Mannequin (38 page)

Always these days one had to be so very careful, and always such things cast their reflections on the matter at hand.

One dead shopkeeper.

‘You are like a fly in a whorehouse, Victor. You buzz when the moment is inappropriate and a swatter nowhere to hand. You say a stupid thing like that. You let me guess at this one's age to see how close I'll come, yet you do not tell us his name, though both must be known to you.'

It was a puzzle particularly as the Préfet really was good at his job, one of the best.

Kerjean was not forthcoming. As they walked in single file through the night, and the beam of the Préfet's torch shone on the tracks, the spur came ever closer to the sea and soon the booming of breakers against rocky cliffs filled the air with its loneliness.

The line turned west. They were still in moorland – coarse grasses, broom, clumps of gorse and more boulders, thought Kohler. Lots of cover, lots of ups and downs but on a low plateau of some sort perhaps forty or fifty metres above sea level … ‘Christ, what are they?' he blurted.

One by one and sentinel nearly five or ten metres high – yes, at least the nearest of them was that high – the standing stones gave their uncomfortable silhouettes to the darkness. Ah
merde
, they were like ancient gods standing in judgement of all that was around them.

The Préfet waited. The one from the Gestapo was suitably impressed – caught completely unawares, which was good. Yes, very good. Terrified a little perhaps by the unexpected. Was Herr Kohler superstitious? Would he now comprehend just how primitive a place this was?

‘Wha …' began Kohler again.

It would be best to enlighten him. ‘The first of several alignments in the Morbihan Jean-Louis will, no doubt, introduce you to.'

‘How old?'

Had the voice grown smaller? ‘As much as or more than four thousand years. Late Neolithic, yes? They go with the menhirs, the single standing stones, the dolmens also, and the passage graves.'

And you wanted me to be startled so as to betray my innermost feelings, thought Kohler uncomfortably. Were all Bretons so wily?

They continued on. The sea was now very close. The smell of rotting fish and kelp, of iodine and salt, filled the air and mingled with that of sea birds and their dung and something else, a musty dustiness he could not explain.

‘The pits are just around this bend.'

‘You know the place well.'

‘I make it my job, Inspector. Prepare yourself.
Regardez
.'

Suddenly dizzy, Kohler drunkenly caught himself, for the line hugged the edge of a precipice. Stark white but ghostly grey in the darkness, and with splashes and wounds of deeper grey, the cragged and hollowed unending expanse of the clay pits fell away for ever from the spur, but glowed eerily, while up from the tortured ground came the sounds and thoughts of long-lost miners and those of nearer times. Of flint and copper and bronze on rock, with fire perhaps and water to shatter things and, more recently, dynamite.

Kohler found the presence of mind to offer a cigarette and a light, both of which were gratefully accepted as if the lesson was now over, though they had to huddle from the wind. ‘Our friend the Captain took his clay from the far side, nearest the sea,' said Kerjean, looking up from the flame as he held Kohler by the hand to steady it. ‘That one claims the kaolin is better there than anywhere else, a rich pocket. It is all a residual deposit, the kaolin having been produced by the chemical weathering in place of the feldspar in the granite.'

Louis should have heard the lecture, since he was always pounding his partner with such improvements of the mind. ‘How far are we from the murder?'

‘About a kilometre and a half. It's a good walk. He was all alone. The plant has been shut down for the holiday. He was seen leaving the pits at 3.20 our time.'

The old time. Not Berlin Time, which was now the order of the day and in winter, one hour ahead: 3.20 p.m. becoming 4.20.

‘Still lots of light?'

And just past the winter solstice, was that it? ‘Enough.'

‘Then the killing was done in daylight?'

Was it so surprising, this little token of co-operation? Kerjean drew on his cigarette and tried to assess Jean-Louis's partner, a giant with bare head, the Fritz haircut, puffy, faded blue eyes, a storm-trooper's jaw and big shoulders. Were all Bavarians so unconsciously menacing, or was it just the shrapnel scars, the graze of a bullet wound on the forehead and the slash down the cheek? ‘To hit a man that hard and only once could easily have been done in darkness, yes, or daylight. Until the coroner establishes the time of death, the matter must remain in the lap of the gods.'

