Dollmaker (14 page)

‘Well, so will you, my friend. It is
three
kilometres out to the main road and twenty-two more to Quiberon!'

He'd best distract Louis and get him working on things, though it was tempting to tell him it wasn't raining. ‘That's about half-way to the clay pits but in the opposite direction, eh, Chief?' he sang out. ‘That must tell you something, seeing as you're from Paris Central and the husband and the stepmother would both have had a long bicycle ride to get there.'

No one should have to listen to such things. ‘These days long bicycle rides are an everyday thing, Inspector, or hadn't you noticed? Besides, they were common enough in the past and twenty-five kilometres is not so much, especially if you want to stop a murder.'

‘Or commit one.'

‘Ah yes, it could have been either way. It is also quite possible for a pretty woman on a bicycle to hitch a ride in a Wehrmacht lorry. You had best check this. As the senior detective of the partnership, I leave the task to you.'

Still bitchy? wondered Kohler. They were passing through moorland pasture, with clustered farm buildings and tiny, whitewashed houses whose dark slate roofs blended perfectly with the night sky. A dog barked. Another took up the challenge and soon he was able to tell exactly which farmers blamed their dogs for all their troubles. Most of them!

They'd best run through things again. ‘On the 30th of December Baumann delivers a message the Captain sent from Paris, Louis. Both the pianist and his wife read it and have plenty of time to think about it. They
know
Kaestner will be at the clay pits and so does the child.'

The Sûreté's head was tossed in acknowledgement. ‘The Obersteuermann carries the look of death perceived. 6,000,000 francs of their money are missing and presumably either stolen by this … this shopkeeper everyone seems to have hated or by his daughter. But …' He paused. ‘… the Captain does not appear to have been too concerned.'

‘He's too busy making dolls and gathering clay,' snorted Kohler. ‘If you ask me, Chief, Herr Baumann had every reason to slam that shopkeeper. Pay the son of a bitch back and get the Captain hauled in on a little charge of murder. From what we've seen of them, U-297's crew don't want to return to sea. They know damned well they won't be coming back and Baumann's look only reinforces this.'

‘And the shopkeeper's daughter has the odds down pat.'

‘Has she got the money? Is she just waiting for them to go to the bottom?'

‘Or does she know who took it?'

Questions … there were always so many of them and so little time.

They had reached the main road, such as the traffic was at nearly midnight. ‘Kerjean and the shopkeeper argue violently,' said St-Cyr. ‘Le Trocquer then catches the noon bus to Lorient. That bus, as everyone knows, takes its time but not only does it pass by here, Hermann, it sometimes calls in at Kerouriec and would have done so on the 1st.'

‘So, having delivered messages to the woman himself, he sat there in the bus waiting for it to carry on,' breathed Kohler.

‘Did he spit towards her with hatred? Did he silently curse her for some reason – what, exactly, was his relationship with her? A woman who would not think of going into his shop even if down to her last centime?'

Kohler suggested they share one of the cigarettes from the shed and, once he had it going, continued. ‘Ahead of le Trocquer, and in that little Renault of his, Kerjean drops in to see Madame Charbonneau long before the bus ever gets near the place. He warns her of trouble – what, exactly, we don't yet know, but then fragments of a doll are found and it's not one of the Captain's. It's from a Bru or a Steiner perhaps, but most likely a Jumeau, though we've only the Captain's word on this.'

‘Cigarettes are left in the shed as is a woman's crumpled handkerchief and her bicycle – was it really sex under duress? She tells us Préfet Kerjean arrived at the house at 1 p.m. but he probably got there at noon or very close to it.'

‘She denies knowing where the husband was,' went on Kohler.

‘Yet the daughter contradicts this. While the woman says she was not at the clay pits, the child offers proof her stepmother was.'

‘That kid has to be blaming the stepmother for what happened to her mother, Louis, but she must also believe her father killed the shopkeeper and that the only hope is to show us the woman did it.'

