So it was back to the dolls, was it? She’d be serious with him and would frown. Yes … yes, that would be best! ‘I … I don’t know. I don’t think so. She’s a little too old for dolls, isn’t she?’
‘Too intelligent perhaps but then … ah then, mademoiselle, age and intelligence do not always coincide and one can still welcome the comfort of friends.’
‘And that child has none of them?’
‘None.’
‘Does she play with her dolls — is this what you are thinking? Dolls the Kapitän Kaestner had made for her? Dolls of her mother, her stepmother and her father, perhaps? The Dollmaker could have used photographs of the dead mother, couldn’t he?’
The attempt had been desperate, the truth still hidden. ‘The doll I want was neither of those but something the Captain did not make.’
‘Then I can’t help you, can I?’
There was nothing he could do to ensure caution. With some it was useless to try. They had to discover everything for themselves. ‘Take care of yourself mademoiselle. I may want to talk to you again.’
She would give him a moment more to see if he remembered the briefcase and wanted to ask her about it. She would study him as he had studied her, stripping away not the layers of clothing but those of the mind. She would smile briefly and extend the hand of friendship just in case. ‘Au revoir, Inspector. Auf Wiedersehen.’
The Sous-Préfet’s comment was terse as they watched her pick her way among the corpses. ‘That girl is trouble. I would not be at all surprised if she not only knew where the money was but counted it before bed.’
‘Don’t tar the child with the sins of the father — this is something I am presently telling myself. No child can be totally blamed for the loss of innocence, yet all lose it, some far sooner than others.’
Unsettled by the all too evident sadness in the Chief Inspector’s voice, le Troadec handed him the report.
He handed it right back. ‘You tell me, please. For the moment my eyes are not what they should be and I am too lazy to find my glasses.’
Understandingly the Sous-Préfet nodded. ‘Chocolate in the stomach. Candied cherries too, and cognac or brandy — enough alcohol in the blood to make him more belligerent than usual, which is saying something.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Yes. Black bread and smoked sausage. Pork most probably. No sawdust, and whole peppercorns, both white and black.’
‘U-boat food.’
It was not a question but a statement of fact, the Chief Inspector gazing off towards the door through which the girl had disappeared. ‘Someone from the crew must have visited him,’ said the Sous-Préfet. ‘The cook perhaps.’
‘Good! I’ll be in touch. Excuse me, you’ve been most helpful.’
He ran. Nimbly, as the soccer forward he had once been, the Chief Inspector reached the door and darted after the girl.
She was waiting for the bus amid the ruins where dazed and grief-stricken stragglers till wandered and the firemen were coiling their hoses. She was not happy to see him coming towards her with such determination …
‘The customers that came to the shop before your father left to take the bus, mademoiselle?’
She would hunch her shoulders forward and draw her neck in a little deeper so that her collar would push her hair up a bit. It had been most wise to listen to her intuition — she must always remember to do so and never deny it. She was glad she had decided to head home instead of going to see someone. Yes, she had listened to the warnings of her innermost self.
‘Mademoiselle …?’
The line-up for the bus was long and doubled. Several were taking notice and the detective had realized he should not have spoken out but he had had to know.
So she would tell him and tell them. Yes she would! ‘Don’t you remember, Inspector? My father had locked me in my little cage in the cellar so as to punish me. He liked to think of me in there as his prisoner.’
Ah damn her! ‘For what, please, were you being punished? For playing around with the enemy?’
A slip of the tongue, was it, Inspector? Beware the snake who listens then, beware the gossips in a little place like Quiberon. ‘The Germans may be your enemy, Chief Inspector St-Cyr from the Paris Sûreté, but they are not mine. Now, please, the autobus is negotiating the destruction given us by Mr Winston Churchill and the bombers of the British Royal Air Force. Unless you wish to stand in its way, I … why, I think you had better leave.’
‘For what reason did he lock you up, mademoiselle?’
Was it so important to him? ‘For things both he and my mother imagined.’
The smoked sausage had been good, the beer perfect and the black bread and Edam cheese added treats. Ali Baba’s Cave had turned out to be a brand-new concrete bunker some five kilometres to the west of Lorient on the outskirts of a small village. There had been tonnes of stores. Far more than enough for a little criminal to indulge himself.
But the warehouse had had another advantage. It was but a nice little walk to the clay pits and Schultz had logged himself into the warehouse on the morning of the murder: 1000 hours bang on and ready.
Kohler drew on his cigarette, one of many he had so recently acquired. He leaned the newly requisitioned Freikorps bicycle against the stone wall beside the road, and took time out to enjoy the day.
Death’s-head Schultz had been in his element. Surrounded by ramparts of tinned ham, pickled beef, peas, beans, chicken stew, tomatoes, plum jam, et cetera, et cetera, with whole smoked hams and sides of bacon hanging above among the rounds and coils of sausage, the son of a bitch had held court over a keg of fresh eggs that in Paris would have brought 200 francs a piece.
Four tins of Dutch pipe tobacco resided in a rucksack, along with six hundred cigarettes, eighteen bars of Swiss chocolate, thirty of soap, four towels, two face cloths, six handkerchiefs, eight pairs of socks and two litres of Russian vodka just to remind him of his sons, Hans and Jurgen Kohler.
‘But have I been had?’ he asked himself. ‘Ah Gott im Himmel, Louis, your partner who prides himself in getting the best of every deal is not so sure this time.’
Louis was still in Lorient, for all he knew, so the confession was safe from prying ears that would remember and recall it six months from now if necessary.
Schultz had played the usual game of distraction. ‘Flash’ cards of pretty Breton girls had been turned over as in a game of poker, some naked and in unusual and awkward poses, others half-naked and doing things no girl should let herself be photographed doing, others chaste and clothed and caught with sudden uncertainty in their eyes.
But none of them had been the shopkeeper’s daughter yet the clay pits were so near.
He wished he could see the autopsy report on the father; he had a feeling it would turn up something.
The deal had been set at a split of 33 to 67. Schultz had not been forthcoming about the Dollmaker, Baumann or any of the others of the crew. Indeed, his only derogatory comment had been about their First Officer, and even on the Baron von Stadler he had clammed up.
‘They’re special,’ he had said with that grin of his. ‘What one does for another, all do. We stick together because we must. We let the mould grow over us at sea and we brush it off our bread until the loaf is too soggy and the mould too deep to eat.’
When the sun came out, Kohler lifted his face to it and thought briefly of home and of the boys. He smelled the pinewoods, the perfume of new sawdust and that of wood-smoke at night. He heard the cows in the barn at milking, the horses as the plough broke the heavy clay. He felt the earth and squeezed a handful so hard, it was as if he was really there.