Flykiller

Everyone knew the saying, but would it ever come? Olivier and Edith would have left town, gone underground, whatever. With total occupation and a Government of zero influence, the listening post had served its usefulness. For it to have operated from the autumn of 1940, no doubt, seemed enough.

Everything had been done to let the other side know Monsieur Olivier was aware of what they were up to, but had he tried to intervene or had he let it all happen to shield himself and his source? wondered Ines, but couldn’t bring herself to ask.

When a burst of gunfire came to them from the street, she knew that Henri-Claude Ferbrave and Dr Menetrel had not let the killer survive but had told him to run.

The baths at the Hotel Ruhl were heaven. Drained, cleaned and replenished, the warm and mildly effervescent water soothed an aching right shoulder and left knee, but was it salve to Louis’s troubled conscience? wondered Kohler.

‘Shot while attempting to escape,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to leave it at that, Louis. If we object, Menetrel will only accuse you of warning Olivier to get clear.’

The doctor would do it, too, but still … Petain would be taking his breakfast behind that screen of his in the Majestic’s Chante Clair Restaurant, the Government’s ministers, their wives and families, et cetera, sipping their cafe au lait ou noir and picking at their hot buttered croissants …

‘A meeting,’ muttered St-Cyr, lying flat out in the bath.

‘Admit it, we’ve done what we had to. Relax.’

The sculptress had been taken to her boarding house where she would have spent the rest of the night. She’d have caught an early bus, would be sitting in the foyer, waiting for the great one to eat and get his briefing over.

‘Nine-fifty,’ murmured Hermann dreamily. ‘My bones feel like rubber, Louis. No pain, no aches, every joint in my body loose and relaxed.’

They’d been left alone in their little stew. It was now 9.30 a.m. Saturday, 6 February. The midday train to Paris didn’t leave until 1 p.m., if they were lucky and it was on time.

Would the sculptress book another sleeper, a girl who had no money to spare?

‘Did Olivier really let the killings happen, Hermann? Am I right in this? I have to feel he did. I tell myself that the Resistance, because of circumstance, can’t be free of such implications, that there is still unfinished business also, and that Albert Grenier was right about our sculptress, and that Ines Charpentier feels she has been betrayed.’

‘The smell of bitter almonds,’ hazarded Kohler. ‘Gessler did vet the thing.’

‘Plastic … could it have been from that?’

Cyclonite did smell almondy but Nobel 808 reeked of bitter almonds so much one inevitably got a hell of a headache when using it. ‘A timer … A pocket watch and battery. It would have to have been a watch, Louis. Those time-pencils the British are dropping to the Resistance freeze up in the cold.’

‘And are delayed by hours. Their acid does not work as quickly when the bulb is squeezed and broken to release it on to the wire that holds the spring back, until that is freed and the pin strikes the detonator.’

‘A watch, then,’ said Kohler. ‘And blocks of 808 embedded in a sculptress’s beeswax. Accessed while left in the elder Grenier’s care and updated last night at her boarding house, the kid not knowing a thing about it. Surely Olivier wouldn’t do that to one of his own?’

Who knew too much and was the only person who could, in all innocence, carry a valise into a meeting to show the Marechal the portrait mask she had completed?

‘They’ll all be at that briefing, Hermann. Laval, Bousquet, Richard, Deschambeault, the others, too, and Menetrel. People will say she had good reason, that Petain had given the order to have her father shot.’

‘Hurry, Louis. We’ve got to hurry!’

Trousers wouldn’t pull on easily over wet legs. Shirts refused to be buttoned; shoes were complicated, wet and troublesome, especially if their laces were broken and had been knotted too many times.

The goddamned car wouldn’t start! Ten degrees of frost was in the air, the sun still struggling to rise as they ran, came to the rue du Casino, cut into the Parc des Sources through the snow, found the covered iron promenade and tried … tried to reach the Hotel du Parc before it happened … it happened.

They skidded into the Majestic and among the tables, knocking diners aside, raising their voices to drown complaints. ‘Out! Get out! Explosives! A bomb!’

Coffee cups shattered, plates shattered. A few people screamed, the screen went over; the kid, startled, looked up from that mask of hers, of Petain, the blush of health on its cheeks, china-blue eyes … surgical glass eyes. Ferbrave intruding … trying to stop them.

‘The valise. Here, take it!’ cried Kohler, shoving it into the bastard’s hands. ‘Run! For God’s sake run!’