Kaleidoscope (2 page)

‘But of course, messieurs. Young Bébert Peretti found her after school late on Wednesday when he came to fetch his father's goats from this, the lower pasture of the Perettis and the Borels, who do not speak to each other these days or for the past two hundred years, and so must take turns using it when the abbé says it is time.'

A stonemason's field, thought Kohler, grateful for the insight but curious as to why it had been offered so readily. ‘Didn't anyone see anything?'

The man shook his head. ‘We were all gathered in the village square to hear our mayor and … the lieutenant speak to us about … about the labour brigades.'

‘The forced labour for the Reich,' sighed Kohler. ‘The maquis, eh?' he shot. ‘Come on, don't shy away from it. You were all gathered by the fountain to receive a lesson about those who had escaped into the hills to avoid their patriotic duty.'

Fratani's gaze didn't waver. ‘The maquis, Inspector, as you yourself have said.'

‘And admitted, is that it?' snarled Kohler.

‘Hermann,
please
! Monsieur Fratani knows only too well he must not upset the Gestapo, not on such a touchy subject and not when they are so tired. Monsieur, what about this one, eh? The victim?'

‘A hunting accident perhaps. Who knows? L'Abbé Roussel says it is not
our
affair. That she was not of us, monsieur, and therefore we are not obligated to give her the last rites or to take her remains up to the church to rest with God.'

‘Louis, she's not Jewish, is she?' Everyone knew that the Jews, like a lot of others, had bolted south to the Riviera during the invasion and must now be squirming like hell, seeing as the Wehrmacht had only just moved in to occupy the whole of the country but had given in to ll Duce and let the Italians occupy the coast from just east of Cannes to Menton and the frontier.

So caught up had he become in staring at the body, the poor Frog was trying to pack that furnace of his while the wind took the last of his tobacco ration. ‘Louis … Louis, I asked you a question.'

Startled, the brown ox-eyes with their bushy brows flew up in alarm. ‘Hermann, what … what is it?'

‘Perhaps you'd better tell me,' sighed Kohler, nodding towards the corpse.

‘It is nothing, Hermann. Nothing. I was just wondering why the
garde champêtre
was not here, waiting for us.'

The village cop. Kohler knew that Louis must have other reasons for being so distracted but let it pass. By rights the lieutenant, whoever he was, should have been in on this too. An SS lieutenant? he wondered, giving a silent curse at the thought.

Grunting painfully, St-Cyr knelt beside the body and, motioning impatiently, had the hearse-driver bring the lantern closer.

Blood had run from the corner of her lips and from her nostrils, but had long since congealed and darkened. The eyes were not blue as he had expected from the hair but that rather pleasant shade of greeny-brown which can sometimes overwhelm an unsuspecting man. A once quite handsome woman, not beautiful but very fine of feature, and definitely once of wealth though that might no longer be so.

The nose was aristocratic, the cheeks slightly pinched. The skin was good – clean too – the brow not overly wide but high and incredibly unwrinkled for a woman who must have had worries in plenty. Why else the climb into these hills and across this stony pasture to what? he asked. To some peasant's farmhouse up there on a barren slope, sheltered only from the wind? Opal and gold ear-rings, the ears pierced, the pendant stones full of fire even in the fitful fluttering of the lantern.

A woman of perhaps seventy kilos – tall, but not too tall. Had she stood with poise even in alarm, she not believing her assailant would dare to fire that thing at her? Had that been it?

The bolt was feathered by leather flights that were hard and cracked with age. The wooden shaft had that dark colour of ash or birch that has first been hardened by fire and then polished before greasing with tallow. The force of the bolt should have knocked her on to her back, yet she had stood her ground in shocked disbelief perhaps and had clutched it.
Ah merde
, who could have done such a thing, what were they to do? Scream at the injustice of it all or simply get on with a job quite obviously no one else wanted?

‘Well, Louis, what do you make of it?'

‘Trouble, Hermann. Me, I have to ask, Why did your chief demand that we attend to this one? Disregard, please, the need for us to get out of Paris, eh? Let's simply stick to the absolute truth.'

‘Someone telephoned Boemelburg from Cannes,' said Kohler lamely. ‘Look, I would have told you sooner or later.'

‘
Who
? Hermann, please do not do this to me.'

