6

Between the root cellar and the barn-board latrine, across a distance of perhaps fifteen metres, St-Cyr found that the snow had not only been trampled flat. It had been stained and splashed by human waste which had been emptied, bucket by bucket, from the pit into rusting sheet-iron barrels on wooden sledges that had been pushed and drawn by ropes.

Behind, and parallel to the low-roofed latrine, the washhouse was in the adjacent ground-floor corner of the barracks block, its windows small and grimy and stuffed with rags and straw where broken and not. One man, a Russian, stared out from the floor above the washhouse. It was impossible not to notice him, but was he pleading for some awareness of their plight, wanting to know the truth about the chemist and Renée Ekkehard, or simply hoping for a delivery of potatoes?

Sophie Schrijen had driven into the Arbeitslager without so much as a word of challenge or nod. The gates had simply been flung wide at the tourer’s approach, but if she could enter that way, could she not just as easily leave like that taking others with her unnoticed?

‘We had a slight advantage,’ she had said of Thomas’s reading his mail, but by not informing the members of his combine, by in effect deceiving them, had he not betrayed their confidence and would that not have had repercussions for him had they found out?

‘This case, this investigation,’ he said, turning away from the Russian without so much as an indication of having acknowledged his existence since to do so would not be wise and he was probably being watched himself, and yet … and yet one must turn back.

The Russian now pressed a hand flat against the glass, his fingers splayed. One must touch the brim of one’s fedora in salute. One must.

Again it was damp in the root cellar. It was fiercely cold, still stank to high heaven, and when the lights came on, the first sight of the potatoes was not of their number but of a pinkish-grey to yellowish-purple-brown frozen, glistening mush where the rotten had been trampled or split in half to be left geode-open on the tiers.

‘Leave me. I’ll come to the gate when I’m finished, but if you see Herr Kohler tell him to wait, then come and get me at once. Don’t let him down here.’

‘Jawohl, Herr Oberdetektiv.’

The guard closed the doors, and since Hermann wasn’t available to talk things over, why … ‘One murder, one suicide, or two of the former,’ he said to the second victim, his breath billowing. ‘You see, since Sophie Schrijen made it possible for you to steal a look at your mail, did your friendship not also extend to hiding what my partner and I greatly fear that committee of hers was up to? Bien sûr, she would have begged you not to tell anyone and she now wishes to distance herself from Renée Ekkehard and in no uncertain terms to warn the bookseller in front of this police officer that it is only herself who will speak for the two of them. She also hints that perhaps the Fräulein Bödicker knows more of Renée Ekkehard’s death than that one is letting on. And early in December, you ask? That party at Natzweiler-Struthof? Is it that Renée Ekkehard betrayed not only herself but the others of that committee? Isn’t that why Sophie Schrijen knows perfectly well the girl’s death was murder? Isn’t that why those two detectives the colonel doesn’t want us talking to have been following her, and isn’t that why she and Victoria Bödicker now fear they are to be next?

‘She gambled, didn’t she, when she interrupted my questioning the bookseller to reveal so much? It was almost irrational of her and certainly desperate. She accused that brother of hers of being not only brutally cruel but impulsive, claimed that either he or her father would have taken care of the matter—a “suicide,” but made sure that my partner and I would have to visit the quarry to question him. So I must ask, in our absence, has she laid the groundwork for yet another suicide, that of the bookseller, and would that then distance herself sufficiently?’

The dust was everywhere in the shed and like pastry flour, felt Kohler. The tattered blue coveralls of Raymond Maillotte, the test weaver and fabric designer, were caked with it, his face, ears and neck stark white under a dust-covered cap, the goggles clouded, the filthy rag over the mouth and nose useless.

As thick stacks of the metre-square sheets of pure white cellulose were fed by him into the machine, they were grabbed by the rotating blades, sucked in and ripped from his hands. No gloves, for they’d already been lost. Not much purchase for the sabots either, for he was standing perched up there on a narrow, steel-meshed gantry at about four metres from the concrete floor. Bins and chutes caught the mountains of dust. A conveyor hurried metre-high stacks of the sheets up to him, giving no time to do anything but hustle them bunch by bunch into the blades. No time to pause like the dust which had to age before it was treated with carbon disulphide to turn, as if by magic, to a brilliant orange in the ‘crumb’ factory at the far end of the shed.

Pungent with the stench of rotten eggs, the eyes weeping, the throat tight, the Xanthate Shed converted the purified soda cellulose to sodium cellulose xanthate which was, in yet another shed, dissolved in dilute caustic soda.

Sprayed through spinnerets that were drowned in sulphuric acid, the xanthate became ‘viscose’ rayon—artificial silk.

The weaver was but one of many. Stopping his conveyor belt, Dorsche motioned for him to come down. Blinking, choking—trying to brush himself off and still terrified of being sucked into the shredder, Raymond Maillotte looked like death in white on a ramrod.

He coughed. He tried to clear his eyes, sneezed maybe thirty times and broke a blood vessel. ‘Excusez,’ he blurted and, finding another rag, clamped it over his nose and threw his head back.

‘Sit, mon ami,’ said Kohler. ‘Tilt your head forward a little and breathe through your mouth while you pinch your nose tightly. Take five. Don’t blow.’

Holding him by the back of the neck, he looked questioningly at Dorsche, for the bastard had deliberately chosen this man for this job. The weakest link in the combine, eh?

Maillotte’s neck was scrawny, the crinkly black hair matted with sweat, though this end of the shed was freezing.

He began to shake. Like Savard, he had to piss but had, unfortunately, no rubber boots. Tufts of straw stuck out of the sabots—straw to prevent his feet from slipping and to keep them warm, but sabots the Russians would have carved.

