Nothing over the other side either. Bare rock. Trees this side, rock that side. And too late to get down there and warn them. Just pray they were alert and keeping a lookout: he’d suggested to Jarl they might do so from the wheelhouse of Loen’s boat. Might have, might not. Ben had the glasses in his right hand, left arm around her – as if to support or steady her… She said, ‘They’ll hear the boat’s engine, won’t they?’
‘And what? Start running, or start shooting? Then the trawler moves in anyway. They’ll have machine-guns as well as that thing on its foc’sl. All the Ekhorn has is—’
‘I saw. Jarl showed me.’
The boat was leaving the trawler’s side now and – sure enough – heading straight in. Seven or eight men in it. They’d have automatic weapons, you could bet on that, would hardly need back-up from the trawler. Run alongside Loen’s cutter, no doubt, and from her deck… ‘It’s slowing. Your father’s boat must be in plain sight from there.’
‘The Kari’s licence is in order. They’ve only to read the number that’s painted on her, and check it on the list they’ll have with them.’
‘Doing that now maybe. Stopped, and – cox’n’s standing with glasses on her.’
Or on the Ekhorn. If, after Jarl had given them the message ‘Sailing eleven-thirty’ they’d begun taking the cam netting off; being so eager to get away, they might have.
‘Ben!’ Anna let out a squeak of excitement. ‘See?’
Of course he could – did. Better than she could, since he had the glasses. The motorboat was under way again, turning away, bubbling whitish wake curving away from its stern, helm over to starboard. To head back. Ben using imagination to make sense of it – trawler on its way up-fjord, skipper realises there’s this one place he hasn’t checked. He puts his ship about and comes back – not far, only a few thousand yards, sends his boat in, and all they see afloat is Loen’s cutter… of which the number checks, registration and licence are OK.
Anna hugged him. ‘Ben – thank God…’
‘Looked bad for a minute, didn’t it?’
‘Very. Very bad.’
She was in his arms: he’d reached to put the binoculars on the window-sill. ‘Better just make sure that thing does go back up-fjord now.’
‘It will do. If it was going westward, wouldn’t have stopped just off the headland. Feel how fast my heart’s beating, Ben?’
He accepted the invitation; and she was right, it was fairly racing. He supposed his was too, but it was more fun checking hers. Kissing again too; but remembering then, and taking his mouth off hers to ask her, ‘Better view from upstairs, you said?’
Chapter 25
Dark enough already, here in Bazoches. In the village, anyway, this narrow main street shut in between dark house-fronts, small huddled houses without as much as a candle visible in any of them, only here and there a gleam of the day’s last pinkish light in the glass of a dirty window. Streets empty too: this one was, anyway. Clausen had turned up from the main road at a crawl, following the van’s dark bulk; over the hump of a stone bridge, then the houses crowding in on both sides. Watching over Clausen’s shoulder, Rosie caught a glimpse of Fernagut’s truck as it led away to the left; more space around them then – market square, of sorts – and the van turning now: at walking pace, no more, she supposed to minimise the sound of their approach.
If they did hear the cars’ engines, would they react to it?
You wouldn’t have thought it would be noticeable. But from the outside, three engines – and the others louder than this, for sure. There was some intermittent traffic hum from the main road – a few hundred metres down there to the left, beyond a certain acreage of pasture and the river – which was the quarter in which one might see the moon rising if there was going to be one. Might well not be: that might have been the end of the old one last night. She thought it had been: remembering her first sight of it in the forecourt of Rue des Saussaies – visual memory linked to that of the absolute marvel of fresh, clean air, enjoying that despite being under the impression that one was being taken – bare-footed, on sharp gravel – to some place of execution.
