Carnival (12 page)

Looking up to the shelves above, to that little row of Baccarat and the empty marc bottle, he said, ‘
Danke
, you son of a bitch. We're going to get you.'

On cold, clear nights Yvonne Lutze knew sounds travelled, but now with so little traffic, they came from even farther. Just when Otto turned off the main road, she wasn't sure, though soon he accelerated a little. Listening, freezing, she tried not to remember how it used to be, how as a girl she had often stood outdoors like this even in winter but upstairs, on her very own balcony, listening for her father who would be returning from the railway station, having been to Berlin, München, Hamburg or Brussels, Paris too.
Vati
who sold the wine of others not because he had to, he had claimed, but because it was among the finest, though unrecognized as such until introduced properly.

Vati
who had loved her dearly and would not have approved of her marrying Werner. Otto would have been much better,
mein kleiner Liebling
, he'd have said, but Colonel Hans Otto Rasche had already been married, that lie and fact still staying with her for he'd not just been handsome and gracious but all those other things she had admired and wanted then as a girl of nineteen when young men of her own age had been dying like flies and soon none would be left.
Vati
too.

And the child Otto had left her with? she asked and answered as always, was God's gift as her half of the bargain. Geneviève who had been a student at the university in September 1939, Geneviève who had been so serious about her studies: ‘A
biologiste, maman
. I want to study biology and chemistry. Women do study such things. There are two of us girls in my class. Two,
maman
! I'm French, not Alsatian, not German.' She would never really appreciate how generations of her mother's family had come to live in this house. Werner had seen to that. Werner.

Whatever else might be said of him, Werner really did take care of things.

Otto knew where Geneviève was and fortunately perhaps the child had gone with the other students when the university had moved to Clermont-Ferrand, the letters frequent until the capitulation of June 1940, the postcards since never many and always heavily censored, and now far fewer of them.

‘She's fine. She's still at her studies,' Otto had said, having made discreet enquiries, ‘Don't worry.' But mothers always do.

When the little car rolled to a silent stop, Otto cleared his throat and even though his voice was hushed, she heard him gruffly say, ‘Kohler, don't forget the house will be fast asleep.'

Two suicides, two murders? she silently asked. Have they seen enough, those two detectives you asked for? The soup, the sausage, cheese and bread that girl took with her—they can't help but realize you must have known where she got them and that I had said nothing of it, not even to yourself, though you never once thought to ask me.

Renée Ekkehard, Otto. Something happened between the two of you last August. A brief moment, a mistake on your part perhaps, but whatever it was, and I'm certain of this, it left you vulnerable to that ‘secretary' of yours. She never once had to force the issue, did she? She simply asked for your help with the
Karneval
and knew you would agree. A pretty girl whose shy and self-effacing modesty gave you a memory of myself perhaps, though I was nearly ten years younger than her. And now what are we to do? Wait for the inevitable? Tough it out, as Werner would? Use caution always?

Why
didn't
Sophie Schrijen go in her stead as she was supposed to? Löwe Schrijen and that son of his are bound to ask questions of their own privately and you know it too. They've people who do this for them. That's why you had to call Paris. I know it was!

And Victoria Bödicker, Otto? Why did she look at me the way she did when I asked her where Renée might have gone, asked at your insistence?

She was afraid. That business of her having to go into the bookshop to take care of a customer was simply a means of her getting away from me for a moment to give herself time. There was no one in the shop. No bell had sounded above that door, though when she came back, she did say that it worked sometimes and not at others, and that a replacement would be impossible to find.

She had realized I had taken that school notebook of hers, one you desperately needed and had asked me to get. It hadn't quite been hidden by my overcoat which was lying on a chair, but she said nothing of this. Nothing! Otto. And when I got ready to leave, she turned away to gather up the cat, making it easy for me to steal from her. Me, Otto. Me! who had never stolen a thing in her life.

Those three girls were up to something that has jeopardized us all. Why can't you admit this? Why can't you talk to me about it? I know you will want me to look through the detectives' things. I know they will ask me how Renée got to the carnival and that I will have to tell them you—yes, you—arranged for a lorry to take her. A lorry, Otto. You knew where she had gone.

