Mayhem (2 page)

St-Cyr took the time to replant it.

At another place, high up on the slope, she had encountered wild raspberries and had hooked a stocking.

Silk like the purse. Unheard of these days, except if prewar or purchased on the black market. A tragedy if she was of little means.

Eventually he came to the spot where Kohler had dropped his trousers. Sure enough the purse hadn't been empty. Hermann had availed himself of a silk handkerchief before depositing the rest of the contents into a pocket.

So, a young man – a boy of eighteen or twenty – and a young girl, perhaps of the same age, perhaps of wealth, but equally perhaps of humble station, a servant, a maid, a governess – something like that.

And a meeting on this lonely road, in the midst of this lonely forest.

Yet she knew the boy would be along. Was she alone in this, or had there been someone with her? The murderer?

Try as he did, St-Cyr could find no evidence of anyone else. But the girl hadn't run blindly into the forest. Ah no, far from it. There was a footpath up there beyond the top of the slope and she'd known of it – known it well enough to have come by it perhaps and to have gone back along it in the dark.

To where? he wondered. The town of Fontainebleau was a good fifteen kilometres to the east-south-east; Barbizon perhaps four kilometres behind him, Chailly-en-Bière a little more, but to the north, and Paris some forty-five kilometres farther.

The path must cut across the road, so she had either had a bicycle there or someone had waited for her in a car.

Then why hadn't that someone come with her?

Again he went carefully over the ground. The victim wasn't all that far from the road – perhaps five metres, the bicycle a little nearer to it. Between the single footprint, the body and the road there wasn't a sign of anything.

Then the girl had killed the boy.

It saddened him to think of such a thing. Automatically he thought of young lovers, of a jealous rage, only to come back to earth at the purse.

Beaded silk. He wished now that he hadn't handed it back to Hermann. Hermann had a way of keeping things like that.

But still there was the memory of it. The pale, sky-blue shimmering silk that was electric and would have been so against a young woman's thigh, the beads that hadn't been cheap and shoddy, but had been strands of seed pearls.

The scent that had been that of a very expensive perfume – he could see the girl lying in her chemise, silk on silk, with dusky eyes so full of tears.

Ah, Mon Dieu, it would be such a sight but so far from the truth!

*

As the car shot across the flat farmlands around Barbizon, Kohler gave the Citroën all it had. He was in a foul humour and knew it. The General von Schaumburg, the Kommandant of Greater Paris and the Wehrmacht's big cheese himself, was a personal friend of that arch little file-toothed bastard, the General von Richthausen, the Kommandant of Barbizon. Hence the call at dawn to drag them out of bed. Hence the, ‘Two detectives and both of you asleep? Get on your feet, Kohler.'

‘
Jawohl, Herr General. Heil Hitler!' Ja, ja
, you son-of-a-bitch!

But why the goddamned interest? Why set the Gestapo and the Sûreté on to something that wasn't even in their turf and could just as well have been left to the local flics and the Préfet of Paris whose beat it was? Ah yes.

Why, unless those local flics weren't any good and von Richthausen, being a von like the rest, had got his back up?

A nothing body. A kid, for Christ's sake! Murders like this, who cared? If clean of complications then forget it. No leads to the Resistance or to other tantalizing things meant no further interest in so far as Boemelburg was concerned.
Kaput
!

A few reports of course, but no big deal. Control, control, that's what Louis needed.

‘Bury the bastard and let's get home!' he roared, leaning on the horn as he passed a sleepy farmhouse, not realizing its inhabitants were already in the fields.

Barbizon swung into view. One dead-dog street of shops, restaurants and hotels, wires strung across the place, a church, the Lady of Whatever, down at the end and few people about.

As he shot past the Préfecture a flic came out to get on his bicycle. Kohler stomped on the brakes. People ran or froze, depending on their natures. ‘The photographer,' he bellowed. ‘
Vite! Vite
! Hurry up!'

The blue cap fell on the stones. ‘There … monsieur.'

‘Where, for Christ's sake?'

‘Three doors past the Kommandantur.'

‘
Merci
.' Again the accelerator, but briefly. Then the brakes.