Clausen braking gently. Stopping. The van ahead drawing away, merging into the semi-darkness of the lane, which at this point was overhung by trees. He pointed, and she saw it then: another large police van turning out of a track or field-entrance on the right-hand side. Clausen now reversing 5–10 metres to give it room to turn out ahead of him. About half a kilometre to go, she supposed. Gendarmes keeping the farmhouse under observation would have been deployed from that van, which would have been parked well back off the lane in that patch of woodland – perhaps hours ago. The nearest cover there’d been, she supposed; and risky enough even to have been that close, in broad daylight. If the Bonny-Lafonts had been on their toes and taking precautions, patrolling the farm’s surroundings…
Slowing again, Clausen muttered, ‘Seems we’ve arrived.’
The truck – Fernagut’s – had turned in to the left. Dark enough now for it to have looked black in doing so, hard-edged in silhouette against the sunset’s afterglow. There were no lights on any of the vehicles, of course. Rosie had seen Clausen put his Luger on the front passenger seat beside him. He was turning now – over rutted, hard-baked mud and through a gap in a low wall. There were buildings ahead and to the right: barns, cartsheds, cowsheds, whatever; and beyond, an area of what looked like neglected kitchen-garden, a higher wall at right-angles to the lane, and a cottage-sized building of which that run of wall seemed to be a part. That, or the building was very close against it. You wouldn’t have called it large – as Fernagut had said the farmhouse was – so… cottage, call it… Blanked off from sight now anyway, an open-fronted stone shed intervening. One could have branched off to the right there, across that shed’s open front, but the vans had held straight on. Similar shed or barn off to the left. But in that one – the end-wall of which they were passing now – at the last moment she’d spotted what might have been two cars closely resembling this one. Brançion had said two Citroens, one van. It had been no more than an impression – afterthought almost, quick glimpse and then imagination maybe playing a part, but if she’d seen what she thought she had – well, the Bonny-Lafonts were here for sure, had not flown this coop.
Clausen had stopped – abreast the rear left-hand corner of what she now thought of as the Citroen shed. The van ahead had stopped too and for a few seconds had been surrounded by a throng of disembarking gendarmes. One of them was at Clausen’s window suddenly: ‘Please to pull off that way.’ To the right – pointing. ‘This one has to reverse so as to block the exit, uh?’
Clausen nodded, started forward again with the wheel hard over, turning along the back of this Citroen shed. There was just room to get round, clearing the rear-end of the van. The open area ahead and to their left now, Rosie saw, was farmyard, with the other van and the truck stopped in the middle of it and the van that had been in front of them backing away now to put itself in the entrance/exit, the gap in the roadside wall. Clausen was edging his car slowly forward on a line parallel to the back of this shed: and Rosie saw the house. The 8- or 10-foot wall she’d seen, before the shed had obscured her view, ran from the lane – probably did form the back or side-wall of the cottage – and continued to the nearer corner of the farmhouse. Which was large. Set well back – couldn’t see its lower part because of the wall – with a jumble of black roof-slopes and ridges, two stacks of chimneys, windows on the upper floor reflecting the glow in the western sky.
Eyes down to the wall again: to a timber double gateway midway between the smaller building and the main house. Easily visible because it was standing open, a rectangular opening 6 feet high by 8 across. Had one turned right on the lane side of the shed with the Citroens in it one could have followed a track – driveway – that passed on the lane side and led to those doors. Could have driven in there now, even, from here: on round the other end of this shed, off cobbles then on to the drive and through
the gateway to the house.
Where Lafont would doubtless have driven, or been driven, on arrival. Deposit personnel and baggage – and prisoner? – at the house, cars then to their garaging in the shed. Presence of the two cars having become by now less speculative than an assumption. But she had not as yet seen the Renault van which Brançion had mentioned and might well be the one she and Nico had seen at the Rue de la Pompe house, and which because of the way they’d felt about the place at that time she’d come to associate with Léonie. Obvious form of transport for a prisoner, anyway.
