Single to Paris

by Single to Paris (retail) (epub)

  Stepping carefully around a big, grey-headed man’s blood-coated legs and boots. Clausen following, moving his torch-beam to the next one’s face.

  Clean face. Bruised and lacerated but no blood on it at all. Some bullet-holes in the shirt that was buttoned right up to the neck, but no blood there either. Bloodless, entirely. Rosie stooping closer – crouching, beckoning for more light…

  Derek Courtland. Field-name Guillaume Rouquet.

  Chapter 20

  She was in Clausen’s Citroen: he’d carried her to it. She’d come round briefly en route and then passed out again. The first time, she actually had fainted – when on her knees beside Courtland’s body, had simply toppled – but the second time round, while being carried had relapsed into unconsciousness and come out of that to find herself alone in the car, Clausen conferring with the infantry lieutenant in the roadway beside that other vehicle. While before that – memory was vivid and immediate – Courtland in close-up but like a wax effigy of himself, as bloodless as anything they had in Madame Tussaud’s, she kneeling beside him, the tears once started seemingly unstoppable but silent; Clausen unaware of them, telling her, ‘He died from being flogged. Probably two or three days ago. The body’s rigid as well as emptied of blood. Are you certain it is Courtland?’

  Seeing her move – having recovered consciousness again in the car – he’d come back to it, to her side, jerking the passenger door open, about to help her straighten herself up, which she could do for herself anyway. ‘Better?’

  She’d nodded. Then found her voice, and begun, ‘But now what—’

  ‘I’ll take you to Jacqui and leave you with her, then go on to rendezvous with this detachment in Rue de la Pompe. In the hope of course, that the girl—’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘No – you’re in no condition… And to go via Rue de Passy – a few minutes only, small detour – you need food, a bath, a sleep…’ He’d gone round to the other side, to get in behind the wheel, but she flopped over and held on to that left-hand door. ‘Tell him we’re going straight to Rue de la Pompe. Please. I’m all right now, I’ll manage, let’s not waste time?’

  Standing, looking in at her. ‘You are not fit, Jeanne-Marie—’

  ‘All that matters is finding Yvette. For that I am fit. Let’s go?’

  She knew she sounded hysterical. Felt it, and must have looked it – looked like nothing on earth. He’d spread his arms helplessly: turned away, started back to the lieutenant who came to meet him. Rosie squirmed back to the passenger side. Weak as a rat – sick, famished, desperate. Didn’t need to pee now: suspected she must have done that somewhere. Oh God, she had…

  All that mattered was Yvette. Léonie. Although if Rouquet – Derek – had been dead two days… Trying to think straight and not panic – or pass out again. They wouldn’t have dumped her body there. Would have counted on his going unnoticed, just one more amongst thirty-five to be scooped up and deposited – wherever, some common grave. Simply taken the opportunity to get rid of him, but wouldn’t have expected one small female corpse to be similarly overlooked.

  She might still be alive. Odds heavily against, but – might be. Scour every square foot of Rue de la bloody Pompe – failing that, Lauriston.

  ‘It is a fact’— Clausen, sliding in – ‘that without you, identification might not be positive. In the absence of Lafont and others—’

  ‘You’re assuming you’d only find her body – and that they’ll have taken off?’

  ‘Not assuming, exactly…’ Wrenching the wheel over: it was a narrow track to turn in, and the banking didn’t help, but he’d backed-up by a metre or so. The troop-carrier – troops now re-embarking – wasn’t going to find it easy either.

  Unless it was four-by-four, which it might be. Clausen finishing – ‘but with this detachment of Ritter’s – and they have guns on that vehicle—’

  ‘Wehrmacht versus Bonny-Lafont?’

  ‘If they refused to produce the girl or facilitate a search I’d have justification – yes. But one doesn’t – anticipate such…’ Reversing the wheel: almost there now, one more to-and-fro and they’d be pointing the right way. The troop-carrier was waiting for him to get clear and past it before it moved. He told her, ‘There’s tank action in progress in the south-west. Not far away at all, by the sound of it.’

