‘We will try the Dolmen of Crucuno first, Jean-Louis,’ he said, ‘since it is much closer, and then, I think, The Tumulus of Saint-Michel.’
Three kilometres east of Plouharnel and the road to Quiberon, rain flooded the narrow, darkened streets of Carnac. Schultz spared the village little. Jamming the accelerator down, he gave the lorry all it had on the only hill worth mentioning in the whole of the Morbihan. All too soon, though, the beam of the headlamps cut an angry swath across the white-plastered front of a small hotel whose giant letters gave THE GRAVE OF THE DRUIDS — THE TUMULUS OF SAINT-MICHEL — and poured water off each of them.
Ah merde, sighed Kohler, not liking it one bit.
His own lorry soon screeched to a halt beside them and both raced their engines and trained the beams of their headlamps nakedly on the hotel in spite of the black-out regulations.
At last the portly owner got the message. Timidly the door opened and, on seeing that it really was the Germans, he stepped out to stand in the rain, shielding his eyes from the glare.
The maroon velour dressing-gown with its jade-green collar and cord had to have been left by some down-at-heel Count of Monte Cristo more than fifty years ago. The beige felt slippers were too big and didn’t even match each other. ‘Messieurs …?’ began the man doubtfully — at least that’s what he must have said but no one heard him.
His chubby cheeks were pale, the dome of his head bald, the ears rather small behind sidewhiskers and under the monk’s tonsure.
Schultz gunned the engine hard, then switched off but left the lights on. The other lorry followed suit. Silence now intruded, joining the incessant hammering of the rain.
‘He’s getting wet,’ offered Kohler.
‘So what?’ snorted Schultz.
‘You’re the Gestapo,’ murmured Baumann. ‘You do the honours, Herr Kohler. Tell him we’re tourists and haven’t got a lot of time. Tell him we’re sorry to have interrupted his sleep but that death waits for no one and he should have been up and at work anyway.’
‘The Préfet’s car isn’t here, Otto,’ hazarded Schultz.
It wasn’t. ‘Give me back my guns,’ breathed Kohler. ‘I don’t feel right without them.’ Verdammt, what was he to do?
‘And here we thought the Gestapo invincible and equal to every situation?’ quipped Baumann drily.
‘Piss off.’
The muzzle of the Luger jabbed him in the ribs. ‘Give him Schultz’s present. Maybe that will loosen his tongue.’
With the string bag of skulls dangling from his left hand, the Gestapo’s detective walked into the lights to stand in the rain and throw his shadow over the hotel.
A big man, he was formidable.
‘Listen, those boys mean business. Is there anyone in the tumulus?’
‘The tumulus …? But … but it is closed for the season, monsieur? The hours, they are from …’
‘Kohler, Gestapo Paris Central. Just answer the question.’
There were at least six skulls in the bag and as the Gestapo raised it higher, they, too, threw their shadow on the wall.
‘Préfet Kerjean was here earlier but … Monsieur Charbonneau, he was not in the tumulus and the Préfet, he … he has told me to lock the door and let no one in.’
That was fair enough and what a good cop would have done. ‘Where was he headed when he left you?’
‘To Vannes … to his house. Monsieur, has anything happened to Monsieur Charbonneau? The Préfet, he has searched the tumulus most thoroughly in spite of my telling him the door was locked all day and Monsieur Charbonneau could not, after his last visit, have left the side entrance open for himself as he sometimes does. The Préfet, please, he has not said why he … he was looking for the pianist.’
‘Someone wants him for a concert at the Santé.’
‘The Santé …?’ Paris’s largest and most crowded prison.
The others must have got down from the lorries, for the man drew in a ragged breath and could not take his eyes from them. ‘So many,’ he stammered.
‘It’s just a party. Give me the key and whatever candles you have. Here, hold this and I’ll pay you up front. That way you won’t have to worry.’
5,000 francs changed hands from a bundle the Gestapo dragged out. ‘It … it is too much,’ stammered the man. ‘I have no change.’
‘Don’t worry. It’s my treat. Look on it as a tip and if my partner arrives, tell him I’m in there. Tell him to do something and to go about it carefully.’
The crew approached and soon they too threw their shadows on the hotel. Quickly the owner crossed himself and, thrusting back the bag of skulls, disappeared into the house for the key.
The damned thing must weigh a good two kilos, thought Kohler. ‘Exactly what kind of a door is it?’ he asked doubtfully.
‘An old one. A big one.’
Behind, and to one side of the hotel, a long, vine-covered pergola that might have been deemed quaint in pre-war days, led to the door whose great iron studs and hammered surface looked not only medieval but impregnable. The vines had lost their leaves and simply got in the way. The lock was stiff, the door took two of them to budge it and another to swing it aside.
Christ! The burrow behind it was lined with upright stones too heavy for fewer than eight or ten strong young men to have heaved into place. It was roofed by the same.
Grey and grey-green, the tightly fitted stones revealed signs of mitring which made one marvel at the skill of its builders. The stones were cold and damp and mossy and when he let a hand trail respectfully down the surface of one of them, Kohler swallowed hard. He’d have to duck. There was little enough room. His shoulders were wide. The floor was paved with blocks, or was it gravel? Dry in any case and all but level. Perhaps he could find some gentle rise, perhaps he could …
‘You first,’ said Baumann. ‘Here, give me the key. Death’s-head will keep it.’
Were they going to lock him in? wondered Kohler. ‘The Préfet isn’t here and neither is the pianist.’
‘We’ll see, since there are two entrances. If not, we’ll have a trial of our own without them. Just you and ourselves. You’ll tell us what we want to know and we won’t tell you anything.’
‘Then give me a light. My eyes aren’t so good when it’s pitch dark.’
‘Quit stalling. The passage goes in to the centre of the tumulus. Graves open off it but are sunk a little into the floor. There is also a cross-cutting passage to the left and then, a little later on, one to the right which leads to the side entrance. The passage we are in makes a circuit in the centre with communal rooms opening off it, and it is in these rooms that there are several cremation pits.’
‘You’ve been here before.’
‘When one leaves the sea, what else is there to do?’
The Blechkoller of U-boatmen, that tin-can claustrophobic neurosis, was foreign to most of them or perhaps they were simply used to it and bolstered one another. Every once in a while the long line of men, stooped and otherwise, would stop to listen hard or laugh and make jokes until silenced by the others. In the damp and musty hush that followed these outbursts, the wind would whisper and sigh as it sought the ancient passages or found some hidden fissure it just had to explore.
Were its sounds parts of the pianist’s symphony? he wondered. The entrance passage did, indeed, pass portals that led to cremation pits in rooms across whose walls and floors the torch beams erratically fled.
One long passage did lead to the west — Baumann shone his torch along it. The stones were grey and silent and forbidding. The floor, trod by ancient feet from across the millennia, brought with the thought of them, the sound of stone hammers cracking the charred bones of their brethren to burn them better and free the greasy marrow.