‘Inspector …?’
‘Ah! Pardon me. I was entranced by the Captain’s dolls.’
She would give him a coy look and delicately brush a curl away from her ear. ‘So was my father.’ She threw the fullness of her china blue eyes at him. ‘Entranced — fascinated and so eager, for you see, Inspector, the Captain modelled his dolls after people he knew.’
Merde …
She gave a nonchalant shrug. ‘Oh for sure he dressed them up. What man wouldn’t enjoy such a thing? Some ladies in Paris make the clothes for him. They’re very good and quite expensive, isn’t that so?’
What was the girl driving at? he wondered. ‘Exquisite,’ he said warily. She grinned but then grew serious and went over to take down two of the dolls.
‘But the faces, Inspector, the figures, they are from memory. His two sisters.’ She held the dolls up. ‘His mother and his aunts when they were young ladies, his cousins, a lover or two or perhaps those were just girls he desired but could never possess. Yes, that is how it must have been, for he would not otherwise have made them into dolls.’
She turned and, stretching on tiptoes, replaced the dolls and tidied their dresses. Then she stood there looking at him across a clutter of pressed glass and paste. ‘Others too, from around here. Yes, of course they must not be forgotten. But if you ask me, Inspector, it’s a queer enough thing for a man to want to make dolls, let alone to make them of people he knows, especially if they are from around here and can be identified by others.’
Ah Nom de Dieu, what had they found themselves in this time?
‘The men from the U-boats and the other Germans come here to buy things, Inspector. Sometimes one of the dolls if … if they think it will amuse their fellow crew members to undress it on a long voyage or they have children or girlfriends at home.’
The girl went on, this time shamelessly tracing a fingertip over a suggestive vase of pale yellowish-green Depression glass and not looking at him. ‘Me he would not use as a model, though I offered the use of myself many times. He said he understood me only too well and that the expression on the doll’s face would betray my innermost thoughts and that …’ She paused to suck in a breath and look frankly at him. ‘… and that he wanted no more trouble with my father since he already had enough of that.’
The missing money — was this what she meant? — or did she go with men from the Captain’s crew? he wondered. Had she thought it best to hint at this since he’d find out soon enough? ‘Your mother, mademoiselle. We had best not keep her waiting.’
How cautious of him!
Half-way up the stairs, she turned so swiftly at some thought, they all but collided and he felt her sudden breath on his brow and pulled an accidental hand from her hip. ‘Please try not to upset her, Inspector. Right now she is beside herself with worry about the future and very depressed.’
Their eyes met. St-Cyr searched hers deeply, asking himself, Why is it you think it so necessary to tell me this?
Then they went on up the rest of the stairs and into the flat.
Kohler was taken aback. The gendarmerie, a skinny, two-storeyed affair of soot-encrusted grey granite block, was squeezed between two rusty, corrugated-iron sardine canneries that stank to high heaven of fish boiled in their own oil. The din was unbelievable. Legions of young girls and older women, some wearing the stovepipe coifs or others of starched white lace, worked, sang, gossiped and threw curious glances at him through the wide-open double doors.
He thought to light a cigarette but found he had none and wondered why, if Doenitz valued the hero of U-297 so highly, he had allowed him to be incarcerated in such a place? Surely house-arrest at one of the Ubootsweiden, the U-boat ‘pastures’, the rest centres in the countryside, would have suited better? The Captain could not help but have a constant headache. Whistle blasts would wake the dead and if not the whistles, the wooden clogs of two hundred hurrying females every change of shift.
‘Trust the French to put a police station here!’ he snorted. They never ceased to amaze him and were always throwing up some new twist of character.
Expecting to find a surly flic on duty, he was brought up sharp. Three pairs of U-boat eyes stared at him through the layered haze of tobacco smoke. The oldest of them, a man of no more than thirty but looking fifty, had a thick black Vandyke and the perpetually haunted, sorrowful expression of death perceived.
The youngest, a boy of seventeen, had the ever-moving, furtive gaze of one who has stood at death’s door and been suddenly reprieved but for how long?
They had been playing a favourite board game, Mensch ärgere Dich nicht — Man, don’t ‘shoot’ yourself. All wore, at rakish angles, the dark blue forage cap with submariner’s badge and the faded blue coveralls that rumour said had been modelled after the British Army’s battledress for its ease of getting about, especially when firing torpedoes or their 88-millimetre deck gun.
‘Kohler to see the prisoner.’
The one with the beard took the stem of a cold pipe from between his teeth and got slowly to his feet. ‘Herr Kohler, ah yes. We’ve been expecting you. Obersteuermann Otto Baumann at your service.’
The accent was definitely of Lower Saxony and Bremerhaven most probably. Chief Helmsman of U-297 and no doubt one of the Captain’s Watch Officers. As if to emphasize this to all and sundry, even though it wasn’t dress-up time, the Ritterkreuz, the Knight’s Cross, hung on the left breast pocket below the Atlantic U-boat badge. There were also two of the black-and-white wound badges and the underwater escape badge, this last signifying a real test of luck and skill and just plain guts.
‘Obersteuermann …’
‘Otto, please, Herr Kohler. Rank means certain things, yes, of course, but in the Freikorps Doenitz we prefer not to stand on ceremony.’
The U-boat Service … ‘Good. All I want is a few words with the Captain just to introduce myself and to make it clear my partner and I are on his side.’
‘We’re not guarding him,’ offered the boy tremulously. ‘We’re looking after him.’
‘Then why isn’t he playing?’
‘Because he’s busy,’ said Baumann unwaveringly. ‘Vati doesn’t want to see anybody right now.’
‘Oh, come on now. How else can we begin to …’
‘Establish his innocence?’ asked Baumann.
‘Yes.’
The Chief Helmsman pocketed a ring of keys that had lain on the table and picked up what was obviously the Captain’s Luger. ‘It’s loaded, I think,’ he said non-committally. ‘It always seems to save argument. You tell him, Martin. Martin, here, is our Second Engineer, Herr Kohler. You wouldn’t know it to look at him but he can make our electric motors whisper like a woman in heat and whose whispers, my friend, have saved our balls many times.’
The one with the clean-shaven, prominent jaw, wide lips, high, bony forehead and big hands still could not find the will to smile. ‘Herr Kohler, the Captain isn’t to be interviewed without Special Officer U-boats Kernével being present.’
Verdammt … ‘Do you mean to tell me we can’t talk to Kaestner without Freisen being present?’
Baumann hefted the Luger. ‘Martin, be so kind as to ring up Base Kernével and ask the Kapitän Freisen to drop everything so that he can join us. That’ll solve Herr Kohler’s problem and we can get back to our game.’
‘But it’s more than fifty kilometres …?’
‘Vati has no legal counsel, Herr Kohler,’ offered the Second Engineer. ‘In the absence of one we, who owe our Dollmaker so much, are insisting all interviews be in the presence of our Special Officer.’