  ‘Think they’re coming?’

  ‘It sounds like it. Last night it was close enough, but – ten minutes ago, this began.’ He had the car turned and moving, passing the troop-carrier with about an inch to spare. ‘Jeanne-Marie – a question that’s of great importance to me.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Jacqui. Your offer of sanctuary in England. I should explain: I couldn’t make any immediate response, despite the fact – which you may not have found obvious – that I was – amazed by the proposal.’

  ‘You managed to disguise your interest in it quite successfully, I must say.’

  ‘Seemed almost too good to believe in. While also I had to ensure I’d be able to produce them. In any case, as an officer of the SD, and you being what you are – the concept of making such a bargain—’

  ‘Now, anyway, there’s only Yvette.’

  ‘And if I find I can – and do – deliver her?’

  ‘Then it’s a deal.’

  ‘Your people would allow it?’

  ‘First thing they’d know of it is I’d have her there with me -fait accompli. But yes, they would, they’d have to.’

  He’d been watching in his rear-view mirror; shifted gear now, accelerating. ‘They’re with us. But you see – moving Jacqui to some other location in France – better than nothing – but they’re going to be hunting down collabos, you know, it won’t be a – a casual process.’

  ‘What about the idea I gave you – her having spied on you on behalf of the Resistance?’

  ‘Well – so far, so good.’ Another gear-change. ‘But a member of my staff, a Frenchman—’

  ‘Dubarque?’

  ‘No, not him. Another to whom I’ve given a great deal of responsibility, and who up to now has been loyal and outstandingly efficient. Now, you see, just about everyone’s changing attitudes and allegiances; and this fellow knows what I’m trying to do for Jacqui. Someone else had to know – unfortunately.’

  ‘And a denunciation might save his bacon?’

  ‘Exactly. There’s bound to be a lot of that sort of thing. You’ll understand, therefore, the attraction of your offer – a guarantee—’

  ‘In return for Yvette di Mellili – alive, of course.’

  ‘But if they’ve killed her—’

  ‘Then there’s no deal.’

  ‘Despite your alleged friendship with Jacqui?’

  ‘You know what I am and why I made friends with her. As it happens I do like her, but that’s – by the way. Any deal has two sides to it – as you’d be the first to insist if our positions were reversed. Even as it is, you kept me in that stinking hole for two nights and a day—’

  ‘Three nights and two days, as it happens, but—’

  ‘No. Monday was when—’

  ‘And it’s now Thursday. Go on with what you were saying?’

  ‘Thursday?’

  ‘What you were saying, Jeanne-Marie—’

  ‘Yes – but if it’s Thursday—’

  Gazing at him. Then shrugging, accepting it. ‘All right. Yes. My offer was to you, not Jacqui… You – SD – are one department of the Reich’s bloody Security, the Geheime Staatspolizei’s another, and linked closely to it is the Gestapo of Rue Lauriston. If Yvette’s dead, you’re her murderers – just as you’re one of Derek Courtland’s murderers. Expecting me to show fondness?’

  He was watching the road ahead and from time to time glancing at the rear-view mirror. They were almost at Porte-Dauphine, she realised. Her brain seemed to be working fairly normally now – apart from having apparently gone haywire date-wise – and she felt that if she’d said OK, she’d take Jacqui back t
o England with her anyway, she’d have been prejudicing chances of getting Yvette out. Clausen had to know that Jacqui’s future depended on Yvette’s.

  He’d shrugged, emerging from his own thoughts. ‘It suits you to hold me responsible for the actions of Lafont.’

  ‘You are. You were supposed to take charge of the interrogation of those two. I was surprised you didn’t raise this when you were interrogating me on Monday night. I’d admitted using Jacqui in order to get to you – right?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Didn’t it occur to you to wonder what reason I – we, SOE say – how we happened to see you – a mere sergeant, incidentally – as the key to whatever was happening to them?’

  ‘I didn’t ask you that, did I…’

  ‘Taking it for granted that anyone would see you as the kingpin?’

