1

L’Abbaye de Vauclair, thought St-Cyr, and here he was facing it again but in an entirely different way.

Down through the encroaching forest, up against the ruins­ of the monastery and definitely not where it should be, an armoured­ Renault van with open doors awaited. Even from a distance and through a heavy downpour they could read the necessary: BANQUE NATIONALE DE CRÉDIT ET COMMERCIAL, SIÈGE SOCIAL, 43 BOULEVARD DES CAPUCINES, PARIS.

A difficult address, given the implications such could have these days, but an even more formidable crime if given the needs of the Résistance, considering that only two days ago Dr. Julius Ritter, Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel’s forced-labour man in France, had been shot dead as he stood on the corner of the rue des Réservoirs in Paris’s 16th arrondissement, home and/or office space to so many of the Occupier.

‘Oberg’s going to scream his head off, Louis. Boemelburg will be in a rage, Berlin on the line again and blaming them both for not having kept “order”,’ said Kohler.

Lately Hermann’s bosses had caused him to worry more than usual and with good reason. Karl Oberg was the Höherer SS und Polizeiführer of France, Walter Boemelburg being its Gestapo chief. It was a Friday. Sometimes those could be good days, if a Saturday half-day and Sunday break could be allowed, though now, it being 1 October 1943, that was highly unlikely. But since the bodies were not with the van and there was no immediate rush, they could take their time and he could fill Hermann in on the ruins and everything else.

‘Why us, Louis? Why when we damn well know the end is in sight and that idiot of a carpet-biter is still bent on destroying everything?’

Hermann never missed an opportunity to nail the Führer with the latest descriptive. Like a lot of other things from home, he had ways of finding such and conjuring them when needed, but ‘spring’ really was coming, an Allied invasion all but certain since the war in Russia was going very badly for the Wehrmacht, and Berlin and lots of other cities in the Reich were persistently being bombed by the RAF at night and the USAAF during the day. It would be wise to take his mind off things and focus it on what was needed. ‘Ah bon, mon vieux, Rocheleau, the local garde champêtre, awaits. Somehow he has managed a small fire and will be warming us a welcoming cup of le thé de France.’

Lemon balm! No sugar, of course, but no saccharine, either. Just the herb water and a few bits of leaves. The rural policeman.

‘Hermann, the nervousness you continue to exhibit requires the calming that tea will bring. Be your generous self. We may not just need what he will begrudgingly tell us, but everything else he will attempt to hold back.’

After an initial gust of flame to start the fire, that thin pillar of smoke had continued to rise well beyond the van and was now all but lost among the ruins. ‘He’s in what remains of the refectory,’ said St-Cyr. ‘That’s appropriate, where the monks used to take their meals. Corbeny, his village, is but five or so kilometres to the east. Rocheleau will know the ruins well.’

Longing for a cigarette if one had it to light and could do so in such a deluge, Kohler held this partner of his back a moment. ‘Now be so good as to tell me how you even knew it would be lemon balm?’

It was a logical enough question, given the state some of the Occupier had got themselves into, though Hermann wasn’t really one of those, not with the past three years of their having worked together day after day solving common crime and doing so honestly in an age of rampant dishonesty. ‘Ah, because the monks left a herb garden that has not only maintained itself over the forgotten years, but peacefully conquered the adjacent land.’

‘Peacefully? Bitte, mein Lieber, don’t rub it in. You’ve been here before.’

‘First in September 1914, but that was a little before your side decided that the only way to hold Falkenhayn’s line after the First Battle of Ypres was to invent the abominable trench warfare that would tragically dominate the next four miserable years of that other war you people caused us to declare.’

Credit given where credit was due, eh? ‘The Great War, was it, and not the Franco-Prussian?’

‘Both, but the later one, of course. Now take a few drags of this reserve I’ve kept hidden. Let me cup my hands over the match you will have to light.’

‘I’ve run out. We’ll need his fire. And that second visit?’

They were both edgy, and with good reason, for the SS of the avenue Foch and Gestapo of the rue des Saussaies could be far from calm and the partnership would be blamed no matter what. ‘April 1917 when, in five days, 29,000 of our boys were killed, myself having been spared due to the sniper’s bullet that nearly took off my left shoulder. Nivelle had ordered Mangin “the ferocious” to attack that ridge behind me. Nivelle’s plan was simple. After all, he was a general. In the first three hours we were to take the entire 3,000 metres of the steep and heavily wooded limestone scarp that forms the other side of that ridge, and never mind the natural caves, the ancient and more recent quarries, and even the German trenches, entanglements of barbed wire and machine guns we had to face. In the second two hours we were to cover this side—it’s easier going downhill, isn’t it?—therefore an additional 2,000 metres of the flat valley floor in which these ruins lie were called for. Though the official casualties were 130,000, and of yourselves some 163,000, the French figures should, I think, rightfully be 187,000 with 40,000 dead before that “engagement” was broken off. Nivelle went out in disgrace, Pétain came in, and now we’re still stuck with that pitiful octogenarian.’

Who had all but elected himself prime minister of France in June 1940 and had settled the government in that playground of the Empress Eugénie, the spa town of Vichy which the partnership knew only too well, having been there early last February.

‘Travail, Famille et Patrie, Hermann.’

Work, Family and Country, not Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité.

‘Traison, Louis. Famine et Prison, that’s what the graffiti artists recently slapped on the boarding that surrounds the Palais du Luxembourg to keep away the grenades someone might throw at the headquarters of the Luftwaffe here in the West.’

In June 1940 Reichsmarschall Göring had taken it over and had had that fence put up when so few would even have thought to throw such, but now … ?

‘That ridge is the Chemin des Dames, Louis, with the “walk” your Louis XV made atop it for his daughters when they went to visit the duchess of Narbonne at her Château de la Bove. There are strategic viewpoints along its thirty-five or so kilometres and it separates the valleys of the river Ailette, here to the north, from that of the Aisne to the south. We’re probably a little less than 150 kilometres to the northeast of Paris, maybe 35 north from Reims and 15 south from Laon.’

