DUVERGER … DUVERGER …‘Remove the hood,’ she shrilled. ‘Let me see your face.’ YOUR FACE …
He was not old, nor young, nor anything but ordinary and when she shot him, he simply collapsed as the sound of the gun boomed and echoed all around them. Other shots quickly followed it. One by one, and without hesitation. De Passe tried to get to her. Renaud turned away to run and was hit in the back. Simondi begged her not to kill him, but she wouldn’t listen.
‘Ingrid!’ cried out von Mahler, but her hand refused to shake and she still didn’t listen.
Rivaille looked up at and beyond her to his God as she fired. ‘It was the only way, Kurt! The only way!’ she cried, and walking among the fallen, fired once more into each of them.
Leaderless, the Hooded Ones had vanished.
*
It was freezing in Orange, some twenty-five kilometres to the north, when they got to the station, the night so pitch black, the hour so small, it was uncomfortable. Von Mahler’s driver simply lifted their bags out of the boot and dropped them on the pavement.
Then he was gone and they were left alone. Hustled out of Avignon without a moment to lose, they stood listening to the tourer’s rapidly dwindling sound.
No one else was around. No one.
‘Verdammt, Louis. How the hell did you know that woman would do a thing like that?’ muttered Kohler, still shaking.
It was tempting to call up a further enseigne but Hermann was just not himself. ‘A pistol without a safety? And fully loaded? She had to have had some training to have known at least enough to leave the firing chamber empty until needed.’
Frau von Mahler had risked her life to save those of two police officers. It would be claimed not by them, but by her husband, that she had suffered from a severe psychotic trauma. The courts would be lenient — bien sûr — and she would probably be confined to a private clinic in Paris for a while to satisfy the Vichy authorities and the Occupier.
‘The singers will be sent into forced labour,’ said Kohler emptily, for always at the end of a case, especially a difficult one — and when were they never difficult? — there was this tremendous sense of loss.
‘Even so, Christiane and Genèvieve will be separated. Will they find each other, Hermann, after this war is over?’
Louis worried about such things and was of too forgiving a nature. He’d wanted stiff prison sentences but had had to defer to the Kommandant’s express wishes, seeing as cagoulards could well be skulking in the streets and magistrates, especially those in the provinces, were tardy at best. ‘Madame Simondi will find her way back to Paris, once she dries out. It would have been too hard to pin anything on her. Forget her, mon vieux. Remember that you can’t always win all battles.’
Hermann invariably said things like that, and one nearly always let him. ‘Marie-Madeleine will move into Mireille’s flat to take up where her friend left off.’
‘Yes … yes, she’ll do that, Louis. A nice kid. Thérèse and she’ll get along okay. They’ll pay Madame de Sinéty a little visit and break the news as gently as they can.’
‘And us?’ asked the Sûreté, still looking off into the cold black emptiness.
Kohler searched his pockets desperately for a forgotten cigarette to share. ‘We’ll just have to stay out of Provence. Mein Gott, it’ll be a relief! No more talk of your finding a little farm down here and retiring to raise melons and strawberries without me around to tell you how to do it!’
They were still arguing when the sous-chef de gare found them and, passing her blinkered torchlight over them, said haltingly, ‘Messieurs, there is a telegram for whichever of you will agree to pay the fifty-seven francs that are due.’
Louis snatched the flimsy tissue from her, Kohler the light.
‘“Beekeeper”, Louis.’
‘Merde alors, let me read it will you? “Body of Beekeeper found in apiary near Père Lachaise Cemetery requires your immediate and urgent attention. Heil Hitler.”’
‘Boemelburg’s still mad at us for not letting the Cagoule put us down, but is willing to momentarily kiss and make up. But isn’t it a little cold to be worrying about bees?’
‘Perhaps, but then … ah mats alors, alors, Hermann, in Paris anything is possible, especially when under the Occupier.’
As if he didn’t already know it!
Kohler thought to add a word but was too tired. And anyway, Louis deserved to have the last one. ‘Come on, mon vieux. Hey, I’ll even let you ride second-class if you want.’
‘Merci. And while you’re up there in front with others of the Occupier, please think about his use of “urgent”, Hermann. That suggests trouble.’