Clandestine (3 page)

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.'