Good for Hermann. He was now prepared to focus on the job at hand. ‘Just don’t “Chief” me in front of Rocheleau. I prevented him from throwing his weapon away and running but foolishly failed to report him to his superior officer.’

‘Must you continue to attract old enemies I then have to put up with?’

‘Detectives always do, Hermann. It’s part of the job. We’re just not paid for it.’

Founded in 1134 at the request of the Benedictine bishop, Barthélémy du Jur, l’Abbaye de Vauclair had been extremely successful for over 600 years only to then be auctioned off for next to nothing after the Revolution. Turned into a farm, its substantial church had become a barn, the whole of its buildings being used and decaying to then be put up for sale a last time in 1911, only to be reduced to the present rubble during the offensive of April 1917 and subsequent battles, for the oft-stagnant front had run right through here.

‘Come on, Hermann. It’s time these two old soldiers, one from each side of this present conflict and the last one, met our garde champêtre.’

‘I’ll let you ask the questions. That’ll put him on edge.’

Hermann generally needed to have the last word but this wasn’t one of those times. ‘Then I’ll start by asking him why Joliot­, the coroner from Laon, is not present.’

Rocheleau, felt Kohler, was a little man with damned big glasses­ whose black Bakelite rims made him look like an owl that had just been surprised while tearing apart a chicken it should never have touched.

‘Rocheleau …’ began Louis.

‘Sergeant St-Cyr! Ah, the years they have taken their toll, but the mind will be as nimble as ever. I knew when I heard the car that you would have seen the smoke and found me. A deluge like this brings back memories of the battle, n’est-ce pas? I’ve placed stones here near the fire for yourself and Herr Kohler. A little warmth for the soul. Le thé de France and the ersatz ham in welcome.’

Like the rifle with its pig sticker’s lance that was leaning against the ruins, the tin mugs were antiques, felt Kohler: dented, banged back into shape and still imprinted with their French Army logos­. The bugger even had a poilu’s rucksack and wore boots of the same, since the French never seemed to throw out anything. No medals, of course. Just the dark blue of a somewhat untidy cop’s uniform and a bicycle, the rain gear having been hung aside and the arch of stone above looking solid enough.

‘Ah bon, Inspectors,’ went on Rocheleau, ‘the steaks will soon be ready. One for each of us to bring a little warmth of their own.’

Thumb-thick slices of rutabaga, felt Kohler, were being fried in lard when, having come from a farming community, Rocheleau should at least have had potatoes with a few eggs and rashers of bacon. Reaching for some sprigs he must have gathered, the cook tore off bits to sprinkle over the repast.

‘A little thyme and oregano, to better the flavour, eh, Herr Detective Inspector Kohler? Don’t burn the fingers. Bon appétit.’

And why was he serving up even such?

The answer came quickly enough. ‘Food is the great leveller, Hermann. It lubricates even those matters that are less than obvious. Rocheleau, our sincere thanks for such a consideration but please be so good as to tell us when you arrived, what you found and why Coroner Joliot, an old and much valued colleague, is still not present?’

There must be no hesitation, not with this former comrade in arms. ‘At 0900 today I received instructions by motorcycle courier from Laon to come here, touch nothing and keep everyone else away but yourselves. I was even brought the rifle with its bayonet and six cartridges.’

While Boemelburg must have sent word that they would be in charge, that motorcycle alone would have meant the Wehrmacht whose local Kommandant would have been duly notified by the Préfet of Laon or vice versa, the former being the only one who could have sanctioned the rifle. But Hermann would already be thinking the investigation was only going deeper and deeper. ‘And did anyone else attempt to intrude?’

With St-Cyr it would have to be said. ‘Father Adrien, our village priest, insisted on blessing them before consigning their souls to heaven.’

‘And was curious, Hermann. Our priests always consider it a duty to find out as much as possible about what has happened in their parishes and what might still be happening. He touched the victims, did he, Corporal?’

Ah merde. ‘Only with his cross and maybe sprinklings of holy water from his little bottle.’

‘In a deluge like this?’

‘Should that matter?’

‘Of course not. Now be so good as to tell us that you covered the bodies with the tarpaulins that courier had instructed you to bring along from Corbeny.’

Bon! St-Cyr hadn’t asked about Father Adrien’s other bottles. ‘I did, yes.’

‘And while you were busy, did the father duck his head into that van or did he step right into it to have a better look?’

Sacré nom de nom! ‘Me, I was not nearby but he wouldn’t have touched anything. When I returned, he said that God would find it hard to forgive the killers. Then he rode off on his bicycle.’

‘Killers?’ asked that Sûreté.

‘Oui. Since the bodies were not lying together or even beside the van, Father Adrien concluded rightly, as I also did, that the shots must have come from two assailants.’

‘And where, precisely, did he find the bodies?’

And never mind who had first been busy hauling that canvas, thought Kohler.

‘Both were some distance from the van, Chief Inspector, the one not among the herbs that are nearest to the ruins of the kitchen­, but nearer the distant remains of the boundary wall and in what must once have been another herbal, the other in what little remains of the chapter house which is right next to what was once the sanctuary and main altar but has more walls.’

A mouthful, but Louis wasn’t going to let him off.

‘Father Adrien was summoned by yourself, was he?’

‘That is correct. Whenever there is a death, I always summon him.’

‘Now tell us why such a van would even have been here?’

‘Robbery. Hijacked on the road from Reims to Laon. That bank regularly does collections from Reims to Laon, Soissons and Senlis before returning to Paris.’

‘And is that all that Father Adrien told you?’

L’espèce de salaud! ‘He said that it had to have been the Résistance from Reims, that they would have known the schedule far better even than the victims.’

