Dollmaker (15 page)

Louis would be thinking of him and worrying too. He would have seen the Admiral's signs and automatically understood that for him the bunkers were off limits. He would find the Sous-Préfet and then head back out to the clay pits for another look.

Louis seldom missed things. They had both been lucky to be assigned each other. Boemelburg had known of Louis from before the war. A Gestapo watcher had been needed for the Frenchman, someone to take care of the guns and hand one over when the shooting started.

He had wanted detectives and that's what he had got.

It would be best to use the badge and shield. ‘Kohler, Gestapo Central, here on the orders of Gestapo Mueller.'

Kohler … Kohler of the Kripo, that most insignificant arm of Herr Himmler's police force, Common Crime. The whip scar was there, the graze of a bullet wound on the forehead, the shrapnel scars from that other war. ‘
fa
, it is him, Heinz.' The Feldwebel with the bulbous nose, the warts and the blackheads thumbed the ID and shrugged, then plucked a notice from a clipboard on the wall and proceeded to read it slowly.

‘Good
Gott im Himmel, Dummkopf
, I'm on a murder investigation! Let me through or Gestapo Mueller will have your ass.'

The puffy blue eyes blandly surveyed him. The nose, with all its curly black hairs, was pinched in thought, the fleshy chin grasped. ‘Herr Mueller's in Berlin. We're here, or hadn't you noticed?'

‘
Nom de Jésus-Christ!
I only want to have a look at the place, eh? A bit of background to flesh the thing out and get the Dollmaker off.'

‘Heinz, our detective even swears in French and is both judge and tribunal. It was the woman's husband who did it, Herr Kohler, or the Captain. At the moment we're undecided and the odds are about fifty-fifty. You can, if you like, put your money where your mouth is.'

‘How much?'

Herr Kohler had understood only too well the price of admission. ‘250 Reichskassenscheine, 5,000 francs.'

‘Now look …'

‘Take it or leave it. The Captain had his eel into the bone-digger's wife. The shopkeeper found out there wasn't enough grease and tried to put the squeeze on him. The husband was jealous. Money was missing, a lot of money, so it's all quite simple, yes? The Dollmaker should have left that cunt alone and gone for the less sophisticated but some men, they need a challenge. They need to climb the highest mountains, those with the peaks that are always cloaked in snow and ice.'

A poet! ‘You're full of news but what if neither of them did it?'

The fleshy lips widened in a grin to betray broken teeth. ‘Then you put your money on that and take your chances.'

The son of a bitch had been fishing for news on the Préfet's involvement. ‘Okay, I will. I'll mess up the odds and cause you all a tumble, eh?' He dragged out a wad of bills that would have choked a horse and peeled off the necessary. ‘Oh, by the way, who's the bookmaker?'

The Feldwebel took his time. ‘Death's-head Schultz. Siegfried to his mother and father, if he had one. U-297's cook.'

The acorn-and-barley coffee was full of saccharine and plaster dust but at least an attempt had been made. Suddenly overcome by exhaustion, St-Cyr slumped into a chair and fought to keep his eyes open.

The windows of the Café of the Golden Handshake were gone. The glass had been swept up but he was still the only customer. Across the square, the ruins of the Préfecture revealed the impossibility of fighting crime under such conditions. Requisitioned in the fall of 1940 as a barracks for the U-boat crews, it had been abandoned to the police who had moved back in when the bombing had become too much and Quiberon and the other places in the countryside had seemed better for the Germans.

Of course the Organization Todt had built a bomb shelter in the cellars. Of course it should have been sufficient – how were they to have anticipated that a 1,000-pound bomb would skip and jump and deflect itself right into the cellar? – but now a warped bicycle frame, its spokes fanned out like the spines of a poisonous sea urchin, seemed all that was left of the Sous-Préfet le Troadec.

Yes, the situation was not good. He had counted on le Troadec to tell him things the Préfet would never reveal.