‘Perhaps but then … ah
mais alors, alors
, it is very difficult, isn't that so? The child prowls about at all hours of the night. The father is often away for days on end and there cannot be any guarantee of when he will suddenly turn up. The Captain visits, the Préfet visits …'

Kohler handed the cigarette over with a nudge and a sigh that was so deep, exasperation was implied. ‘She denies ever having had sex with Kaestner. She even told me to tell the child she hadn't been screwing around though she and the husband had yet to consummate their marriage.'

‘But is it the truth?'

St-Cyr searched the darkness of the road for any other sign of life. He would have to go carefully now. ‘There is a telescope with which a couple on the beach could easily be observed if in certain places.'

‘Did the Préfet know of that telescope?' asked Kohler swiftly.

Hermann never missed such things! St-Cyr held the smoke in to warm the lungs and stall for time, deciding that, while the woman might not have used tobacco, she would quite willingly have accepted the cigarettes for her husband.

‘Louis, I think I asked you something. I haven't kept anything from you, not this time and not on that last case either. Fair's fair.'

Must God do this to him? Surely Hermann could be counted on not to tell the SS and the Gestapo?'

‘Louis…'

‘All right, I'll trust you. Kerjean knew of the telescope. According to the child, he used it to watch the
sardiniers
.'

‘And the U-boats? Christ, that's all we need. The fucking Resistance!'

‘Now wait. Please do not be so hasty. Victor has a son. Just before the bombing raid, Angélique hinted that I should ask her how many
sardiniers
had been gathered. Unless I am very mistaken, that son left here for England aboard one of them. That still does not mean Victor didn't fall in love with the woman and become very jealous of the Captain's attentions to her. It simply means that he and Madame Charbonneau had to be very careful. This the child, in her own way, understands and yet she is not fully cognizant of the consequences nor of the hell the stepmother has been going through.'

‘Your logic's perfect, Chief. There's only one thing you forgot. The money, eh? Money to pay some fart-headed little runt in tattered canvas for the ride.'

From far along the road to Plouharnel and Quiberon, a lorry sped towards them with unblinkered lights. Even from such a distance, Kohler knew it was the Freikorps racing to Lorient to help with the clean-up.

‘Please don't say anything about it, Hermann. Yes, I'm begging you, and yes, I will owe you whatever you think is necessary. Victor's a good man. He has only one son among five daughters. Don't blame him for wanting the boy out of France, if that's how it was.'

Think of yourself advising your sons to emigrate to Argentina in 1938, eh? thought Kohler. Well, what about Kerjean's sending his son off to fight again?

Always things had to be laid on the line for them. If Boemelburg ever got word of it, Louis and he would be done for this time. Up against the wall or under the guillotine! ‘Hey, what I want to know is was le Trocquer aware of the escape?'

‘That is the question which troubles me the most.'

‘
If
Kerjean was really watching the
sardiniers
for that reason, Louis.
If
That's the question you'll have to settle first, and that, my fine patriot from the Sûreté, is an order. Even bumboats like one of their lousy
sardiniers
seldom sail with only one passenger.'

Ah
merde
, of course!

5

They had been fighting fires for hours and doing what they could. Lorient had been devastated. At dawn there was silence. It was as if those who remained took stock of things and held their breath lest a shattered wall collapse or a floor give way.

Everywhere there were bomb craters, everywhere the stench of burnt flesh and plaster dust, cordite and burning diesel fuel. Where the street ran downhill to the harbour, fog clung to railway lines whose torn-up tracks were bent and twisted. The tunny fleet was no more. Having been denied the fuel to put to sea, splintered masts and sunken blue hulls cluttered the quays.

The street was littered with granite blocks, broken glass and rag-doll bodies. Miraculously one woman still clung to her purse, another had given birth. A boy of seven would never ride his bicycle again. How had he lasted this long?

There was blood everywhere. Blood and plaster dust and stumps at the knees. And through the haze and the uneasy silence, the dock workers plodded downhill towards a twelve-hour shift in the bunkers, seemingly numb to the suffering that lay around them. Zombies in faded dungarees and black berets – black crudely stitched and tattered shoulder bags. Women too. Women in filthy grey coveralls with backsides the size of plough horses.

Kohler crouched over the boy. Louis said, ‘Hermann, you will only think of your sons.' He would have to tell him.

‘Kid, listen to me. Just try not to worry, eh? Everything is going to be all right. You'll see.'