Kohler gave a shrug. ‘A friend of your chief's.'

‘That little shit?'

‘The same. Major Osias Pharand himself, Louis. Titular head of the Sûreté Nationale and as file-minded an anti-Semite as Himmler and his boys could ask for.'

‘So, is this one Jewish, eh? Is that what you're saying? Hey, my friend, me I can't tell so easily with members of the opposite sex. Perhaps you'd better have a look.'

Touché. Pharand hated the Resistance too – Kohler could see the worry clouding the Frog's eyes. ‘Relax. We'll sort it out and wrap it up in style.'

‘That is
exactly
what I'm afraid of! The small cigar, Hermann. This … this one left deliberately at the scene.'

‘As a reminder?'

‘But of course.'

‘Then take my advice, Louis. Let's say it was a hunting accident. Let's find the village idiot and nail him with it.'

This from a former Munich detective, to say nothing of Berlin! ‘So, Hermann, ask our friend who told him to meet us at the station.'

‘He's gone, Louis. Fratani's buggered off.'

‘
Nom de Jésus-Christ!
I leave you to do the necessary while I attend to business and you … you …'

‘Easy, Louis. Easy, eh? Why not tell me what's upset you?'

‘A feeling. The breath of memory, Hermann. An uneasiness I have not experienced since the first week of January 1934.'

St-Cyr tugged at something in the woman's right hand and when he had it free, let out a gasp, then lifted brimming eyes to the lantern.

Kohler brought the light closer. ‘The
mont-de-piété
in Bayonne, Hermann. The municipal pawnshop and the same damned one as in 1934!'

He turned aside, and for a cop with a gut of iron, proceeded to vomit and then to urinate in his trousers, both at the same time or in between.

Kohler sat him up and held the brandy to his lips, and when he'd had another pull at it, St-Cyr waved the flask away. ‘Care to tell me about it?' asked the Bavarian. ‘Just so that I know exactly what to expect.'

Those troubled eyes ducked furtively away to the body. ‘That is just it, Hermann. With him – if it really is him – we will never be sure of what to expect.'

‘Then you watch my back, I'll watch yours. Let's stick together like glue, Louis. That'll fix him.'

‘The Deuxième Bureau, Hermann? State security? Even in a nation crippled by the Occupation, security must come before all else, especially murder.'

Louis really was quite ill. ‘Perhaps he doesn't work for them any more.'

‘Perhaps, but then … then this one will. Once the dye has taken, the skin cannot be changed.'

‘Then come on, let's see what's up the hill. This one will keep for a while.'

The house on the hillside had but one room, a single lantern hanging from the ceiling over the table, a loft for sleeping in warmer weather, and the fetid stirrings of the animals below.

As Kohler shut the heavy door behind them, the sound of the wind dropped a little but the shrieking voice carried on – dementedly shrill in terror, the girl tossing on the only bed, roped to it – while the old woman sat with her back to a roaring fire and the wind … the wind outside laid its file over everything.

Blood gushed down the woman's pudgy hands as she turned the grinder and vigorously stuffed goose livers into it. Heaps of kidneys, a slab of fatty bacon, some larded ribs of pork and the skinned carcasses of four rabbits glistened on the chequered table-cloth before her.

There was a butcher's knife, a cleaver – blood smeared everywhere – and a bowl of freshly washed intestines, grey-white and flaccid in their coils. Herbs and spices and black olives. Oil too, and salt. A rope of garlic, two of dried peppers and a mound of peeled onions.

‘She's making sausage, Louis,' whispered Kohler.

‘And
pâté. Merde
, can I not see this myself? The girl, Hermann. What in God's name is wrong with her?'

‘Epilepsy.'

‘A fit?'

‘What else would you call it?'

The ropes about the ankles and wrists were feverishly strained at, the shrieking again became a shrill, hair-raising cry for penance perhaps or for the torture to end.

Quivering, the spasm passed, and from where they still stood at the door, they could hear the ragged breathing lapse into a fitful caution.

The woman merely continued to grind things, and the fire that raged, threw her rounded shadow on the wall beside them and on the beams in the ceiling too.

‘Madame …?' began St-Cyr only to see her suddenly stop and reach for the cleaver.