Gently Kohler patted Prisoner 220374 on the shoulder. ‘Rest for as long as you need,’ he said sadly. ‘No one’s going to hurt you while I’m here. I promise.’

‘Eugène … Eugène had been sentenced in absentia, Inspector.’

Finding two of Chairman Schrijen’s cigarettes, Herr Kohler lit them, placing one between Prisoner 220374’s quivering lips. It fell, of course, noted Dorsche, and the Detektiv tried to rescue it from the piss-soaked dust only to fling it away and donate the one he’d lit for himself. ‘Sentenced?’ he asked in Deutsch.

The head was nodded. Tears and blood streaked the pancake makeup of dust. The harried dark brown eyes were gaunt. A bronchial cough was given.

‘To death?’ hazarded this Detektiv, still not wanting to believe that prisoners could well attempt to hide such things from their Lagerfeldwebel.

‘Ja, but … but we could not agree on how to carry out the sentence,’ managed Maillotte, ‘nor could we decide who should do it.’

And so much, then, for Victim Number Two not having had any enemies.

Almost imperceptibly Eugène Thomas trembled, and when one laid a hand on him, the vibrations were transmitted.

‘It’s the Works,’ said St-Cyr. ‘It’s all that heavy machinery.’ Pipe smoke drifted from him and he waved it away. ‘I need to put myself in your shoes. Sophie Schrijen would have seen you nearly every day. Among her many duties she would have liaised with you on fabric quality, production problems, dye batches, the length of each run, the types of cloth planned, all such things. Is it not safe to say, then, that over the past two and a half years you became the dear friend she has claimed?’

There are friends and there are friends, Inspector.

‘And certainly you, or any other POW, would have encouraged such a friendship, but did it grow to much more than that, and if so, then when she learned that Renée Ekkehard had been found hanged, did she not come to you at some point? Understand, please, that she desperately needs help and will sacrifice the bookseller if necessary. Of this I’m certain.’

A bookseller, a secretary and a chairman’s daughter, Inspector—three, who though they took terrible risks to help us in such tiny ways, were definitely not equals.

‘Two soft, rose-coloured buttons from a summer’s frock, monsieur? I’ve been a fool, haven’t I? These were lost last summer on the twentieth, of August but why, then, did I find them in your pockets?’

Renée had a blanket pass to the Works and could come and go after hours without the colonel.

‘And Renée and Sophie had much to discuss. Löwe Schrijen would often work late …’

But could have been asked for much needed materials.

A carnival …

‘Colonel Rasche would have gone through your pockets but given that failed seduction of his, would not have left those buttons for us to find which means, of course, that they must have been left after you had been laid out here.’

And since Victoria Bödicker doesn’t have a pass, that leaves …

‘Either one of your combine or Sophie Schrijen.’

Who must have become very close to Renée.

‘Victoria was the odd one out.’

A girl whose notebook was then taken by Yvonne Lutz.

‘At the request of Colonel Rasche.’

A torn page being found crumpled in my pocket.

‘With the precisely written chemical equations, much simplified, for making viscose rayon, something Sophie desperately needed to understand.’

And I was well able to teach.

‘But didn’t write down the formula for trinitrophenol. Instead, it suggests that it was quickly done by someone who was leaning over your shoulder and since Raymond Maillotte, the fabric designer and test weaver, is the only other one from your combine who has a pass allowing him to come to that laboratory of yours …’

Experiments, Inspector. Didn’t Sophie tell you of them? Since May of 1941 that camp at Natzweiler-Struthof has been in those granite hills to the southwest of Strasbourg. We learned early on of what was happening to some of those who had been sent there. A failed hanging, isn’t that what her friend had to witness?

‘The Fräulein Schrijen is ashamed of her brother but why would he have forced that fiancée of his to have witnessed an execution unless he had already overheard the girl crying out things his sister would not have wanted anyone to hear?’

Renée really didn’t want to marry him.

‘Victoria Bödicker not only knew that girl was in danger but also despondent and suicidal.’

POWs always have three things in mind, Inspector. First there is the hope of mail from home, then that of a parcel once a month, and then …

‘Escape.’

That cutthroat your partner found yet left behind the photograph of a striptease artist.

‘Trinitrophenol, monsieur, especially if in its dry, crystalline form, which it would have been in a place like this and used well up into the late twenties or early thirties as a yellow dye. Unfortunately even unscrewing the lid of a jar of it can set it off. It’s highly unstable and definitely highly explosive. You see, though we in the trenches of that other war all knew about it under its other name, picric acid, others around the world soon learned. Halifax, Nova Scotia, 6 December 1917 the news flashed: World’s Biggest Man-Made Explosion. It still is, though we’re in another war. Sixteen hundred dead in that city; 9,000 injured, the sight taken from 200 by the flying glass from their very homes, 250 hectares of factories, et cetera absolutely flattened by the blast whose plume reached nearly two kilometres into the sky, or by the tidal wave*** that quickly followed, or by the fires that were caused as walls collapsed onto household stoves. Two vessels, the Belgian Imo, and the French Mont Blanc, collided in the harbour at 8.45 a.m., and at 9.06, you ask?

‘Two thousand, seven hundred and sixty-six tonnes of picric acid, gun cotton and TNT destined for the European conflict to be made into munitions, detonated in the Mont Blanc’s hold. Granted flaming benzol draining into the hold was a major factor, and granted that the shock of the collision by itself did not set off the cargo, but picric acid is still nothing to fool with.’

A dyestuff.

‘Which both you and the firm’s test weaver could well have discovered overlooked in some storeroom.’

