Dollmaker (27 page)

It was now nearly 5 a.m. Berlin Time. They had been over things again and again but in spite of what had happened, he found the woman still reticent. She had been there at the time of the murder – yes, of course – and had heard but sworn she had not seen the killing. Le Trocquer had confronted her with the doll when she had caught up with him on the tracks after having left her bicycle in the shed. He had told her in no uncertain terms exactly what he intended to tell the Captain and had thrust the doll at her as evidence.

Aghast at what Angélique had done, she had backed away in terror and had tried to plead with him for her life and that of the child and her husband but he would have nothing to do with her. ‘You are all finished.
Finished!
' he had cried.

Stunned by his hatred, she had stumbled back and had fallen. She had then backed away from him on her hands and seat and, still not knowing what to do, had stood in despair and had heard the switch-bar as it had hit the rails.

There had been no sign of her husband nor of the Captain, she had said and had sworn she wasn't lying. ‘The tracks … the bend in the line … I dropped the doll. I had cut my hand rather badly and when I went forward to see what had happened, I could hardly find the will to put one foot ahead of the other. You must believe me. You must! I only saw that he was dead.
I did not kill him!
I didn't! I
didn't
!' she had shrieked.

‘And then?' he had asked gently. He had not reminded her that she had left the tracks and gone out on to the moor.

She had buried her face in her bandaged hands and had wept. ‘I … I stepped on his glasses. I heard the glass disintegrate under my shoe. He … he made no sound but I knew he never would again because I had seen a boy lying just like him in that street in Berlin. Adèle … Adèle and I had got out of the car to help the boy but … but the Brown Shirts, they … they wouldn't let us touch him. I had seen others too,' she had said, ‘on the road that day from Paris.'

‘Did you and Herr Kaestner ever use that shed?' he asked, startling her back into the present.

‘In which to have sex?' she blurted, looking up and across the kitchen table at him.

The grief in her eyes was almost more than he could bear. ‘You know that is what I mean, madame.'

‘Then never!'

‘Yet you knew it well enough to leave your bicycle there.'

Must he keep on badgering her like this? ‘Only because Johann had told me of it and that Yvon often left his bike there. I had never been to the clay pits before. I had to ask my way several times. Someone might remember.'

‘And you never saw your husband or Herr Kaestner there on that day?'

‘Never. I touched nothing but the glasses. I left the doll exactly where I had dropped it – I panicked, yes? and I ran in tears, not knowing what to do or what was to become, not just of myself, but of Yvon and Angélique whom I dearly loved and still do.'

Her distress only made the sincerity of her appeal all the more convincing. He wanted so much to believe her but she could well be protecting the husband.

‘Madame, your husband's bicycle. Was it in that shed?'

It was a question she ought to have anticipated but found difficulty answering and had to take her time. ‘N … no. Yvon … Yvon must have … have left it somewhere else – up by the standing stones perhaps. I did not see him. He … he could well have gone home.'

‘But, madame, we know he didn't? He picked up the doll.'

‘Yes … yes, he did, didn't he?'

‘Kaestner gave you and your husband lots of time to get clear. That can only have meant he was not protecting either of you but giving himself time to decide how best to deal with the matter.'

She was frantic. ‘He'll kill Yvon because he will have to. He'll kill Angélique. I know he will even though he likes and admires her very much. He can't afford to let her live unless I kill myself and even then …' She went to wring her hands in despair and only just stopped herself. ‘Will he fling her from the cliffs? Is that what he'll do?'

They had not mentioned the Préfet for some time. St-Cyr thought to do so. Victor had known of that shed yet had tried to hide the presence of the bicycle tracks from them. Had he known of the cigarettes the Captain sometimes gave the pianist? Had he used them? He also had every reason to want the shopkeeper dead and to then blame the Captain so as to hide behind that blame.

But now? St-Cyr asked himself. What will he do?

‘Your husband, madame. Please, I must ask you to tell me truthfully. Did he kill Monsieur le Trocquer? You are hiding something from me. I sense it, yes? I feel it. I want so much to help.'