‘Georges?' she asked. ‘Is that not you?'

‘Blind … Goddamnit, Louis, she can't see us.'

‘But I can hear you,
mes amis
. So, please, what is it you want of me? You are not from around here. This I already know.'

‘A moment of your time, madame. Please do not be afraid …'

‘Afraid? Why should I be afraid?'

She was perhaps seventy. It was always so hard to tell with country people. Round of face and shoulder, chin, cheeks and nose, she had the gaze of the blind all right, the high colour of the wind and sun and the ample bosom of the hills.

Wisps of silky grey hair were matted to the brow with blood or stuck out from beneath the simple kerchief.

‘Madame, the girl …?' began St-Cyr with genuine concern.

‘That one? Have you really come from the asylum in Chamonix as promised?'

‘No … Ah, no, madame. We have come from Paris about the … the …'

‘The taxes?'

‘Ah no, madame. Not the taxes.'

‘The schooling for my grandson – my only grandson? Look, messieurs, the husband he is dead, isn't that so? I am the widow, yes? The boy he is needed around the farm. Reading can do him no good if he cannot eat.'

‘Then he was not at school on Wednesday?' hazarded Kohler.

The cleaver was lowered in defeat perhaps. ‘No … no, he did not go to school then, monsieur. Wednesdays are not days for the schooling. Is it that you did not know of this perhaps?'

Kohler flung Louis a questioning look, only to see the Frog shrug and hear him say, ‘I would have told you sooner or later, eh? Go and have a look at the girl. Leave this one to me.'
Merde
!
Les Provençaux
could be so difficult! Suspicion always, particularly towards outsiders, but she had spoken in French, albeit with the harsh accent, so that was something.

‘The woman, madame. The body?' he ventured, watching her closely.

She stiffened. ‘What body? There is
no
body. I am not going to my Maker just yet, monsieur, not when I have such a …' Ah no, why had she let it slip?

‘Such a duty, madame?' offered the Sûreté's detective.

‘Yes … yes, a duty to that one.'

The girl.

Kohler found the patient's watchful gaze electric. Every particle of the girl was set to strike out at him if she could. Spittle foamed from between her clenched teeth, the lips were drawn cruelly back, the breath coming in short spasms, hatred everywhere.

He reached out to soothe the dampened brow. She jerked her head back and savagely bit him!

‘
Ah … you slut!
' he shrieked. ‘
Let go of me! Louis … Louis … The bitch …!
'

St-Cyr pried the jaws apart and the girl spat in his face!

‘
Verdammt
!' bellowed Kohler, sucking on the bloodied ham of his right thumb. ‘I was trying to be kind, Louis.'

‘You need a mirror, my friend. That scar … the thing that rawhide whip bestowed upon your left cheek, eh? The stitch-marks are still red.'

‘Shit! Her teeth are sharp. I'll get epilepsy, Louis. Human bites … one can't be too careful. They're always the worst!'

The Gestapo's detective had meant it too. Always the Germans were so afraid of catching some French disease. St-Cyr shook his head to chide his partner, and taking up a wash-cloth from a nearby chair, squeezed water over the thumb.

As the girl watched closely, her breasts pushed at the rough cotton nightgown and her slender throat constricted. She was about twenty-four years of age and thin, had the high cheekbones of the aristocracy, the fierce dark eyes of the Midi and the hair to match. Was really quite beautiful were her state of health and condition not so utterly deplorable.

Kohler wrapped his thumb in the rag. Immediately the girl yanked her eyes from Louis to focus fiercely on it. Again the breasts shoved at the nightgown. Again there was that watchful look of hatred whose intensity both shocked and troubled.

Blood was smeared on her neck and collar-bones, and where the old woman had tried to jam a stick between those white, white teeth, there was more of it on the chin and on the pillow-slip and sheets.

Together, St-Cyr plucking at Hermann's coat-sleeve, they withdrew. The old woman was again stuffing goose livers into the grinder. ‘Nothing stops for long in these hills, Hermann,' said St-Cyr ruefully. ‘It can't, for to do so is to die.'

‘Then ask her if the one in the bed is related to the one with the bolt in her chest.'

‘You're learning.
Ah Mon Dieu
, my old one, the lessons I have been so patiently imparting to you are at last beginning to sink in.'