Mayhem (50 page)

But had he forgotten something to do with that dead girl? Had Giselle's disappearance made him forgetful?

All Germans were tourists. To treat them any differently was to admit they existed for purposes other than tourism and that they wouldn't eventually go away.

Father Eugène Delacroix rubbed his hands in anticipation of payment. ‘The chapel of our patron saint lies on the hallowed ground' – he ducked his head to indicate the very place – ‘of the much smaller edifice that was first erected here, monsieur, in the twelfth century.'

Kohler took the bandy-legged little bastard in. Seventy-two, if a day, with narrowed, watchful eyes, a grey brush cut and a grizzled beard that showed the severe shortage of razor blades in bloodied nicks and bits of sticking-plaster.

‘Listen, you ragged little bag of bones, your history's a little too old for me.'

Delacroix ignored the warning. ‘In 1852, monsieur, the Baron Lepic laid the first stone even as the nuns of the Josephine mixed the Holy mortar.'

A heavy door slammed. The priest went on anyway. ‘The Monsignor Christophe, the Bishop of Soissons himself, has consecrated this house of God not three years later, monsieur. Three!' as if it had been Rome itself and built in such a shortness of time.

‘Father, I'm here on business.'

The distant steps had grown nearer but now paused. ‘What sort of business?' shot the priest, raising his voice to sound a warning.

‘Murder,' breathed the detective.

Kohler moved swiftly. He hit the vestry door and shrieked, ‘GESTAPO, FREEZE!'

The novice flattened himself against the far wall and went as white as a sheet.

‘Kohler of the Gestapo, my fine young sackcloth. A few questions or would you prefer the ashes?'

The old priest came to stand in the doorway. ‘It's all right, David. You may go now. Do the silver. See if we haven't enough wafers – perhaps you could break them in half. Yes, yes, that would be best. The shortages,' he clucked his ancient tongue. ‘Leave the wine alone. I'll take care of it.'

‘Just a minute. No one leaves until I'm done.'

The vestry door closed. The young priest couldn't seem to pull himself off the wall. The older one scratched the three-day growth, opening a wound and flaking off a bit of sticking-plaster that wanted to go somewhere else. ‘David,
sit
down. It's all right. God will protect you.'

Kohler knew he ought to ask, why he needed God to protect him. ‘Which of you reported the body of that corporal?'

The novice swallowed hard, glancing to the elder priest for reassurance. Receiving none, he said, ‘I did. It was me,' and, shutting his eyes in a grimace, thrust out his arms for the handcuffs.

Well now, how about that? ‘Start talking. We'll see about the bracelets later.'

‘One of our parishioners called David in, Inspector. Me, I was indisposed at the time.'

‘Drunk and sleeping it off, eh? Let him sing his own song, Father. Yours is too rich for the blood.'

‘Monsieur, your people have taken thirty souls from my parish. Is that not rich enough for
your
blood?'

‘Stung, eh? Let him tell me himself. I'll get to you soon enough.'

The young priest was now sitting on the bench, wringing his hands in despair. ‘It's all over, Father. I knew they'd come for me.'

‘David, God will guide you. Put your trust in Him.'

The tears were very real, the face was pinched, the forehead high and narrow so that the rampart nose gave steep access to the close-set blue eyes and thin, fair hair.

A cigarette might help. Kohler shook one out, only to have the old priest accept it on the novice's behalf. ‘I've warned him, Inspector. It's a penance. These days the young should not smoke. It's bad for the lungs and too expensive.'

Father David's voice was toneless. ‘I found the body in the courtyard. Someone had dragged it in from the street. They'd stolen his boots and socks but had left the rest.'

There, he'd said it at last and God would have to answer for him.

‘Where had he been shot?'

‘Right between the eyes. It … it was not so pleasant to look at, monsieur.'

Fair enough. ‘How long had he been dead, do you think?'

The novice shrugged.

They'd find out soon enough. ‘Who told you where the body was?'

‘M …'

‘The person was taken away in this morning's
rafle.
To the rue du Cherche-Midi, Inspector. I have only just discovered this.'