Anger tightened all her features, making the tears glisten. ‘And I have already told you I saw no one out there at that place.
No one, do you understand?
'

Had Charbonneau done the killing? Everything in her seemed to suggest he had.

‘Yvon Charbonneau overheard the two of you, madame. He heard the accusations and later removed the doll and tried to hide it. He watched as the shopkeeper died or he did it.'

‘And if he didn't?' she asked beseechingly.

‘Then until I get the four of you in a room, I am not going to know which of you killed him.'

‘Or even if it wasn't any of us but someone else perhaps? Some member of U-297's crew who would realize right away exactly the difficult position his Captain was in? A man who would say nothing about it to anyone and would keep his own counsel. A man who would then do everything he could to protect not only his captain and U-297's reputation, but himself most especially.'

‘Did you see this man?'

‘I went out on to the moor but something drove me back to the railway. I… I sensed I was not alone and that it was not my husband who watched me as I took my bicycle from that shed and hurried away.'

‘Explain this, please, madame. You “sensed” another?'

She gave him a look so naked he shuddered. ‘Yvon must never learn of it. He would only feel responsible. He would only blame himself for what happened.'

‘Please, madame, I must have your secret.'

‘I felt as I had in that street in Berlin on
Kristallnacht
. Instinctively I knew I would be raped and then killed.'

The party was over, the dance floor empty and the chairs all upside down on the tables. There wasn't a soul about. Badly shaken and drenched to the skin, Kohler stood alone. He tried to light a cigarette but … ah
nom de Jésus-Christ
! his hands shook too much.

‘I'm getting too old for this,' he grumbled. ‘I'm cracking up.' Louis and himself had been on the wrong side of the Occupying Authorities far too many times to let it happen again. Distrusted, despised and reviled by both the SS and the Gestapo in France
and
the fucking Resistance, they had best tread warily and overlook a few details.

‘Like a certain car that nearly ran me down,' he said bitterly. ‘One of ours. Herr Kaestner. I'm certain of it. Question is, Who let him out of jail? Baumann and the others or Elizabeth Krüger?' Had she had a spare key to slip the Captain? he asked himself and said, ‘Ah
merde
, she might have.'

There hadn't been time to get more than a glimpse of that car and oh for sure it would be impossible to prove that it really had been Kaestner, but … ‘He was alone.'

Nature called and automatically he started for the toilets only to stop, to wonder if Death's-head and the others had caught up with Paulette le Trocquer and had brought her back.

Was she lying in there on that wet-tiled floor in a swill of puke, soggy cigarette butts and spent condoms? Had she been taken to some cave, or had she managed to get away from them?

A pretty thing in her black leather skirt and turtle-neck sweater … he still had her shoes in his pockets and idly he drew them out only to realize what an idiot he was to even have them anywhere near himself if she was dead.
If
.

The Gestapo would only seize on them and have him arrested for her murder no matter the evidence. The men of U-297 would all swear he had been after the girl. Louis would not be able to save him, not this time.

‘Don't get yourself in such a panic,' he said.

The stage curtains were open and bunched at the sides. Carefully he set the shoes out of sight then sighed and said, ‘I'm going to have to do it. Louis isn't with me.'

The door to the toilets was stained and cold. Of cheap wood and flaking, greasy white paint, it yielded all too easily for comfort. The sour stench of splashed urine, bad drains and cheap perfume rushed at him. There were no stalls, just an L-shape to the room with the men's urinal trough to the right, the sink down at the bend and …

When he found her right at the back of the room, Paulette le Trocquer was slumped and kneeling with her head over one of the toilets. Her knees were apart, the toes that had fought so hard for purchase and escape were slack against the hard, wet floor. Her skirt lay two metres from her next to the wall beside the sink, the slip and underpants and stockings were scattered in the slime. The turtle-neck sweater – soaked right through by the rain – had been pushed up to her armpits. Hairs stuck out from beneath it. Her brassière strap had been cut and now its ends hung loosely at the sides, the skin so bluish white and grey and cold, he had to force himself not to turn away.