In single file they crossed the catwalk, the river ice pale under moonlight, she looking down at them. Softly letting herself back into the house, she stood a moment between the heavy blackout drapes and the closed door, listening still until Werner turned over in his sleep.

Out of long habit and no matter what, he could drop off so easily when needed and sleep as soundly as a babe.

Mein Mann
, Otto. Your Oberfeldwebel.

In the quiet of a house where sounds would echo, Louis laid out on one of the beds the collected bits and pieces from his pockets, and as a conjurer in a
Karneval
, passed the wave of a silent hand over them.

The two rose-coloured buttons taken from Eugène Thomas's pockets were nothing like those that had been carved by one of the POWs and left on Rasche's desk for them to find.

Carefully Kohler set the spine of medical glass next to the former.

The earring's amethystine brilliant caught the lamplight, the papier-mâché ball looking out of place and seeming to mock them, as did the tightly rolled wad of 471 Lagermark, the bobbins with thread still wound, the swatch of blue cloth, and the poor bastard's tin wedding ring, the original no doubt having been taken from him on capture.

‘This investigation, Hermann,' came the whisper. ‘First there is Frau Oberkircher talking her head off to you on the train, only now we find she is known to the Fräulein Bödicker and sometimes is called in to take care of that one's bookshop.'

‘Frau Bödicker having been locked up in the camp for British and American women at Vittel.'

‘
Victoria
being a decidedly British name.'

A hot box tells us there are partisans.'

‘Feldgendarmen and plain-clothes Gestapo make a hunting ground of Belfort's railway station.'

‘Looking for deserters.'

‘
N und Ns
are heading for Natzweiler-Struthof.'

‘A quarry, Louis, but also with well-known ski slopes nearby.'

‘And a girl, a secretary and committee member, who is invited to a party there.'

‘Only to witness something that could well have driven her to kill herself if we were to have believed it.'

‘A cutthroat, a bowstring knot and then an arbour knot which is also used to tie neat little bundles of medicinal iron.'

Eugène Thomas's nail and stone, left on the floor of that office toilet, were silently pointed out, Hermann then tapping a forefinger against the copy of
Schöne Mädchen in der Natur
and then at the magazine photo of a lone, buck-naked, grinning German soldier.

Unnoticed until now perhaps, the boy's carefully folded uniform was on the ground at his feet, but only a corner of this showed.

‘SS,' whispered Hermann. ‘I didn't want to point it out to you.'

‘A postcard,' breathed Louis. ‘A lonely, loving wife who could well have been desperate for money.'

‘A
Postzensuren
up to mischief.'

‘Perhaps but for now …
ah,
mais alors, alors, mon vieux
…'

‘A
Karneval
to raise substantially more cash than last year since Gauleiter Wagner can be very demanding.'

‘Months and months those men have been at it, Hermann, but why, please, would your former commanding officer have agreed to such a thing?'

‘Since by doing so the son of a bitch left himself vulnerable.'

‘And others too, others like Frau Lutz and that husband of hers.'

‘Lies, lies and more of them, Louis; half-truths or none at all.'

‘And only after the death of Eugène Thomas at around midnight Friday does he then decide to seek help elsewhere.'

‘Knowing the chemical formula for trinitrophenol has been scribbled on a scrap of notebook paper and that he definitely can't trust his own detectives to keep quiet about it.'

‘Since they've been watching him and are a direct pipeline through to Natzweiler-Struthof, knowing also, though, that it was torn from Victoria Bödicker's school notebook and that Löwe Schrijen, chairman and owner of the Textilfabrikschrijen, gives his daughter everything she needs for her
Karneval
.'

‘But does so to please Gauleiter Wagner. He must, Louis. We're in the Reich and the
Oberbonzen
call all the shots. There's also a target date of Saturday, 6 March.'

