Clandestine by J. Robert Janes Read Free Book Online Page B

realized what those two were going to do. She then leaped between them when the door was unlocked and opened.’
    â€˜ Liebe Zeit , Louis, we’ve got ourselves a detective.’
    â€˜Hermann, we could perhaps be missing something. Let’s make allowances and overlook the indiscretions, but was there anything else, Eugène? A suitcase perhaps?’
    â€˜A handkerchief. This one. She tried to hide it under the mat. Me, I noticed a corner.’
    Smudged, trod on yet bone dry, it had obviously been given up regrettably, and when smoothed out, revealed an embroidery of tulips, daffodils, crocuses and hyacinths. ‘Perfect, Hermann. Done at the age of ten. Silk thread from the colonies. Java perhaps, but prior to this war since it’s now under the Japanese.’
    There was also a name, an Anna-Marie Vermeulen, but he wouldn’t remind Rocheleau of it, felt St-Cyr.
    â€˜And yet he would have kept that knowledge from us to satisfy the urges of his wife, Louis?’
    â€˜Hermann, again I must insist these times, they are …’
    â€˜Not the best, eh? Then maybe I should ask him why he attempted to steal not just one of those bundles of one hundred of the 5,000-franc notes, but five of them for a total of 2.5 million? Obviously he’s got someone he wants to impress but had better be careful when spending it, or was he going to stuff them all into a glass jar like most of your peasants? A man with a 2.5 million-franc jar, eh, and not just a 200-franc one or even a 1,000? Ten tins of sardines as well, two coils of smoked sausage, six half-kilos of the coffee that Évangéline of his must have a longing for like the rest of us. Two handfuls of the truffles for the omelettes those eggs would have made had he taken any. Not one but two rounds of the Brie de Meaux. Eight weeks in the curing, isn’t that right, my fine one? Me, I did sample it but only to be certain it wasn’t fake like so many that are flogged on the marché noir you French insist on having even though it’s illegal. Detectives have to do things like that and you’d better not forget it.’
    Such a storm probably wouldn’t help but it had been good of Hermann not to mention the missing bottles of wine. ‘Eugène, please return to your fire. Brew up some more of the tea. Coroner Joliot and the men who are with him will welcome it, as will we.’
    Only when he had left, did Louis point out the impression inside each of the shoes. ‘Monnier, Hermann, the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Made to measure, but definitely not to hers.’
    And taking a small, packed-down wad of newspaper from each of the toes, unfolded these and said, ‘Le Matin , but dating from 20 August of last year.’
    â€˜And with a name like a Netherlander. A submarine?’
    One without papers or with false ones.
    â€˜And no suitcase, Louis. Either she never took it with her when she went to that van, or they must have taken it back, but in their haste, forgot the shoes.’
    It was Joliot who said, ‘Both killed most probably between 1000 and 1600 or 1700 hours, Wednesday, 29 September. The one hit first on the forehead with this. There are even scraps of skin.’
    Questions … It was a night for them, thought St-Cyr from behind the wheel of the van. Pitch-dark except for the regulation slits of the headlamps, it was taking forever to get to Paris. Basically they were sticking to the N2, but Hermann, in the Citroën which had no governor, would speed up only to realize he had gone too far and that the dim red twinkling of his taillights might be necessary on an otherwise empty road. And of course they were travelling through country that had been brutally fought over during the Great War, the Germans loving to shell things so much, Laon had all but been destroyed, Soissons’s thirteenth-century cathedral having had its nave cut in half and tower obliterated.
    Villers-Cotterêts,