Sandman (19 page)

‘Where, please, can we find this Madame Rébé?'

Ah, damn him! ‘
Look
, she has nothing to do with any of this … this …' She gestured dismissively at the map and the rubbish on the desk. Her brown eyes glared at him fiercely. Every facial feature was sharpened by the light and the tension in her, the high cheekbones, the lips that were twisted up a little to the right, producing now a timorous and uncertain look.

‘Please, we may need the clairvoyant's help, madame, isn't that so?' he said, not taking his eyes from hers. ‘Ah! I'm not averse to consulting them myself from time to time. My first wife was very committed to the practice and would not undertake any business venture without first the consultation.'

Had he deliberately made reference to that wife so as to make her wonder why the woman had left him? Might she then forget herself, if but for a moment? The bastard.

‘She was a dress designer and had a little shop of her own, madame. My long hours and continued absences, these she simply could no longer take. Women need love. In marriage, it's expected. Now please, Madame Rébé?'

Cochon!
she wanted to scream at him. She wished she could slap his face so hard they would hear it downstairs. ‘
Numéro
10, rue de l'Eperon.'

It was in the Sixth, in Hermann's
quartier
and but a stone's throw from the house of Madame Chabot on the rue Danton and the flat he shared with Giselle and Oona on the rue Suger. A small world.

‘And the atelier of this German artist?'

‘This I … I do not know. Ask Liline. She'll tell you.'

‘Ah! I wish it were possible, but you see, madame, the girl has left for the south. A hurried trip. Didn't your husband tell you?'

‘
Bâtard
, he tells me nothing and you know it! Why distress me so? Are you all the same, you
flics?
'

‘The same? Ah no, madame. No, there are differences.'

She turned away, she turned back. ‘I don't know what you want with me. I've done nothing.'

‘Then you have nothing to fear, have you?'

Her eyes darted down over the rubbish, and when they momentarily hesitated at the tiepin, he asked, ‘What is it, please? Do you recognize something?'

‘No. No, I … I just can't understand why that child had to pick up everything she came across. It's shameful. It's disgusting and unsanitary.'

But useful.

His mind made up, he took hold of her by the elbow, and when she heard his voice, his words, she shuddered inwardly and did not know what to do or say. ‘Madame, please accompany me to the morgue. There is something I must show you.'

She could not bring herself to look at him. ‘Honoré, the … the chauffeur, he … he will be having his supper. He …'

‘I am sure he won't mind, but if you wish, I could telephone the Kommandantur for a car.'

Ah
merde, merde
, why must he do this to her? ‘Antoine is the one you want, not me.
Bien sûr
, he's still in Rouen—he has an excuse, eh? Always he has an excuse.'

In the foyer, with the maid assisting, St-Cyr handed Madame her boots, first checking the soles until he had what he wanted and had inserted the bent pin of the turquoise-and-silver stud into the hole he'd discovered.

‘Now we're getting somewhere,' he muttered to himself, not looking up at her. ‘She stepped on this.'

The morgue was far from quiet. Scratchy strains of that pre-war classic,
J'ai deux amours
, ‘Two Loves Have I', filled the entrance hall as the desk clerk logged in their names. Finches twittered in the distance of the autopsy room, singing along with Edith Piaf, as only she could render, before the war, that bittersweet longing for what had now become the France and Paris of other years.

‘He's been in there since dawn,' seethed the man on the desk. ‘One attends, one rewinds that cursed Victrola of his, and if I hear that goddamned song again I am going to personally put him on ice!'

St-Cyr gave the attendant a curt but understanding nod and, turning to lead Madame Vernet to a bench against the wall, said flatly, ‘Please wait here until summoned.'

Quickly he left her, but saw her shiver suddenly and pull the mink coat more tightly about herself. A coat that was now worth nearly one million francs, such was the need for fur on the Russian Front. That same coat, in the fall of 1940, would have fetched no more than sixty-five thousand francs.

She'd keep on ice of her own. Ah yes and, cruel though that might seem, these things, they had to be done.

