Carnival (6 page)

A match was struck. Dorsche leaned in, and as he lit his cigarette, he said, ‘A Wills Gold Flake? You impress me, Herr Kohler. Did you shoot the aircraft down or only arrest its British pilot and crew after they had bailed out and tried to escape?'

‘Neither, and so much for this not being a designated area. Look, we need your help.'

‘I would have thought that obvious.'

‘Then I'd be grateful if you would go over everything. Who found him, the time as closely as possible, the position of the body, the rope … '

‘And anything suspicious?'

‘Even the smallest detail.'

‘Like cigarette ashes in a tin cup and a man perhaps taking a contemplative moment at 2207 hours?'

One of the guards must have reported this but a sigh would be best. ‘Look, I know your eyes are as good as mine, if not better.'

Ach
, how humble of Herr Kohler. ‘This toilet services both the laboratory and the administrative offices on this floor. The secretaries … there are five of them and one other woman, also the Lageroffizier, the Oberstleutnant Rudel and others of his staff, still others too. I tell you this only so that you will realize that they were in the habit of using it as well but normally not at that time of night.'

But had any of them left something they shouldn't have? wondered Herr Kohler, unable to prevent himself from glancing up at the cistern.

‘There was nothing but water in it,' said Dorsche. ‘I checked.'

‘But what led you to do so? Apart, that is, from your normally suspicious nature?'

A shrug had best be given.

‘Didn't he have a guard with him?'

Had there been a note of panic in Herr Kohler's voice? ‘
Kein Posten
. The one who killed himself needed no guard here and was free to come and go. Orders. … Who am I to question the will of my superior officers? Oberstleutnant Rudel is in charge of the
Lagerführung
.'

The camp office.

‘It is he who issues the
Passierscheine und Ausweise
that allow such workers to come and go at all hours.'

The temporary passes and the more permanent ones and identity papers all such places would demand. ‘And the body?'

‘Was found by Gefreiter Hartmann at 0011 hours Saturday. He touched nothing and immediately notified me.'

‘Who, in turn, notified the Oberstleutnant.'

‘Who then notified Kommandant Rasche, as was his duty.'

‘All right, we've got the chain of command. Now tell me exactly what you saw.'

‘Hanging is never pleasant.'

‘And I'm fresh out of cigarettes. Sorry.'

‘Then try one of these.
Ach
, take two. You may need them. These days one never knows.'

They were Junos and right away they brought moisture to Herr Kohler's eyes, for they were often a Berliner's first choice and he'd once been a detective there. ‘Two?' he asked, as if the truth were hard to accept and he'd been away too long.

‘Sweepings. Hay, chaff, dried herbs and other things like carrot tops. With tobacco, of course, or else they couldn't legally have sold them as such, could they, a government that doesn't lie?'

Berlin, and Louis should have heard him! ‘The Gauloises bleues and Gitanes we've been getting have rat shit in them. There aren't many horses left in France, so it has to be that. I use the leaves of the red beech, cured in a biscuit tin I keep buried deeply in one of the manure piles out at the racetrack, but because of the threat of terrorism from the
Banditen
, the Résistance, if you like, they've had to move the races to Le Tremblay from Longchamp. When black and crumbled, the leaves have no taste and are perfect for thinning good tobacco, if you can get it. Twenty percent. More and they're a waste; less and it just keeps getting better and better.'

A connoisseur. ‘Then you'll understand that it's hard to keep paper here.'

Dorsche indicated the all but spent roll of grey, unbleached tissue most POWs would never see. ‘Was he taking it for his pals?'

‘When he thought he could get away with it, but when one has nothing else but the pages of one's Bible why, one does what one can, is that not so?'

It was. ‘What's the ration?'

‘Two packets of twenty a fortnight, or fifty grams of the loose, with papers. The POWs are supplied through their parcels from home and those of the Red Cross, so they don't always need what we bring in for their canteen, when we can get it, of course.'

And don't need it! ‘Was there anything else here?'