Kohler was only too aware that the forced march from the Xanthate Shed had been just that but voices hadn’t been raised, not yet. Cap tucked under the left arm of a still snow-dusted greatcoat, Dorsche stood rigidly to attention inside the open door of the chairman’s office, while Karl Rudel confided to Löwe Schrijen what Prisoner 220374 had revealed.

‘A sentence in absentia, Kohler,’ sighed Schrijen as if savouring the matter, his dark blue eyes flicking briefly over this Kripo to settle beyond him. ‘Lagerfeldwebel Dorsche, the highest commendation will be in my monthly report to Colonel Rasche. A citation at least. If our Kommandant didn’t have such a one to look after his Arbeitslager, Kohler, where would a man in my position be? Always in the past I’ve trusted implicitly the judgement of our Lagerfeldwebel, as has Colonel Rasche and with good reason. A Grossfahdung was thought necessary when you arrived this morning. You asked me to stop it and out of misguided courtesy I reluctantly agreed. Now surely you must see its need.

‘Lagerfeldwebel, I’m certain Lageroffizier Rudel will concur with what I have to say. Please proceed with your search.’

‘Now just a minute,’ objected Kohler. ‘The death of Eugène Thomas could well have been murder. Until our investigation is—’

‘Murder, Kohler? A man’s comrades sentence him to death and he learns of it? His wife in Paris is letting our boys have her repeatedly? There’s a brand-new bicycle few can afford?’

‘He killed himself, Kohler,’ said Rudel stiffly. ‘Don’t push it any further.’

‘A fait accompli, is that it, meine Lieben? Gestapo … I’m one of them, remember? If we’re stopped, Gestapo Müller hears of it, not just Gestapo Boemelburg.’

‘Kohler, Kohler, what is this you’re saying?’ exclaimed Schrijen. ‘That what the Gruppenführer Müller most wishes to hear from you has finally come to pass? That once again you consider yourself one of us?’

‘And loyal,’ said Rudel. ‘Please don’t forget that even in Berlin they’ve heard of you.’

Raymond Maillotte would be sent to Natzweiler-Struthof to be interrogated, no questions asked here, no interview taken down by either Louis or himself. ‘What can a few minutes matter? Allow my partner and I to have a go at their quarters before Maillotte gets his things. If we find anything, we’ll be sure to let you know.’

Kohler wasn’t going to learn how to behave but why, suddenly, was he so agitated? wondered Schrijen. Concern for the prisoner or had something else been uncovered that he was holding back, something even Dorsche, as yet, knew nothing of? ‘Pick through the rubbish afterward. Let Lagerfeldwebel Dorsche know if you find anything he and his Greifer have missed. Make a little contest of it. Your eyes against theirs.’

Only the Russian watched from his window. Even the guards up in the nearest tower hadn’t yet taken notice, felt St-Cyr. If he could scoot round the corner of the kitchen, could he make it down that side of the administrative block unaccompanied? It was worth a try but first the root cellar doors would have to be closed. The guards on the gate would have to continue thinking he was still with the victim.

Certainly he couldn’t search through the laboratory under guard. There would still be Thomas’s assistants to deal with. He would have to go carefully, couldn’t have anyone finding out what he was after.

At a signal from the Russian, he realized that the man could see the gate quite clearly and that the guards there were momentarily preoccupied. Running, he darted round the corner of the kitchen, kept on going through the ankle-deep snow, cursed his broken shoes, found stacks of old machinery, broken grindstones, boxes of rusty bolts … Was nothing ever thrown out?

Found that even so, a cleared space of ten metres lay between him and the perimeter wire, its single warning strand no more than two-thirds of a metre above ground, with short lengths of dirty white rayon cord tied every ten metres to mark it, beyond this, the no-man’s-land, beyond that, the first of the three-metre-high fences with their inwardly leaning overhangs, the barbed wire complete with continuous nests of concertina wire atop the overhangs and between the inner and outer fences.

The boot prints of the Hundeführerin and the dogs on their nightly patrols were clear enough. When a voice, given over a megaphone, called out, ‘Halt! Was wollen Sie?’—Who goes there?—he was right back in that other war and cried out, ‘Nicht Schiessen!’ Don’t shoot! ‘Ich bin der Oberdetektiv Jean-Louis St-Cyr der Sûreté Nationale, meine Herren. I am merely trying to find the entrance to the laboratory and administrative offices.’

‘Ach, the other side. Kommen Sie her. Beeilen Sie sich!’ Come here. Hurry!

They would have him in their sights. Others in further towers would be notified if they hadn’t already seen him. With a wave, he shouted, ‘Danke! I’ll go this way as ordered,’ and kept on, the wire always there, the guns too. No prisoners ventured here unless they had to. All were either at work or in their compound.

A black Mercedes four-door sedan was in the garage he entered just beyond the far end of the administrative block, having felt it best to duck out of sight where possible.

Beside the sedan, its bonnet up, was the tourer. Two lorries were also being worked on but there were no guards and it looked as if no one here had yet seen him.

Hobnailed boots rained on rough-timbered stairs that were shoulder-narrow and too gottverdammt steep, thought Kohler. Doors burst open ahead of him, wire-meshed dividers were thrown aside as, caught up in the rush of Dorsche and his Greifer, he was carried along.

Floor by floor the bastards went, the sleeping tumbling from their bunks to blink myopically in the pitiful light, a bucket of piss pouring over a bare, plank floor as the men, their stubbled faces lined, confused, terrified or empty, fought to stand upright beside bunks that were tiered four to the ceiling timbers.

