rubbish among scrolled and gilded panel boards that had peeled and faded.
From here, this second set of tracks, having picked its defiant way through that rubbish, headed for another stall, somewhat closer to the Salon Carousel. Hermann played his torch fitfully over the ruin until it settled on the tracks, as once garishly painted, plaster clown heads stared emptily up at them with gaping mouths.
‘Ping-Pong balls,’ he muttered. ‘The clowns would all have been ranked in line, eyes to the right or left, or facing straight ahead. You feed a ball into the mouths of the ones you think will win and the ball drops down a gullet slot and either rings a bell or doesn’t.’
‘Carpet-sweepers, duvets, tureens and chamber pots as prizes, but few if any winners. Don’t linger.’
‘My Gerda used to love going to carnivals, fetes and fairs. We would have such a time of it, the two of us.’
The tracks, when again found, led into the depths of the Salon Carousel, their torch beams flickering as they passed over the once gaily coloured menagerie. A band organ had been pulverized by the budding musicians among the local tribe of farm children. A stallion now wore charcoal horn-rimmed spectacles, the swan-chairs, the crayoned grimaces of white-winged witches.
‘Louis, if we ever get out of this, we’re going to have to get out of France. Neither of us will be allowed to stay, not now, and you know it.’
‘The Resistance …’
‘Will be after both of us, and if not them, the SS and Gestapo, and if not them, the collabos, and if not them, the Bonzen, and if not those …’
‘The French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston and others.’
Gangsters the SS and Gestapo had let out of the Sante, Fresnes and other such prisons and had put to work. Gangsters, several of whom Louis had consigned to those very prisons.
‘Come on, mon vieux,’ said St-Cyr, ‘we can discuss it later.’
‘There won’t be time and you know it.’
They shook hands, and through the darkness, looked steadily at each other. Hermann had taken far more Benzedrine than he should. The hand was warm but quivering until gripped more firmly. ‘Merci bien, mon ami, let us count on each other.’
‘As always.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘You didn’t answer Victoria when she asked if you felt Sophie had killed Renee.’
‘There was no need and she knew it.’
‘And now …’
‘Un moment!’
‘The Tonneau de l’amour, Louis.’
Victoria Bodicker had fallen and the startled cry she had given was repeated, the echoes torn from it. ‘She’s been leading us away from what she has in mind, Hermann.’
‘The Jeu de massacre, but she’d not have cried out like that had she not been terrified.’
‘And followed by Sophie?’
Who must have heard the Citroen’s approach and then watched as they had got out of the car. ‘That Mauser pistol, Louis …’
Light spilled from a canted doorway behind the long, dark silhouette of the Barrel of Love. It gave small shadows to footprints that shouldn’t have been here had he been doing his job, felt Kohler. Hesitantly he touched Louis on the shoulder, heard him suck in an impatient breath and knew that this partner of his was trying his damnedest to figure out what best to do.
‘Hermann, find another way in. Let me confront the Mademoiselle Schrijen.’
Above the spindled, horn-winged arch over the broken entrance, drunken letters gave the name in French of Dr. Bonnet’s Travelling Museum of Anatomy.
Light seeped from among splintered panel boards whose faded, peeling posters gave the lie of pseudoscientific credentials, once luridly dyed wall hangings portraying obscure surgical operations: Transfusion of Goat’s Blood; et cetera, et cetera.
‘Hermann, leave me. Either Sophie Schrijen has set the lantern down to distract us or to shine it at her friend.’
‘Take care. I mean it, Louis.’
‘You also.’
‘Batteries okay?’
‘Hermann, there isn’t time!’
They parted. A last glance over the shoulder gave the blocky, dark silhouette of Louis as he quickly ducked into the entrance, totally committed and utterly reliable …