‘A little something … '

The copy of the magazine,
Schöne Mädchen in der Natur
, was thin, the full-page black-and-white spreads well taken. All the girls were totally naked and generously posed. They lounged, stretched, bent over backward and pressed their hands to the gymnasium's floor as they grinned.

‘Every man, even a
Kriegsgefangener
, needs a little diversion from time to time,' mused Dorsche.

‘Pants down when found?'

‘Up. Belt and buttons tight. No signs of an erection on death as can be quite common. None of the—'

‘All right, all right! Who left it and why?'

Now that was a good question, but a shrug would be best.
Ach
, the shoulders, the rheumatism …

Dorsche winced and Kohler let him be for the moment. Though the Nazis had a damp view of pornography, they encouraged healthy eroticism to boost the birth rate. All of the major hotels offered these above-the-counter ‘health-and-art' magazines which often found their way to Paris where they were earnestly compared with photos the French produced in spite of the extreme shortages of photographic materials.

‘You'd best let me keep this, Lagerfeldwebel.'

‘Certainly.'

‘Anything else?'

A thorough detective, was that it? ‘His carpenter's nail and stone, set carefully on the floor to one side. The left. Here, you can have those too.'

‘And this?'

Herr Kohler indicated the magazine and had best be told a little something to keep him happy. ‘Angrily folded and jammed behind that roll of tissue in the dispenser, and wet with his tears, I think, since there was also this.'

And torn from another magazine, the upfront buff-shot of a grinning young Wehrmacht stallion, one of the ‘boys' the French girls in Paris and elsewhere were having such a time with.

‘He's not from here, so don't even bother trying to attach a name to him.'

The candle having burned down, the victim was again seen only in electric light. Shadows, cast by the lath and potatoes, fell on him.

‘You won't mind, will you, if I take a look at these?' asked St-Cyr, gesturing companionably with pipe in hand. ‘Please don't think it an invasion of your privacy and detective meddling. Think of it as a necessity if we are to get at the truth.'

On the earthen floor at his feet were the last effects, taken from the pockets. Like soldiers everywhere, Eugène André Thomas had carried snapshots of his loved ones: the wife as a girl of twenty at Paris's Lutetia Pool, then as a bride and as the radiant mother of a brand-new baby boy. One of little Paul at the age of six months, another at a year and a half, Madame Paulette Thomas holding him by the hand and delighted by his timid steps.

‘Radiant still,' he said. ‘But last Friday night, monsieur, you ripped her photo apart, though taking care to save your son from such a fate. Had she betrayed you?'

As always these ‘discussions' were as if with the living, and everything that could be was used. ‘Betrayal,
mon ami
. Certainly what has happened to her photos cries this out. Wayward wives are sadly becoming an ever-increasing problem at home, especially in the larger cities and towns where food is scarce and prices astronomical. Your rank was that of a private, though as a chemist you could have been an NCO, and I must ask, were you a bit of a rebel?'

There was no answer. ‘Had Madame Paulette taken to the streets to feed herself and your son?'

Again nothing was forthcoming. Perhaps some common ground would be useful. ‘Look, I know such a thought is hard, and that it takes time for one to adjust if true. Before she and our little Philippe were tragically killed early last December by a bomb that was meant for me, my second wife, my Marianne, had carried on a torrid affair with one of the Boche. Although I forgave her immediately, and was able to convey this to her, if only on one occasion, I do know what it feels like to be a cuckold. The long absences, the loneliness she had had to deal with—it was all my fault, and I readily admit it. And the bomb, you ask? The
Résistance
keep putting me on some of their hit lists. The Gestapo found the bomb and left it in place. Apparently neither side is content. The former think I'm a collaborator because I have to work with Hermann; the latter hate our guts for always pointing the finger of truth. Let's face it, these days no one is happy except for those who are swimming in the gravy.'

There were no photos of the parents, none of a brother or sister or in-law. The couple, it appeared, had had only themselves. ‘You weren't from Lille or any of the other textile cities and towns in the northeast, as the colonel stated. You lived in Paris, in Issy-les-Moulineaux, an industrial suburb in the southwest of the city. Chemicals, leather, bronze, copper and aluminium, the National tobacco factory that employs 3,000 to make the crap they ration. The giant Renault Works is also nearby, in Boulogne-Billancourt on the Île Seguin. It's the one that makes things for the Wehrmacht, like a lot of other such concerns.'