And wouldn’t you know it, thought Kohler. Reims instead of Laon which was much closer to Corbeny. The steaks were woody, the lard a trifle off and the tea as thin as usual.

Snapping his fingers, Hermann demanded the reserve cigarette, and carefully cutting it in half, lit both at the fire and passed one to the corporal before sharing the other with this partner of his.

It was Louis who told Rocheleau to keep the fire going and the tea warm. ‘We’ll have a look.’

When well away, it was Hermann who said, ‘That was one of the old Lebel Modèle d’ordonnance 1886, eight millimetres.’

And the first to have used the ‘new’ smokeless powder and find itself in the Great War and then during the Blitzkrieg of this one. ‘A museum piece, Hermann. The bolt sticks out like a sore thumb and catches on everything, and the spare rounds that have been patiently fed into the forestock’s tubular magazine insist on taking their time.’

‘That needle of a pig sticker’s lance is a good fifty centimetres long.’

‘He’s hiding something. Me, I still don’t know what it is but assume there’s got to be more than meets the eye.’

‘Another piece of canvas for starters. It was tucked behind the rubble he had leaned that beat-up old blue chariot against. If you’d been observant and using the cameras of the mind that you repeatedly insist on, you’d have seen it.’

‘Ah bon, mon vieux, you did see it. Me, I’m gratified. The lessons I’ve been trying to teach you are finally coming home. Keep up the good work.’

‘Laon may have lots of réseaux, Louis, but that priest of his was smart enough to point us in the opposite direction.’

‘But was the poor box of his church alleviated?’

Since it was a bank van. ‘Meaning that even priests might be tempted?’

‘You said it, not myself. Me to find the bodies, you to look over the van. It’ll be drier.’

‘Then take this with you.’

‘I’d no idea you were so light-fingered.’

‘Stores at the rue des Saussaies would just have sold that flask on the marché noir, and you know that as well as I do.’

It even held an eau de vie de poire.

‘The Williams pear, Louis, the same as what’s called the Bartlett in America. Giselle got it for me. The bottle’s in the boot but it doesn’t have a label so it’s just one of those from a travelling still that goes from farm to farm and holds a good deal back because of that same black market and in spite of all the red tape your Vichy food controllers have thrown up against such necessary things.’

Giselle being one of the two women Hermann cohabited with when he had time and was in Paris and not busy, the girl having returned to live with him, Oona also. ‘Enjoy yourself.’

‘Be sure to look for cartridge casings, Chief. Footprints will be out of the question. We’ll let that ex-corporal stew in his own juice and then we’ll pickle him for good measure.’

Adding a few twigs to the fire that siphoned gasoline from the van had started, Rocheleau heaved a grateful sigh. The ‘steaks’ had done their work. Those two from Paris had noticed nothing. They’d find the bodies and would have a look at the van and then they’d come back with their questions to receive the answers already given.

Taking another piece of sausage from his coat pocket, he skewered it onto the stick he would burn once the repast had been consumed. Un saucisson fumé de Champagne and with the fully ripened Brie de Meaux, a little taste from heaven and who would have thought such would be possible in a bank van? Even Father Adrien had been surprised. He had seen the bottles and had immediately shoved two into the deep pockets of that cassock of his and had clutched a third and given him the gospel. ‘For the Mass, Eugène. Say nothing, my son. What has happened here is not for us. Let the police from Paris deal with it.’

Fritz-haired when he had pulled off the Gestapo’s storm hat, Herr Kohler was taller by far than that Sûreté turtle of his. And yes, a glistening scar caressed the left cheek from eye to chin, giving reminders of something Herr Kohler would definitely remember for the rest of his life should the end of this Occupation require a certain garde champêtre to point the finger of truth before the post was used, the one at least for that collabo partner of his.

Shrapnel scars from that other war had graced the storm-trooper countenance, the age, that of about fifty-five or fifty-six and maybe three years older than his little follower. Bulldog jowls had given the sad, rheumy faded-blue eyes a little more intensity, but they had held interest only in the rifle and its bayonet, and memories perhaps of that other war. The hands had been big, the touch of the fingers as he had held that cigarette, light.

The tortoise was, of course, still with that bland, broad and defiant holier-than-thou brow, the moustache much more than that of the German Führer he served, the thick and bushy eyebrows the same as before, the hair a dark brown but without the grey that had immediately overtaken his own after that battle. Medium in height, blocky across the shoulders, that one had changed so little he still terrified. But the bullet scars across the brow had been more recent, though it was a great pity some criminal had missed him. Here, as the battle had raged, the limestone had caused an infinity of rounds to ricochet until one from a sniper had slipped through to knock that salaud off his feet, causing St-Cyr to drop the rifle he had only just picked up, intending to thrust it back at himself and prevent such an act of cowardice.

Crossing himself, he said to no one but himself, Me, I thought he really was dead and that all my worries were over, but when I found that he wasn’t, I thought to take up his Lebel Modèle 1873 and let him have one of those old eleven millimetres even if that revolver should misfire due to the years of the government’s having stored them in dampness. Black powder too. But he opened his eyes and said, ‘Ah bon, mon brave, you’ve got your rifle again. Push on. Keep them from me.’

When everyone else was shitting themselves and wanting to run.

Those two from Paris would find the victims for certain and food enough for the Action Courts, but could they be accused of stealing any of it for themselves?

Having crossed what little remained of the cloister and its courtyard, and now adjacent to the eastern end of the church itself, St-Cyr entered what had been the chapter house. This small, square room, with its arched and gaping doorway to what was left of the sanctuary and altar, had two openings that faced onto the eastern walk of the cloister. Light would have entered from the remains of the three windows in its outer wall, and it was here that the abbot and his monks would have met each morning after the first hour to go over any problems and the business of the day. A lectern would have stood facing the cloister openings, the abbot sitting behind it, the monks on two rows of benches before him.

