Flesh-coloured and thin, some like broken pale shards of rose petals, the bits of bisque huddled among the granitic chips which, pale and flesh-coloured too, had all but hidden them. ‘Part of a doll, all right, Louis.’
‘The face, I think but someone has collected several of the pieces? Your Sous-Préfet?’ he asked, looking up into the light.
Kerjean shook his head. ‘He has touched nothing. This is exactly as it was found.’
‘Then who dropped the doll and who took it away?’
‘This we do not know.’
‘Then who picked up the pieces and who informed your Sous-Préfet of the murder?’
Kohler watched the two of them closely. The brown ox-eyes of the Sûreté’s Chief Inspector never wavered nor did the gaze of the Préfet.
‘The Kapitän Kaestner,’ said Kerjean firmly. ‘That one has refused to hand over the pieces but has shown them to myself and the officer in charge of U-boat operations, the Kapitän Freisen. It was Herr Freisen who informed Herr Doenitz of the matter.’
Hence the Admiral’s insistence that the bisque was not Kaestner’s.
‘And when was Sous-Préfet le Troadec summoned?’ asked Louis.
Kerjean hesitated. A pause would suit best, perhaps the wetting of the throat so as to drive home the point. ‘At 3.10 this morning, the old time.’
‘Three?’ asked Louis, surprised.
Not a flicker of triumph appeared though Kerjean hesitated again before saying, ‘Yes. That one waited for several hours both here and at their headquarters in Kernével before addressing the problem. Six cigarettes were stubbed out just over there against the flat rock upon which he sat to think it over.’
‘What was he doing out here?’
‘Gathering clay from the pits. At least, this is what he steadfastly claims though he could purchase all he needs for a few francs. Ten perhaps, or twenty at the most.’
‘Clay?’
The Préfet crouched to touch one of the thin, whitish streaks that lay atop the gravel and parallel to the tracks. ‘Spillage from the railway trucks. Kaolin for the dolls he makes. It’s very slippery when wet.’
‘And the shopkeeper?’ interjected Kohler.
‘Was the one who sold them for him here in Brittany and was his agent with the faience works in Quimper.’
‘So they met out here to place a new order or discuss a new design? Come off it, Préfet. How long has Kaestner been stationed in Lorient?’
The Gestapo was a big man, far taller than Jean-Louis, even taller than himself, and from the Kripo, from Common Crime. ‘Just over two years,’ said Kerjean levelly. ‘Almost right from the beginning.’
‘And he’s still alive? The son of a bitch must have the luck of the gods.’
‘Or the skill, is that not so?’ asked the Préfet, not wavering. ‘The Kapitän Kaestner is well liked by his men, Inspector Kohler. Indeed, they count it a great privilege to be with him.’
Was it a warning? wondered Kohler and decided that it was. ‘They’ll lie for him, Louis. They’ll bend over backwards to help us.’
‘Perhaps, but then perhaps not. When forced to live so closely for months on end, little animosities can assume the size of mountains. A Dollmaker?’ he asked.
Kerjean nodded. ‘That is his nickname. That and Vati — Daddy, the Old Man — though he is not quite thirty-two years of age.’
‘And has sunk how many ships?’ demanded Kohler swiftly.
‘Twenty-seven for a total of 164,000 tonnes.’
‘At a cost of how many lives?’
Was the one from the Gestapo feeling guilty or merely saying, If one could kill so thoroughly, why mess around with an iron bar? ‘Five hundred and forty, maybe more. Oh for sure, who’s to say exactly, since the British fail to tell our German masters? But it is enough to warrant the Admiral wanting him out there again.’
‘Then we will get to work,’ said St-Cyr guardedly, ‘and we will not bother to sleep tonight.’
‘But I have arranged the rooms …’
Was it such a catastrophe? ‘Those will keep. Now see if you can find us another lantern in that washing plant you spoke of. Hermann, go with him. This lantern will do me until you return.’
‘You sure you’ll be all right?’
Hermann always had to have the last word. After nearly two and a half years together one did not argue. One simply let him have it.
Besides, Hermann would begin to sort out the Préfet. ‘… Our German masters …’ How could Kerjean have been so bold? Surely to use ‘our German friends’ would have been far wiser and Kerjean fully cognizant of this?
‘Either he is very troubled and distracted by this matter,’ muttered St-Cyr to himself, ‘or he wanted us to clearly see he was no collaborator, even though, as I myself, he must work for the Occupier.’
Always these days one had to be so very careful, and always such things cast their reflections on the matter at hand.
One dead shopkeeper.
‘You are like a fly in a whorehouse, Victor. You buzz when the moment is inappropriate and a swatter nowhere to hand. You say a stupid thing like that. You let me guess at this one’s age to see how close I’ll come, yet you do not tell us his name, though both must be known to you.’
It was a puzzle particularly as the Préfet really was good at his job, one of the best.
Kerjean was not forthcoming. As they walked in single file through the night, and the beam of the Préfet’s torch shone on the tracks, the spur came ever closer to the sea and soon the booming of breakers against rocky cliffs filled the air with its loneliness.
The line turned west. They were still in moorland — coarse grasses, broom, clumps of gorse and more boulders, thought Kohler. Lots of cover, lots of ups and downs but on a low plateau of some sort perhaps forty or fifty metres above sea level … ‘Christ, what are they?’ he blurted.
One by one and sentinel nearly five or ten metres high — yes, at least the nearest of them was that high — the standing stones gave their uncomfortable silhouettes to the darkness. Ah merde, they were like ancient gods standing in judgement of all that was around them.
The Préfet waited. The one from the Gestapo was suitably impressed — caught completely unawares, which was good. Yes, very good. Terrified a little perhaps by the unexpected. Was Herr Kohler superstitious? Would he now comprehend just how primitive a place this was?
‘Wha …’ began Kohler again.
It would be best to enlighten him. ‘The first of several alignments in the Morbihan Jean-Louis will, no doubt, introduce you to.’
‘How old?’
Had the voice grown smaller? ‘As much as or more than four thousand years. Late Neolithic, yes? They go with the menhirs, the single standing stones, the dolmens also, and the passage graves.’
And you wanted me to be startled so as to betray my innermost feelings, thought Kohler uncomfortably. Were all Bretons so wily?
They continued on. The sea was now very close. The smell of rotting fish and kelp, of iodine and salt, filled the air and mingled with that of sea birds and their dung and something else, a musty dustiness he could not explain.
‘The pits are just around this bend.’
‘You know the place well.’
‘I make it my job, Inspector. Prepare yourself. Regardez.’
Suddenly dizzy, Kohler drunkenly caught himself, for the line hugged the edge of a precipice. Stark white but ghostly grey in the darkness, and with splashes and wounds of deeper grey, the cragged and hollowed unending expanse of the clay pits fell away for ever from the spur, but glowed eerily, while up from the tortured ground came the sounds and thoughts of long-lost miners and those of nearer times. Of flint and copper and bronze on rock, with fire perhaps and water to shatter things and, more recently, dynamite.
Kohler found the presence of mind to offer a cigarette and a light, both of which were gratefully accepted as if the lesson was now over, though they had to huddle from the wind. ‘Our friend the Captain took his clay from the far side, nearest the sea,’ said Kerjean, looking up from the flame as he held Kohler by the hand to steady it. ‘That one claims the kaolin is better there than anywhere else, a rich pocket. It is all a residual deposit, the kaolin having been produced by the chemical weathering in place of the feldspar in the granite.’