Single to Paris

by Single to Paris (retail) (epub)

  ‘It helps to know you. One… respects—’

  ‘Oh’ – Adée’s murmur – ‘does one not.’

  Dénault said, ‘Fresnes is empty now. Most of them were herded into cattle-trucks. You know the police are on strike? So their prisoners were lucky. Tuesday, that was. You want the general situation, how it is here?’

  ‘If you can be bothered – don’t want to get some rest?’

  He was lighting another cigarette from the stub of that one. Assuring her then, ‘I’ll rest, don’t worry… Well – Monday, about two and a half thousand prisoners were entrained for the camps. Although we heard the SD let another couple of thousand go free in the last two, three days. Because they’re getting out themselves, would be the reason, non-combatant units all pulling out. Those prisoners – you caught your breath when I said how many – they’d be from the dungeons of Montrouge, Romainville, Vincennes, Valerian. Where incidentally they’re still shooting hostages. Valerian and Vincennes for sure, every day, if you’re within a few kilometres you hear the volleys. Of course there’s Drancy too – that swine of a commandant, Brunner, even he’s left now. He sent off a whole trainload of Jews, fifteen hundred of them – oh, a week ago – and he himself left on Wednesday with all his Gestapo guards and another fifty-one Jews. Maybe sick ones they’d intended to leave behind, someone told me. So Drancy’s empty now, gates standing open. But Thursday – day before yesterday, Saturday now – Thursday was the biggest exodus of bloody Fritzes. Every train packed, and the streets solid with their transport. I saw it from Gare de l’Est and Gare du Nord, and later on the Champs Elysées and thereabouts – chaotic absolutely, every through-road and all the boulevards jam-packed: trucks, cars, vans, ambulances, horse-artillery even. And crowds gathering around the requisitioned hotels adding to the congestion – looking for hand-outs, especially food.’

  Rosie said, ‘Traffic was heavy enough today – I mean yesterday.’

  ‘Nothing like Thursday. And to complete the picture – the surface of it anyway – that night there was a wholesale departure of collaborators and ultra-collabs. They were assembling in Rue des Pyramides – because that’s where the PPF offices are situated, and they’d organised transport, Wehrmacht cars and trucks to take the rats away in. Know what PPF is?’

  ‘Partie Populaire Française. Fascists, pro-Nazis.’

  ‘Yes. Scum. Doriot’s lot, and Darnand’s. Amongst them the intellectuals, so-called. My God, that crowd! All with their little suitcases and picnic baskets. Editors and broadcasters, scribblers of all kinds, politicians including some from Vichy. Laval left the day before, incidentally. He’d come up from Vichy and they put him in l’Hôtel Matignan. There were SS protecting them all, unfortunately, nothing we could do about it – might have been a jolly little party otherwise. Some of our lads have sacked the PPF offices since then – and the offices of La Gerbe and some others; but what a lost opportunity! You see, the Boche embassy’s been handing out German passports to all corners, in recent days.’

  ‘Have they…’

  Thinking of Jacqui. Whether Clausen might have got her a passport: as presumably he could have. Or whether he might have a wife in Germany; and if so, whether Jacqui’d know it. Dénault was saying, ‘Miliciens were busy saving their hides too, Thursday night. Truckload after truckload. What the Boches will do with them in Germany, God knows.’ He’d shifted on the bench, yawning: ‘Getting light, out there. Jeanne-Marie – are you leaving it to me to find out where your friends are being held – or were being held?’

  ‘Think you could?’

  ‘I could put some lads on to it. Without telling them too much. Nothing guaranteed, mind. Some have contacts among the Boches: although one wouldn’t want rumours reaching the wrong ears. But if we get anything – if either you or I have reason to get in touch – Adée’s ’phone here, leave a message with her? All right, Adée?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Back to Rosie. ‘You don’t have any other lead on these people? Tell me their names again?’