The Russians, but this was only the third storey of the brick monolith that had, in 1870 or ’80, been the original works. On and on Dorsche went. Everywhere the muscle was applied. He seemed to thrive on it, for he’d a lead-weighted, black leather truncheon in hand.

The French POWs were on the fifth floor and directly under an attic that must be huge. Here there was a little more headroom allowed and bunks that were only layered three high. Stiff, closely woven, timber-held wire mesh ran from floor to ceiling, dividing up the space and separating them from the four-tiered bunks of the Poles as though the two peoples must treat each other as untouchables. But even here, those who had been asleep after a twelve-hour shift, poured from their bunks to stand rigidly to attention, though the Grossfahdung was to be conducted in one ‘room’ only.

Shaking, Kohler tried to light a cigarette. The ‘room’ in which Thomas’s combine lived when not at work was large by what had been seen so far, yet still it couldn’t be any more than eight metres deep by five in width. There were two small, wire-meshed windows at one end, and within this space for the past two and a half years were bunks for twelve. Armoires—cupboards, closets, whatever they’d called them—were being emptied. Everything was being yanked out, glanced at and thrown to the floor, the lumpy mattresses and pillows spilling their cellulose when ripped apart.

Photos of loved ones were torn from where they had been pinned, letters strewn, books fanned and flung aside, mess bowls dented, banged, crunched, the remains of last month’s Red Cross parcels no longer budgeted but trod on, the tins of meat, fish, butter and condensed milk being bayoneted first. Even the bunks were pulled down, their slats and timbers scrutinized for hidy-holes.

A refuse dump remained and it hadn’t taken any more than ten minutes. Dorsche had already had a look early this morning. ‘Satisfied?’ demanded Kohler. The bastards were sweating, he himself still shaking, still remembering those first days behind the wire.

‘Ach, now it’s your turn.’

Clutching the wire, the Poles silently watched from its other side. The French POWs who had been asleep, simply waited.

‘Leave me, will you?’ he said to Dorsche. ‘I need a little time.’

‘Take as long as you wish. One man will remain while the rest of us visit each of the prisoners who occupied this room but are currently on shift.’

‘They’re not to be harmed nor sent anywhere, not until we’ve had a chance to interview them.’

‘Prisoner 220374 will be the first of them. He can then join you to collect his things.’

‘I’m warning you, Lagerfeldwebel.’

‘That, too, is understood.’

The snowflakes were large, and when they struck the window of the entrance door to the garage, they hesitated as if unsure of themselves, and only then began to melt.

Standing just inside the door, still catching his breath, St-Cyr knew with absolute certainty that not only had he a perfect view of the eastern end of the administrative block, chance had come into play and he was onto something. He could feel it, almost taste it, but could he find it and would it then lead him to the trinitrophenol?

Diagonally across a cleared lane of no more than ten metres lay the private entrance to the executive offices. Above this entrance, Löwe Schrijen’s windows looked out from the first storey, those of his daughter also. And when the big garage doors are opened? he had to ask. Both could easily see if a lorry or van was available and that their respective vehicles had been serviced. So, too, would Eugène Thomas have seen this if in Sophie Schrijen’s office, and also Renée Ekkehard.

But had it really been luck, his crying out in Deutsch, ‘Don’t shoot’? Hadn’t he done the same thing in that other war; wouldn’t audacity be what the POWs would believe was the only way to defeat their masters? A gamble, swift and unexpected?

‘Mein Herr, is there something I can do for you?’

It was the mechanic who had been half-hidden under the tourer’s bonnet. ‘Ach, my shoes. I was giving them a little rest.’

‘They don’t look good, do they?’

‘And haven’t for some time.’

It could do no harm to help; indeed it might well do some good. ‘Lucien Weber at your service, Herr Oberdetektiv. You’re a long way from home and I greatly fear those shoes will not last without a few stitches. Fortunately this was once the stables. Though the firm’s horses are still used in the logging operations, none are kept here now but we do have the tack room where harnesses were mended and I still do a little of that work. If you would be so kind as to follow, I think we can settle this, at least until you get back to Paris. Things are satisfactory there, are they?’

Dry shoes to a detective were as necessary as pipe tobacco, but it would not be wise to tell the truth. ‘Things are fine. There’s a shortage of small coins, but it is only to be expected.’

‘The métro still busy?’

‘As ever. My partner and I are hardly there, so we really haven’t noticed any changes.’

‘It’s not good, is it?’ confided Weber when they were alone.

‘But far better than Stalingrad, Berlin or London.’

‘Inspector, please don’t worry. We can at least talk to each other like civilized men. Now give me those shoes. Sit in the other room if you wish. This won’t take long. What one learns as a boy, one never forgets. My father was Stalldirektor here.’

‘Which other room?’

‘That one. The barbershop. The gift of a wealthy French businessman who wished to ease the plight of those who had been taken prisoners of war. It has never been used. Most of those men were only here for such a short time, they missed its arrival, but Chairman Schrijen felt we should at least install it, so a room was found.’

Un salon de coiffure pour hommes, ein Friseurladen. ‘I could use a shave.’

Had nostalgia swept in on the chief inspector? ‘Then please help yourself. There’s plenty of hot water, towels too, and a lovely aftershave.’

Alone but for the guard, Kohler surveyed the refuse heap as a POW would have done. Frustrated, angry at the injustice of it and yet exhilarated, for now he had to find what had been missed, and hadn’t it all been a game: them against the guards, those against them, the hidden and the most hidden?

Where utensils had been needed—the knives, forks and spoons of common decency—Martin Caroff, the assistant machinist, had fashioned these out of pieces of tin cans salvaged from their parcels. Nothing was ever wasted. The rivets, forged with the aid of one of the tin-can blowers and shaped on a small anvil, were perfect. Not only had the Breton an eye for utility, he’d one for artistry. Brightening their lives, each utensil, the plates and tin cups too, had incised designs that curved continuously, circling round and round. Celtic those designs and thousands of years old.