His fist opened the door. The shop sign flew off to skid across the floor as the photographer remained etched in celluloid, pinned there struggling into his shop coat. All bones and shoes and glasses, a narrow face, about forty-five years old, a mop of dark brown hair over the brow. ‘Get your camera and come with me,' shouted Kohler.

‘Hermé, do as he says,' shrilled the wife, running into the shop with a breast bare and the child still suckling.

At once the place was in an uproar. ‘I haven't done anything!' cried the photographer. ‘I've got a christening at nine!'

‘Gestapo!' shouted Kohler, flashing his badge. ‘You can piss on the brat's head at nine thirty.'

The photographer threw a terrified glance at his wife. Hard-eyed, brown-haired, about thirty-five years old and not quite over the hill. ‘Do as he says, Hermé. Don't be a fool.'

The man bolted. Kohler gave the place the once-over before letting his eyes settle on the woman.

‘Will you pay?' she asked defiantly.

‘Of course,' he breathed. ‘We wouldn't think otherwise.' He began to look about the shop more closely. Against one wall there were several painted backdrops, thousand-year-old scenes in front of which newly married couples could stand or puke: a rose arbour, a lake with mountains in the distance and a cream-coloured sun, a cottage that needed a new foundation … ‘Nice,' he said. ‘Very nice.'

The woman burped the child but didn't cover the breast. ‘What's the painting of the Eiffel Tower for?' he asked.

She was too watchful.

‘German soldiers on leave. They like to have their pictures taken in front of it so that they can say they've been to Paris.'

Kohler cocked an eye, then used a stumpy forefinger to pull the lower lid down so as to emphasize the fact. ‘Interesting,' he said. ‘So what's taking the husband so long?'

‘He has to cut the film. It's in such short supply …'

Kohler nodded and went right past her. He flung the curtain aside, strode down the mangy corridor to the red light, but stopped at bursting in.

‘You've got enough film,' he said.

The light went out. The door opened. ‘Now let's have a look, my friend,' he said, pushing past the photographer who closed the door and switched on the light.

My God, it was dull in here. How could a guy work in a place like this? Ribbons of newly developed negatives hung above the sink. Kohler thumbed a couple. The woman had a passable figure. Was that lust in her eyes? Did she really enjoy being photographed like that? The Eiffel Tower seemed a little out of place.

‘So, okay, my friend, I'll ask you only once. From whom do you get your film?' The canisters were big enough to have belonged to Goebbels himself.

Merde
! The Gestapo! They were all the same. ‘I buy it on the black market.'

‘Like hell you do. Paris is too far. You'd need an
ausweis
– a goddamned
laisser-passer
– six times a week.'

‘One of the soldiers gets it for me.' That was closer to the truth. ‘He takes things into the city and he brings things back.' That was better. ‘The Feldwebel takes a cut.' The Staff Sergeant … Better still. ‘As does the Lieutenant but you mustn't …'

Again he exhaled. ‘I won't. Don't worry, I'll keep it in the bank. Now come on. We've a different kind of body for you to work with.'

The frost had all but gone from the rims of the bicycle but still clung to the spokes. The blood on the stone had absorbed the sun's earliest rays but had failed to run. A curious thing.

St-Cyr stood over the corpse, talking to it as was his custom when in private. He no longer asked the routine stuff – Who are you? Where were you heading? Why did she kill you? – he'd been through all that.

Instead, he asked, Why me? Why here? Why now?

There was something, call it what you will, but the corpse of this boy made him feel uneasy.

No matter how hard he tried, this feeling wouldn't leave him. He had the frightened photographer take shots from several angles, including two of the place where the purse had been found and one of Kohler's spoor, just for the record.

When the Bavarian insisted that the two of them be captured on film, he knew he couldn't object. Chummy photographs with the Gestapo were too dangerous, but a sort of counter-blackmail-insurance for that shot of the spoor with its handkerchief.

Damning evidence he'd rather not have around. ‘It's bad enough having to work with them, eh?' he said to the photographer. ‘You send me the negatives and I'll see that you get paid. No extra prints, you understand?'

The Gestapo pouch at the Kommandantur would be used.

‘He won't say anything, will he?' asked Hermé Thibault.

St-Cyr was solicitous. ‘Him? Not a whisper. Hey, it's simple with them, my friend. You give them what they want and they go to sleep.'

