Wehrmacht boys with carbines slung over their shoulders and dogs on the leash, patrolled the shuffling line, while those with the Schmeissers covered the flanks, and those who had come to supervise the deportations stood nearby.
Suitcase after suitcase was being left to one side of the tracks, but the ‘carriages’ the passengers were to take were still some distance ahead.
‘We’re there,’ said the Bzp Obergruppenführer, indicating a corrugated, rusty-roofed shed of grey concrete block that looked exactly like all the others.
‘Your name …’ began Kohler. ‘I seem to have heard of it years ago. Where’d you say you were from?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Then tell me.’
‘Münsterberg.’
‘Near Breslau?’
Kohler was just ragging him. Of course everyone in 1924 had heard of Karl Denke, the mass murderer and butcher who had smoked and then sold the meat of his victims. ‘We weren’t related.’
‘I just wondered. Police work – you know how it is. I was in Munich; the wife at home on her father’s farm. We hadn’t yet had our two boys, Jurgen and Hans. Mein Gott, the inflation, eh? I wheeled a barrow full of marks to buy a dinner of boiled cabbage and a toothbrush!’
There’d been famine. Real hardship. From an official exchange rate of 4.2 marks to the U.S. dollar in 1918, the mark had fallen to 1,000,000 to the dollar in 1923. Those who had had work, had instantly spent their wages on anything they could get.
The smoked ‘pork’ Herr Denke had marketed had sold very well. Buttons from the bones, too, and soap from the fat and ashes.
I can’t let what’s happening to the deportees set me off, said Kohler to himself. I mustn’t.
They were climbing into cattle trucks and would freeze in them. Jésus, merde alors, how could anyone do this? He was glad Louis wasn’t here to witness it; Oona neither, nor Giselle.
‘Look, tell your miliciens to wait outside, eh? This is between the two of us. The less who know of it, the. better.’
Charonne was still very much the village it had once been. As he left the house and began to walk uphill along the cul-de-sac towards the rue Stendhal, St-Cyr knew he was being watched from more than one window. ‘A manage de convenance,’ Madame de Bonnevies had said to Hermann and told him not to ask the neighbours. ‘Life is hard enough.’
Whispers … rumours … there would have been lots of those, for when all was said and done, the beekeeper had been an original, an odd character, an eccentric, and in any village or small town such idiosyncrasies always singled one out. Her money, too – they’d not have missed such a juicy thing.
But had she been carrying on an affair? If so, she would have done it discreetly but even then, the women of this street would have noticed and commented on a made-over skirt, a newly polished pair of prewar high heels – those silk stockings Hermann had mentioned; a chapeau cloche or beret set at a more determined angle, the hair perhaps curled.
Since the Defeat there had been a flood of anonymous letters to the authorities. Vichy and the Gestapo encouraged them, to the shame of the nation. Old scores were being settled, lies told upon lies. Even children – especially children – could be useful to those who would encourage such trash, but had there been letters of complaint about de Bonnevies?
Which of you smashed those hives and robbed them? he demanded silently. Is this why you watch me so closely?
The matter of the hives would have to be settled but for now it was the least of his difficulties. Something had caused madame to hide the fact she had known very well who Frau Schlacht was and that could only spell trouble for Hermann and himself if things turned sour.
At the intersection of the impasse, the rue Stendhal ran downhill past the graveyard and church to end in a set of stone steps. Although the day was almost half-over, the sun had failed to show itself. But here was history, he reminded himself. Architecturally there were those, he knew, who thought the Église de Saint-Germain de Charonne frightful. Only its bell tower remained of the original structure. Fires, wars, dedicated, well-meaning parishioners and determined priests had seen what had been in place since the twelfth century all but completely rebuilt in the fifteenth, gutted of its transepts in the nineteenth and left with a clock in its bell tower to give the time of funerals, confessionals, weddings and christenings, in verdigris-stained Roman numerals.
An original in itself.