The blowers themselves had been fashioned out of soup, butter and sardine cans. Each tiny, clay-lined firebox would be fed with wood chips, cellulose, bits of paper and the odd pea-sized piece of stolen coal. A fan, rapidly cranked by hand, kept a stream of air directed into the firebox, above whose chimney, either a mess bowl or home-made saucepan would be heated at the end of each day.

Unlike the others, the French POWs were allowed to dine in comparative luxury. Not for them the day’s final meal in the crowded mess hall that was next to the Lagerküche. They drew the slop the kitchen dished up and brought it here to eat with their other rations, twelve men sharing everything because only then could they survive.

Two-kilogram loaves of black bread—one per man per week—added a further sourness to the air which was heavy with the stench of old sweat, body heat, bad sauerkraut, unwashed rags, urine, rotten eggs—that chemical smell—and stale tobacco smoke. A puddle from a bayonetted can of condensed milk had engulfed photos from home. Meat paste of questionable age and origin had the greasy slickness of pâté to which Norwegian fish-oil margarine had been substituted in quantity.

Letters had been stained. Postcards had their uncensored remaining words blurred. A bead of solder rolled from under a partly unravelled woollen sock whose holes outnumbered the rest. Elation filled him. Solder—lead and tin from the seams of the cans—was being gathered and that could only mean they’d a definite use for it.

Tunic buttons, cap badges and Iron Crosses, et cetera, the beads melted in one of their blowers and cast into those blanks to be later meticulously painted but where? Not here, he knew, letting his gaze sift slowly over the rubbish, asking too, Had Dorsche removed the evidence of those blanks early this morning?

He couldn’t have. He would have had the combine put on Straf and would have cleaned this place out.

A much needed pair of work gloves awaited further stitching, having been fashioned out of scraps of cloth. A bit of grey-green fabric—nothing more than a tunic’s lapel in size—matched the shade of the uniforms of those the French had come to call les haricots verts, the green beans, the Wehrmacht’s finest.

Newspapers had been sewn into a hood to give warmth—he and others had done the same in that other war. The smell of a smashed bottle of cheap scent rushed at him as he lifted a soggy wad of newspaper from the remains of that hood, dehydrated peas and carrot cubes now underfoot.

Caught among the rubbish, the fist-sized carving of a long-haired, voluptuous naked woman gazed fiercely up at him from her chariot. Armbands of beaten gold, a torque of the same and a quiver of javelins completed the attire, the one in her hand broken off during the search.

Rescuing the carving that the assistant machinist must have done, he cleaned it off with pages from the Kölnische Zeitung of Monday, 4 January 1943, only to hesitate, to pocket the carving and to quickly scan the columns. Kathe … Maria … Angela … ‘Karen is at the age where a girl desires children. She is 175 cm tall (5’9”), weighs 54.4 kgs (120 lbs.), has a good figure if just a little big in the bust, likes to dance and to party, to go to the cinema and take long walks …’ Ach, hadn’t he read this before? ‘Reads romance novels but finds them insufficient for her needs. Wishes to meet a man who is gentle and kind and older than herself so that a mature hand can give guidance to a sometimes frivolous nature. Preferably he will appreciate Herr Wagner’s music as much as she does. Der fliegende Holländer perhaps.’ The Flying Dutchman. ‘Apply Box 1043.’

Pages from the Berliner Morgenpost were here too, from the stuffing of that hood. Those of the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and Tageblatt but earlier issues, and then … Wednesday, 20 January 1943, the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten. ‘Beate is blonde, blue-eyed and lonely. At the age of 27, she finds herself still a virgin. Friends say she is too rambunctious, that she needs guidance and should seek someone much older. One who likes swimming, sunbathing and the superb Deutsche Grammophon recordings of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. If you are that man, apply Box 1379 and include a snapshot, please.’

Dorsche hadn’t seen this either.

From one of the wire-meshed windows there was a view of the root cellar’s entrance, still closed—Louis could take forever talking to a corpse. There was also a view of the administrative block and all the way down it to a garage.

To his right, to the south and just beyond the outer perimeter, a goods train was backing along a siding, the slogan RÄDER MUSSEN ROLLEN FÜR DEN SIEG! splashed in sooty white paint on its engine and coal tender. Wheels must roll for victory.

These boys would have worked out the schedules. Once loaded, that train would go to the station where Louis and he had waved auf Weidersehen to Frau Oberkircher only to find that it hadn’t been good-bye after all.

Astounded by what he had inadvertently come upon, St-Cyr took a moment to survey the barbershop. There were four reclining chairs with cushioned leather upholstery, hand-lever controls and nickel-plated footrests that gleamed. Bevelled wall mirrors, all but to the ceiling, were behind a countertop of variegated grey marble with inset basins, taps and retractable shower-hoses.

‘Merde, why send it here and not use it?’ he sighed. Individual cabinet sterilizers were also on that counter, atomizers too, each with its little plunger-pump. Bay Rum, cologne and hair oil, the standard three bench bottles every coiffeur had for men’s hair, were here, but these bottles, and many more of them, were of cobalt-blue glass webbed with silver to give a decidedly spice-trade look. Everyone who sat in any of these chairs would automatically see those elixirs and think of Arabia and of desert caravans, of dusky-eyed maidens bathing toutes nues in palm-treed oases or plump, honey-skinned Turkish belly dancers in an Istanbul café whose aroma would most certainly be of pungently black tobacco and strong, dark coffee.