Like dragons in their dens.

The boys in blue came with their black gasogene van and the corpse was wrapped up. ‘You sure you know what you're doing?' asked Kohler as they started off to overtake the van. ‘Laying that stiff on ice in Paris makes more of him than he deserves.'

St-Cyr stared out the window. They'd begin to accelerate about now. Yes … yes, here it comes … ‘Why won't you let me see the contents of that purse, Hermann?'

The Bavarian rapped the horn and pushed the accelerator to the floor. Gravel beat the fenders. ‘Because I can't, my friend. Look, I'm sorry, eh? It's just the way things are. Let's put him in a pauper's grave and forget it.'

‘An accident?'

‘Yes, an accident.'

‘But it's gone a little too far for that, hasn't it? From Kommandant to Kommandant, I think. Questions, Hermann. Answers will be needed. Von Schaumburg's no fool.'

‘Von Schaumburg's an ass! The purse has nothing to do with him.'

‘Then with whom does it have an association?'

Kohler lifted a tired hand to signal thanks to the boys in blue as the car shot down the road. ‘I'm not sure, Louis. I want a little time to think it over. For now, the matter's private.'

‘So, I'll catch a bit of sleep then, if you don't mind, Inspector.'

‘Don't get in a huff. You know there are things I can't tell you.'

St-Cyr pulled the fedora down over his eyes but couldn't resist a sigh and then, ‘Just don't expect me not to find out.'

Photographs with the Gestapo, silk purses and bodies on ice, where would it all end?

‘I don't like it, Hermann. No, me, I can honestly say I don't.'

‘Then that makes two of us.'

Idly St-Cyr wondered what racket the photographer had been involved in. ‘Dirty pictures of his wife,' snorted Kohler. ‘Now catch a few winks while you can.'

A reader of minds, eh? ‘Remember to get my car serviced. The carburettor needs adjustment.'

‘That's only water in the fuel. I'll give it a dose of alcohol. That'll help burn off everything.'

That and the speed.

‘It's nice not to have to worry about other cars,' sighed St-Cyr. ‘That's one thing the war's done for us. Cleared the roads of unnecessary traffic.'

‘There's a convoy ahead. Hang on.'

One of them had to have the last word, so for now he'd let it be but he wished the worry would go away, wished Hermann hadn't insisted on that photograph of the two of them. If that should ever get into the wrong hands … Who'd understand that the smile or the grin had been partly out of necessity and partly out of … what? Respect? Ah no, not quite – that wasn't the word he'd use though there was respect. There had to be after what the two of them had been through.

Friendship then? Partnership? A certain begrudging loyalty? God forgive him, he didn't know. It was so hard to define. With Hermann it was as if, to survive and live with himself, he had to leave his body, to rise above it all and look down on the two of them only to laugh at some of the Gestapo's antics and laugh at his own predicament. God's curse.

Laugh if you will, my friend, he said, but it's no laughing matter.

Ah no, it certainly wasn't.

The street was narrow and slicked by the rain that had departed. At four o'clock the granite paving bricks were dark, and the shouts of the boys echoed in the distance as the street rose up to their angular shapes which were etched against the hurrying dusk.

Small, square, two- and three-storeyed houses of brick or stucco crowded in but here and there a bit of garden had been left.

There were no cars – how could there have been? All bicycles, and the
vèlo-taxis
some used to earn their living, were either still on the streets in the heart of the city, or carefully put away.

Alone, St-Cyr walked towards the boys. Would it be France against Germany today, or the Resistance against the Gestapo?

Being boys, they wouldn't say if asked but would only dart secretive looks at one another as their leader stepped forward to answer, Priests against the Nuns, or some such thing.

Not that they ever really made fun of him. Being a cop did set one apart from all others, no matter how much one wanted to be included.

Belleville was Belleville – the XX Arrondissement and the home of so many little people. All walks of life, several races – immigrants not just from the Auvergne in the early days, but from Russia, Armenia, Hungary, and more recently, in the late 1930s, Jews fleeing from the Nazis in Germany. Algerians too. Even a family of Negroes who now lived in almost total seclusion and terror for their lives as did the few remaining Jews.