Père Michel wasn’t at home in the presbytery or in the church. He was downhill from them a short distance along the rue Saint-Blaise, sitting at a corner table in the Café au Rendezvous, waiting for the Sûreté to question him.
One saw it at a glance on entering. Word had somehow been telegraphed on ahead. Mon Dieu, there were so few telephones in such quartiers, one seldom considered their use.
No, this had been done whisper by whisper and as if through the walls, but how had they known madame would be certain to send him to the priest? Oh bien sûr, it was logical. A death in the parish, the murder of one of their own, but the Sûreté could have come at any time.
They’d seen it, right from the moment he had stepped from the front entrance. They’d known it in his walk. Merde, these villages, he said, letting a rush of affection pass through him, for he was of Belleville, had been born there, and knew it and Ménilmontant and Charonne like the palm of his hand, as would this priest.
In the faltering light of a single electric bulb, shadows seemed to fill Shed fourteen. The smell was overpoweringly of buckwheat, of ripening fields, of straw and wax and beebread, cordite, blood and burning barns. The image of peasant women and children on their knees was clear. Pistol muzzles pressed to the backs of their heads. Bang, bang and into the mud and shit. The men were being hanged.
Kohler sucked in a breath and heaved a defeated sigh at the stupidity of it all, only to notice that Obergruppenführer Denke was watching him closely. The smug little bastard would report his reactions …
‘Mein Gott,’ he said and tried to flash a grin as he indicated the contents of the shed. ‘The Wehrmacht’s boys sure did a job, didn’t they?’
Denke probably wouldn’t know a damned thing about bees. ‘They didn’t just take the heaviest and lightest of the hives – those of the old, well-established colonies that might harbour disease, or the youngest that were too light to overwinter,’ said Kohler. ‘They took everything.’
Inverted straw skeps, grey and golden, the thimble- to basket-shaped hives not used in ages in the Reich, nor in France for that matter – except for catching a swarm – had been piled one on top of another right to the roof. Russia … the Ukraine? he asked himself, and going in among the stacks, touched one and then another.
‘My grandmother used to make these,’ he said, the sound of his voice flat in the freezing, pungent air. ‘Toothless and so old, the arthritis in her hands caused her constant pain she ignored. And forget that crap you hear about bee stings helping. They didn’t.’
The iron skep needle had been like a skewer, twenty centimetres long and sharply pointed, but with a circular loop at its opposite end. ‘Peeled, split willow and blackberry shoots are used to bind the tightly coiled ropes of straw. My brother and I used to gather them for her.’
So why the trip down memory lane? wondered Denke uneasily. Some of the hives had been removed, and because of this there was a gap in the stacks. Kohler had wandered out of sight.
‘Okay, so who’s bringing these in?’ called out the Detektiv.
‘We can go through the manifests, if you like. The Frenchies keep them in the main office.’
A shot rang out, puncturing the metal roof and killing a rat with a sweet tooth.
‘Herr Kohler, what is the meaning of this? What’s going on?’
Nervous was he, at the sound of gunfire and yet wanting a different uniform? ‘Just tell me who it is. Whoever set this up had help – lots of it – and long lines of communication.’
Where … where the hell was Kohler now? ‘I … I simply don’
t know, mein Herr. How could I?’
‘And you an Obergruppenführer in the Bahnschutzpolizei who’d look better in a Leutnant’s grey-green? Hey, mein Kamerad from Münsterberg, I know you’re sharper than that. Cough up and I’ll put in a good word for you like I said.’
Another rat fell from the roof timbers, and then another. The miliciens didn’t try to enter. In his mind’s eye, Denke could see them running back along the tracks towards the stationhouse. Had Kohler planned it this way? Of course he had!
‘He’s … he’s important,’ faltered Denke only to hear Kohler quip, ‘He’d have to be.’
‘He’s one of the Bonzen.’
The bigshots. That was better, but teasing the name from the sergeant would be like coaxing the rats to show themselves.
Verdammt, the lousy Schweinebulle, thought Denke. The shed had dropped to silence.