A flat on the suburb's avenue de la Paix, at numéro 43, wouldn't be up-market, but was within a short walk of the old Fort d'Issy and the school on the rue du Fort. A good choice, one would think. Oh for sure, things hadn't been easy in the thirties for chemists like this and millions of others. They had picked up in '38, possibly a little before that, but the couple would have married in hard times, the baby coming right away, so in late '37 probably. There weren't more recent photos, even those that must have been taken just before the Blitzkrieg, but perhaps they were still pinned up beside his bunk. ‘You didn't tear them, too, did you?' he asked.

Thomas would likely have received a few photos in relief parcels from home and would, most probably, have been made aware by the camp's administration that the Renault Works had been bombed by the RAF on the night of 3 March last year. Five hundred dead; 1,500 wounded, but had Paulette Thomas been terrified or had she been elsewhere on that night, having left their little son in the care of a neighbour as so many unlicenced
filles de joie
were now doing?

‘Let's face it,
mon ami
, the pay of a private is next to nothing and as the wife of a common soldier, conscripted in '39, all she can hope for are the allowances Vichy doles out per child and per wife or dependent parent. Granted, after much debate and thousands of complaints, the Maréchal Pétain, our illustrious Head of State, and his ministers in Vichy where the government resides, reluctantly agreed to an additional two francs per day to ease the burden POW wives suffer when sending parcels to their husbands. After all, there are 1,500,000 of you,
n'est-ce pas
, and that's one hell of a lot of unhappy wives since almost sixty percent of you are married and forty percent have children at home. She did send you parcels, didn't she?'

They would have to find out. ‘Two lousy francs,' he grated­, ‘at a time when five kilos of potatoes in Paris cost 2,000 on the
marché noir
, the half a kilo of sugar another 2,000. An inner tube for the bicycle of necessity everyone has to have these days, costs 250; a new tyre, 1,000 if you can get any of these items and avoid arrest, since it's illegal to deal on that market, though the Church now says one can buy but not sell on it.'

He would toss a hand at such idiocy, would add, ‘There's no milk available in a country that once produced so much its milk trains were a regular feature. Granted, those wives whose incomes fail to reach 5,000 francs a year, can apply for a supplement and relief from all but the land tax, and a reduction in their rent. But to get these, one has to go down on the knees, and even then, there are over 30,000 POW wives in Paris alone who must exist on less than 1,000 francs a month.'

One couldn't do it without help and that, if not the terrible loneliness and uncertainty plus being the sole caregiver, was the problem. Two and a half years of it now.

Four hundred and seventy-one Lagermark, the ‘Lagergeld' or Lager Gold, had been in a tight roll, in the right-hand pocket­. Worthless outside the camp, no doubt. Certainly the money couldn't be sent home, although Vichy had said that if working prisoners could be allowed home on holiday—yes, on holiday!—they would be able to exchange the Lagermark for francs. There were eleven tens, six fifties, the rest being in fives, twos and ones and all with serial numbers well into their tens of millions.

A postcard, sent a good six weeks ago but only just received, had been forgotten in a back pocket. Saved from the bitter haste of the tearing, it said: “
Mon cher Eugène, Each day we pray for your return, each night I long for the moment we'll be together again
.”

‘Those aren't the words of a betrayer, Monsieur Thomas. They're those of a wife who loved you desperately.'

There wasn't much more on the postcard. Only seven lines were allowed and the censors had been at the rest. Those of the Pétain Government first, and then those of the
Lagerführung
. ‘One can but imagine the humility you felt at having others read your personal mail and then delete as much as they pleased, but had she had another child? One that you were unaware of until word came through from another source, an anonymous one? Please, I must ask. You see, you wouldn't have received such a notice directly. You would have gotten the news from the Lager office, which would have received it from Vichy's Berlin office of the
Service diplomatique des prisonniers de guerre
.'