  ‘Touché.’ A shrug. ‘May I ask the question now?’

  ‘Carl Boemelbourg, no less, told a pederast friend of his that he was leaving you in charge. That person told another, who got the news to us. You should learn to look to the top of the heap for your Intelligence leaks, perhaps.’

  ‘Thanks for the tip.’

  ‘Tell me now. Since Boemelbourg did issue that instruction, how come it didn’t happen?’

  ‘The instruction – if he gave it – is news to me. Probably verbal and not recorded – nothing about it in the SD files that were passed to my department, which I was able to consult when you were with me. The fact is I was out of Paris – there was an investigation to be cleared up in Lyon – when those two were brought from Nancy to Avenue Foch, where initially they were held for several days.’ Pointing ahead, at the broad avenue leading to the Etoile. ‘Avenue Foch 82 to 86 – now, as I’m sure you know, defunct. Anyway the officer supervising the close-down had to move them somewhere, and made arrangements with Lafont – stressing the importance of information believed to be in their possession.’ A glance at her: ‘Information important enough to bring you here, eh?’

  ‘I doubt Léonie would have much of it in her head.’

  ‘Then why are you so desperate to find her?’

  ‘I simply want her out.’

  ‘Why would she not have this important information?’

  ‘She is – was – a pianist. Transmitting whatever messages she’s told to send, receiving what comes in. No need to memorise, even necessarily understand.’

  ‘With some, it might be like that—’

  ‘One doesn’t want it in one’s head. Unless one’s operating solo – as I was, most of the time. Was Lafont told what questions to put to them?’

  ‘There’d have been some test questions, but he was to reduce them to – a state of compliance, is a term they use for it.’

  ‘Term they use?’

  ‘All right – we.’

  ‘A state to which he evidently did not reduce Derek Courtland.’

  They were in Avenue Foch now, with the troop-carrier close behind. Clausen agreeing quietly, ‘As you say.’

  ‘Why would they have tried to hide him like that?’

  ‘I suppose – having failed in that task, and having always prided himself on – delivering the goods… But also being on the point of pulling out?’

  ‘You really do think—’

  ‘You heard the guns.’ Rearward jerk of a thumb. ‘It’s also a fact that our defences are so thin they’re practically nonexistent. All the anti-aircraft batteries from central Paris for instance have been moved out for use against tanks. In essence therefore the Bonny-Lafonts can either do a disappearing act or get ready to be strung up on lamp-posts. To them of all people their fellow-French aren’t likely to be kind.’

  * * *

  The house was in darkness and the gate across the driveway was standing open. Empty driveway, no transport in there or in the road here either. Clausen parked his Citroen short of the driveway entrance, he and Rosie watching then as the troop-carrier drew up half on the pavement in front of the house, the soldiers disembarking in a swift dark flood that melted into that lower darkness, the railed area of shrubbery. There were men still on top at the machine-guns; Rosie could see them from her wound-down window – head out in the cool dawn air, waiting for Clausen to move before she did. The machine-gunners would have a field of fire over the shrubbery, covering the front door and windows and maybe up the left-hand side there as well. There was a side door, she remembered.

  The place had an empty look about it, though. If there’d been any guard on the outside he/they had to either be lying low or to have ducked inside. This open gateway, too…

  Clausen said – with his door open, and half out – ‘You’d better stay here. I’ll send a message if anything…’

