The Boy Who Saw: A gripping thriller that will keep you hooked

by Simon Toyne

  Baptiste studied the map, tracing the route Marie-Claude had taken, southeast to Toulouse before heading north. Why hadn’t she gone directly north? Taking this detour must have added an hour to her journey. He ran a search on her mobile phone number again in case she’d turned it back on, but the map returned to the same place as before, slightly to the northwest of the building he was now standing in. He zoomed in, studied the large expanse of tarmac with tiny dots lined up on it and realized what it was and why Marie-Claude had taken this detour.

  She had not driven here to catch a plane. She’d come here to change her car.

  55

  The service station was noisy and bright and smelled of fuel and sweat and burnt coffee, and Solomon was glad to escape from it. They had gone inside separately but everyone was far too preoccupied with themselves or their phones to notice anyone else. Marie-Claude was buying snacks for the onward journey. Solomon wanted air.

  He stopped under the shade of an acacia tree and looked down at the grass. It was dry and yellow and littered with cigarette butts, but even in its sorry state he still contemplated taking his boots off to connect with the earth for a moment. He laid his hand on the trunk instead, feeling the rough contours of the sun-warmed bark flexing gently in the exhaust-laced breeze. This was a nowhere place, a place of permanent transit, limbo. The tree was the only thing that lived here, the only thing with roots, and Solomon drew a measure of calm from touching it.

  Marie-Claude emerged from the service station holding a bag in one hand and Léo’s hand in the other. He looked around, the thick lenses of his glasses amplifying the way his eyes lit up when he spotted Solomon. Solomon reluctantly broke contact with the tree and stepped up to the car, opening the doors for both Marie-Claude and Léo.

  ‘Wow. An old-fashioned gentleman,’ she said.

  ‘Manners are the glue of civilization.’ Solomon winked at Léo. ‘And the ladies will love you for it.’

  ‘Will they, now?’ Marie-Claude shook her head and got in the car.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Solomon murmured.

  They rejoined the péage and Solomon lowered his window.

  ‘You know the air-con works better with it closed,’ Marie-Claude said.

  ‘Yes, but I work better with it open. Do you actually like being in a car?’

  She looked around at the soft, leather interior. ‘I like being in this one.’

  Solomon held his hand out and felt the air rushing through his fingers, the speed of the car making it feel liquid. ‘So why don’t you have a car like this?’

  ‘The kinds of jobs I want to do don’t pay the kind of money that would get me one of these, and the hours are too long. I’ve got Léo to think of.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind you working long hours if we could have a car like this,’ Léo said.

  ‘Thanks. I’ll bear that in mind.’

  Solomon pulled his hand back inside and turned to Marie-Claude. ‘What is your job exactly?’

  ‘This is. Tracking down survivors of Die Schneider Lager. Collecting their stories.’

  ‘You get paid to do that?’

  ‘Kind of. I got a grant from the Shoah Foundation. You know what that is?’

  Information shimmered through Solomon’s head in response to her question. ‘It’s a charity set up to archive the oral history of Holocaust survivors. Funded by profits from the Hollywood movie Schindler’s List.’

  Marie-Claude nodded. ‘Of course you know. You know everything – except useful stuff like how to drive a car. Anyway, to tie in with the seventieth anniversary of the end of the war, the Foundation set up a fund to collect stories that hadn’t been told before. My proposal was to tell the story of my grandfather and the other survivors of Die Schneider Lager. The only thing that’s ever really been written about the camp is Herman Lansky’s memoir. It’s one of the great untold stories.’

  Solomon waited for the usual torrent of information but none came. ‘Who’s Herman Lansky?’

  ‘You don’t know? I thought you knew everything.’

  ‘Not everything, and the things I don’t know are usually significant. Tell me about Herman Lansky.’

  ‘I can do better than that.’ She reached into the back and pulled a book from her backpack. ‘You can read his book.’ She handed it to him, leaned over and pulled a second book out of the bag. ‘You should read this one too. It’s an account of how the camp was liberated. Those two books are the foundation of all my work.’

