The Cyclist (8 page)

Auguste looked from face to face around the table. The emotions tugging at his heart were so powerful he felt they threatened to overwhelm him. He noticed the tears forming in his eyes. He wiped his nose on his sleeve. He felt a breath cut short and realised he was sobbing.

‘Papa, don’t cry,’ Zara said. She rose and came to him, and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. He turned and embraced her and felt again the feeling he experienced in his heart after her nightmare. He reached for her not in body but in soul. His love overtook him then and he closed his eyes, feeling the depth of that love within him. Great fear and emotion seemed to Auguste, to be transformed to joy, as if love had converted everything to a bright white feeling arising out of the deep blackness of despair.

Monique said, ‘Uncle, Are you frightened?’

Again, he wiped his face on his sleeve.

‘Oh Monique. I am frightened for us all. I will protect you. We are all together here, a family. You are part of our family until Pierre returns. Frightened? Yes. But we will all together, make a place of safety upstairs and we will keep you safe.’

‘Will the Germans catch me, Uncle?’

‘No, my child. We will hide you and when this stupid war is finished, your father will come home. I am sorry if I make you scared. Are you frightened too?’

‘No uncle, but I wish my Maman was here.’

He saw tears in her eyes and he realised expressing his own feelings to this child was wrong.

Odette reached for her and as he held onto his daughter, she held on to Monique.

She said, ‘Monique, my darling girl, I loved your mother for many years. I will give you my love too. You are part of this family now. You belong with us and we will all love you.’

‘Auntie,’ Monique said, ‘I need to say prayers sometimes. Father taught me to. I don’t want to go to the church.’

Auguste, recovered now, said, ‘Monique, you will do exactly as Pierre taught you. I cannot help you with it. On Sundays, we will go to church and you will remain here and say your prayers as you can remember them. It will be fine, don’t worry. We will be like little bears in a den. One family.’

She looked at him and said nothing. Perhaps the enormity of the risk had finally come home to her too, or maybe, Auguste wondered, the absence of her only living parent insinuated itself in her mind, but she said, ‘I am only nine years old Uncle, but Papa told me about it all. He said you would help me.’

‘I am the one appointed to the task it seems, little one. We, as a family will not let you down, but you must learn to hide. It will be a kind of game for us to play. They will seek and we will hide, no? Now you two girls get off to bed and I will eat then start work on a hiding place to fool all those silly Germans.’

They sat for an hour after he ate, talking about the war and the dangers ahead until Auguste closed the back door behind him and strode through the icy drizzle to begin his task of demolishing his brick out-house.

Chapter 5

1

Auguste cursed the rain as he walked from his battered Citroën towards the Prefecture. Three hours sleep was all he had managed as he toiled into the small hours cleaning bricks and carrying them up into the loft. He drew his collar around his neck and pulled his hat forward as he passed the empty bakery window. He resolved to speak to Jules and find work for Bernadette. He was still scared but thinking about the work he embarked upon the previous night calmed him. At least he was doing something.

By the time he reached the desolate cafe, he noticed the crowd. They had gathered in front of the Prefecture and he recognised faces as the gathering grew. He wondered what the fuss was about and pushed his way to the front. Claude Desour, his second in command, was there and the desk sergeant, George, tried to press away the accumulating crowd.

Auguste pushed through the gathering of townsfolk and realised they were staring at something on the ground.

‘Claude,’ he said, ‘What’s...’

He stopped. A feeling of irritation struck him first. A naked body lay face down on the cobbles. No one could mistake the body of a young woman, shapely even in death, limbs twisted into the unnatural pose only the flight of mortality could imbue. He looked around and realised his men were clearing the area around the body and forcing the crowd to keep a respectful distance, despite their curiosity.

‘All right, all right,’ he said in loud tones and raising his arms to the crowd, ‘please go home, we will care for her now.’

He turned to Claude and said, ‘What has happened?’

Claude shrugged. He said, ‘It is as you see. A man came in and called George, saying there was a body.’

