Carousel (34 page)

‘Then they will kill me, Hermann, unless you do exactly as they say, and they will kill that one up on the stage.'

‘Who did that to her, Jean-Louis?
Who
beat her with a belt so hard the welts will never be erased?'

The dressing-room, off the narrow corridor behind the stage, was very small, but they were alone.

‘Why can't you answer me?'

The eyes were of that deep fullness of colour violets get when in the shade of new leaves. The hands were slender and pressed together on her lap so that the diamonds, the seed pearls and the chatoyant, shimmering blue of the sheath were as one and in prayer.

‘Gabi, listen to me. Lafont and Bonny are untouchable. The rue Lauriston holds –'

‘Such power they can tear a young girl's buttocks and back to pieces and bruise her breasts like that, eh? Me, I have thought you
better
than to be afraid of such as they! We agreed, did we not, to do something together for France?'

The moisture of shame was in his eyes. He had to let her see it. ‘Please don't say anything like that. Don't even think it. You're Russian, Gabrielle, an illegal émigré for all they care. You can go to dinner at Maxim's, the Ritz or the Tour d'Argent with any or all the German generals you like, but none of them will stand in their way if Lafont and Bonny really want to kill you, because they
are
the Gestapo, they
are
the tools of the SS. Just give me time. Let me settle this in my own way.'

She tossed her hands, was through with him. ‘I can't go with you and Kohler to Périgord. It's impossible. Me, I refuse absolutely this “protection” you offer. I've too much else to do. Besides, there is the club to think of.'

‘And all the money you're raking in, eh? Ah! forgive me. I shouldn't have said that.'

‘We hardly know each other. Perhaps it is best we don't.'

‘Yes … yes, that would be best but they would never believe it.'

‘So what do we do?'

‘We find the gold and we find out who did the killings.'

‘And then?'

‘We let them have the gold because that is all they really care about.'

‘And what if someone tries to stop you?'

‘We kill him, Gabi, or he kills us.'

‘And this gold?' she asked hotly. ‘These louis d'or or whatever. Where are they hidden?'

‘That I wish I knew.'

‘To hide best is to expose the things you value most to view. Ah, don't tell me you didn't notice the furniture in that place of mine? A small fortune under heavy paint. Things bought for a song and kept because they are hidden so well and …' the eyes were lowered, for he had the gaze of a saint at times like this,' … and because I am content in knowing I have saved a few of them, the paintings also.'

‘Don't give me the heroine's tale, Gabrielle. Me, I know only too well of your shrewdness and much admire that quality in a woman. What you do both here and with those things you keep in that flat of yours is no concern of mine, eh? But please, please, madame, don't tell me you do it for the good of France.'

‘Ah! don't be so wounded, idiot! I'm trying to tell you something.
Look
where others have looked but failed to see.'

He drew in a breath. ‘Anger makes you even more beautiful.'

‘Compliments won't hide the truth, Jean-Louis. Take care of yourself.'

St-Cyr got up. She turned away to the mirror. Thoughts of what had happened to Giselle le Roy intruded. He knew she was weakening, knew any signs of weakness would be rapidly overcome.

‘What will you do about the hostages?' she asked. ‘The twenty-nine who are still left?'

‘Who told you one of them had died?'

‘No one. It's of no consequence. I only ask because one has to ask such things, isn't that right?'

Someone connected with the Resistance must have told her. Ah, Nom de Dieu … He let a hand fall to her shoulder. ‘Von Schaumburg will release them if we find Schraum's killer, but me, I greatly fear that that one will turn out to be as French as all the rest so they will be lost in any case.'

‘Please close the door and tell them I will be a few more minutes.'

‘Gabi …'

‘
Don't
! Please don't. Just go.'

Ah
merde, merde
! Why would she not listen?

8

Mist crept up the forested slopes to be caught by the wind on the heights above the rocky gorge. There was snow in the air and water dripping from the branches.

‘It's beautiful, is it not?' croaked the Frog with all the hushed reverence of a monk.

‘Piss off. I'm catching my death. Goose shit and worry in the eyes of that little one who was force-feeding the feathers between her thighs. No one in his right mind would be anywhere but by the fire.'