  Solomon read both titles:

  Freeing the Dead: The Nazi Death Camp Liberators

  – and –

  Dark Material – The Devil’s Tailor: Death and Life in Die Schneider Lager by Herman Lansky.

  He opened Lansky’s book and tried reading the first page, but the low-level nausea he’d been enduring since leaving Cordes welled up and forced him to look at the horizon and take deep breaths instead.

  ‘You OK? You want me to pull over?’

  ‘No, it’s OK. Keep going. I’ll read it next time we stop.’

  ‘That won’t be for a while,’ Marie-Claude said. ‘Still a looong way to go.’

  ‘That’s why car rides are boring,’ Léo muttered in the back. ‘No reading.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Marie-Claude said. ‘No reading and no barfing. And that goes for both of you.’

  56

  Amand was kept waiting for almost twenty minutes before Jacques Laurent – his appointed juge d’instruction – finally emerged from chambers, immaculate in a gun-metal grey suit the same colour as his hair. ‘Walk with me,’ Laurent said, heading away down the oak-panelled corridors. ‘I have to be in court in five minutes. Tell me about the new suspect. Or has this one escaped too?’

  Amand let the comment slide. ‘His name is Madjid Lellouche. Migrant worker. I interviewed him before coming to see you.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he confessed?’

  ‘No, sir. He says he’s innocent.’

  ‘Don’t they always.’

  ‘Yes, but in this case I think he’s telling the truth.’

  ‘Based on what evidence?’

  ‘I’ve just come from the morgue and the weapon we found at the suspect’s home does not appear to match the wounds on the victim.’

  ‘Does not appear to match?’

  ‘At the moment, it’s only a preliminary observation.’

  ‘What about the blood on the weapon?’

  ‘Hasn’t been tested yet.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you should hold judgement until you have all the facts. What about the other suspect, the one you let go?’

  ‘We believe he may have absconded with the granddaughter and grandson of the murder victim.’

  ‘Any idea why?’

  ‘No. They may have been coerced.’

  ‘May have been.’

  ‘We don’t know for certain.’

  ‘You don’t seem to know very much, Commandant. Any other leads?’

  ‘We’re considering two other possibilities. Josef Engel was a death camp survivor and the nature of his murder suggests his killer might be connected to his past.’

  ‘Any idea who?’

  ‘I’d like to look into a man named Artur Samler, the commandant of the camp Monsieur Engel was incarcerated in. It’s possible that he or someone connected to him may be carrying out some long-standing vendetta.’

  ‘Sounds tenuous. How old would this man be now – a hundred?’

  ‘Yes, but his son also worked at the camp for a time and he would only be in his eighties.’

  ‘Only. Sounds very unlikely.’

  ‘Maybe, but the victim was chemically subdued before he was tortured and killed, which would suggest his killer was not physically strong.’

  ‘You said there were two other leads, I hope your second one is better.’

  ‘We’re also trying to locate Monsieur Engel’s ex-grandson-in-law, Jean Baptiste.’

  Laurent stopped walking and turned to face Amand. ‘Jean Baptiste.’

  ‘Ye
s.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he has a history of violence against the Engel family, was recently released from prison and has since disappeared.’

  ‘He was released early, which means he was a model prisoner. A reformed character.’

  ‘A model prisoner who killed someone whilst inside.’

  ‘In self-defence, and he paid a heavy price for it.’ Laurent dropped his voice as a couple of sober-suited lawyers walked by. ‘Given your role in Jean Baptiste’s arrest and incarceration and the sense of responsibility you must feel towards his ex-wife, your concern is understandable. However, if your personal feelings are going to cloud your judgement, perhaps you should step down from the investigation.’

  Amand nodded. So that was what this summons had been about. It was difficult and unusual for a judge to remove someone from an investigation, but an officer was perfectly free to recuse themselves.

