Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  Liar.

  “Which homes? Where?”

  A shrug. He bent down to squash his cigarette butt against a dirty floor tile. The cats finally left me alone, perhaps sensing I’d never been a cat lover.

  “The kids were too scared to tell us; our comrades too, in case more young lives were put at risk. With Roma, there’d be no official records. Not like Jews. To the Boche, most were worse than vermin.”

  “Who did the liaising? Delivered them to the tunnel, ready for escape?”

  “Father Diderot - I keep calling him that - and Alize. They used covered hay wagons. The kids trusted them. Loved them, even.” He found another cigarette. Lit it, held in the smoke. “I’ve not had a proper night’s sleep since then. It’s guilt, even though I pray to Jesus and Mary every day. I still see those little faces, hear them chattering to each other. Playing with their spinning tops, their wooden animals... The only things allowed.”

  My breakfast snack was on the move again. Connections strengthening.

  “Guilt? Why?”

  “I never saw them again, after we’d given out soup, bread and

  sleeping bags. They were just half a metre from the end of the tunnel. Half a fucking metre from freedom when the Devils arrived.”

  “You did your bit, Signor Lopez,”

  “Not enough.” He crossed himself for the third time.

  My watch showed 14:45 hours already, with still too many queries to make.

  “Have you heard of another Paris outfit called AEJ? Association des Enfants Juives?”

  Hesitation, then a nervous pull on his next fag.

  “No. Only the OSE. Oeuvres de Secours aux Enfants. They created safe houses all over France. In convents and wherever.”

  “So how was this four million francs supposed to arrive? Who was meant to receive it?”

  A sudden glance. I knew the look.

  Don’t lose him now…

  “You’re no estate agent. You’re a fucking flic.”

  “Do I look like one? Do me a favour. When I get home from work every night, I do historical research. The Free Zone’s been my special interest for some time.”

  Thankfully, he seemed convinced. Blew two smoke strands from his nostrils. “By low-wing monoplane. We were told there’d be a white angel painted on the outside of the package, and whoever picked it up, was to inform Ricard Suzman immediately. Our leader.”

  Shit…

  “Where was the drop planned for?”

  “A small field next to the jardins here. Dead of night, October 7th1942. My nineteenth birthday. Mind you, looking back, I think that was to put some of us off the scent.”

  I took a chance.

  “But when I met the couple from Mas Camps the other day, they’d sworn the previous owners had people crawling all over their vineyards after dark.”

  “Well, I’m telling you, we crawled over everyone’s bloody land. And it wasn’t just us. Word had spread and strangers seemed to appear out of the woodwork. Some brought guns, they were that desperate to find it.” He glanced past me out of the window. Clearly on edge. “To think that money could still be lying undiscovered somewhere. I’d get a fucking metal detector if I could afford it.”

  “Surely Opération Anges checked that their money had been located and lives saved?”

  “Dream on. No-one heard a thing. Everything vanished into thin air, even the

  millions. Only blood was left in that tunnel. Someone betrayed those helpless kids.

  Someone got rich...” His mouth formed another perfect smoke ring that disintegrated into his grey, crinkly hair. God alone knows how they perished. I‘ve struggled with my faith ever since...”

  I moved towards the front door and, seeing the street outside was all clear, opened it on to a still-patterned sky of black and blue. Also sounds of distant gunshots. Boussioux at it again, most likely. I took another chance.

  “One last question. You’ve not seen a blond Belgian guy hanging around here?”

  “You mean a cocky, little short-arse?”

  I let it go

  “Few times. Green Seat car. Came here once. Full of questions about the gipsy kids and the drop, like yourself.”

  “When?”

  “Last Monday. The 7th It was. He also called on Alize. But what I do know is, she kicked him out in no time.”

  “Flying too close to the sun, perhaps?”

  “If you say so.”

  The man who was so good at dates, opened the door for me, his eyes on my back as I reached house number ten and knocked on its door until another elderly neighbour popped out to say that Alize Saporo had left Dansac for good.

