‘The young master is always bringing her things.’
‘Nothing is ever wasted these days, is it? Everything has a use.’ Even a dead man’s overboots.
One table, small and rough-hewn, had been set up just outside the cage, one straight-backed chair on which to sit as he interviewed each of the combine, but that wasn’t going to be of any use. Kohler knew Dorsche would wring each of them dry before they ever got here. Dorsche would start with Raymond Maillotte, would ask the test weaver only one question: Why had Prisoner 220371 been sentenced to death?
Maillotte might hold out, having already betrayed himself and his friends. He might take the blows and the shrieks, but even if he did, the others wouldn’t know what he’d said. There was only one way to help them. Nothing else really mattered now. He had to get the colonel to intervene, had to convince him that his visiting detectives desperately needed time.
Stuffing the coat-hood with its wadding of newspapers into a torn pillowcase, grey from use, he headed for the exit, pushed past the guard who’d been delegated to watch him, heard that one’s startled objections, the sighs of observant POWs as he started down the stairs, cramming the pillowcase into a pocket, going faster, faster until the cold light of day and the gently falling snow hit him.
Far along the soot- and snow-covered lane that ran between the steam plants and sheds to one side and the administrative block to the other, Dorsche and two of his Greifer were escorting Prisoner 220374 toward him. The Lagerfeldwebel was in the lead and clearly in a rage; the other two each had Maillotte by an arm, their Mausers slung. POWs dropped their shovels and stood to attention, snatching off their caps and baring their heads. Outside the kitchen, one of the Russians deliberately threw a bucket of potatoes across the trampled snow in front of them but was ignored.
Between the latrine and the root cellar, the ground was filthy, Dorsche livid. ‘WHERE IS THAT PARTNER OF YOURS, HERR KOHLER? WHY HAS HE NOT OBEYED THE ORDER FROM THE TOWER TO TURN BACK?’
A cigarette would do no good, a grin certainly wouldn’t help. ‘Louis will turn up, Lagerfeldwebel. He can’t have gone far.’
‘ALLE WERDEN BESTRAFT, KOHLER. ALLE!’
All are going on punishment.
‘STRAFLAGER IST KEIN ZUCKERLECKEN!’
Punishment camp is no picnic.
‘Bitte, find your friend and quickly,’ said Dorsche, suddenly out of breath and realizing that the POWs in the barracks block would be at their windows watching the scene he’d created. ‘Tell him he must not do this, that you both, at all times, must be with one of the guards for your own safety, of course.’
Cigarettes had best be hauled out now, for Dorsche badly needed to save face.
‘Danke, Herr Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter. Prisoner 220374 can give us both the answer to the question I asked him.’
Maillotte was brought forward, the men in the background not moving from where they stood to attention, simply watching as POWs had done in every camp that had ever been. Maillotte hesitated. He flicked his dark brown eyes uncertainly over Dorsche and this Kripo, was still caked with that white dust, had slipped a hand into the right pocket of the blue coveralls whose faded fabric showed through only at its creases.
‘You are to answer,’ said Dorsche, still catching his breath.
The test weaver lifted his gaze to the barracks block beyond them. Perhaps he tried to find the two windows his combine had shared, perhaps he simply begged the Russians and the others to forgive him, but one thing was certain. The two guards had stepped back and to his left; Dorsche and himself were now facing him, and between them there was perhaps no more than two metres.
‘Don’t,’ Kohler heard himself saying, but by then it was too late, though he ran. He slipped and nearly fell as he chased after Maillotte but the Frenchman had kicked off his sabots and had somehow found the wind of the gods. Maillotte leapt easily over the warning wire, didn’t stop, didn’t wait for the shots, grabbed the barbed wire and started to climb, the white dust of him being sprayed with blood and brains, the teeth erupting from his mouth as he coughed once, Kohler grabbing him and what he had tried to swallow …
A bloodied lump of partly masticated papier-mache and a phosphorescent swastika button.
Dorsche hadn’t seen him take them, not really. Inherently suspicious because he had to be, the Lagerfeldwebel grunted and said, ‘Fur ihn ist der Krieg zu Enden, Kohler.’ For him the war has ended.
‘No one is to be sent anywhere without the Kommandant’s order, Lagerfeldwebel.’
Was the Detektiv about to throw up? ‘Straf cells are in the attic and that is where they must now be taken. You could have been shot. Ach, had you been patient, I might still have helped you, but now can do nothing.’
‘Then put this one in with the other one.’
‘Certainly, but your hand. You’ve cut it.’
‘The barbed wire.’
‘Are stitches needed?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You must go immediately to the Lagerfuhrung in any case. They have a first-aid kit and euflavine, an antiseptic, also some of the sulphanilamide powder. Sepsis you do not want. There is no doctor here, but as soon as possible, have one look at the wound or … Ach, there’s a woman pharmacist in town who is excellent. The Unterlindenstrasse, near the bus terminal. I go there many times.’
And hadn’t that same pharmacist already been mentioned? ‘I’ll just rinse this off in the washhouse before I go to the Lagerfuhrung.’ Louis … Louis had to be in the one place Dorsche and his Greifer hadn’t thought to look.
St-Cyr knew that no shots had been heard in the garage. There had been far too much background noise from the servicing of the lorries, and from the Works out there. A goods train was also being loaded, but still the news had travelled quickly.
‘To each saint his candle, Inspector,’ said Lucien Weber, using a decidedly French expression but prudently giving it in Deutsch while sadly shaking his head.
Honour to whom honour is due, but was Hermann all right? Had he thrown up? Did he have the shakes that damned Benzedrine sometimes caused? They’d not eaten. His blood sugar would be low. It was nearly 3.30 in the afternoon.
‘The Fraulein Schrijen will be terribly upset, Inspector. Sophie had her heart set on those men bringing some of the Karneval things to life for the Winterhilfswerk fundraiser. Three deaths. First Renee Ekkehard … Such a lovely girl and her dearest friend. Those two … To see them together was wonderful. But then Herr Thomas on whom Sophie depended for virtually everything she had to do here. No task was too difficult, no schedule too complicated. He would work it all out with her and was extremely patient, a real teacher.
‘Inspector, you must know she is convinced Renee’s death was not a suicide. Now she’ll be worrying all the more that it could well have been herself had her brother, Alain, not come home unexpectedly. The car is his. Sophie never forgets.’
‘And on Saturday, 30 January?’
Not two weeks ago. Eleven days to be precise. ‘She went to the train station that afternoon to give him the car as she always does. Alain then drove here without her, spoke briefly with his father and then went on to the house at Kaysersberg. It’s always been his first love, that house and its vineyards.’
‘Could he have gone out to the Karneval?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Didn’t he want to see his fiancee?’
This one was going to press for answers that had best not be given. ‘He told me he was going to the house in the country.’
‘And his sister?’
Must the Inspector make things difficult? ‘Sophie would have stayed in town and taken the bus home, to the house Chairman Schrijen has in Kolmar.’