The Girl in the Baker's Van

by Richard Savin

  There was another single knock, followed by a second and a third – then a pause. They waited, but it was quiet. The sun was getting lower on the horizon; soon the light would go.

  *

  Kasha had struggled all day with the donkey to get over the Col de la Brousse. The animal was continually fractious and obdurate; for much of the time it had to be encouraged by one of the guides who poked it in the vent of its anus with a blunt stick. It had been slow-going for two days but now the end looked like it was close.

  ‘We won’t reach Las Illas tonight,’ one of the guides told Cigale; she relayed the news to Kasha knowing he would not be pleased.

  ‘I don’t like the way the priest decided to give up and stay in Céret. I don’t trust him.’

  Cigale, who had wrapped herself in sheepskin and a thick shepherd’s cape with a wool bonnet which hung down to her shoulders, trudged through the snow beside him. ‘Well,’ she shouted from inside her cocoon, ‘if he isn’t here that’s one less to share with.’ No sooner had she said it than a voice shouted from behind them. The whole party came to a halt as two figures came running along the track towards them. At around three hundred metres one of them knelt down. There was the crack of a rifle and a bullet ricocheted off the rocks close to where Kasha was standing.

  ‘Christ!’ he shouted. ‘They’re shooting at us. Get the hell out of here!’ He gave the donkey a hefty slap across the rump. The creature shot forward and broke into a run with the guide hanging onto the head harness, pulling it along. The kneeling man fired again; it snicked a neat hole in Kasha’s coat and spun him round as it passed through the flesh on the edge of his waist. He fell and Cigale screamed. The second guide unshouldered his hunting rifle and returned a round, but it went wide. There was the rattle of a burst of machine gun fire, forcing them to take to the rocks for cover.

  Kasha pulled an automatic pistol from his pocket, then lay there waiting to see what happened next. At that range he knew the pistol would be useless and it would be ammunition wasted. They had a hunting rifle and a pistol against a submachine gun and a high velocity military carbine; the odds were not good. He stuck his head up and the rifleman took another shot, the bullet sending a shower of stone shards into his face, but he had caught a glimpse of them and the figure with the submachine gun was advancing under the covering fire, while the rifleman stayed back beyond pistol range.

  Kasha rolled away to a new place and again tried to get a look at the position. There was another burst of machine gun fire, sending sparks and stone shards flying in all directions. The guide decided he’d had enough and made a run for it. He got only a few yards when there was another burst from the submachine gun and he fell. Kasha took the chance and tried to get off a single round, but the breech jammed, leaving him naked and defenceless. He waited for the inevitable. Somewhere above him he heard a rifle shot, followed by a scream of pain and the clatter of metal bouncing on rock. There were two more shots and then silence; seconds ticked by and nothing happened. He heard the sounds of shoes running on the shale track and braced himself, but the head that came into view was Cigale. He stood up to see the man with the submachine gun lying face down, blood pouring from a hole in the side of his head. There was no sign of the rifleman. Above them on a small promontory a man in a long coat with a Catalan beret was waving. He made his way down to them. ‘My name is José,’ he said. ‘If you will follow me I will take you somewhere safe.’

  With a broad grin of relief Kasha grasped his hand and shook it vigorously. ‘What happened to the other man?’

  ‘He ran away,’ José laughed. With the toe of his boot he nudged the body that lay bleeding on the track, but it was now a corpse. He bent down and picked up the weapon the man had been firing. ‘This could be useful. He no longer has need of it.’ A short distance further on they caught up with the donkey but the guide was nowhere to be seen. As the last rays of the sun blinked on the horizon Kasha struggled up the steps of the veranda and collapsed.

  ‘I think he has lost much blood,’ José observed, ‘but not as much as the one who had this,’ and he brandished the machine gun with a flourish. ‘He will not be going to Mass on Sunday. We must get this one inside,’ he added, pointing to where Kasha was slumped in a chair.