  *

  I drove away from that drab little scene, wondering where she might be, and how at mention of Mas Camps’ previous owners, Pablo Lopez hadn’t volunteered the Ryjkel name. Odd that. I then toyed with the idea of phoning the Pastados but then remembered no telegraph wires connected to their home. I could turn up on the off-chance they were in, to have that cat-loving Spaniard’s story either confirmed or disproved, however, the thought of those malnourished hounds eating my legs, kept me going, past the sign for their property, and on into Saint-Antoine.

  Far better, I reasoned, to renew contact with someone else who might just be more forthcoming. More useful.

  Chapter 37. Karen.

  Robert Taillot, the clever man who’d helped me return to France incognito, was on the line, sounding far away and tired.

  “You OK?” he said.

  I visualised the concern in his face. Except, right then, I didn’t want it.

  “Fine.”

  “Your gates and CCTV?”

  “Them too, thanks.”

  “Is Monsieur Lyon there, by any chance?”

  I put Martine’s shabby desertion on hold. He mustn’t know I was on my own. Paranoia now my middle name.

  “He’s around somewhere. Can I take a message?”

  Why the hesitation? Was he paranoid too?

  “This line may not be safe. But yes, there is news. Please ask him to call me from a public phone. I’m in until eight o’clock. Then I go singing.”

  “Singing?” In the circumstances, it sounded almost obscene.

  “The Choeur de la Salerne. We’re doing Fauré’s Requiem next.”

  A small shudder.

  I’d chosen the Agnus Dei for Moeder’s funeral. It had almost torn my heart out. Thinking about her life. The life we’d both lost...

  “I often play it,” I said, recovering my composure. “His best work by far.”

  With that, he ended the call and I was left with that Latin prayer curling its way into my mind. The memory of a wet October morning in the Hauptlaan. The kindly priest who’d officiated at Moeder’s burial. Wind, rain and a half-empty church, save for me and those friends and neighbours who’d been shocked that someone as fit as she, should have fallen down solid stairs she’d known for years...

  How small her white coffin had seemed. How unreal. How I’d wanted to lift its lid and shake her back into life to answer more of my questions.

  I did in fact, make such a move, but someone - a man I’d judged to be in his late fifties - restrained me with a force which I found later, had left a sizeable bruise on my arm. During the interment, with rain lashing my black suit to my body, thinning the earth on her coffin to mud, I’d looked around for him, but he’d vanished. On the other hand, Mevrouw Schenken - another widow - who lived next door in one of two apartments, was never off the scene. She’d had the audacity to expect me to query the Coroner’s ‘death by misadventure’ verdict, but I had work to focus on, whose results could have made the difference between a patient’s life or death. I won’t ever forget the look she’d given me before leaving that graveyard. Someone else I’d let down for selfish reasons.

  My father had also called me selfish. Usually accompanied by a sharp smack on the legs.

  “One day, Liesbet, you’ll learn...”

  It seemed though, as if I hadn’t.


  *

  On the spur of the moment, I dialled Martine’s home number in the Rue de Razès in Carcassonne, without the faintest idea how to begin.

  “Oui?” A man’s deep voice met my ear.

  Damn...

  “Monsieur Girard Mannion?”

  Pause.

  “Doctor Ryjkel?”

  My heart felt odd. So, she’d been spreading that name around. “It’s Fürst, Monsieur, not Ryjkel. Is Martine there with you? We both need to talk.”

  “Bit late for that. She’s very upset. And for my part, I’ve heard about your strange affairs; your investigations that put her life and another’s at considerable risk.”

  This was rich, coming from a child molester.

  “Who do you mean, another?” My pulse thumping.

  “She never said.”

  Thank you, God. Unless he was lying.

  “Well, she’s left me high and dry,” I said. “Contractually, I need a month’s notice from my employees. It’s in one of the files she didn’t remove from my room. She also took a very special item of mine which I’d like returned.”

  Meaning my old rifle. But the truth was, I needed her back here with me, for our survival’s sake.