Kohler ran his eyes over Delacroix. ‘There's nothing wrong with your tongue, Father. Is it that this one might choke if he used his own?'

The old priest gave a deferential nod. ‘So be it. Let God decide.'

‘Madame Ouellette. It … it was in her courtyard. She … she is the one who told me of the body.'

‘Her husband, our horse butcher, is in a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany, Inspector. David, he is young.'

‘I think I get the picture. Come on, son. Come and show me.'

‘I'll come too, just in case you have need of my tongue.'

They were a pair, these two, and as sure as that God of theirs had made little green apples, this Madame Ouellette hadn't been carted off this morning. She and the young priest had been up to something and hadn't heard a thing in that courtyard.

With the two of them hurrying before him like rooks, Kohler went through to the back of the church and from there stepped on to the rue Saint-Luc, a short bit of nothing.

The house with its shop and golden horse's head above the door was nothing much either. The shelves were bare. Madame Ouellette didn't take to butchering and when he saw the woman, he instantly knew it wasn't just because of the shortage of horsemeat.

She had a child at the breast and that kid could not possibly have been the husband's unless their God had made it by mail.

The woman's hair was long and brown. The doe eyes were full of alarm and likely to beg forgiveness.

Apparently the penance didn't just extend to cigarettes but to twenty-six-year-old war widows with earthy minds and needs below the waist.

‘Marie, you must forgive us the intrusion,' managed the young priest. ‘The Inspector is here to find out what he can about the body of that German soldier.'

Satan had many forms. The breast was being clasped by the greedy tyke and the milk was dribbling down its little chin. Father David brushed a fond hand over his child and in that instant, Kohler knew he'd witnessed a rare and resigned bravery.

The old priest had let the young one continue in his priestly duties even though he'd broken his vows on the altar of this one's bed. It was that or forced labour. Of just such things was Paris made.

‘You have thirty, my friend. Try to spare us this one.'

The eyes of the old priest revealed the bond he felt for his protégé. Kohler nodded. ‘Just tell me everything you can about the corporal, most specifically who might have killed him.'

‘It was not a Resistance killing, monsieur. Of this we are certain, but,' Father Eugène gave a shrug, ‘you may choose to think we would not say otherwise.'

‘If not the Resistance, then who?'

The child was switched to the other tank, the woman not bothering to cover either of them, her dark eyes watchful now.

It was the young priest who said, ‘Someone who wanted the authorities to take hostages and who didn't care how many your people took.'

‘The killer of that girl?' asked Kohler incredulously.

The old priest nodded. ‘Word was left on my doorstep, monsieur, that the Resistance had nothing to do with the killing.'

From the folds of his cassock he drew an envelope and, opening it, handed the Gestapo the note. ‘Read for yourself, since you are one of the few who bother to speak our language.'

Look not to the Resistance for this one. Try the rue Lauriston and if not them, then the rue de Villejust. Those bastards must have killed the girl as well.

‘Show me where you found him. Tell me how he was.'

The coins had been scattered about the girl's room but one had been dipped in blood and left in the centre of her forehead as a warning.

Louis should have got clear of the rue Lauriston by now. That left the rue de Villejust, the Intervention-Referat, the shock troops of the avenue Foch, who used them when they didn't want to become involved.

The dead corporal had just taken on another meaning, but had he been killed for what he knew or simply because he'd happened along at the wrong time and had, perhaps, called out in alarm, in a drunken stupor?

Blood marked the paving-stones near a side-entrance to Madame Ouellette's house and empty shop. ‘I thought he was drunk,' said the woman. ‘I didn't know what to do, so I went to find Father David.'

Even now she'd cling to calling the young priest that. And at the height of passion too? wondered Kohler.

‘I touched him. I knew he was dead, monsieur. I … I went to fetch Father Eugène,' said Father David.

‘Did the corporal have anything with him?'

The three of them exchanged rapid glances. The baby had to be burped and brought up a mouthful which hit the paving-stones.

‘A small thing in his fist, monsieur. A dragonfly.'