  ‘I think that until we have more evidence we should pursue all lines of enquiry,’ Amand said as calmly as he could. ‘That includes known offenders with a history of violence against the victim’s family. That is not personal feeling, that is common sense.’

  Laurent stepped closer, so close that Amand could smell his cologne and see the white foam in the corners of his thin-lipped mouth. ‘Leave Jean Baptiste alone,’ he said. ‘Go back to Cordes and get me some hard evidence. Go talk to the Arab again and try to sweat a confession out of him, that will be the best use of your time, not chasing Nazis or pursuing personal vendettas.’ He turned and walked away. ‘And the moment you have some proper evidence, let me know.’

  Amand watched Laurent marching away, the sound of his expensive leather shoes echoing down the grand corridor. He forced himself to breathe deeply for a moment, then headed to the basement where the Albi Commissariat kept an office. Some of his irritation came from being told what to do by someone he didn’t respect, but some came from knowing that Laurent was partly right. Because he did feel responsible for Marie-Claude and Léo. He was responsible. He had been instrumental in taking away Marie-Claude’s husband and Léo’s father. And though he had tried to do his best to fill the hole in their family he had helped create, he had never managed it. And now they were missing and he needed to find them and make sure they were safe – and he was failing at that too.

  He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialled the Cordes Commissariat. Henri answered after the second ring. ‘How was the morgue?’

  ‘Not great. Where’s the cane, Henri?’

  ‘It should be there.’

  ‘Well, it’s not.’

  ‘But I … I’ll chase it up.’

  ‘What have you found out about those other two murders – Herman Lansky and Saul Schwartzfeldt?’ There was a pause and he heard a muffled conversation with what sounded like Parra.

  ‘Calls have been placed to London about Lansky, but due to the age of the case it’s unlikely we’ll get anything back on that soon, if at all. And we’re waiting to hear back from Colmar about Saul Schwartzfeldt. Hopefully I’ll have something by the time you get back.’

  ‘I’m not coming back. I’m going to stay here until that cane shows up. I’ll be on my mobile if you need me.’ He hung up and pushed through a door into a small office containing three desks and an ancient sergeant. ‘Any chance I can borrow a desk for half an hour?’ He showed the sergeant his ID and the man’s bushy eyebrows shot up as he recognized the name.

  ‘You’re the guy who caught the murder over in Cordes.’

  Amand nodded wearily. ‘Good news travels fast.’

  ‘Help yourself,’ the sergeant said, gesturing at the empty desks.

  Amand nodded his thanks and plopped down at the tidiest one. The only item on the desktop was a framed photograph of a kind-looking woman with two dark-haired girls, all smiling for the camera. It was like a window into the kind of life he might’ve had: wife, kids – normal. But that had never been on the cards for him. He had been an outsider his whole life and people like Jacques Laurent only made that feeling stronger. He thought about what he’d said, about finding more evidence and trying to make the murder stick to Madjid Lellouche. But he was an outsider too. Maybe that was what made Amand feel sympathetic towards him. The cane would help prove it, one way or another. He checked his watch. Still only mid-morning.

  He leaned forward, logged on to the computer using his network ID and password, checked his email and opened a search engine. He would give himself until the cane finally turned up to explore other leads. After that, he would return to Cordes armed with the results and either talk to Lellouche again or let him go. He typed ‘Artur Samler’ into the subject box and hit Return. A whole raft of results came back, topped by a Wikipedia entry showing the same picture he’d seen in Marie-Claude’s research notes of Samler looking immaculate in his Nazi uniform. The short biography said he was believed to have committed suicide at the end of the war.

  Believed – but not confirmed.

  He clicked on the main link and started to read.

  57

  Patrice Boudy was pretending to look at his computer screen but secretly reading a detective novel when he became aware of someone approaching his desk. He looked up, saw the police badge and his stomach did a somersault.

  ‘I need to talk to someone about security cameras,’ the man with the badge said. ‘The ones covering the car parks.’