But all of that was gone except for the broken-off stems of a couple of the columns that would have supported the vault above which now gaped at the sky.

‘From just such a past do we poor mortals pass into the present,’ he said to the victim as if by way of greeting, for no matter how hard one tried, the reverence of these ruins still intruded on the thoughts.

Caught among the squared-off blocks of medium-grey limestone with their encroaching dark-green moss, ivy and wild grape, the man lay under canvas as if in the Great War. Hermann would immediately have turned away and probably thrown up. Having lost his two sons at Stalingrad before the defeat of von Paulus and the Sixth Army there early last February, this impulse of his had become more intense with every new murder. The younger, the harder; the more innocent, the more terrible. ‘My partner’s really a very good detective and I’ve come to absolutely depend on him, while he himself has increasingly become the citizen of the world I’ve been encouraging.’

Pausing to let that sink in and the cameras of the mind to do their work, he gave the room the once over, noted the sodden grass and wildflowers that had gone to seed, lush as they both were, and the encroaching saplings of the forest. And finding one of the latter broken off some distance from the corpse, fingered it in doubt and said, ‘Ah bon, mon ami, what has gone on here?’

The grass could, or could not have been trampled more than necessary. It was simply impossible to tell, but the room was small and all but a cul-de-sac. Had the victim been trying to hide? Had he heard the other one being shot, or had he been the first?

Gently pulling back the canvas, he had to pause, for before being killed, the victim had been holding a bloodied handkerchief to his forehead. ‘Had you been hit by a stone, or did you fall and hit yourself? Is that why there was that broken sapling? Dazed, you would have stood, the killer then jamming that weapon of his tight against your chest.’

Surprise … Had that been it, that left hand up and near the head as if, in having been startled, he had just removed the handkerchief?

The bank’s uniform jacket, vest, shirt and undershirt had all been torn by the bullet’s entry, the muzzle having left its circle around the bullet hole. There would be powder burns. Joliot would also find the tiny tattoos the grains of that gunpowder would have left as they’d been driven into the skin.

‘Had your clothing not been torn, I’d have thought the bullet had been fired from at least a metre away.’

Rigor had passed, but with the cold and dampness, decay would have been retarded. Hypostasis, the lividity due to the gravitational settling of the blood into its lowest parts, would have begun after about two hours, giving the slatey blue to reddish patches that were evident. The lips were that same blue, the eyes somewhat clouded, though of a deep brown, the face broad, strongly-boned and quite pale.

‘Since on average rigor lasts for sixteen to twenty-four hours, mon ami, and begins from two to four after death, the time this could most recently have happened is yesterday and probably in the morning since it is now 1320 hours, but it could also have happened on the preceding day, perhaps in the afternoon. Joliot will be able to give a far more definite estimate since I’ve broken my thermometer, but when were you first found and who was it that reported the killings? Certainly not Rocheleau, and why, of course, did whoever it was happen to come upon you and that van in a place like this? It’s not usual to walk here, nor to visit the ruins in weather like this.’

The victim had been unarmed, the Germans increasingly hesitant to even allow such a thing as pistols for bank guards. In age he was in his mid-thirties, but nowadays especially with Gauleiter Sauckel’s demands for forced labour and the Vichy government’s compulsory labour draft, the Service du Travail Obligatoire, papers would be needed detailing the absolute necessity of the Banque Nationale de Crédit et Commercial’s having him. Such a necessity would also have meant that the third bank employee, the one who would normally have ridden in the back and assisted the second with the pickups and deliveries, had no longer been possible and they were having to deal with only two victims.

‘Also, mon ami, and one has to ask this, why were you not a prisoner of war in the Reich, along with all the others? Had you been rejected by the military for health reasons, tuberculosis perhaps? Bien sûr, there could be any number of reasons, the eyesight among them, but still there has to be a reason, n’est-ce pas?’

The pockets had been turned out and emptied, the papers and everything else simply taken, even the small change that was so necessary now if one was to ride the métro, whose riders had gone from 2 million a day in the autumn of 1940 to nearly 4 million. And since German soldiers on leave were fond of being forgetful and continued to take their change home, the correct amount was now being demanded by the ticket collectors, causing utter chaos at times.

Unlike so many these days, however, this one had obviously been eating well enough. ‘And married too. Have you children?’ he asked.

When he found a wooden-handled Opinel, the peasant’s standby, behind a stone, he wondered if the knife had been held in defiance. ‘But not by yourself, mon ami. Not when found here. Was it torn from the hand that held it and thrown aside by yourself, eh? Is that why the rock that bashed your forehead left such a mark you had to pause to mop it?

‘Ah merde, monsieur, was it a third victim we are now going to have to concern ourselves with, and while we’re at it, why would your killer take the time to empty your pockets if your partner was still on the run, or was he the first?’

Deep in the grass and wildflowers to the right of where the killer would have stood, he found the cartridge casing and heaving a contented sigh, said, ‘Now the investigation really begins, doesn’t it? An altercation causes the forehead wound, that party then running from you, yourself to sit and mop the forehead only to then be confronted by the killer. Understandably I need more proof, of course, so for now we’ll just say it’s curious.’

The cartridge casing was from a nine-millimetre Parabellum round, common enough in a Luger or Walther P38, and certainly the Résistance, if the killer was of them, could have bought the weapon from among the Occupier.

‘Automatically this casing was ejected, but Hermann will remind me that the Browning FN, the first truly automatic pistol, the one that the Belgians gave to the world of killing and adopted for their own army prior to this war, was also adopted by the Dutch, who called it the Pistool M25, No. 2. The Browning Hi-Power has a thirteen-round magazine and it’s not a common Résistance gun, so it has to be telling us something else if that is what it really was. Merde, but the questions keep piling up, don’t they? The Parabellum is a high-powered round. There will be markings on this cartridge—scratches from the breech and its ejector, the imprint of the firing pin as well. All of these can be compared with the next one I had better find because then, if they’re the same, it will tell us that whoever killed you most probably went after your partner using the very same weapon.’

