Carnival (5 page)

More bread was brought to sop up the juices, his glass refilled from the stoneware jug, Hermann's beer replenished, the woman making certain that everything was as it should be. Indeed, the busier she became, the less she betrayed that nervousness the colonel and her husband sensed only too well.

For dessert there was a tart whose filling was of preserved bilberries, eggs, cinnamon, slivered almonds,
crème fraîche
and honey, and whose sweet, short-crust pastry was of unsalted butter, white flour, sugar, salt and egg yolk. Pure heaven for a citizen from German-Occupied France.

Wedges of Munster cheese and real coffee, dark and absolutely exquisite, finished the repast, Rasche thrusting his tobacco pouch across the table, Oberfeldwebel Lutze having found himself a cigarette.

‘These suicides, gentlemen,' said Rasche, taking a moment to draw on that pipe of his and get the fire going. ‘There were two of them. The first was a week ago yesterday, but she wasn't discovered until last Tuesday.'

‘Sunday, then, 31 January,' said Louis as he packed his pipe, ‘but not found until 2 February. Why the delay, Colonel?'

Paris had said that St-Cyr was known to fuss over every detail, Kohler tending to jump to conclusions until cautioned by his other half.

‘She went missing. We believed she had gone to Strassburg. The girl had some leave coming and understandably we thought she had taken it.'

‘We?' asked Louis.

‘My adjutant and myself, but also the officer who keeps the duty roster at the
Polizeikommandantur
. She was a secretary. Well, actually, gentlemen, she was my secretary.'

And now here it comes, swore Kohler silently.

‘Name?' asked Louis.

‘Renée Ekkehard.'

‘Age?'

‘Why should that matter, Inspector?'

‘It's Chief Inspector, Colonel. Her age, please, just so that my partner and I hear it from yourself.'

‘Was I sexually intimate with her—is that what you think?
Mein Gott
, you two. We feed you like princes and then you … I'm a family man. My Hilde and I have been married for nearly forty-five years—no, it's forty-seven this coming April, the ninth!'

‘Renée Ekkehard's age, Colonel?' asked Louis, unruffled.

‘And then you'll get the rest of it—is this what you're thinking? Well, is it?'

‘If necessary. Now, please, we're here to help.'

‘Twenty-eight. She had family in Strassburg and had spoken of a need to go home for a visit. Some little matter. I … I didn't ask. It was personal.'

And beware all those who shout the loudest about the sanctity of their marriage vows, thought Kohler. Frau Lutze hadn't been able to stop herself from glancing sharply at the colonel as he'd ranted on about his Hilde, while Oberfeldwebel Lutze had given that wife of his a penetrating glance before turning away to concentrate on the quay as if he and his colonel were expecting company at any moment.

‘Hadn't the Fräulein Ekkehard signed herself out for leave?' asked Louis.

‘The girl had Sunday off but hadn't returned from lunch on Saturday. Schmidt, the duty officer, felt she and I must have been called away on business and thought nothing of it. We often were, but not that afternoon.'

‘It was only when my husband noticed her skis were gone that we realized she must have left,' said Yvonne earnestly. ‘We thought, a lodge in the hills, perhaps. We asked around—at least I did. One has to be so careful now. No one seemed to know until I—'

‘She was one of your boarders?'

‘I … I needed to know how many would be here for supper.'

And needed to be careful.

‘Until I went to see … '

Rasche slid the school notebook in front of himself but kept a meaty hand pressed flat on it. ‘Yvonne went to see the Fräulein Bödicker at my insistence.'

‘Victoria Bödicker looks after the bookshop in her mother's absence, Inspectors. For her not to have done was to have lost the shop.'

That being the law also in Occupied France. ‘And the mother?' asked St-Cyr.

‘She's in the internment camp at Vittel.'

In France! ‘And the school notebook?' asked Hermann, the colonel then nodding curtly at Frau Lutze who ducked her head, fought for words and then finally confessed.

