Without another word he was gone from the cottage, gone out into the night to stand alone under the stars, looking up at them. The custodian could not know the detective had lost his two sons at Stalingrad not quite a week ago, nor that his wife back home on her father’s farm near Wasserburg had just gained her divorce and was going to marry an indentured farm labourer. A French peasant!
They met outside the ring of lights as the police photographers went to work and the members of the press, with angry shouts and curses, were fighting off the truncheons and lead-weighted hems of the gendarmes’ capes and their steel-cleated boots as well.
‘Louis, I need a drink.’
‘Me also. How’s the flu?’
‘Fine. I never felt better.’
Oh-oh.
‘Lend me a fag, will you? I’m fresh out. I left mine with the custodian.’
The first of two paniers à salade was arriving. Clang, clang, and into the iron salad baskets with the press for transport to the overnight cells. ‘Your heart’s too big,’ snorted St-Cyr. ‘As a punishment, I ought to force you to try to roll one from the contents of my little tin.’
Everyone collected cigarette butts, but they had 800 of the best, well, 720 now perhaps. Kohler had lost count. ‘Here, let me have a few of them. Hey, didn’t I find you three tins of Dutch pipe tobacco in that U-boat warehouse?’
A press camera was being smashed and ground to pieces, a nose had been broken. ‘You did, and I am forever in your debt. Please take the packet. I was only saving it for Gabrielle.’
His new and yet to be consummated love affair. A chanteuse. ‘Ah, don’t sound so wounded. I’ll give you another. We’ll make it two. One from me and one from yourself.’
‘Merci. Now, please, reveal to me what you are hiding.’
‘Hiding? Hey, it’s to be a surprise. I’ll tell you all about it when we meet Old Shatter Hand.’
‘The clay pigeons …?’ bleated the Sûreté, leagues ahead of him.
‘Fifty in less than forty minutes and a dozen doves in a little more than ten. The child was killed between about three-ten and three-twenty. The custodian saw nothing out of the ordinary in the cage, though he entered it twice before finding her. Either the killer smothered her cries and is a cool one, or he did it in one hell of a hurry and was just damned lucky not to have caught a blast from von Schaumburg’s double-barrelled wonder.’
Kohler paused to take a drag. ‘His coat was either dark blue or black, or it was the child the custodian saw but briefly. A blur.’
They could compare notes later, but he had to say it. Something is not right with this one, Hermann. I’ve asked for Bel ligueux to be brought in for the autopsy. He’s by far the most difficult but can’t be bought or silenced. She’s to go straight to the place Mazas and on to ice. No one is to uncover her until we have either spoken to him or done it ourselves. He will make himself aware of the other victims so that we can discuss them with him.’
‘Good. Now we need some transport. Let’s borrow the sous-préfet’s car until we can pick up the Citroën.’
‘The sous-préfet’s car? Is that wise?’
‘Wise or not, that little runt is far too shifty and needs a damned good kick in the balls.’
Ah merde, sometimes Herman didn’t think of the consequences, but it would be useless to argue. Where once there had been more than 350,000 private automobiles in Paris, to say nothing of the lorries, there were now fewer than 4,500, and most of those belonged to doctors, high-ranking civil servants, bankers and industrialists or to the police, the Germans and the gangsters.
It was a city without wheels in a nation without gasoline. Well, almost. One could not forget the bicycles.
When the engine coughed to life under crossed ignition wires, the Sûreté threw his eyes up to God in despair and said, ‘You would have made an excellent car-thief, Hermann. It’s a pity there’s a war on.’
‘What war? The Führer, in his wisdom, thought it necessary to occupy the rest of France on the eleventh of November of last year, my fine Frog friend, or had you forgotten? Now stop grumbling and let me floor this thing while the sous-préfet sucks lemons. Hey! the tyres are bald. There’s ice. Hang on.’
And pray.
2
Beyond the tall iron fence, and in darkness, the softly falling snow gave to the Villa Vernet the caress of a moth. Beech, oak and plane trees graced an open parkland which, with formal gardens, overlooked the Bois and were but a kilometre and a half from the cage of doves, and right in the northwestern corner of the city, quite close to the Seine.
‘It is perhaps the most prestigious address in Paris,’ said St-Cyr, his voice hushed and uneasy, for they were not going to reveal the mistake in the identity of the victim right away and could not know where such a lack of forthrightness would lead. ‘There will be no communal soup kitchens here, Hermann. The route du Champs d’Entraînement is home to but a chosen few.’
The powerful and the useful. Those who’d been allowed to keep their wealth and position. Those the Occupier hadn’t kicked out so as to requisition their villas. It was money, one hell of a lot of money, that kid had inherited. The house, built in the style of Louis XVI, of Chantilly limestone blocks that softly glowed and sharpened shadows, was of two storeys. A narrow balcony, recessed around the upper storey, made access to the roof and chimneys easy. Here, too, the ceilings were much lower than on the ground and first floor. ‘The servants’ quarters.’ Kohler nodded uncomfortably. ‘A couple probably, or a cook, maid and housekeeper. A governess, too, perhaps, even though the kid goes out to school. Louis, maybe we had better tell Vernet the truth and get it over with. He’ll have connections other than von Schaumburg.’
The SS perhaps.
‘Let’s take a little look around first. If we ask, we will not be given the chance. Indeed, it may be our only opportunity.’
‘And the other?’
‘We keep silent for now, no matter what.’
‘Then don’t blame me if we get our asses in a sling!’
‘Hermann, this killing was different. Don’t be an idiot! Something must be very wrong. There were two girls, not one, and the victim could not have been randomly chosen.’
Leaving the car some distance away, they headed up the circular drive and were soon standing behind the house Footprints that would have been made less than fifteen minutes ago were now all but buried.
‘A dog,’ breathed Kohler, puzzled. ‘A poodle probably, and the one who came out with it. A woman in her bare feet, I’m afraid.’ He indicated a far corner of the garden where Doric columns stood beyond the dark grey granite edges of a snow-covered pond. ‘You or me?’
‘Me, I think. Check the coach house. See if there are living quarters above it-the groundskeeper perhaps.’
They parted without another word, and when he neared the folly, St-Cyr realized that it was in the style of the Parthenon. Steps led down to the pond where water lilies would bloom in summer beneath the shimmering wings of dragonflies as they hovered above the lurking shadows of the carp.
He could barely see the woman, so deep was she among the shadows. ‘Madame, I regret very much this sudden intrusion into your solitude. My name is Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the Sûreté Nationale.’
‘was she naked? Did she suffer a lot?’
‘Naked …? Ah no. No, madame,’ he said, conscious of the tremor in her voice, its shrillness. ‘She suffered, yes, but … but perhaps not too much, if one can say such a thing was possible.’