  She was out – missing the rest of that. Hadn’t felt too good at some stages along the way, but fresh air still helped. In streaky dawn light – a pale orange glow over central Paris, houses, trees and telegraph-poles jet-black against it – she saw that apart from the soldiers at those guns the street was empty. Rumble of gunfire continuing from the south-west. The soldiers who’d disembarked must have been inside the railings by this time, although she’d seen no such move; they’d be in the cover of the bushes, maybe around the sides as well. There was a pedestrian gate opposite the front door, but she thought most of them must have gone over the railings – all in one swift movement in the course of disembarking. Maybe straight over from the truck. Clausen had growled over his shoulder, ‘Stay there, anyway’, and gone in at a trot, in at the driveway and through the garden towards the house. Torch-beams showed here and there around it, and she heard a door burst open – minor explosion, a crash and the sound of splintering wood in the pervading quiet: all quiet again then, except for the background mutter of artillery. Twenty or thirty miles away? Then on her way along the front of the garden she heard not only that distant rumbling but from much nearer and more or less the opposite direction – central Paris, roughly – rifle shots. Quite a lot of it – definitely rifles, not automatic weapons, sometimes in flurries but mainly well separated: thickening then, as if that outbreak had spread rapidly elsewhere. Résistants in the streets again, she guessed. Anticipating the arrival of the Yanks? She was at the house now – where torchlight was showing at uncurtained windows. On the third floor even – within barely a minute of breaking in they seemed to be all over it.

  Probably was empty. Gestapists on the run, saving their own foul skins. But in one of those top rooms, Léonie might be. Rosie went up the steps and in by the open front door into a fairly spacious hall – doors left and right also standing open, a rising curve of staircase, wide corridor leading away towards the back – to the dining-room, she guessed, doubtless also to kitchen, scullery, larder, butler’s pantry, ironing-room, servants’ hall, so forth; but first an inner hall, with what looked like a cellar door standing open. She’d been thinking of the top floor – prisoners’ cells – also of finding a bathroom on her way up, but this one drew her, for some reason.

  Knowing what they used cellars for, of course.

  Reminiscent of 11 Rue des Saussaies: small, heavy door and stone steps leading downward. Not as foul-smelling, but not pleasant either. An ingredient in the odour – as well as the smell of lamp-oil – which she didn’t want to recognise.

  Heavy timber chair with straps fixed to its arms and a coil of rope – washing-line cord – on its seat. She leaned on the back of it for a moment, taking a few breaths while the dizziness came and went. Still with her weight on it then, but able to take notice again, looking round. Seeing that the flicking, yellowish light came from an oil-lamp on an iron bracket a few feet away at about shoulder-height. It was smoking blackly, either running out of oil or burning dirty oil or needing its wick trimmed.

  No wine-bins that she could see. But—

  Centrally, directly above a patch of dark staining on the concrete, was an iron hook in the ceiling with a few feet of cord dangling from it. Same cord as the heap of it on the chair. Blood-stained, though. And the circular dark patch
under it – she didn’t need to examine it any more closely to understand what purpose the hook had served.

  And that—

  She stooped, picked it up. A club, of sorts. Clean at this end, blood-stained where it flattened, where she realised the curved end of this former hockey-stick had been sawn off. Bludgeon, was the word for it. Taking it closer to the sputtering oil-lamp, recognising dried blood and – long, dark hairs adhering. Remembering – visualising – Léonie’s hair, the smooth, dark shine of it. She’d worn it pulled back into a pony-tail – at any rate when Rosie had stayed with her in her flat in Nancy above the hat-shop.

  ‘Mam’selle…’

  The lieutenant – Ritter – with a torch: telling her in passable French, ‘There are no prisoners here, mam’selle. It is empty, the house. But – I like to show you, please—’

  ‘Ah, Ritter.’

  Clausen, clattering down. A hard look at Rosie, who pointed at the hook, the blood-caked cord and the stained concrete under it. Watching him as he looked from there to the chair and to the bludgeon which she was still holding. She dropped it: didn’t want to impart to him her own near-certainty that Léonie was dead.

  ‘He wants to show me something, he says.’ A nod to Ritter. ‘So?’

  ‘Excuse me, Herr Major.’

  She followed him to the stairway and up it; Clausen following too, telling her, ‘Rooms on the top floor have been in use as cells. But there’s nothing to indicate – connect with – either of them. So—’

  ‘What d’you think that hook was for? Or the chair with the straps?’ Turning to face him at the top as he came up. In Rouen a year ago they’d had her strapped into a chair very much like that one: why, even the sight of it had made her head swim. Asking Clausen, ‘Want me to tell you – what your friends and colleagues must have been doing down there?’