Stonekiller (27 page)

‘She's very beautiful, isn't she?' said Marina von Strade tighdy. ‘Watch how she disembowels a doe.'

Ah
merde
… blood … blood on her thighs and arms, her breasts, neck and face.

‘Danielle, Inspector. Danielle is the one you want.'

When Kohler and Madame Jouvet found it quite by chance, the room was in darkness but then Danielle came along the corridor in a hurry, swearing softly in French, crying, wiping away the tears perhaps and saying more loudly, ‘Bastard … that bastard … Oh
mon cul, mon pauvre cul.…
'

She tripped, she cried out, ‘Ah no!' and went down on her hands and knees to grope about the carpet and beg God to give it to her until at last she had it.

A light on the dressing-table went on. Behind the heavy drapes, Kohler clasped a hand over Juliette Jouvet's lips to smother her gasp, then eased his hand away.

Naked but for a leather thong about her slender waist and her skin bag of stone tools, Danielle Arthaud stood a moment to calm herself. A lower drawer was opened and a silver disc, perhaps ten centimetres in diameter, was taken out.

The disc was polished and held up to the mirror. Trembling, she searched for the flint blade with which she had so carefully divided the
truffes sous la cendre
and when she had it, licked it and used a crumpled blouse to dry it.

From a cigarette case, she took a straw of cobalt-blue glass and for a moment, delicately fingered this as if in the waiting there was heightened excitement.

Two halves of a walnut shell, the thing she had dropped, were carefully prised open and again Danielle sat there looking as if temptation's call was only enhanced by waiting. ‘I can still stop myself,' she said and sighed. ‘I'm still not a slave to it.'

Cocaine was dipped out of the walnut shell with the point of the flint blade and carefully tapped onto the centre of the disc. Spreading the snow-white powder, she smoothed it into a square that was divided into ten lines. She waited again for so long it seemed she really might be able to stop herself.

Two lines were taken, drawn through the tube and into each nostril, the head thrown back each time, the eyes shut, lips parted in a gasp, then a grin and a slow smile that grew until the lips parted in another sudden gasp.

Blood pounding, she sat there and, fingering the glass tube, held it to the light and watched herself in the mirror.

Grinning, she took some more and then a little more. ‘
It's enough!
' she said. Enough for what? wondered Kohler. Enough to kill?

Everything was packed away. Worth far more than gold these days, the rest of the cocaine was carefully returned and the halves of the walnut shell closed to safely hold their little treasure.

Von Strade … said Kohler to himself. The giver of all gifts.

‘Toto … I'll fix him,' breathed Danielle. ‘He enjoyed doing that to me while the others watched and Willi … Willi sat in that goddamned chair of his and made me beg.
Me
to whom he owes so much!'

Ah
merde.…

The road was dark, the wind was in her hair and it felt so good to be leaving that place Juliette wanted to shout for joy but found only despair. Herr Kohler was ahead of her; St-Cyr behind. Caught between the two of them, they would ride through the rest of the night until, at last, they could walk the bicycles up through the woods and into that little valley to leave them by the stream and climb to the cave.

It all made sense. Everything. The trunk coming to light after all these years, the film, the visit of Courtet, the payment of 10,000 francs and André's … André's working for Danielle Arthaud and telling her things and then … then for Herr Oelmann … Herr Oelmann.…

André would kill her. He would relish the beating he would first hand out. Her face, her lips, her eyes and nose, and why … why is it, please, that he felt such a need to take out all of his bitterness on her?

Her father had come back.
Maman
had wanted her kept out of it and that is why she had told her nothing. Nothing of the paintings, the forgery. Nothing of what she had been up to, the unexpected, the impossible, in a cave she knew so well. Ah yes.

The tears were brushed away. The road went downhill and she hurried to catch up only to realize she was alone … alone.

Apprehensively her heart hammered. Disturbed, upset that the détectives had not told her to stop, she stood astride the bicycle Herr Kohler had stolen for her from the château and waited — listened — tried hard to find them.

Nothing … only silence and then … then that feeling of closeness, of his caring she had experienced, now the loss of it … the loss. He had really cared about her, she said. He had!