‘A brooch,' said the woman, finally thinking to cover herself while at the same time wiping the child's lips with a corner of her blouse.

‘A dragonfly,' breathed Kohler. ‘Was it like this?'

They studied the butterfly. They hid their thoughts. It was Father Eugène who said, ‘Madame Ouellette has it in her house, monsieur, because I gave it to her for safe keeping and the authorities who came to remove the body were far too busy to ask, just as were those who removed the hostages.'

‘You were there. I saw you,' accused the woman.

‘Only as an observer. That's not our department. We're strictly murder.'

‘Marie, please go and find the dragonfly. Here, let me hold Jean-Guy,' said Father David.

The child had the young priest's eyes and hair, though both might darken with age.

‘God help you if the husband comes home,' breathed Kohler. ‘Don't try to leave town until I'm done with you or I'll hound you to the ends of the earth. Keep quiet about this too. Don't even confide it in that God of yours. The Corsicans of the rue de Villejust and the other boys of the rue Lauriston both have direct pipelines to Heaven.'

Father Eugène knew only too well what he meant.

Louis would be intrigued. A dragonfly and a butterfly. The poor Frog would be pounding the beat, trying to figure things out and biting the bullet with good reason!

‘The Préfet has a cold, monsieur. He extends the regrets but suggests your health is foremost in his mind and that he would not wish for you to catch it.'

There was no sense in arguing with the housekeeper. To ask for help had been a mistake, an act of cowardice. Talbotte had the shutters closed.

‘Extend to him my sincere condolences, madame, and tell him, please, that Chief Inspector Jean-Louis St-Cyr has paid his respects. From now on I wear my muffler and gloves, eh, to keep the influenza at bay.'

All of which made the woman toss her head before closing the door in his face.

‘Horse hamburg steeped in bouillon is supposed to be good, madame!' he called out for the sheer pleasure of it. ‘I always knew the Préfecture was a draughty place. Beware the currents of air, madame. Keep him away from the rat-holes!'

Like those of the rue Lauriston and the avenue Foch! Currents of air that would blow over a dead girl's naked body or brush a carousel into motion.

The Préfet's house was one of two that overlooked the boulevard du Palais on the Île de la Cité. Behind it rose the massive stone edifice of a former barracks, the Préfecture. He ought to see about the carousel licence. He ought to force them into doing something.

Talbotte
had
sent his chief coroner to the carousel. That
was
something. But now the draught was too much. Word must have got round that St-Cyr and Kohler were dead.

Shunning the quays, he tried to find a bit of solace in the Flower Market nestled between the Préfecture, the Tribunal of Commerce, and the Hôtel-Dieu. The stalls were empty. Few people were about and those that were appeared nervous.

He touched the canary in his pocket. He remembered the coin in the centre of that girl's forehead … a warning, ah yes.
Maudit!.

Beyond the mist of condensation there were a few tired poinsettias in an otherwise empty shop. Distraught, St-Cyr stared at the plants. Where once there would have been a riot of blooms, a jungle, there were now only these and a single rubber plant that should have stayed at home.

Henri Lafont was capable of the utmost cruelty yet loved with the passion of an innocent child, all types of flowers. He had them in his office – there'd been hothouse begonias on a corner of that desk. White ones. A mass of red roses over by the windows. A lemon tree.

Every day the flowers were changed no matter the season. Orchids were a favourite. Orchids and women like Nicole de Rainvelle.

He pushed open the shop door.

‘M'sieur?' asked the startled reed in glasses who was warming his hands by furiously rubbing them with cat's fur.

‘Ah yes. I'd like a cactus. The pricklier the better.'

Alphonse Bilodeau didn't like the look in this one's eyes. Taxes – were they after him again for the taxes?

‘A cactus?'

‘Yes.
Cleistocactus strausii
perhaps.'

‘Something with spines. These days that's about all we have.'

Bilodeau motioned him to follow. Behind the shop, which was less than three metres wide and four in length, a thin partition separated the living quarters, some three metres by one and complete with larder, hotplate, cold-water tap, sink, clothes rack, chamber pot, et cetera, et cetera.