The eyelids were too heavy. The mind drifted off. Sadly he drew in a breath and from deep in a pocket, uncovered a vial Hermann had left on a woman's night table in Lyon. Exhaustion then, too. A week … had it been as much since then? A case of arson. So constant was the blitzkrieg of Boemelburg's demands and those of common crime – they had only been on this present case for thirty-six hours, a century it seemed and no sleep! – Hermann had succumbed to the pep-up. ‘He's addicted,' swore St-Cyr under his breath. ‘He's been taking small handfuls and trying to hide the fact from me.'

The pills made the heart race and when a man is fifty-five or fifty-six years of age and inclined to lie a little about it, and is big like Hermann and never wanting to slow down, why a constant harassment. ‘He could drop dead when most needed. I'm going to have to get his heart checked.'

Shaking two of the tablets out, St-Cyr added a third, crushed them up with a spoon and, grimacing, downed them with the coffee. At fifty-two years of age and still a little overweight in spite of the shortages and all the exercise, the pills were chancy. It would take awhile for them to work. He would concentrate on the shopkeeper no one should have chosen as a business partner let alone the Kapitän Kaestner. He would consider the victim's wife and daughter and the freedom the money might bring to either of them.

When Sous-Préfet Gaetan le Troadec found him, he was fast asleep. The coffee had been tipped across the table – a sudden, instinctive jerking of the left hand perhaps. Everyone hated having to drink that stuff.

A vial of pills had been scattered, the pipe and tobacco pouch forgotten beneath hands whose fists were those of a pugilist. Indeed, the Chief Inspector St-Cyr had won several medals at the Police Academy in his early days and had most recently flattened the Préfet of Paris, an arch enemy. The left hand was still swollen. The fight had not been in the ring, ah no, but on a case just finished, that of a missing teenaged girl, a neighbour, Préfet Kerjean had said. There'd been a robbery too. Eighteen millions, one for every year of her life.

Quietly le Troadec found another chair and sat opposite him. Exhausted, he took off his gloves and hat and signalled to the
patron
to bring him a coffee.

St-Cyr still wore a gold wedding band. He would understand why the wife and kids had had to be moved out into the countryside, thus saving the life of the Préfet's assistant. He would understand a lot of things but he would not let them interfere with his pursuit of the truth. Not him.

The coffee was hot, payment signalled on to the account with a cautionary wave. Let this one sleep. I want to take my time with him.

Both the Chief Inspector and his Gestapo partner meant business. Préfet Kerjean had made a point of warning him to be careful of what he said. There had been a bus – Madame Charbonneau had thought the two detectives might have been killed. Préfet Kerjean had driven all the way to Lorient and the hospital and then to the temporary morgue just to find out if they had.

He'd been disappointed at the news but had quickly recovered. He hadn't stayed and, though he had avoided saying where he was going, it was evident he had gone right back to tell her the news.

Everyone quietly said they were having an affair. Would the woman have wrung her hands in despair at not finding the detectives' bodies in the wreckage of that bus? Would Préfet Kerjean have put an arm about her shoulders and tried to comfort her?

Were they in it together, harsh though that thought might be? Who, really, had killed that shopkeeper? The Captain? The woman – could it be possible? Had her husband been at the site of the murder too?

With a sinking feeling, le Troadec had to admit the husband could well have been there but why, then, would he have killed the shopkeeper? A mistake perhaps?

Everyone knew the Captain had also taken a decided interest in the woman. Yvon Charbonneau was a jealous man but had chosen to take himself away to search for the past rather than confront the couple – he, himself, had seen enough evidence of that, oh for sure.

Préfet Kerjean had deliberately not mentioned seeing things he would normally never have missed.

Then why protect the husband by arresting the Captain, if not to protect the woman from Herr Kaestner's advances and keep him away from her?

The deep brown ox-eyes of the Sûreté opened. Suddenly there was a grin of welcome and relief, the explosion of, ‘Ah,
grâce à Dieu
, I am glad to find you alive!'

Such an outburst could only mean trouble.

The eyes swiftly narrowed. ‘Tell me about the Préfet's son.'

‘The son …? But … but what has Henri-Paul to do with things? He's in Paris. He was wounded twice and discharged. He works in advertising, I think, or is it insurance?'

