Flykiller (60 page)

‘The British, Colonel?’ came the reminder.

‘Naturally they, too, are worried, but so far the deaths haven’t been one of theirs. I want this matter settled. Berlin. . . Need I say more?’

A cigarette had been left to waste its life in the ashtray. ‘Colonel, your predecessor mentioned a bell ringer. . . ’

The head was tossed.

‘A nothing monk, a stroller about town in cloth. He comes and goes, and my predecessor let him, since he apparently has a calming effect on them. They love him, those women, if I can use that word with such as him. They are happiest in his presence, and he, I must say, adores them.
Lieber Gott,
he’s like a fat little dog! His is but to serve and lick, and theirs but to receive. I’m sure he knows them all by name. Both the Americans, who seem to favour him most with presents, and the British who worship him.’

This was getting deeper and deeper. ‘An herbalist?’

Kohler had yet to sit down, so
gut, ja gut
. Kept on his feet would be best.

‘You might call him that. If not making the order’s Host then it’s the soap those people sell on the
schwarzer Markt
—I know they do!’

The
marché noir,
the black market. . .

‘And if not those, his herbs, potions, and honey. The hands, the feet, the face, the skin. Frankly, I have no use for him or for the French. They still encourage such people. When the Führer has time, I am certain even that matter will be settled.’

And uh-oh again. ‘A warm brother, Colonel?’

‘That is putting it politely.
Ein Arschficker,
Kohler. I’m certain of it.’

The thought to ask, ‘How certain?’ was there but had best be left. ‘And he comes and goes?’

This time a hand was tossed. ‘His kind are apparently harmless, though we shall see.’

‘But are there others who come and go?’

The eyes were lowered to the cigarette, then took their time in lifting. ‘This latest death was not of an outside origin, Kohler. Women, cooped up together month by month and year by year, can be every bit as aggressive as men, if not more violent. My predecessor, if you can believe it,
allowed
them to discipline themselves and look where it has led. They are accustomed to being locked into their hotels each night, but are free to stay up and move about for as long as they wish, though only if the blackout drapes are tightly drawn.’

So as not to send a signal to the RAF, who might be passing overhead on their way to a bombing run in the Reich. ‘Those stovepipes, Colonel. . . ’

‘Certainly they have had their little fires, or so I have been told, but someone always smells the smoke or sees the flames.’

‘And are they allowed to visit from hotel to hotel?’

Had Kohler come upon something already? ‘Only during the day unless permission has been granted, as on last Christmas night, when the British entertained the Americans.’

‘And no nighttime sleepovers?’

‘
Liebe Zeit!
If they should choose to stay to pursue such filthy practices, that is currently their concern, though we shall soon be putting a stop to it and they have little time to spare for such activities during the day.’

‘Chores keep them busy?’

‘There is no daily
Appell
as yet, though that is going to change.’

No lining up at dawn and counting of heads.

‘They have to queue up for bread, soup, their parcels and mail, Kohler. Hauling water or firewood, doing their laundry—all such things keep them occupied, but the question you must ask and answer quickly for me, is will there be another murder or suicide?’

And uh-oh yet again. ‘Not if my partner and I can help it.’

The cigarette’s little life was abruptly ended.

‘Not if
you
can help it,
mein Lieber
. I’ve arranged for you to stay in the hospital. Four of the doctors there are French, as are the nursing sisters, but the one who is in charge of those is English, and there is another doctor—a Scotsman best left alone. I can’t make apologies for their presence. That is how I found things. The patients go to them, in any case. Dr. Schlieffen oversees and looks after us, but has his surgery and rooms in one of the other villas.’

‘We’d prefer to live in town, Colonel. A bed-sitter.’

And defiance already? ‘That is not possible. Transport simply isn’t available. You are on call at all times and will take your meals with us in the canteen, and you will not discuss the war with the internees or with those damned doctors and nurses. To all such enquiries—and there will be many—you will simply say,
Verboten
. For them, they are here to enjoy the safety and goodwill the Führer provides and that is all there is to it.’

Day to day, hour by hour, and with no news of when their little stay might end.