  ‘Guillaume Rouquet and Léonie Garnier. Those are their field names, of course. But yes, I do – didn’t want to interrupt what you’ve been telling me, that’s all. Here it is. A woman by name of Jacqueline Clermont worked for us as an informer in Rouen a year ago. I knew her then – recruited her, in fact, which is why they’ve given me this job now. She’s here in Paris shacked-up with an SD man who calls himself a sergeant but is probably something more – I can’t explain that, but his name’s Gerhardt Clausen. He has, or had, a big reputation for catching agents like me. He’s dangerous, and clever, and Jacqui’s lover. She says she’s crazy about him, it’s the real thing, all that. I visited her – in their apartment, top floor of a house in Rue de Passy – on my way here yesterday. Clausen wasn’t there. But he has charge of these two prisoners – this was reliable information received in London – and the hope is that through her I might find out where they are. She says she won’t let Clausen down, but still agreed to meet me for lunch today at a restaurant on the Ile de la Cité. In return for her help – of what kind, I haven’t told her yet – I’m offering her our protection, certification that she’s been working for us.’

  ‘To whatever extent that may influence anyone.’

  ‘I’m promising it. And if I do get her help I’d ask you to back me up on it. I may say that in Rouen she did keep her end of the bargain.’

  ‘See how it goes, then.’

  ‘Meet here tomorrow evening?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I suppose – if there’s no set time, and you wouldn’t mind waiting around. That’s an amazingly close contact you have – I’d certainly like to hear how it develops.’

  ‘Could I wait in your house, Adée?’

  ‘Yes.’ Adée nodded. ‘I’d send round to tell you he was here.’

  ‘So that’s it – for the time being. I’m more than grateful to you both.’

  Dénault spread his hands. ‘You understand I promise nothing. I’d guess you’re more likely than I am to strike lucky. I’ll do what I can, but—’

  ‘I know. But if I do get to know where they are—’

  ‘You’d want help from us then.’

  ‘Yes. Perhaps at very short notice. Like meeting you this evening, and—’

  ‘D’accord.’

  Stubbing out the cigarette, repeating, ‘D’accord.’ Adée asked him, ‘How was the meeting?’

  ‘Much as expected. The Reds repeating “Now to the Barricades!” and “No Liberation without Insurrection!” We – our leadership – insist that doing so prematurely’d cost maybe two hundred thousand lives. What do we want here – another Warsaw? This was a CNR meeting, you understand.’ Interpreting that to Rosie: ‘Conseil National de la Résistance. Includes all sorts. And the Reds admit that in the whole of Paris they have only six hundred weapons. Against sixteen thousand well-armed Boches with light tanks – and supported if they want by squadrons of Stukas from within a few minutes’ flying time of the centre. Anyway, we had our own meeting after that one. Messages have been sent to the Americans, begging them to come in before the bloodbath starts. The Reds of course don’t give a damn for that. But we’ve a trick or two up our sleeves. Although God knows, we need arms too. Mind you, there again, seems we may have found a source.’

  Pushing himself up. ‘Jeanne-Marie, you were right, I do need to snatch a couple of hours’ sleep.’

  He did have a limp. Red hair – maybe, but the light wasn’t good enough yet. Plaid shirt with a scarf at the neck, donkey-jacket. Forty-five, maybe: voice and manner suggested that sort of age. Adée locked the door behind them, Rosie left her bike where it was but brought the basket with her, and he came with them along the alley. It was only yards to Adée’s house, and his route took him that way. There was already a hum of distant traffic, but nothing moving here; they’d stopped to listen, heard not another footfall. Rosie said quietly, ‘It’s heartbreaking you’re not well armed. We’ve spent years setting up paradrops here, there and ev
erywhere. I’ve taken part myself a dozen times, seen the stuff trucked away—’

  ‘The Boches have dug up a lot of it. Informers, mostly. Plenty of them ought to be shivering in their boots right now. But others of course under torture, out of their poor minds. This your place, Adée?’

  ‘That half of it.’

  Rosie had stopped: remembering something important she’d meant to ask. Shaming in fact that it should have slipped her mind until now. ‘Georges—’

  He straightened from kissing Adée good-night. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Tell me if this rings any bell with you. When I called by to see Jacqueline—’

  ‘In Rue de Passy?’

  ‘Correct. There was a man who’d been visiting her. He had a grey Citroën Light Fifteen, and two thugs with him who’d been waiting in it. Bodyguards, could have been. He, though – tall, smartly dressed, mid-thirties maybe, and the extraordinary thing, his voice: as high-pitched as a girl’s!’

