The cook rolled down his side window. The sound of the car grew at a bend. It was negotiating the first of the alignments. Almost imperceptibly Kohler began to lower his hands towards the steering wheel. Anything was worth a try. There was a Beretta strapped to his left calf and just itching to be fired. ‘Look, why not get out, eh? He’ll squeeze right past us. He’ll only think you boys were too pissed to continue and decided to sleep it off.’
Schultz hesitated. He couldn’t seem to make up his mind, but at last he said, ‘Don’t try anything. You first. I’ll follow. Take it slowly.’
‘Just let me tie my shoelace.’
The cold muzzle of the pistol was pressed hard against the back of Kohler’s neck. Some glass fell from the side window and they both heard it hit the running board as the door opened.
Once on the road, Death’s-head made him raise his arms. ‘Now we wait and you can count the seconds.’
The car came on but the sound of it seemed to come from all directions until, suddenly, there it was out of the fog with its headlamps staring at them and its engine still ticking over.
‘Hey, I’ve seen that car before,’ quipped Kohler gratefully. ‘It’s Préfet Kerjean but he’s not at the wheel.’
Schultz didn’t like it. ‘Get back in the lorry! Don’t fuck about.’ He grabbed an ear but it refused to budge.
‘The woman’s with her husband. My partner’s getting out. If you shoot me now, my friend, he’ll nail you right between the eyes. Fog or no fog, that one can hit a flea on a whore’s ass at twenty paces and not even touch the skin.’
‘All right, we’ll see what they have to say.’
‘Then let me tie my shoelace. I wouldn’t want to trip and have you hot shots start firing.’
‘Hermann, is that you?’ came the call of a blind man who could see well enough.
‘Yeah, it’s me. That shoelace is busted again. Ah Gott im Himmel, Louis, the lousy bastards who make them should be shot.’
Schultz felt the Beretta jammed under his chin. ‘Don’t,’ breathed Kohler. ‘We wouldn’t want to spoil our dinner, especially not when we’ve got the cook with us.’
The chicken soup was good, the tinned ham from Alsace superb when fried with chopped, boiled potatoes, green onions, tomatoes and a sprinkling of basil. Not turbot or sole or oysters, ah no, of course not, thought St-Cyr, but beggars could not quibble. Schultz had had the ham and the dried soup mix, both staples of U-boat fare, in a box under the seat of the lorry. There was real coffee too, not the meagre three beans of authenticity Vichy doled out on top of every bag of the ersatz stuff that, even though it was so lousy, was still labelled ‘coffee’ and still rationed to half a kilogram per month per family.
Everyone had partaken of the meal, some not tasting it at all but eating it as people did these days, never knowing if it would be their last or someone would steal it hot off the plate.
They had cleaned themselves up and wore dry clothes that had been parcelled out by the pianist. Now the lines above the kitchen stove were once more heavily draped, and his shoes dripped the last of their run-off on to the hot iron.
Hélène Charbonneau’s hands had been attended to. The child sat between her and the husband. Schultz was beside Hermann who would translate when necessary. The Préfet was at the other end of the table from the Sûreté. Out of deference, the bracelets had been removed.
Now all were waiting for the Sûreté to begin. He would light his pipe and take the time to contemplate each of them with one notable absence, that of the Captain.
The woman met his gaze steadily and did not flinch, so much so, that he could but find admiration for her and wanted to say, Be at peace. My partner and I will help you all we can.
But, of course, he could not do so. There were now two further murders to consider.
Unable yet to view the bodies of these latest victims, he could only trust to Hermann’s incomplete remembrances of them.
Contrary to what both he and Hermann had come to believe, when faced with the gravity of the situation, Yvon Charbonneau had revealed an acceptance of reality that was sobering and far from the symphony he heard and the megaliths he searched.
Kerjean did not turn away from meeting his gaze either. They were three very formidable adversaries.
Death’s-head Schultz was the fourth. Only Angélique bowed her head and moved her lips silently in a prayer for absolution.
‘Good. Now let us begin,’ he said, removing his pipe just long enough to motion at them with it. ‘The key to this whole business is that one must think as the Dollmaker did. One must have the Allied freighter or troopship right beneath the intersection of the cross hairs.’
Kerjean asked for a cigarette. Charbonneau lit it for him. Schultz, if ever such a man could do so, remained impassive.
‘Herr Kaestner,’ said Louis, ‘could not allow the crew who held him in such high regard, to find out that he had been having a love affair — excuse me, please, madame, for calling it that — with a Jewess, no matter how intelligent, kind or beautiful she was.’
‘Death’s-head couldn’t have them finding it out either,’ snorted Kohler, watching them all closely.
‘Ah, yes,’ acknowledged the Sûreté, ‘loyalty to one’s captain is to be respected and it is much to your credit, Herr Schultz, that you kept what you saw on that doll to yourself. Believe me, it is.’
Both hands were placed on the table as if to lift it out of the way. ‘If you’re trying to grease me with margarine, forget it. There is still a higher court even than Gestapo Mueller in Berlin. I also didn’t kill anyone.’
‘Please, a moment, yes? Don’t be difficult.’ Again St-Cyr looked round the table at each of them. ‘Herr Kaestner knew of the telescope, isn’t that correct, Angélique?’
The whispered yes was barely audible, her fingers studied with a concentration that begged forgiveness. She had really done it this time, she thought. Oh mon Dieu, but she had!
‘Then on the 5th of November, he knew for sure of the real reason for my visits to this house,’ sighed Préfet Kerjean sadly.
‘Money was missing,’ said the pianist with a gravity that implied complete understanding and awareness of the outcome. The dark brown eyes were much saddened by life’s little realities and looked down at the table as if puzzled but accepting of them, tragic as they were.
St-Cyr could still not help but imagine him at some concert.
‘A lot of money,’ said Hermann gruffly. ‘6,000,000 francs we still haven’t seen.’
‘And aren’t likely to,’ grunted Schultz in good enough French. They were all surprised. ‘What did you do with it, Préfet?’
‘Paulette …’ began the child, her voice so faint it broke.
‘Paulette knew who had “borrowed” the money,’ went on Schultz. ‘She wasn’t about to say and she died to keep her silent, didn’t she, Préfet? Vati wouldn’t have killed her. We didn’t, so that only leaves you. And don’t tell us the pianist rode that beat-up old bicycle of his all the way to Quiberon. You drowned her, you smug bastard. You killed her and her mother.’
Men like Schultz were always liars. ‘She was violated repeatedly. Did I do that also?’ asked Kerjean.
Tough … Nom de Dieu, he could be a brawler when needed, thought St-Cyr.
‘I’m not so sure she was violated,’ hazarded Kohler apologetically. ‘Hey, I didn’t take a look where I should have. I just assumed she’d been.’
‘The child,’ hissed Madame Charbonneau. ‘Her ears, messieurs!’
‘One of the sardiniers did not return,’ whispered Angelique, and never mind her hearing things she shouldn’t but knew all about. ‘Money changed hands. A lot of money.’
‘Angélique … Chérie, you must not speak. Herr Schultz is … is not one of us,’ pleaded the woman desperately.
The cook grinned and let his eyes dance over her. ‘In that you are correct, madame. Vati didn’t know what you were but now he does.’