Stonekiller (7 page)

‘A mortar stone, Hermann. No thicker than a normal
lauze
and a little longer than my hand. Its edges have been worked but not perhaps in twenty thousand years.'

‘There's that sooty black stuff again.'

‘Yes, yes. The mortar was used to grind the pyrolusite. Our teacher has been collecting lumps of a mineral her ancient forebears used to paint the walls of their caves.'

Kohler took up the mortar and ran a thumb over it. The stuff was not slippery like graphite or shiny. ‘So, what's she been up to? Painting that cave?'

‘Hiding something from us. She mentioned the mushrooms but only in memories too dear to lose. The mother always brought them. Always one of the local chefs would be required to cook some under her directions but Madame Fillioux also cooked them herself at the house of the daughter. The husband, along with the rest of the family, ate them.'

‘A half of the omelette, eh? and an end to the bastard.'

‘Madame Jouvet made no mention of the champagne, Hermann. Surely if it was a part of the ritual, she would have included it.'

The sound of a well-tuned engine came to them.
Cars were so few these days
, one had to be curious. Even here in the
zone libre
, gasoline was all but impossible to obtain.

The car took the grade easily. Its engine hummed then throbbed as it sped uphill. An open touring car. Grey. A Mercedes-Benz.

‘Four men and one woman, Louis. No uniforms.'

‘The sous-préfet of the Périgord Noir.'

‘Is the woman his mistress?'

‘Idiot, you're slipping.'

‘And the other three?'

‘They don't all look like SS or Gestapo with false papers but then … ah then, Hermann, it is often so hard to tell with those, is it not, and they would need false papers to venture into the Free Zone under cover.'

‘Piss off! They're just friends along for the ride.'

‘Then let us see what they want.'

3

S
UNLIGHT STRUCK THE PLACE DE LA HALLE AND
glared from the tiled roof of the town's seventeenth-century covered market. It made the air above the car's bonnet vibrate and brought the smell of vaporizing gasoline.

The only shade was under the timbered balcony of the market or within its expanse, the only sound, that of a flight of homing pigeons. Perhaps one hundred and sixty people were gathered. Shopkeepers, café owners, waiters and chefs stood in aprons at the doors of their premises. Mayor Pialat, florid and in a hurry in a black homburg, heavy black woollen suit, black tie, vest, gold watch chain and stomach, paused half-way between the Governor's House, with its shuttered first-storey windows and its second- and third-storey side turret, to stare up at his precious pigeons and wet his lips in apprehension.

Mopping his brow and grey bush of a moustache, he continued on across the stony square where tufts of weeds and wedges of stunted grass had suffered the ravages of drought and tethered goats.

He disappeared into the shady recesses of the market. Not a word was said. Though the crowd listened intently, all they could hear were those damned pigeons.

No swastika flew from the grey-roofed turret of that lovely sixteenth-century house. No German sentries stood on either side of its french doors, no patrols tainted the air with the smell of sweat and saddlesoap or the sound of their rifles as they fired at a post and white-targeted ‘terrorist' or hostage and saw him suddenly slump.

No swastika pennant flew from the front left wing of the car yet it could just as well have done so, such was the mood of the crowd. The South was haven to far too many the Germans wanted. Homing pigeons such as those might carry secret messages and were forbidden in the North.

Like tourists from the other side of the moon, the five visitors waited impatiently for the mayor to unlock the old iron gates to the stone staircase that led down into the warren of caves and tunnels beneath the town. Used as a hiding place during the Hundred Years' War and then in the Wars of Religion, the caves would be pleasantly cool.

But why the interest? wondered St-Cyr. Why the impatience? And why the hell was sous-préfet Deveaux playing tour guide and host when he knew very well there was a murder to attend to?

The visitors were swallowed up, the woman going first in that hip-clinging white silk dress of hers and a big, floppily-brimmed and beribboned
chapeau
, the mayor bringing up the rear and bleating, ‘The lamps, madame et messieurs. You must each take one so as not to get lost.'

‘Toto, darling,' came the earnest female voice up from the darkness, rich and deep and musical, the accent exquisite and one hundred per cent of the salons along the rue Royale. ‘Toto, light one for me. There's a good boy. Willi … Willi, how can we possibly get a crew in here?' The switch to
deutsch
maintained the richness. ‘Franz, it's fascinating — were the English slaughtered or did they hide in these caves?'