There were bars of scented Castile soap that had been made in Aix from ‘pure olive oil’ before the Defeat. These days to get anything like this in Paris, or that oil, was to get the impossible. ‘Would the monsieur like the lemon-, the rose-, or the lavender-scented?’ he taunted. ‘A coconut shampoo, peut-être? A little of the Old Master Brilliantine for glossing the moustache? The Vieux Seigneur?’

Tweezers, nail clippers, hairdresser’s smocks of white drill were here and had never been used. A honed, brand-new cutthroat razor gleamed, its balance perfect, the blade of Damascus steel.

Cutthroat in hand, he couldn’t help but see himself in the mirrors: jaundiced, hollow-eyed, no light in his eyes anymore, just the fear of defeat, of worry too, eh? Worry over Hermann and his Giselle and Oona in Paris, worry over Gabrielle and her son too, and what was to become of them all and, yes, worry over trinitrophenol and just how was he to find it, yet not let anyone know he was searching for something like that?

Among the cutthroat razors there was a choice like no other and one would not be missed. Had Eugène Thomas managed to pocket it and then taken it to the carnival against all risk of discovery?

‘Like the colonel, we’re digging a hole for ourselves and it just gets deeper and deeper.’

Choosing the Crème de Vichy, silk-velvetine shaving soap and using a brand-new badger-haired brush from … ‘Harrods of London,’ he said, and fleetingly had to smile at the magic of a war that could be so utterly tragic. Lathering up, he was careful with the razor.

When Lucien Weber rejoined him, the chief inspector favoured cheeks that hadn’t been shaved as closely in years.

‘My partner must see this,’ he said, patting them a last time and feeling like a new man. ‘He’s always going on about setting up some little business. A bar, a café …’ And never mind that it was to be on the Costa del Sol and well out of France before it was too late. ‘A small hotel perhaps, of which business he knows nothing though thinks he has all the answers. Something like this would suit him far better. If he was with us, I’d get him to give me a proper trim just to prove he really can do such a thing when he puts his mind to it. By the way, that lavender aftershave you mentioned is perfect, but I prefer the jasmine. Ah, my shoes. Danke.’

‘I’ve found you some overboots as well, from the Volksopfer. Alain … the Fräulein Schrijen’s brother brought them for the collection the last time he was here. Sophie …’

‘Is chairperson of that committee also. The people’s offering of winter clothes for the boys along the Russian front.’

‘You may choose others if you wish, Inspector. I don’t think the Fraulein Schrijen will mind. The pair I’ve selected should suit but …’

They did. They weren’t new, of course, had been purchased in ’39 probably, and from the Bon Marché in Paris, so not expensive yet still with years of life. A full thirty centimetres high and of natural rubber, with a fleece lining, they even had snow excluders, and when the trousers were tucked in, why no less than five buckles had to be done up.

The storeroom, just beyond the barbershop and complete with sorting tables, shelves and boxes, held not only overboots and shoes, but overcoats, scarves, hats, heavy pullovers, shirts, blouses, trousers and skirts even underclothes both male and female, though there were far fewer of the latter and certainly BDMs and nurses would also be stationed near the front.

‘The young master is always bringing her things.’

‘Nothing is ever wasted these days, is it? Everything has a use.’ Even a dead man’s overboots.

One table, small and rough-hewn, had been set up just outside the cage, one straight-backed chair on which to sit as he interviewed each of the combine, but that wasn’t going to be of any use. Kohler knew Dorsche would wring each of them dry before they ever got here. Dorsche would start with Raymond Maillotte, would ask the test weaver only one question: Why had Prisoner 220371 been sentenced to death?

Maillotte might hold out, having already betrayed himself and his friends. He might take the blows and the shrieks, but even if he did, the others wouldn’t know what he’d said. There was only one way to help them. Nothing else really mattered now. He had to get the colonel to intervene, had to convince him that his visiting detectives desperately needed time.

Stuffing the coat-hood with its wadding of newspapers into a torn pillowcase, grey from use, he headed for the exit, pushed past the guard who’d been delegated to watch him, heard that one’s startled objections, the sighs of observant POWs as he started down the stairs, cramming the pillowcase into a pocket, going faster, faster until the cold light of day and the gently falling snow hit him.

Far along the soot- and snow-covered lane that ran between the steam plants and sheds to one side and the administrative block to the other, Dorsche and two of his Greifer were escorting Prisoner 220374 toward him. The Lagerfeldwebel was in the lead and clearly in a rage; the other two each had Maillotte by an arm, their Mausers slung. POWs dropped their shovels and stood to attention, snatching off their caps and baring their heads. Outside the kitchen, one of the Russians deliberately threw a bucket of potatoes across the trampled snow in front of them but was ignored.

Between the latrine and the root cellar, the ground was filthy, Dorsche livid. ‘WHERE IS THAT PARTNER OF YOURS, HERR KOHLER? WHY HAS HE NOT OBEYED THE ORDER FROM THE TOWER TO TURN BACK?’

A cigarette would do no good, a grin certainly wouldn’t help. ‘Louis will turn up, Lagerfeldwebel. He can’t have gone far.’

‘ALLE WERDEN BESTRAFT, KOHLER. ALLE!’

All are going on punishment.

‘STRAFLAGER IST KEIN ZUCKERLECKEN!’

Punishment camp is no picnic.

‘Bitte, find your friend and quickly,’ said Dorsche, suddenly out of breath and realizing that the POWs in the barracks block would be at their windows watching the scene he’d created. ‘Tell him he must not do this, that you both, at all times, must be with one of the guards for your own safety, of course.’

