Carnival (21 page)

Dorsche didn't answer. Was he waiting for that shriek, wondered Kohler, or did he just know that this one was the combine's leader and would therefore have to watch him closely?

‘She teased Eugène mercilessly about his being too familiar with his lab assistants, Inspektor,' said Léger. ‘Paulette was always his only love and the girl knew this. “A married man without a wedding ring?” she would taunt. Eugène's was taken from him when he was captured, so he had Martin make him one to shut her up.'

Martin Caroff, the assistant machinist. ‘And when Thomas had been away working at the
Karneval
and came by for his mail?'

‘She would always snicker and ask him what had gone on out there, implying mischief even with Sophie Schrijen, of all people, or with Renée or Victoria. The
Idioten
didn't know.'

‘What?

‘The boss's daughter? The Kommandant's secretary? Our guards … we were always under guard. We're not fools, are we?'

‘And if there was mail?'

‘It would be so blacked out, Eugène would be driven to despair. He was far too sensitive. Behind the wire one can't be, can one?'

‘So when the anonymous letter came, he went over the edge?'

‘That is how we see it, yes.'

The tourer had leather seats and a heater that not only cleared the windscreen of its icy fog but kept the hands and feet warm. Sophie Schrijen drove carefully through Kolmar's streets, avoiding cyclists and pedestrians, an excellent driver, thought St-Cyr, but was she also taking her time so as to impart yet a further
confidence
?

It wasn't long in coming.

‘Eugène would never have killed himself, Inspector. Paulette and he had grown up in Chartres on the same street. Having to move to Issy-les-Moulineaux welded them together. Both had come from family bankruptcies. First her mother died, then his parents. They had no one else, were totally dependent on each other and happy, I'm certain. Very happy. A love like that is hard to find.'

She did not give it pause, but slowed the car further.

‘One of the
Postzensuren
was particularly vicious. She had been very fond of one of the junior sales' staff, who had been killed in action, and was taking it out on Eugène—we all knew this, but nothing was done about it. Like other such girls, she has now probably taken to placing advertisements in the newspapers. Young man wanted … Old man, what does it matter so long as it's a man and she can find a lover? Lonely like most of them, she is also bitter.'

‘And with his mail?'

‘It was the most heavily censored of all but you see, we had a slight advantage. After everyone had left the office, Eugène could sometimes find his postcards and take down what Paulette had written before that girl got at it. That way he only had to contend with what Vichy's censors had blacked out. His despair was a total fabrication. The girl never knew—I'm sure she didn't—and I don't think any of the men of his combine did either. For him to have said anything to them about my unlocking that office door would have been far too risky for me. He was totally selfless, Inspector. A very dedicated worker and the truest of friends, and he taught me a great deal about things at the Works. The chemistry and mechanics of the process, you understand. Without him as my teacher, I don't know what I would have done.'

The chemical equations and formula on that scrap of notepaper …

‘I'd never even been in the Works for more than an hour at a time before this war made it necessary for me to take over as its assistant manager.
Vati
—my father—hasn't the patience or time to teach me, a girl, a woman with no technical training or mind for chemistry. I had to have help.'

And had become dependent on Thomas. ‘And when this anonymous letter arrived?'

Karl must have given it to Kohler. ‘Eugène would have been badly shaken, of course. It … it would have been totally unexpected. The girl would have gloated over it and made some comment when he came out of Oberstleutnant Rudel's office after having read it, but Eugène must have known it was nothing but lies. He must have!'

Or had he? wondered Sophie. Had that
Postzensure
discovered he had been reading his mail and taken care of the matter in her own way? ‘A friend or relative in Paris could easily have written that letter for her, Inspector. She has a sister in Paris, a translator at the Kommandantur on
place
de l'Opéra. Their father is an ardent member of the Party.'

6

Between the root cellar and the barn-board latrine, across a distance of perhaps fifteen metres, St-Cyr found that the snow had not only been trampled flat. It had been stained and splashed by human waste which had been emptied, bucket by bucket, from the pit into rusting sheet-iron barrels on wooden sledges that had been pushed and drawn by ropes.

