Flykiller (43 page)

Richard, Bousquet, Deschambeault and de Fleury. Hermann indicated that for the moment he would leave that one to his partner and Chief. ‘I don't think so, Premier,' said Louis guardedly. ‘Though Herr Kohler and I are badly in need of a chance to compare notes, everything we've uncovered so far indicates exactly the opposite. Whoever killed them did so because of what they'd become.'

‘Lovers and informants. The wives, then, or the doctor, who is not above murder, I must say, but … but come. Before we decide, let me show you both why I've left a perfectly good lunch to find you. Réal,' he called out to one of the
durs.
‘Take Herr Kohler's vehicle and follow. Tell the others to pile into it. Albert in the back seat with Mademoiselle Varollier. The sculptress in front, but keep an eye on her and your weapons.'

‘Monsieur le Premier,' called out Inès, ‘would it be possible for me to go with Madame Richard?'

Laval looked to each of them, Hermann giving him a nod.

‘Then it's settled. Madame Richard and Mademoiselle Charpentier to join us as we view the latest artwork.'

LAVAL AU POTEAU
! ‘Laval up against the post' had been plastered in huge, dripping, now-frozen black letters over the wall of Charmeil's eighteenth-century school. Above the Premier's name, and just beneath the tops of its letters, were two side by side and freshly mounted posters.
BEKANNTMACHUNG
– Official Notice – as if any of the kids or their parents could read
Deutschl
snorted Kohler to himself.
AVIS.
Notice
APPRÉHENDÉS.
Apprehended.
PEINE DE MORT.
Penalty of death.
FUSILLÉS.
Shot. Ah, Christ! Paul Panton, Edgar Guerledan, Francine Aubret and Marcel Boulanger. Kids, just kids.

‘Herr Gessler's quick off the mark, isn't he? Ages eighteen to twenty. Fools!' swore Laval, indicating the names of the dead and angrily finding himself another cigarette to light hurriedly.

Everyone had got out of the cars, Mademoiselle Charpentier sickened by the notices, thought St-Cyr. Beyond them, and the letters, its whitewash faded by the years of the Occupation so that the wall became a mirror of the times, were the words that had been written in despair by retreating soldiers in early June 1940, not realizing then that the Government would soon be installed in Vichy.
QUI NOUS A TRAHIS
?
Who has betrayed us?

No one had apparently thought to enquire about, the bicycle that leaned against the wall. A sturdy, pre-war Majestic, its worn seat rested against the edge of the stripped-away stucco. Below it, the bare lava-stone blocks had been scratched by centuries of schoolboys and girls who had wished to leave their little mementos to posterity. A woman's bike, then, said St-Cyr to himself. Tallish, long-legged and long-armed.

The faded wicker carrier basket was frayed to twigs around its edges and held an all but empty, two-litre tin of coal-black paint and a ten-centimetre-wide brush that must date from 1930 and had been used many times to whitewash the inside of a cowshed. A good farm, then, and well above the usual, but perhaps this was the very brush the soldiers had found to use?

‘There are also these, Inspectors,' said the Auvergnat, giving a quick wave of salutation to schoolchildren who had found the view from the classroom windows more interesting than their lessons.

Cartoons had been cut from a magazine and a newspaper.

‘Both date from 30 October 1940,' said Laval. ‘
Punch Magazine
and the
Daily Mirror
. I had them checked.'

The first portrayed him as the Great Laval in white bow tie, black waistcoat and tails and juggling swastikas, holding a
Francisque
rolling pin with rubber spikes like those guaranteed to remove excess fat, and bottles of his very own Vichy water, one of which had shattered at his feet.

The second clipping, that of the newspaper, depicted the Premier as a hideously grinning, squat and moustachioed bullfrog cradling a bouquet of chrysanthemums – the press's funereal choice had been perfect! – as he came courting to knock at a door whose emblem was a large black swastika.

