‘Well, Louis, what do you make of it?’
‘Trouble, Hermann. Me, I have to ask, Why did your chief demand that we attend to this one? Disregard, please, the need for us to get out of Paris, eh? Let’s simply stick to the absolute truth.’
‘Someone telephoned Boemelburg from Cannes,’ said Kohler lamely. ‘Look, I would have told you sooner or later.’
‘Who? Hermann, please do not do this to me.’
Kohler gave a shrug. ‘A friend of your chief’s.’
‘That little shit?’
‘The same. Major Osias Pharand himself, Louis. Titular head of the Surete Nationale and as file-minded an anti-Semite as Himmler and his boys could ask for.’
‘So, is this one Jewish, eh? Is that what you’re saying? Hey, my friend, me I can’t tell so easily with members of the opposite sex. Perhaps you’d better have a look.’
Touche. Pharand hated the Resistance too – Kohler could see the worry clouding the Frog’s eyes. ‘Relax. We’ll sort it out and wrap it up in style.’
‘That is exactly what I’m afraid of! The small cigar, Hermann. This … this one left deliberately at the scene.’
‘As a reminder?’
‘But of course.’
‘Then take my advice, Louis. Let’s say it was a hunting accident. Let’s find the village idiot and nail him with it.’
This from a former Munich detective, to say nothing of Berlin! ‘So, Hermann, ask our friend who told him to meet us at the station.’
‘He’s gone, Louis. Fratani’s buggered off.’
‘Nom de Jesus-Christ! I leave you to do the necessary while I attend to business and you … you …’
‘Easy, Louis. Easy, eh? Why not tell me what’s upset you?’
‘A feeling. The breath of memory, Hermann. An uneasiness I have not experienced since the first week of January 1934.’
St-Cyr tugged at something in the woman’s right hand and when he had it free, let out a gasp, then lifted brimming eyes to the lantern.
Kohler brought the light closer. ‘The mont-de-piete in Bayonne, Hermann. The municipal pawnshop and the same damned one as in 1934!’
He turned aside, and for a cop with a gut of iron, proceeded to vomit and then to urinate in his trousers, both at the same time or in between.
Kohler sat him up and held the brandy to his lips, and when he’d had another pull at it, St-Cyr waved the flask away. ‘Care to tell me about it?’ asked the Bavarian. ‘Just so that I know exactly what to expect.’
Those troubled eyes ducked furtively away to the body. ‘That is just it, Hermann. With him – if it really is him – we will never be sure of what to expect.’
‘Then you watch my back, I’ll watch yours. Let’s stick together like glue, Louis. That’ll fix him.’
‘The Deuxieme Bureau, Hermann? State security? Even in a nation crippled by the Occupation, security must come before all else, especially murder.’
Louis really was quite ill. ‘Perhaps he doesn’t work for them any more.’
‘Perhaps, but then … then this one will. Once the dye has taken, the skin cannot be changed.’
‘Then come on, let’s see what’s up the hill. This one will keep for a while.’
The house on the hillside had but one room, a single lantern hanging from the ceiling over the table, a loft for sleeping in warmer weather, and the fetid stirrings of the animals below.
As Kohler shut the heavy door behind them, the sound of the wind dropped a little but the shrieking voice carried on – dementedly shrill in terror, the girl tossing on the only bed, roped to it – while the old woman sat with her back to a roaring fire and the wind … the wind outside laid its file over everything.
Blood gushed down the woman’s pudgy hands as she turned the grinder and vigorously stuffed goose livers into it. Heaps of kidneys, a slab of fatty bacon, some larded ribs of pork and the skinned carcasses of four rabbits glistened on the chequered table-cloth before her.
There was a butcher’s knife, a cleaver – blood smeared everywhere – and a bowl of freshly washed intestines, grey-white and flaccid in their coils. Herbs and spices and black olives. Oil too, and salt. A rope of garlic, two of dried peppers and a mound of peeled onions.
‘She’s making sausage, Louis,’ whispered Kohler.
‘And pate. Merde, can I not see this myself? The girl, Hermann. What in God’s name is wrong with her?’
‘Epilepsy.’
‘A fit?’
‘What else would you call it?’
The ropes about the ankles and wrists were feverishly strained at, the shrieking again became a shrill, hair-raising cry for penance perhaps or for the torture to end.
Quivering, the spasm passed, and from where they still stood at the door, they could hear the ragged breathing lapse into a fitful caution.
The woman merely continued to grind things, and the fire that raged, threw her rounded shadow on the wall beside them and on the beams in the ceiling too.
‘Madame …?’ began St-Cyr only to see her suddenly stop and reach for the cleaver.
‘Georges?’ she asked. ‘Is that not you?’
‘Blind … Goddamnit, Louis, she can’t see us.’
‘But I can hear you, mes amis. So, please, what is it you want of me? You are not from around here. This I already know.’
‘A moment of your time, madame. Please do not be afraid …’
‘Afraid? Why should I be afraid?’
She was perhaps seventy. It was always so hard to tell with country people. Round of face and shoulder, chin, cheeks and nose, she had the gaze of the blind all right, the high colour of the wind and sun and the ample bosom of the hills.
Wisps of silky grey hair were matted to the brow with blood or stuck out from beneath the simple kerchief.
‘Madame, the girl …?’ began St-Cyr with genuine concern.
‘That one? Have you really come from the asylum in Chamonix as promised?’
‘No … Ah, no, madame. We have come from Paris about the … the …’
‘The taxes?’
‘Ah no, madame. Not the taxes.’
‘The schooling for my grandson – my only grandson? Look, messieurs, the husband he is dead, isn’t that so? I am the widow, yes? The boy he is needed around the farm. Reading can do him no good if he cannot eat.’
‘Then he was not at school on Wednesday?’ hazarded Kohler.
The cleaver was lowered in defeat perhaps. ‘No … no, he did not go to school then, monsieur. Wednesdays are not days for the schooling. Is it that you did not know of this perhaps?’
Kohler flung Louis a questioning look, only to see the Frog shrug and hear him say, ‘I would have told you sooner or later, eh? Go and have a look at the girl. Leave this one to me.’ Merde! Les Provencaux could be so difficult! Suspicion always, particularly towards outsiders, but she had spoken in French, albeit with the harsh accent, so that was something.
‘The woman, madame. The body?’ he ventured, watching her closely.
She stiffened. ‘What body? There is no body. I am not going to my Maker just yet, monsieur, not when I have such a …’ Ah no, why had she let it slip?
‘Such a duty, madame?’ offered the Surete’s detective.
‘Yes … yes, a duty to that one.’
The girl.
Kohler found the patient’s watchful gaze electric. Every particle of the girl was set to strike out at him if she could. Spittle foamed from between her clenched teeth, the lips were drawn cruelly back, the breath coming in short spasms, hatred everywhere.
He reached out to soothe the dampened brow. She jerked her head back and savagely bit him!
‘Ah … you slut!’ he shrieked. ‘Let go of me! Louis … Louis … The bitch …!’
St-Cyr pried the jaws apart and the girl spat in his face!