Flykiller

Merde alors, the son of a bitch looked like a defrocked priest! The body was round, the face round, the precisely clipped and black-dyed Hitlerian moustache perfect, the cheeks smooth, the throat no doubt dry and regretting the sour red it had consumed last night.

‘Ah bon,’ said Kohler, offering fresh nourishment and a light, for it took all types to make this world. ‘Give us shots of her and the buvette from all angles, Marcel, then one or two of the Buvette de la Grande Grille and another two of the Buvette Lucas, just for local atmosphere.’

Barbault grinned. ‘The corpse?’ he asked, eyebrows arching beneath a fastidiously blocked black homburg, the overcoat collar of carefully brushed velour.

‘Oh, sorry. She’s behind the bar. I’ll leave you to it, then, shall I?’

‘A clean killing?’

‘Tidy, I think.’

‘You going to stick around in case there’s anything else you want?’

‘Of course. Prints on that dripping tap above her feet when you get to them.’

Barbault moved the lanterns so that they wouldn’t cast his shadow on the corpse. Popping flashbulbs, he went to work. Merde, how could he be so calm? He didn’t whistle like some, didn’t sing or mutter things to himself like others. ‘A good fuck,’ he said, his voice gruff and echoing. ‘A nice cunt for the old sausage to ram, eh, Inspector? They say he never wears a rubber, that he simply tells them to wash it out!’

‘I’m going to get a breath of air.’

‘Don’t catch your death.’

Jesus, merde alors!

The skies were clear but dark. Always before dawn it got like this, and which cities and towns at home would be in ruins? Jurgen and Hans had been killed at Stalingrad – just kids, really, his sons, and why hadn’t they gone to Argentina like he’d begged them to? Gerda, the ex-wife, was at home on her father’s farm near Wasserburg but was now married to an indentured French farm labourer …

Giselle and Oona were at the flat on the rue Suger in Paris, just around the corner from the house of Madame Chabot and Giselle’s old friends in the profession. Thank God Oona was there to keep an eye on her.

‘I really do have to get them out of France before it’s too late. Louis, too, and Gabrielle, his new love, though that definitely hasn’t been consummated.’ A chanteuse, a war-widow with a ten-year-old son, a beautiful lay who was keeping it only for Louis.

The Resistance would shoot that patriot simply because he worked with one of the Occupier and in their need for vengeance they’d make lots of similar mistakes.

‘Vichy can’t last,’ he muttered as, remembering the matter to hand, he hurried back inside the Hall. ‘Marcel, make sure you get close-ups of those cigar ashes on her front and on the counter, those also at the Buvettes de la Grande Grille and Lucas. I’ll show them to you when you’re ready.’

‘Cigars …?’ gasped a female voice. ‘Ah Sainte Mere, I have brought some for the Marechal, Inspector.’

‘Just who the hell are you and what do you think you’re doing in here?’

Here … Here … came the echoes on the damp, cold air.

‘Ines Charpentier … Sculptress and patcher-up of injured detectives. Is it really true that there is a sadist who rapes and then murders only virgins? I ask simply because … because I may have to work late and return to my boarding house after dark and alone.’

Had there been a catch in her throat? ‘Your information’s a little off. She wasn’t raped and wasn’t a virgin.’

‘Oh. The … the men who are clearing the snow have it wrong then. Are these really cigar ashes, Inspector? You see, the Marechal detests cigarette smoke but apparently enjoys an occasional cigar, and my director, he … he has sent him a little gift of some Havanas, from Cuba by submarine, I think.’

Had the kid been crying? She was standing behind the bar, with her left hand wrapped tightly around that dripping tap and the other one flat on the counter, smudging the ashes. She couldn’t stop herself from staring at the corpse, was sickened, no doubt, and likely to throw up.

‘Come on,’ said Kohler gently. ‘You need what I need.’

‘And the ashes?’ asked Barbault, not turning from his work.

‘Find the rest of them yourself and then have her moved to the morgue.’

The broom kept going. The man, the boy under torchlight, didn’t look up but down at the snow he was clearing from the covered walk. The jacket of his bleus de travail was open, the coveralls well padded by two bulky pullovers, two flannel shirts and at least one pair of long johns.

A tricolour – a blue-, red- and white-banded scarf – trailed from its tight knotting about the all but absent throat. The face was wide and flat, the dark brown eyes closely spaced under a knitted woollen cap and inwardly grooved by fleshy folds of skin beneath frowning black, bushy brows.

‘Albert,’ said the father gently. ‘The Chief Inspector St-Cyr has come all the way from Paris to speak to you. Surely you could spare him a moment?’

‘I went round as I always do,’ retorted the son. ‘All the doors were locked except for that one!’