Behind, and parallel to the low-roofed latrine, the washhouse was in the adjacent ground-floor corner of the barracks block, its windows small and grimy and stuffed with rags and straw where broken and not. One man, a Russian, stared out from the floor above the washhouse. It was impossible not to notice him, but was he pleading for some awareness of their plight, wanting to know the truth about the chemist and Renée Ekkehard, or simply hoping for a delivery of potatoes?

Sophie Schrijen had driven into the
Arbeitslager
without so much as a word of challenge or nod. The gates had simply been flung wide at the tourer's approach, but if she could enter that way, could she not just as easily leave like that taking others with her unnoticed?

‘We had a slight advantage,' she had said of Thomas's reading his mail, but by not informing the members of his combine, by in effect deceiving them, had he not betrayed their confidence and would that not have had repercussions for him had they found out?

‘This case, this investigation,' he said, turning away from the Russian without so much as an indication of having acknowledged his existence since to do so would not be wise and he was probably being watched himself, and yet … and yet one must turn back.

The Russian now pressed a hand flat against the glass, his fingers splayed. One must touch the brim of one's fedora in salute. One must.

Again it was damp in the root cellar. It was fiercely cold, still stank to high heaven, and when the lights came on, the first sight of the potatoes was not of their number but of a pinkish-grey to yellowish-purple-brown frozen, glistening mush where the rotten had been trampled or split in half to be left geode-open on the tiers.

‘Leave me. I'll come to the gate when I'm finished, but if you see Herr Kohler tell him to wait, then come and get me at once. Don't let him down here.'

‘
Jawohl
, Herr Oberdetektiv.'

The guard closed the doors, and since Hermann wasn't available to talk things over, why … ‘One murder, one suicide, or two of the former,' he said to the second victim, his breath billowing. ‘You see, since Sophie Schrijen made it possible for you to steal a look at your mail, did your friendship not also extend to hiding what my partner and I greatly fear that committee of hers was up to?
Bien sûr
, she would have begged you not to tell anyone and she now wishes to distance herself from Renée Ekkehard and in no uncertain terms to warn the bookseller in front of this police officer that it is only herself who will speak for the two of them. She also hints that perhaps the Fräulein Bödicker knows more of Renée Ekkehard's death than that one is letting on. And early in December, you ask? That party at Natzweiler-Struthof? Is it that Renée Ekkehard betrayed not only herself but the others of that committee? Isn't that why Sophie Schrijen knows perfectly well the girl's death was murder? Isn't that why those two detectives the colonel doesn't want us talking to have been following her, and isn't that why she and Victoria Bödicker now fear they are to be next?

‘She gambled, didn't she, when she interrupted my questioning the bookseller to reveal so much? It was almost irrational of her and certainly desperate. She accused that brother of hers of being not only brutally cruel but impulsive, claimed that either he or her father would have taken care of the matter—a “suicide,”
but made sure that my partner and I would have to visit the quarry to question him. So I must ask, in our absence, has she laid the groundwork for yet another suicide, that of the bookseller, and would that then distance herself sufficiently?'

The dust was everywhere in the shed and like pastry flour, felt Kohler. The tattered blue coveralls of Raymond Maillotte, the test weaver and fabric designer, were caked with it, his face, ears and neck stark white under a dust-covered cap, the goggles clouded, the filthy rag over the mouth and nose useless.

As thick stacks of the metre-square sheets of pure white cellulose were fed by him into the machine, they were grabbed by the rotating blades, sucked in and ripped from his hands. No gloves, for they'd already been lost. Not much purchase for the sabots either, for he was standing perched up there on a narrow, steel-meshed gantry at about four metres from the concrete floor. Bins and chutes caught the mountains of dust. A conveyor hurried metre-high stacks of the sheets up to him, giving no time to do anything but hustle them bunch by bunch into the blades. No time to pause like the dust which had to age before it was treated with carbon disulphide to turn, as if by magic, to a brilliant orange in the ‘crumb' factory at the far end of the shed.