Kohler eased the stiffness in his back. Eighteen hours in the saddle and for what? A glimpse of Périgord at dawn, the finest scenery in France?

‘You should have stayed at the château, my friend, or at the walnut mill. But ah no, you had to force yourself upon my patience! Kindly shut up and leave this to the French who understand such things.'

‘Don't get your ass in a knot, Louis. Gabi will be okay.'

‘And Giselle, eh? What of her? Antoine Audit is out here somewhere, Hermann. Find a man in his element and you understand him best.'

‘Find a girl like that stroking geese like that and ask her to join you in the hay, my old one. You need it, Louis. You're becoming bitchier than usual.'

‘That girl is
nothing
, Hermann! Just a diversion the latest Madame Audit tolerates but barely. If one knows where to look, one finds.'

The road south from Limoges had been a bastard. Once through St-Yrieix-la-Perche they had hit the kaolin pits, then wound through the hills and valleys to a doubtful crossing at Muquet. After that Louis had tried to alleviate things by going on and on about the cave art of Upper Palaeolithic man as if the heart of Périgord were at once the heart of humanity and the River Vézère the Nile of that dawning age some 40,000 to 10,000 years ago!

There were caves in the yellowish limestone scarps at Les Eyzies, La Mouthe, Font-de-Gaume, Les Combarelles and Lascaux, the latest and most spectacular find of all. The last ice age had still been very much a fact of life when those caves had been occupied. Swollen rivers here and rains.

‘Food-gatherers, Hermann. Is it not odd that Périgord should be the cradle of modern man and of the black truffle?'

‘I just hope we haven't made a mistake leaving Oona at the château.'

‘She'll sleep as long as Madame Audit allows her to.'

‘So what gives then, eh?'

‘What gives is that the goose girl said our Monsieur Antoine would take the pigs with him today.'

Kohler found the crushed remains of a last cigarette but there were no dry leaves to offer help as paper. ‘The pigs,' he said.

‘Female pigs are used on level ground, mongrel bitches on the slopes.' A self-evident, if grumpy fact.

‘From here I see lots of slopes, my old one, but level ground that's far too distant for my lack of boots and wings.'

The opposite side of the gorge! ‘If I remember correctly, Hermann, I warned you to equip yourself accordingly.'

Still bitchy, still worried, eh, and in need of a damned good lay. ‘Since when did that God of yours grant you wings?'

St-Cyr heaved a sigh. ‘The
Tuber melanosporum
favours the moist areas near the roots of the oak, Hermann. We look for oaks and we look for ground a female pig would not have too much difficulty traversing.'

‘The pig gets the scent, the gatherer digs for the fungus, so we look for the holes, right?'

Sometimes the Gestapo tried so hard to be helpful. ‘The holes are carefully covered over, Hermann. The whole thing is done in great secrecy since the black gold of the Périgord is exceedingly valuable.'

‘And mid-December's the best time, right?'

‘You're improving but please, don't try my patience. Me, I have had enough of your terrible driving. I will take my chances here because I must.'

‘A walk to where, then?' asked Kohler, dumfoundedly looking around at the woods.

‘Where the scent would lead a man whose fortune began with the fungus, Hermann. A man who must return to its hunt each year as the pilgrim seeks the spiritual nourishment of Jerusalem or the Shrine at Mecca.'

‘You're too deep for me, pal.'

‘Then leave me to the truffle-hunter and go back to that girl with the geese. Sweet-talk her a little, find out what you can. Already the empire of Antoine Audit is far more extensive than I had imagined.'

‘That château up on the rocks?'

‘Purchased for a song from a departing Jew unless I'm mistaken.'

‘Take care of yourself, Louis. Don't get lost.'

‘Don't get shot at either, eh? Can't you feel it, Hermann? Can't you sense the tensions of these hills and rocky valleys? Generations of feuds and petty jealousies going well back before the Romans, each landowner fiercely guarding his holdings against all poachers, yet coveting the land of his neighbours? The pigs will be doing their work while the hunter watches with more than half an eye for other game and listens lest his secret be discovered.'

