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Francs-Tireurs who tried to stop our train, or simply think, as others must, that they might be out there in those hills?’
    â€˜Helping deserters to cross over?’
    That, too, was a good question.
    Karneval , thought Kohler. A travelling fair with games, sideshows, rides and other forms of amusement. Normally run as a commercial enterprise, occasionally held by charitable groups as a way of raising funds.
    Rasche would give them no peace. Relegated to looking after Arbeitslagern , long past retirement and still a colonel? It didn’t bear thinking about.
    One hundred and twenty thousand had been expelled from Alsace in 1940; 500,000 from Lorraine—all those who had wanted to keep their French citizenship and lose their property. Only those whose families had been there before 1918 were to be considered citizens of the Greater Reich. A matter of efficiency to Berlin, one of easing assimilation and purifying the remaining stock, and then, in August of last year, introducing conscription.
    Frau Oberkircher, who had grown silent at thoughts of the frontier, had probably just been caught up in things like so many others, but had bought herself a copy of today’s Völki­scher Beobachter , the Führer’s paper, thinking its presence, along with that of two detectives, might just help.
    Excusing himself, Louis reached across the woman and opened a fist, revealing some chestnuts. ‘There are only a few left, Hermann. Don’t forget to use your pocketknife. We don’t want to have to visit a dentist.’
    â€˜ Ach , we’re almost in the Reich. Things will be different. There’ll be anaesthetic. Cold, boiled, dried chestnuts,’ he said in Deutsch to the woman. ‘A little something for the road his girlfriend pressed upon him in Paris as we caught the train out.’
    His girlfriend, Gabrielle Arcuri, a chanteuse.
    â€˜There’s been no heavy breathing yet, from that love affair,’ confided Kohler, widening the woman’s eyes.
    â€˜Shave it, Hermann,’ said St-Cyr in French, indicating the chestnut. ‘Don’t cut yourself.’
    â€˜We’re floaters,’said Kohler to their travelling companion. ‘We drift from murder to arson to missing persons, fraud and bank robberies and live in the never-never land of shadows.’
    Chestnut shavings were eaten. ‘I gather beechnuts in the autumn and press a lovely oil from them which I heat with onions and salt for the potatoes,’ said Claudette. ‘It’s every bit as good as butter—better, I think.’
    Certainly there were so few potatoes available in France, she shouldn’t have said it, but Louis let it pass. Louis knew the woman was bringing memories back to this partner of his. At the frontier, he took the heaviest of the woman’s suitcases which was opened and thoroughly searched, as he’d known it would be. At Kolmar, now spelled with a K , they saw her into a horse-drawn sleigh, a taxi whose mare was far beyond the needs of the Russian Front and just as aged as the few the Occupier­ had left in France.
    Giving them a wave, her heart filled with relief and gratitude, Claudette looked back to see them standing in the Bahnhofstrasse, formerly the rue de la Gare, two very different men wondering what the future might bring.
    â€˜ Amis ,’ she said, as if it were a miracle, ‘but even les très amis must doubt one another now.’
    It was curious that they each remembered where the police station was but that neither spoke of it, thought St-Cyr. Two charcoal-gas-powered lorries reminded one of Occupied Paris, their fire-boxes up front or behind and gas tanks on the roof. Long queues stood outside the shops, just as at home. There were bicycles, bicycle taxis and few, if any, privately operated cars. Here, too, people simply went on foot, but also there were fewer of them. Perhaps a third less than usual, so a population now in Kolmar of about