How many had gone at her? he wondered sadly. Had they made her drink brandy and beer, a half-and-half on top of wine – was that why the toilet? Had they even bothered? One girl and six or eight men. Death's-head for sure. The boy Erich Fromm and others. ‘Yes, others,' he said. ‘They'd have held her,' and reaching down into the toilet, gently lifted her head by the hair thinking to pull her out only to realize he had better not.

‘Louis … Louis … ah
nom de Dieu, mon vieux
, why aren't you with me?'

Bruises marked those places she had struck – the outer thighs, the buttocks and knees also.

Others marred the back of her neck – thumb-marks, fingermarks as she had been shoved face down and held, not throttled. She had thrashed her legs and had tried so hard to stop it from happening. An hour … had she been dead an hour?

When he saw himself in the fog of a cracked and peeling minor, Kohler was taken aback. He could still feel her hair and how cold it had been. He knew he must not touch her again yet he wanted to cover her. She looked so forlorn and lonely in that mirror, a kid … just a kid.

Outside, in the rain, it was still dark. His two sons were dead at Stalingrad and suddenly he wanted to be with them at home in better times, but the girl was dead and so was her mother.

It was nearly thirty kilometres to the house by the sea and when he reached it in darkness still, no amount of banging at the front door could arouse the occupants. ‘
Louis
,' he cried out. ‘
Louis, it's me
.'

The wind took his words and flung them up at the eaves and into the hammering rain.

9

The beam of the torch flashed round at timbered posts and scattered straw. The shed beside the railway spur was empty. There was no sign of the child nor of Yvon Charbonneau. Kerjean was grim and gave the shrug of a policeman thwarted by the odds and fate.

‘Hélène, I am so sorry. A night like this … I had hoped at least for Yvon. The alignment, the clay pits, the treasures he uncovered when digging up the briefcase … I had thought he might have returned since he was not at any of the other places.'

He shook the water from his cap and cape and shone the torch momentarily up into St-Cyr's eyes. ‘Ah, pardon,' he said. ‘A bitch of a night, eh, Jean-Louis? At this time of year one tries to force the dawn but the sun remains in bed for as long as it wishes.'

It was now 6.30 a.m. Berlin Time, 5.30 the old time and still two and a half hours before there would be light enough to dispense with torches. When Kerjean, in the little Renault the Germans had allowed him to keep, had picked them up at the house, there had been no chance to let Hermann know that, contrary to all protestations, the Préfet had headed for Lorient and this shed, discounting entirely that the Sûreté had advised most strongly a visit to Quiberon. No chance, either, to tell Hermann that someone else could well have seen the murder or committed it. Someone from U-297's crew perhaps …
Merde
, this case, he said to himself. One must go so carefully, especially when unarmed and without back-up.

Kerjean forced a smile that was both awkward and uncertain. ‘Still we are together, eh? I'm glad I did not stay in Vannes to rest up as your partner insisted, but turned around when I got there and came straight back. Angélique will be all right, Hélène. Come now, you must not worry. Herr Kaestner …'

‘He's desperate, Victor. He'll do something. He
has
to,' she said.

‘Now listen, the less he does, the better off he is. A man like that, he is like the cobra in the basket, isn't that so? One goes carefully past or does not move at all but never … never, Hélène, does one allow the hypnotism of the self, eh? Never.'

‘Victor, a moment, please,' cautioned St-Cyr. ‘Is Herr Kaestner aware that you borrowed the money to allow your son and several others to escape?'

‘Hélène …?' managed Kerjean, startled. All the fears of just what such a thing would mean were in the look he gave her.

‘I had to tell him, Victor. I had no other choice.'

‘Herr Kaestner cannot possibly know, Jean-Louis. No one knew but myself and …'

‘And who, Victor? Who?'

Ah damn Doenitz for demanding that a detective be sent from Paris. Any other would have suited but no, it had to be Jean-Louis and his friend.

‘All right, so I put the squeeze on that shopkeeper. That doesn't mean I killed him.'

‘I didn't say you did. I asked who else might know you had borrowed the money.'