A gendarme, bareheaded and carrying a rifle, not machine-pistol, came trotting from where she guessed he’d have parked that van in the exit to the lane. He was crossing the yard from behind them and to the left, passing between them and the other vehicles and making for the far end of a long, low building on the yard’s southern side. Milking shed – and that end of it not far from the house. Exit to pasture in fact between house and shed. He’d be covering windows and any doors in that end of the house, she supposed. Might have been wiser to stay with his van, perhaps. But another of them might have stayed there: and from where that one had now melted into the gloom he’d also be covering any approach to the truck and/or the other police van – if there was a breakout from the house, for instance. One didn’t know how many there were in the contingent from Provins: and not having seen anything much of the dispersal from vans and truck at the time of arrival, could only assume that all aspects of the house must by now be covered, with what one might call the assault group somewhere on its south-facing side, preparing to break in.
‘Taking their time about it.’
Jacqui agreed: ‘What I was just—’
A whistle – double peep, sharp and clear. Clausen grunted, ‘Unh?’ – translatable as ‘Here we go…’ Action swift and loud then: crash of timber and glass – much as it had sounded at the de la Pompe house but more of it, more than one point of entry – and shouting from the house now. A burst of fire from a machine-pistol: Rosie asked Jacqui, ‘Let me out?’ Wanting to get out on the right-hand side, where – at least to start with – she’d be out of sight from most directions including the near end of the house. She climbed over Jacqui and slid out, leaving the door for Jacqui to pull shut and running for the nearest point of deep shadow thrown by the wall. Then along it to the gateway. Crouching there, where the drive led into another yard with a grass or earth circle in its centre. Lights flickering in the house – torches. There’d been no more shooting but a lot of shouting. A single shot now – the sound had come from upstairs, she thought, and was followed by a brief snarl of Schmeisser-fire. She was edging through, upright now, holding herself close against the framework of the open door on this right-hand side, to get a look from the inside at the smaller, ancillary building – farm-worker’s cottage, or whatever.
Renault van. Black van anyway. Yes – Renault shape. Parked this side of the cottage and close to it, close in to the angle it made with the wall. So use that for cover; it was as handy as it could have been, in fact. She crept through and around the timber door itself – which made for greater exposure than she’d have liked – then was close to the wall and running.
Van, first. Bastards might be keeping her in it…
Weren’t, though. Its doors weren’t locked, and it was empty. She shut the door she’d opened and edged on round and up between it and the cottage wall, looking for a door or window – but too close, getting no general view of it – and about as tense as she’d ever been. Fleeting memory of the Manoir St Valéry, that night’s mayhem – forgetting it completely though at the sound of someone smashing through a window, timber and glass going like a bomb-burst, an almost familiar sound now – from the main house, she guessed at its far end or thereabouts. She’d pulled back into the space between van and wall, then saw a man running – in this direction, from the house – maybe from around that far corner of it. An end window maybe he’d crashed out of. Like a drunk’s or an ape’s shambling run but actually covering the ground quite fast: he’d hit the edge of the grass circle – some sort of kerb – almost gone flying, but recovering, staggering back on course…
Course for this van. Wouldn’t know the exit was blocked, naturally. She thumbed the Beretta’s safety-catch off. Sighting on him, waiting for a kill at close range: Berettas weren’t exactly target pistols. Dark stain on his face – blood from window-glass, she guessed.
He had not been making for the van: coming off the grass patch he swerved to his left, came pounding on in that weird splay-footed way and with his arms gyrating – for balance presumably – and now flung himself at a door in this cottage’s wall: bursting straight in, Rosie only seconds behind him, other boots pounding the yard’s hard surface from the direction of the house, and a shot – rifle-shot, that ricocheted off the stone wall near this door – but she was inside, and – no gestapist. Kitchen table, dresser, coal-stove: then boots crashingly loud on wooden stairs. Straight, steep, narrow stairs from inside what looked like a cupboard, familiar odour from an oil-lamp glowing under a slope of ceiling in the room they led to, and a male scream of, ‘Didn’t think I’d leave you to them, did you?’
Léonie had one wrist chained to the iron bedstead, and the man had a knife in his right hand, by the look of it was reaching with the other to grab her by the hair. She was off the bed though, on its far side. He had blood all over him, from his dive out of that window. Rosie howled, ‘Drop it and stand still!’