‘He'll hear the car as it leaves.'

‘You impress me, Inspector. For you there's still hope.'

‘Since when would the Reich allow them guns?'

‘If you've friends in the right places, Hermann, all things are possible. In any case, who's to know out here?'

He had a point. ‘Shall I come back for you at noon?'

St-Cyr shook his head. ‘That's too early. Once the sun is fully up, the frost will leave the ground and the hunt will go on in earnest until darkness. He'll have transport back to the mill. I'll hitch a ride.'

‘We'll have to find us a place to stay.'

‘I'm sure Madame Audit will be more than willing to oblige a member of the Führer's Gestapo, Hermann.'

A hint, eh? Kohler gave him a handful of slugs for the Lebel. ‘Fire three in sequence if you get lost. The sound will carry down the gorge.'

‘Enjoy the girl's fist. Don't slip in the shit.'

He ignored the jibe. ‘You watch your back, eh? Remember brother Charles and friend Réjean could just as easily have taken a little holiday.'

‘By train?'

‘Or truck, especially as M Antoine has them running to and from Paris on a more or less regular basis. Wine and pâté, remember? Silk and Cream of the Walnut.'

‘The more there are to hunt, the richer the harvest.'

‘The better the omelette, eh?'

‘They won't leave Paris, Hermann, because they can't.'

‘If I were you, I'd not be so sure of myself.'

The Citroën dwindled from sight, but just before it turned down into the gorge, Hermann stopped and got out to look back at him. Mist trailed across the road. The forest, naked of its leaves, seemed to frown as they walked towards each other, two lonely men with their cross.

‘It's merely a matter of deduction, Hermann. Antoine Audit holds answers his brother Charles and Réjean Tourmel want desperately to keep hidden as does he himself. Why else the girl in that room at the Hotel of the Silent Life, why else this butterfly or these gold and emerald earrings she could not possibly have worn?'

‘Why else the coins that were forged, eh, Louis? Why else the carousel? Do as you're told, my fine Frog friend. Watch your back because I won't be around to watch it for you.'

‘Then you do the same for yourself.'

The man they had come so far to see was not easy to find. Though barren of its leaves, the forest all too often hid things. Always the smell of damp, rotting leaves was present, warmer now perhaps because the day had grown and the mist had begun to clear.

Since leaving the road, St-Cyr had climbed to the heights, for the Périgord was an old and much dissected plateau where the elements of karst topography had been played in collapsed sinkholes, scarps, abandoned river gorges and flat-lying uplands. Not always were there oaks. Spasms of misguided plantation fever had seeded pines for lumber but they'd not had a decent time of it. Too much lime in the soil probably. The chestnut trees had fared better, the poplars, of course, much better still, and some of these had retained a few recalcitrant leaves on branches that had been broken during an early ice storm or by the winds.

Those leaves tended to stir, and long before he would come upon the poplars, he would know where they were. But, ah Mon Dieu, where was Audit? To come so far, to leave loved ones behind in grave danger, twenty-nine hostages also, was unforgivable.

Just when he realized he was being stalked was not quite clear. There'd been a shallow dip in the crown of a hill, a grove of magnificent walnut trees, quite unexpected, for he'd been amongst them before he'd noticed a few stray nuts and had stopped to gather them.

The undergrowth had been sparse. Had he heard something? The distant barking of dogs, the flight of a partridge? A step perhaps?

Never the grunting of a sow upon which he had, at first, depended as much as on the flatness of the land.

Going from tree to tree, he'd suddenly stopped. Yes … yes, there'd been a half-step.

This one was of the forest.

Now a flat-floored, empty gorge opened into a former plunge pool where once there had been a waterfall. Oaks grew in profusion among the blocky boulders. The scree was thick and of that yellowish, buff tint, invariably stained by oxides of iron like the walls of the gorge that rose perhaps to a height of 20 metres and just above the crowns of the trees.

He knew he had walked right into it – he'd been making circles, trying to come up behind his starting point, only to find the circles had become spirals that had taken him farther and farther from their start.