But whose gods, was that it? wondered Kohler. Trapped into betraying his eagerness, he said. ‘But you think it was done in daylight perhaps up to an hour after the Captain was seen leaving the pits, so at about 4 p.m. your time?'

Was it a small offering of peace, this Gestapo's use of the old time? ‘At a prearranged spot and with the victim's back turned so that the Captain did not have to see his face.'

‘Then why the killing?' asked Kohler levelly. ‘What was the motive?'

‘You will see. The washing plant is over there not far from where the Captain took his clay. That large silhouette on the horizon, yes? The granite is crushed and screened to remove the coarsest material, after which the clay is separated by washing and allowed to settle into two products. Coarse kaolin, at up to five microns in particle size, and the fine at below one micron. When dried, most of it is sent to Quimper for the making of faience.'

‘Why not admit it doesn't make a bit of sense Kaestner's killing that shopkeeper? Not here, not anywhere. There's no money in dolls – there can't be.'

And you have fallen right into my little trap, thought Kerjean. ‘Oh but there is, Inspector. Herr Kaestner comes from a very old family in Waltershausen, Thuringia. His grandfather was
the
famous Kaestner, one of the finest dollmakers in Germany. The Captain dreams of revitalizing an industry he knew and loved as a boy but which fell prey to the last war and the hard times after it. He and Monsieur le Trocquer, our shopkeeper, were partners in this little venture. Kaestner and his crew put up the money, since Monsieur le Trocquer had none. Absolutely none, you understand.'

‘How much?'

They had not moved in some time, so intense was their conversation. That, too, was good. ‘300,000 marks to get things started.'

‘Reichskassenscheine?'

‘The Occupation marks, yes. Yes, of course. None other can be used, isn't that correct?'

‘6,000,000 francs. That's one hell of a lot to entrust to an impoverished shopkeeper.'

‘Monsieur le Trocquer was perhaps on his way to tell the Captain the money was still missing. One cannot say at the moment just why he came out here. It is too early in the investigation.'

‘Missing?'

‘Yes. Since at least the 5th of November.'

A decisive man, the Captain – was that it, then? A simple matter of money? ‘You're not exactly happy to see us, are you?' asked Kohler cautiously.

‘Should I be? The Captain killed him, Inspector. Justice has to be done no matter how difficult or on which side of the fence one sits.'

‘I could have you shot for that.'

‘You won't. You are not like the others, Herr Kohler. Even here in the Morbihan we have heard of you.'

‘But you wanted to get it straight between us?'

‘That and my knowledge of Jean-Louis. He's one for the truth, as is yourself apparently, for you wear the scars, particularly the one down the left cheek from eye to chin, a rawhide whip and a little matter in Vouvray, I believe, that was settled regardless of the status quo.'

And now you're trying to make me think you like me, thought Kohler warily.

‘Inspector, who is to say how the wind blows in these troubled times? For myself, you will understand, I had to be certain. If, as your reputation says, you seek the truth, then you and Jean-Louis will have my entire assistance no matter the consequences. If not, then rest assured justice will find its way. Ask the stones. They will tell you that here in the Morbihan we do things a little differently if necessary.'

All alone and happy about it, St-Cyr carefully set the lantern next to the fragments of bisque, then retraced his steps to the corpse. Though the light flickered over the edge of the embankment and into the nearby gorse, he could no longer see the lantern due to the bend in the tracks, and when he stood all but where the killer had delivered the death blow, he could see even less of the light.

‘So, good. Yes, that's good,' he said to himself, and taking out his pipe and tobacco pouch, stood a moment in quiet contemplation. Somewhat corpulent, not tall, but not too short either, he was a solid trunk of a man with broad shoulders, a wide brow, thick bushy dark brown eyebrows and a moustache grown long before the Führer had taken up the fashion. A muse, a lover of books and of gardening and fishing, a lover of many things, a cop.

The thin trails of spillage from the railway trucks glowed a ghostly white, emphasizing the blind spot most definitely. ‘Kerjean should have noticed this,' he said aloud. ‘There is no way such a one could have missed it, yet so far he has said nothing of it.'