Her spirit was wounded and, yes, it hurt to know they still did not trust her completely. Hesitandy she began to walk the bicycle back up the hill.

A cigarette was being shared. Dark against the night sky, the two détectives had paused just on the other side of the hill so as to be alone, and when in dismay she called out to them, they stopped talking and waited for her to join them. Did they sigh inwardly with impatience?

‘Your husband, madame,' began St-Cyr and it was clear that they had been discussing André and her father. Were they working together, was that it, eh, messieurs? Has André been telling Henri-Georges all about m
aman
and her annual visits, visits that never changed until the last? And all about the daughter who secretly dreaded each of her mother's visits to the house afterwards yet had to show the brave front and the bruises, the smashed lips, the shame of a marriage that had gone so wrong?

‘Your husband, madame. Hermann and I were simply discussing how best to protect you and return you safely to your children.'

‘André is dead, madame. Louis had to kill him.'

‘Dead …? Please, what is this you are saying?'

St-Cyr told her then and in the silence of the night, they heard her suck in a breath and say, ‘A stone.… Killed with a stone.'

Kohler reached out to her. ‘Oelmann,' he said. ‘He'll realize where we've gone. He may feel he has to get help this time from the Périgord
Sonderkommando.
Louis and me, we … we were wondering if it might not be best for you to go home to Mayor Pialat, madame. He'll do his best to hide you. Think about it, eh? The two of us could ride on together and then I could come back to help Louis.'

She squeezed the hand that had taken hers. She said, ‘You both are kind.
Merci
but, please, you will need me at the cave, yes? The paintings? The second chamber Professor Courtet claims to have found all by himself. The postcards, too, I think.'

‘They'll come after us, Louis. They'll have to,' said Hermann grimly. ‘Oelmann won't be able to leave things now.'

She rode on ahead, but on the downhill slope they soon caught up with her and she felt first one put a comforting hand on her shoulder and then the other, and she laughed aloud because she had to tell them how relieved she was to know they trusted her.

But at the bridge over the stream that would, some fifteen or twenty kilometers to the south, find its little waterfall, they again stopped to listen to the night.

Its stillness was of that other time and she knew they each listened as Neanderthal would have done, wondering why it was that just before dawn the night was always at its darkest. ‘I love you both for the way you have made me feel,' she said. ‘Just give me a handaxe and I will show you what I can do with it.'

9

I
T WAS LIKE SOMETHING OUT OF
TOTO
AND THE
Seven Dwarfs
or
Snow White and the Yellow Brick Road
, thought Kohler. It was not real — oh
mein Gott
, no. It was weird and horrific.

‘
Nom de Jésus-Christ
, Louis. Look what the hell they've done to our valley.'

The dawn had broken and through its soft, primordial blush, cranes, ladders, platforms and towers stood stock-still, while straight up the right side of the valley, over brush and rock alike, a primitive wooden set of rails carried a cart and camera pylon.

The cinematographer in Louis was intrigued. ‘As the Baroness and her prehistorian climb to the cave, assistants wind the trolley slowly up the slope so that the camera can record their progress for posterity.'

Juliette Jouvet was silent. Staging went up only so far, then the trolley took over. But right at the entrance to the cave, and on the same side, a platform had been built. Now an open parasol of unbleached Egyptian cotton stirred forlornly in the breeze as if waiting for something to happen. High above it, a honey buzzard circled. The hawk was so beautiful and majestic. How many times as a girl had she and
maman
watched one so similar she would come away from the cave filled with thoughts of it?

‘It's his valley, isn't it?' said Kohler, nodding at the hawk.

‘Or hers. To me the hawk has always been a male, but now I wonder if I was right. Is that not my mother up there watching me?'

The film's set crews had done their job with blitzkrieg speed, even to somehow hauling in two huge, camouflaged electrical generators with banks of storage batteries, all courtesy of the Wehrmacht. Heavy black cables were strung here, there. Sometimes hidden, most often not, they were dabbed with yellow paint to warn people not to trip. Lights … some big, some small, were even mounted in the trees whose interfering branches had been ruthlessly broken and left to hang or brutally decapitated and dragged away.

