Clandestine (4 page)

‘
Ah mon Dieu, mon vieux
, it gets deeper and deeper, doesn't it?'

‘You really do want the last word so I'll let you have it while that
garde champêtre
of yours cooks his own little goose and fails to show himself at such a time.'

Orders were orders. Taking up his position, Rocheleau stood guard with bayoneted rifle behind the van. If the rain didn't return, he would be all right, but these old boots … The wife
would
insist that he wear them to remind that
salaud
St-Cyr of the battle, but of course a person like that would make no mention of his having been
saved
by anyone, let alone a corporal he had apprehended. Indeed, getting a medic to attend to him had not been easy, nor without extreme danger. ‘He would have died had I not done what I did, yet still he fails to thank me. Well we shall see, won't we,
Monsieur l'Inspecteur principal de la Sûreté Nationale
? When the end is near and all you collabos get what's coming to you in the purge, me I will rejoice! The blindfold, eh? The priest perhaps, but I don't think the Résistance in Reims or Laon or even in a little place like Corbeny will ever allow one. Rather it will be that the soul, it goes straight to hell.'

St-Cyr and that Gestapo partner of his were now standing in the mud beside the car that had arrived, but …
Ah merde
, Herr Kohler hadn't returned the Heil Hitler salute that the one in the back with the officer's cap had given.

There were no medals on the colonel. There didn't need to be, felt Kohler, for this one was a behind the scenes man, a non-entity, a shadow unless he, or his superior officers in Berlin, wanted it otherwise.

He was also, of course, one of Heinrich Himmler's ‘Teutonic Knights.' And as for the ruffled dumpling in the nondescript fedora and years-old grey topcoat who was now sucking on a fresh fag, that one had the look of Hamburg and the age and experience of a pending retirement that simply wasn't going to happen, not with the war in rapid retreat.

The adjutant, knowing his place, sat down behind the wheel and said nothing, neither did the Gestapo. Mud had, however, splashed the right sleeve of the colonel's coat. Livid, that one's gaze leapt.

‘Kohler, who did this, where are they, and why have you not apprehended them?'

Louis would be taking in everything while smiling at his partner's discomfort, but Berlin couldn't possibly have any interest in what had happened here. ‘
Ach
, Colonel, those are excellent questions, but might we have your name and those of the others, just for the record? And while you're at it, could you tell us who found the bodies and when? We'll assume they then reported the crime.'

‘
Lieber Christus im Himmel, verdammter Schweinebulle
, are you to remain defiant of authority even when I am in charge?'

Pig-fuzz, was it?

‘You fail to return my salute, Kohler? You give me no answers? Living with a Dutch widow whose husband was a Jew? Living also with a French whore who is young enough to have been your daughter? Well, we shall see. Now answer me, damn you.'

Louis would have urged caution, but an answer had been demanded. ‘Definitely, Colonel, but let me clear the air. The widow lost her two children during the Blitzkrieg's exodus and still hasn't found them, and the husband was later rounded up and killed, she then needing help. The “whore,” as you're calling her, is now lead model at a very fashionable shop on the
place
Vendôme—it's right near the Ritz and sells female undergarments, perfume, soap and other rare and very expensive unmentionables to generals and visiting dignitaries from the Reich. As to your questions, when my partner and I have the answers, we will be only too prepared to give them to you after first checking everything out with Gestapo Boemelburg, my superior, and Major Osias Pharand, my partner's. Now
liebe Zeit
, back off and tell us who found the bodies and when, and while you're at it, if you know something we should, then spit it out.'

This
Scheisskerl
wasn't going to like the answer to that simplest of his questions. ‘Untersturmführer Ludwig Mohnke and Oberführer Wolfgang Thomsen, his senior officer. Brigadier Thomsen wanted to show the young man the Drachenhöhle, to go over tactics he had used here during the Great War.'