And to hold anything in public, even a
Karneval
, the Gauleiter's permission would have had to have been given. Rasche had also warned them never to underestimate Löwe Schrijen, but had only reluctantly revealed that the son, Alain Fernand, had been engaged to Renée Ekkehard, his secretary who had been like a ‘daughter' to him.

‘A girl who skis all night, Louis.'

‘Only to then be distracted by a piece of costume jewellery.'

‘While being drugged.'

They hadn't bothered to unpack their grip, those two detectives. They had so little in any case, thought Yvonne. A sliver of prewar hand-soap smelled faintly of lilacs and just as faintly bore the impress of the Crillon, a luxury hotel on
place
de la Concord. The Bavarian had probably pocketed it while on an investigation in late 1940, for the Wehrmacht and the SS had taken over many of the hotels, or so Otto had said after that first visit of his. They had even built a makeshift wooden walkway above the rue Royale between that hotel and the former Ministry of the Marine, and so much for culture and architectural beauty in a city of them.

Begging herself to remain calm, she set the grip on the bed Herr Kohler had used and emptied it item by item. ‘One spare hand towel,' she whispered. ‘Socks with holes in them. Limited changes of underwear. Two spare shirts, an extra necktie, three handkerchiefs—St-Cyr's?' she asked, for they had been carefully pressed as if by a man, and he probably used them for collecting some of the things he did.

Two handguns were wrapped in the woollen pullover Herr Kohler had brought and laid on the very bottom of the grip. One of them looked like the pistol Alain Schrijen had laughingly shown Werner when the boy had come to escort Renée to his father's house on Christmas Eve.

Mat-black, clean, sleek, much worn and therefore used, this one had a
P38
incised a little in front and above the trigger, a Walther too, the soft curve of the maker's name, the lie of what was now in her hand.

Well oiled, it fitted easily, the brown, crosshatched wooden grip perfect, but for a moment she couldn't move, could only stand with this thing pressed to a thigh in defeat, her shoulders slumped. Was she going to go to pieces?

‘I can't! I mustn't! Geneviève,' she whispered. ‘Darling, please be careful. Please don't become involved in anything no matter how strongly you feel about the way things are, just hide while you study.'

The other gun was a Lebel
Modèle d'ordonnance
, the old 1873, heavy, ugly, brutal, a six-shot revolver bearing the inscription of the Saint-Étienne Arsenal. It too had a crosshatched brown grip. Some sort of very hard wood—tropical perhaps, or was it of dyed bone?

The barrel, indeed the whole of this thing in her hand, was scratched, nicked, banged up but well oiled. Spare bullets were in a packet and heavy. Eleven-millimetre black-powder cartridges, but why should the Frenchman have such an antique when his partner had only the most modern?

Clips for the Walther pistol held eight 9mm Parabellum cartridges, and there were four spares and a full packet as well, gun oil too, and the cleaning rags, those that he had wrapped the guns in before using the pullover to hide them.

St-Cyr had slept in the box bed, he being the shorter; Herr Kohler the four poster with canopy which, like the other bed in its alcove, like the whole of this room and house, was now drawing in the light of day to glow warmly and securely from its panelled walls. Walls that showed off the lovely grain and knots of the wood and made one think always of a forest and of belonging.

Quickly, deftly, Yvonne made the beds and smoothed their quilted, chequered
Kelsch
-covered duvets and pillows, pausing at the foot of Herr Kohler's bed, the warmers now clutched. ‘Cherry pits,' she had heard him mutter late last night, their light out at last. ‘They radiate the heat even better than bricks, Louis, and are a hell of a lot softer.'

And then, as if he had longed for home, ‘
Meine Oma
taught us how to make them. The pits are gently dried in the sun. My brother and I used to turn them for her. You let the flat of your hand move lightly over them so as not to pile them up. The seed shrinks inside the stone and leaves an air space that holds the heat in longer. They're cosy too. My Gerda used to pack bags just like these.'

His grandmother and then his ex-wife … St-Cyr had tersely muttered something about Saarbrücken and a farm there and knowing all about it. ‘Tomorrow, Hermann.'