‘What time was that?’

‘Ten minutes ago.’

‘You’ve called the city pathologist?’

‘I have called no one yet. I was keeping the crowd away.’

‘Very good. Call the pathologist and we will have her taken to the mortuary. I’ll have a look.’

Auguste knelt at the side of the body. He felt her neck first to ensure she was dead. The flesh felt warmer than he expected. He looked at the ground around the body looking for bloodstains and there were none. She had clearly not been killed here. He stared at the face.

Recognition began to come. Fear came too. He recognised her. He felt his heart beating, his breath came in rasps and he experienced a mounting and unreasonable anger. He knew her. He had spoken to her only hours before. It was Bernadette.

He sank to both knees and turned her over. The eyes were open and he tried to shut them. They would not stay closed and within moments he realised the gesture was pointless.

Auguste stood up in the drizzle and removed his overcoat. He draped the body with it and looked at the faces of the crowd. The faces had meant nothing to him moments before but now he felt an urge to explain. He had a desire to ask their forgiveness, he wanted to avoid their angry stares. Guilt took him.

She had gone home to her mother and he knew she had been safe on the night he took her back. How could she be here, naked, lifeless and forlorn?

Her feet peeped out from under his coat. Auguste noticed they were small, delicate and perfect in shape. Red-painted toenails stared at him, he thought, in anger. Red is the colour of hate, he thought. Had he failed her? Had this happened because he had discouraged her from her singing? Had she become a woman of the night, prostituting herself to earn a living and this had become the result?

No, he knew her. She was a decent girl and nothing would persuade him to the contrary. Why was the body here? No clothing lay nearby, he could see that. She had died elsewhere and her body left in the square hidden by the bushes. But why?

The noisy green van from the mortuary arrived. Two men in white uniforms emerged and after rummaging in the back, extracted a stretcher and a black body bag. Auguste wondered for a moment whether their white uniforms symbolised some kind of purity like the innocence of this girl’s youth. He felt only anger and he swore to himself he would find out who had done this.

Bernadette, the beautiful singer, the child-like student of fine-art, the girl he had taken home, away from the leering, lecherous German that night in the Bonne Auberge.

Brunner. Had he done this? Would he do such a thing? He was a man of no conscience but this would be stupid even for him.

In his mind, he could hear Édith say Brunner had bad habits. Was this then, what Édith had meant?

The questions flew in his mind and he had no answers. He knew he should speak to Brunner but Bernadette’s mother came first. If the German had done this, he would bring him to justice, to the guillotine.

Bernadette, so young, so beautiful. In death, her beauty had grown in his mind. Her vulnerability had been so clear and made him feel so protective of her. His thoughts wishing Zara would become like her, frightened him now rather than reassured him. Was this how it could end?

The two mortuary attendants stood nearby. They made no attempt to remove the body since the pathologist had not arrived yet. It was some minutes before he did.

Claude returned and took a list of names from the crowd. Had they seen anything? Who was the man who had found the body? Auguste needed to talk to him.

Dr. Dubois arrived. He drew up his bicycle and leaned it against a tree. He waited to see if it would fall and satisfied, he turned to where Auguste stood, musing.

The doctor was a man who liked a drink but he did the post-mortems and prepared his reports with remarkable efficiency considering his wine consumption. Eight o’clock in the morning was of course a time of sobriety even for him so Auguste knew Dubois would be reliable.

‘Good morning, Inspector,’ Dubois said.

He was a small round man who reminded Auguste of an orange on cocktail-sticks. His globular body propped upon his thin short legs and his cherry-red cheeks belied a man of good intellect and Auguste knew this. He was after all, not a man who tolerated fools.

‘Good morning Doctor,’ he said.

‘This is where the body was found?’

‘Yes, I turned her over onto her back to make sure she was not alive.’

‘Always you do this. You know you make more work for me my friend.’

‘Sorry. I checked her pulse. Bernadette Leclerc. I knew her.’