La Caverne du Dragon had been a quarry on the other side of the Chemin des Dames. Enlarged into a bunker, the Wehrmacht had then made rooms and rooms for the boys to sleep, relax and take their meals in until the French had finally mined their own way in and the two sides had bricked off each other while still shooting. It wasn't any more than a kilometre or two to the south of the ruins, but that second lieutenant was related to the SS Major­ General Wilhelm Mohnke, the commander of Heinrich Himmler's bodyguard.

‘They came on here yesterday afternoon, Kohler, and found the van and the bodies at between 1430 and 1530 hours, reporting it to the General Hans von Boineburg-Lengsfeld directly on their return to Paris, since the van's head office is located in his city.'

Louis would be thinking,
Merde
, now they really were in it! That Kommandant von Gross-Paris had been a cavalry officer in the Great War and was a stickler for protocol, a dyed-in-the-wool Prussian of the old school just like his predecessor.

‘Kriminalkommissar Ludin will be your liaise, Kohler. At 0800 hours tomorrow, you will present yourself at 84 avenue Foch. A full report.'

And never mind the Führer's having put France on Central European Time in June 1940 and recently having added an hour of daylight saving time in autumn and winter, making that 0800 really 0600 the old time. ‘Not if we have to spend the night here, Colonel, and haven't finished our preliminary examination and are still awaiting Coroner Joliot and his clean-up crew.'

The first sprinklings of the next deluge had arrived. As if he had plenty of tobacco, this ‘Ludin' passed his cigarette over.

‘Contact me when you're ready, Kohler, but don't leave it too long. Full details, nothing left out, everything to myself.'

‘Then be so good as to tell us why the hell you lot should even be interested?'

‘That's for us to know, and not yourselves. Just do as I've said and we'll get along fine.'

Skidding in the mud, the tourer departed, and as they watched, that feeling of being alone against the world returned. In spite of the partnership's desperate need, Hermann crumbled the cigarette and let the deluge take it.

‘
Merde alors
, Louis, what has Boemelburg dropped us into this time?'

‘A fetid shell crater full of water and hidden by barbed wire. Let's deal with our
garde champêtre
while there's still some semblance of daylight. We'll visit his campfire, pick up the necessary, and let him stand guard while we question him from the shelter of the van.'

‘Why hasn't the bank shown up?'

‘A good question, but perhaps no one has thought to tell them or they simply got word of the other visitors and decided it would be better to wait. That
Kriminalrattenfänger
is trouble, Hermann. Didn't the RAF firebomb Hamburg on the night of 27 July last, and the USAAF during the day, the two then carrying on the visit for a few more nights and days?'

With winds said to have been at temperatures of up to 1000°C and speeds of 240 kph, there had been more than 40,000 dead, up to 100,000 injured and countless left homeless. And since
Kriminalkommissar
and
Kriminalrattenfänger
meant the same, the latter's shortened form of ‘criminal rat-catcher' would do. ‘Maybe that
Kriminalrat
is just out for blood, Louis, and feels we'll slake his thirst, but whoever killed those two didn't bother with the big bills and left virtually all of the food and wine, the champagne and black truffles.'

‘But took time to empty the pockets and take the identity papers of the victims, even the small change? That doesn't make sense.'

‘Not unless we're dealing with something very different.'

Rocheleau hadn't just stolen a few coils of sausage and several other items. His makeshift satchel, tucked as it had been behind yet further blocks of stone, betrayed something in the clutter they definitely didn't want to see. Sickened, Hermann said, ‘Where the hell is she, Louis? Out there somewhere lying naked with her throat cut?'

A forearm was grabbed to steady him. ‘It's only a pair of shoes. There could well have been a perfectly logical reason.'

‘You're hedging. Me, I can always tell. High heels like those? Dark blue leather like it used to be? Hardly ever worn? Kept for good? Those were kicked off so that she could run when those bastards up front brought her here and she realized what they were going to do. They hadn't gone into lockdown. That back door would have been locked from the outside with the key they use when collecting cash or delivering it. She wouldn't have known what the hell to do to open it and they damned well wouldn't have told her, not with what they had in mind.'