  *

  Fifty metres from the café where Bonny and his squad sat drinking their coffee Kriminalinspector Schreiber climbed the steps of the Mairie totally ignorant of the Carlingue presence. He was ushered into a room with the flag of France draped across one wall. There was a large framed photo of Maréchal Pétain and another of the Eiffel Tower. There were two men in the room seated at a solid time-worn desk. Monsieur le Maire got up from his seat behind a desk and extended a hand, while at the same time indicating the other man who was now also standing in compliance with formalities.

  ‘I believe you are already acquainted with the good Father Guillaume, Monsieur Kriminalinspector.’

  Schreiber looked the man up and down. ‘Only third hand; we have never actually met. He has provided my department with much valuable information on the movement of escaped prisoners and Jews fleeing to Spain.’

  ‘So how can I help?’

  ‘I need four gendarmes who know the region. I intend to arrest a British spy and a fugitive prisoner in the area around Las Illas.’

  ‘That I can do,’ the Maire agreed, ‘but Les Illes …’ and here he used the French name for the village, which was right on the border and had changed hands several times over the centuries ‘… it is not an easy place to get to. You will need to go on horseback?’

  *

  There was a shout from the top of the stairs where Cigale was leaning over the bannister rail. ‘He’s come round, someone help me.’

  Evangeline ran up the staircase followed by Grainger and José. On the bed Kasha had pulled himself into a half-sitting position. He looked pale and drawn with one hand over the wound pressing a towel against it, but it was obvious from the amount of blood oozing through the material that things were not good. Cigale sat on the bed, her hand gently rubbing his shoulder as she tried to comfort him.

  ‘Let me see it. I have received some instruction in first aid.’ Evangeline took the towel from the wound, ‘This needs a doctor,’ she said. ‘I think it has opened a vein. If we can’t stop it he’ll bleed to death.’

  ‘I will go to Las Illas,’ José agreed. ‘You will need to keep watch while I am gone. I am sure the man who shot him will return – most likely with others.’

  When Evangeline came back down she found Grainger in the kitchen where he had laid out what they had as an armoury. He picked up the submachine gun that José had taken from the dead man and removed the magazine.

  ‘German,’ he muttered to himself, ‘nine millimetre.’ He removed the bullets and counted them. Evangeline came over to him and, leaning lightly on his shoulder, kissed the lobe of his ear. ‘Seventeen,’ he said, and reloaded the magazine. He pondered the rest for a minute. There was the hunting rifle of the dead guide with three rounds of ammunition, the pistol they had taken from Schreiber in Fabrezan – a miserable 7.25 calibre – no good except for very close range, and then McAndrew’s army Colt .38 – more useful – especially with the two clips he had donated. His own pistol had been emptied by Kasha. He examined the spare clip from McAndrew, then removed a bullet and examined it.

  ‘Good, it’ll fit the machine gun.’ He loaded the extra eight rounds. They would have an accurate range of two hundred yards fired from the machine gun, around twice the distance than when fired from a handgun; but what he really needed was more ammo for the hunting rifle. With that he could hit a man at a thousand yards. With that he could force them to keep their distance – but with only three rounds, what then?

  Evangeline looked at the slim choice of weapons. ‘I’ll take the Gestapo pistol,’ she said quietly. ‘I’d prefer to be able to defend myself; not so much for you to worry about.’

  Grainger picked up the small automatic and handed it to her, then wrappe
d her in his arms and kissed her. He stood back to admire her. ‘You’re a brave girl.’

  ‘Not especially – I am used to looking after myself. Will they come, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know – probably. I suppose it depends on who they are and how many they are. They could be just two robbers who’ve got wind of that gold, in which case with one of them dead the other might think twice about it.’

  There was the sound of a boot falling on the steps to the veranda. Grainger grabbed the Colt and cocked the breech. There was a knock on the door, then José’s voice. ‘The doctor won’t come,’ he said. ‘They’ve heard the firing in the village and he’s scared. He has given me this.’ He held up a brown paper bag. ‘Army stuff, cotton plugs, antiseptic ointment and morphine.’ He went up to the bedroom where Cigale sat on the edge of the bed, red-eyed with tears running down her cheeks.

