‘I suppose I could deliver those papers of yours,’ he had said. ‘Where did you say she was staying?’
Glad to be off the stuffy train at last, McGregor crossed the main road in the direction of rue Lentonnet. He paused as a bus passed and he met a female passenger’s eyes for an instant as it speeded south towards the city. The evening air was fresh, and passing one or two bistros he realised he was hungry. The interiors glowed orange and smartly dressed waiters delivered appetising plates to the tables. There was a smell of roasting meat on the air. However, casting an eye over the menus on display, the superintendent realised he had no idea what was on offer. What was agneau, he wondered, and moules? The French language classes at Corstorphine Primary hadn’t covered those. Two men stood smoking in a doorway, their conversation sounding like a babble. It had been a long time since Mademoiselle Keltie had put him through his paces in the schoolroom, and even then French conversation had dealt mostly with how to buy tickets and discuss the weather. The two sentences he’d hazarded in front of Vesta were the only ones he could remember with much clarity. Now that he listened to French being spoken by, well, the French, the language was faster than he recalled – a rough and complex jumble of indecipherable words.
Coming to a halt in front of the Hôtel Rambeau, McGregor wondered if Mirabelle was inside, and if she was, whether she would be pleased to see him. Through the window he could see an old man settled at the reception desk, reading a paper and smoking a pipe. He paused, surprised to find himself nervous as he turned the handle and stepped inside.
‘Bonsoir, monsieur.’ The man looked up.
McGregor was instantly tongue-tied. ‘Un room,’ he managed to get out. ‘I am looking for my friend. An amie, Mirabelle Bevan.’
The old man squinted. He removed his glasses and said something incomprehensible.
‘Mirabelle Bevan,’ McGregor repeated. ‘Ici?’
The man nodded and said something incomprehensible again. McGregor wondered if it was the same thing he’d said before or if it was something different. In either case, the old fellow had at least nodded, which indicated that he might be in the right place.
‘All right.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Ou est Mirabelle Bevan?’
The man shrugged and said something that McGregor suspected was about women in general. He motioned towards the rack of room keys. McGregor checked his watch. It was six o’clock.
‘À quelle heure?’ he asked, getting into the swing of things.
The old man laughed. McGregor felt deflated. He pulled out the francs he’d exchanged at Dover and pointed towards the remaining keys.
‘Pour moi?’ he tried.
The old man took down a key, handed it over and efficiently removed a note from between McGregor’s fingers. He handed over his pen and motioned for McGregor to sign the register. Then he sounded out the strange name.
‘McGregor.’
‘Je suis Écossais.’
‘Ah. Glasgow.’ The old man grinned.
‘Oui.’ McGregor did not correct him. Instead he tried to procure a drink. ‘Whisky?’
This was an internationally recognisable term. The old fellow came out from the reception desk and led the superintendent into a room that was laid ready for breakfast. Disappearing into the back, he returned a few seconds later with a short glass of amber liquid.
‘Et voilà, monsieur,’ he said.
McGregor took a sniff. It didn’t smell too bad. He motioned into the hallway and up the stairs.
‘I will go to my room,’ he said slowly and loudly. ‘I will wait for her.’
Mirabelle peered onto the street from the front door of the house in the 8th arrondissement. She couldn’t make out anyone suspicious along the pavement. An old woman walked a dachshund on a lead, dawdling to match her pace to the dog’s tiny legs. Occasionally a car drove past. Her heart pounding, she stepped out and walked towards the house where she’d been held. The old boots felt heavy and loose. They were well made, but it was like walking with her feet encased in boxes.
Above her head the lights were switched off on the first two floors, but further up the windows were lit. She stepped back to gaze up at the skylight she’d escaped through. It had seemed higher from above than it did from the street. At the doorstep a row of bells was unmarked by names. Anyone visiting this house would have to know already which bell to ring. Mirabelle walked as unobtrusively as she could towards the end of the road, noting that she had been held on the rue de Courcelles. It was an address to be avoided in future.
