J. Janes: Mayhem

At a place where the road pitched down through the gorges, the land sloped steadily upwards to the barren branches of the trees.

The fog was everywhere, hugging the road, putting frost on the tall, sear grasses, riming the stones and the spokes of the bicycle. Drenching the body.

Jean-Louis St-Cyr slid his hands into the pockets of his overcoat and waited. At dawn, Fontainebleau Forest gave itself entirely over to the birds, those that had not had the great good fortune to have migrated.

It was eerie and it was silent. It was cold, damp and a lot of other things. Kohler’s breath steamed impatiently and once in each breath, the Bavarian’s nasal passages would pinch and whistle with barely controlled fury.

A giant of a man with the heart and mind of a small-time hustler, the Gestapo agent stood knee-deep in bracken, looking down at the body. Was he thinking of the Russian Front, of his sons, of death, or merely of his shoes that might, quite possibly, be leaking? Sometimes one never really knew with Hermann – oh for sure, one could guess, but Hermann … He’d been a Munich detective before his transfer to Berlin, before his ascendancy to Paris. A good one too. Probably.

The Bavarian nudged the corpse with the toe of his right shoe but didn’t look up. ‘So, what about it, Louis?’

The accent was harsh, guttural, the French quite passable because Hermann, being Hermann and stubborn, had seen to it that he spoke the language. One found out so much more that way. It facilitated things – all things. Gestapo things. Especially girls.

St-Cyr chose not to answer immediately. A last leaf fell through the hush to crash into some boulders with its load of frost and scrape its way to patient rest.

Hermann took no interest in the leaf, in the beauty of its death, the curled edges, the ring of encrusting frost, not even the fact that the leaf was from a plane tree and that such trees were a rarity in this part of the Fontainebleau Forest.

Always it was blitzkrieg, blitzkrieg. December 1942, the Occupation. Now the whole of France, as of last month.

‘We shall have to see, won’t we?’ he said at last.

Accustomed to such delays, the Bavarian sucked on a tooth and snorted, ‘It’s one less Frenchman for us to worry about.’

Must he be so blatant? ‘We’ve no evidence he was involved with the Resistance, Inspector. Perhaps …’

‘Perhaps what ? Mein Gott , you French. A lonely road like this, death in the small hours? Pedalling like hell to avoid the patrols? He hit a patch of ice and went off the road.’ Kohler smashed a meaty fist into a palm. ‘That boulder settled him, Louis. That one. That one right there!’ He pointed fiercely.

Blood was frozen to the rock that had killed the boy. Blood and dark brown hairs. ‘I admit that it appears as you’ve suggested, Inspector, but the bicycle, my friend, it’s undamaged.’

So it was. Irritably Kohler dragged out a cigarette and began thumbing a lighter that just wouldn’t co-operate. ‘Please, allow me, Hermann.’

‘ Ja, ja , of course. That lousy bed last night, I didn’t sleep a wink. So, what do you really make of it?’

St-Cyr found his pipe and began the ritual of packing it. Inwardly Kohler threw up his hands in despair. Sometimes Louis took for ever! As at meals, especially lunch. Two hours if he could get them. Two!

Not a shred of tobacco was lost. Hard up on the rations again. So, that made them equal.

Tobacco was the great leveller these days. It brought out the worst in people, bought friends, information, pretty girls.

Several minutes passed in which neither of them moved from where they’d been standing. Hermann was the taller – bigger in every way. At fifty-five years of age he understood only too well the vagaries of life. He’d cock an eye at something new but beyond that, no surprise, only a stolid acceptance of human frailties. He frowned at his superiors, remaining remote from them. The bulldog jowls, sad, puffy eyelids that bagged and drooped to well-rasped cheeks and shrapnel scars, served only to emphasize the hidden thoughts behind the faded blue and often expressionless eyes. The nose was pugnacious, the lower jaw that of a storm-trooper. Hermann had come up through the ranks, but then, so had he. They were like two streams flowing around their little island of the war to commingle and proceed as one because they had to. That was the way of things these days. One couldn’t choose. The Occupation saw to that.

‘It’s my birthday,’ managed St-Cyr, sucking on the fire. ‘At seventeen minutes past the hour of 3 a.m. on 3rd December 1890,’ he waved the pipe, ‘my mother had me in the back of a carriage on the boulevard St Michel. No doubt in exactly the same place my father first had her. They were heading for the Hospital du Val Grace and he ran over a cat. Naturally, he stopped to see if the creature could be saved, but then …’

He gave the Frenchman’s fluting look and gestured to the heavens before cramming the pipe-stem back between his teeth.

Mais alors … alors … always it was, but then … then, as if some hidden whim of the Almighty had chosen to break the clouds with a fart! ‘I thought all your women had their brats at home?’

‘As now,’ went on St-Cyr, agreeably ignoring the racial slur. ‘But father … You had to know him to understand, Inspector. A lover of nature.’ He indicated the forest and then the fields that lay below them in the distance, but neglected to elaborate on the fact that the time of birth and that of the death could almost have been the same.

The furnace was going well. At fifty-two years of age, Louis was inclined to be plump, to let the dust settle on things, but to be very careful when blowing it off.

Somewhat shabby, somewhat diffident, he had the broad, bland brow, the brown ox-eyes of the French, a moustache that was thicker and wider than the Fuhrer’s and grown long before the war and thus left in defiance of it. The distant air of a muse, the heart of a poet and the hands of a … what? stormed Kohler. A fisherman, a gardener, a reader of books in winter. A chief inspector of the Surete Nationale, the Criminal Investigation Branch at number 11 rue de Saussaies.

St-Cyr had been all but alone in the building the day the Wehrmacht had marched into Paris and the Gestapo, the SD and the Abwehr into the Surete. Kohler knew Louis had been caught in the act of destroying several confidential files.

The dark brown hair was thick and brushed to the right with a careless, indifferent hand. The bushy eyebrows arched. Both men returned their gaze to the victim who lay on his stomach in the grass, arms at his sides, the hands turned outwards as a ballet dancer might if stung by a bee.

‘I’ll admit he could have been struck on the forehead,’ grumbled Kohler dispassionately.

‘Then positioned so as to make it look like an accident – although the murderer should not have placed the arms and hands like that,’ said St-Cyr, mainly giving back what they both thought.

‘Or turned the head so that it rested on a cushion of leaves.’

‘A woman?’ asked St-Cyr, tossing the question out at random.

‘Another of your “crimes of passion”, Inspector?’ snorted Kohler. The French … They’d kill each other over the silliest things. ‘Looks about twenty or so. An escaper?’ he asked.

St-Cyr shrugged. ‘If so, then why kill him?’

‘Why not?’ demanded the Bavarian with a snort. ‘He’d only have been someone’s trouble.’

‘Ah yes, of course,’ replied St-Cyr acidly. ‘The decree of this past July regarding acts of sabotage including the aiding of escaped prisoners of war, downed British or American airmen and those running from the labour gangs. Yes, it could well be because of someone’s trouble but then, why here, why a meeting in the dead of night – why the cry from the darkness, the beam of a torch perhaps, Hermann? No, my friend, this one wasn’t an escaper.’ St-Cyr crouched but still didn’t touch the body. ‘The clothing’s too good.’