Sometimes Hermann jumped to conclusions, but was that really the case, considering the forehead of the first victim and the Opinel that had been thrown aside? Yet there had been a robbery. ‘She could have been a decoy.'

Must Louis examine everything from every angle? ‘A plant who then found she had to run? Did those two grab her?'

‘Or find her too fleet of foot, and then find a little something else? A nine millimetre in each, Hermann, the
Genickschuss
in the second, the chest up tight in the first.'

‘Then why not empty that bloody van? Why take only the small bills, cut two wedges from a Brie, snap off the neck of a bottle of Moët et Chandon and drain but a mouthful?'

This definitely wasn't good. ‘She can't have been a decoy unless the robbers and the killer intended to silence her too. We'll both have to search, you to the ruins, myself to where I think she might have headed, since its cover is somewhat better. Rocheleau is to remain on guard.'

‘I'll take that bayonet and rifle and lock them in the van.'

‘Not without its keys, Hermann. The killer must have taken them.'

‘So as to break into something else?'

The bank's depot, garage, offices or vault? Had Hermann hit on it? ‘Let's leave that one for now.'

Louis headed off toward the Chemin des Dames with determination. Young or old, corpse or no corpse, it was always the same, a detective through and through, felt Kohler. ‘And an example to us all,' he muttered, ‘but
lieber Gott, mon vieux
, is she lying up there in those woods, naked, splayed out, pegged down hard like the one I found in Munich on a Sunday, 6 May 1939 at 0540 hours?'

Ilse Grünwald had been fifteen, the throat cut so deeply, the head had all but been severed, the flashlight glinting from her eyes.

He paused. He had to, and when done, said, ‘
Verdammt
,
I can't be throwing up anymore. I'm just going to have to press on like the chief, and he knows it too.'

When he found the ashes, though soaking wet, they lay in the tall grass but a couple of metres from the ruins and ten along from the van. Almost side by side were two arched doorways, the farthest with an empty ocular that gazed with suspicion, as rampart by rampart the ruins descended until almost shoulder height next to the ashes. Incompletely burned charcoal lay amid what had to be the ash of starter wood and charcoal, suggesting that the robbers had come in the usual: a
gazogène
with firebox well dampened to make the producer-gas with which to feed the engine instead of gasoline or diesel fuel.

When he saw what looked to be metal, he began to sift the ashes, and when the corners of identity photos came up and then some coins, he fortunately found the keys to the van and set them all aside in a cluster on the nearby wall, only to find a little something else too. It was just lying there, yet tobacco was in such short supply, most collected cigarette butts and thought nothing of picking them up in the streets and bars, and this just had to be the
mégot
tin of that firebox's feeder. On its lid was an enraptured, free-spirited
fin-de-siècle
nude lying back on a divan, sampling one of the honey-and-absinthe throat lozenges and declaring it perfect while admiring a diamond the size of a pigeon's egg on her finger.

An elongated puddle, parallel to the wall, lay in the grass. Deep, it indicated a heavy load, and when that truck had finally got going again, it had skidded several times, but had that girl of the shoes managed to escape, only to be caught by the killer or one of the others who must have been with him?

When he had gathered up the necessary, he glanced behind the wall and found the charred, soggy remains of what must have been a poultice.

^{*
A lever that locks all the doors if the van is threatened.}

^{*
Tracking prices during the Occupation is exceedingly difficult, for they changed from year to year and place to place, hence best estimates for October 1943 are used.}

2

Coming to a grove of beech, St-Cyr immediately began to gather a few of the nuts only to stop himself. He was now to the south of the ruins and much nearer to the Chemin des Dames. From its lower heights, he could look back out over the flat valley floor to see Hermann and then the van, the ruins running east-to-west to catch maximum sunlight whenever possible, for the Cistercians always built their abbeys this way and with plenty of water, forest and field. He could even follow the line of the hollow, now full of rainwater, that must mark the top of the once much deeper, timber-lined channel that would have conducted water from the Ailette to gristmill, forge, brewery, latrines and sawmill, and the ponds in which the monks would have raised the carp they ate instead of meat. But they would not have used that water for everything. He was, he realized, near the spring they would have visited daily for their drinking water and cooking. He could even hear it.