‘I took it. Victoria doesn't know this, so please don't tell her. Let me just put it back where I found it. She … she went into the shop to wait on a customer. I … ' Again Frau Lutze glanced at Rasche for permission. ‘I found it in a drawer and thought Otto—the colonel—should see it.'

‘The Fräulein Bödicker told Yvonne that my secretary must have gone out to the
Karneval
to get a better idea of what was needed,' said Rasche. ‘Look, it's not usual for me to concern myself with such things, but there are always demands­ these days and one handles them as best one can. The ladies of the
Winterhilfswerk
Committee felt they had to have something quite different this year if they were to raise substantially more than last year. Gauleiter Wagner can be very demanding and I … Well, when asked, I agreed to get them a little help.'

Wagner, Gauleiter of Baden and Alsace, was an absolute bastard. ‘A
Karneval
. A travelling fair?' asked Louis.

‘
Ach
, the whole thing—rides, games, booths and sideshows—had been abandoned. The owner, the performers and operators simply didn't come back from the Blitzkrieg's Exodus.'

‘Who went with your secretary?' asked Louis, reaching across the table to try to do the impossible and get the notebook away from beneath that hand.

‘No one. The little fool went alone. Renée was Alsatian. She belonged here. She … she didn't think!'

‘On Saturday afternoon, 30 January.'

‘Listen, damn you, she had no reason to kill herself!'

‘Otto, please … ' began Yvonne.

‘But someone had?' persisted Louis. ‘It's either the one or the other, Colonel.'

‘And that is why you're here at my request. Mine, you understand. Everything is as it was. I've a detail on guard. No one, unless authorized by myself, goes into that
Karneval
or comes out. The men are billeted in a nearby farmhouse.'

‘Dogs?' asked Hermann.

‘Of course.'

‘And the corpse?' asked Louis.

‘I had her cut down and covered.'

‘Left exactly as lowered?'

One had best sigh heavily at this Sûreté's penchant for detail. ‘She's in a pine box, Chief Inspector. It's cold enough, is it not, for her to keep and at the moment, far more secure than any morgue.'

‘Autopsy?'

Verdammt!
‘None. We don't normally do such things in cases like this.'

‘Do so.'

Must St-Cyr make a nuisance of himself and Kohler let him? ‘I'd rather you both took a look at her first. It's not that a coroner can't be produced—
mein Gott
, they're performing autopsies all the time at that university in Strassburg. It's … it's just that I would prefer not to submit a request until you're absolutely certain one is necessary.'

‘He doesn't want to have to go through the
Konzentrationslager
's office at Natzweiler-Struthof, Louis.'

Kohler would snort at it! ‘Our
Arbeitslagern
are all under that umbrella, yes. Kommandant Zill is often away, the Schutzhaftlagerführer Kramer … '

‘The one who keeps order, Louis. The one who does the head counts and takes care of everything else.'

‘Until June of last year, Kramer was acting Kommandant of Natzweiler-Struthof but please don't think his being passed over by Zill will have upset him in the slightest. Men like Kramer are career officers in the SS and familiar with every aspect of such camps, having served in them, in his case, since 1934. Dachau, Buchenwald or Sachsenhausen, I'm not sure at which of them he cut his teeth, but believe me, gentlemen, cut them he did—'

‘Renée Ekkehard and Victoria Bödicker were members of the committee that was having some of the
Karneval
things painted and refurbished,' interjected Yvonne. ‘Otto had agreed to lend his support and the use of five of the prisoners. A carpenter, a glazier and three others to clean and paint, or restitch canvas that had been … Ah, forgive me, please, Otto, I … I only wanted to help.'

‘I didn't formally request the loan of those men,' grumbled Rasche. ‘Kramer, like so many of his compatriots, is a fanatic when it comes to paperwork, but none of those five were anywhere near that
Karneval
on that weekend. They were at the mill and at their jobs. This I know for certain.'

‘And the other suicide?' asked Louis.

‘Was one of them.'

2

Trees, their bare branches overhanging, lined the freshly ploughed road onto which the colonel now turned. Ahead of them, the road dipped gently into a hollow where a small bridge gave easy access to a snow-covered stream. Rasche slowed the car, but did he need to shut out the ever-increasing, sooty-grey drabness of the obvious? wondered St-Cyr.