‘As soon as you have settled the two who have died, they will be buried side by side but not in this park, am I understood?’

‘Definitely.’ And wasn’t this one just their luck? A real
Mitläufer,
a fellow traveller of the Nazis, if not a dyed-in-the-wool
Eingefleischter,
the hypnotized. ‘My partner and I will do what we can, Colonel.’

‘Correction.
You
will do as you’ve been ordered. Now, I really must get on with things. Supper is at 1830 hours—no later, no earlier—and it will not be dragged out as the French invariably do with their meals.’

Louis definitely wasn’t going to like that, either. ‘And the first victim, Colonel? Where might we find her?’

‘At the bottom of one of the elevator shafts in that hotel of theirs. Don’t ask me how she got there or why that
verdammte
gate was open. That is for you to find out.’

It fluttered down, and as they looked up from the foyer of the Hôtel Vittel-Palace, the brassiere, the tiniest thing possible, floated lazily in some up-draught, only to trail one strap as it finally took the plunge.

The railing, three storeys above, was now completely clear of laundry, as were the staircase railings on either side of it. Trapped, the makeshift garment lay on the Art-Deco mosaic of the marble floor at their feet, where Neptune, in all his glory, was being enticed by golden-haired mermaids to take the waters.

‘Hermann, allow me.’

Two lace-trimmed handkerchiefs had been refashioned. Repeated gentle washing, with water of stewed ivy leaves and then that of pine needles, had given it a scent both halfway between and all its own. The straps, however, were of cotton scavenged from a shirt-blouse. Instead of the usual clasp, a safety pin would have been used but such a valuable item had absented itself either through need or safekeeping.

There wasn’t a sound, and how was it that nine hundred and whatever people could make themselves so scarce that not a one of them could be seen or heard? Had they climbed to attic garrets, gone into the cellars, or both? And if so, who had such a power over them that one’s orders were completely obeyed?

Carefully folding the garment in half, Louis started out, their overboots left just inside the door as a sign of trust, perhaps, and a gamble at that.

Room 3–38 was no different from the others they had been able to glance into as they’d passed by open doors. It, too, was devoid of occupants but otherwise crowded.

‘Hermann, a moment.’

Ach,
the cinematographer!

‘You start from the left, I from the right,” said St-Cyr. ‘Give the room the careful once-over.’

Commit the ‘film’ of it to memory, then make the traverse in reverse. Photos, cutouts, maps, and such covered whatever wall space had been free. There was a lacrosse stick, two tennis rackets, an American football, quite worn and obviously used by male hands and boots, but. . . ‘
Mein Gott,
the room’s tidy. What more do we need?’

That, too, could not be allowed to pass. ‘What did the years in Munich and Berlin teach you? To concentrate only on the obvious and ignore the significant?’

‘Temper, temper. Don’t let all those missing girls unsettle you.’

‘
Ah, mon Dieu,
is it not evident I want us to use the opportunity they have unwittingly provided? It’s curious, isn’t it, that only one of the occupants was sitting on her bed just prior to their leaving?’

The beds were ex–French Army portable iron cots with straw mattresses, and there was a dent in the one Louis had noted. A game of solitaire had been in progress there, the cards laid out with a precision that defied reason.

‘An evident reason, Hermann, for this one couldn’t have been watching at any of the windows in use, could she?’

Since the windows here wouldn’t overlook those sections of the park they’d had to cross. ‘These ones face north and northeast.’

‘
Ah, bon,
Inspector. You’ve already learned something significant.’

‘And since she once played lacrosse, no one, and I mean no one, has dared to cut away any of that stick’s leather webbing no matter the need, or to borrow the hard rubber ball that is nestled in its crotch.’

Two of the beds, one on either side of the door, were against that innermost wall. End to end, sets of two others occupied opposing walls, the area immediately in front of the floor-to-ceiling French windows being left as a sort of common space, replete with three fold-up, portable wooden-slatted café chairs and an upturned half-barrel as a table and reminder of what they’d once been allowed to partake of with pleasure.

French and German magazines and newspapers were there—collaborationist and Nazi and obviously weeks and weeks old and cartoon-decorated in ridicule; an ashtray, too, but no cigarette butts.

