Carnival (22 page)

‘Lagerfeldwebel, I'm certain Lageroffizier Rudel will concur with what I have to say. Please proceed with your search.'

‘Now just a minute,' objected Kohler. ‘The death of Eugène Thomas could well have been murder. Until our investigation is—'

‘Murder, Kohler? A man's comrades sentence him to death and he learns of it? His wife in Paris is letting our boys have her repeatedly? There's a brand-new bicycle few can afford?'

‘He killed himself, Kohler,' said Rudel stiffly. ‘Don't push it any further.'

‘A fait accompli, is that it,
meine Lieben
? Gestapo … I'm one of them, remember? If we're stopped, Gestapo Müller hears of it, not just Gestapo Boemelburg.'

‘Kohler, Kohler, what is this you're saying?' exclaimed Schrijen. ‘That what the Gruppenführer Müller most wishes to hear from you has finally come to pass? That once again you consider yourself one of us?'

‘And loyal,' said Rudel. ‘Please don't forget that even in Berlin they've heard of you.'

Raymond Maillotte would be sent to Natzweiler-Struthof to be interrogated, no questions asked here, no interview taken down by either Louis or himself. ‘What can a few minutes matter? Allow my partner and I to have a go at their quarters before Maillotte gets his things. If we find anything, we'll be sure to let you know.'

Kohler wasn't going to learn how to behave but why, suddenly, was he so agitated? wondered Schrijen. Concern for the prisoner or had something else been uncovered that he was holding back, something even Dorsche, as yet, knew nothing of? ‘Pick through the rubbish afterward. Let Lagerfeldwebel Dorsche know if you find anything he and his
Greifer
have missed. Make a little contest of it. Your eyes against theirs.'

Only the Russian watched from his window. Even the guards up in the nearest tower hadn't yet taken notice, felt St-Cyr. If he could scoot round the corner of the kitchen, could he make it down that side of the administrative block unaccompanied? It was worth a try but first the root cellar doors would have to be closed. The guards on the gate would have to continue thinking he was still with the victim.

Certainly he couldn't search through the laboratory under guard. There would still be Thomas's assistants to deal with. He would have to go carefully, couldn't have anyone finding out what he was after.

At a signal from the Russian, he realized that the man could see the gate quite clearly and that the guards there were momentarily preoccupied. Running, he darted round the corner of the kitchen, kept on going through the ankle-deep snow, cursed his broken shoes, found stacks of old machinery, broken grindstones, boxes of rusty bolts … Was nothing ever thrown out?

Found that even so, a cleared space of ten metres lay between him and the perimeter wire, its single warning strand no more than two-thirds of a metre above ground, with short lengths of dirty white rayon cord tied every ten metres to mark it, beyond this, the no-man's-land, beyond that, the first of the three-metre-high fences with their inwardly leaning overhangs, the barbed wire complete with continuous nests of concertina wire atop the overhangs and between the inner and outer fences.

The boot prints of the
Hundeführerin
and the dogs on their nightly patrols were clear enough. When a voice, given over a megaphone, called out, ‘
Halt! Was wollen Sie
?'—Who goes there?—he was right back in that other war and cried out, ‘
Nicht Schiessen
!' Don't shoot! ‘
Ich bin der Oberdetektiv Jean-Louis St-Cyr der Sûreté Nationale, meine Herren
. I am merely trying to find the entrance to the laboratory and administrative offices.'

‘
Ach
, the other side.
Kommen Sie her. Beeilen Sie sich
!' Come here. Hurry!

They would have him in their sights. Others in further towers would be notified if they hadn't already seen him. With a wave, he shouted, ‘
Danke!
I'll go this way as ordered,' and kept on, the wire always there, the guns too. No prisoners ventured here unless they had to. All were either at work or in their compound.

A black Mercedes four-door sedan was in the garage he entered just beyond the far end of the administrative block, having felt it best to duck out of sight where possible.

Beside the sedan, its bonnet up, was the tourer. Two lorries were also being worked on but there were no guards and it looked as if no one here had yet seen him.