To their left, to the west in the Vosges and perhaps no more than five kilometres, the absolute beauty of snow-covered, spruce- and pine-clad hills drew one's gaze. Below these and nearer were fields where flax would once have been grown for the textile mill, but also there were orchards, among them a cluster of houses and the white stucco and gilded spire of a church whose headstones reached well above the snow. Chapel and columbarium were there to make this Sûreté think of that last Alsatian investigation. Under French law, and they had observed it here between the two most recent wars, the scattering of the ashes was forbidden, since this constituted a violation of the burial place. Usually there was a stiff fine; occasionally the three years and the 5,000 francs it had cost an undertaker in Strasbourg who had claimed, in the autumn of 1937, that all such niches had been filled and that the bishop had turned a deaf ear to cries for more. Certainly M. Édouard Klausener had been lying to bereaved widows and eager heirs too distant to have checked up on him, but to have slept with the widow of the wealthy banker whose ashes he had just scattered, to have promised marriage when he had already tied the knot? The
imbécile
. Ashes were nothing to fool with.

‘There are still trout here,' said Rasche longingly, having stopped the car on the bridge. ‘The bed of this little tributary of the Fecht is surprisingly clean and of well-rounded gravel. Granite from those hills, and its sand.'

To the east, across another field, the road they should have taken ran straight alongside the compound. Behind the wire, in its southwestern corner and nearest to them, was a large, five-storey rectangular building of faded red brick with tall chimneys on either end, but no smoke coming from them. Beyond this original mill, and running in a north to south direction side by side, one after another, were the low, ground-storey factories of modern industry whose tall chimneys pillared sooty black smoke from the steam plants, but Hermann … Hermann wouldn't be thinking of scattered crematoria ashes or of a springtime's stolen moment. He would be ever-mindful of that double-stranded, horizontally run barbed wire at fifteen centimetre intervals which was three metres high, the top canted inwardly a half-metre so that no one in their right mind would ever attempt to climb it.

Without a word, a match was struck by St-Cyr, and when the cigarette was passed forward over the back of the front seat, Rasche noticed that Kohler instinctively reached for it. These two, he wondered. Had they grown so close? Kohler had always been trouble, but had been different than most, yes, different, but had it been wise to have asked for them? Two ‘honest' detectives, ‘hated' by some, the SS in particular?

Without even turning, the Bavarian handed the cigarette to the Frenchman who took but a brief drag before passing it back and gently patting his partner on the shoulder.

‘Gentlemen, a quiet word before we go in there. Under the rules of the Geneva Convention governing prisoners of war, those above the rank of private are not obliged to work but can, if they wish, volunteer. From the autumn of 1940 well into '41, the men held here were French POWs—among them several textile workers from Lille and other places in the north. In '41 the camp at Natzweiler-Struthof came into being. Most of the French were moved out to other stalags and oflags well inside the Reich, but some were absolutely essential.'

‘Meaning that they had no other choice but to stay, Louis, and now find themselves under Kommandant Zill and Schutzhaftlagerführer Kramer.'

‘
Ach
, Kohler, please! Zill and Kramer are not above me—it's a grey area, since they are SS and I'm the Wehrmacht's representative. Among my duties as Kommandant of the Ober-Rhein,
**
I liaise with each of the Arbeitslager Kommandants and their staffs but can, since handling the discipline problems of each of those forty-seven camps is the prerogative of the
Konzentrationslager
, go only so far.'

And if that wasn't warning enough, what was? wondered Kohler.

‘Yet you were able to obtain help for the ladies of the
Winterhilfswerk
Committee,' said Louis.

Irritably rubbing away the fog on his side windscreen, Rasche again gazed up the little valley toward the hills. ‘The second of these so-called suicides ran the testing lab and was responsible for the chemical work—the dye batches, the digesters, that sort of thing. There's a staff of two that he had trained quite well for subordinate duties, but someone will definitely have to be found to replace him.'