‘Baroness, I believe the Huguenots captured the town in 1588.'

‘Did they slaughter the French Catholics or did they, too, escape into these caves? It's marvellous what holes in the ground can tell us about history. Willi … Willi, make a note of that. Oo, darling, there's such a lovely breeze. It's blowing right up my dress. It's like the bathe I had under that little waterfall. It's delightful.'

A short, stocky
Périgourdin
of sixty years, sous-préfet Odilon Deveaux returned from the depths and as he came up the stone steps in his banker's suit, he was caught in the half-light by the two from Paris Central and shrugged. ‘Jean-Louis … ah, a moment. Yourself also, Haupsturmführer. Please.' A stumpy forefinger touched the grim-set lips of a cop who had seen it all and had just lost patience. The gaze was hooded, the nose massive, the warts, moles, scars and clefts pronounced, the eyebrows a bushy, unclipped iron-grey.

Out of breath, he had to pause at the top of the stairs. ‘The asthma,' he managed. The pollen and the dampness. Cats … she has a cat. Her perfume … ah, it may be marvellous but it's giving my lungs a seizure! A moment.' And then, ‘Come … come away for a little privacy. Give me a cigarette, please.'

Gathering them in, he guided them across the covered market to a line of benches against the far wall where a helmeted Wehrmacht corporal held a carbine in poster-paper over the words, Give
your labour in the fight against Bolshevism.
‘Paris …,' he wheezed in again. ‘Only one of them is Parisian — an ex-waiter, ex-boot-black, I think. The rest are originally from Berlin and Vienna. Very famous, very connected and very demanding. The cigarette?' he repeated.

Kohler shrugged, I'm fresh out. Louis found his
mégot
tin. Consternation registered. ‘But … but what is this?' managed Deveaux. ‘No tobacco but those? I would have thought.…'

‘It's the way things are,' shrugged Louis apologetically. ‘We beg, we borrow, we pick up like everyone else but we cannot steal.'

‘Or be caught doing so,' offered Kohler, the chief tobacco thief whenever possible.

Hermann chose five of the butts and began that painful process of first trying to free the tobacco and then of finding paper and spittle enough to roll one. Though a former bomb-disposal expert and prisoner of war, he could not roll a cigarette. It was God's little irony. ‘Here, Louis, you do it. I'm all thumbs. It's that dress and a bathe under that waterfall. Our princess must have paid the valley a visit.'

‘Baroness … she's a baroness and Austrian. That site, my friends.… That site has to be “cleaned”.'

‘Pardon?' managed Louis.

‘“Cleaned”, as I have said. The film crew, they are shooting at Lascaux but are to descend on the valley in a matter of days. Two perhaps or three. It depends on the weather and the shooting.'

‘A film crew?'

The cigarette was handed over. Deveaux couldn't wait for a match and hauled out a battered lighter with a flamethrower's torch. ‘Ah!' he said, narrowly missing his eyebrows. ‘Fucking gasoline. One has to be careful, eh? These days one has to make do in so many ways. It's desperate. I once took my eyelashes off.'

He coughed. He inhaled again and rested his back against the wall. ‘They are shooting a film, yes. A docu-drama — please don't try my patience with questions. Let them tell you themselves. I will give you the essence of it.'

Another moment passed. The rise and fall of his chest began to lessen, though God knows why, thought Kohler. That ‘tobacco' could be anything. Sweepings of manure and herbs, dried linden blossoms or carrot tops.

‘It's about a cave, a trunk of artefacts that was found in a Paris antique shop, and a woman — please don't ask me to explain how their minds work, these creative people. The film is to be called
Moment of Discovery.
She's the female lead. The boy from Paris is just an assistant on the “dig”.'

‘And the archaeologist, the prehistorian?' asked Louis quite pleasantly.

Deveaux was quick to sense trouble and eased his crotch with a massive heave. ‘These fucking trousers … ah, the crap they make these days. Always pinching in the wrong places, always splitting up the ass when you don't want them to and causing the balls to sweat.'

So much for the shortages.