  ‘Lafont. “Monsieur Henri”, they call the swine.’

  Staring at him…

  ‘Christ. Of course!’

  He’d turned away to spit: a streak of silver across the cobbles. Shake of the head then. ‘She keeps nice company, your Mademoiselle Jacqueline.’

  Chapter 7

  Less than a kilometre from the Etoile, an alarm rang mercilessly in a darkened bedroom and a woman groaned, her voice thick with sleep, ‘Even weekends now. Really, Henri—’

  ‘You sound like a wife.’ He’d only murmured it. Adding, reaching long-armed to shut off the noise, ‘Not only the week that’s ending. A whole damned era. I think you should get out of Paris.’

  ‘Not even daylight, and I get my marching orders?’

  ‘Saving-your-life orders. Weren’t you listening to what the Standartenführer was saying last night?’ Lafont was out of the bed: long-limbed, broad-shouldered. Telling her, ‘You were at your best last night. Beautiful, amusing and – altogether a splendid evening. I congratulate you.’

  ‘And my reward is to be dismissed?’

  ‘Unless you want to – shall we say – entertain the mob. I won’t be here much longer, my people will disperse and this place will be empty. The riff-raff might even break in and smash it up – they’ve been doing so elsewhere. Why not go down to the country, stay with some of your less boring friends?’

  ‘They mightn’t want me. All joining the Resistance – or looking for Jews to shelter in their houses. But at a pinch I might: there’s certainly one door I could get a foot in…’

  He hadn’t stayed to hear it; the bathroom door had slammed. She sat up, seeing that daylight had arrived, was actually quite bright in a gap between the curtains. And there was already traffic in the streets. Could be, she thought, that he was right: she did remember that ghastly Standartenführer droning on, not exactly adding to the general gaiety… Maybe one should have got out weeks ago. Although when one had been living like a queen, despite being only a pseudo-countess – and there’d always been the hope that if it did come to the worst he’d take one with him…

  ‘Oh, come along now!’ He was back, towelling himself. ‘Rouse out some coffee, will you?’

  ‘If I must.’ Swinging her legs off the bed. Naked, as he was. In the early days – ten or twelve months ago, say – she actually had thought he’d take her with him, if ever it came to anything like this – and if she’d felt so inclined. As she would have – then. Now, the German citizenship they’d conferred on him seemed a lot less attractive. She reached for her negligee. ‘Where are you off to, anyway?’

  ‘Rue de la Pompe. They’ll be waiting for me.’

  ‘Still using that place, then.’

  ‘For the moment.’

  ‘Here, that stuff’s finished, eh?’

  Staring at her: his chin up, eyes hard. ‘What?’

  ‘I only said—’

  ‘See about the coffee, will you?’

  Shrugging, she pushed her toes into slippers, crossed to the bell-pull and gave it a tug, tightened the flimsy gown around her as she went out on to the landing. Thankful at least that the cells, former servants’ bedrooms, were empty now; she’d always had a creepy feeling about that top floor, and at having his private army of gestapists in the house. Worst of all, the use they put the cellar to. He might still be using the cells and cellar in the house next door, which he’d taken over – oh, before her time. The red-headed marquise had reigned here then and it had been on her insistence, aimed at clearing that sort of unpleasantness out of this house. As apparently it had done – for a while…

  The horse woman. She’d also persuaded him to buy the racing stables which he’d now got rid of. Horses – women – new toys never lasted long with him. Perhaps one should have understood the short-term nature of it all. But the way one had been then, and – admit it, in similar circumstances might well be again – one had dared to presume that in one’s own case it would be different, would not only endure but go from strength to strength.

  One certainly had not envisaged disaster of this magnitude. She didn’t believe he had either.

  ‘Ah, Brançion.’

  ‘Madame la comtesse, bonjour!’

  Averting his eyes. The negligee was tight around her; she was conscious of the swell of her breasts and the protuberance of nipples. So let him avert his eyes…

  ‘Breakfast in the small salon in five minutes, Brançion. Coffee and croissants. Oh, and melon.’

  ‘As madame desires.’ An anxious look then – his eyes on hers and no lower – and speaking very softly. ‘They’re worrying, madame. Certain things that have been said – last night for instance – I’m sorry, but some voices—’

  ‘Later, Brançion.’ She’d turned away. ‘See to the breakfast now.’

