Stonekiller (15 page)

*  *  *

The heat was on, the noonday silence of the village seemingly impenetrable. As St-Cyr and Kohler shared a cigarette, Franz Oelmann tinkered with the car's engine while Courtet, morose and silent, sat on his precious trunk refusing to budge until Lemieux came back to guard it. Not wanting to return to Lascaux just yet, the Baroness and her Toto had gone to find the village's only café. Juliette Jouvet had retreated to the river to avoid Herr Oelmann and seek solace in her loneliness.

‘Louis, this thing …,' began Kohler, and St-Cyr could tell his partner was really worried. ‘A fucking swastika on a bit of deer-horn fifty thousand or even twenty thousand years old. Goebbels and Himmler —
der Führer
, for Christ's sake. Ah
verdammt
, what are we to do? Take the Baron's offer of 250,000 apiece to look the other way or get stubborn?'

Hermann had never looked the other way. ‘Remain calm. Try to think as Madame Fillioux would have done.'

Kohler took a deep drag before handing the cigarette over. ‘Postcards from the father's parents in Paris.'

‘Pleas for food Madame Fillioux ignored until two days before her death.'

‘Postcards from the Professor he absolutely has to have returned. 10,000 francs and a visit to that cave with her.'

‘Then miraculously he finds the paintings in another part of the cave, having already come into possession of the trunk.'

‘A cave she must have known only too well,' grumbled the Bavarian. ‘Our schoolteacher receives a frantic telephone call from the mother and pays the cave two visits before successfully retrieving the mortar and lumps of pyrolusite. She lies about the first visit. She thinks someone was watching her on the second. Could it have been that husband of hers?'

‘Our veteran.… Perhaps, but are there postcards from her father, Hermann? Postcards her mother didn't tell her of? Is this not what she is now worrying about? Everything suggests Madame Fillioux thought her long-dead husband had returned but our victim also knew Professor Courtet.'

‘Yet she laid out the picnic as for the husband,' said Kohler, exhaling smoke through his nostrils in exasperation. ‘Champagne was left at the site. She didn't bring it but did the husband? His flask is found — she couldn't have had that, could she? Christ, so many went AWOL in that last war, who could blame them.'

St-Cyr took the cigarette from him to savour it. ‘Henri-Georges was very skilled in the use and making of stone tools but is Professor Courtet?'

‘Not according to the daughter. She even challenged him to make one. When she was a child, the mother told her Courtet and her father hated each other.'

‘And now the Professor has everything Henri-Georges once had.'

A cave, a trunk and now a film and fame. ‘Oelmann must be Himmler's man on location, Louis. If that cave really is a forgery, our friend from the SS will do everything necessary to keep it quiet. They're in too deep.'

Everything including killing the woman? But what of the sous-facteur Auger, wondered St-Cyr. What of the daughter's husband?

Only time would tell, and time was something they did not have.

5

B
EYOND THE DIRT TRACK THAT LED TO THE VIL
lage, the road climbed tortuously into the hills. Oak woods crowded closely, sweet chestnut grew near each habitation, and where sufficient land could be cleared and the soil was right, walnut plantations had been set out. But after nearly ten kilometres, they knew they had to turn back, knew also that they had been deliberately led astray.

Subdued and pale in the back seat beside Louis, Madame Jouvet had been giving herself time to think and had let them pass the turn-off.

‘Well? snapped Oelmann.

She was sickened by the little smile he gave. ‘The lane is very difficult to see. Monsieur Auger lives alone and uses a bicycle, so does not often need the fullness of an
Autobahn.
'

Touché
, was that it? wondered St-Cyr, wishing she hadn't let Oelmann get the better of her. ‘Madame, is it that you are afraid the sous-facteur has also been murdered?'

She dropped her eyes so swiftly it startled him. She turned away to stare at a fine old tree. The car crept along through woods where raspberries grew in summer and the voices of her mother and those of her children on holiday would come to her.

When they found it, the lane pitched downhill and, rather than chance the wash-outs, Oelmann said he would stay with the car.

Kohler didn't like it one bit. Oelmann was only stalling. The bastard was going to follow at a distance.

