‘Don’t give me the heroine’s tale, Gabrielle. Me, I know only too well of your shrewdness and much admire that quality in a woman. What you do both here and with those things you keep in that flat of yours is no concern of mine, eh? But please, please, madame, don’t tell me you do it for the good of France.’
‘Ah! don’t be so wounded, idiot! I’m trying to tell you something. Look where others have looked but failed to see.’
He drew in a breath. ‘Anger makes you even more beautiful.’
‘Compliments won’t hide the truth, Jean-Louis. Take care of yourself.’
St-Cyr got up. She turned away to the mirror. Thoughts of what had happened to Giselle le Roy intruded. He knew she was weakening, knew any signs of weakness would be rapidly overcome.
‘What will you do about the hostages?’ she asked. ‘The twenty-nine who are still left?’
‘Who told you one of them had died?’
‘No one. It’s of no consequence. I only ask because one has to ask such things, isn’t that right?’
Someone connected with the Resistance must have told her. Ah, Nom de Dieu … He let a hand fall to her shoulder. ‘Von Schaumburg will release them if we find Schraum’s killer, but me, I greatly fear that that one will turn out to be as French as all the rest so they will be lost in any case.’
‘Please close the door and tell them I will be a few more minutes.’
‘Gabi …’
‘Don’t! Please don’t. Just go.’
Ah merde, merde! Why would she not listen?
8
Mist crept up the forested slopes to be caught by the wind on the heights above the rocky gorge. There was snow in the air and water dripping from the branches.
‘It’s beautiful, is it not?’ croaked the Frog with all the hushed reverence of a monk.
‘Piss off. I’m catching my death. Goose shit and worry in the eyes of that little one who was force-feeding the feathers between her thighs. No one in his right mind would be anywhere but by the fire.’
Kohler eased the stiffness in his back. Eighteen hours in the saddle and for what? A glimpse of Perigord at dawn, the finest scenery in France?
‘You should have stayed at the chateau, my friend, or at the walnut mill. But ah no, you had to force yourself upon my patience! Kindly shut up and leave this to the French who understand such things.’
‘Don’t get your ass in a knot, Louis. Gabi will be okay.’
‘And Giselle, eh? What of her? Antoine Audit is out here somewhere, Hermann. Find a man in his element and you understand him best.’
‘Find a girl like that stroking geese like that and ask her to join you in the hay, my old one. You need it, Louis. You’re becoming bitchier than usual.’
‘That girl is nothing, Hermann! Just a diversion the latest Madame Audit tolerates but barely. If one knows where to look, one finds.’
The road south from Limoges had been a bastard. Once through St-Yrieix-la-Perche they had hit the kaolin pits, then wound through the hills and valleys to a doubtful crossing at Muquet. After that Louis had tried to alleviate things by going on and on about the cave art of Upper Palaeolithic man as if the heart of Perigord were at once the heart of humanity and the River Vezere the Nile of that dawning age some 40,000 to 10,000 years ago!
There were caves in the yellowish limestone scarps at Les Eyzies, La Mouthe, Font-de-Gaume, Les Combarelles and Lascaux, the latest and most spectacular find of all. The last ice age had still been very much a fact of life when those caves had been occupied. Swollen rivers here and rains.
‘Food-gatherers, Hermann. Is it not odd that Perigord should be the cradle of modern man and of the black truffle?’
‘I just hope we haven’t made a mistake leaving Oona at the chateau.’
‘She’ll sleep as long as Madame Audit allows her to.’
‘So what gives then, eh?’
‘What gives is that the goose girl said our Monsieur Antoine would take the pigs with him today.’
Kohler found the crushed remains of a last cigarette but there were no dry leaves to offer help as paper. ‘The pigs,’ he said.
‘Female pigs are used on level ground, mongrel bitches on the slopes.’ A self-evident, if grumpy fact.
‘From here I see lots of slopes, my old one, but level ground that’s far too distant for my lack of boots and wings.’
The opposite side of the gorge! ‘If I remember correctly, Hermann, I warned you to equip yourself accordingly.’
Still bitchy, still worried, eh, and in need of a damned good lay. ‘Since when did that God of yours grant you wings?’
St-Cyr heaved a sigh. ‘The Tuber melanosporum favours the moist areas near the roots of the oak, Hermann. We look for oaks and we look for ground a female pig would not have too much difficulty traversing.’
‘The pig gets the scent, the gatherer digs for the fungus, so we look for the holes, right?’
Sometimes the Gestapo tried so hard to be helpful. ‘The holes are carefully covered over, Hermann. The whole thing is done in great secrecy since the black gold of the Perigord is exceedingly valuable.’
‘And mid-December’s the best time, right?’
‘You’re improving but please, don’t try my patience. Me, I have had enough of your terrible driving. I will take my chances here because I must.’
‘A walk to where, then?’ asked Kohler, dumfoundedly looking around at the woods.
‘Where the scent would lead a man whose fortune began with the fungus, Hermann. A man who must return to its hunt each year as the pilgrim seeks the spiritual nourishment of Jerusalem or the Shrine at Mecca.’
‘You’re too deep for me, pal.’
‘Then leave me to the truffle-hunter and go back to that girl with the geese. Sweet-talk her a little, find out what you can. Already the empire of Antoine Audit is far more extensive than I had imagined.’
‘That chateau up on the rocks?’
‘Purchased for a song from a departing Jew unless I’m mistaken.’
‘Take care of yourself, Louis. Don’t get lost.’
‘Don’t get shot at either, eh? Can’t you feel it, Hermann? Can’t you sense the tensions of these hills and rocky valleys? Generations of feuds and petty jealousies going well back before the Romans, each landowner fiercely guarding his holdings against all poachers, yet coveting the land of his neighbours? The pigs will be doing their work while the hunter watches with more than half an eye for other game and listens lest his secret be discovered.’
‘He’ll hear the car as it leaves.’
‘You impress me, Inspector. For you there’s still hope.’
‘Since when would the Reich allow them guns?’
‘If you’ve friends in the right places, Hermann, all things are possible. In any case, who’s to know out here?’
He had a point. ‘Shall I come back for you at noon?’
St-Cyr shook his head. ‘That’s too early. Once the sun is fully up, the frost will leave the ground and the hunt will go on in earnest until darkness. He’ll have transport back to the mill. I’ll hitch a ride.’
‘We’ll have to find us a place to stay.’
‘I’m sure Madame Audit will be more than willing to oblige a member of the Fuhrer’s Gestapo, Hermann.’
A hint, eh? Kohler gave him a handful of slugs for the Lebel. ‘Fire three in sequence if you get lost. The sound will carry down the gorge.’
‘Enjoy the girl’s fist. Don’t slip in the shit.’
He ignored the jibe. ‘You watch your back, eh? Remember brother Charles and friend Rejean could just as easily have taken a little holiday.’
‘By train?’
‘Or truck, especially as M Antoine has them running to and from Paris on a more or less regular basis. Wine and pate, remember? Silk and Cream of the Walnut.’