  ‘I can help with that.’ Boudy sat up in his seat, his eyes pausing at the scar on the man’s face. ‘Do you have a warrant?’

  ‘Well, here’s the thing,’ the man said, tucking the ID into his pocket. ‘I’m investigating a murder case and this is more of a hunch than a solid lead. I don’t really want to bother the judge with it only to find out it’s a dead end and was wondering if I might have a quick unofficial look and if we find anything useful I’ll get the proper paperwork in place and we can find it again, officially.’ He glanced at the detective novel lying face down on the desk. ‘I’m sure you understand how these things work, Monsieur …?’

  ‘Boudy. Patrice. Yes, I … yes.’ Boudy was feeling flustered and excited. His morning had been the usual dull parade of giving people directions and replacing lost parking tickets. Now he was being asked to help in a murder investigation.

  ‘Thank you, Patrice. I really appreciate it. And if anything useful comes out of it, I’ll be sure to mention you in my report.’

  Boudy’s stomach did another flip. He had a half-filled-in application form to join the Police Nationale in his flat. He’d abandoned it at a section asking for any relevant experience. If he could put something in about helping in a murder investigation that would be way cool.

  ‘Follow me, monsieur.’ Boudy rose from his chair and headed through a door into a dark, dimly lit office with a desk, a computer, and a wall of flat-screen monitors showing various fixed views of the airport. Boudy dropped into the seat and typed in his username and password. ‘Which car park do you want to check?’

  ‘The big one to the north.’

  ‘That’s long-stay.’ He tapped P5 into a command box and the screens changed to all the feeds from that car park. ‘What are we looking for?’ Boudy said, excited at the prospect of doing real police work.

  ‘A red Peugeot 205.’

  ‘Any idea what time it entered the car park?’

  ‘Around an hour and a half ago, maybe two.’

  ‘Registration number?’

  Baptiste recited it from memory and Boudy copied it into a search field.

  ‘Bingo!’ He hit a button to zoom in on a freeze-frame of the registration plate. ‘The barrier cameras picked it up entering P5 at 10.42.’ He checked the parking log and frowned. ‘Wait a second.’ He tapped in a new number and the screen changed to an image of the same registration plate from a slightly different angle. ‘Another barrier camera picked it up fifteen minutes later, only it didn’t leave. It’s still in the car park.’

  ‘Do you have a wider angle of that?’

  Boudy tappe
d more commands and the screen changed to show the Peugeot parked at the barrier. He hit the space bar and the image unfroze and started to play forward in real time. Baptiste leaned in, eyes fixed on the partial profile of a boy in the rear window of the car. Then the man appeared: tall, pale, white hair. He held something out and a hand reached through the driver’s window and took it. The man got in and the car reversed away from the barrier. Baptiste watched on a wider feed as the Peugeot backed up until it came to an empty spot and parked. ‘Do you have a closer angle on that?’

  ‘No, but I can make that one bigger.’ Boudy tapped keys and the whole wall of screens filled with the same camera feed.

  Baptiste stared at the pixellated image of the car, shifting slightly as the recording moved on. After about a minute, one of the doors opened slightly and a small, blurry figure emerged, keeping low. Baptiste moved forward a little, wishing the resolution was better so he could see Léo’s face. The tiny figure moved out of the way and two larger figures got out. All three stayed low as the door closed again, then they moved into the line of parked cars and disappeared from sight. After a few seconds the indicators of a large black car parked further along from the Peugeot flashed, the driver’s door opened and Baptiste caught hints of movement in the car as the three figures crawled inside. There was a brief pause before the car pulled out of its spot and headed away to the barriers. Boudy waited to see where it stopped and switched the cameras again.

  ‘Freeze it there,’ Baptiste said, reaching for a pen to copy down the registration.

  ‘I can do a screen-grab, if you like.’

  ‘Let’s wait for the warrant before we do that,’ Baptiste said. ‘For now I’ll just make a note and put out an alert. What make of car is that?’