Uphill of him, the sodden ferns revealed cobbles in places that had once paved the former path, but had that girl known of the spring, had she run this way knowing there might be a grotto in which to hide from those two in the van?

Nothing was broken, nothing flattened. It was as if she had deliberately avoided leaving any such trace, and when he came to the spring, it poured readily over a flat, grey slab of limestone the monks could well have left in place.

Pausing to drink as he would have done in 1914 or 1917 had opportunity allowed, he rested a hand on the slab. Surprisingly, it moved ever so slightly, but …

‘Did you even come this far?' he had to ask, and only then saw that she must have slipped away to his left to enter somewhat denser forest uphill. But she wasn't there either. Instead, a good twenty metres from the spring, the single frond of very healthy fern among many had been hesitantly grasped and its top broken. No others had been damaged, but he was all but certain she had stood where he now was. Having heard the first of the shots, she had sought comfort in that touch and then, as the second shot had come, had instinctively snapped the frond and known exactly what must have happened.

Not until he returned to the edge of the encroaching forest, and with his back to the Chemin des Dames, did he find any further evidence.

She had stood here and waited, not knowing if she, too, would be killed.

Two healthy young saplings of hornbeam had been deliberately trampled. Of the two killings, the first he had examined had been the closer. The second had been all but across the ruins to the north and by that peripheral wall, which could only mean that she had run that way first and then had used that wall to hide her coming back and around the ruins to here and the spring. ‘But why leave such a trace, mademoiselle, when you already knew the location?' Hermann had gone all but right around the ruins of the church and remains of its outbuildings, had even had a look at the bodies, for he was standing by the farthest, holding a corner of the tarp, had forced himself to do it. But if she hadn't been a decoy, then what better way for her to get through the controls and into Paris unnoticed than by riding in the back of a bank van? Unless he was very mistaken, she couldn't have known that it was going to be robbed, nor that those two would even think to turn on her.

Still feeling her former presence, he heard himself saying, ‘
Ah bon
, mademoiselle, Joliot and his crew have finally arrived. The two who are with him can start looking for you in earnest then come back tomorrow with others and the dogs if needed. But if the killer didn't shoot you, what then?'

Joliot's faded dark-blue 1933 Peugeot 301 two-door didn't have a firebox. Instead, having been fitted with a roof-top battery of fifteen-centimetre diameter metal tubes to hold the bottled producer-gas from the depot in Laon, it looked like a badly designed makeshift rocket launcher. One of the Russian ‘organs' perhaps, their ‘little Kate's' from the tender song of such a girl, the banefully howling Katyusha.

When Hermann caught up with him, he said, ‘Yet another
gazogène
, Louis. That killer came in a heavily loaded one.'

More couldn't be said.

‘Mes amis,'
shouted Joliot, who looked like a rake handle in stiff black tweed and a detachable snap-on collar that had been yanked at so hard Kohler could see that it had come loose. ‘
Putain de merde
, Jean-Louis and Herr Kohler, the fart-gas that wretched old china vase of ours insists on gave the carburettor a hiccup and stopped me cold on the road. Me, I was patching a tire whose inner tube only Picasso would want for the variety and design of its innumerable patches. Profound apologies. Emergency repairs take time and these old hands, they can only do so much when that Victor of Verdun insists I pay the official eighty francs for a new inner tube that will be useless if I can get it, instead of the eight hundred of the
marché noir
where the availability and quality are almost, if not quite, as they used to be. What have you two for me this time, eh? More trouble?'