  The blue of that bruised sky beyond my window was sharper, brighter than ever. Instead of bringing down the blind, I angled my wheelchair away from its punishing glow.

  “She’s not come home yet, and if anything’s happened to her, my wife and I

  will hold you responsible. You, remember?”

  I slapped the receiver down and immediately it rang again. John saying he was on his way and would be with me in half an hour. I told him about Girard Mannion and my still-missing rifle. Then, on the spur of the moment, wheeled myself out of my door, along the short, curved area of landing until I reached his room.

  *

  He’d left his blinds open for the blue-black Heavens to pattern the ceiling over his neatly made bed. No pyjamas, so I leaned low to sniff his pillow. Immediately that intimate mix of skin and remnants of shaving cream, almost toppled me from my wheelchair. Love and danger. That was it. And there was me telling him to be careful...

  I noticed his suitcase lying on the window seat, a few toiletries in the bathroom and that black leather jacket hanging from the back of his door. Most men I’d known would have spread themselves around. Not this one, and the more I focussed on that less than new suitcase and its torn remains of old luggage labels sticking to its vinyl lid, the more I wondered what other part of him it might be hiding.

  Its two sturdy locks defied me to pry, so I wrapped a tissue around my fingers to raise the suitcase upright by its handle, expecting a good weight. Not so. He obviously travelled light. I tilted it this way and that, hearing a few clothes shift, but more importantly, quite a number of papers.

  With more time, I’d have used a hairpin to poke around inside those locks, like Christian had once shown me, but not just then. Later, because what lies out of sight has always been more important to me than what is visible.

  Chapter 38. John.

  Thankfully, ex-Lieutenant Taillot was back home. He picked up my call on the second ring, as if keen to offload his findings. All the while, a quartet of elderly, Arab men with pitted skin and dusty clothes clustered around my phone booth in the Place des Étoiles, as if waitng to make calls to their faraway homelands.

  Meanwhile, this useful guy from Puylaurens, who could supply anything from discounted mobiles or the means to make anyone disappear from the face of the earth, had been busy. Max Heimlat’s call to Karen had come from a Saint-Antoine call box near the supermarket. Roche-les-Bains a fabrication. Who else but a Suzman, I thought, as Taillot delivered the rest of his revelations.

  *

  “So, Sophie Blumenthal is Yvette Suzman’s mother? Are you quite sure?” I said, once he’d finished.

  “I am. And more than surprised that André Besson was loose-mouthed enough to fill you in about her and her death.”

  “Me too. And Sophie’s father?”

  “Unknown. A wartime liaison perhaps. Here today, gone tomorrow...”

  My heartbeat was way too fast.

  “Is she still alive?”

  “With no death certificate so far, we can assume so. I’ve checked this and surrounding départements’ records. Nor is there any evidence she ever left France.”

  “Good work.”

  “You’ve got me hooked, Monsieur Lyon.”

  “So, given the history, she’s probably still in this area.”

  Like Karen, pursuing her own agenda...

  “Perpignan’s most likely. Busy place to hide. Besides, most victims usually return home or nearby.”

  More stitches in this secret and complex piece of knitting were connecting up, except the faint link between Karen’s loss and the fate of those separated children seemed to have evaporated. I’d been a bloody fool to mention the name Liesbet Ryjkel to Father Diderot, albet anonymously. No way could his history connect with hers, even though her older brother had apparently switched from Protestantism to Catholcism.

  Still, any response from him might be useful.

  Meanwhile, until Taillot was less of a stranger, Herman’s murder and Martine’s bolting from Les Pins were off-limits. But together we could try and locate Sophie Blumenthal. If her memory was still intact, I might get a teenage girl’s eye view on events in October 1942. Pablo Lopez’s biased account had too many holes. Why hadn’t the money drop been more accurately positioned? Had the pilot been in some kind of trouble? Even drunk? Was there a double agent on board turning things his or her way?