‘Oskar Schlacht. He has an office in the Palais d’Eiffel but is seldom there, or so I’ve been told.’
A busy man, then. ‘So who does Herr Schlacht ring up in a Wehrmacht supply depot in Kodyma or Krivoy Rog, or maybe Lugansk?’
Kohler had worked his way right round the stacks and was not two metres from him! ‘I … I really couldn’t tell you, mein Herr.’
‘It’s Detektiv Aufsichstbeamter or Herr Hauptmann.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Look, relax, will you? Don’t worry about it. A cousin – is that who Herr Schlacht rings up?’
‘He has relatives stationed in several places. In Russia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, too, and the South of France.’
A man with a big family. ‘Gut! So come and have a look, eh? You never know. Maybe what I’m about to show you could be the key to your future.’
They went among the hives. There was little else he could have done, thought Denke warily. Kohler still had the Walther P38 in hand, but held loosely.
With each stack, the lowest hives had all but been crushed. Others above them were distorted – squished this way and that – but all gave ribbed shadows where light struck the bound coils of straw.
Except in the uppermost hives, where near-dormant bees stirred and fanned their wings, everything was frozen. Dead bees littered the floor. Wax and honey were underfoot. ‘These are Caucasians,’ confided Kohler, handing the pistol to him to hold. ‘You can tell that by their big size and grey hairs. Here, let me gather a few for you to take to the Kommandant von Schaumburg. You can tell him I’m still looking for others. He’ll be at home today. I’ll write the address down for you, no problem. Just hand him this matchbox and he’ll understand.’
Von Schaumburg …
Kohler’s expression was companionable. He found a pencil and a little black notebook, and tearing out a page, wrote the address and then: Herr Kommandant, this is a man the OKW could use. It’s not right to let the past of a relative stigmatize what could be a promising and very successful career. Heil Hitler.
He had even signed the note.
‘Why, danke, Herr Hauptmann Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter. For a moment there, I thought … Well, that young woman and those two. I found them in the office on their hands and knees, the younger one rutting at her like a wild beast while the older one pinned her wrists and head to the floor. I … I didn’t quite know what to do, and then there you were to settle the matter.’
‘Your lucky day, just like I said. Oh, have you ever tried chewing this? It’s propolis – bee glue, the bees get from trees. The sap. My boys used to love chewing it, like gum, only this is way better.’
Louis would be pleased. A call to Use Gross would suffice. One Obergruppenführer who should have known better, two miliciens the world could well do without, and a charge of rape. Flu or no flu, Old Shatter Hand would hit the roof, and as for Herr Oskar Schlacht, why, the fun had just begun.
3
The Café au Rendezvous was like so many St-Cyr had experienced as a boy. The stand-up bar, with its rows of cloudy, overturned glasses on their metal tray was just the same; the copper coffee machine still exactly like a boiler-works out of Jules Verne.
Several of the linoleum-topped tables were occupied, and the hands of the patrons still identified their owners: a clerk in a menswear shop, a glazier, piano teacher, plasterer, carpenter and stonemason …
Burn marks the size of bullet-holes marred the linoleum floor where countless cigarettes had fallen in the heat of argument.
‘Inspector …’
Father Michel Audet had chosen his position well. From the back of the café, and flanked by posters that cried out, Vous Avez la Clef des Camps – You Have the Key to the Camps – and, The Good Times are Here Again, Daddy’s Working in Germany, the priest waited.
Overly large, black horn-rimmed glasses magnified the intensity of sharp, dark eyes. The brows were thick and had been defiantly dyed black, and they matched the beret which was clean but so obviously had the dust of age and obstinacy clinging to it.
‘Father, I am—’
‘Yes, yes, I know who you are. I’ve followed your career for years with much patience.’
Ah merde …
‘Sit down. Marcel,’ he signalled to the patron. ‘A pastis for the Chief Inspector. He looks like he could use it, and put that idiot signboard out of sight at least until our guest has refreshed himself.’
