Ah nom de Jésus-Christ! the lousy air on that lousy train, the wretched food-what food? No sleep for days, none now either, and von Schaumburg on their backs. ‘Von Schaumburg, Hermann. Forget about having the flu. Don’t be an idiot! Old Shatter Hand simply won’t believe you.’
He wouldn’t either. The Kommandant von Gross-Paris was a Prussian of the old school, a real Junker’s bastard when it came to former N.C.O.s who had had the great good fortune to find themselves in a French prisoner-of-war camp in 1916.
‘Hey, my French is pretty good, eh, Chief?’ quipped the giant, trying to grin. ‘You take the left side, I’ll do the right and try not to breathe on you. Then we’ll compare notes.’
‘You sure?’ They hadn’t been able to do this in nearly a year.
‘Positive. We’ve got to find the son of a bitch. We’ve got to put a stop to him. I’ve already promised her we’ll use the bread-slicer.’
Ah yes, the guillotine, but first …
The cable that had reached them on the homeward train had been brief:
SANDMAN STRIKES AGAIN. BODY OF HEIRESS FOUND IN BIRDCAGE AMONG DOVES NEAR CLAY-PIGEON SHOOT BOIS DE BOULOGNE. REQUEST IMMEDIATE ACTION. REPEAT ACTION. IMPERATIVE VILLAIN BE APPREHENDED. REPORT 0700 HOURS DAILY. STURMBANNFÜHRER BOEMELBURG CONCURS AND PLACES YOU BOTH DIRECTLY UNDER MY ORDERS.
HEIL HITLER.
Boemelburg was Hermann’s Chief and Head of Section IV the Gestapo in France. Under him, the Kripo, that smallest and most insignificant of subsections, fought common crime, and every one of the flics standing around knew this, knew also that this particular flying squad was constantly held in doubt and challenged as to their loyalties. Two detectives of long standing but from opposite sides of the war, thrown together by circumstance and fate to become partners first and then friends Ah yes, God did things like that. God also had not answered the silent cries of such as this one, which only served to emphasize He could not have stopped it from happening.
But never mind those who would claim He needed another eleven-year-old angel. Never mind all that sort of thing. Four other girls, each randomly chosen, each caught alone and of about this one’s age, had been sexually violated and murdered in Paris within the past five weeks. Four over the Christmas-New Year holiday-what holiday? One to the east of the Bois, in the industrial suburb of Suresnes, near the Terrot bicycle factory; another to the north, in Aubervilliers, in a crowded tenement near an overworked soup kitchen; then one in les Halles among the barren stalls of what had formerly been the belly of Paris but was now but a forlorn reminder of it.
And the last? asked St-Cyr of himself.
‘Up in one of the bell towers of the Notre-Dame, right in the préfet’s backyard,’ sighed Kohler without being asked. ‘Only pigeons were witness to it. Pigeons then and doves now, and why us, Louis? Why? How much more does that God of yours think we can take?’
He always asked those questions; they were nothing new. God often figured in their troubles, especially at times like this. ‘Let us remove the bins of droppings but do so one by one. She might have tucked something among them. It’s just a thought.’
‘Don’t forget the giraffe, eh? Don’t let some flu decide to steal it for his kids.’
St-Cyr lifted the first of the bins away and, squeezing his broad shoulders into the space, just managed to kneel beside the victim with out disturbing her. Reaching well under the nesting boxes, he retrieved the giraffe. Faded red blotches marked its pale yellow hide. ‘It has lost an ear. The left one,’ came the droll comment to allay the distress they both felt. ‘As with myself, injury is apparently attracted only to the left side. That eye has lost its black paint.’
‘Made of real rubber?’ asked Kohler, intent on something he had found.
‘Real rubber …? Ah, a stiff, rubberized composite, I think. Lots of clay to give it firmness yet keep its plasticity. Pre-war and not recent. Fabricated by injection moulding in an unlicenced shop, probably in Saint-Denis or Belleville during the early thirties. No date or manufacturer’s name, but the number 979.12 has been written on the inner right hind thigh, with pen and ink.’
