He would only have bitched about getting his shoes and socks thoroughly wet! He would only have blamed his partner for being so stupid as to have let the Préfet out of his sight!
The humps and hollows grew more difficult but soon there were sedges, feather mosses and tall, coarse grasses, the beginnings of the fenland. ‘The gulls are out there somewhere,’ he said.
Everything wept moisture, everything was shrouded in fog. Stunted black spruce were spindly like the bones of a fish and often clublike at the top with a witch’s broom of many shoots.
He fell. He went down on his hands and knees. His shoes were in danger of becoming lost with the sucking of the bottom muds. He almost called out, Kerjean, where are you?
He almost said, You leave her alone.
When he arrived at a bit of staging, a dock of sorts up on pilings and none too solid, there wasn’t a sign of anyone. Only the fog and the beginnings of open water that was ringed by rushes now sear.
The tightly knotted painter with which the pianist had tethered his punt had been cleanly cut. ‘Last night,’ he said and knew he was right.
The gulls were out over the water. The ravens had no place to land except on the punt.
Kohler swallowed tightly. The chamber, deep in the Tumulus of Saint-Michel, was large enough and roofed by massive slabs that were held up by standing stones of several tonnes. He sat all alone before the men on a large, flat rock — had it been a megalithic butcher’s block? he wondered. His feet were sunk into one of a scattering of cremation pits — shallow, round holes about a metre or so in diameter that had been dug into the floor perhaps four thousand years ago. They’d been excavated more lately, of course, but … Ach! There were still bits of charcoal and charred bone. He noticed a molar and tried not to concentrate on it, looked up suddenly.
Death’s-head Schultz had his Walther P38 in a pocket, the Second Engineer had Louis’s Lebel, and Baumann still had the Captain’s Luger.
Among the thirty or so men who were gathered, those who had one of the thick, greasy candles held it before them in a clenched fist, and the light … the light not only flickered hauntingly across their faces but those of the others, and they all cast shadows on the roof and walls behind them. The stench of grease, soot, smoke, sour wine and beer, puke and sweat was close on the damp, cold, musty air just like in a submarine.
They were definitely not friendly. Grim-faced, stolid and silent, they were almost as apprehensive as himself. After all, he was Gestapo, was one of them, and mock trials, no matter how much of a joke they might claim them to be, were nothing to fool with should word get back to Berlin. Things could also go wrong. Ah Gott im Himmel, what was he to do?
Having searched and found no sign of Charbonneau, they wanted answers. They were about as much in the dark as he was. They genuinely needed to find out what the hell had been going on. Their Captain, their Vati, was being blamed for something he maintained he hadn’t done. Paulette le Trocquer had been gang-raped and murdered and the Inspector was saying their cook, the Obersteuermann Baumann, the Second Engineer and Erich Fromm were responsible. The girl’s mother had been killed. The money — some of it their own — was still missing.
‘Let’s face it,’ grimaced the prisoner, ‘that sweet little bit you guys nailed in the toilet would have told you everything, Death’s-head. The question is, why don’t you tell the rest of us?’
His head bent forward uncomfortably lest it hit the stone roof, the cook grinned and let his lark’s eyes dance over the prisoner. ‘We’re asking the questions. You are doing the answering.’
‘Then ask. Let it be between the two of us.’
‘Otto, he hasn’t understood.’
Baumann sighed. ‘We found the girl just as you did, Herr Kohler, the mother also. Now, if we didn’t kill them, who did?’
‘Your Vati?’
Baumann dragged out the key to the cell and waved it reprovingly. ‘He’s locked up. I myself saw him into the cell last night after his brief visit to the party.’
‘And there’s no other key? Don’t be a Dummkopf. Quiberon’s gendarmes would have had a spare. The Préfet …’
‘The Préfet,’ said Death’s-head, still grinning. ‘Bitte, Herr Detektif. Bitte. Why would Préfet Kerjean release our Dollmaker when he believes him guilty of murder?’
‘I didn’t say he did. I only meant there could well have been two keys and that, given the opportunity, Fräulein Krüger could well have palmed the other one and passed it to the Captain.’
‘The Fräulein Krüger …? But … but how was she given that opportunity?’ asked Baumann.
‘Were there two cell keys hanging on the wall of that piss pot gendarmerie?’ countered Kohler. He had got them talking. At least that was something.
Baumann thought about it. The Obersteuermann raked over the leaves of the past few days. The arrest, their demanding to take charge of Vati, the telexes to and from the Lion in Paris, the Préfet’s backing down. Kerjean had vehemently argued that the Dollmaker was his responsibility yet had let them guard the Captain, ‘Ja, there may well have been two keys.’
‘Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. Question is, did she give that key to the Captain because I damned well saw him in a car outside that shop. He nearly ran me over.’
‘Yet you do not believe he killed Madame le Trocquer?’ asked Baumann. ‘Why, please, is this?’
‘Yes, why?’ demanded Death’s-head. ‘Why blame us when you know Vati was there?’
‘Because you bastards were looking for your money. You smashed the place up. The dollmaker wouldn’t have bothered.’
‘Unless,’ said Baumann, half in thought and half in doubt, ‘unless he had wanted to make it look as if someone else had done it.’
I.e., the crew.
‘Were all four of you always together at the last?’ asked Kohler, wishing he had fags to pass around. Tobacco was the great pacifier. ‘Well?’ he asked.
‘Not always,’ admitted Baumann cautiously. ‘But we were together when he found the girl on her knees and then found the mother.’
‘Before or after I did?’
‘Before. You were still looking for us in the rain. We went straight from the Club to the shop and in a hurry.’
‘No sign of the Captain?’
‘No sign of anyone.’
‘Would the Captain have killed them — did he have a reason, damn it?’
A reason … A reason … Herr Kohler had raised his voice and the passages had echoed it back.
Baumann threw Death’s-head an uncertain look. The lark’s glimmer vanished. Kohler caught the drift and said, ‘Schultz, you had better tell us about the doll Angélique Charbonneau left in that shop. Maybe then we’ll all understand why you wanted to find the pianist so badly. You were going to kill him, too, weren’t you, eh? You were going to shut him up before he spilled it all to the others.’ He indicated the rest of the men.
‘Otto, he’s lying. He’s just trying to get us rattled.’
‘Am I?’
Only the sound of the pianist’s symphony came to them and they listened for it to a man.
‘Death’s-head, the doll,’ said Baumann.
‘The woman dropped it on the tracks. I saw her backing away from le Trocquer. I heard him shouting at her.’
‘Good, that’s very good,’ sighed Kohler. ‘Now tell us the rest.’
‘She couldn’t speak. She was too terrified. Her eyes were on the bend in the tracks. We both heard that iron bar come down. I swear we did. Then it hit the rails as it was thrown aside.’
‘Where were you at the time?’
Damn Kohler. Damn the Lion for demanding that a detective be sent from Paris. ‘Among the stones of that alignment.’
‘Where was the pianist?’
‘Nowhere near. I didn’t see him, if that’s what you’re asking. I only saw the woman. She didn’t see me. Not once. I made sure of that.’