Free Flykiller by J. Robert Janes

sorry. She’s behind the bar. I’ll leave you to it, then, shall I?’
    â€˜A clean killing?’
    â€˜Tidy, I think.’
    â€˜You going to stick around in case there’s anything else you want?’
    â€˜Of course. Prints on that dripping tap above her feet when you get to them.’
    Barbault moved the lanterns so that they wouldn’t cast his shadow on the corpse. Popping flashbulbs, he went to work. Merde , how could he be so calm? He didn’t whistle like some, didn’t sing or mutter things to himself like others. ‘A good fuck,’ he said, his voice gruff and echoing. ‘A nice cunt for the old sausage to ram, eh, Inspector? They say he never wears a rubber, that he simply tells them to wash it out!’
    â€˜I’m going to get a breath of air.’
    â€˜Don’t catch your death.’
    Jésus, merde alors!
    The skies were clear but dark. Always before dawn it got like this, and which cities and towns at home would be in ruins? Jurgen and Hans had been killed at Stalingrad – just kids, really, his sons, and why hadn’t they gone to Argentina like he’d begged them to? Gerda, the ex-wife, was at home on her father’s farm near Wasserburg but was now married to an indentured French farm labourer …
    Giselle and Oona were at the flat on the rue Suger in Paris, just around the corner from the house of Madame Chabot and Giselle’s old friends in the profession. Thank God Oona was there to keep an eye on her.
    â€˜I really do have to get them out of France before it’s too late. Louis, too, and Gabrielle, his new love, though that definitely hasn’t been consummated.’ A chanteuse, a war-widow with a ten-year-old son, a beautiful lay who was keeping it only for Louis.
    The Résistance would shoot that patriot simply because he worked with one of the Occupier and in their need for vengeance they’d make lots of similar mistakes.
    â€˜Vichy can’t last,’ he muttered as, remembering the matter to hand, he hurried back inside the Hall. ‘Marcel, make sure you get close-ups of those cigar ashes on her front and on the counter, those also at the Buvettes de la Grande Grille and Lucas. I’ll show them to you when you’re ready.’
    â€˜Cigars …?’ gasped a female voice. ‘Ah Sainte Mère , I have brought some for the Maréchal, Inspector.’
    â€˜Just who the hell are you and what do you think you’re doing in here?’
    Here … Here … came the echoes on the damp, cold air.
    â€˜Inès Charpentier … Sculptress and patcher-up of injured detectives. Is it really true that there is a sadist who rapes and then murders only virgins? I ask simply because … because I may have to work late and return to my boarding house after dark and alone.’
    Had there been a catch in her throat? ‘Your information’s a little off. She wasn’t raped and wasn’t a virgin.’
    â€˜Oh. The … the men who are clearing the snow have it wrong then. Are these really cigar ashes, Inspector? You see, the Maréchal detests cigarette smoke but apparently enjoys an occasional cigar, and my director, he … he has sent him a little gift of some Havanas, from Cuba by submarine, I think.’
    Had the kid been crying? She was standing behind the bar, with her left hand wrapped tightly around that dripping tap and the other one flat on the counter, smudging the ashes. She couldn’t stop herself from staring at the corpse, was sickened, no doubt, and likely to throw up.
    â€˜Come on,’ said Kohler gently. ‘You need what I need.’
    â€˜And the ashes?’ asked Barbault, not turning from his work.
    â€˜Find the rest of them yourself and then have her moved to the morgue.’
    The broom kept going. The man, the boy under torchlight, didn’t look up but down at the snow he was clearing from the covered walk. The jacket of his