Flykiller

‘Who were obviously up to mischief, not just with them, and who needed to be taught a damned good lesson before the scandal of their using vans from the Bank of France erupted in the Government’s face.’

‘Give me that again, will you? Christ, I need a fag!’

The car started off with a jerk – water in the petrol, always water these days. Following the eight bikes, they watched as the headlamp beams fled up and over the walls, revealing stonework and doorways from the days of the Celestins perhaps, when in 1410 a monastery had been established at one of the sources, not far from Olivier’s house.

Louis repeated the thought, adding, ‘Is that not why Celine Dupuis’s note stated, “Lucie, we have to talk. It’s urgent”?’

A scandal of massive proportions in an already shaky Government, not just one of an unfaithful wife and Petain to titillate the local ears. ‘Madame Dupuis was afraid they, too, would be killed – is that what you’re saying?’

‘Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux and Camille Lefebvre already had been. All were friends – fast friends, I’m certain.’

‘Four girls, then, the first of whom constantly flaunted her affair with the Minister of Supplies and Rationing whom we’ve yet to meet.’

‘We’ve simply been far too busy for such social calls, but yes, our thirty-seven-year-old nurse must have made a nuisance of herself.’

And Bousquet hadn’t exactly been telling them the truth.

‘Lucie was pregnant, Hermann, and had had a crise de conscience over the abortion Deschambeault had arranged. I think she may have been threatened early last Saturday morning on her way home from the Hall des Sources and that this is why she changed her mind and got into bed to await Deschambeault’s comforting embrace. She could well have become a considerable problem both to him and that family of his, judging by what little we’ve seen of it so far. Old money never appreciates a mistress who imperils the family fortune and drives an unhappy wife and mother to seek costly help in a private clinic.’

‘But Camille couldn’t have become a nuisance to Bousquet, could she?’

‘A Secretaire General de Police whose wife and children reside in Paris and who must have come to know the others here only last summer and not two years ago after the Defeat? He’d have had to take his rightful share of the rewards of their little scheme wouldn’t he? One of les gars?’

‘Laval trusts him, Louis.’

‘Laval told him to work closely with us and to keep him advised of our progress. An embarrassment, then, at the highest level, Hermann. Let us not forget this.’

‘They didn’t kill them, did they?’ It was a plea.

‘And try to pin it on Olivier?’

‘Who, in the first place, suggested that they had, right? Or at least that the killer or killers had.’

They were now heading north along the river beside its park, the billowing snow from the motorcycles sometimes hiding the road ahead. The villa the Turkish Embassy used came into sight. Herr Gessler’s was next. Was God not watching? wondered Kohler. Did He really have to allow things like this to happen to honest, hard-working detectives?

‘An assassin or assassins, Hermann. One or two who move about this town so unobtrusively as to be seen but not seen, accepted but ignored, passed over and forgotten only until that final moment when truth arrives.’

‘One or two who have his or her ear – or both – to the ground at all times, eh?’

‘And who know well beforehand when things are about to happen and must have impeccable sources.’

‘Olivier, mon enfant. Olivier and his Edith, and you damned well let him go!’

*

Both older and more recent brand names are used, especially those of Nat Sherman, which so aptly suit the late 1930s, though the cigars themselves are not from Cuba.

*

A nickname Petain earned, the country having been flooded with images of him. Vases, mugs, et cetera.

*

Now the boulevard de Russie.

7

Chez Crusoe was Hermann’s kind of place: loud, brassy and crowded, the tobacco smoke pungent, the girls half naked, their legs wrapped in black-mesh stockings and garters, their songs lewd, ribald, saucy or coy and sweetly virginal, with black bowler hats, stick canes and lighted cigars under spotlights; the keys of twin pianos furiously rippling to a thunderous drumbeat …

‘Gott im Himmel, Louis. Paradise instead of prison and the firing squad!’

‘Don’t count on it.’

‘No sign of Gessler.’

Fin-de-siecle decor was everywhere if a trifle moth-eaten, the main dance floor huge, its timbered ceiling smoke-stained from the turn of the century and before. Probably 1890, or 1880.

‘I’ll get us a couple of drinks and see if there’s any food left.’

‘You won’t get through the crush.’

‘Pastis, right? Beer for me. It’s straight in from home.’

Hermann was like a small boy greedily eating stolen chocolates at his first film. Mesmerized by it all, rejoicing and automatically joining in because that’s the way he was. Giselle and Oona would certainly have their hands full if he ever did get that ‘little place’ on the Costa del Sol.