Hernand Belligueux was tidying up and took no immediate notice of him. Why should he? Weren't coroners indispensable? The Victrola-grinder was pale and painfully distressed—his feet must be freezing after thirteen hours in the cold room with barely time out to piss. Birdseed, harvested by the coroner in the wild throughout the fall, since none was available in the shops, was being doled out to the half-dozen finches in the ornate cage at his elbow.

Belligueux was nearly seventy years old and had been a bachelor all his life. That alone should make one wary of him. Slight, not tall, he was fastidiously dressed—waistcoat, shirt with sleeves carefully rolled up, and tie were all but covered by the tenth or twelfth white lab-coat he'd worn that day. From its pockets his notepads bulged. He would wash his hands and dry them as the need arose; sometimes he used gloves, most often not. The heart, lungs, livers, kidneys and stomachs would all have been opened and specimens taken for further examination. Nothing would be left to chance. Both corpses were shrouded under clean white sheets.

The thin red ribbon of the
Légion d'honneur
was pinned to the lapel of his lab-coat; below it, the yellow and green of the
Médaille militaire
. A patriot.

‘Paris in winter is for the Boches, Jean-Louis,' he grumbled in acknowledgement at last. ‘They deserve it. But, please … Ah! it's good of you to come, though in future I must ask that you wipe your shoes, eh? lest you track snow on my floor and cause unnecessary labour.'

He motioned to the attendant to clean things up, and quickly. He examined the palm of his left hand as if plotting exactly how best to say what had to be said, but did not, as was his custom on such occasions, remove the horn-rimmed glasses that only served to enhance the acid of his gaze and tongue.

‘I thought detectives who ordered autopsies were to be present during them so as not to cause me to repeat myself?'

‘Apologies, Coroner. The pressures of the investigation.'

‘Pah! you people. At least have the courage to admit the matter was too delicate!'

The precisely trimmed goatee and hair had been dyed black. A nonsmoker, when virtually everyone else was dying for tobacco, he would not tolerate its use in his presence. But he was good, the best, and through the years had always looked where others had missed things.

‘Well, I suppose I had better fill you in so that I can get to my supper—you have eaten, I take it? That is soup on your moustache? If it's not, then please
don't
come a millimetre closer. The flu this winter is terrible, our gift to the Boches from which one trusts they will all succumb.'

Only he could have said it unscathed. Even the hardest of Nazis were afraid of him because, in addition to all else, he was driven to gaze into their eyes before telling them exactly what diseases they suffered from and would, quite naturally, die of.

‘First, the child,' he grumbled, not bothering with his notes. ‘She suffered from tinea and if, as I have been given to understand by Préfet Talbotte, her little friend now wears the beret and scarf of this one, she, too, will come down with it. So much, eh? for the good sisters forcing the child to bathe under a sheet so that God would not see her naked, but one has to wonder why the evidence on her scalp was missed.'

Tinea, barber's itch and other such fungal infections of the skin were endemic, picked up in the public baths, schools and churches, the cinemas, too, and yes, the hairdresser's. Half of Paris had suffered at one time or another and had been in agony, what with no wholewheat or potato flour with which to dust the bedsheets so that one could at least roll around in it for relief.

‘Her scalp,' he said, damning the nuns just in case they really were to blame. ‘Two circular patches her comb has often worked on. Her underarms and seat. The child has had it for some time and has, no doubt, prayed constantly that the good sisters would not discover her affliction and force upon her a sulphurous shower bath. Or is it,' he asked suspiciously, ‘that she was being punished and was required to bear the penance of such an affliction?'

The sisters would all have come down with it if that had been the case but … but why had they not noticed it in the infirmary? Perhaps they had. They must have. ‘And?' managed the Sûreté's mouse.

‘
Speak up. I can't hear you
.'

Ah, damn Edith Piaf and the finches! ‘
AND?
'

‘That's better. She was killed with a Number Four knitting needle. That is four millimetres in diameter, in case you didn't know, whereas the others were all killed with a Four Point Five.' He tossed a hand. ‘Then, too, the weapon was not sharpened at the point as were the others. Also, the needle was not driven into the heart.'

‘Not into the heart …'

‘You should have read the reports.'

‘We did not have time.'

‘Hah! the Sûreté is as incompetent as always.'

