Flykiller

‘But someone obviously did,’ grumbled Louis, giving that Surete nod his partner would understand only too well.

‘And now you’ll have to be charged with withholding evidence,’ sighed Kohler. Oberg would hit the roof and threaten piano wire! Boemelburg would simply carry through his threat to send Louis to the salt mines of Silesia and himself to man a machine-gun on the Russian Front!

‘But I haven’t withheld it, have I?’ said Bousquet. ‘I’ve come clean.’

‘Then join us in the morgue, Secretaire,’ said Louis with all the acid he could summon. ‘Tell us who and where her husband is. Flesh out the little details while we examine the corpses.’

‘Hermann, a quiet word.’

They drew away from the counter, Bousquet offering the attendant behind it a cigarette and trying to exchange pleasantries so as to cover his being here with two detectives from Paris.

‘There’s no need for you to see them,’ said Louis, those big brown ox-eyes of his moist with concern. ‘Get Georges to drop you off at the Hotel du Parc. Pump him dry and find out what really went on the night of that little rendezvous, then talk to the switchboard operator that Menetrel will probably have dismissed. Dry her tears. She may be a bank.’

‘Bousquet won’t tell you everything.’

‘Of course not. None of them will, but Premier Laval would most certainly have been aware of this and may well have sicked Menetrel on to the switchboard girl not only to get rid of him but to let us know we ought to talk to her.’

The French … Mein Gott, the wiliness of their peasants! Laval had grown up as one of them and was known to make much of it. ‘Or to those at the PTT?’

The main exchange. Hermann was learning. ‘Those too. Apart from the plentiful hotels, and the lack of a prominent politician who might not have agreed with them but would have demanded a powerful position, the Government came here because the town possessed a modern telephone exchange and calls could be made to New York, London or anywhere else, even Berlin.’

‘Enjoy yourself.’

Stark under lights that must be far brighter than needed, the victims lay side by side. The white shrouds had been drawn fully back … The skin of each was so pale and waxy-looking – blue and cold, especially in the lips and fingernails, livid elsewhere in blotches, the autopsy incision of the one crudely stitched up from her black-haired pubes to her throat …

‘That … that is Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux, the first of them. Found in the Grand etablissement thermal. Drowned,’ managed Bousquet only to hear St-Cyr calmly saying, ‘Take a moment, Secretaire. Calm yourself.’

The thermal baths …

‘Unmarried – divorced when still quite young; nineteen, I think. A nurse with her own practice. Age thirty-two or three. Alain Andre Richard, our Minister of Supplies and Rationing, was quite infatuated with her.’

‘And you, Secretaire? Were you as “infatuated” with Madame Lefebvre?’

Whose throat was greenish-yellow and tinged with coppery blue in places and still depressed on either side of where the wire had cut through, the flesh gaping … Flecks of dark blood beneath the skin – showers of them, the smell of her …

‘Don’t!’ said St-Cyr. ‘Come away, Secretaire. Away! A brandy! A glass of water!’ he called out to one of the attendants.

‘Brandy?’ came the echoing response. ‘He asks for a marc, Hernand.’

‘Then get it from the safe, idiot. Hurry!’ said Hernand, the boss perhaps.

‘Merci,’ gasped Bousquet when it had arrived and been downed – three fingers at least and rough. ‘Another. And another. Now leave us and close the door. This is a private matter. Speak of it to anyone and you’ll be planting corpses in Russia for our friends.’

The door closed. ‘Sacr

e nom de nom, forgive me,’ said Bousquet, looking at Camille’s corpse whose nipples had collapsed and were tinged with bluish green and yellow, and whose breasts were slack and marred by livid blotches, no longer warmly being kissed or suckled as she cried out in ecstasy and begged, ‘In, Rene. In and deep. I have to have you in me!’

‘Tell me about her, Secretaire. Tell me everything you know. Don’t hold back. Hermann and I will only find out, and the sooner we have everything, the sooner we will have her killer or killers.’

The auburn hair was thick but because she’d been hosed down and it had been so cold in here, the hair was slicked and matted and had lost its permanent wave. ‘Her eyes …’

‘They’ve sunk a little into their sockets. A film of mucus and dead cells forms over the cornea – it’s normal with exposure to air after a few hours. Dust collects on it and the surface of the cornea soon becomes brownish and wrinkled. Again, that is normal.’

‘She had beautiful eyes.’

‘Then imagine them as they once were and tell me about her. You loved her?’