She turned in the opposite direction to the elderly dogwalker just in case and strode past some chic boutiques. Tomorrow she’d buy new shoes, and in the meantime there was nothing to be gained by returning to Christine Moreau’s studio or seeking out anyone who might help at the American Embassy. Christine knew she was being watched, and if she was working for the Americans they must know too. Mirabelle contemplated a return to von der Grün’s house on the rue de Siam but that, surely, would be the first place her captors would put under surveillance when they realised she had gone. Reporting to the British Embassy would almost certainly result in a rap on the knuckles and being sent home on the first available train. The British would want any information she uncovered, but as soon as they had it they would certainly view her as a loose cannon, and a loose cannon was never welcome.
Mirabelle tried to think what Jack would do in this situation. She envisioned him, papers splayed across the desktop in front of him, his hands clasped together as he thought. When he was struggling with a problem a deep furrow appeared between his eyebrows. It was impossible to know how long she had been followed, she reasoned. So the first thing she must do was move and keep moving and not go back to anywhere she might already have been seen. She stopped at a phone box and dialled the number of the Hôtel Rambeau. The bell rang several times before anyone answered.
‘Hello,’ she said in rapid French. ‘It’s Mirabelle Bevan. I’ve been called home suddenly. Will you ship my case, please? I have to leave at once. You can send it to the left luggage office at Victoria – I’ll pick it up from there.’
The old man sounded uncertain. ‘But your husband has arrived,’ he said.
Mirabelle’s heart almost stopped. ‘Mon mari?’ she said, a vision of the man in the Mackintosh looming in her mind’s eye.
‘Yes. Monsieur McGregor.’
If the old man was suspicious of what must look like a romantic assignation, his tone didn’t betray it. Mirabelle’s eyes darted. It was a relief not to feel alone, she realised, but she was mystified as to why McGregor was here and worried that he might be in danger.
‘McGregor? You’re sure?’ she checked. ‘No other man?’
The old man stifled a laugh. ‘How many men are you expecting, madame?’
Mirabelle ignored that. ‘Put him on, would you?’
‘A moment.’
It took longer than that. Mirabelle shifted inside the phone box as she waited. The Parisian streets were glossy with rain and all but deserted. It was Sunday, after all. On the corner two teenage boys burst out of a bar and paced down the street discussing music loudly. A taxi drew up and the driver pulled out a copy of Le Monde to read as he waited for his fare. Mirabelle wondered how much good Christine Moreau had done over the years. That was the difficulty with covert operations – sometimes it was only years later that you realised what the operation had achieved, and often the people involved never knew. When you were a small cog in a larger machine, the outcome was beyond you. She wondered what information Christine was handling and how on earth the woman was getting it in and out. She had foxed the Russians, and that of itself was admirable.
There was a rustling sound at the other end of the line.
‘Hello?’ McGregor’s voice brought her attention to the matter in hand.
‘Superintendent,’ Mirabelle greeted him. ‘It really is you. Are you alone?’
‘Yes.’ He sounded quite proud of himself. ‘Vesta sent me with some pa
pers she wanted you to have. She dug them up in the library or the records office or something, and wasn’t sure about posting them.’
‘What do they say?’
‘I have no idea. They’re upstairs in my case. In an envelope.’
Mirabelle allowed herself a smile. McGregor was about as far from a covert operative as one might hope to get. It clearly hadn’t occurred to him to open the envelope and see what was inside.
‘Are you hungry? Can I take you for dinner?’ he continued.
Mirabelle decided not to explain where she had been or what she’d been up to. She’d have to meet him away from the Hôtel Rambeau in any case – it might as well be at a restaurant, though not everywhere would be open on a Sunday night.
‘There’s a bistro near the Louvre,’ she said. ‘It’s along the colonnade at the Palais Royal. There’s an enclosed courtyard there. A sort of park.’
‘Right you are.’ McGregor’s voice sounded uncertain.
‘You’ll need to take a taxi,’ Mirabelle advised him. ‘Check you’re not being followed. Do you know how to do that?’
McGregor grunted in the affirmative.
‘Get the cab to drop you at the Palais Royal. We’ll meet at the Bistro Florentine. I’ll be waiting.’