And what of the Sous-Préfet le Troadec? he asked himself. An unknown quantity, though to his credit he had noticed the fragments, ah yes. But had he noticed the most important thing of all?

Between the fragments and the corpse someone had stumbled and fallen, then, still on his or her seat and in terror perhaps, had frantically pushed themselves away and back around the bend and out of sight. A full twenty metres. The clay was often smeared. Sporadic threads and clots of coarse black wool – an overcoat no doubt – had been caught on some of the sleepers. The heels had been dug into the gravel to give purchase and at one place, a sharp bit of granite had punctured the left palm. There would be scrapes and bruises. Blood and kaolin were smeared on the outermost rail nearest the fragments, red against stark white and the burnished grey of the iron.

Whoever had backed away from the shopkeeper had then stood and had dropped the doll, which had hit that same rail and had showered its fragments inwardly at that person's feet.

One tiny fragment – a portion of the cheek, he thought – revealed a smear of blood, indicating that just before falling, the doll had been gripped in the left hand by the head.

‘Either this visitor discovered the body and retreated from it in horror or there was an altercation of some sort with the shopkeeper just prior to his death and this drove the visitor from him.'

After dropping the doll, the visitor had left the railway spur and had wandered out into the moor next to the innermost part of the bend. Had he or she then killed the shopkeeper?

Most of the terrain was either covered by gorse and bracken or was of bare rock with rare pockets of coarse granitic sand, so footprints were not easy to find and only with daylight could they conduct a thorough search. But was the presence of this visitor the reason the Kapitän Kaestner had been so diligent in collecting the pieces of the doll, and why, please, had Kerjean not looked more thoroughly?

There was still no sign of Hermann and the Préfet. Though the Bavarian was easy-going and no man's fool, still it was sometimes a problem for others to accept their having to work together. Kerjean could well have thought it best to keep things close until he could speak privately with the Sûreté.

Again St-Cyr looked along the track into the night but saw only the flickering of the light. In spite of the war and animosities that were only natural, Hermann and he had got on splendidly. Well, most of the time, and had done so since the fall of 1940. A trick of fate God had played on him. A
friend
among the enemy! God often did things like that to his little detective. ‘So, what have we here, then?' he asked, throwing a look up into the heavens. No answer would be forthcoming. There never was. God wanted detectives to think for themselves.

‘Did you confront this visitor?' he asked the shopkeeper. ‘Did you challenge him or her, and force them to retreat from you in horror?

‘Or did this visitor kill you and then retreat in horror at what they had done only to return for a cautious look and to inadvertently step on your glasses? And why, please, did you remove them? You were holding them in your left hand when struck, is that not so?'

Retrieving the lantern, he again located the place where the killer had stood to deliver the blow. It had been a ruthless, downward swing of the switch-bar with both hands no doubt and the weight so totally behind it, the shock had driven the toes of the killer well into the gravel. Craters of several centimetres' depth marked the places where the shoes or boots had been planted. Kerjean should have noted this too, yet had chosen to say nothing of it.

An open and shut case. One U-boat captain. Must things always be so difficult?

When the Préfet and Hermann finally arrived, he had them place extra lanterns round the bend. Lit up, there was no dispute. ‘The shopkeeper, the Captain and at least one other person,' he said gruffly.

‘There, what did I tell you, Préfet?' enthused Kohler. ‘It's not for nothing that Louis was chosen to work with me. Right, Louis? Boemelburg knew him from before the war. The IKPK, the International Police Organization.'
*

‘Yes, yes,' said Kerjean testily, ‘but I still say the Captain killed that one.'

‘Perhaps,' said Louis – Kohler held his breath and waited for the oft-pronounced disclaimer – ‘but perhaps not, Préfet. For now the Kapitän Kaestner can keep. The time of killing, please?'

Ah
merde
, thought the Préfet. Now it's serious. ‘At dusk, or just before it.'

The ox-eyes of the Sûreté swept emptily over him. ‘And when did the watchman see the Captain leaving the pits? Remind me, please.'