Dollmaker by J. Robert Janes Page B

should have all been used up by now. The detectives will have realized this but have said nothing of it.’
    Ah damn, what was she to do? Would they discover she had kept a carton for the Captain so that he could dole them out as he saw fit? Cigarettes for the husband of that woman and cigarettes for the Préfet.
    Crumbling the last of the cigarette to dust, she let the remaining flakes of tobacco fall into the toilet and stood a moment staring at them. The RAF had rained depth charges on the boat that last time in early November. U-297 had had a gaping hole in her bow, no deck gun – a British destroyer had rammed them in the North Atlantic some 1,327 kilometres to the south-west of Iceland and just outside the southern limit of the Greenland pack ice, but even that damage had not stopped the Captain from putting her on the bottom.
    â€˜The Totenallee ,’ she said in a whisper. ‘Death Row, that’s what they now call the final approach to Lorient.’
    There had been panic aboard. Four had been killed. One had had his head crushed to a pulp. Gas had escaped from the batteries. Its deadly hiss had been heard all the time, the air choking … Sweat had run into their eyes as they had all looked up and had hung on in the darkness waiting for the next explosion. Dear God, why must it end for them this way? Obersteuermann Baumann knew it would. No one could escape that look of his, not any more.
    She vomited. She gripped her stomach and, kneeling, threw up everything. Gasped, ‘Sweet Jesus, spare him.’
    Kohler heard her gagging. The chain was yanked and he wondered what had upset her so much. Nerves of course. It didn’t take a donkey to see she had the hots for the Captain.
    But there must be something else. The truth? he wondered.
    Préfet Kerjean withdrew into that dark, brooding silence so typical of the Breton. The Captain remained intensely aware of everything around him. His very being evoked command.
    Freisen was perturbed and, unlike the Captain, betrayed a sour disposition. He and the Captain had used the interlude to exchange a few words in confidence. None the wiser, the C.-in-C. U-boats Kernével was not happy.
    Dollmaker would go his own way as in everything else. That’s what it took to survive and he was a survivor most certainly.
    The girl waited tensely. Unable to lift her eyes from the pencil and pad, she knew the Chief Inspector was looking her over slowly and that … Ah what is it that troubles you so, Fräulein Krüger? wondered St-Cyr. Love rejected, truth denied or something you yourself have hidden? A spare key to this cell perhaps? A little something you can slip to the Captain if necessary?
    â€˜So, let us begin again,’ he said magnanimously the peacemaker. Relighting his pipe, he puffed happily away to show that there were no hard feelings and that it was all just routine.
    Kohler smiled inwardly but remained outwardly impassive. Apart from Kerjean, none of them could possibly know what Louis was really like.
    â€˜A matter of blackmail …’ began the Sûreté.
    â€˜It’s impossible. I wouldn’t have stood for it. He wouldn’t have had the guts. A shopkeeper? Le Trocquer? Most certainly not!’
    Louis tossed the hand of dismissal. ‘Good. Then let us turn to something else. The fragments of bisque you collected, Captain? Since they are the proof the Admiral wishes us to see, might we not examine them?’
    Kaestner gave him a curt nod and, digging deeply into a trouser pocket, brought out a crumpled white handkerchief and laid the ball of it before him.
    No one moved to open it, most notably himself.
    â€˜The bisque is French,’ he said at last. ‘Though it might be from a Bru doll or a Steiner, I am inclined to believe it is from a jumeau.’
    â€˜Perhaps the most successful of our dollmakers,’ breathed the Sûreté and, setting the pipe aside, reached for the handkerchief and