Flykiller

A concentration camp!

‘The north bank of the Danube near Enns? Mein Gott, Louis, how could I have missed it? One tries so hard but I’ve been away too long, I guess. Here, sorry I forgot to light a cigarette for you. Have mine.’

‘Destination?’ demanded Schepp.

‘A cabin downriver. A crime scene,’ said Kohler blandly and never mind about their heading for the racetrack!

‘Recent?’

‘Not so recent.’

‘Then there’s no rush, is there?’

‘Not really.’

‘Length of stay?’

Verdammt, were they going to be watched that closely? ‘An hour or two, Scharfuhrer. More if we find something we need to follow up.’

‘Curfew has been rolled back to twenty-one hundred hours. Make sure you’re tucked in by then.’

The buzzing drone of a low-flying Storch interrupted them. Camouflaged, sand-coloured from the desert war in North Africa and looking like a skinny dragonfly with stiff legs, the plane roared overheard at 200 metres, then quickly throttled back to drop to river level.

‘The tiny aerodrome below the village of Charmeil,’ explained St-Cyr humbly. ‘It’s only five kilometres from here, Inspektor. The Marechal Petain has a large farmhouse in the village; Herr Abetz a chateau, I believe.’

Hermann paid no apparent attention, would continue to try to break through that armour.

‘Were you at Stalingrad with von Paulus and the 6th, Scharfuhrer? I ask only because my boys were there and still are.’

‘And not on the long march into Siberia? They’re among the lucky then, aren’t they, Herr Hauptmann der Geheime Stattspolizist?’

Fish only when there are fish to be caught and then you won’t be humiliated, thought St-Cyr ruefully. The whole of the 6th Army, what had been left of it, had been taken. Over 90,000 men were on that march, but the Scharfuhrer was letting Hermann know his sons were heroes, their father something far less. Paris had informed Herr Gessler of who Hermann was, and Gessler had spread the word.

‘Lucky, yes,’ muttered Hermann tightly. ‘What’s going on here?’

‘The same war.’

‘Banditen in the hills? That was a spotter plane, wasn’t it?’

‘Terroristen, ja. Communists. FTPs. We’ll soon clean them out. Who’s he?’

‘Him? The Frenchman they gave me to run errands. St-Cyr, Surete.’

‘The Oberdetektiv Jean-Louis St-Cyr of 3 Laurence-Savart in Belleville, Paris? The one who gets his name splashed all over the papers?’

‘Yes. Yes, that’s him.’

‘Then just remember the two of you are on your own. We have enough to do as it is and won’t be lifting a finger to help should you get into difficulties. Oh, I’ve forgotten my hand. This finger.’ The roof was banged. ‘Pass. Erich, let this one pass,’ called out the Scharfuhrer. ‘They have to pee.’

‘Sorry, Louis,’ muttered Kohler. ‘You know I didn’t mean that bit about running errands.’

The Sonderkommando would net the innocent, the terrified who would bolt simply because they wouldn’t know what the hell was going on, and perhaps even a few maquisards would be caught. But was the threat really from the Resistance as Bousquet and the others thought? And had the Fuhrer not also used the opportunity to make absolutely certain Petain didn’t go over to the Allies?

The aerodrome would still have French aircraft sufficient for a night flight to Morocco or Algiers, and Hermann … Hermann had been told by the nameless one that the Reich didn’t want anything happening to the Marechal or else.

They had reached the stables.

‘Hermann, will you be okay in there?’

Louis was remembering the SS and the scar of a rawhide whip that his partner had earned in the stables of a chateau on the Loire near Vouvray early last December, the chateau of Gabrielle Arcuri’s mother-in-law. ‘Me? Fine. No problem.’

Perhaps. ‘There are two cars parked outside, and one engine is colder than the other.’

‘Ferbrave’s come running, I think.’

‘And Albert?’

‘Has found more rats than he bargained for.’

Built at the turn of the century, their heavily timbered cupolas rising above the loft, the stables’ stalls were arranged off an aisle that was more than 300 metres in length and held the accumulated tack of all those years. There were thoroughbreds, quarter horses, trotters, hunters and those for just plain pleasure. Lucie Trudel’s dappled grey was a splendid gelding; the stall was immaculate, even with a snapshot of her pinned up for the horse to look at if lonely.

Stablehands, and the usual hangers-on every track seemed to have, were about, riders still coming in. Two of the Blitzmadchen, the grey mice who had come from the Reich to work as telegraphers and typists, et cetera, were rubbing down a bay mare and whispering sweet nothings to it. A Wehrmacht general and his orderly were dismounting to hand over the reins. Everything seemed quite normal. A busy place. Bicycles had been parked outside and at least two staff cars were at the far end.

‘No trouble, then,’ breathed Kohler.

‘But trouble all the same,’ sighed Louis.