They walked in silence. The wash-outs deepened. On the steepest slope, the lane became a scree of pale yellow boulders among the trees, and it was alongside this that a rope had been placed.

‘Auger would have had to carry the bicycle,' breathed Kohler, shaking his head. Rather than fix the bloody road, the sous-facteur had probably written to the authorities and, having heard nothing, had got his back up and refused to do a thing. A stubborn man.

‘Madame,' hazarded St-Cyr still looking at the scree, ‘would your husband and his friends in the LVF know of this farm?'

‘André …? But… but with his leg, monsieur? Surely you don't think.…'

‘I am merely asking about his friends, madame. They are to march in the Bastille Day parade. To do so, implies a certain mobility.'

‘André would … would not have killed Monsieur Auger, Inspector. He had no reason to.'

She waited for him to ask, But what about killing your mother? She knew this was what he really wanted to say but he let the silence do its work.

Using the rope, they picked their way down the hill and when, at last, they had reached the bottom-lands, they saw the farm beside a bend in the river. The stone cottage with its tiled roof was all but hidden in a grove of walnut trees on the far side of a small pasture where a russet mare paused in grazing to flick her tail and stare at them. The sound of geese came from behind the cottage. There were no cows to milk.

‘He's not alive,' she said desperately. ‘No smoke comes from the chimney.'

The place was too quiet. ‘It's summer. He'd only need the fire just before dawn and maybe in the evening,' breathed Kohler. ‘Why'd he live alone like this?'

‘Why? Because it is the land of his father and when his older brother was killed in the last war, the farm fell to him.'

‘A bachelor,' said St-Cyr, carefully searching the landscape for every last detail.

‘My mother was the only woman he ever loved, Inspectors. Though she refused him, she needed him and in her need, there was a kind of contentment for him. He never gave up trying and I was always the daughter he had never had. I loved him as a father.'

‘Ah
merde
, stay here, then, with Hermann.'

‘Try down by the river if … if he is not in the cottage. He … he liked to go fishing and would have spent all his time doing so if it had been possible.'

‘But only on a Sunday would he have had the time,' sighed St-Cyr.

The Sunday before her mother was killed. The day she herself had returned to the cave to retrieve the lumps of pyrolusite and the mortar before it was too late.

‘Oelmann has a pistol, Louis. I left our guns in my other bag, the one that stayed on the train.'

‘Idiot! If you don't have your bags chained to your wrists these days, they are stolen!'

‘I checked it through. It went into the luggage lock-up.'

‘Destined for the Gare d'Austerlitz? Hah! a
perfectionniste!
'

It was Hermann's responsibility to look after their guns when not in use.

‘
Befehl ist Befehl
, Frau Jouvet,' seethed St-Cyr. ‘
Ist wirklich ganz einfach.
An order is an order. It's really quite simple. I leave you with him and trust that God will not ensure yet another blunder!'

‘He speaks
deutsch.
It helps,' offered Kohler lamely after Louis had left them. ‘Now why don't you tell me about the postcards? Oelmann will only find out, then where will you be? He's SS, madame — he has to be. They teach them how to deal with recalcitrant tongues. Men, women and children, it makes no difference.'

‘This is not the
zone occupée
, monsieur. Here there are still laws against such things.'

But for how long? he wondered sadly. They'll strip you naked so as to humiliate you. Then they'll make you sit before them under the lights or they'll hang you up from a meat-hook and make what that lousy husband of yours does seem like a picnic. Guys like Oelmann can always get help, madame, even here in the
zone libre.
All he has to do is make a phone call. If not a
Sonderkommando
, a special commando, then the Vichy Security Police who work hand in glove with them in spite of your laws. He won't even lay a finger on you unless he gets a kick out of it, but we'll find you in some field with the flies buzzing.'

‘
Stop it! Please stop it!
'

‘Hey, I'm really sorry I had to do that but you have to have the truth. Louis and I can't be with you all the time. Not if we're to deal with this thing.'

Sweat stung his eyes and St-Cyr cursed it. The geese were worried. Perhaps forty of them disinterestedly pecked at the stubble about the door but on seeing him the whole flock rushed to a tiny shed at the side of the cottage. There they beat their wings and stretched their necks as they complained loudly.