And you are going madly back over the case to find the reason for my question, thought St-Cyr. They were quite alone. The
patron
was behind the zinc tidying things. Still, it would be best to keep the voice down. ‘The
sardiniers
, Sous-Préfet. Was one of them reported missing on the 3rd of November?'

‘The
sardiniers
…?'

Was the question such a calamity? Feeling suddenly sick, le Troadec clumsily searched his pockets for cigarettes but found none.

‘Please answer the question and then tell me what the cost is of sending not just one person but several to England?'

The Chief Inspector could not possibly see the zinc from where he was sitting, not without turning. Frantically le Troadec swept his eyes over the all but empty café before settling them on the owner.

‘I know of no such things, Chief Inspector. It's preposterous. The Germans maintain a very tight control. Ah, what do you think you are saying?'

The Sous-Préfet's shrug was massive in rebuke, a hand was tossed in dismissal at such idiocy.

‘Just answer me.'

The Chief Inspector hadn't seen the
patron
take up his broom and come closer. ‘I don't kn …'

A hand shot out to grip him by the wrist. ‘
Do I have to tell you how it was?
' hissed St-Cyr. ‘Don't be so loyal to your boss. It's admirable. Oh for sure it is, but not when murder is being discussed.'

Le Troadec looked coldly at the hand that held him. ‘I tell you I know nothing of such things.
Nothing
, do you understand? Isn't that correct, Monsieur le Cudenec?'

Ah
merde
, thought St-Cyr, have I given him away?

‘Now if we are finished, Chief Inspector, I must attend to my duties. There are still the dead who must be identified and whose families must be notified.'

From the square, the streets ran outwards in all directions, some miraculously spared, others a shambles.

Half-way up a ruined street, they stopped beside the shell of what had once been a school. Desperately le Troadec searched the street for possible witnesses. ‘They'll kill me if I tell you.'

‘No one will know of it.'

‘So long as the Nazis don't question you, Chief Inspector.'

This was true of course. Under torture one never quite knew what one might reveal until that moment but … ‘Please don't force me to ask around, eh? It would not be wise.'

‘Then yes, a boat went missing. You could have found that out from anyone. The Germans made a great fuss – they always do. Twenty-six boats went out from Quiberon, Port Kerné, Port Quibello and other places in the last week of October. Twenty-five returned on the 3rd of November.'

‘Good. Now please, the fee per passenger? You can trust me.'

‘I've a wife and three small children, two others as well.'

‘That is understood.'

‘Is it that you think the money was stolen for this purpose, Chief Inspector, and by Préfet Kerjean?'

‘I am merely asking because I must examine all aspects of the case.'

As he had suggested, St-Cyr could well ask others who might then inform the Germans of his interest. ‘The fee is high because the risks are high. The Germans have minesweepers and patrol boats out there all the time. They board and search the
sardiniers
and other fishing boats whenever they feel so inclined. If there is anything at all suspicious, the captain and crew are arrested on the spot and their boat is confiscated.'

‘But it doesn't stop there, does it?' acknowledged St-Cyr quietly.

‘If guilty, they are shot and their families deported.'

He'd give the Sous-Préfet a grim nod. ‘There is also the risk of being spotted by the Luftwaffe's long-range patrol planes which go out from here to search for Allied convoys.'

‘And the risk of being strafed by the fighter planes that are based along the north coast.'

‘Yes, those too,' said the Sûreté with that same nod.

‘450,000 francs per man. There are some who say the British drop money and arms to the Resistance at night but of this I know nothing. How could I when I am forced to work with the Germans all the time? The Resistance wouldn't trust me for a moment.'

A man with several children … A man in a very favourable position of authority and certainly most useful to them.
Sacré nom de nom
, why must God do this to them? ‘Of course not but, please, there will have been rumours perhaps. How many went with the Préfet's son?'

‘Préfet Kerjean didn't steal the money from Monsieur le Trocquer, Chief Inspector. He didn't kill him either. He was nowhere near the clay pits. He was in Quiberon on New Year's Day. He rang me up to wish us well and to tell me I was to take the afternoon off.'

So as to be out of the way? ‘How many went with the son?'

Again there was the searching of the street, again that look of desperation. Could he really trust St-Cyr to say nothing of it?