Hobnailed boots rained on rough-timbered stairs that were shoulder-narrow and too
gottverdammt
steep, thought Kohler. Doors burst open ahead of him, wire-meshed dividers were thrown aside as, caught up in the rush of Dorsche and his
Greifer
, he was carried along.

Floor by floor the bastards went, the sleeping tumbling from their bunks to blink myopically in the pitiful light, a bucket of piss pouring over a bare, plank floor as the men, their stubbled faces lined, confused, terrified or empty, fought to stand upright beside bunks that were tiered four to the ceiling timbers.

The Russians, but this was only the third storey of the brick monolith that had, in 1870 or '80, been the original works. On and on Dorsche went. Everywhere the muscle was applied. He seemed to thrive on it, for he'd a lead-weighted, black leather truncheon in hand.

The French POWs were on the fifth floor and directly under an attic that must be huge. Here there was a little more headroom allowed and bunks that were only layered three high. Stiff, closely woven, timber-held wire mesh ran from floor to ceiling, dividing up the space and separating them from the four-tiered bunks of the Poles as though the two peoples must treat each other as untouchables. But even here, those who had been asleep after a twelve-hour shift, poured from their bunks to stand rigidly to attention, though the
Grossfahdung
was to be conducted in one ‘room' only.

Shaking, Kohler tried to light a cigarette. The ‘room' in which Thomas's combine lived when not at work was large by what had been seen so far, yet still it couldn't be any more than eight metres deep by five in width. There were two small, wire-meshed windows at one end, and within this space for the past two and a half years were bunks for twelve. Armoires—cupboards, closets, whatever they'd called them—were being emptied. Everything was being yanked out, glanced at and thrown to the floor, the lumpy mattresses and pillows spilling their cellulose when ripped apart.

Photos of loved ones were torn from where they had been pinned, letters strewn, books fanned and flung aside, mess bowls dented, banged, crunched, the remains of last month's Red Cross parcels no longer budgeted but trod on, the tins of meat, fish, butter and condensed milk being bayoneted first. Even the bunks were pulled down, their slats and timbers scrutinized for hidy-holes.

A refuse dump remained and it hadn't taken any more than ten minutes. Dorsche had already had a look early this morning. ‘Satisfied?' demanded Kohler. The bastards were sweating, he himself still shaking, still remembering those first days behind the wire.

‘
Ach
, now it's your turn.'

Clutching the wire, the Poles silently watched from its other side. The French POWs who had been asleep, simply waited.

‘Leave me, will you?' he said to Dorsche. ‘I need a little time.'

‘Take as long as you wish. One man will remain while the rest of us visit each of the prisoners who occupied this room but are currently on shift.'

‘They're not to be harmed nor sent anywhere, not until we've had a chance to interview them.'

‘Prisoner 220374 will be the first of them. He can then join you to collect his things.'

‘I'm warning you, Lagerfeldwebel.'

‘That, too, is understood.'

The snowflakes were large, and when they struck the window of the entrance door to the garage, they hesitated as if unsure of themselves, and only then began to melt.

Standing just inside the door, still catching his breath, St-Cyr knew with absolute certainty that not only had he a perfect view of the eastern end of the administrative block, chance had come into play and he was onto something. He could feel it, almost taste it, but could he find it and would it then lead him to the trinitrophenol?

Diagonally across a cleared lane of no more than ten metres lay the private entrance to the executive offices. Above this entrance, Löwe Schrijen's windows looked out from the first storey, those of his daughter also. And when the big garage doors are opened? he had to ask. Both could easily see if a lorry or van was available and that their respective vehicles had been serviced. So, too, would Eugène Thomas have seen this if in Sophie Schrijen's office, and also Renée Ekkehard.

But had it really been luck, his crying out in
Deutsch
, ‘Don't shoot'? Hadn't he done the same thing in that other war; wouldn't audacity be what the POWs would believe was the only way to defeat their masters? A gamble, swift and unexpected?

‘
Mein Herr
, is there something I can do for you?'

It was the mechanic who had been half-hidden under the tourer's bonnet. ‘
Ach
, my shoes. I was giving them a little rest.'

