J. Janes - Kaleidoscope

Delphane ignored the lie. ‘But … but she has Madame Oona Van der Lynn to take care of her? Forty years of age. Tall, blonde, blue-eyed and …’

Munk let Delphane say it. ‘And a Dutch alien, Herr Kohler. An illegal immigrant.’

The bastards.

‘Are you fucking them both?’ asked Munk, breathing in so tightly his nostrils pinched. ‘If so, we can supply you with condoms. We found eighteen cases stashed among the wine bottles in the cellars of the American consulate.’

The man from the Deuxieme Bureau waited; Munk sucked in a little breath and allowed the merest vestige of a grin.

‘So, okay,’ sighed Kohler, ‘you’ve made your point. Now what seems to be the trouble besides that notebook?’

Again at a curt nod, Delphane was delegated to speak. ‘No, my friend, I have not made my point. The Sturmbannfuhrer Boemelburg has offered the Deuxieme Bureau the full co-operation of the Gestapo in this matter and I want it. I insist!’

‘It’s too early to tell you anything. If you want another look at the body, she’ll be over at the morgue just as soon as our driver can get her there.’

‘That driver of yours must be watched,’ said Munk fastidiously.

‘And where is Louis?’ asked Delphane. ‘Why is he not here with you?’

Kohler shrugged. He wasn’t used to being told he’d have to work under a Frenchman. It hurt. It was humiliating and that was exactly what Munk had had in mind.

Delphane was terse. ‘Don’t get your ass in a knot, my friend. If you wish me to do so, I will tell Gestapo Paris to keep the child from returning to her profession.’

‘She’s not a child.’

‘Then we will leave her to her own desires and get on with things.’

A buzzer was pushed. An orderly brought in a roll of maps and they moved over to a table that had been cleared.

‘The maquis,’ swore Delphane. ‘Bayonne to Marseille to Cannes, the mountains and the Italian frontier.’

‘Where they no doubt have joined up with the Italian partisans who’ve been fighting Il Duce’s Fascists since the late twenties? Come off it,’ snorted Kohler. ‘That woman had nothing to do with the Resistance.’

‘Nothing? But … but what is this?’ demanded Delphane. ‘Has Louis not told you of the Cross of Lorraine the woman was wearing under the lapel of her overcoat?’

‘ Ah merde ! You bastards …’

‘Bastards we may be, Herr Kohler, but you will find the truth for us or else.’

Again Munk had let the Deuxieme Bureau say it.

Kohler stood nervously outside the hotel finishing the cigarette he had taken from the orderly. One thing was certain. Gestapo Cannes would offer no help in solving the murder. Stores would not free up a set of wheels. Food tickets were out of the question. Even ammunition for Louis’s Lebel and his own Walther P38 was ‘unobtainable’.

Yet the place was like a wasps’ nest that had been stirred. Telephones, telexes – grey mice everywhere and full of themselves. Blonde, blue-eyed bitches from home.

And in the cellars – cellars that already were choked with loot – the beatings, the screams, the sight of Delphane and Munk hurrying down stone steps and along to a cell. A terrified shriek, a girl’s. The kid’s sister? he demanded, not liking the thought.

Memory came and gave him every detail. The corridor stacked on either side with oil paintings and tall mirrors in richly gilded antique frames. Himself in every one of the mirrors. His face that of a man on the run and ravaged by doubt and anxiety.

The girl had shrieked, ‘My mother!’ so clearly his heart had stopped. Then had come the blows, the vomit, the sound of water and of her choking and gasping for air, and of, ‘Bring her round. Immediately! We must know the reason for it.’

He had slid the iron window open a crack and had seen the body on the floor awash in vomit and excrement with Delphane standing over her. A shoe had lifted. The kick, when it had hit the ribs, had been savage.

Then the kid had rolled over with a sigh and in that instant Delphane had looked towards the door, the image of him seared on the mind for all time. Intense, yes; stung, yes, but in secret fear himself and terrified he’d be discovered doing such a thing.

They had hauled the girl up and had sat her in a chair. They had hit her several times to bring her round, then Inspector Jean-Paul Delphane had taken hold of her by the front and had ripped the shirt and shift away.

He had touched her battered, shivering cheek and had run the tip of his fingers down the curve of her broken jaw.

Kohler threw the butt down and ground it out. He was glad Louis hadn’t been there, glad his partner hadn’t seen what Delphane had done next.

Fratani was waiting by the hearse, staring emptily not towards the sea but towards the hills of home. Rheum in his dark eyes and so much tremor in the voice, he could not speak at first.

‘You’re not coming with us?’ he asked, when finally he’d taken the necessary papers.

A shake of the head would do but a touch of kindness would not be remiss. ‘She’ll sleep okay now but see that they put her on ice.’

‘The leader of the Gestapo, he … he took the longest time with her. Me, I had to draw the curtains wide for him so that the sun, it would pour over her.’

‘And Delphane, the man from Bayonne?’

‘He … he has told me that all our lives, they are in jeopardy if we do not obey.’

Like a knife, the mistral blew just as incessantly and as coldly as before. Sweeping down among the shuttered villas of the wealthy, it had long since bent the token olive trees towards the south. Yet the sky was so absolutely clear of cloud, one could see for at least a good forty kilometres and, were one up on the very heights above the city, the snow-capped Alpes-Maritimes and the Italian frontier.

‘Why not tell me what happened the day the woman was killed?’ asked Kohler, wishing he had cigarettes to offer and hating himself for having stolen the last of them from Fratani some time ago.

The hearse-driver drew himself up as a garde champetre and village elder should. ‘Because to do so is to have all the men of our village shot, Inspector.’

‘Then wait for me down the hill a bit, eh? I won’t be a minute.’

The little blue notebook was still on Munk’s desk. Frantic that he’d be discovered, Kohler tore his eyes away from that damning temptation to find the dossier Boemelburg had so kindly sent down from Paris, and to find Louis’s right underneath it. Ah merde , what was he to do?

He lifted them, and only then did he pause, for beneath the two was the dossier of Madame Anne-Marie Buemondi.

It took about three seconds for him to decide. Popping buttons on his shirt front, he stuffed the dossiers away, lifted the notebook and only paused when he saw the photograph. Paris in the fall. The Marly Horses behind, the girl in an off-white linen dress with modestly plunging open collar, wrist-watch, leather shoulder bag and wide-brimmed felt hat tilted to the left and pulled down so that the edge of the brim and the eye were all but in line.

She’d a coat folded over the hands that were clasped in front of her. The belt was wide and of linen too, so matching the dress. No jewellery at the neck, button earrings – enamelled perhaps – the hair dark and thick like the sister’s, the eyes the same, the face the same, even to the tiny mole that was on the upper cheek-bone just below the right eye. Josette-Louise Buemondi. That kid in the cellar? he cried out inwardly, knowing he’d have to look, that he couldn’t leave it. Not now; not after seeing the photo.

The cell door was wide open, the clothes were in rags, the body completely naked and crumpled on the floor among the swill. Blood seeped from her nose and battered lips.