Sandman by J. Robert Janes

there.’
    He ripped the licence down and stuffed it into a pocket, thus putting her right out of business until she could get another. ‘Now look, I told you not to lie to me, so how is it that you know they left when you’ve just said you were at the public baths?’
    â€˜Because I had returned before then. It does not take an old woman hours to have a bath, only the half-hour, since one has to pay for it and one is not allowed to have company even though one might still desire such a thing now and then.’
    A tough one. ‘And the girl?’ he asked.
    Dear Jesus save her now. ‘Still in … in the room. That … that one, she has not come out. “She’s resting,” the good father said. “Resting.”’
    A priest … a black over coat … and a maker of little angels.
    Alone, St-Cyr clenched a fist. Noise from the docks filtered into the shabby room on whose plain iron bed and rumpled sheets Liline Chambert lay with fists tightly clenched on her upper chest. The woollen dress and cotton slip were hiked just above her middle, the underpants were nowhere to be seen. Her black lisle-stockinged legs were spread slackly, revealing a slash of dark brown pubic hair and a large stain. And damn Maréchal Pétain and his bigoted, hypocritical government in Vichy that allowed things like this to happen so that the youth of the country could be replaced no matter the cost.
    A squeeze-bulb syringe and nozzle long enough to penetrate the cervix lay with dirty rubber tubing on the floor beside two chipped enamel bowls of soapy, filthy water.
    The abortion had failed. Air had entered her bloodstream to block its circulation, causing instantaneous death. One moment the girl had been alive and apprehensively feeling that thing going inside her as she lay anxiously praying with her knees up and spread, her shoes still on; the next, her slender frame had jolted as she had been flung back to grip her fists and gasp and stare at the ceiling.
    Lying on a cloth, and unused, were long, pliable steel needles and a catheter in case the syringe’s douche hadn’t worked and the foetal sac had needed to be punctured and drained. Sepsis and gangrene would have been assured, a terribly painful death.
    When Hermann tapped on the door, he wasn’t allowed to enter. ‘Vernet should be forced to see this,’ grunted St-Cyr grimly. ‘Call the sous-préfet and tell him the fingerprint boys and a photographer are necessary, also the stretcher-bearers. We’ll put her on ice with the other one and let Belligueux have a go at her.’
    â€˜And Nénette Vernet?’
    Hermann was visibly shaken, but it would do no good to avoid the truth. ‘Is now without friends or parents and all alone if still alive.’
    â€˜Then I’ll put a first call in to the industrialist and we’ll have the bastard over for a little chat.’
    â€˜He can refuse to come.’
    â€˜I’ll let Old Shatter Hand do the telling.’ Messy … why must things always be so messy? Verdammt!
    Sitting with the dead was always troubling, only the more so if young. She’d been an attractive girl, Liline Chambert, not beautiful, but with that blush youth so often wears so as to successfully find a mate and reproduce the species in love and honour. A sculptress, a student … Was this why the child had had the Faber pencil case in her pocket and the tube of Mummy Brown?
    With difficulty St-Cyr found the items. The tin pencil case had seen years of use, but the child and her little friend would both have admired the picture of jousting knights on horseback and in colour. The red knight’s lance was true and strong and outlasting all battles, an A. W. Faber Castell HB from Bavaria, the firm established in 1761. The white knight’s lance had snapped in half, a not uncommon thing with cheap pencils, and now he was about to fall from his mount, stabbed right in the