Cigarettes had best be hauled out now, for Dorsche badly needed to save face.

‘Danke, Herr Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter. Prisoner 220374 can give us both the answer to the question I asked him.’

Maillotte was brought forward, the men in the background not moving from where they stood to attention, simply watching as POWs had done in every camp that had ever been. Maillotte hesitated. He flicked his dark brown eyes uncertainly over Dorsche and this Kripo, was still caked with that white dust, had slipped a hand into the right pocket of the blue coveralls whose faded fabric showed through only at its creases.

‘You are to answer,’ said Dorsche, still catching his breath.

The test weaver lifted his gaze to the barracks block beyond them. Perhaps he tried to find the two windows his combine had shared, perhaps he simply begged the Russians and the others to forgive him, but one thing was certain. The two guards had stepped back and to his left; Dorsche and himself were now facing him, and between them there was perhaps no more than two metres.

‘Don’t,’ Kohler heard himself saying, but by then it was too late, though he ran. He slipped and nearly fell as he chased after Maillotte but the Frenchman had kicked off his sabots and had somehow found the wind of the gods. Maillotte leapt easily over the warning wire, didn’t stop, didn’t wait for the shots, grabbed the barbed wire and started to climb, the white dust of him being sprayed with blood and brains, the teeth erupting from his mouth as he coughed once, Kohler grabbing him and what he had tried to swallow …

A bloodied lump of partly masticated papier-mâché and a phosphorescent swastika button.

Dorsche hadn’t seen him take them, not really. Inherently suspicious because he had to be, the Lagerfeldwebel grunted and said, ‘Für ihn ist der Krieg zu Enden, Kohler.’ For him the war has ended.

‘No one is to be sent anywhere without the Kommandant’s order, Lagerfeldwebel.’

Was the Detektiv about to throw up? ‘Straf cells are in the attic and that is where they must now be taken. You could have been shot. Ach, had you been patient, I might still have helped you, but now can do nothing.’

‘Then put this one in with the other one.’

‘Certainly, but your hand. You’ve cut it.’

‘The barbed wire.’

‘Are stitches needed?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You must go immediately to the Lagerführung in any case. They have a first-aid kit and euflavine, an antiseptic, also some of the sulphanilamide powder. Sepsis you do not want. There is no doctor here, but as soon as possible, have one look at the wound or … Ach, there’s a woman pharmacist in town who is excellent. The Unterlindenstrasse, near the bus terminal. I go there many times.’

And hadn’t that same pharmacist already been mentioned? ‘I’ll just rinse this off in the washhouse before I go to the Lagerführung.’ Louis … Louis had to be in the one place Dorsche and his Greifer hadn’t thought to look.

St-Cyr knew that no shots had been heard in the garage. There had been far too much background noise from the servicing of the lorries, and from the Works out there. A goods train was also being loaded, but still the news had travelled quickly.

‘To each saint his candle, Inspector,’ said Lucien Weber, using a decidedly French expression but prudently giving it in Deutsch while sadly shaking his head.

Honour to whom honour is due, but was Hermann all right? Had he thrown up? Did he have the shakes that damned Benzedrine sometimes caused? They’d not eaten. His blood sugar would be low. It was nearly 3.30 in the afternoon.

‘The Fräulein Schrijen will be terribly upset, Inspector. Sophie had her heart set on those men bringing some of the Karneval things to life for the Winterhilfswerk fundraiser. Three deaths. First Renée Ekkehard … Such a lovely girl and her dearest friend. Those two … To see them together was wonderful. But then Herr Thomas on whom Sophie depended for virtually everything she had to do here. No task was too difficult, no schedule too complicated. He would work it all out with her and was extremely patient, a real teacher.

‘Inspector, you must know she is convinced Renée’s death was not a suicide. Now she’ll be worrying all the more that it could well have been herself had her brother, Alain, not come home unexpectedly. The car is his. Sophie never forgets.’

‘And on Saturday, 30 January?’

Not two weeks ago. Eleven days to be precise. ‘She went to the train station that afternoon to give him the car as she always does. Alain then drove here without her, spoke briefly with his father and then went on to the house at Kaysersberg. It’s always been his first love, that house and its vineyards.’

‘Could he have gone out to the Karneval?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Didn’t he want to see his fiancée?’

This one was going to press for answers that had best not be given. ‘He told me he was going to the house in the country.’

‘And his sister?’

Must the Inspector make things difficult? ‘Sophie would have stayed in town and taken the bus home, to the house Chairman Schrijen has in Kolmar.’

‘It’s a beautiful car, isn’t it? A dark forest green, with a bonnet that seems to go on forever, and two spare tyres up front under white duck covers.’ Unheard of these days.

‘The 540K of 1938, Inspector. A birthday gift from the chairman. The four-speed, supercharged Überwagen whose overdrive is so smooth one hardly notices its kicking in. A hundred and seventy kilometres an hour, from zero to one hundred in 15.6 seconds. I’ve clocked it many times for Herr Schrijen and his son.’

And that with a weight of nearly two and a half tons, to say nothing of the five passengers, should each seat be occupied. ‘The Fräulein Schrijen must really enjoy having the use of it.’

‘She worries all the time and lives in fear of getting even the slightest scratch or dent, though there are so few cars on the roads, who hears of an accident? We take good care of it too, so she really has no need to concern herself.’

‘And when with the Fräulein Ekkehard?’

‘Only then would we see her get behind that wheel and smile.’

‘Yet still she must have fretted?’

‘Certainly.’

‘And on Sunday, 31 January? Come, come, Herr Weber?’

