More flecks of gilding and sawdust had fallen into them, and for this he apologized. ‘An autopsy,’ he muttered. ‘We absolutely must have one but are being denied it.’
Setting the bread aside, he opened Hermann’s little sack and arranged everything on the lid. ‘Boudicca,’ he said of the carving. ‘Bien sur, nothing seems new in this world of ours, does it? Stripped of her family’s holdings by the Romans, she objected loudly to the loss and was publically flogged naked and forced to watch as her daughters were raped. In rebellion, she rose up to lead most of the Celtic tribes of the British Isles against them. Camulodunum, the Roman capital, fell and was sacked and burned, other hillforts and settlements too, their collaborationist Celts put to the sword, and then Londinium, but in A.D. 62 she was betrayed, it is said, by one of her own. Rather than suffer capture, she and her daughters took poison. Three females, mademoiselle. The number three just keeps turning up, doesn’t it? Three ravens, the three of you on that Winterhilfswerk Committee?’
He would give her a moment, would run his eyes down these stained scraps of newspaper Hermann had gathered from the living quarters of those men, would smooth each of them out.
‘As a boy of five I was rather sickly,’ he said, for sometimes it helped to recount such things to a victim. ‘Cod-liver oil was of no use, iron tonics neither, and not just the stone-filings from a carpenter’s nail. Fifteen francs a bottle my dear papa paid for that stuff. Weeks in bed were prescribed. “He needs rest,” the doctor said, giving my poor mother little to hope for but a lifetime of nursing, and grand-maman little patience. “Courage,” she said to maman. “Don’t flood the house with your tears. The boy can’t swim though I’ve warned him he’d best learn.”
‘She read to me.’ He indicated the carving. ‘Of course at such a tender age the word defilement meant little, but to be stripped and flogged by an enemy was sufficient for what my grandmother most wanted to implant. That wherever oppression exists, there will be those who rise up against it. Boudicca is from the Celtic word bouda, meaning victory, mademoiselle. In English, the equivalent name is, of course, Victoria. Many of those from Lille, and from Brittany too, have Celtic/Gallic ancestors. Was it the assistant machinist who carved this as he did the buttons for the waistcoat the colonel was having made? A boar, a stag, a salmon … these too.’
He set Thomas’s wedding ring and one of the spoons down on the lid. ‘Let’s admit that this artist and artisan remembered the centuries of his ancestors, but what is more important, did so deliberately and not just to improve the lives of his comrades. And as to his having instructed you in such things, though you loved the woods, you constantly felt a forbidding presence, and in this the colonel was, I believe, telling us the truth.’
Three ravens, three crows … The Phantom Queen.
‘The supreme goddess of all that is perverse and horrible amongst the powers of the supernatural. My second wife was a Breton and at times very superstitious, as are many Bretons.’
Morr’igan …
‘And Badhbh, the Crow-Raven, and Nemhain, that of Frenzy and Panic. There are always the three, though really they are but one and the same.’
Morr’igan. But showing herself as three solitary ravens or crows.
‘Was it that assistant machinist who pumped you full of Celtic mythology? More importantly, please, why did he do so? Admit it, you were desperately afraid, mademoiselle. You knew that what you and the other two were involved in could only end in disaster, but did he and the others then find out and plan to use it for themselves?’
Sophie was being followed. …
‘That father of hers learned what the three of you were up to, didn’t he? That is why those two detectives of the colonel’s came and took my partner.’
But did Colonel Rasche also find out? Did Werner and Yvonne? A Winterhilfswerk fete, a little Karneval of our own? Games of chance, target shooting and a Jeu de massacre? A Bottle Fish …
The carving of the chariot and its rider had a short round peg under it and could not be set quite upright. ‘My partner and I haven’t had a chance to discuss things thoroughly, mademoiselle. There are still things he knows that I don’t; those that I do, and he doesn’t.’
Opening the cutthroat which must have come from that barbershop for it was every bit the same, he flashed its blade and asked, ‘Did you know of this? Come, come, you weren’t exactly the blithe spirit you wanted others to perceive.’
Staring at the ceiling, surrounded by hideously garish masks, murals and distorting mirrors, she lay silent.
He’d sigh, then, thought St-Cyr, and say, ‘You didn’t know about this razor, did you? You’re as shocked as I am that those five men for whom you and Victoria and Sophie would risk so much, should in turn contemplate betraying you with something like this. Admit it, mademoiselle, of all of those five men, Eugene Thomas had the best chance of taking it, since he had the confidence of Sophie Schrijen.’
The Primastella’s engine didn’t idle well. Each time the engine faltered, the beams from its headlamps would dim and a breath would be held, but then the damned things would brighten.
‘You should have that looked at,’ said Kohler. Caught in the light, he waited, facing them, and as they advanced, their shadows were thrown ahead of them: pulled-down fedoras first and then the rest; Gauloises bleues being sucked on, tobacco smoke drifting into the cold night air, the one much taller, bigger in every way than the other who was to the right. ‘Ach, can’t we talk this over?’
They hesitated. A split second passed, but on they came and well apart. The tall one would start it, the shorter one would wait but momentarily. Breath billowed-his own. Light from the car was blinding him. Silent still, they drew closer. Both cudgels would now be raised. The tall one would hit first and high-the left shoulder or forearm. The other one would try for the back of the right calf or knee. They would want him to fall over.
The headlamps dimmed, the engine coughed. Kohler lunged at the tall one, grabbed the cudgel in mid-stroke, felt the jar of it, the pain, found himself slipping, losing balance as he cried out. Over and over they rolled, fists flailing, hands grabbing, forehead trying to smash him and smash him. The bastard was too strong, too heavy. An ear was bitten, eyes were gouged, blood tasted, a hand thrust under a bristled chin to force the head to stop butting him, the other one’s truncheon glancing off a shoulder. Now his back was being clobbered and instinctively each time it was hit, it arched, causing him to lose his grip.
From one side of the road to the other, they rolled, grabbing, choking, punching, struggling, the tall one trying desperately to tear the shoelace from around his throat but the cord cut too deeply.
Knees jammed hard against the son of a bitch’s back, Kohler spat hard and tried to avoid the other one’s truncheon, had best kill this one. Couldn’t avoid it. Verdammt!
‘Don’t!’ yelled Herve Paulus, backing away a little. ‘Serge, I’ll try to get him to stop.’
Arms flailed, eyes bulged, the tall one’s struggling began to slacken … ‘Toss that thing of yours away. Don’t and I really will kill him.’
‘Serge …’ hazarded the shorter one, pitching the truncheon to the road but not far enough.
‘Your gun,’ managed Kohler, catching ragged breaths as the weapon bounced and skidded to the edge of the road but didn’t bury itself in the snow like it should have. ‘Now go and put your hands flat on the bonnet of the car. Stand with your back to us.’