J. Janes - Sandman

‘To count. To make sure her girls didn’t cheat.’

He tried to shake the snow from himself, and she could see that he wanted desperately to warm his fingers at the stove. ‘We collect the used rubbers for those reasons, yes, of course. All the girls do, but also so that their madams can then sell them to others, to those who obtain the release of their little burden by simply fingering that of others.’

‘Pardon?’

Was it such a revelation? ‘To each appetite there is an answer. To all must be given satisfaction, even to those who cannot touch a woman because they are too afraid. Those types, they stand at the door to the courtyard behind the house. Madame, she treats them very badly. She makes them wait for hours and they do. Ah! they’re so eager, she makes them pay really high prices. Those types, they are beneath her. Well, not any more, I guess, unless there are the maisons de tolérance in hell. But she would often make them kiss her fingers, too, as she stuffed rubbers into the mouths of some of them. They enjoyed it. They loved it. They were humiliated, very ashamed of their strange desires, and she rejoiced in her hold over them as she wiped her hands on their clothes.’

‘Céline can’t have done that to those girls. The semen in those rubbers would have dried and been no good to her.’

‘Oh? And is the weather not cold? Can the cloud custard not be frozen first if … if one puts the coffee can out on one’s little balcony, or at least keeps it very, very cold by placing it in the crushed ice of the champagne bucket after first adding a handful or two of salt to the ice so as to make the water colder? Can the custard then not warm in my sister’s cloak pockets even as she finds the rubbers I have placed there for her? Like snakes; snakes through which she must then run her fingers not just in agitation, yes, but in rage, I think. A demented rage.’

Ah merde, merde , the days of the soup kitchens, the blood groupings of the semen stains, no pubic hairs … It was just not possible.

Kohler dragged off his mittens and then the gloves Louis had pinched for him at Chez Rudi’s. He warmed his hands at the stove while still keeping the beam of the torch on her knees. He let her look up at him and met those deep brown, innocent eyes with concern.

She stroked the parrot. She opened her sweater and shirt-blouse and carefully tucked the bird down her front, saying, ‘Don’t scratch like the men who have pawed me so many times and sucked my nipples. Just keep warm.

‘He’s going south like me, Inspector. I’m going to name him but have not yet decided. Perhaps you have a suggestion?’

He had no time for dreams, he had only time for Céline and that child, that child. She’d have to tell him. She’d have to keep him here as long as possible. ‘You see, Inspector, when my father took me, Céline, she got very jealous, very angry and blamed me. To her I was a little cunt in heat and awakening to it. No longer was she the favourite, no longer papa’s little schoolgirl.’

‘And now?’ he asked.

‘Now she hates me for what I do but condemns all girls of that age. To her they have the devil in their bodies just like me. To her they think of doing things they ought not. Can you imagine how it must torture her to have to teach them? It agitates her. It drives her to a frenzy, and the little bitches feed this by making fun of her. She becomes insane. She has to visit me again and again, sometimes twice in the same day. I have to listen to her. The least little thing sets her off A stolen zebra, was it?’

‘A giraffe.’

‘An elephant. A baby, but that was taken on a last dare, I think, and much later, and by then, why then, the identity of the Sandman, it had been discovered by that child. My sister. My Céline. A nun.’

‘You’re lying. You’re only trying to protect your priest.’

Even now he could not believe it of a nun. ‘Then wait and see. Find what you can. Please close the door Henri and me, we wish to be alone.’

‘Henri?’

‘Yes. I have decided to name him after my father. It’s the least I can do, but if he scratches me, I will have to kill him.’

The barn of the Norman farm was not warm-no, of course not, thought St-Cyr. Hay had been forked out for the two milch cows and the nanny goats, and he could hear them softly chewing and moving about in their stalls. There was a loft above, and from this the sound of wayward chickens, disturbed at their roosting, came to him. Others began to stir down here. He waited. He pressed his back to the wall and rubbed the muzzle of the ancient mare the Germans had not thought fit enough to send to Russia.

The chickens up there didn’t want to be disturbed. The rooster objected. When the child hissed, ‘ Shush! ’ he began in earnest to seek the ladder that must lead to the loft.

Someone else sought it, too. Unfortunately, the Sûreté did not have the use of his torch anymore. The batteries hadn’t liked the cold weather. Having taken them out, he was trying to rejuvenate them with body heat in his trouser pockets.

Ah merde , but it was dark! A button or clasp hit a rung of the ladder. After this there were only the sounds of the chickens, the cows, the goats and the wind, which found every chance to enter the building. Paris seldom saw such storms. Hundreds would freeze to death.

‘Nénette … Nénette Vernet, is that you?’ asked the nun. ‘Attend to me, child. You are in great danger and should not have left the infirmary. We would not have harmed you.’

Steps sounded above him. Bits of straw filtered down and these were caught by the wind and blown into his eyes …

‘Child, stand up. Don’t you dare hide from me. Now, come along. You must be frozen. Here, give me your hand. Why have you taken your mittens off?’

The beam of the sister’s torch flitted around up there. He climbed. He tried to reach them unnoticed. He …

‘ You did it. You killed them .’

Ah no, go carefully, he cried out inwardly to the child, carefully, please, and grasped another rung.

‘I did no such thing. It is despicable of you to think this. Those girls were hungry. I fed them, as did the other sisters. We gave them love. God’s love.’

The child must have swallowed or tried to look for a way out, but then he realized she had simply been screwing up her courage. ‘Not in the belfries of the Notre-Dame. Not there, Sister,’ she shrilled. ‘After that girl was killed, I … I found some things in the pockets of your cloak on the very same day. I did. I really did. After the murder in les Halles also.’

‘ What? ’

It was almost a scream.

The smell of the stables came to him strongly, the sound of the wind and something else, something down there at the entrance Had someone come into the barn?

‘Lots of those … those rubber things, Sister. All sticky. Really sticky.’

Ah nom de Jésus-Christ! He reached the loft. He saw them against a far corner. Crossbeams separated him from them. The nun had her back to him and seemed to tower over the child, who was scrunched against the walls. Under the light from the sister’s torch, the child’s big dark blue eyes gazed up warily from a pinched face. A fringe of jet-black hair protruded from beneath the crocheted pink-and-white tea cosy.

The cloak was of coarse black wool. It was webbed with snow. Now it all but hid the child from him. The hood was thrown back. The sister’s hair was as if hacked off with scissors. Closer … he must get closer. Someone … someone else had come into the barn …

The chickens moved about up here, complaining. The child had several eggs clutched in both hands.

‘Don’t lie to me, Nénette.’