  “I was given the name Opération Anges by a Pablo Lopez in Dansac. Another loose-mouth in his sixties,” I said before adding the rest of the story. “They may still be active, under a different name, away from their initial Paris base. Wherever children’s lives are still under threat. And can you please check out the AEJ Association des Enfants Juives? Especially a Girard Mannion from the Rue de Razès in Carcassonne who’s apparently hooked into them.”

  “Mannion? Any relation to Dr. Fürst’s gardener?”

  “Her father.”

  Small pause. A rogue, leaden cloud had settled overhead, sending a sudden rush of rain against the booth’s dusty glass.

  “I’ll try.”

  “There may also be records of that particular flight 0n the night of October 7th. Who was on board and where the four million francs came from. You never know...”

  “There’d be no records, unless someone had another agenda.”

  “I’m thinking Martin Luther after the Wannsee Conference.”

  Silence.

  “Also, according to a neighbour, Alize Saporo seems to have vanished. I saw a black Range Rover Classic pulling away from near her house - 10, Impasse des Oliviers - but couldn’t read its number plate,.and Range Rovers are hardly your typical Dansac car. She gave me the impression Sophie Blumenthal had died, despite her efforts to save her. Perhaps not, and she’s traced her. If so, Sophie herself could be in danger.”

  The Arabs had moved away. Afternoon sunlight replaced them, hot against the glass, bringing sweat under my clothes. Taillot was talking again.

  “Was Father Diderot also in this rescue group?”

  “Yes. Got anything on him? His other name? What he did before? We need to find out who betrayed those poor kids and why.”

  “And kept the loot.”

  “I’m not so sure. My guess is, it could still be out there. Or, was never dropped.”

  “Anything’s possible. And if the land’s since been dug up, built on, well, who knows?”

  *

  Light-headed from Taillot’s revelation about the late Yvette Suzman and her vanished mother, I drove in the drizzle to another phone booth in front of a rundown Club des Jeunes near Yves Tanguy’s garage, then dialled Karen. She mentioned her call to the man she’d assumed was Martine’s father. That according to him, his daughter hadn’t arrived home.

  Otherwise, all was calm
.

  She’d sounded weary, and suggested I come back to Les Pins to watch one of her “black and white flickerers” as she called them. Post-war movies, together with a glass of wine and a treat from the chiller cabinet. Or, alternatively, Alfred Brendel playing Chopin. For a second, I was tempted, but my mind had already travelled to my next ports of call and a possible trip to Rotterdam...

  “Hello, Earth to Mars?” She prodded.

  “Sorry. Just plotting next moves.”

  “Great.”

  “This is your mission, right?” I reminded her, never having been a big fan of sarcasm. Then regretted it.

  Not nice that, John. Not nice...

  Just then, a grating noise from above, was growing louder until the cause of it lay directly overhead, like some large, deranged black bird. Another microlight, but this time, seriously out of control. Its pilot’s hands frantically beating the air. For a fraction of a second, I saw a small, panicked face, moments before the flimsy craft met the topmost edge of a limestone crag towering over the Bayrou, river and vanished in a violent nest of flame.

  *

  Good God…

  Was this the same plane I’d spotted earlier? With me the real target? Now, possibly the sole witness to that shocking sight? It would seem so, with no other traffic around. Not a living, bloody soul...

  I drove in top gear through Saint-Antoine and out the other side towards the Gorges de Salerne, where my guidebook had pin-pointed the Accents du Vent microlight centre. Bare vines, more grey soil, while above the dominating limestone range, hovered a bank of purple cloud stretching from east to west. Like a sleeper rising, it continued to grow until the sky was split into two colours. A bruise, as before, but this time, bringing thunder and slow, fat drops of rain.

  *

  I arrived at the foot of the Col des Pèlerins, where red and yellow markers

  indicated various randonées for walkers, and pulled in on Accent du Vent’s gravel forecourt, reserved for clients only. No cars, no microlights or any other signs of life. I took three deep breaths of the damp, herb-scented air, as if this simple act might help keep me sane. It didn’t.