So many china vases had been made with Pétain's mug on them, the
maréchal
had acquired that epithet, thought Kohler, but it was Louis who said, ‘Just the two for now, Théo. We need you to pin down the time, but there may also have been another.
Garde champêtre
Rocheleau will be only too willing to show you where the first two are, and while you're at it, Hermann and I will give the van another going over.'

‘Rocheleau,
ah oui, oui
, that one, he has the wife who is twenty years the younger and has not only ambitions for him but for herself. Me, I don't envy him, even if she does have a figure fit for the gods and likes to display it. Father Adrien, their priest, simply lifts the eyes of despair and tosses the futile hand since the confessional, it is private and none of my business. No one comes here, Jean-Louis, yet suddenly there's a robbery and two murders and we must have tourists who visit the Caverne du Dragon
yesterday and happen upon the bodies when looking at the ruins here? Order is required, Herr Kohler. Order is what the Kommandant of Laon and others are insisting upon because of the robbery. Apparently having our police look after things is no longer any good, and even Herr Oberg in Paris is demanding that Vichy allow him to bring in good German police to oversee the whole 150,000 of the force, not just the 30,000 in Paris. Me, I happen to think they're crazy but that the
maréchal
and those people he has with him in Vichy had better agree since there are bound to be further such incidents, and spring is coming,
n'est-ce pas
?'

Again the Allies and the invasion.

Boots, oilskin, hat, satchel and specs were adjusted, a hand lifted in salute as Rocheleau deferentially came to lead him away.

‘Joliot's even wearing a two-franc Marianne, Louis, and the coins I've collected for you just aren't the same.'

Back in 1940, the wearing of all such badges and pins, political or not, had been forbidden, but lately the young especially had taken to making protest buttons of the discontinued small coinage of the Troisième République. ‘Théo's six granddaughters know well enough that the head of Marianne and the cloth cap she wears are symbols of liberty. As one of the Occupier, Hermann, I expect you to say nothing beyond telling him that it brightens up such an atrocious suit.'

‘
Ach
, no one but an idiot would ever challenge a coroner lest he find one looking over him.'

When they climbed into the back of the van, Hermann chose the bolted-down swivel chair she must have sat in and, opening the
mégot
tin, found the butts and matches dry. ‘Junos from home, Louis, makhorka too.'

And taking out that last letter, dated 8 November 1942, from his Jurgen and Hans that had finally found its way to him two days ago, he read:

Vati, only the captains get tobacco made from the leaves. The others get the really strong stuff from the stems and because their clothing is so heavy and their boots often lined with felt, the scent clings and, though we can't hear them at night, we can smell them.

‘Let's try it, shall we?' said Louis.

‘We'd only choke, but it does tell us our firebox operator's been around. There are also Lucky Strikes and Camels from downed American aircrew, and Woodbines and Wills Goldflake from RAF aircrew. Dropped, probably, by Wehrmacht and picked up in bars frequented by those same boys.'

‘We'll have to ask him.'

‘If we ever find him, and we had better. Rocheleau's a problem, Louis. When a coroner even hints at something, we'd better listen.'

‘He'll still have to pay the penalty, Hermann. We can't have him stealing evidence that is badly needed.'

‘Maybe a warning. At least let's listen to him when he comes back.'

‘Rocheleau will only lie and accuse us of having stolen things if confronted by that
Kriminalrat
colleague of yours from Hamburg.'

‘Back off! His silence, even for a few days, might just give us the time we need. The bigger the issue, the lesser the other.'

It was an old argument, but perhaps the importance of something else should be emphasized. ‘Although from 1910, your
mégot­
tin is almost as if brand-new.'

‘Bought from among the fleas of Saint-Ouen?'

‘Hopefully it will lead us to the seller who can then lead us to the buyer.'

‘There were also the keys to the van, and these.'

Coins and the charred corners of ID photos.

‘And this.'