Pungent with the stench of rotten eggs, the eyes weeping, the throat tight, the Xanthate Shed converted the purified soda cellulose to sodium cellulose xanthate which was, in yet another shed, dissolved in dilute caustic soda.

Sprayed through spinnerets that were drowned in sulphuric acid, the xanthate became ‘viscose' rayon—artificial silk.

The weaver was but one of many. Stopping his conveyor belt, Dorsche motioned for him to come down. Blinking, choking—trying to brush himself off and still terrified of being sucked into the shredder, Raymond Maillotte looked like death in white on a ramrod.

He coughed. He tried to clear his eyes, sneezed maybe thirty times and broke a blood vessel. ‘
Excusez
,' he blurted and, finding another rag, clamped it over his nose and threw his head back.

‘Sit,
mon ami
,' said Kohler. ‘Tilt your head forward a little and breathe through your mouth while you pinch your nose tightly. Take five. Don't blow.'

Holding him by the back of the neck, he looked questioningly at Dorsche, for the bastard had deliberately chosen this man for this job. The weakest link in the combine, eh?

Maillotte's neck was scrawny, the crinkly black hair matted with sweat, though this end of the shed was freezing.

He began to shake. Like Savard, he had to piss but had, unfortunately, no rubber boots. Tufts of straw stuck out of the sabots—straw to prevent his feet from slipping and to keep them warm, but sabots the Russians would have carved.

Gently Kohler patted Prisoner 220374 on the shoulder. ‘Rest for as long as you need,' he said sadly. ‘No one's going to hurt you while I'm here. I promise.'

‘Eugène … Eugène had been sentenced in absentia, Inspector.'

Finding two of Chairman Schrijen's cigarettes, Herr Kohler lit them, placing one between Prisoner 220374's quivering lips. It fell, of course, noted Dorsche, and the Detektiv tried to rescue it from the piss-soaked dust only to fling it away and donate the one he'd lit for himself. ‘Sentenced?' he asked in
Deutsch
.

The head was nodded. Tears and blood streaked the pancake makeup of dust. The harried dark brown eyes were gaunt. A bronchial cough was given.

‘To death?' hazarded this Detektiv, still not wanting to believe that prisoners could well attempt to hide such things from their Lagerfeldwebel.

‘
Ja
, but … but we could not agree on how to carry out the sentence,' managed Maillotte, ‘nor could we decide who should do it.'

And so much, then, for Victim Number Two not having had any enemies.

Almost imperceptibly Eugène Thomas trembled, and when one laid a hand on him, the vibrations were transmitted.

‘It's the Works,' said St-Cyr. ‘It's all that heavy machinery.' Pipe smoke drifted from him and he waved it away. ‘I need to put myself in your shoes. Sophie Schrijen would have seen you nearly every day. Among her many duties she would have liaised with you on fabric quality, production problems, dye batches, the length of each run, the types of cloth planned, all such things. Is it not safe to say, then, that over the past two and a half years you became the dear friend she has claimed?'

There are friends and there are friends, Inspector.

‘And certainly you, or any other POW, would have encouraged such a friendship, but did it grow to much more than that, and if so, then when she learned that Renée Ekkehard had been found hanged, did she not come to you at some point? Understand, please, that she desperately needs help and will sacrifice the bookseller if necessary. Of this I'm certain.'

A bookseller, a secretary and a chairman's daughter, Inspector—three, who though they took terrible risks to help us in such tiny ways, were definitely not equals.

‘Two soft, rose-coloured buttons from a summer's frock, monsieur? I've been a fool, haven't I? These were lost last summer on the twentieth, of August but why, then, did I find them in your pockets?'

Renée had a blanket pass to the Works and could come and go after hours without the colonel.

‘And Renée and Sophie had much to discuss. Löwe Schrijen would often work late …'

But could have been asked for much needed materials.

A carnival …

‘Colonel Rasche would have gone through your pockets but given that failed seduction of his, would not have left those buttons for us to find which means, of course, that they must have been left
after
you had been laid out here.'