‘From a crèche?’ asked the Bavarian, still not looking up but now using a pencil to explore the bracelet that encircled her wrist.
‘Perhaps but then … ah mais alors, alors, mon vieux, why number it?’
‘So as to prevent theft, idiot!’
‘Then why do so with ink that will wash off?’
It was but one of many questions.
‘Was she left-handed, Louis? Is that why her charm bracelet is on the right wrist?’
Hermann needed to talk when working so close to a corpse. To heave an impatient sigh would do no good. One must be kind. ‘Why not wait until I’ve had a closer look?’
‘You’ll take all night! Hey, I’m nearly done and you’ve hardly started.’
Hermann hated doing this. He really did. ‘Her ccat pocket has been torn a little. Did the one who found her do this, or did the killer, and if the latter, did he …’ said St-Cyr.
Suspiciously the Bavarian’s head shot up. ‘Did he have to check who she was?’
Ah, perhaps. But it may have been the flics.’
Had it given the Sandman a thrill to know who his victim was, wondered Kohler, sickened by the thought. It took all types. ‘And who was she, Chief?’ His stomach was just not right.
Those deep brown ox-eyes he knew so well looked out from under a broad, bland forehead and bushy brows. Louis’s battered, stain-encrusted fedora was judiciously removed and perched atop the nesting boxes to signal work in progress and not shade the corpse. ‘Nénette Micheline Vernet, of the Vernets and money that would make even our friends in the SS over on the avenue Foch sweat with envy. Age eleven years, three months and seven days. The photo is good but the eyes … ah, what can one say but that they are most definitely not dark blue, as is written here on her carte d’identité, nor is her hair black. Our flics have checked but have only taken time for the photograph, the name and then perhaps the address, yes, but not, I repeat not, for the descriptive details below them. They panicked, Hermann. They accepted that it was the heiress.’
‘Then it’s not her?’ bleated Kohler.
‘If it is, her parents, they have much to explain.’
The bushy brown moustache was plucked at in thought, the robust, swarthy nose pinched, the rounded cheeks with their depths of evening shadow favoured. At the age of fifty-two, and a Chief Inspector of the Sûreté Nationale, Louis was not easily ruffled.
‘Only the photographs have been switched, Hermann. It’s not a competent job of forgery-ah no, nothing like that. These are simply the identity papers of Mademoiselle Nénette Vernet, over whose photo this one has pasted her own so as to hide the other. Fortunately, the stamp of the Commissariat de Police has not intruded, and doubtless the heiress has this one’s papers, though bearing her own photograph. But has the killer, having ripped off the victim’s hat and having perhaps torn the pocket to see who she was, now gone after the other one?’
Verdammt! Another killing and so soon? Girls … ah, just what the hell had they been up to? Von Schaumburg would hit the roof. False identity papers, et cetera, et cetera. ‘Let’s empty her pockets, then. Let’s see what else she can tell us.’
A dustbin of things came out of the left pocket. A tin pencil case-a Faber Castell; a toy, hand-held, push-lever roulette wheel with a tiny steel ball bearing to roll around; frosted and unfrosted marbles; four of the gritty vitaminic ‘biscuits’ all children were given at school in lieu of fresh fruit, vegetables, milk, cheese and meat, et cetera, at home. ‘A crystal of clear quartz,’ said St-Cyr, gazing raptly down at the loot. ‘A small pebble of poorly polished amethyst. A homemade ring of braided gold wire-scrap most probably and once saved for the jeweller’s, perhaps. A tiny, zinc-cast Lone Ranger on his Silver, a pre-war thing from an American cereal box, perhaps, the horse rearing up so as to give chase to bank robbers. I’ve seen it myself in an American film serial, or was it in a Tom Mix film? There was also a wireless serial. She may have listened to it on the shortwave late at night. Not now, of course. Now she’d be arrested and shot, but we won’t mention it, will we?’