J. Janes - Sandman

There was no sign of the child.

This is the way out and the way in , said Kohler to himself as he stood with his back against the wall in moon-shadow watching the lift, waiting, hoping, remembering the footprints they had found down there, those of a woman. Violette, he wondered, or Céline?

‘It’s been jammed,’ hissed Louis furiously from below. ‘Whoever did it knew the child hid out here. That person may have been waiting for her, Hermann. The child may already have been taken.’

Verdammt! Whatever footprints there were looked old and were being rapidly obliterated by the cursed snow. ‘The cemetery,’ sighed Kohler, not liking it at all. ‘The vaults, Louis. The crypts, that mausoleum where the kid bedded down.’

And wrote in the fine dust of spilled cremation ashes, Andrée, you must forgive me. Liline is also dead. I went to the place where she was and I saw them taking her out .

Steps led up to the mausoleum, but the bronze doors, with their shattered stained-glass panels, had been wired tightly shut. Kohler shone his torch inside only to find that the words the child had written had been rubbed out. ‘Debauve,’ he said. ‘A man’s handprint, Louis. I’m certain of it.’

The silk flowers still rested in another mausoleum among the broken coffins and scattered bones, but here, too, the doors had been wired tightly shut.

In every place she could have run, steps had been taken to thwart her escape. The snow hid all tracks. It was impossible to find any. It beat against the face and stung the eyes. It said, Give up. Let it be. There is nothing you can do.

While they had been at the house on the rue Chabanais, Debauve must have been searching for the child, but had he finally caught her? Had he? It was not pleasant hunting for her corpse among the rows of tombstones, some broken, others pushed over. Behind the mausoleums among scattered bushes there were places she could have hidden had she got away, places she could have been caught and killed, but she wasn’t there. And as for looking in the rest of the cemetery, there simply wasn’t time.

When they got to the tenement house on the quai du Président Paul Doumer, it was to find the door haphazardly repaired after Hermann’s splintering of it. Pounding did no good, so he broke it in again, using one good kick and the flat of his shoe.

Yvette Grégoire, the concierge, lay at the foot of the stairs to the cellars. Her false teeth had popped out when her head hit the stone floor. The faded blue eyes were bloodshot and glazed, the hairy lips split.

Hastily St-Cyr crossed himself and said, ‘Dead for several hours. Why has no one reported it?’

‘Too afraid, probably. Each waiting for someone else to speak up, all thinking that tomorrow would be best. They’ll have seen and heard nothing. An accident, eh, but what else could be expected since the stair runners are so old and torn?’

When they got to the Villa Vernet there wasn’t a sign of the child. Not in the folly, not in her room or anywhere else. Madame Vernet paced the floor, smoking cigarette after cigarette under the watchful eyes of a severe, grey-suited young woman with a pistol. Vernet brooded in his study.

There would be time enough for them later.

‘The Jardin, Louis. The children’s zoo or the puppet theatres.’

‘The cage of doves, the stables … Ah merde, merde, mon vieux , why can God not give us some sign? Has she been taken, or is she still on the run?’

God couldn’t see them. Like the bedsheet the sisters used to hide the nakedness of their girls from Him, the sudden blizzard hid virtually everything. It froze the windscreen wipers to the glass. It made the car skid. Somehow they reached the Jardin, somehow they managed to get out of the car, but would they ever be able to return to it in this, would they ever find that child?

‘She knows this place too well,’ said Louis grimly. A voyou Sister Céline had called her, a guttersnipe, a brigand of the forest.

Very quickly, and totally without intention, they became separated. Each felt at once the other wasn’t there. Each thought to call out but knew it would be quite useless.

The child, whether by design or mistake, had put things squarely on her own footing. If still free, this wearer of a tea cosy, a leaf-padded overcoat, sealskin boots and mittens would try to hide where no one could find her.

And if not free? asked St-Cyr and knew he must not ask such a question until they had found her.

A shutter banged, a large cage of wire appeared out of the blinding snow. Faltering, his torchlight shone on a signboard and, brushing the snow away, he read: OLD WORLD MONKEYS. Poor creatures. They must be frozen stiff or huddled in their little house wishing they could hibernate.

The Enchanted Garden, the Miniature Autodrome, the statue of the naturalist Daubenton, the aviary, the lions’ den-past each of these he forced himself, into the wind that brought snow and freezing cold until he thought he might just as well be in the Yukon with Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush and saw himself picking nails out of a pair of boiled boots on which he was dining.

‘ Nénette ,’ he called out at last. ‘ Nénette Vernet .’

The wind took her name and threw it away.

The aviary stank of birds, but it was warm if fetid, and, once out of the wind and snow, all Kohler could think to ask himself was who had opened the door, who had broken the lock?

There were parakeets and cockatoos, macaws, parrots, budgerigars, canaries and finches. There were violet-eared waxbills, Java sparrows, golden pheasants, peacocks, guinea fowl and one hell of a racket among the drooping rubber plants, the creepers and coconut palm forests. Aisles and aisles of cages demanded attention now that the light from his torch had passed over them to settle on one of the four or five large cast-iron stoves with pots of water simmering and coal fires banked for the night. A furnace somewhere, too, and real coal! Von Schaumburg must have okayed the supply. Tropical birds above children and old people. A sensitive men, a kind heart. A Prussian!

Violette Belanger sat on the floor beside the stove. There was a small, blue-green parrot in her lap, and this she stroked and fed bits of dried apple. Her knees were bent, her lower legs folded demurely to one side. The woollen kneesocks were pulled up, the pleated skirt of her tunic was pulled down and closely wrapped about her legs. Her shirt-blouse was done up and from somewhere she had acquired a cardigan, much worn and badly in need of mending, an overcoat, too. The shaggy mop of dark brown hair was a tangle though now dry, so she’d been in here for some time; the dark brown eyes were earnest, watchful and very conscious of him as he cautiously approached.

Her cheeks and the tip of her nose were still red from the wind and the cold, the rest of her was pale.

‘She’s out there,’ she said at last. ‘She has to punish that child-isn’t that correct? Schoolgirls shouldn’t think the things Céline thinks they do.’

‘Where’s Debauve?’

‘Where indeed? He has to find her, too, and Céline. I’m supposed to stay here. I’m to wait for him. My priest. My pimp. My lover. We’re going to Provence. We’re going to buy my little farm.’

‘He’s the Sandman, isn’t he?’

How cruel of him, how harsh. One must be soft and gentle, then. ‘The Sandman. The one who puts things into the mouths and other places of schoolgirls before he kills them. Why, please, then would he use a knitting needle, the weapon of a woman?’

‘It can’t be Céline, it can’t be you.’

Was he so lost, this giant from the Kripo, this detective? ‘Why do you think Madame Morelle made us collect the used rubbers?’