The chalked pas d’alcools board was quickly tucked behind the zinc, a Ricard bottle produced as if by magic and set on the table with two glasses and a small carafe of water.
‘You read my mind, Father,’ said St-Cyr gratefully.
‘It’s my job to do so, as it is your own.’
A cigarette was offered – it was extremely rare for one to do so these days, so the priest was not only telling him they had things of importance to go over, he was warning him to tread carefully. And, yes, he was also telling the assembled that here was a Sûreté they would have to recognize but that it would be wise to first funnel everything through himself.
‘This murder …’ began Father Michel, adding a touch of water to the pastis in both of their glasses.
‘My partner and I are not absolutely certain yet that it really was murder, Father. Amaretto isn’t common, even on the marché noir, but it could have come from there. Did our beekeeper buy such things?’
‘Not from around here. Alexandre didn’t even care for the stuff, but what you really mean to ask is, could Madame de Bonnevies have added the poison to it.’
‘I’m waiting, Father.’
‘Then wait. God is still hearing dispositions on the matter. Madame de Bonnevies tried repeatedly to get me to intercede on her son’s behalf. She begged me to find her three skilled workers who would willingly leave their jobs, their families and loved ones, to work in Germany, in return for which, her son would have been released.’
This was the Relève, the exchange programme whose poster, of a male Germanic fist holding an upraised key, was to the right of the priest. But now that scheme, having been introduced in mid-1942 and having failed utterly, had been replaced by the Service du Travail Obligatoire, the forced labour draft, so even posters like that of the radiant young mother telling her four children money was now on the table, were passé. Now all non-essential males born between 1 January 1912 and 31 December 1921 immediately faced being called up.
The priest cleared his throat, then wetted it.
‘I refused, of course, and advised patience. It was wrong of me.’
‘Why so?’ asked the Sûreté.
‘Alexandre might still be alive. It’s a question that haunts me. Madame de Bonnevies has suffered greatly and is a very distraught, very desperate woman who has had two and a half years of agonizing over that son of hers and has, I should surmise, tried everything possible to free him.’
The hands that fingered the glass so delicately were not big, but finely boned. Beneath the jacket, the priest wore a grey cardigan that had lost none of its original buttons yet had probably been purchased back in 1930.
‘The past is food for the present, Inspecto
r, but at its table the future is nourished. If ever there was a woman wronged it was Juliette de Bonnevies. Oh for sure, Alexandre was not only one of my parishioners but also a very dear friend, and I am much saddened by his unfortunate and untimely death. And certainly I tried to intercede in that marriage. Love for his wife – a wife who had borne him the son of another man. Pah! He refused her this just as she refused it him. They tried, of course, at first, but very soon it became apparent both were prisoners of the other; she to dote on her son and ignore the daughter she and Alexandre shared; he to do exactly the reverse.’
‘He lived on her money.’
‘He married her because of it. He knew she was pregnant with the child of another. It had all been arranged. Her family, his family, the matter settled. You see, I married the couple, and when I leave here to walk back up the street, I will see my church’s beautiful and ancient bell tower stained by the mistake I made.’
‘They hated each other.’
‘Of course they did.’
‘And Danielle?’
‘Has always felt she meant nothing to her mother, and everything to her father.’
It would be best to give St-Cyr a moment, and to replenish his pastis. ‘Inspector, that child has no other choice than to peddle merchandise. Alexandre had no head for filling the family larder, even in the good times, except for the produce of his bees. Since the Defeat, the mother has had little head for it either. Those two existed solely because the child they had produced chose to hold them together and feed them.’
It had to be asked. ‘Could Danielle have inadvertently picked up that bottle during one of her trading circuits?’
‘Then why did he choose to drink from it days or perhaps weeks afterwards?’
A good point, but was Father Michel still trying to suggest the mother was guilty?
They finished their second cigarettes in silence. None of the other patrons watched them now. All were huddled in close conversation. But two women had entered the café so quietly, thought St-Cyr, he was troubled by the fact he hadn’t noticed them and the priest hadn’t let on.
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