‘They don't look good, do they?'

‘And haven't for some time.'

It could do no harm to help; indeed it might well do some good. ‘Lucien Weber at your service, Herr Oberdetektiv. You're a long way from home and I greatly fear those shoes will not last without a few stitches. Fortunately this was once the stables. Though the firm's horses are still used in the logging operations, none are kept here now but we do have the tack room where harnesses were mended and I still do a little of that work. If you would be so kind as to follow, I think we can settle this, at least until you get back to Paris. Things are satisfactory there, are they?'

Dry shoes to a detective were as necessary as pipe tobacco, but it would not be wise to tell the truth. ‘Things are fine. There's a shortage of small coins, but it is only to be expected.'

‘The
métro
still busy?'

‘As ever. My partner and I are hardly there, so we really haven't noticed any changes.'

‘It's not good, is it?' confided Weber when they were alone.

‘But far better than Stalingrad, Berlin or London.'

‘Inspector, please don't worry. We can at least talk to each other like civilized men. Now give me those shoes. Sit in the other room if you wish. This won't take long. What one learns as a boy, one never forgets. My father was
Stalldirektor
here.'

‘Which other room?'

‘That one. The barbershop. The gift of a wealthy French businessman who wished to ease the plight of those who had been taken prisoners of war. It has never been used. Most of those men were only here for such a short time, they missed its arrival, but Chairman Schrijen felt we should at least install it, so a room was found.'

Un salon de coiffure pour hommes, ein Friseurladen
. ‘I could use a shave.'

Had nostalgia swept in on the chief inspector? ‘Then please help yourself. There's plenty of hot water, towels too, and a lovely aftershave.'

Alone but for the guard, Kohler surveyed the refuse heap as a POW would have done. Frustrated, angry at the injustice of it and yet exhilarated, for now he had to find what had been missed, and hadn't it all been a game: them against the guards, those against them, the hidden and the most hidden?

Where utensils had been needed—the knives, forks and spoons of common decency—Martin Caroff, the assistant machinist, had fashioned these out of pieces of tin cans salvaged from their parcels. Nothing was ever wasted. The rivets, forged with the aid of one of the tin-can blowers and shaped on a small anvil, were perfect. Not only had the Breton an eye for utility, he'd one for artistry. Brightening their lives, each utensil, the plates and tin cups too, had incised designs that curved continuously, circling round and round. Celtic those designs and thousands of years old.

The blowers themselves had been fashioned out of soup, butter and sardine cans. Each tiny, clay-lined firebox would be fed with wood chips, cellulose, bits of paper and the odd pea-sized piece of stolen coal. A fan, rapidly cranked by hand, kept a stream of air directed into the firebox, above whose chimney, either a mess bowl or home-made saucepan would be heated at the end of each day.

Unlike the others, the French POWs were allowed to dine in comparative luxury. Not for them the day's final meal in the crowded mess hall that was next to the
Lagerküche
. They drew the slop the kitchen dished up and brought it here to eat with their other rations, twelve men sharing everything because only then could they survive.

Two-kilogram loaves of black bread—one per man per week—added a further sourness to the air which was heavy with the stench of old sweat, body heat, bad sauerkraut, unwashed rags, urine, rotten eggs—that chemical smell—and stale tobacco smoke. A puddle from a bayonetted can of condensed milk had engulfed photos from home. Meat paste of questionable age and origin had the greasy slickness of pâté to which Norwegian fish-oil margarine had been substituted in quantity.

Letters had been stained. Postcards had their uncensored remaining words blurred. A bead of solder rolled from under a partly unravelled woollen sock whose holes outnumbered the rest. Elation filled him. Solder—lead and tin from the seams of the cans—was being gathered and that could only mean they'd a definite use for it.

Tunic buttons, cap badges and Iron Crosses, et cetera, the beads melted in one of their blowers and cast into those blanks to be later meticulously painted but where? Not here, he knew, letting his gaze sift slowly over the rubbish, asking too, Had Dorsche removed the evidence of those blanks early this morning?

He couldn't have. He would have had the combine put on
Straf
and would have cleaned this place out.