‘It's too late. He can't hear you. He's slipping away. Leave it.'

‘Don't be stupid. He has what it takes.'

The boy could only watch the man with the big face who tried to tie tourniquets around his legs. Perhaps he noticed the scar down the left cheek. Perhaps that was what caught and held his attention.

‘Louis … Louis, he's gone.'

‘And he's left you thinking of your sons.'

‘Yes.'

‘They're gone too, Hermann. Look, I'm sorry. I knew I had to tell you sometime. Boemelburg left it to me. A telex from Army HQ Eastern Front just before we left Paris.'

‘Missing in action and presumed dead?'

Hermann couldn't look up. He would deal with it in his own way. He was like that sometimes. ‘What else can I say?'

‘We'd best get to work. Try that, Chief. You sure can choose your times.'

‘I'm sorry. I really am. I didn't want to have to tell you.'

They shook hands and held each other firmly that way, two shabby, dust-covered weary men from opposite sides of this war. ‘It isn't right,' said St-Cyr, seeing the anguish in the Bavarian's eyes. ‘None of it is. You could go home, Hermann. Compassionate leave? Surely they wouldn't deny you that.'

‘I might never be allowed to come back. What would Oona and Giselle do, eh? What would you do without me, a patriot wanted by the Resistance in a land of the Gestapo?'

They had been through so much and Hermann did like to feel wanted and useful. ‘Come on then, let's see if we can find ourselves a ride back to Quiberon.'

‘The bunkers first, and then Doenitz's former command post at Kernével. It's time the Kapitän zur See Freisen coughed up a little information. I want a look at Dollmaker's report on the morale of U-297's crew. I want a lot more. I want answers, Louis. Answers.'

*

Kohler pulled up the collar of his greatcoat and tucked his head down further against the cold and the fog.
Mein Gott
he needed a cigarette, would have to latch on to some soon.

A catwalk had been laid across a bomb crater full of filthy water where the tracks had been torn up, and the long line of shuffling dockworkers had to cross this in single file to get to the checkpoint. Damage crews were everywhere – picks, shovels, cars, lorries, ambulances and pumper trucks – yet through the chaos and the fog, the Keroman bunkers rose like megaliths of their own. Long, grim, tall and menacing with huge black armour-plated doors for each of the forty or so bays and grey, rust-stained concrete. Concrete that had resisted even the 2,000-pound bombs. There wasn't a scratch. Seven metres of ferroconcrete on the roof and walls – concrete with iron filings in it
plus
reinforcing rods – had allowed work to go on non-stop inside. ‘The bloody things will still be here a thousand years from now,' he snorted lustily to no one but himself.

So savage was the Admiral's penchant for dealing with spies, the warning signs had been among the first things to be replaced or straightened. One stark poster near the guardpost showed a goitred little dockworker hanging by the neck. His sobbing wife and children knelt in prayer under the steel-grey Schmeissers of jackbooted heroes who, everyone knew, were just about to pull the triggers.

The SS had put that one up. The Sturmscharführer with the snappy cap and snazzy uniform reminded him of Klaus Barbie and Lyon, a recent case of arson and a naked woman on her hands and knees under torture. ‘I spit on you,' breathed Kohler, standing back to take it all in. ‘My sons are gone because of types like you.'

No letter writer, he would have to write to Gerda – she'd be crying her eyes out and remembering. Like Louis had said, he ought to go home for a visit but after nearly two and a half years, he wasn't Bavarian any more or French but something in between, a pebble that had been thrown into a pond to make its own ripples.

‘I even forget myself and swear in French half the time.'
Merde
, what was he to do?

‘Get on with it,' he said grimly. ‘Admit that deep down inside, you've known for some time the boys weren't coming back.'

Verdammt
! but it was a piss-assed life. ‘I really have had it,' he said, trying to probe the fog to find the end of the bunkers. No tears yet. ‘Concrete coffins to hold the iron ones,' he snorted. ‘Like Baumann, death is with me all the time. I see it in Oona's eyes sometimes and in Giselle's too, and I worry about them both because when this war turns sour, it's going to do so with a vengeance.' Both would be classed as collaborators.