Flykiller

‘Look, I know this won’t sound right,’ said Bousquet, cupping his hands as he lit the last of their cigarettes, the three of them standing but a few steps from the car whose engine idled, Georges, the driver, still behind the wheel and minding his own business because he’d been told to. ‘The second victim … Camille Lefebvre. She and I … An evening or two. Ah! it was nothing, I tell you. A chance meeting at a local inn well before last Christmas, a small gathering, a few friends. Who would have thought anything would have developed? Certainly I didn’t.’

‘Married?’ snapped Kohler.

‘The daughter of an officer, one of the recently disbanded Army of the Armistice.’

Demobilized 21 November of last year.

‘I was careful. So very careful. One has to be in a little place like this and with a position such as mine.’

‘We’re waiting,’ sighed Louis, impatiently flicking his cigarette away and not bothering even to save it for his little tin. ‘You’ve not answered my partner’s question.’

These two would think the worst but would have to be told. ‘We had agreed to meet downriver at one of the cabins the open-air cafes let to people in summer. Swimming, boating, water-cycling and sunbathing, that sort of thing, but closed in winter.’

‘Except that you’ve a year-long lease on this one,’ muttered Kohler. It was just a shot in the dark but …

‘I hardly ever have the time to go there. Friends use it, my wife and family in summer when they come for a little visit.’

‘Hermann, ask him what he told those who needed to know where he’d be?’

‘En route to Paris. There were three rooms. Not big, quite small. She got up during the night. Perhaps she had to take a pee, perhaps she heard a shutter banging – one was loose. I awoke when I heard her struggling. I reached under the pillows for my gun and called out that I was armed. There … there was still a good fire in the kitchen stove, light from its firebox and from her torch which had fallen. She … she was lying in a heap on the floor, twitching. Her robe was open, the back door swinging in towards me. I fired into the night. Twice, I think. Maybe three times.’

‘The date and time?’ grumbled Louis.

‘7 January, a Thursday at … at about 2.45 a.m.’

‘A Friday?’

‘Yes … Yes, it was Friday by then.’

‘Knifed, garrotted – what, exactly, Secretaire?’ demanded Louis, using that Surete voice of his.

‘Garrotted, the wire still embedded in her throat.’

‘And blood all over the place,’ sighed Kohler. ‘The jugular, the carotid artery …’ They’d seen it all in Avignon ten days ago. One of a group of madrigal singers, the Palais des Papes …

‘Her pessary had fallen out. I reached to pick it up but … but hesitated because I felt whoever had killed her would come back to finish the job.’

‘Footprints, Secretaire? Two sets or one? A man and a woman or only …’

‘Jean-Louis, that is all in the report but, yes, I think now that there could well have been two of them.’

Confusion, then, and doubt, the prints not clear. ‘And were you the target or was she?’

‘Merde alors, why would anyone have wanted to kill her? I was the target. Me! And now Georges is always kept near and always ready, and I am more than convinced of the danger, but at the time was far too concerned with …’

‘With saving your own ass and buggering off,’ sighed Kohler. Mein Gott, were they all the same? De Fleury and now Bousquet.

‘Be reasonable, eh? I had to leave her. I had no other choice. Paris … I had to be in Paris by four that afternoon.’

‘To meet with Oberg and others of the SS, and Gestapo Boemelburg?’ demanded Louis.

‘Marseille … Since you appear to think you know everything about the destruction of the Old Port, you will understand why I had to leave her.’

‘Threw the pessary into the stove, did you?’ quipped Hermann.

‘Yes. I … I gathered up all evidence of my having been with her. I’d often let others use the cabin. Sous-prefet Robert was well aware of this since he and his family had stayed there for a week this past summer. Camille had come on skis. There was really nothing to link me with her.’

‘And Menetrel, was he told in confidence?’ demanded Louis.

‘Don’t be absurd! Of course, if I had felt for a moment they would make an attempt on the Marechal, I’d have spoken up. That private army of the doctor’s is supposed to keep our Head of State as secure as a termite’s ass in a beehive but obviously didn’t. And that, messieurs, is why you’re here.’

Grey in the light, the river looked muddy where the ice had failed to form due to heat from the septic outfall. A lone hawk, a male hen harrier perhaps, thought St-Cyr only to mutter absently, ‘They migrate don’t they?’

‘What?’ yelped Bousquet, flinging his cigarette down.

The hawk was indicated.

‘Idiot, it’s searching for mice and voles.’

And waiting to have its tail feathers plucked for quills? wondered Kohler. Merde, what were they to do? ‘Where was your driver, Secretaire?’

‘Downriver at a small hotel. He was to collect me well before dawn and did so. No one was to have known I’d be there. No one.’