Flykiller

‘She was volunteered for service and rejected seven times, monsieur,’ said the driver, bitching silently too, and with a dead fag end glued to his lower lip and a moustache that was coated with frost.

‘Jesus, merde alors,’ shrilled Louis, ‘must we have an argument?’

‘Only if you insist,’ countered Hippolyte Simard as the two from Paris clambered into the sleigh without permission.

‘Then the eighth review will be her one-way ticket to adventure and your loss,’ went on Louis. ‘Now get this crap-heap moving.’

The stitched-up wound above the left eye was cruel, the goose-egg red and probably still swelling. A fight, then, chuckled Simard to himself, so good – yes, it was good to see a cop that had been taught a lesson, though this one had obviously not yet learned it!

‘Paris … Must all those who come from the centre of the world lord it over us, Marguerite? Pay no attention to the acid, mon ange. Let us do as this flic asks and leave others to question his manners.’

Oh-oh, this wasn’t going to end unless someone intervened. ‘Louis, I thought we were to head for the morgue?’

‘Certainly.’

‘The morgue, messieurs? But it’s at the other end of …’

‘Just do as you’ve told the angel who’s doing all the work unless you want to take her place. Repeat anything we’ve said and you’ll be wearing two of what I’ve got on my forehead!’

‘He’s right. I wouldn’t fool with him,’ grinned Kohler. ‘If you think this is cold, you ought to try Russia.’

Silence followed.

‘There, that shut him up,’ sighed Kohler, sitting back. ‘You should always leave such things to me, Louis. No arguments. He simply hears authority in my voice and understands.’

‘Sacre, you’re sounding like the Occupier! If I were you, I’d be careful.’

They turned towards the river and were soon racing through the English Garden that Napoleon III had commissioned in 1861. Snow on the branches of the silver birches and tulip trees, last leaves still clinging … More snow on the Lebanese cedars. A bandstand … a rose arbour … a lone woman carrying a thin burlap sack of sticks, a German officer on a dappled grey, others of the Occupier on skis and looking as if on holiday, still others on patrol – twenty in all and most of them boys no older than seventeen, wearing cut-down uniforms that were still far too big for them.

‘They look ridiculous,’ said Kohler sadly. ‘But why couldn’t my boys have had that chance? Paradise here; hell where they died.’

A large swastika flew above the entrance to one of the villas that had been built in those early days, the Turkish flag was next door, the tricolour still in the near distance atop the Hotel du Parc.

‘Maybe God thought He needed them in Russia, Hermann, just as He thinks we’re needed here.’

Louis was always calling that God of his to account for being miserable to honest, hard-working detectives. ‘You know Bousquet doesn’t want us to go anywhere but the morgue.’

‘And that, mon enfant, is exactly why we’re going elsewhere!’

‘You want to have a look at where he supposedly found the carte d’identite that should have been with our victim and in her handbag or pocket.’

‘Why the earrings, Hermann? Why try to hide them? Was it simply fear of robbery or was there some other reason for that Florentine intriguer’s saying to me with all sincerity that he “wished he knew who’d given them to her”?’

‘Admit it, you were stopped cold in your tracks. Don’t be bitter. The good doctor just wanted to make certain he was out of bed and at the hotel before we got there.’

‘You leave Henri-Claude Ferbrave to me. I don’t need my big Bavarian brother to take care of such things.’

‘Flies, Louis? Why the hell did Laval throw Bousquet such a silencing glance when asked about that telex?’

Good for Hermann. ‘High-ranking administrators, even those as gifted as our secretaire general, must be cautioned from time to time. He also shouldn’t have told us he had found the victim’s ID in her room and has now realized the killer or someone else must have deliberately put it there, and so he is worried he might have missed something else.’

They had arrived at the Hotel d’Allier. The mare was sucking air. ‘Louis, what’s a Florentine intriguer?’

‘The Medici, the Renaissance, deceit, treachery, torture and court killings that time alone has not been able to erase the memory of. Their knives, dirks and especially their ghastly poisons. Stick around. I’m sure you’ll have ample opportunity to find out!’

‘And when I do?’

Must Hermann always have the last word even when they were in a hurry? ‘Just make sure you’re right behind me.’

They were running now, going up the steep and narrow staircases two and three steps at a time. At each landing, hips banged against waist-high wooden wainscoting, shoulders against wallpaper whose turn-of-the-century flowers were faded.

Gleaming, the banister’s railing and darker spindles led the way, their steps hardly muffled by the thin carpet.