His words seemed to have a hollow ring to them. He knew her. It was more than a simple acquaintance. He had known her a long time, since her father had died and her mother was crippled. And here she lay, cold in the drizzle of the morning air, her toenails the only sign of warmth or feelings. He hated his job now. Politics and now death. Death and then politics, it had all merged in his mind until he could not tell them apart. It was as if he faced a huge monster marching or crawling towards him, destroying all in its path, even young innocents. And she had been a young innocent, who had squeezed the last ounces of his desire to protect, from him. He had not been there for her and he hated himself for it.

‘Auguste, there is hypostasis forming even now,’ Dubois said.

‘Yes, I realised. When do you think she died?’

‘Auguste, please. You know, when the blood drains through the tissues into the lowermost part of the body at least two hours must have passed and the rigor mortis has only begun now which means about four hours.’

‘You called it something else last time.’

‘Eh?’

‘Yes, you called it something else.’

‘Livedo gravitatas?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Auguste, my friend, please be patient. I will examine the body and you will get my report after the weekend.’

‘After the weekend? Are you mad? I need to know the cause of death and the timing today.’

Dubois smiled.

‘You are joking?’ Auguste said.

‘Of course. You are such an easy target my friend.’

Dubois slapped Auguste on the arm, ‘I can do it this afternoon. I will have the written report in your hands tomorrow morning.’

‘Can I come to the mortuary this evening?’

‘Of course.’

‘But you can’t tell me how she died?’

‘You don’t know?’

‘No.’

‘You should have spectacles, my friend. You did not see the bruising around her throat?’

Auguste looked at the exposed throat, where Dubois had pulled down the overcoat.

‘Yes, I see it now. Not very marked.’

‘Ah, the laryngeal cartilages will be crushed, wait and see. Poor girl.’

Dubois raised his hand to his two porters and they came, black bag and stretcher. Auguste felt revulsion as they manhandled Bernadette into the bag and folded the edges. They were neat, practised in their work and it was another aspect of the matter filling him with revulsion. To be practised with death, to be used to handling dead bodies tugged at his feelings of disgust.

‘I will see you later Auguste. Telephone at five and I will tell you if we have finished.’

‘Thank you Jean.’

Auguste stood and watched as the mortuary attendants loaded the girl’s body into the van. They departed, a green van disappearing around a corner, carrying with it the last remnants of his self-respect.

It had always been like this for Auguste. Every death was personal. Every one meant something to him. His teachers and seniors always taught him it was unprofessional to be too closely involved. A case is a case, they said.

Murders were unusual in Bergerac, where everyone knew everyone else. To Auguste, unpractised as he was in solving murders, each body was a person, a soul departed from its mortal shell. It was God’s will but apprehending the killer was Auguste’s will and he had never failed so far. He would find Bernadette’s killer and bring him to justice. Good, honest, French justice.

He walked towards the door of the Prefecture and he swore by the soul of St Sacerdos of Sarlat, he would find whoever killed this child.

2

Auguste sat with his head in his hands. It tortured him. The Jews, Monique, the murder of the young woman. He felt as if he was a joist in a building and more and more weight bore down upon him. He wondered if he would crack. Three hours sleep and his mind was functioning at a level where he felt he was wandering in a mist. Basic functions of his working life seemed lost to him. Where to start? Brunner? Forensic pathology?

He began to panic. A crisis of confidence enveloped him. He felt he could not solve the crime. Too much was going on. His confidence sank. He had no faith now in his own ability.

And then it came to him. He saw his God. He envisioned his Lord on the cross and a warm feeling came. What had he himself ever suffered? What possible claim could he make to the Passion of Christ? Yet, there before him, he could envision how suffering could lead to justice for some or reclamation for others. And it was justice he wanted, no, needed. Justice for the loss of an innocent life, a child, in his eyes. He believed in the law. He led his entire professional life by it and now he felt compelled to further its inexorable path. And Bernadette? She was beyond justice, beyond the effects of revenge. Yet she or the concept of what she had been, depended on Auguste’s actions now and he needed to have strength.