The twilight crept across the sky like the ink cloud from an angry squid. Tonight, there were two wool-clad sharks on the hunt. Striding towards St. Bernhardt’s church, they were silhouetted by the headlamps of a parked French army truck. Bill could only hope they did not have his photograph or description.
“What’s the plan here, boss?”
“I have no idea. Misselwitz will know we are onto him by now, so we don’t have much to lose. Fatty’s armed, so don’t take any chances. If he goes for his pockets, or whatever, we put him down, and to hell with the consequences.”
As they moved out of sight of the main street, they saw a police patrol sauntering along the road on the opposite side. Jack tugged the brim of his hat at them. One of the surly-looking coppers nodded in reply, and the two of them carried on towards the main street, smoking as they went.
As they approached, the church seemed to stare back at them. Its smashed and boarded old stained-glass windows were pleading to them like a puppy’s eyes. The door was shut, and a dull light from inside escaped around the edge.
“Why do I have a bad feeling about this?” asked Jack, his eyes fixed in the direction of the battered church.
“Because nothing good ever happened in a church, pal.”
As Bill checked behind them, Jack pulled out his Walther P38 and quietly flicked off the safety catch. The pair of them approached the church and stopped near the door. There was no activity around. Mainly because even the decaying buildings still standing were long since vacated. One of the few usable ones contained Mrs Krause’s shop, which was still open. The lights were on, and no doubt the fire too. The small store lit the road in front of it in a strange criss-cross pattern with its taped-up glass window like a glow-worm attracting a mate.
They moved to the door, and in a well-rehearsed manoeuvre, Jack carefully turned the handle, booted the door open, and then entered, simultaneously sweeping his outstretched gun in front of him and across to the right. Bill mirrored his motions to the left, and between them, they had assessed the danger in all directions. With the slightest of glances, Bill steered Jack around the opposite side of the open church as they silently stalked their prey. Finally, they navigated the outside walls and met at the little doorway to the back room.
Peering through, Bill saw the rotund priest was flat on his back, surrounded by a dark area of dried brown blood. Checking around them as they entered and seeing the room was otherwise empty, they put away their guns.
“Well, at least we know who killed this one,” Jack said as he looked over the body.
“Yes. Talk about stating the obvious. Thanks, Dr Watson,” Bill replied, rolling his eyes.
Bill pulled the surgeon’s scalpel out of the fat man’s chest. It was stuck there like a little flag pole, pinning the handwritten note. Bill looked more closely at the blood-stained message, then placed it in his pocket.
“Someone else must have happened across him by now. Why did no one report the body?” Bill said to himself out loud.
“We know the usual clientele of this place. They are hardly likely to want to get involved with the law.”
“That would explain Mrs Krause’s ramblings.”
“How do you mean?”
“She mistook me for a Gestapo officer when I went in there. She said something about other Gestapo men frequenting her shop. I don’t think she imagined it. She is clearly a little mad, but I think she was telling the truth. These Gestapo officers were clients of this strange operation they are running here. Maybe they weren’t all Gestapo, but anyone sounding official in a long black coat is Gestapo in her mind. They probably go over to buy their cigarettes or some food. It’s the only shop around, after all. Plus, we know it stays open late.”
“Or, at least, she forgets to close at the end of the day.”
“We’d better see if she knows anything else.”
Bill dropped the scalpel down next to the body. Then, holding the chin, he flexed the head side to side, lifted an arm and dropped it back into the dried bloodstain.
“The muscles have relaxed. Rigor mortis has all but gone, but there is no leaking from the nose yet, and very little smell. So, I’d peg him at about two days, although it’s pretty cold here, so rigor mortis could have been prolonged, perhaps up to four days. Knife up into the brain, look.”
Bill held the head to one side, showing the small diamond-shaped slot at the base of the skull.
“The commando’s calling card,” Jack said as he studied the wound.
“Or, at least, someone who was commando trained,” Bill said. They both nodded.
Bill pulled out his own commando knife and checked it against the hole. “The size is a perfect match. I guess that confirms it. One more thing I want to check. Can you give me a hand here, brother?”
They wrestled off Father Lardy’s pullover with Jack on the opposite side. The blood inside the body had pooled to the lowest point, making the corpse look bi-coloured. The lower half was a deep purple, transitioning to a kind of marbled grey colour on top. His face looked peaceful, but the strange black ghosting in his eyeballs gave him a demonic appearance. After they finally got his old jumper off, as Bill had suspected, there, clear as day, was a small letter A tattooed on his left inner bicep. In the back of his waistband was an old Broomhandle Mauser pistol.
Bill stood and glanced around the room. It was exactly as he remembered it. He placed the gun on the table and poked around but found nothing that would provide any new profound revelation. He opened the old shoebox again and flicked through the various currencies.
“Well, he won’t be needing this anymore,” he said as he pulled the wad of notes out and pocketed them.
The travel tickets fell like confetti onto the floor as he did so. Bill knelt to gather them up. Then, as he sorted them face-up in his hand, he stopped.
“There is a disproportionate amount of tickets to Wannsee here.”
“A trip to Wannsee is on the cards, then is it? They have some good restaurants down there. The kind where those green notes can secure you the best steak.”
“Nothing else here, except …”
“What is it?”
Bill scooped the rest of the tickets and travel permits up. In amongst the pile of tickets was a single photograph. He looked at it closely, then turned it around as Jack approached so he, too, could verify what Bill suspected.
“That’s her again, isn’t it? The one with the big tits, Anna’s girl.”
Bill nodded and frowned at Jack gravely.
“But that’s not where the others were taken, is it?”
Bill shook his head.
“That shirt. Was that taken in a …” Jack couldn’t quite get the words out.
Bill nodded, swallowed, and then turned the photograph face down.
The two men said nothing more as they headed back into the main church. Bill reached into his pocket and placed the photograph carefully in the bottom as if it were made of some fragile parchment. As he did so, he removed the note recovered from the body.
Jack continued past him and bent down briefly to collect the white chiffon scarf they had spotted as they entered. It was lying in the middle of the central aisle.
Bill sighed and looked down again at the pierced and bloodied note one last time before burning it. He didn’t want that bastard cop, Müller, to have the satisfaction of having any useful evidence pointing to her. As Bill dropped the burning paper to the ground, the flames took hold and licked around.
It had only two handwritten words in a beautiful looping cursive script:
For Violette.