‘The archaeologist, yes,' said Deveaux. ‘That one flubbed his lines the other day. He's being shot again — yes, yes, that is what they have said. Shot for being nervous, eh? Stage-struck perhaps, who's to say. The male lead in the thing. The woman, the Baroness, found the cave for him by deciphering the hieroglyphics of some abbé. The Church … must the Church always stick its nose in things?'

They waited. They did not dare to say a thing, these two from Paris Central. So, good, yes, good, let it be a lesson to them. Jean-Louis was more than an acquaintance but would not understand why the matter was very delicate, very difficult. Ah yes.

Deveaux hauled at his crotch again and let his stomach relax. ‘There are two prehistorians on the staff. Advisers, yes. One is from Paris and is French so as to give our side of the story perhaps. The other is German, a professor from Hamburg, but they are not actors. The one who flubbed his lines is the cock of those ancient times perhaps, though if you ask me, my friends, I would have split his skull long ago and dined happily on the brains and heart! These others, they are also at Lascaux, each ranting in his own way about possible damage to the cave paintings. They're purists.'

‘A film,' said Louis, throwing Kohler a worried glance.

Clouds of smoke poured from the hairy grottoes of the souspréfet's nostrils. ‘Yes. A joint production of Continentale and the Institut des Filmes Internationales de Paris. Lights, cameras and action, and slate boards to tell us which scene they are shooting. Without those boards, no one would know which end was up. At least I wouldn't.'

Kohler let Louis ask it. ‘And they want the site of the murder
cleaned?
'

‘Yes.'

‘That's not possible.'

Deveaux gave the sigh of a father whose patience has just been sorely tried. ‘Jean-Louis, it was I who had you pulled off that train. A stroke of luck, I thought. Ah, I cannot tell you how relieved I was to learn that you and the Haupsturmfuhrer were available, but,' he tossed the hand with the cigarette, ‘but I will let these feelings I have for you be set aside in honour of saving your hides. Herr Goebbels, the Reichsminister of Propaganda, has personally sunk 50,000 marks of his own money into the project.'

‘Goebbels … Ah
nom de Jésus-Christ!
' exploded Kohler. ‘I knew we should have stayed on that train. This is all your fault, Louis.'

‘It can't be his own money, can it?' hazarded the Sûreté. ‘Besides, a delay of a few days cannot matter.'

‘Perhaps you should personally ask him,' countered Deveaux. ‘Perhaps, as the Baroness von Strade has said, the Reichsminister will pay the site a little visit.'

Oh-oh … ‘A propaganda film?' bleated Kohler.

‘The dawn of prehistory.
Moment of Discovery.
'

Kohler tramped on the accelerator to cool things off. The touring car, big and heavy, shot along the narrow street and out through the Porte del Bos, to rip down the cliffside and hit the bridge across the river. Ninety … one hundred and twenty kilometres an hour … one hundred and ninety … a great set of wheels.

‘
Hermann — horses!
' cried the only passenger, hastily crossing himself.

The horses were all over the road ahead. Twenty … thirty … Rumps and tails and lonely brown dumps on the stones.…

The brakes were hit. The car slewed. The horses, on frayed tethers, bolted heavily into the surrounding fields, dragging their dealer with them.

Dust rose and settled. The smell of burning rubber was unpleasant.

‘I warned you,' seethed St-Cyr. ‘I have tried to tell you to expect the unexpected on our roads but ah no, no, the Gestapo are invincible. They know everything. They
steal
a car so as to hurry to a murder scene before everything is removed, and all but kill its only passenger.
Grâce à Dieu
, I have not soiled my trousers. Excuse me, Inspector, while I relieve the bladder.'

Kohler could hear him pissing against a rear tyre, a favourite French trick, since it gave the lie of big, proud, brave dogs in a nation defeated.

The horse-dealer, a member of the
nouveau riche
, was not so pleasant. Having recaptured two of his nags and burned the skin off both palms, he approached the car in a hurry. ‘
Imbécile! Salaud!
Did your mother have the syphilis, eh? Did she not obtain the
certificat sanitaire
before conceiving you?'

There was more. Age, some fifty-six years perhaps, did not interfere. Barnyard bootscrapings were referred to. Horse shit was furiously flung at the car.

At last the dust settled. The nags snorted and tossed their wild-eyed heads. The moon face of the dealer began to lose its colour. The dark brown eyes under that cap and thatch of grey hair, began to worry. The half-smile was crooked.