‘We have not slept. We have been working on this thing since we got in last night, Coroner.
Last night!
'

‘Please don't shout. You will only disturb the finches, who are as innocent as the child.'

‘Forgive me.'

‘Certainly. How's your stomach?'

‘Fine.'

‘Good.' Belligueux removed his glasses and gravely polished them. ‘Jean-Louis, there is something that even our nefarious press have only hinted at out of fear of reprisals from our illustrious government in Vichy, not out of any concern for decency or the parents of the deceased. With each of the first three victims, the Sandman attempted vaginal penetration and fellatio. Perhaps he was too anxious, too excited—who is to say what went through his mind—but premature ejaculation was common to all. Semen was smeared on their private parts and its stains were left on their clothes, but …' He paused to hold the glasses up to the light and look sadly through them. ‘But with Andrée Noireau there is no such attempt beyond the hasty opening of her overcoat and pulling up of her skirt and sweater. Is it that he realized he simply did not have the time, or having failed before, did he fear he would do so again?'

‘This killing was different, Coroner. What you are suggesting is that it was decidedly so.'

There was a curt nod of agreement. The recording came to an end. The needle scratched. The sleeve,' breathed Belligueux, tersely tossing the warning aside to the attendant. And then, ‘With Andrée Noireau there are none of the bruises in those tenderest of places as with the others, all of whom had to suffer the harshness of the Sandman's fingers and bore several scratches inflicted by his nails.'

‘Yet another difference,' said St-Cyr sadly. ‘Is there more?' The look Belligueux gave him was grim.

‘The attack in les Halles, Jean-Louis. In that one, sodomy failed, as did fellatio but not vaginal penetration. There it was complete and brutal with several tears. Please, I regret the unpleasantness, but you must have the truth. Semen was smeared on the face and buttocks and on the genitalia—a failed attempt at first and then completion but …' He paused before saying it again. ‘… but with your Andrée Noireau we have none of this. No attempt at rape beyond the dishevelling of her clothes. Soldiers,' he said of the les Halles attack and threw out his hands in despair. ‘Was it a soldier? Is our Sandman one of the Germans here on leave?'

Had the threat of this brought tears to the Sûreté's eyes?

‘The assailant's pubic hairs, Coroner? Can matches be made from victim to victim?'

Jean-Louis was desperate. ‘Ah! this I cannot tell you, for there were no such hairs reported on any of the victims and I found none on this one either. Of course, they would be expected unless purposely removed afterwards by the “assailant” or “assailants”'

An unpleasant thought, for, if true, it implied an iron-hard calmness, an absolutely ruthless determination to hide his identity. A battle-hardened soldier perhaps. ‘The semen stains?'

‘Blood Group A with the Suresnes and the Aubervilliers victims. Indeterminable with the other two. For myself, I wonder if such tests were really done on those two.'

‘Indeterminable …? But … but that could mean Group O or a non-secretor? Surely if his blood grouping is A, the others should be the same?'

‘This I cannot say, more than I already have.'

Ah damn. ‘And the dates, the times of the murders, please?'

‘All from one to three hours after the midday meal of soup. A Wednesday for the Suresnes killing, a Friday for that in Aubervilliers. The les Halles murder was done on a Saturday; that of the Notre-Dame on a Wednesday, after the crowds of “tourists” had left. And this latest on a Sunday.'

‘Had she eaten?'

‘Some bread, no butter. Two raw carrots and perhaps three of the vitaminic biscuits.'

‘Wool … were there threads of black wool?'

‘A few were caught under this one's fingernails.'

‘But not in those of the others?'

‘No, not with them, though I must emphasize I personally did not conduct those autopsies and all were quickly buried.'

‘And with Liline Chambert, what have you for us?'

The finches sang, and for a moment Belligueux listened to them before sadly saying, ‘At least three and a half months pregnant, a boy. Massive embolism. A disinfectant and soap but not the National one. No, this soap produced a copious froth. The filthy stuff was injected forcibly into the uterus. Air bubbles penetrated the mural veins. Death was instantaneous. One could ask, Was it deliberate? What better way to remove an unwanted lover? But this I could never prove and you know it. May God crucify the one responsible before she kills another.'