‘Vichy is Vichy, Inspectors. There is no other place like it in the world. There never will be nor can be, and I am at the centre of it. Inheritor of the decisions of others, cementer of bargains that are seldom adhered to. Reviled, hated, ridiculed by an ever-growing number, ah
oui
, but to be ill thought of and yet useful is better than to be ill thought of and useless. That bicycle must have been stolen; God knows where the artist found the paint. Footprints indicated the général direction of retreat but the children soon put paid to them, though they did establish the time of the atrocity, since the paint they touched on first inspection was then not frozen.'

‘It doesn't belong to one of the teachers, does it?' asked Kohler of the bike.

‘
Merde alors
, you sound like the great one! Is pedantic logic always foremost in the mind of detectives too? Come, there's more to see.'

‘A moment,' cautioned Louis. ‘The clippings, Premier?'

‘Slid in an envelope under the door to my office at the Hôtel du Parc late last night or early this morning.'

‘In spite of the Garde Mobile's redoubled presence?'

‘Perhaps because of it. The doctor is, of course, in a rage and once more Henri-Claude Ferbrave has been threatened with immediate dismissal. Derelict. Spending too much time with the
horizontales
of that
maison de tolérance
he favours. Ménétrel, in spite of the coarseness of his tongue, is very much a prude and family man, and is offended by the unbridled appetite of his chief lieutenant. The Hôtel is, I'm afraid, abuzz.'

Workmen, among them the elder Grenier, were busily erasing the damage with scrapers, wire brushes and kerosene. Spectators stood about, lots of them. Passers-by paused. A Wehrmacht lorry dropped off a squad of burly Felgendarmen, the military police.

The Hôtel du Parc and Hall des Sources had also been decorated.

COURAGE ON LES AURA
faced Pétain's office and balcony, from where the Maréchal could be seen sadly gazing down at words he'd spoken to the troops at Verdun in 1917: Take heart, we'll get them.

BOUSILLER LES GARS
! Smash – bump off – the boys! had been splashed directly below him on the ground-floor wall of the hotel, between its sticking-papered and blue-washed windows. And then, as if to rub it in, the artist had used one of the Ministry of Agriculture's innocent campaign slogans for children.
LUTTEZ CONTRE LES DORYPHORES!
Fight against the potato beetle. Children all over rural France had been excused from classes, armed with bottles of water and, accompanied by their teachers, encouraged to swarm into the potato fields each summer to catch, drown and squash this pest. But now, of course,
Doryphores
also meant the Boche and everyone knew it!

‘Premier, the Hall, I think,' said Louis determinedly.

‘I can tell you little.'

‘Sometimes even a little is enough.'

‘Are the boys next, now that you've seen the slogans for yourselves?' Laval was clearly worried but calm.

‘Let us reserve judgement, Premier. Let us adopt one of yours and the Maréchal's very first policies with the Occupier in 1940, that of
attentisme.
'

‘Wait-and-see has never been my way, Inspector, but had you the opportunity then, what would you have done?'

‘Exactly the same thing. You … we … had no other choice.'

‘Then let us go in and settle this little matter before Herr Gessler and his gang of thugs trample everything.'

‘And the thugs you, yourself, employ?'

‘Are Ménétrel's men, the very ones who were among those who arrested me on 13 December 1940 after my first term here. Ménétrel, of course, begged Pétain to have them assassinate me, but Herr Abetz intervened. Now I employ them. That, too, is of Vichy. I insisted they guard me. One has to do things like that when one is Premier. Every day that they are with me they must worry about being killed in an assassination attempt that has not been of their own making, but also … Ah
oui, mes chers détectives
, they and that little doctor of ours are forced to realize not only the opportunity they missed but the mistake they would have made! Now, of course, if they were to kill me, they'd have no one.'

Merde alors
, the wily peasant at heart! ‘And Bousquet and the others?' asked St-Cyr – Hermann would leave him to deal with Laval.

‘Are worth saving if for no other reason than to hold together what's left and prevent anarchy. No scandal is going to erupt out of what they've been up to. Shocking as it was, and a severe embarrassment to my Government, that little business venture of theirs has been stopped. You, in turn, will find the murderer or murderers of those girls and then quietly leave.'

‘And if it's more than that?'

‘The Résistance? We'll deal with it.'

‘And if it's one or more of the boys?'

‘Then he or they will be dealt with.'

‘And if it's the wives?'

