Flykiller

‘They … they said that if I did not let them in they would go to les Allemands and cause trouble for Auguste. Much trouble. Don’t you see that I had to?’

‘When first?’ asked Louis. There had been a German Embassy in Vichy, and still was for that matter.

‘A year ago, then again in midsummer and last autumn. In October, and … and since then two more times. Never long, I swear it. An hour, perhaps a little more. They would speak quietly to one another, rediscovering their childhood haunts. The attic, the cellars, their father’s study, the kitchen. I … I could not stop them and was always so afraid Auguste would suddenly turn up.’

‘But were they left alone in here?’ asked the Surete.

Batard! she wanted so much to shriek at him. ‘They … they insisted, went everywhere they wished, even into their father’s bedroom and mine. Mine!’

‘And the most recent visit?’ asked Louis. Her head was now bowed again, fingers agitatedly twisting and untwisting tightly.

‘Last Monday afternoon.’

With Lucie Trudel already dead. ‘And you didn’t realize anything had been taken?’

The knife, the dress and shoes, the earrings, sapphires and a sample of Noelle Olivier’s perfume, also some of the billets doux Petain had written to her. ‘They’d never taken things before. Why should they have done so then? I was only too glad to see them gone from the house!’

‘And when Secretaire General Bousquet came here did you inform him of what Paul and Blanche Varollier must have done?’

‘I … I couldn’t. Auguste … Auguste would never have forgiven me if he’d found out I’d let them into his house and not told him they had returned. Each visit had to be arranged so carefully, the moment seized only when he was certain to be absent for more than an hour.’

You’re the fool, not the monsieur, one wanted so much to say, St-Cyr told himself sadly, for those same times could so easily have been used to pin down Olivier’s meetings with others of the FTP.

Repocketing the knife and taking the laudanum bottle – feeling like examining magistrate, judge, jury and hooded executioner, and not liking himself one bit – he said as gently as he could, ‘For now we’ve seen enough, Hermann. Mademoiselle, please don’t think of leaving Vichy. You will only be hounded down.’

‘And Auguste?’

‘Will, I believe, have gone for one of his strolls.’

A Peugeot two-door sedan can’t outrun a Wehrmacht motorcycle patrol in the dark of night, in a strange town where armed controls are on every bridge. It can try, of course, but when it finds itself wedged into the narrowness of a medieval street in the heart of the old town, with all exits blocked, it has to give up.

Unblinkered headlamps – an emergency – blinded them. Steel helmets hid riders’ heads, goggles their eyes, black leather their massive shoulders and bulging arms. Gauntlets their hands.

VAROOM … VAROOM!

BANG! BANG! farted a wounded muffler. The shortages these days …

‘Talk to them, Hermann.’

‘Louis, you let Olivier go!’

‘I had to! I had no other choice.’

‘And Giselle and Oona and Gabrielle, eh? Did they have a choice? Gessler won’t stop if he lays his hands on him. It won’t just be you and me!’

‘I’m sorry, but …’

‘Admit it, that son of a bitch is Vichy’s section head of the FTP and your patriotism got to you. Jesus, merde alors, don’t I know all about it!’

Hermann got out from behind the steering wheel, leaving his door open so that the thirty degrees of frost and its softly falling snow would find his little Surete Frog, his constant passenger.

Strolling into the light, he gave the boys a nonchalant wave, a rush of banter, which was cut off by an Unterfeldwebel shouting, ‘Arrest? Ach! mein lieber Hauptmann Detektiv Inspektor, we aren’t to arrest you. Mein Gott, what gave you such a crazy notion? We’re to escort you to a meeting with the Chief of Police.’

He didn’t say anything. For once Hermann was at an absolute loss for words, didn’t even lift a tired hand to indicate they would obediently follow.

Tears frozen to his cheeks, he got back into the car to grip the steering wheel with bare hands.

‘You left your gloves on the bonnet, mon vieux.’

‘Fuck my fucking gloves! Think, Louis! Gestapo Gessler! We’ve got to have answers for him we can readily give.’

‘Like, you examined Madame Olivier’s bedroom and the scene of the theft, while I interviewed the recluse who was just that, lonely, bitter, very difficult and of little use to us.’

‘Bonne chance. It isn’t going to work.’

‘All right. Four murders that could just as easily have been eight and should have been if the boys were the targets, forgetting of course, for the moment, Petain, Laval and Menetrel!’

‘Gessler will like it if we say it must be a sadist who’s sexually incapable of rape. I’ll tell him the girls were killed because the assassins had a thing about marital infidelity and wanted to put the fear of God into their lovers.’