But clearly something else had happened here before that shot had been fired. ‘It really does get deeper and deeper, doesn’t it? Hermann would have said, “It’s like swimming in gravy, Louis. The bottom’s hard to find and the lumps just get in the way, but we always have the taste of it.”’

Turning the body over, he found the slug and pocketed it. Hermann would be pleased.

It was a Purdey smooth bore, side-by-side 12-gauge, an absolutely gorgeous upland gun. Still in the cradle that had been made for it between the two seats in the van’s cab, it certainly would have been a bit of a problem drawing it quickly, but there would have been no argument from anyone as the crew had collected deposits or made a delivery. Beautifully chased ducks on the wing in silver set off the gun-metal blue of the barrels and the straight-grained French walnut stock. Tightly incised, the crosshatching of the left hand’s grip sparkled even with this lousy daylight and fitted that fist perfectly. And were the day not so miserable, Kohler knew he would have stepped out to flow through the motions of shooting imaginary birds on the wing.

‘Louis, it’s a honey,’ he said, though Louis was elsewhere. ‘I’ll have to lock it up in the Citroën’s boot so that no one steals the evidence.’

As to why the killer or killers had left it, and why the driver or his assistant hadn’t at least tried to draw it, would have to remain questions for now, but back in the early autumn of 1940 guns like this had been confiscated unless smeared with cosmoline and buried, the penalty for doing such being far too onerous for most. There had been racks and racks of hunting rifles and shotguns, pistols and revolvers too. Those whose owners had held British passports, including, no doubt, the owner of this shotgun, had been arrested, the men sent to the internment camp in the former French Army barracks at Saint-Denis, just to the north of Paris. British women, and those with that passport who were French, had all been sent to the old military barracks atop the mesa overlooking Besançon, but so bad had the winter of 1940–1941 been, so appalling the conditions the French had imposed, that the Wehrmacht had insisted that those with children under the age of fifteen should be released and sent back to their homes in France, the rest to Vittel’s Parc Thermal, an internationally famous spa and one that Louis and he knew only too well from last February.

Stamped and signed by the Kommandant von Gross-Paris and the Reich’s chief supervisor of French banks, since such travel permission was required, the van’s manifest on its clipboard was under a spill of shotgun shells he quickly pocketed. As he ran his gaze down the list, he muttered, ‘Cash … cash … and more of it. Eighteen branch pickups, for a total of 42 bags and 65,250,000 francs.’

Even at the official exchange rates of 20 francs to the Reichskassenscheine the troops were given to spend, it was 3,262,500 of those, or when at 200 francs to the British pound, or 45 to the U.S. dollar, not the black bourse’s 100 to 140, still 326,250 pounds or 1,450,000 dollars, a bigger than usual pickup.

All of the notes would have been sorted as to size and tied with that twisted paper string everyone had to use these days and hated, elastics being simply nonexistent. But once at the designated entrance to the city, the Porte d’Aubervilliers, no one would have bothered to take any more than a glance at this manifest, not unless some of the Führer’s finest had had a share in what else was in the back.

Squeezing round, he had a look through the armoured window. Cut open, the heavy grey bags had been scattered in haste, loose banknotes seemingly everywhere, the blue, green and white of the five-franc notes, brown of the tens and hundreds. But right on top of a wooden case whose straw packing had been scattered, was a round of what could only be Brie de Meaux. A bottle of Moët et Chandon had had its neck snapped off, the champagne downed in celebration probably, but why leave it standing upright near that cheese, why not throw it out the back since that door would have been open as it now was?

There was nothing for it but to have a closer look, and going round to the back, he climbed in and somehow found room enough to stand. ‘Louis, what the hell has really gone on here? They didn’t even go into lockdown.’*

Louis could take forever with a corpse and was still nowhere near. Two wedges of the Brie had been eaten and, since taking fingerprints was next to useless these days, as he cut into that velvety white surface, the aroma, when held closely, was magnificent, the taste like heaven. Yet case after case of the champagne had been left, six in all: two of the Moët et Chandon, two of the Taittinger and the same of the Mumm. And as if those were not enough, there were two open cases of a vin rouge and another two of a blanc de blanc, three bottles of the former having been taken.

Bought at 85 francs the litre, that wine would have sold in Paris for a good 500 francs, the champagne for 1,000, the bottle having been bought at 150 probably, and at 10 bottles to the case, a good 51,000 for the champagne, and 16,600 for the wine, for a total profit on these alone of 67,600 francs and not bad at all.

Certainly the two with the van hadn’t just been augmenting their wages. If each trip had been like this, they must have been planning an early retirement. There were even bags of cooking onions, unheard of these days in Paris and most other large cities and towns. Smoked sausage was in coils atop hams from Reims, at least twenty of those, and beneath them all, as if they were not enough, several sides of bacon, a good ten rabbits and two dozen fully plucked chickens. Obviously these boys had had deliveries to make as soon as they arrived back in the city and before returning to the bank’s garage. That bacon would have brought at least 250 the kilo, the chickens from 150 to 200 each and the rabbits maybe 50 apiece since most who could raised their own in the cupboard or on the balcony or roof, the citizenry having turned Paris, with all its vegetable pots and plots, into the largest farming village in the world.

Garlic hung by the necklace and would bring at least 35 francs the bulb, whereas before this Occupation it would have cost 50 centimes at most, but when he uncovered black truffles, he really had to pause, for these were of the winter variety and would bring at least 5,000 a kilo, maybe even 7,500, the summer ones a hell of a lot less, but it all depended on who the customer was and how much was on offer; other things too, like friends and friends of friends.