‘The date, the exact location and time, Colonel?' asked Louis.

Rasche didn't turn from looking toward the hills. ‘Last Friday­ evening, 5 February. The men work a twelve-hour shift, but he had stayed late—the matter of a new dye batch that was coming up. When he didn't return to the barracks by lights-out—that is 2200 hours—it was felt he must have been detained­. It had happened frequently. Some prisoners do enjoy losing themselves in their work. It was thought that one of the factory guards would surely fetch him. At midnight the alarm went out and they found him soon afterward. There's a toilet near the lab. He had—'

‘Yes, yes, Colonel. The body?' asked St-Cyr, a hand firmly gripping Hermann by the left shoulder.

A glance at this Sûreté who asked the questions and felt so deeply for his partner would be sufficient, felt Rasche, and then the gate closing behind them as further warning.

‘The dogs, where are they?' asked Hermann.

‘
Ach
, they'll be in their kennels.'

‘And that second victim, Colonel?'

‘I had him put in the root cellar with the potatoes. It was, at that moment, the best I could do.'

‘The potatoes, Louis.'

Hermann was really feeling it. ‘Transport, Colonel. A busy man such as yourself can't constantly be with us.'

‘It's being arranged, but for today you'll just have to be content with me as your guide.'

Constant on the air now was the muted, agitating sound of thousands and thousands of mechanical shuttles, and the rank, chemical smell of rotten eggs.

The steps were wide and of concrete, the root cellar deep and seemingly endless under the arctic light of two widely spaced fifteen-watt bulbs. Up from the earthen floor a dampness seeped, fog hanging in the fetid air. The potatoes, too many of them rotten, lay on racks of lath in tiers, the double-wrapped cord around the victim's neck, stark white, stiff, and brand-new.

He lay on his back on one of the tiers so as not to be trampled in the aisle that ran along the centre of the bunker. Not young, not old, not tall, not short—
ah, mon Dieu
, thought St-Cyr, must the images come so fast when one had to ask, had he killed himself?

With hanging it was often impossible to tell if it hadn't been the victim's intention. Perhaps forty percent of all suicides chose this method; murderers seldom, for invariably the victim fought back, leaving marks and smashing things unless drugged or drunk, but even then there were often signs of a struggle, noises too.

The face was thin, the dark brown eyes wide open but protruding slightly. Sprays of petechiae, the little blood spots usually found just under the skin of the deceased, seemed all but absent. The bridge of the nose was sharp. He had shaved early on that Friday morning, the razor dull. The tongue wasn't swollen nor bitten through. The lips, parted slightly, were plum-blue, the slipknot up tight under the right ear, the head canted to the left.

Saliva had drooled in quantity, a vital act. Most probably, then, he had been alive as the rope had tightened. Waste had been voided but if he stank, as he must, there was no hint of this, so masked was the air.
Bien sûr
, there was nothing quite like the smell of decaying potatoes and rotten eggs.

Fully clothed, he still wore the French Army trousers he'd had during the Blitzkrieg, now much patched and crudely mended. The shirt collar was frayed but the clothes were clean, there was no dirt scaled about the throat on either side of the rope, no sign of the too-infrequent bathing one would have expected of a prison camp.

Above the rope, the neck did have its scattered petechiae; at it, the flesh was depressed, but was the ligature too tightly drawn for him to have tied it himself? one had to ask.

The backs of the hands were blotched with slate-blue to reddish-purple patches. The calves, ankles and feet would be the same. As the engine of life had ceased, gravity had simply let the heavier red corpuscles sink to the lowest spots.

‘You know the colonel wants this done quietly,' he said to the corpse, ‘so where, please, is it best we begin? I'm alone. I've told the guard who conducted me to this place that he was to close the doors behind me and return to his post on the gate. Where could I run to, eh, if run I wanted?'

The hands were tightly clenched, the thumbnails that dark, midnight blue all the others would show.

