J. Janes: Flykiller

Ruefully the line, which stretched alongside the waiting train, advanced one footstep: bundled-up, grey travellers in all but complete darkness, colds, coughs – sneezes – and, under a dim blue wash of light, two railed walkways below a distant signboard that read in heavy black letters on white: HALT! DEMARKATIONS-LINIE, and in very polite but much smaller French, Etes-vous en regie ? Are your papers in order?

Hermann, as usual, thought it a great joke. His partner would be scrutinized, accosted, searched, perhaps even roughed up, simply because he was French and the boys on duty hated Schweinebullen more than anything else but dared not touch their own cops!

‘Relax. It’ll go easy this time. I can tell,’ confided Kohler. ‘Just act normal and don’t get hot under the collar.’

‘It’s too cold for that. It’s snowing heavily, or hadn’t you noticed?’

Emptied out of the train from Paris, Louis wasn’t happy. It was Thursday, 4 February 1943 – 2.47 a.m. Berlin Time, 1.47 the old time. Ever since 11 November last, when the Wehrmacht had moved into the South in response to massive Allied landings in North Africa, the whole of France had been occupied, yet still there was this wait, this frontier between what had since June 1940 been the zone occupee and the zone libre. Here, too, at Moulins, some fifty-five kilometres by road to the north of Vichy, the international spa that had become the capital.

‘Did you bring your vaccination certificates?’

‘ And my Great War military demobilization, my ration card and tickets, residence card, carte d’identite , Surete ID, the letter from Gestapo Boemelburg – from your chief, not mine – authorizing the visit. My Ausweis – my laissez-passer – my last tax declaration, and yes a thousand times, my letter exempting me from three years of forced labour in your glorious Third Reich because I work in a reserved job and am considered necessary, though I cannot for the life of me understand this since no one among the higher-ups cares a fig about common crime or that hardened criminals freely walk the streets because the SS and Gestapo employ them and have given them guns!’

‘ Gut. I’m glad you’ve finally got that off your chest. Now be quiet. Leave it all to me. This one won’t understand a word of French, so don’t even try it.’

‘ Name ?’ demanded the portly Feldwebel, a grey blob with sickly blue-washed bristles under a pulled-down cap, the greatcoat collar up and a scarf knotted tightly around the throat. Leather gloves – real leather! – thumbed the crushed fistful of carefully cared-for papers.

‘St-Cyr. Surete.’

‘ Mein Herr , that is not complete,’ grunted the staff sergeant, his eyes straying from the torchlit identity card.

Nom de Jesus-Christ , must God prolong the torture? ‘Jean-Louis St-Cyr, Oberdetektiv der Surete Nationale.’

‘Age?’

‘We’ve a murder investigation in Vichy. It’s urgent we get there.’

‘It can wait.’

‘Murder never does!’

‘Easy, Louis. Just go easy.’

‘Hermann, the humiliation I am suffering after two and a half years of this sort of thing has at last frayed my nerves!’

‘ Dummkopf , just give him your age.’

‘Fifty-two.’

‘Hair?’ asked the Feldwebel, still studying the card.

‘Brown.’

‘Eyes?’

‘Brown. Nose normal. Look, mein lieber General, would I attempt to legally cross the Demarcation Line between two now fully occupied zones if my nose were that of a communist, a Gypsy, a resistant – a terrorist – or even some other Rassenverfolgte , some racially undesirable person, and I knew exactly what would happen to me if caught?’

‘Nose?’

‘Normal, but broken twice – no, three times, though years ago.’

‘He was a boxer at the police academy.’

‘Hermann, who the hell asked you to interfere?’

‘ Bitte , Herr Oberdetektiv St-Cyr. Diese Papiere sind nicht gultig .’

Not good … ‘ Ach! was sagen sie ?’ What are you saying? ‘They’re perfectly in order,’ shrilled St-Cyr.

‘Argue if you wish.’

Two corporals with unslung Schmeissers leaped to assist.

‘Hermann …’

Kohler was let through with a crash of heels, a curt salute and a, ‘Pass, Herr Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter. This one must, unfortunately, be detained.’

‘Louis, I’ll wait in the barracks.’

‘You do that. Enjoy the stove, the coffee and outlawed croissants but ask for real jam not that crap we French have had to become accustomed to!’

Oh-oh. ‘Louis, I’ll go with you. I think that’s what he wants.’

‘ Gut! Mein Partner finally realizes what is required of him!’

‘I knew it all the time.’

‘You didn’t. You were simply enjoying my predicament!’

‘Then you tell me who those three are who’ve been waiting all this time for a quiet word?’

They were standing outside the barracks, standing side by side like a little row of increasingly broad-shouldered, overcoated and fedora-ed set of steps. ‘Bousquet is the middle one. The others I don’t recognize.’

‘The shorter, thinner one will reluctantly tell us who he is; the taller, bigger one will wish to remain nameless.’

French, then, and Gestapo. Occupied and Occupier, with the Prefet of France as the cement between them.

‘Things must be serious,’ confided Kohler.

‘Aren’t they always?’

Hermann had never met Rene Bousquet, but then the partnership didn’t move in exactly the same circles. ‘Monsieur le Secretaire General,’ said St-Cyr, convivially swallowing pride and extending a hand, but with a crushing lump in the throat, for this one had already become a legend.

‘Chief Inspector, and Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter Kohler, it’s good of you to have come on such short notice.’

‘And of you to have waited out here half the night,’ countered Kohler in French.

These two had a reputation. ‘We’ve been warm and you haven’t,’ chuckled Bousquet. ‘But, please, we must still stamp the feet until your suitcases have been cleared through customs. No currency you’ve agreed to pass on for friends in the north, eh?’ he quipped. ‘No letters to post?’

The pre-printed postcards, with their word gaps to fill in and words to cross out or use, were still mandatory.

‘Not even a train novel,’ snorted Kohler. ‘No British detective novels or spy thrillers. Not even any chicory. No time to get them, eh, Louis?’

A huge, illicit trade in Belgian chicory existed on the marche noir , the black market. The number one coffee substitute and better than cash! ‘Just a kilo of dried horse chestnuts,’ offered St-Cyr drolly. ‘For personal use – it’s an old Russian remedy for aching joints, Secretaire. You boil them until soft, then mash them up before spreading the poultice on a towel and wrapping the inflicted joint. My left knee. An old wound from the Great War.’

Horse chestnuts! St-Cyr was known to have a White Russian girlfriend in Paris, a very popular chanteuse, Gabrielle Arcuri, hence the remedy! ‘Then perhaps you’ll have time for the thermal baths.’

‘Are they still open?’

‘A select few.’

Cigarettes were offered and accepted and why not, wondered Kohler, with tobacco in such short supply, and certainly Bousquet didn’t know it wasn’t Louis’s left knee but that of his partner! Only when the flame of a decently fuelled lighter was extended did the Secretaire confide, ‘Monsieur de Fleury, Inspecteur des Finances, felt it might be useful for him to join us, since the latest victim was his mistress.’