‘They've completely taken over,' murmured the passionate naturalist and lover of prehistory in Louis. ‘What was once so beautiful has been ravaged.'

Sections had been roped off — a portion of the stream where Marina von Strade and her prehistorian would pop the corks and toast their discovery; the picnic site where they would feed each other sweet cherries or mushrooms perhaps; parts of the path to the waterfall where the two would strip for a healthy bathe before a severely academic romp in the cave and doe-eyed glances under those of the aurochs or whatever, thought Kohler. But even in these locations there was change. Potted trees had been brought in and, still in their pots, planted where none had existed before. Leaves and branches had been carefully trimmed so as not to intrude. Pine needles had been scattered over the sharp husks of chestnuts from years ago so as to soften the lovers' picnic site and bugger that crap about audiences knowing one tree from another. When you've got the screen filled with a woman who liked to bathe in the buff or have her bottom polished, who would care?

Shabby in a dirty grey cloak with staff and beret, a scraggly-bearded shepherd came to stand at the very edge of the cliff, just above the dark entrance of the cave. As his flock gathered about him, they, too, peered curiously down at the scene below.

A stone fell to clatter and bounce until its sound was no more. The shepherd raised a hand in greeting and called out to them. He asked about the crane and platform hoist he had seen mounted up the valley by the waterfall. ‘It is not safe, I think,' he said. ‘More stones are needed to weight the base of it down.'

Down … down … stones … stones, the echoes came, his patois harsh and broken like the rocks from which it had sprung.

He moved his staff to point out the location. Frightened, one of the lambs bolted into space. ‘
Ah, no
,' gasped Juliette. The thing hit a slab of rock and broke its head, bouncing and flying through the air before coming to rest. Hind legs twitching … twitching until at last they were still.

Ruefully the shepherd surveyed the loss and for a moment glared at them in silence. ‘
Idiots!
' he shrieked. ‘
See what you have made me do.
' Do … do.… ‘
A Christian gesture, one of goodness of the heart and you … you … I hope you all bash your shitty heads to pieces and give your blood to the stones.
' The stones.…

Ah
merde.…
‘Pay no attention, madame,' said Kohler gently. ‘That's a month's wages. Anyone would have said the same. He didn't mean it.'

‘He did. He has come to this little valley like that since a boy. It was always his special moment and even then
maman
and I intruded, though we fed him sometimes and tried to get to know him.'

The honey buzzard was feasting on the eyes and offal, and when they drew near it in their climb, intestines were being dragged out to glisten in the early morning sunlight. Blood red against the grey-white of the stones, the intestines momentarily became still under the fiercely glaring eyes of the hawk whose rights had also been intruded upon, ah yes.

‘It is not good,' she murmured. ‘It is an omen I must heed even as my ancestors would have done at the dawn of time.'

They were hungry and tired, and she wished the détectives would go to sleep but there was no time. Did they always run on Messerschmitt benzedrine? she wondered. Herr Kohler's hand shook. Jean-Louis said, ‘This is positively the last time, Hermann. The heart, yes? You cannot go on like this. Crush them up, madame, and sprinkle them on the
pâté
and bread our illustrious Bavarian Gestapo has fortuitously stolen for us from a certain château. Then you must show us the second chamber and the paintings.'

‘The paintings, yes,' she managed. ‘Messieurs, there … there is something I must tell you. When Herr Kohler found me in …'

‘It's Hermann. Please, it'll be easier.'

‘
Merci.
When Hermann, he … he has found me in the Professor's room, I was going through my father's journals. I … I was certain then that… that the page where he had described the cave in depth was missing — carefully cut out with a razor blade or flint knife.'

‘By Courtet or by Danielle?' breathed St-Cyr.

‘Or by my father, yes?' she said sadly. ‘Like Lascaux and lots of other caves in the Dordogne, there are often chambers with passages between. Here, at the back of this chamber, there are two passages. The one continues out to the east to end on the surface in an entrance big enough only to slither through. This one, the Professor has called a ventilation shaft, a chimney for the fires. The other passage, it … it does not go out to the surface and has troubled me very much, you understand. Mother spoke of it on her visit last year. She asked if I remembered her warning me not to enter it.'