Merde, but there were sardines in tins from as far away as Marseille. At eight-five to ninety the tin, they would originally have cost maybe three, if that, before the Occupation. Butter was now at 120 the kilo, and there were four crocks of it, another four of eggs submerged in water glass. The eggs, bought at sixty francs the ten, could bring twenty each if sold individually for something that would originally have cost from five to seven for the ten back in 1939, and with wages stagnant at generally 1,000 to 1,500 a month, or lots less, prices had simply climbed and climbed.*

There was even coffee, but had these boys had access to one of the warehouses of the Vichy food controllers? Coffee was like gold, the ersatz simply horrible, so at least 500 the half-kilo for the real.

‘This has to suggest someone big, mon vieux,’ he said, though Louis still hadn’t shown up. Moving on, he came to the topic of bread. It was one of those few things that couldn’t be bought on the marché noir, but flour could be and they had four fifty-kilo bags of that beautiful white stuff that would go for at least seventy-five the kilo, since birthday cakes, brioches, croissants and other such things had been judged ‘luxuries’ by Vichy and banned back in the late autumn of 1940.

Yet not only had the killer or killers left all of the provisions behind, they had seemingly left the bundles of five thousands, one thousands and five hundreds and had taken what they could grab of the small bills, the hundreds, twenties, tens and fives.

Placed as it was a goodly distance from the ruins of the monastery’s church and other buildings, and right near what had once been the two-metre high peripheral wall, with plenty of open land left inside, the second ‘herbal,’ felt St-Cyr, must have been a centuries-old throw bed and humus pile. Fully in sunshine, when available, its plants had flourished.

The other victim was lying face down and clearly visible from the ruins of the church, he having all but made it into the thickness of the encroaching forest, having run from the killer. Challenged from behind, he had thrown up his hands in surrender and had immediately been shot in the back of the neck. ‘The Genickschuss,’ St-Cyr heard himself saying with that certain sense of alarm since it was a favourite method among the Occupier no matter which country they were in, especially the SS and Gestapo­, but the Wehrmacht also when Banditen—résistants—who had been caught were to be executed on the spot.

‘My partner will immediately think, as I now must, that the pistol was most probably either a Walther P38 or Luger and the killer German. But that doesn’t make much sense, does it, unless whoever fired that pistol was on the run and a deserter? We’ve had some of those coming through, now more since the Russian front is far from a picnic.’

In age this one was the younger, more strongly built and probably, at somewhere between twenty-five to twenty-eight, the assistant. Certainly all those background questions again needed to be asked, then, too. ‘Were you also a father?’ For killings like these always tended to hurt far too many.

As before, the pockets had been emptied. ‘Bien sûr, identity cards and all accompanying papers can be doctored, and there’s a ready market for them, but why bother when you’ve a van loaded with cash?’

It made no sense, even though the price for used identity papers had gone from fifty francs in the autumn of 1940 to 250, the supporting documents extra.

‘This inflation of ours is terrible, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Seventy percent since the autumn of 1940, with most wages frozen at prewar rates, my own included.’

Covering the victim, he added, ‘And now for the challenge, eh, especially as I’m all but certain your killer was the same as that of your boss.’

Left to itself, fennel could grow in great profusion and here it was so tall and thick, the dill was threatened as was the recovery of that cartridge casing. Down on his hands and knees, forcing his way into the thicket, he said, ‘There are limits to my patience, Hermann. Maybe you should be here instead of myself!’

Leaves, old stalks, the refuse of the forgotten years didn’t make the task easy. Taking a break, he went to harvest a little dill. Letting that wonderful astringency and aroma come, he again went down on the hands and knees, was now soaked through and with no easy way of getting dry.

The ground wasn’t just spongy. The knees sank in, the hands too. Sunlight, if God had granted it, would have made the job easier. In all it took an hour and by then he had, of course, repeatedly heard Hermann calling for him and at the last, a more vehement, ‘Verdammt, Louis, where the hell are you?’

Disregarding the summons, sheltering the 10x lens the years had given him, he scanned the two casings side by side. ‘Ah bon, there’s little doubt. Similar scratches imply that it was the same gun, the killings done by a decisive individual who, for some reason, didn’t hesitate to silence both of you.’

The pungent aromas of juniper and rosemary were here, the taste of those and of sage, thyme and oregano in scatterings, and had the day been different, he would have spent happy hours harvesting. ‘There’s even a stonemason’s mark,’ he said, tracing it out on a large rectangular block. Though several hundred years old, it was still as fresh as the day it had been cut. ‘A circle with inwardly­ pointing arrowheads on the single horizontal line that cuts it exactly­ in half and is parallel to the bedding planes of the limestone. As to its meaning, mon ami, it’s somewhat like a murder investigation. One should consider that the job must be compassed round and studied carefully from every angle. This one was a master builder. No names are ever in any of the history books, hardly a mention even, and yet … and yet they have left us so much.’

Hermann was now madly waving both arms, only to finally point toward the muddy lane they had taken to get the Citroën in as far as possible.

Top down, for the rain must have miraculously stopped, a Wehrmacht-camouflaged tourer flew drenched swastika penants. The one at the wheel had stood up to better see them and signal that they both should come near. No need, then, for anyone else to muddy their boots or shoes.

‘Merde, visitors no one wants, and with no time for us to first talk things over.’

Apart from the silver skull and crossbones on the cap, and the braiding, the one in the back with the open topcoat looked like Rommel in the desert war that had finally been lost on 12 May of this year after so many successes, while the one in the dark-grey fedora with down-pulled brim and topcoat collar up who was sucking on a cigarette in the front seat beside the driver and polishing his steel-framed specs, looked the epitome of an aging Gestapo gumshoe.

‘God always smiles when least expected, Hermann.’

‘Why a Standartenführer, Louis?’

