Flykiller

Kohler plucked the Laguiole from the floor where Albert had dropped it as he’d lunged at the sculptress. ‘Look after it,’ he said, pressing it into Ines’s unwilling hands. ‘I’ve got to find my partner.’

‘The butcher’s knife,’ she managed, pale and badly shaken.

‘Oh, sorry. Look after that one too.’

The noise was really something. It sounded like a cross between a PzKw IV tank and a leichter Schutzenpanzerwagen, a ‘light’ half-track, and when it appeared on the road from Vichy, cresting the final approach to the chateau, snow swirled around its dark, heavily plated body, sunlight glinting from the blue-tinted bulletproof windscreens.

On and on it came, rocking gently from side to side, lumbering yet travelling at a good fifty kilometres an hour and capable of much more.

‘An armoured Renault …’ began Kohler, having come from the barn to find Louis waiting in the yard.

‘Built at great public expense for King George VI of England and Queen Elizabeth’s visit in July 1938,’ said St-Cyr drolly. ‘Typical of such visits, it was used only once for a little side trip the consort made to Versailles. Boemelburg and I were in the lead car and defenceless from ambush. The tyres can’t be punctured. That’s why it sways. They’re far too thick. It’s Laval.’

‘Louis, we have to talk.’

‘Hermann, is there something going on that we’ve been missing? Those who knew that Madame Dupuis would wear the earrings and the perfume, didn’t know that the dress, et cetera, would be taken from Noelle Olivier’s room and deliberately left for us to find. There was also, apparently, a hamper that was intercepted.’

‘A hamper with a knife that has a corkscrew just like this one, eh?’

More couldn’t be said.

The durs who got out of the front seat wore the grins of long, expenses-paid, pre-war holidays in the Sante, Fresnes and other such prisons. Tattoos were on the fingers that gripped the Schmeissers and barred polite progress. Three dots, two back and one forward, in the web of skin, the tobacco pouch between the thumb and forefinger. Mort aux vaches, death to cows – cops. The five dots too, for All alone between four walls and solitary.

‘Ignore them,’ said St-Cyr. ‘It’s always best.’

A rear door opened, a pinstriped trouser leg appeared, then another. Black kid boots negotiated a rut so as to avoid the deeper snow, their grey cloth uppers each closed with a neat little row of mother-of-pearl buttons from which the sunlight struck rainbow hues.

‘Ah Sainte Mere, Hermann!’ swore Louis, furiously fishing deeply into an overcoat pocket until, at last, he had what he wanted.

The plain, tin-plated stud, the post, the back of one of those goddamned buttons and memories of Celine Dupuis’s corpse lying in the Hall des Sources behind the counter of the Buvette du Chomel!

9

The wind swept the granules of snow past those carefully planted boots, bringing with it, St-Cyr noted, the tired pungency of stale cigarette smoke. Long-moist, a stained fag end clung to the Premier’s fleshy lower lip, the bushy black moustache half hiding it, the bull neck scarfless.

Dark eyes, swift to all meaning, detective or otherwise, took in Blanche Varollier and Ines Charpentier, for they’d come to watch from a distance, with Albert Grenier between them. Albert, who was terrified and in tears, of course, but for his own good necessarily out of commission, his wrists bound by the shame of Kripo bracelets he could not remove.

Sandrine Richard and Charles-Frederic Hebert were also attentive, the two sworn enemies unaware they stood shoulder to shoulder in that side entrance to the kitchens. But one must say something.

‘Premier …’ began St-Cyr, the gangsters moving discreetly away to allow privacy as commanded.

‘Inspector, surely that …’ Laval indicated Albert. ‘That can’t be our killer?’

‘He’s a part of it,’ grunted Hermann. ‘He tried to kill the sculptress with this.’

‘Pah!’ snorted Laval, impatiently tossing his fedora-ed head in acknowledgement of the almost brand-new Laguiole of Noelle Olivier. ‘The doctor vets every visitor his God on earth receives and is most fastidious about it. Surely Mademoiselle Charpentier poses no threat to the great one, or are we to hire Albert to head up security?’

‘Premier, the body of Celine Dupuis …’ hazarded Louis.

‘Inspectors, the boy loves the Marechal as he would a grandfather who dotes on a little grandson. Certainly Petain fails to acknowledge his existence, but Albert’s loyalty never wavers, not even when the great one’s autograph has to be purloined by other means, namely the Marechal’s batman!’

‘Premier, you went to have a look at Madame Dupuis after the doctor had pronounced her dead.’

‘My button … You found its backing! Certainly I have a stock of them, a few extras, but they’re impossible to buy these days. I’m always misplacing them. Merci.’