Singed at its edges, scorched on the underside, the poultice held a sachet between the two layers of cloth. ‘Laid against a ragged tear in the skin, Hermann. Cloves, thyme too, and lavender, camomile as well probably. A temporary attempt until medical assistance, since a good deal of pus was leaking and the wound must have been badly inflamed. The cloves would have been for the pain, the thyme for its antibacterial, the camomile to readily soothe the inflamation and the lavender to offer both its stimulation and calming due to such a pleasant aroma.'

‘You should have been a herbalist monk.'

Since they were in a place where there would have been successions of them. ‘The sachet is first plunged into boiling water and then applied as hot as can be withstood.'

‘But not made up here, Louis. It couldn't have been, not when in such a hurry, but did they bring her back to that truck and take her with them?'

‘That we won't know for a while, but why the attempt to destroy it and the pocket contents of the others?'

‘Evidence someone didn't want hanging around, not after the killings.'

‘And who was that someone, Hermann, since those items must have been seized and flung into the firebox?'

Trust Louis to always look beyond the obvious. ‘A boss who wasn't happy and in one hell of a hurry, hence a forgetful firebox handler, but a killer who should never have taken what he did.'

‘But was she originally in the truck hitching a ride and then in the van?'

Merde
, must Louis look beyond everything? ‘If so, that
gazogène
could never have kept up with it.'

‘
Ah bon, précisément
, since it had a gasoline-driven engine which would have put them at least an hour or more ahead of that truck.'

Scheisse!
‘Which was heavily loaded, and since they damn well couldn't have known where that van would be taking her, did they happen to see it from the road to Laon, eh, since we went through a woods to get here?'

Apparently the small things did matter. ‘But why is she so important Berlin are interested, Hermann, or is she the reason at all?'

Some questions simply didn't have ready answers.

‘Ah, Rocheleau, these shoes,' said Louis. ‘Come up, squeeze in and point out exactly where and how you found them. They may be important.'

This Sûreté was going to have him dismissed, thought Rocheleau. Lackey to his Gestapo partner, he had even spread the rest of the satchel's contents at that one's feet. ‘The wife,' he heard himself blurt. ‘Inspectors, you must …'

Already there were tears behind those Bakelite windows, thought Kohler, but the
salaud
would only blame Louis unless his partner took charge. ‘Might I remind you that it's Chief Inspector St-Cyr and Herr Detektivinspektor Kohler of the Kriminalpolizei i.e., the Geheime Staatspolizei.'

‘Hermann,
please
, these are difficult times.
Garde champêtre
Rocheleau, like far too many others, had his wages frozen in the autumn of 1940. The wife, Eugène?'

Was further humiliation now to be demanded? ‘My Évangéline loves to dance and those, they are of her size or almost.'

Kohler couldn't resist. ‘Isn't dancing considered an affront to those million-and-a-half of your boys in our prisoner-of-war camps and the others that have been buried? Dancing is in the Third Reich,
as is kissing in public, and exactly the same as your
maréchal
has banned.'

‘
Ah oui, oui, mais …'

‘But dances are held each week near Corbeny, are they, in someone's barn or forest clearing?'

‘Hermann …'

‘Louis, I can't believe it. A thief, and now a rural cop who allows dancing. Gestapo Boemelburg will be demanding the maximum.'

‘Hermann, surely you know, as I do, that were
garde champêtre
Rocheleau to have arrested those involved, he would not only have been hated by everyone in his district, those who had information would be reticent to impart it. Eugène, please point out for us exactly where and how these shoes were found.'

Ten or even twenty years of hard labour, wondered Rocheleau. Is that what this Gestapo would demand? Squeezing past the boxes, the litter and all the rest, he laid the shoes on the rubber mat that was also under Herr Kohler's. ‘She must have been sitting in this chair and quickly pried them off when the van came to a stop and she realized what those two were going to do. She then leaped between them when the door was unlocked and opened.'