That, too, was a very good question: a colonel in the SD, the Sicherheitsdienst, the Secret Service of the SS and Nazi Party. ‘Ours is but to ask, but let’s keep things to ourselves. You to do the talking, me to play the conquered subordinate with Gestapo detective overseer.’

‘Don’t rub it in. Let me just tell you that things are definitely not right with what’s happened here and that bastard under the grey sombrero who’s still sucking on his breakfast teeth is someone we simply don’t want meddling in our business.’

‘Ah mon Dieu, mon vieux, it gets deeper and deeper, doesn’t it?’

‘You really do want the last word so I’ll let you have it while that garde champêtre of yours cooks his own little goose and fails to show himself at such a time.’

Orders were orders. Taking up his position, Rocheleau stood guard with bayoneted rifle behind the van. If the rain didn’t return, he would be all right, but these old boots … The wife would insist that he wear them to remind that salaud St-Cyr of the battle, but of course a person like that would make no mention of his having been saved by anyone, let alone a corporal he had apprehended. Indeed, getting a medic to attend to him had not been easy, nor without extreme danger. ‘He would have died had I not done what I did, yet still he fails to thank me. Well we shall see, won’t we, Monsieur l’Inspecteur principal de la Sûreté Nationale? When the end is near and all you collabos get what’s coming to you in the purge, me I will rejoice! The blindfold, eh? The priest perhaps, but I don’t think the Résistance in Reims or Laon or even in a little place like Corbeny will ever allow one. Rather it will be that the soul, it goes straight to hell.’

St-Cyr and that Gestapo partner of his were now standing in the mud beside the car that had arrived, but … Ah merde, Herr Kohler hadn’t returned the Heil Hitler salute that the one in the back with the officer’s cap had given.

There were no medals on the colonel. There didn’t need to be, felt Kohler, for this one was a behind the scenes man, a non-entity, a shadow unless he, or his superior officers in Berlin, wanted it otherwise.

He was also, of course, one of Heinrich Himmler’s ‘Teutonic Knights.’ And as for the ruffled dumpling in the nondescript fedora and years-old grey topcoat who was now sucking on a fresh fag, that one had the look of Hamburg and the age and experience of a pending retirement that simply wasn’t going to happen, not with the war in rapid retreat.

The adjutant, knowing his place, sat down behind the wheel and said nothing, neither did the Gestapo. Mud had, however, splashed the right sleeve of the colonel’s coat. Livid, that one’s gaze leapt.

‘Kohler, who did this, where are they, and why have you not apprehended them?’

Louis would be taking in everything while smiling at his partner’s discomfort, but Berlin couldn’t possibly have any interest in what had happened here. ‘Ach, Colonel, those are excellent questions, but might we have your name and those of the others, just for the record? And while you’re at it, could you tell us who found the bodies and when? We’ll assume they then reported the crime.’

‘Lieber Christus im Himmel, verdammter Schweinebulle, are you to remain defiant of authority even when I am in charge?’

Pig-fuzz, was it?

‘You fail to return my salute, Kohler? You give me no answers? Living with a Dutch widow whose husband was a Jew? Living also with a French whore who is young enough to have been your daughter? Well, we shall see. Now answer me, damn you.’

Louis would have urged caution, but an answer had been demanded. ‘Definitely, Colonel, but let me clear the air. The widow lost her two children during the Blitzkrieg’s exodus and still hasn’t found them, and the husband was later rounded up and killed, she then needing help. The “whore,” as you’re calling her, is now lead model at a very fashionable shop on the place Vendôme—it’s right near the Ritz and sells female undergarments, perfume, soap and other rare and very expensive unmentionables to generals and visiting dignitaries from the Reich. As to your questions, when my partner and I have the answers, we will be only too prepared to give them to you after first checking everything out with Gestapo Boemelburg, my superior, and Major Osias Pharand, my partner’s. Now liebe Zeit, back off and tell us who found the bodies and when, and while you’re at it, if you know something we should, then spit it out.’

This Scheisskerl wasn’t going to like the answer to that simplest of his questions. ‘Untersturmführer Ludwig Mohnke and Oberführer Wolfgang Thomsen, his senior officer. Brigadier Thomsen wanted to show the young man the Drachenhöhle, to go over tactics he had used here during the Great War.’

La Caverne du Dragon had been a quarry on the other side of the Chemin des Dames. Enlarged into a bunker, the Wehrmacht had then made rooms and rooms for the boys to sleep, relax and take their meals in until the French had finally mined their own way in and the two sides had bricked off each other while still shooting. It wasn’t any more than a kilometre or two to the south of the ruins, but that second lieutenant was related to the SS Major­ General Wilhelm Mohnke, the commander of Heinrich Himmler’s bodyguard.

‘They came on here yesterday afternoon, Kohler, and found the van and the bodies at between 1430 and 1530 hours, reporting it to the General Hans von Boineburg-Lengsfeld directly on their return to Paris, since the van’s head office is located in his city.’

Louis would be thinking, Merde, now they really were in it! That Kommandant von Gross-Paris had been a cavalry officer in the Great War and was a stickler for protocol, a dyed-in-the-wool Prussian of the old school just like his predecessor.

‘Kriminalkommissar Ludin will be your liaise, Kohler. At 0800 hours tomorrow, you will present yourself at 84 avenue Foch. A full report.’

And never mind the Führer’s having put France on Central European Time in June 1940 and recently having added an hour of daylight saving time in autumn and winter, making that 0800 really 0600 the old time. ‘Not if we have to spend the night here, Colonel, and haven’t finished our preliminary examination and are still awaiting Coroner Joliot and his clean-up crew.’

The first sprinklings of the next deluge had arrived. As if he had plenty of tobacco, this ‘Ludin’ passed his cigarette over.

‘Contact me when you’re ready, Kohler, but don’t leave it too long. Full details, nothing left out, everything to myself.’

‘Then be so good as to tell us why the hell you lot should even be interested?’