And since Victoria Bödicker doesn't have a pass, that leaves …

‘Either one of your combine or Sophie Schrijen.'

Who must have become very close to Renée.

‘Victoria was the odd one out.'

A girl whose notebook was then taken by Yvonne Lutz.

‘At the request of Colonel Rasche.'

A torn page being found crumpled in my pocket.

‘With the precisely written chemical equations, much simplified, for making viscose rayon, something Sophie desperately needed to understand.'

And I was well able to teach.

‘But didn't write down the formula for trinitrophenol. Instead, it suggests that it was quickly done by someone who was leaning over your shoulder and since Raymond Maillotte, the fabric designer and test weaver, is the only other one from your combine who has a pass allowing him to come to that laboratory of yours …'

Experiments, Inspector. Didn't Sophie tell you of them? Since May of 1941 that camp at Natzweiler-Struthof has been in those granite hills to the southwest of Strasbourg. We learned early on of what was happening to some of those who had been sent there. A failed hanging, isn't that what her friend had to witness?

‘The Fräulein Schrijen is ashamed of her brother but why would he have forced that fiancée of his to have witnessed an execution unless he had already overheard the girl crying out things his sister would not have wanted anyone to hear?'

Renée really didn't want to marry him.

‘Victoria Bödicker not only knew that girl was in danger but also despondent and suicidal.'

POWs always have three things in mind, Inspector. First there is the hope of mail from home, then that of a parcel once a month, and then …

‘Escape.'

That cutthroat your partner found yet left behind the photograph of a striptease artist.

‘Trinitrophenol, monsieur, especially if in its dry, crystalline form, which it would have been in a place like this and used well up into the late twenties or early thirties as a yellow dye. Unfortunately even unscrewing the lid of a jar of it can set it off. It's highly unstable and definitely highly explosive. You see, though we in the trenches of that other war all knew about it under its other name, picric acid, others around the world soon learned. Halifax, Nova Scotia, 6 December 1917 the news flashed:
World's Biggest Man-Made Explosion
. It still is, though we're in another war. Sixteen hundred dead in that city; 9,000 injured, the sight taken from 200 by the flying glass from their very homes, 250 hectares of factories, et cetera absolutely flattened by the blast whose plume reached nearly two kilometres into the sky, or by the tidal wave
***
that quickly followed, or by the fires that were caused as walls collapsed onto household stoves. Two vessels, the Belgian
Imo
, and the French
Mont Blanc
, collided in the harbour at 8.45 a.m., and at 9.06, you ask?

‘Two thousand, seven hundred and sixty-six tonnes of picric acid, gun cotton and TNT destined for the European conflict to be made into munitions, detonated in the
Mont Blanc
's hold. Granted flaming benzol draining into the hold was a major factor, and granted that the shock of the collision by itself did not set off the cargo, but picric acid is still nothing to fool with.'

A dyestuff.

‘Which both you and the firm's test weaver could well have discovered overlooked in some storeroom.'

Kohler was only too aware that the forced march from the Xanthate Shed had been just that but voices hadn't been raised, not yet. Cap tucked under the left arm of a still snow-dusted greatcoat, Dorsche stood rigidly to attention inside the open door of the chairman's office, while Karl Rudel confided to Löwe Schrijen what Prisoner 220374 had revealed.

‘A sentence in absentia, Kohler,' sighed Schrijen as if savouring the matter, his dark blue eyes flicking briefly over this Kripo to settle beyond him. ‘Lagerfeldwebel Dorsche, the highest commendation will be in my monthly report to Colonel Rasche. A citation at least. If our Kommandant didn't have such a one to look after his
Arbeitslager
, Kohler, where would a man in my position be? Always in the past I've trusted implicitly the judgement of our Lagerfeldwebel, as has Colonel Rasche and with good reason. A
Grossfahdung
was thought necessary when you arrived this morning. You asked me to stop it and out of misguided courtesy I reluctantly agreed. Now surely you must see its need.