‘Those too.'

‘And if it's the doctor?'

Laval grinned.

‘Personally I would like nothing better than to present to the Maréchal the
procés-verbal
his
éminence grise
had to sign under the stern gazes of a Sûreté and a Kripo that I, myself, had requested. What better an example of mutual cooperation between our two nations than for the Général, the
Vainqueur de Verdun
, to acknowledge that our two police forces, united in the battle against common crime, have found my Flykiller? Of course, the lance corporal with the Iron Cross Second and First Class would appreciate it too. Even Herr Hitler has, I'm sure if one searched desperately enough for it, a certain sense of humour.'

From inside the Hall des Sources, where she stood next to frozen Kentia palms and near-dead, pollarded lime trees, Inès could see the workmen quite clearly as they scraped away the
COURAGE ON LES AURA.
Like blue-clad flies in winter, they were pinned to the tall, arched windows from whose delicate friezes long icicles hung, and where sheets of discoloured ice had lain beneath the artist's brush, those segments of the letters rapidly vanished.

Beyond the workmen who faced her, others across the street at the Hôtel du Parc had their backs to her, and wasn't that also like Vichy? she asked herself. To confront, to shun, to erase the truth and turn the back on so many?

Laval, St-Cyr and Kohler had gone over to the Buvette du Chomel, to where Céline had been finally cornered and slain, but had she known her killer or killers? How had she got away from the one, only to then be trapped by the other? What words had been said? Last words …

Sandrine Richard stood near the entrance, perhaps not wishing to come closer for fear of betraying herself. And Blanche? asked Inès. Blanche was halfway between herself and the others but had found that she, too, could approach no closer.

Voices echoed. The detectives made no attempt to hide their questions or the answers given. Perhaps they did this to taunt her and the others, perhaps it was simply for expedience. Laval's description of the corpse fitted Ménétrel's – St-Cyr acknowledged this. The Premier had, on crouching to examine the body, lost a button from one of his shoes and, having heard it clatter away, had searched for and found it, only to then find that its backing had slipped out and been lost.

Her hair had been gone through. Had he opened her nightgown? St-Cyr had asked – one of its ties had been snapped. ‘No had been the answer.'

‘Yet you moved her legs and hips,' St-Cyr had challenged.

‘I had to,' Monsieur le Premier had answered, lighting a fresh cigarette and erupting in a hacking cough.

‘Why didn't you tell others of this?' Herr Kohler had demanded. ‘Ménétrel, certainly the investigating police?'

‘I didn't want the doctor knowing I was concerned enough to have come in here to see her for myself. Convinced that it could well be a threat to Richard and the others, I personally telexed Gestapo Boemelburg requesting assistance and then telephoned him. Boemelburg agreed to my request and I told Secrétaire Général Bousquet that even though he was opposed to my choice of you both, he was to work closely with you.'

‘They've all tried to cover things up!' said St-Cyr.

‘They had much to hide,' countered the Premier.

‘Then what, please, other than another victim, another of your flies, convinced you of the threat?'

‘Yes, what?' Inès heard Herr Kohler ask, and then …

Then from Laval, ‘There was a burnt matchstick, broken and left in the sign of a V.'

‘Ah
merde
, Hermann, now he tells us!'

‘And I ask again, Inspectors,' replied Monsieur Laval calmly, ‘is it a campaign of terror that now threatens us?'

And never mind the victims!

‘Where is it, please, this matchstick?' demanded St-Cyr, clearly very upset with him.

‘I removed it. I felt I had to. I didn't want to compound the matter until we had further information.'

‘Did you tell anyone of it?' the Sûreté demanded archly.

‘None.'

‘And yet Ménétrel made no mention of it, Hermann. Why, please, did he not think that necessary?'

‘Security,' snapped Laval. ‘Ménétrel is terrified our friends will move in
en masse
and kick his precious Garde out!'

And that, too, was of Vichy, thought Inès, holding her breath and waiting for their answer.

‘A Garde who are excused their duties …' muttered St-Cyr.

‘Who miss an early-morning postman they should have caught, Louis,' said Herr Kohler – referring to the press clippings Laval had shown them.