‘Or French … perhaps Alsatian, eh?’ he taunted, seeing as the Nazis had taken what they had thought was theirs: Alsace-Lorraine. But what was it about the corpse that made him feel uneasy? That crushed bit of thyme where someone’s shoe had been carelessly placed? That small, burned circle on the downwind side of a limestone slab grey-green with moss, the butt of a small cigar carelessly lying amid the stones?
With difficulty, St-Cyr tore his gaze from her and, pushing the lantern aside, looked steadily up at the stars to smell the wind and hear it rub the earth like sandpaper!
Had it all been deliberate again? The choosing of Hermann and himself to solve what should have been a local affair? Were the SS still out to burn them for matters past? Vouvray perhaps, or the carousel, eh? Or both?
Beyond the stars, God mocked and begged his little detective to climb up there to have a look down at himself poised lonely on this windswept hillside with Hermann as his Gestapo watcher and yet another body.
Fate and God had a way of doing things like that and, as if that were not enough, had provided a hearse as accompaniment!
Sobered by the thought, he was all business when he sought their driver, part Italian, part Greek, Roman, Saracen and Visigoth or Vandal. A tough little man with a wide, bony brow and cheeks that had been hammered out of these mountains and were grizzled with at least four days of whiskers, the scruffy brown moustache speckled with grey and half-frozen spittle, soup or snot. Small rimless glasses and a brown-eyed shiftiness no priest would have admired. ‘So, monsieur, the details please. Who found the body, when was it found, who ordered the canvas to cover and then uncover her, and who told you to wait for us at the station?’
Dedou Fratani shrugged as he drew on the cigarette that miraculously clung to his lower lip even when he was facing into the wind.
‘Please do not press me, monsieur,’ said St-Cyr. ‘My partner, here, really is from the Gestapo.’
‘I am,’ said Kohler, removing the man’s fag and flicking it aside. ‘Don’t piss in your trousers. If you have to take the wiener out, fire it downwind. We don’t want to get her wet.’
‘Me, I have already relieved myself, monsieur, while you and … and that “partner” of yours were pushing my gazogene.’
‘Your hearse,’ breathed Kohler.
‘You bastard!’ swore St-Cyr, remopping his eyes and mouth, then spitting on the handkerchief to give himself a good wash.
‘The hill, messieurs,’ began Fratani. ‘It is very steep. I did not wish for you to pause on my account. I …’ He looked away because the one from the Gestapo was grinning and had the cruellest of scars down the middle of his left cheek! ‘I … The bladder, it is weak. The guns … I was at Sedan in 1914 and … and again in 1940. That is how I have come by the hearse, monsieur. It … it was sitting at the side of the road. The driver, the undertaker, he had no more use for it. He …’
Kohler tucked the man’s frayed tie under the tattered sweater and brushed the lapels of the stovepipe jacket. ‘Sure you were there in fourteen and in forty, eh? And me, my fine, I have heard it all before, so give.’
Kohler … Kohler of the Kripo, the smallest and most insignificant of the Gestapo’s many sections, the ones who were supposed to investigate ordinary crimes. Subordinate and attached to Section IV for convenience.
‘I’m waiting,’ breathed Kohler.
‘And so am I,’ said the one called St-Cyr, the one who was much shorter than his friend. Chubby and round of face, but with that broad, bland brow of the determined cop! The thick, wide moustache that was there in defiance of reality and grown perhaps long before the German Fuhrer ever came to power. The hair on the head untidily long for a Parisian and blown about by the wind since he had lost his fedora somewhere and would no doubt insist on finding it.
‘But of course, messieurs. Young Bebert Peretti found her after school late on Wednesday when he came to fetch his father’s goats from this, the lower pasture of the Perettis and the Borels, who do not speak to each other these days or for the past two hundred years, and so must take turns using it when the abbe says it is time.’
A stonemason’s field, thought Kohler, grateful for the insight but curious as to why it had been offered so readily. ‘Didn’t anyone see anything?’
The man shook his head. ‘We were all gathered in the village square to hear our mayor and … the lieutenant speak to us about … about the labour brigades.’
‘The forced labour for the Reich,’ sighed Kohler. ‘The maquis, eh?’ he shot. ‘Come on, don’t shy away from it. You were all gathered by the fountain to receive a lesson about those who had escaped into the hills to avoid their patriotic duty.’
Fratani’s gaze didn’t waver. ‘The maquis, Inspector, as you yourself have said.’
‘And admitted, is that it?’ snarled Kohler.
‘Hermann, please! Monsieur Fratani knows only too well he must not upset the Gestapo, not on such a touchy subject and not when they are so tired. Monsieur, what about this one, eh? The victim?’
‘A hunting accident perhaps. Who knows? L’Abbe Roussel says it is not our affair. That she was not of us, monsieur, and therefore we are not obligated to give her the last rites or to take her remains up to the church to rest with God.’
‘Louis, she’s not Jewish, is she?’ Everyone knew that the Jews, like a lot of others, had bolted south to the Riviera during the invasion and must now be squirming like hell, seeing as the Wehrmacht had only just moved in to occupy the whole of the country but had given in to ll Duce and let the Italians occupy the coast from just east of Cannes to Menton and the frontier.
So caught up had he become in staring at the body, the poor Frog was trying to pack that furnace of his while the wind took the last of his tobacco ration. ‘Louis … Louis, I asked you a question.’
Startled, the brown ox-eyes with their bushy brows flew up in alarm. ‘Hermann, what … what is it?’
‘Perhaps you’d better tell me,’ sighed Kohler, nodding towards the corpse.
‘It is nothing, Hermann. Nothing. I was just wondering why the garde champetre was not here, waiting for us.’
The village cop. Kohler knew that Louis must have other reasons for being so distracted but let it pass. By rights the lieutenant, whoever he was, should have been in on this too. An SS lieutenant? he wondered, giving a silent curse at the thought.
Grunting painfully, St-Cyr knelt beside the body and, motioning impatiently, had the hearse-driver bring the lantern closer.
Blood had run from the corner of her lips and from her nostrils, but had long since congealed and darkened. The eyes were not blue as he had expected from the hair but that rather pleasant shade of greeny-brown which can sometimes overwhelm an unsuspecting man. A once quite handsome woman, not beautiful but very fine of feature, and definitely once of wealth though that might no longer be so.
The nose was aristocratic, the cheeks slightly pinched. The skin was good – clean too – the brow not overly wide but high and incredibly unwrinkled for a woman who must have had worries in plenty. Why else the climb into these hills and across this stony pasture to what? he asked. To some peasant’s farmhouse up there on a barren slope, sheltered only from the wind? Opal and gold ear-rings, the ears pierced, the pendant stones full of fire even in the fitful fluttering of the lantern.
A woman of perhaps seventy kilos – tall, but not too tall. Had she stood with poise even in alarm, she not believing her assailant would dare to fire that thing at her? Had that been it?
The bolt was feathered by leather flights that were hard and cracked with age. The wooden shaft had that dark colour of ash or birch that has first been hardened by fire and then polished before greasing with tallow. The force of the bolt should have knocked her on to her back, yet she had stood her ground in shocked disbelief perhaps and had clutched it. Ah merde, who could have done such a thing, what were they to do? Scream at the injustice of it all or simply get on with a job quite obviously no one else wanted?