The day of Renée’s suicide. ‘Alain took the late afternoon train back to Strassburg. I believe he was to stay over with the Fräulein Ekkehard’s parents to discuss the wedding. Renée didn’t want her parents spending much; Alain and Chairman Schrijen wished a somewhat larger celebration since the Gauleiter Wagner was to be among the guests of honour.’

‘I’ll just sit in the car for a moment.’

This one was trouble. Anxiously Weber looked across the garage to see if the others were busy and finally taking no notice of them. ‘Inspector, there’s no need. Sophie has the Mauser pistol my captain once carried in the Great War. She asked me to quietly find something for her and I … Ach, I gave it to her. It’s fully loaded and in the glove compartment. It’s crazy of her to think she’s in any danger but what could I have done except to have humoured her? Please don’t inform Chairman Schrijen of this. I … I would not just lose his trust and respect.’

The Wehrmacht’s version of that pistol would most probably be the 7.63mm, with a ten- or twenty-round box magazine. The overall length was nearly thirty centimetres; the barrel a good fourteen, the weight almost one and a half kilograms, the muzzle velocity 480 metres per second. Somewhat clumsy and not as well balanced as the Luger, it was still every bit as effective. Indeed it had a third more muzzle velocity and was simply not a lady’s gun.

Concrete laundry tubs, each with a lone and dribbling tap, flanked the washhouse walls on three sides, while at the far end, four goose-necked shower heads serviced nearly six hundred men.

Kohler hesitated; those who were doing their laundry paused. For perhaps thirty seconds, the two long lines of waiting, naked men, each with a bundle of clothes and a postage stamp of grey face cloth for drying off, waited.

They were all staring at him, even the guards who hustled the men into and out of the shower bath at intervals so short no one could possibly clean oneself properly.

Without a word, one of the Russians stepped away from a laundry tub, indicating that he should use it.

‘Danke,’ he managed, but the shakes came so suddenly it was all he could do to get his left fist under the tap. Ice-cold water helped but again and again the shakes came, again and again he kept seeing the dead in the trenches of that other war, the heaps of rotting corpses, those of this one too, Louis among them. Louis. Gabrielle and Oona and Giselle—Gerda? he demanded. Their boys, Jurgen and Hans—how had they died at Stalingrad?

Searching for answers to it all did no good. Throwing up didn’t either. The mush of papier-mâché in his hand held a tight wad of off-white threads. Rayon? he demanded. Like an eggshell, the papier-mâché covering had been.

‘None of you saw this,’ he heard himself saying first in French and then in Deutsch, for he knew no Russian or Polish.

The phosphorescent button with its enamelled red swastika stared up at him from amongst those threads and why the hell would Maillotte have tried to swallow a ball they had made for the Jeu de massacre?

There could be only one reason. The dry heaves hit and he shook so hard, he almost wet himself.

‘Your tears, tovarisch. It’s not good that you should be seen with them.’

Washed without hot water when the steam plants could have supplied endless streams of it at no cost, the rag, a woollen sock, was far from clean but he used it anyway.

‘Is it true what we hear of Stalingrad?’ asked the prisoner.

A nod would suffice. Suddenly he was too exhausted to do otherwise.

‘Are your people building an Atlantic Wall in France?’

A continuous line of fortifications. True again.

The Russian considered this gravely. Frowning, he deferentially hazarded, ‘It’s impossible your Führer could have made the same mistake as the Maréchal Pétain and Monsieur Maginot when they helped to convince the French Government to build a similar line from Southern Alsace to the Belgian border but still, isn’t wisdom as foreign to great leaders as poverty is to wealthy men?’

During the Blitzkrieg of 1940, the Maginot Line had been gone round and taken within the blink of an eye but there were more important things to discuss. ‘Did any of you do laundry for Eugène Thomas?’

Had this detective once been a POW? ‘We do it for the French when they feel it necessary.’

‘Cigarettes?’

‘One for the socks, the underwear and undershirt; two for the trousers, shirt and pullover. Though we would like to haggle, the price is nonnegotiable and has been set firmly by the French. Without Lagergeld, Red Cross parcels or those from home, it is the—’

‘The only way you can get a smoke, but did the others of his combine make certain his clothes were always the cleanest you boys could get them?’

This one was thinking clearly. ‘That is as it was, Inspector.’

‘Good. Here, take these. Share them up for me.’

Fumbling, the Gestapo’s detective pressed cigarettes and small cigars into waiting hands, matches too. ‘I’m not one of them,’ he said of the enemy. ‘If Dorsche or any of his Greifer ask, forget I was here.’

Four dried, boiled sweet chestnuts mysteriously appeared from the depths of a pocket. ‘Shave them,’ said Herr Kohler. ‘Don’t break a tooth.’

‘We will soak them in water for as long as it takes and make a paste. Perhaps a little of the boiled potato or black bread could be added if it is first soaked. Salt is out of the question, of course, but …’

‘Enjoy. I only wish there was more. Maybe someday there will be.’

‘Then let us look forward to it, Inspector. Now go, please. It’s not good for me to be seen talking to you.’

Again the men were staring at him, again he had to pause just inside the door. Standing out in the wind and the snow, a handkerchief tied round his hand, Kohler knew they would have endless days and nights in which to think over and discuss what had happened in those few moments. Something strange, something decidedly different. A miracle.

When Louis, hurrying between the nearest of the steam plants and the kitchen, caught up with him, Kohler quietly confided, ‘Ask that God of yours to be with us, mon vieux. I think I’ve found the trigger element.’

*** Recent studies at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography have called into question the presence and extent of the tidal wave because of the configuration of the harbour and the nature of its bedrock. Though damage from the blast was essentially as given here, the size of the wave was greatly exaggerated and probably not much more than a metre high.