‘You were married,' said St-Cyr, leaning well in over the victim, ‘but your wedding ring isn't of gold or silver. It's been fashioned out of piece of tin and beautifully riveted. Even the edges have been curled inward so that you wouldn't cut yourself. There's an engraving—not hearts and letters but something else, something very fine. Had he Gallic and Celtic ancestors, this tinsmith-cum-jeweller? Ah,
sacré
, my light!'

Shaking the torch, he accidentally banged his head on the rack above, cursed Gestapo stores and the Occupation, said calmly now, yes, calmly, ‘
Excusez-moi
, monsieur. It's the times,
n'est-ce pas
? Spare batteries are seldom available. For each new one back home, two old ones must be turned in. Certainly when in Paris, my partner is adept at substituting ours for those of other
gestapistes
, but we haven't spent much time there of late.'

Lighting a candle, taken from his pocket, St-Cyr fixed it to one of the wooden uprights. Looking down at the victim, bathed as that one was in this gentlest of lights, he said, ‘May the grace of God be with you,
mon fils
. Though I am no priest, I doubt that one will ever see you.

‘My partner couldn't have joined me,' he added quickly. ‘Always now I feel I have to explain. You see, he can't stomach the sight of death anymore. It happens even to the best of us and he's one of them. I also don't want him heaving up that magnificent lunch. But why, please, did the colonel provide it and why was that housekeeper of his edgy, his former sergeant-major silent?'

A hanging. An ‘apparent' suicide when virtually everything seen so far indicated that was exactly what had happened.

The toilet was spotless, Kohler noted, the room no more than a small closet, the porcelain throne massive, for they had sure as hell built them to last in the 1890s when the office and the original mill had begun. The dark walnut seat, lid and brass fittings were as solid as the Rock of Bloody Ages, but
Gott sei Dank
, the cistern hadn't pulled away to crush the victim.

Standing in the doorway, he let his gaze sift slowly over everything. It had been good of Louis not to have asked him to help with the corpse, good of him to have tried to keep his partner busy and away from thinking about the wire, but neither of them had realized the size of the
Textilfabrikschrijen
, the Schrijen Works. It had been almost a two-kilometre forced march just to get to this end of the administrative building. Lagerfeldwebel Jakob Dorsche was now behind him, as were the two the sergeant had delegated to escort this detective. Uneasy—all three of them were that, the guards terrified Dorsche would tear a stripe off them for some minor infraction. After all, it was his job to keep order in the camp and Dorsche should damned well have known something like this ‘suicide' might happen and would definitely be held responsible no matter what.

Given the size of the factory, and at least three to four hundred POWs, Louis and he would not get anywhere without his help. Dorsche knew it too. Watchful blue eyes behind wire-rimmed specs missed little. The ruddy Burgermeister cheeks were round, the forehead a hard rampart of bone that had rammed many, the nose flat, wide and broken several times, the ears small and tight against the short-cropped, greying bristles under that cap, the fists hammers.

A barrel of a man in jackboots that gleamed, Dorsche took the time necessary to assess his visitor as cigarettes were found in this detective's innermost pocket and offered, the packet all but empty, the sacrifice evident.

‘
Danke
, Herr Hauptmann Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter. You've seen the notices, have you?'

‘Pardon?'

‘The fire hazard of such practices. Smoking indoors is
verboten
except in designated areas. The officers' mess, that of the men, their headquarters also, the—'

‘And here I thought—'

‘That this toilet would be used for such?'

Dorsche had been leagues ahead of him!

‘It's not often we get someone such as yourself, Herr Kohler. The stride, the set of the shoulders—one can tell a military man at a glance, a police officer also, just as it's not hard to tell a
Kriegsgefanganer
once one has been one, but please don't trouble yourself. I also was once a prisoner of war in that other conflict, the one we lost, so in their wisdom, the OKW, after much deliberation, put me in charge of this camp.'

The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the High Command, and a life behind wire, but this time,
his
wire!

Now there were only two cigarettes left in the packet. Dorsche indicated the boys. ‘Good fortune doesn't often come easily,' he said to them. ‘Beat it. I can take care of him myself.'