Storage was under the beds and in armoires that had been scavenged and to which shelving had been added. A pantry, a little kitchen. . .

‘That stove to the right of the window is French, Louis, a Godin. Asbestos paper has been stuffed around its pipe to seal it in and keep out the wind, but at night the blackout drapes would have to be helped when drawn.’

‘But of what date is the stove?’

Ach,
must he! ‘Eighteen-ninety, I think.’

‘Try 1916 to 1919.’

‘And that other war?’

‘You’re learning. Didn’t I say you would? Vittel’s Parc Thermal and its hotels became a giant hospital camp for
les Américains
when the French cases were moved out in 1917, myself among them. Perhaps this indicates the origin of that football you noticed.’

The things one didn’t know. Louis had been wounded twice in that other war but had never said where he’d been sent for treatment.

A chipped, enamelled metal stew pot, something kept from the Reich’s inevitable scrap drives and left over from those doughboys, no doubt, sat atop a small, electric ring whose cord, by the look, was dangerously frayed. ‘Are they able to call in an electrician now and then, do you think?’

‘Perhaps but then. . . The meal, Inspector?’

Steam was rising from the pot. Kohler started forward only to be held back. ‘There is no need. The aroma,’ said St-Cyr.

Louis would have separated that one smell from all the others that had been coming at them like those of tennis shoes no amount of washing could cure, given the sachets of lavender that had been tucked into them. ‘A rabbit stew, I think.’

‘
Un garenne, mais bouilli à l’anglaise,
and without its stuffing of veal, egg, lard, or fat and bread.’

Boiled wild rabbit, in the English way.

‘The flesh is firmer and has a better flavour, Hermann, than the domesticated. Perhaps that is why there are two string snares now washed and ready to be used again and waiting under one of the beds I was preparing to thoroughly scan.’

With the cameras of his mind, and the nearest of the two against one side wall, the same as had the game of solitaire, the dent, and the lacrosse stick. ‘A loner, is she? Those pelts have been cleaned and stretched.’

‘And there are two rabbits in that pot. Are moccasins in the offing?’

Since a pair of the same were already neatly side by side next to the latest Red Cross parcel whose string had been carefully coiled for use in other snares and such like. . .

‘That curtain line next to the ceiling on your side, Hermann? Were the two who slept there accustomed to shutting themselves off from the others?’

And trust Louis to have noticed it first! ‘That vase of silk chrysanthemums, the arrangement of them, that portrait of Pétain. . . A Tricolour pinned to the wall above a map of France which shows absolutely
nothing
to signify the country’s defeat and partition into a
zone occupée,
eh, and a
zone non occupée
?’

‘And the catches on the suitcase beneath that bed, Hermann? It’s from Goyard Aîné at 1233 rue Saint-Honoré.’

‘And the catches are considerably different in style than on those of the others.’

‘
Ah, bon, mon vieux,
you really are learning.’

European-style catches: a French occupant, then, and the Americans.

A pair of pink satin ballet slippers hung from a corner of the armoire between those two beds. ‘And right above our second victim’s,’ said Kohler. ‘And if I check the Red Cross parcel will I find chocolate bars and chewing gum absent but present in all the others?’

‘Or is it that the occupants of Room 3–38 pool such resources for the common good?’

That pantry and
merde
again! ‘Did they not always get along, the French one here and the Americans?’

‘Of those two beds, Hermann, is the one closest to the window that of our victim’s guardian?’

‘Was Caroline Lacy her ward?’

‘Was the girl the daughter of the woman’s benefactor, Hermann?’

Everyone knew that before this lousy war a lot of the French had been damned poor due to a constantly devalued franc until opportunity had come along from across the sea.

Whereas there were photographs of ballerinas and ballets of note that had been cut from magazines and pasted up on that wall, and one of a villa in Provence and a few of family members, above the other beds there were the brightly coloured, large-lettered pennants college students would madly wave at football matches: ‘Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Louis. Michigan Tech at Houghton, Michigan, the U of Wisconsin at Madison, and. . . ’