  ‘Coward,’ she screamed when he told her about the doctor – as if he might hear her. Evangeline put an arm around her and moved her away from the bed. She broke a cotton plug out of its paper wrapper and smeared it with the antiseptic ointment; finding the entry point of the bullet she carefully pushed it into the hole. Kasha winced but said nothing. She instructed him to roll over onto his front and found the exit wound, plugged it and then bound a long crepe bandage firmly around his waist to keep them in place.

  ‘Keep the morphine till you really need it.’ She held up a glass vial. ‘Do you know how to use this?’

  ‘You crush the ampoule against your body and the glass breaks the skin. I know; we had them in the Polish army.’

  They took it in turns to stay up all through the night, but nothing happened and nobody came. At first light Evangeline decided they should eat something. She had spent much of the night calming a near hysterical Cigale who needed something to take her mind off Kasha.

  ‘We have to get him out of here,’ Grainger said as they ate the omelette Evangeline and Cigale had made from the last of the potatoes and onions. José nodded. ‘He can’t walk but we can use the donkey.’

  Outside they found the donkey where they had left it shut inside what had once been the garage. The beast was sitting down but it still had its burden strapped to the wooden cradle on its back. They lifted off the heavy box filled with the Napoleons, then removed the cradle. Tucked into the blanket they found another automatic pistol – 9 mm and a pack with fifty rounds of ammunition.

  ‘Now that is useful,’ Grainger grinned, stuffing the find into his coat pockets. Between them they carried the heavy box up onto the veranda and into the house.

  ‘Put it in the cellar,’ José suggested. ‘We can cover it over with some wine cases. It should be safe there.’

  *

  Further back in the valley Bonny and Edith waited; they had heard the gunfire. A figure with a rifle was running towards them, shouting. Bonny peered into the gathering gloom as the sun gave up its last rays, colouring the few shreds of cloud hanging motionless in the pale sky to a deep crimson with a fine gold edge.

  ‘It’s Marcel,’ he said as the man got closer. ‘What’s wrong?’ he shouted.

  Marcel arrived panting for breath. ‘They got Lucas,’ he blurted out through gasps for air as he tried to talk and catch his breath at the same time. ‘He’s had it; he took one right through the head. Some Catalan peasant, he came out of nowhere. I think I hit the big one, the Pole; he looked like he was wounded. I hid in the rocks and watched them go. He was walking but with difficulty.’ Bonny looked surly and disgruntled.

  ‘Sorry, boss,’ Marcel mumbled, but Bonny was in no mood to be consoled. His mind was now consumed by the fear that the bounty he knew he would receive from the Gestapo for capturing such a valuable prize could be slipping through his fingers.

  A week after Kasha had escaped, the office in Rue Lauriston had received a tip-off: their quarry was in Narbonne where he was making his arrangements to jump into Spain. If this spy got across the border that would be an end to it, and it rankled deeply that he had been in their grasp and they had been thwarted. Edith smiled; she had a personal score to settle with the Polish spy who had so nearly managed to kill her and she was glad he was not dead. She had a deep need to finish him herself and she savoured the idea that it would be a long and painful death. Secrets and rewards were of no interest to her. Revenge was gnawing in her belly like a saw-toothed rat and it needed to be fed.

  ‘Let’s move it,’ Bonny snarled. ‘It’s not far to Les Illes; we can requisition a house for the night and start looking again in the morning.’

  They reached the village as its inhabitants were preparing their evening meal and the smell of food laced the night air with tantalising aromas. A short way into the village they found what looked to be a prosperous house. Bonny pushed open a low gate, marched up to the front door and banged on it demandingly. The door opened, revealing a middle-aged man with a walrus moustache and a thick waistline. Bonny told the man they needed accommodation for the night; the man looked unhappy. Bonny pointed a pistol at the man’s over-adequate gut and the conversation changed.

  Over the evening meal and a glass of strong Spanish red wine their host revealed that he was the local doctor. All through the evening he could not take his eyes off Edith and eventually had to explain how professionally interesting she was. Bonny dismissed it; in his eyes she was just a freak, a useful tool to scare confessions out of his victims. What did interest him, however, was when the doctor let slip he had been asked to attend on a man with a gunshot wound at a house not far from the place where they were now seated eating their supper.

