J. Janes - Stonekiller

No one was inclined to effort. The meal he had not partaken of had been too large, the wine excellent, the cognac superb.

Dreamily the Baron Willi von Strade, age sixty if a day, watched his actress-wife of thirty-five hold in close and serious discussion her latest lover, a boy of twenty, one Gerald ‘Toto’ Lemieux of Paris, on contract to the Institut des Filmes Internationales. Did the former boot-black have promise? Was she planning his future or merely going over a minor scene to save him from a life of shining shoes or waiting on tables?

Lemieux was handsome, straight and tall, but no match for the Baron who could, Kohler surmised, simultaneously pluck the eyes and cock from a cobra unharmed. Verdammt , what was he to make of them?

Franz Oelmann of the Paris Propaganda Staffel was bemused by the little tete-a-tete and the Baron’s apparent complaisance. Perhaps he knew what went on between the Baron’s sheets, perhaps he even watched the fun. Stamped with that blue-eyed, closely trimmed blond print of the Master Race, he would no doubt carry double duty, working both for Goebbels and for Heinrich Himmler. Frankly, he stank of the SS and that only made one uncomfortable since von Strade and his wife would be certain to know of it while saying nothing and indicating absolute innocence of even such a thought.

Sous-prefet Odilon Deveaux, his chair tilted well back against the wall, propped by a foot that was jammed against a stone pillar, dozed as he should with half an eye open.

Only Mayor Pialat seemed anxious. Flustered – florid from too much wine and foie gras – he continually stole little glances at his pocket-watch and muttered about the urgency of things to himself. His pigeons were gone and might now have been plucked and eaten, but he could not leave. After all, the visitors were paying guests and the assistant chief of police was among them. Poor Pialat mopped his brow and wiped his lips, held up the flat of a hand at the refill Kohler offered, and said, ‘Ah no. No, merci , monsieur. A splendid meal. Magnificent. Exactly as in the years before everything was taken from us.’

Oelmann and the Baron let him say it unchallenged. Embarrassed at the stupidity of his tongue, Pialat tried to tuck the watch away. He couldn’t understand more than three words of German. Exhausted from smiling and nodding, he again retreated into worry. With watery large brown eyes he searched the skies above the line of distant trees until, at last, Deveaux took pity on him to smile reassuringly and shrug as if to say, Les Allemands , my friend, we can do nothing but await their pleasure.

But all the time things had been going on in the Baron’s cranium beneath the immaculately brushed grey locks whose growing bald spot shone. As if on cue, he spoke. ‘What will it take, Herr Deveaux? 25,000 each to get them off our backs?’ The cops, the two detectives.

‘Marks or francs?’ asked Franz Oelmann.

‘Marks, of course. Reichskassenscheine , Herr Kohler, because that’s the way it has to be.’

And they can’t be sent home but must be spent in the occupied country. ‘This is still the Free Zone, isn’t it?’ said the sous-prefet. ‘I merely ask so as to be aware of things.’

The Baron overlooked the slight. ‘Even so, at twenty to one, that is still 500,000 francs, a substantial sum but worth it.’

‘But,’ sighed Deveaux, ‘Herr Kohler is subordinate to Gestapo Boemelburg in Paris who is, himself, subordinate to Gestapo Mueller in Berlin, is this not so? Correct me, please, Baron. If Herr Boemelburg insists, as he has by telephone this morning, that his two detectives continue their investigation with the utmost urgency, who are we to question such as him?’

‘We need the woman’s house,’ said Franz Oelmann flatly. ‘It is crucial to the story. The trunk will be taken there and Marina will find it.’

‘The Baroness. … Ah yes, of course,’ enthused Deveaux expansively, ‘but let our two detectives from Paris Central first examine the contents of the house. Letters, papers, little things – there may be something that will tell them where to look for the one who did the killing.’

Verdammt , the insolence of the French! ‘It’s someone local,’ snapped Oelmann. ‘A voyeur. He will have followed her, seen her bathe – watched her – good Gott im Himmel , idiot, use your brains. Excited by her nakedness, he went crazy and attacked her. Surely you have dossiers on all such types? You do, don’t you?’

Deveaux said nothing. He was like a man who quite willingly would give his worm to the fish who had stolen it, knowing well that little fish would soon be eaten by another.

Kohler thought he’d best say something. ‘That’s interesting. A voyeur?’

The Baroness and her Toto had disappeared behind a stone wall.

‘Look, this is serious,’ insisted Oelmann. ‘We have a very tight schedule. Shooting at Lascaux will be done in a day at most. Then it’s upriver to the house of that woman to find the trunk of artefacts and the diary of the abbe. Then we’re on location at the Discovery Cave, damn it, for whatever it takes.’

Kohler refilled the Propaganda Staffel’s glass and nodded for him to continue. The Baron let him and Oelmann, irritably taking out his cigarette case, lit up to decide how best to proceed. ‘Look, it’s unfortunate the woman was murdered but we can’t let it interfere. Moment of Discovery is to be previewed by the Reichsminister Goebbels in Berlin on the 15th of November. The Fuhrer is to see it on the 5th of December at Berchtesgaden, after which it will be shown simultaneously in eighteen cities. Koln, Diisseldorf, Munich, Essen.… It’s crucial to the war effort that the people see it. Here, too, in France as well.’

He really meant it. He believed, as so many of the Nazis did, in the invincibility of the Reich and in their mission. ‘We’ll need transport,’ offered Kohler. ‘Louis and me, to check out the victim’s house tomorrow. Have the trunk there. We’ll want to take a look at it. Oh by the way, how did you come by it?’

Von Strade decided to intervene. ‘An antique shop in Paris last spring. An archaeologist, one of their leading prehistorians came upon it. We’ve hired him as an adviser and script consultant but have, of course, brought in our own expert to verify both the contents of the trunk and the cave. Make no mistake, we’re on to something with this.’

‘The very dawn of history,’ offered the sous-prefet.

‘And in our very own cave,’ said Pialat. ‘Who would have thought it possible.’

Canny suspicion, awe and pride were mingled so well in the voices of the two Frenchmen only Kohler noted it and rejoiced again in the French. Verdammt but they always surprised and amused, even if they were often troublesome.

A hand fell lightly on his shoulder and he felt the softly perfumed caress of fingers in the short hairs behind his left ear. ‘I play the part of the Frenchwoman who is ignorant of all these things, Herr Kohler, but whose very psyche is awakened by the Herr Dr Professor of our film who sees, as only the expert prehistorian can, the true meaning of what she has stumbled upon in the mouldy trunk of a long dead monk.’

The Baron gave her a brief smile of encouragement. Rather than use a meaty forefinger to extricate a few drunken fruit flies from his glass, he swished the cognac around and tossed it out.

More than fifty years of patient history hit the ground. Any sensible Frenchman would have downed it with pleasure. Deveaux wore the pained expression of the wounded who could say nothing. Pialat was so flabbergasted, he could not pull his gaze from the stained cobblestones.

The glass was refilled by Franz Oelmann. The fingertips continued to curl the hairs at the back of Kohler’s head. ‘You smell nice,’ he grinned. The Baroness pressed a hip against him and her sea-green eyes came down to look more closely into the faded blue depths of his. The thick, soft mass of strawberry blonde hair floated all around him. Her breath was warm.