Flykiller

But not Rene Bousquet, age thirty-three and the youngest secretaire general, probably, in the past two hundred years. ‘Brilliant,’ some said; ‘Exceptional,’ others. ‘A man we can trust,’ Himmler, head of the SS and Gestapo, had enthused. ‘Our precious collaborator.’

‘Age: twenty-eight, therefore pregnant at twenty-three,’ Louis went on, knowing exactly what his partner had been thinking. ‘Was it love? I ask simply so as to know the victim better.’

‘Love,’ grunted Bousquet. ‘When word came through that her husband had been killed, she tried to join him and very nearly succeeded. Aspirins, I believe, but now they are in such short supply one never hears of similar attempts.’

‘And since then?’ asked Louis, using his sternest Surete voice.

‘Back to dancing. A contract to work in Vichy at the Theatre du Casino and other places and to teach part-time at the ballet school.’

Teaching the offspring of the elite? wondered Kohler, mentally making a note of it. Everyone was smoking Gitanes, the tobacco black and strong. De Fleury was squeezed between himself and the driver, chain-smoking and nervous as hell. The road ahead wasn’t good. Visibility was down to thirty metres, if that. Snow everywhere and Ach! a Schmeisser on the floor at his feet. Had they been expecting trouble? The son of a bitch behind the wheel had half his gaze on the road and the other half on the woods and fields. ‘Want me to drive?’ he asked, implying, Would it help?

‘Georges is good at his job, Inspector,’ chuckled Bousquet knowingly. ‘When a man is so skilled, we like to leave him there but increase his wages.’

Thermoses of coffee, laced with marc, had been provided, sandwiches too, but the Delahaye was so crowded it was hard to manoeuvre.

‘Nationality: French,’ went on Louis, scanning the carte d’identite under blue-blinkered torchlight, having lowered it to his knees to help hide the light. ‘Born: 10 April 1915, Paris, Hermann. Monsieur l’Inspecteur des Finances, how old are you, please?’

The cigarette de Fleury had been smoking fell to his overcoat lap and was hastily brushed to the floor with a muted ‘Merde! Fifty-six.’

‘And twice her age, Louis,’ snorted Kohler. ‘Do all of Petain’s top-ranking civil servants go for girls half their ages?’

Hermann, who was the same age as de Fleury, lived with two women, one of whom was twenty-two, but no matter. The Marechal Petain had a lifelong history of just such affairs, having married one of the women in 1920 when she was forty-three and divorced, and he had reached the less-than-tender age of sixty-four, but having also bounced her on his knee in 1881 when she’d been four years old. Un homme, then, with a long memory and utter patience. Thirty-nine years of it!

‘Inspector, could we not stick to the matter at hand?’ muttered Bousquet testily.

It’s coming now, thought Kohler, and smiled inwardly as Louis said the inevitable: ‘All things are of interest in murder, Secretaire. The victim’s family and little daughter live at 60 rue Lhomond. That is almost halfway between the Jardin du Luxembourg and Jardin des Plantes. The house will overlook place Lucien-Herr which divides the upmarket neighbourhood of the Pantheon from that of the little shopkeepers and working-class people to the east along the rue Mouffetard and other such streets, and it implies our Madame Dupuis was well educated. Was she a good conversationalist, Monsieur de Fleury?’

‘Jesus, merde alors, Jean-Louis, can you not let me fill you in? Me, mon ami! Your secretaire general.’

‘Please, first his answer. We need everything. It’s best my partner and I get it clear right away. The coffee is excellent, by the way, and most appreciated. Merci.’

Ah damn, thought Honore de Fleury. ‘Celine was a very quick-witted girl – marvellously so, at times, and knowledgeable about many things. Birds – pheasants, guinea … Ah! I go on. Music …’

‘Operettas?’

‘Jean-Louis …’

‘Please, another moment.’ Birds … why had de Fleury cut himself off like that? ‘Monsieur …?’

‘Musicals, Inspector,’ snapped de Fleury. ‘Cabaret things and yes, operettas, but much, much more. Chopin, Debussy – she played the piano beautifully.’

‘At private dinner parties?’

‘Yes,’ came the defeated reply as Hermann found the Inspector of Finances another cigarette and lit it for him at a bend in the road, a tunnel through tall plane trees whose mottled bark caught the blue, slit-eyed light from the headlamps, momentarily distracting their driver.

‘Place of residence: Hatel d’Allier, on the rue des Primeveres in Vichy,’ went on Louis. ‘That’s just upstream of the Boutiron Bridge, is it not, Secretaire?’

‘If you know, why ask?’

‘Was the ID found on her person, or was she so well known no one had to ask who she was and it was only later taken from her room or handbag, or both?’

‘In short, tell us who found her, where she was found, how she was killed, and particularly,’ demanded Kohler, ‘why the hell her body was where it was.’