‘That’s for us to know, and not yourselves. Just do as I’ve said and we’ll get along fine.’

Skidding in the mud, the tourer departed, and as they watched, that feeling of being alone against the world returned. In spite of the partnership’s desperate need, Hermann crumbled the cigarette and let the deluge take it.

‘Merde alors, Louis, what has Boemelburg dropped us into this time?’

‘A fetid shell crater full of water and hidden by barbed wire. Let’s deal with our garde champêtre while there’s still some semblance of daylight. We’ll visit his campfire, pick up the necessary, and let him stand guard while we question him from the shelter of the van.’

‘Why hasn’t the bank shown up?’

‘A good question, but perhaps no one has thought to tell them or they simply got word of the other visitors and decided it would be better to wait. That Kriminalrattenfänger is trouble, Hermann. Didn’t the RAF firebomb Hamburg on the night of 27 July last, and the USAAF during the day, the two then carrying on the visit for a few more nights and days?’

With winds said to have been at temperatures of up to 1000°C and speeds of 240 kph, there had been more than 40,000 dead, up to 100,000 injured and countless left homeless. And since Kriminalkommissar and Kriminalrattenfänger meant the same, the latter’s shortened form of ‘criminal rat-catcher’ would do. ‘Maybe that Kriminalrat is just out for blood, Louis, and feels we’ll slake his thirst, but whoever killed those two didn’t bother with the big bills and left virtually all of the food and wine, the champagne and black truffles.’

‘But took time to empty the pockets and take the identity papers of the victims, even the small change? That doesn’t make sense.’

‘Not unless we’re dealing with something very different.’

Rocheleau hadn’t just stolen a few coils of sausage and several other items. His makeshift satchel, tucked as it had been behind yet further blocks of stone, betrayed something in the clutter they definitely didn’t want to see. Sickened, Hermann said, ‘Where the hell is she, Louis? Out there somewhere lying naked with her throat cut?’

A forearm was grabbed to steady him. ‘It’s only a pair of shoes. There could well have been a perfectly logical reason.’

‘You’re hedging. Me, I can always tell. High heels like those? Dark blue leather like it used to be? Hardly ever worn? Kept for good? Those were kicked off so that she could run when those bastards up front brought her here and she realized what they were going to do. They hadn’t gone into lockdown. That back door would have been locked from the outside with the key they use when collecting cash or delivering it. She wouldn’t have known what the hell to do to open it and they damned well wouldn’t have told her, not with what they had in mind.’

Sometimes Hermann jumped to conclusions, but was that really the case, considering the forehead of the first victim and the Opinel that had been thrown aside? Yet there had been a robbery. ‘She could have been a decoy.’

Must Louis examine everything from every angle? ‘A plant who then found she had to run? Did those two grab her?’

‘Or find her too fleet of foot, and then find a little something else? A nine millimetre in each, Hermann, the Genickschuss in the second, the chest up tight in the first.’

‘Then why not empty that bloody van? Why take only the small bills, cut two wedges from a Brie, snap off the neck of a bottle of Moët et Chandon and drain but a mouthful?’

This definitely wasn’t good. ‘She can’t have been a decoy unless the robbers and the killer intended to silence her too. We’ll both have to search, you to the ruins, myself to where I think she might have headed, since its cover is somewhat better. Rocheleau is to remain on guard.’

‘I’ll take that bayonet and rifle and lock them in the van.’

‘Not without its keys, Hermann. The killer must have taken them.’

‘So as to break into something else?’

The bank’s depot, garage, offices or vault? Had Hermann hit on it? ‘Let’s leave that one for now.’

Louis headed off toward the Chemin des Dames with determination. Young or old, corpse or no corpse, it was always the same, a detective through and through, felt Kohler. ‘And an example to us all,’ he muttered, ‘but lieber Gott, mon vieux, is she lying up there in those woods, naked, splayed out, pegged down hard like the one I found in Munich on a Sunday, 6 May 1939 at 0540 hours?’

Ilse Grünwald had been fifteen, the throat cut so deeply, the head had all but been severed, the flashlight glinting from her eyes.

He paused. He had to, and when done, said, ‘Verdammt, I can’t be throwing up anymore. I’m just going to have to press on like the chief, and he knows it too.’

When he found the ashes, though soaking wet, they lay in the tall grass but a couple of metres from the ruins and ten along from the van. Almost side by side were two arched doorways, the farthest with an empty ocular that gazed with suspicion, as rampart by rampart the ruins descended until almost shoulder height next to the ashes. Incompletely burned charcoal lay amid what had to be the ash of starter wood and charcoal, suggesting that the robbers had come in the usual: a gazogène with firebox well dampened to make the producer-gas with which to feed the engine instead of gasoline or diesel fuel.

When he saw what looked to be metal, he began to sift the ashes, and when the corners of identity photos came up and then some coins, he fortunately found the keys to the van and set them all aside in a cluster on the nearby wall, only to find a little something else too. It was just lying there, yet tobacco was in such short supply, most collected cigarette butts and thought nothing of picking them up in the streets and bars, and this just had to be the mégot tin of that firebox’s feeder. On its lid was an enraptured, free-spirited fin-de-siècle nude lying back on a divan, sampling one of the honey-and-absinthe throat lozenges and declaring it perfect while admiring a diamond the size of a pigeon’s egg on her finger.

An elongated puddle, parallel to the wall, lay in the grass. Deep, it indicated a heavy load, and when that truck had finally got going again, it had skidded several times, but had that girl of the shoes managed to escape, only to be caught by the killer or one of the others who must have been with him?

When he had gathered up the necessary, he glanced behind the wall and found the charred, soggy remains of what must have been a poultice.

^{* A lever that locks all the doors if the van is threatened.}

^{* Tracking prices during the Occupation is exceedingly difficult, for they changed from year to year and place to place, hence best estimates for October 1943 are used.}