  She wondered where Henri would go, when he left Paris. It wasn’t the sort of question anyone in her right mind would ask him.

  * * *

  When he came out of the house, pausing on the steps to flick away a cigarette, Chauvier was polishing the car’s windscreen and Montand was brushing out the inside. Two other men dressed similarly – leather jackets, green army trousers – who’d been loafing out front, were now opening the gates. Chauvier jerking the driver’s door open and getting rid of the chamois leather, Montand holding a rear door open.

  ‘Where to, boss?’

  ‘Rue de la Pompe, first.’

  Out of this courtyard and to the left, then a right into Rue Boissière, up to Place Victor Hugo, left into the avenue of the same name. Half a kilometre, roughly – and not a word; when he didn’t speak they knew better than to speak to him – to a hairpin right turn into the upper part of Rue de la Pompe. Then it was only one block away: pausing for a gazo dustcart to putter by before nosing over and into a forecourt on that side of the road. A black van was parked there – a Renault – and an exceptionally ugly man in a fawn-coloured lightweight suit came from it to meet Lafont as he got out.

  ‘All well, Victor?’

  ‘They’re ready for you. Paul’s with ’em, Jubert boys are on guard, I’ve others in the van if they should be needed. Told ’em they could sleep it off. It was a great night in Le Chapiteau, I tell you!’

  ‘Enjoy it while you can. None of us will much longer.’ He had the Jubert brothers in sight simultaneously for a moment, one peering from the front door and the other re-entering at the side. Identical twins, and both carrying Schmeissers. He nodded to the one in the hall as they went in, asking Victor – Victor Bernin – as they passed on through, ‘Any progress, Paul say?’

  ‘Fuck-all. Ask me, boss, the guy’s dead meat or near it, we’d do better to work on her.’

  ‘I am working on her, Vic!’ His voice had shot up higher. ‘Christ, what d’you think I’m bloody doing?’

  ‘Yeah, but—’

  ‘What’s wanted here isn’t dead bodies – although you’re right, likely we’ll have one soon enough. Mind you, don’t want him dead yet, if we can help it—’

  ‘Boss – she’s seen i
t all, knows what’s coming like. When it’s her turn—’

  ‘She wouldn’t stand a tenth of what he’s taken. Wouldn’t crack, either, just curl up and die. Then we wouldn’t get whatever’s in their heads. All right, forget him – in her head.’ He’d stopped, thinking about it: with a hand on the wall, leaning on it. ‘All right, time’s passing and she’s holding out – longer’n I’d reckoned. For such a delicate little bitch—’

  ‘She’s that all right. Look, when he’s snuffed it, if by then she hasn’t—’

  ‘I’ll work on her myself then.’ Pushing himself off the wall. ‘Come on.’

  The door to the cellar was halfway along a central passage leading to the back of the house. Smallish, heavy door, winding stone stairs, candles and oil-lamps and a smell of drains. At the bottom a male figure was standing waiting for him: broad, with a wide white face under a thatch of black hair. Young – eighteen or so. Looking down at him from above, what you’d notice would be his bull-like solidity; the surprise in store, when you got down to that level, was that he was barely five feet tall.

  ‘All right, Paul?’

  Paul Clavié, Lafont’s nephew. He had a club in his hand. It might have been a hockey-stick with the curved end sawn off. Pointing it at the girl whom he’d strapped into a heavy chair, her ankles secured to its legs and her wrists and elbows tied behind its back so that her shoulders were forced back although her head hung forward, chin on her breastbone, a tangle of dark hair curtaining forehead and eyes. She could have been dead, held there only by the straps. Clavié told his uncle, ‘She spat at me.’

  Lafont like a tall crow, staring down at him. Round, fierce eyes and the jutting beak. Carrion-crow, dressed as always to the nines. ‘So?’

  A shrug, mildly challenging. ‘I slapped her. I was bringing her rations – in the cell – bitch spat at me!’

  ‘Slapped her, or hit her with that thing?’

  ‘With this.’ His bunched fist. ‘Knocked her down, but—’

  ‘She unconscious, or asleep?’

  ‘Nah. Playing possum.’