Chapter 23
Let food be your medicine.
Mirabelle had to admit the location was romantic. The courtyard was flanked by a wide sandy gravel path round a long lawn which was lit by old-fashioned wrought-iron lamps that cast a diffuse honey-coloured light over it. A fountain rose at the centre and a couple of statues punctuated the grass on either side. Lines of chestnut trees, devoid of their leaves at this time of year, must provide welcome shade in the summer. A long colonnade enclosed the courtyard and running along it there were little cafés and grocery shops that served the apartments above, though most were dark-windowed in the evening. On the side that opened towards the Louvre the shops sold souvenirs and antiquities. This was where Mirabelle entered, slipping past the displays of fossils, unframed miniatures of Napoleon and postcards of the Mona Lisa. The courtyard would be an easy place to spot anyone following McGregor. The structure made it difficult to hide – there was nowhere to get lost in the ordered layout. If you walked in, you could be seen as soon as you moved past the line of trees.
While much of Paris seemed deserted this Sunday evening, the courtyard was relatively busy. Lights shone from the upper floors. As Mirabelle arrived, she could make out residents moving in the bright rooms – serving dinner, preparing clothes for the following day, listening to the radio or simply reading. An elegant woman in a long chocolate-brown coat and a fur hat overtook Mirabelle and tripped into one of the passageways that led to the apartments. Mirabelle eyed the woman’s high heels enviously. Perhaps the riding boots would put paid to the superintendent’s romantic ideas once and for all, she thought sadly. It was strange, now she came to think on it: the truth was that she didn’t want McGregor and yet she didn’t want to give him up either. Paris provided shelter from such decisions. Brighton seemed so far across the Channel it was almost a dream.
The Bistro Florentine was lit mostly by candles and heated by means of an open fireplace beside which logs were neatly stacked. Flames flickered in the grate as a dapper waiter showed Mirabelle to a table for two by the window, which was partly steamed up. She slid her hand across the damp glass to clear it, ordered a glass of red wine and settled down with one eye on the yard. It always struck her as odd that one minute one might face the risk of kidnap or plummeting from a five-storey building yet not long after the world felt entirely normal and all that was left was a sliver of adrenaline in the bloodstream. No one would guess the kind of evening she’d had or what she had been up to. It seemed strange to slip so easily back into normality. The wine tasted smooth, almost buttery, and she gulped it down. McGregor was not far behind her. He entered through the arch she had come in by and she watched as he strode along the colonnade looking for the right place. He seemed taller than she remembered. He was a fine-looking man, if a little scruffy, and in Paris scruffiness seemed somehow more acceptable to her than it had been in Brighton. Out of context, Mirabelle considered Alan McGregor with fresh eyes. When he noticed her gazing through the candlelit window he smiled and waved. Inside he didn’t greet Mirabelle with a kiss, like a Frenchman, but instead put his hand on her shoulder.
‘Are you all right? Why did you think I might be followed?’
‘Were you?’
‘No.’
Mirabelle pondered that to anyone looking it would be apparent they weren’t French. But then, why would anyone be looking? ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I’m sure. I’ve a good ten years on the force, remember.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘I’ll have one of those.’ McGregor directed the waiter’s attention to Mirabelle’s wineglass.
The man hovered.
‘Encore deux verres du vin rouge,’ Mirabelle translated.
McGregor took off his hat and coat and sat down. He was wearing a blue woollen scarf that matched his eyes. Mirabelle tried not to notice but the superintendent’s face held the light somehow.
‘Vesta said you had the lingo down pat. Your mother was French, is that right?’
‘Yes. She was brought up here. In Paris, I mean.’
‘It’s a beautiful city.’ McGregor had taken a taxi as instructed and had spent the trip staring out of the window at the glories of the French capital. ‘Vesta said you were looking for somebody. Have you found him?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Well, this might help.’
McGregor withdrew a manila envelope from his inside pocket. Mirabelle’s name was written on the front in Vesta’s scrawl. As she tore it open she felt a sudden nostalgia for the office on Brills Lane – the endless tea and the comforting rhythm of keeping the ledgers. Inside the envelope was a set of handwritten notes. McGregor picked up his glass and drank.