Should have shot him there and then: because with the knife, and that close, and his seemingly murderous intention in the first place – unless he’d come not to kill her but to get away with her – but if his intention had been to kill her and he’d moved fast—
He’d whirled to face Rosie.
‘Who the fuck—’
Now – in those few seconds – he looked as if he meant business with the knife. She’d yelled again, ‘Drop it!’ and for another second was ready to let him have it between the eyes – an intention which he’d have read, which held him with mouth open, gasping, chest heaving noisily like bellows, eyes showing a lot of white, face and head actually running with blood from gashes. The knife had fallen: both blood-stained hands lifting, palms towards her, into the path of any bullet as if they might be enough to stop it. Swaying, feet shifting for balance as on a moving deck. She had the pistol aimed at the bridge of his nose, her hand surprisingly steady, torch in the other hand at least partially blinding him, hearing herself ask Léonie – stupid question, when she thought and told about it afterwards, but asking it in English – ‘You all right, Léonie – Yvette?’
‘Do I know you?’ She was pulling back away from him as far as she could get, as the length of her arm and the chain would allow: answering the silly question then with, ‘All bruised – everywhere. Literally everywhere, I’m—’
‘He rape you?’
‘Christ, yes! Lafont gave me to him, said—’
‘Want to kill him yourself, or I do it for you?’
‘You – please, I—’
He was grinning, and shaking his head. Imbecilic. Fear – terror – disbelief – or madness? Didn’t understand English anyway, couldn’t know what was coming – not for certain anyway, but—
‘Where would you shoot him?’
‘Oh’ – pointing, with the unchained hand – ‘first shot—’
‘Yes.’ Downstairs they were crashing in through the kitchen. She knew exactly where to put the first shot. Second and third not far from it in the lower belly where one had always been told it hurt the most. Ears ringing from the whipcrack shots, further deafened by his screaming; he was doubled over, emitting shrieks, now buckling at the knees – hugging himself, on his knees and toppling over sideways just as the first of the gendarmes crashed in. Rosie put the sole of her shoe against the bloody face, pushing him over on to his back: she shot him again but this time in the forehead. Had to find the key then for the padlock on Léonie’s chain. She told the gendarmes – there were
two in the room by this time – ‘It was self-defence. He was coming at me with that knife. I fired one shot – as you see.’ Her torch-beam on the bullet-hole in his forehead: ‘That one.’
‘Yes. Beyond dispute.’ They’d both looked, and now exchanged nods and grunts of agreement. Having also seen Yvette, obviously. This one added, ‘It was precisely as you say. But now, you search for—’
‘This.’
The key. He’d had it on a string around his neck and she’d snapped it off, showed it to the gendarme as she went to Léonie. ‘My name’s Rosie. We met in Nancy. Are you going to be able to walk?’
* * *
‘His name – Bernin. Victor. Lafont called him Vic. He – Bernin – once threatened to cut off my eyelids.’
‘What a charmer.’
Léonie was hobbling, supporting herself with her hand hooked over Rosie’s shoulder, and with one gendarme hovering close behind, ready to assist but not touching her. Rosie wasn’t touching her either, leaving it to her to find what support she needed – she’d said she didn’t want any arms around her, on account of the all-over bruising. Her face was a patchwork of brown, purple, yellow from it. She was wearing what looked like a man’s nightgown – striped, straight-sided and reaching to the ground – and had said she had no idea what had been done with her clothes. Rosie had told her, ‘We’ll fix you up, don’t worry. We’ll be driving back to Paris now to a flat in Passy. Girl with me, Jacqui Clermont, lives there and has masses of clothes. They’ll be big for you but we’ll fix them well enough for getting back to England. Through here now, Léonie – I mean Yvette. Sorry, keep thinking of you as Léonie.’
‘I don’t mind being Léonie. I still think of Derek as Guillaume.’
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