  *

  The sun had set and it was properly dark. Crouching in front of the hearth, Grainger poked at the last remnants of a burning log, sending a shower of sparks spiralling up the chimney. ‘We have to get him out of here,’ he told José. ‘We should make him ready. It won’t be easy getting him up on that donkey.’

  ‘We’re leaving, mademoiselle,’ José called up to Cigale to let her know that they were going to move and to get Kasha sitting upright. He went into the kitchen and unbolted the back door. ‘I’ll get the beast and bring it here.’

  José stepped out of the kitchen into the pitch black of the night. Close to the shed where the donkey was he heard the sound of movement and at first thought the animal had got out. There was a rasping, grunting sound coming from the direction of the front steps. His first thought was a wild boar was rooting around in the bushes – there were plenty of them. Then there was a cough; it was human.

  Kasha sat in a chair close to the fire; his face was drawn and pale with pain. He had resisted using the morphine but now the pain was becoming too much. Evangeline and Cigale had guided and steadied him as he precariously negotiated his descent, taking one careful step at a time. Cigale took an ampoule in one hand. ‘Here,’ she whispered, half choked with tears, ‘you have to take this now or you will pass out.’ She crushed the fragile glass tube against his forearm and waited for it to take effect. Grainger came in from the kitchen with an armful of logs for the fire. ‘We should keep him warm …’ He was cut short in mid-sentence as the front door burst open with the violence of an explosion. Edith had removed it with a single kick and it hung twisted on its hinges. She stood there, framed by the door, as the others froze, transfixed, horrified by the image that confronted them. Cigale screamed and passed out.

  For a split second Grainger just stood and gawped, his brain finding it hard to believe what his eyes were clearly showing him. Edith saw Kasha and her grotesque face twisted into a vicious grin. She moved slowly and maliciously across the threshold, advancing towards him. With her concentration on her revenge she ignored Grainger as he grabbed at the Colt which he had carelessly left resting on the mantle above the fire. A man appeared in the doorway with a rifle pointed at Grainger, who froze. In the same moment Evangeline got her hand around the butt of Schreiber’s small-calibre pistol. She fired a single shot into Edith who now turned to stare viciously at her, but seemed unaffected by it. With a mov
ement of surprising speed she cuffed the pistol out of Evangeline’s hand and sent her spinning backwards against the chimney breast where she fell like a stone to the floor.

  Outside, the bark of a rifle shot split the air, causing the man to turn. Then someone yelled, ‘Marcel, Edith!!’ Another shot punctuated the shout; Edith and the other man both turned and ran out of the house.

  ‘That must be José,’ Grainger shouted and grabbed the Colt, stuffed it in his belt and bolted to the kitchen, returning instantly with the submachine gun, pulling back the slide to arm the weapon as he ran to the door. ‘Help me,’ he called to Evangeline, who had now picked herself up off the floor. Between them they lifted the door and, pivoting it on its one good hinge, wedged it back into the frame.

  ‘Give me a hand to move the table.’ They pushed the heavy dining table up to the door and jammed it hard against it, wedging two of the legs into a rut in the stone floor, though on the monster woman’s first performance he doubted it would do more than slow down another assault. ‘Here,’ he said, handing her the Colt, ‘this’ll be more effective than that pop-gun. If she comes at you again don’t mess around – just shoot her in the face.’

  He went into the kitchen and bolted the back door. Gathering up the hunting rifle and the 9mm pistol he had found on the donkey, he went back into the room. Evangeline had taken up a defensive position on the far side of the room behind a stuffed sofa and an upturned coffee table; they offered little protection but psychologically she felt less exposed. Grainger cast a glance around the room trying to work out the best strategy. He picked a point midway between the kitchen and the salon where he could easily get a line of fire on anyone coming from either direction. He was sure they would return – sooner rather than later. There was the sound of another shot outside and he wondered if they had got the drop on José. Cigale was crouched down beside Kasha where he sat in his chair, looking slightly dazed. ‘How are you feeling?’ Grainger looked at the eyes that were struggling against the effects of the morphine. He held out the spare gun from the donkey and pushed it at Cigale. ‘Do you know how to use it?’