‘That’s good,’ he pronounced. ‘Very nice.’
Mirabelle laid the papers on the table. In the low light it was difficult to make out the words formed by Vesta’s untidy hand. The page was headed Mrs Ida Caine’s Last Will and Testament and below it was a list of worldly goods: a house a mile outside the dramatically named village of Pity Me in County Durham and a car, an old Morris 8 series. There was some jewellery: a string of pearls valued at £26 and a diamond ring worth about the same. The relics of a woman’s life. Mrs Caine had died in January 1944. In only a few months she could have had her son home again, Mirabelle thought sadly. She had passed away thinking that she’d lost everyone. No wonder Caine had been furious when he heard.
After carefully copying the items contained in Mrs Caine’s estate, Vesta had continued. Mirabelle lifted the paper and squinted. She cocked her head to one side as she read.
‘But they can’t have actually done that.’ The words came out in a low whisper.
‘What is it?’ McGregor looked up from the menu, which he was examining with a bemused expression.
Mirabelle’s eyes returned to the page as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was reading. Her mind buzzed, making the connections. In the absence of close family, her sons being missing in action, Mrs Caine’s property had been bequeathed to her cousin. That was normal enough, but this wasn’t just any cousin. During wartime the estate must have languished unexecuted, because no British solicitor would dream of contacting a German with the news that they’d inherited a good deal of property in England. What had Mrs Caine been thinking? The situation itself was interesting – a legal conundrum – if not entirely a surprise. Almost since the beginning Mirabelle had known of Caine’s German relations. Some Hun family connection, the RAF officer had said at the Army and Navy Club – on his mother’s side, it would seem. No, what made Mirabelle’s mind pulse was that the cousin Mrs Caine had named was Wilhelm von der Grün. She read the name again to check that was really what it said. On the lines below, Vesta had carefully copied out
von der Grün’s titles, the ones Mirabelle had read at the National Library in Wer Ist’s. The girl had written ‘sounds posh’ in brackets at the end.
Mirabelle sat back in her chair. The titles meant there was no mistaking the identity. It wasn’t simply a matter of two people sharing the same name.
‘So Caine knew him,’ she whispered. ‘They were second cousins. That’s why Caine had to stay in France. That’s why he didn’t go home again.’
When Bradley and Caine arrived twenty miles outside Paris in the summer of 1942 they must have discovered that one of them had a direct connection to the heart of the Nazi war machine. A break like that could be invaluable to the Allies.
Mirabelle ran through the scenario. When the men realised von der Grün was newly stationed in the French capital – perhaps they had read the very newspaper article that Mirabelle had found in the library – they would have reported the information to London. Perhaps Christine Moreau had helped them. The Resistance was certainly their best chance of getting a message through. With that in hand, they must have settled down to wait for instructions. Mirabelle imagined Jack receiving the news at his large mahogany desk in the Whitehall office. It was a lucky break – a dream opportunity for anyone in covert operations – but of course it was also risky. Any action would have to be approved, so Jack would have gone to someone senior. In a back room somewhere, three or four British officers would have met around a table. Brandy and cigars, no doubt. What might they be able to make from such an opportunity? Could they trust that Caine’s loyalty to his country was stronger than his family ties? As with any opportunity there were risks to weigh up.
On balance, she reckoned, Philip Caine would have been told to stay. Well, clearly he had been. And Bradley was more use at home, so Bulldog was sent back via Bilbao to a storm of press interest and a blackout on the news that he had escaped as part of a duo. Before the men parted, Caine made Bradley promise to look after his mother and Caroline. The opportunity was so important to the war effort that it was worth abandoning his pregnant fiancée. Under orders, Caine would have had little choice in the matter. It must have been heartrending for him, she thought, and an act of selfless bravery. The men must have made a deal to ensure Caroline Bland wouldn’t be humiliated by bearing Caine’s illegitimate child. At home, Bulldog kept his word and married his friend’s lover.
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