‘All right, all right,' he said. ‘A moment, please. Ah
nom de Jésus-Christ!
'

They fretted. They rushed him again. They pecked at his shoes and ankles. One worked on the turn-up of a trouser leg, another at a sock until he slipped and went down hard to scramble up as they fluttered about and he flicked his hands to clean them and roared, ‘
Is Auger in there, eh? Bloated, butchered, festering among the wooden rakes? Ah merde
, look what I've done to my clothes.'

He was glad Hermann hadn't seen him fall. He would never have lived it down.

The shed was primitive, the feed-bin half empty. Seizing the wooden bucket, he dug it fiercely into the cracked corn and tried to repel the invasion. ‘Now, now,' he said. ‘Don't be greedy. There's enough for all.'

A pump in the yard gave salvation, a towel on the line was used. Wiping his shoes off as best he could, he lifted the latch and went into the cottage. The soot-stained fireplace held cold ashes; the bare, plank table and benches had seen years of use. There was nothing out of the ordinary. The place was clean and simple and elementally perfect once one had got used to the geese. A box bed, with big drawers beneath it, was near a plain armoire. Heavy log beams were above. A small attic was through a trap door to which a ladder of peeled poles rose steeply. Again there was nothing much but again, as in Madame Fillioux's attic, he had to ask, Has the place been carefully searched?

Several of last year's walnuts lay in a bowl in the centre of the table, the large grandjeans still in their shells.…

Down by the river, the grass and wild flowers were tall. The sun was high overhead.

Auger's lacquered, split-bamboo fishing rod protruded from the ample lawn chair he must have purchased at auction or been given years ago. Solid comfort. Cushions even. A pipe and small tin of tobacco were nearby, some matches — the matches destroyed by the rain on that Sunday … that Sunday.

The fishing line had been cut. No hook, worm, sinker or fly trailed in the water. There was no sign of a body, only the mocking laughter of a river which joyfully tumbled over clean white gravel.

‘
Merde
, where is he?' It was not nice, this isolation. Though everyone would have missed the sous-facteur, had none bothered to search?

Looking back towards the cottage, he could just see the crown of its roof above the walnut trees. There was no sign whatsoever of Hermann and Madame Jouvet. It was as if he was all alone.

There were no stones nearby large enough to crush an unsuspecting skull. No hat had tumbled aside. Then why cut the line?' he asked.

There were no worms in the earth of the bait tin beneath its cover of moss. Deliberately they had been freed from their little prison. ‘Hermann,' he said. ‘Hermann, we have a problem.'

Kohler didn't like it. Oelmann could have made a detour down the bluff, but had he seen the two of them step through the shoulder-high bushes into tall grass? Not a lark stirred, not a sparrow. Instinct warned. It was as if a hunter stalked. Everything else had gone to ground. Everything but the bees and butterflies.

‘Stay here. I won't be a moment,' he breathed.

‘Ah no, please don't leave me.'

She was terrified, ‘I have to. I can't have him getting the jump on us, madame. It'll be all right. I'm used to this.'

He moved away. The bushes hardly stirred. For a big man, Herr Kohler was quiet but it was not nice, sitting here alone, half hidden by the grass and wild flowers. It made her think of
maman
in her lovely dress. It made her think of blood rushing up past the blade of a flint knife to wet the fingers and then the chest. The smell of it, the stench, the sound of blowflies.…

‘
Ah!…
'

Torn from her thoughts, she was grabbed by the hair and mouth and lifted up so suddenly her bladder emptied as she fought to get away… away. Bushes … bushes … she screamed at herself, her face hitting them. My hair … my hair.…

Oelmann rushed her through the brush. He took her far enough, then slammed her down hard on the ground.

Winded, in agony for breath, she tried to move, tried to fight him off.

All but smothering her, he let her pass out. ‘So,
gut
,' he caught a breath. ‘
Gut.
Now we vanish for a while.'

He waited. He looked slowly around. Kohler must have heard them but there was no sign of him.
Verdammt
, where was he?