The Girl in the Baker's Van

by Richard Savin

  *

  There is no such thing as luck, only good detective work; of this Schreiber was convinced and it had served him well throughout his career. He was certain all the players were in the city; he could feel it but he needed more than feelings – he needed a lead. All he had was the bargee and he stuck with him; sooner or later he would lead Schreiber to another stepping stone.

  Leaving the quay, Schreiber’s quarry made his way across the square in front of the Hôtel de Ville to where the cathedral stood – tall and forbidding. The bargee entered an alley that ran along the side of the huge stone building then, just before he reached the end of it, he turned again, this time into an impasse. This had to be the destination because there was no way out – it was a dead end. The impasse decanted into a small courtyard with half a dozen houses facing into it. Schreiber hung back in the shadow of a doorway and flattened himself against the wall. The bargee banged on one of the doors and waited. Almost immediately it opened and, without looking back, he went in.

  Schreiber made a note of the house number, then retraced his steps into the alley. To the left it led up an incline and into the cloisters of the cathedral; to the right was the way he had come in, where the alley entered the square and this, he reasoned, would be the direction from which any further visitors to the impasse would come. Turning left he walked quickly to the cover of the cloisters from where he would have a clandestine but unrestricted view of the entrance to the impasse. He settled down to wait. This was the bit he liked least about his work of detection – the hanging around, the waiting for something to happen, unproductive periods often yielding absolutely nothing. He looked at his watch; he had been watching for over two hours but there was nothing for it – he had to stay put.

  After another hour he decided to give up the vigil and go instead to the barge where he would try to break in. He had just emerged into the square when he spotted two people who had entered from a road on the far side of the Hôtel de Ville. A man and a woman on bicycles rode into the square, then stopped briefly to look around. The woman raised her arm and pointed towards the alley. Schreiber carried on walking into the square. As he got closer he recognised the woman, Evangeline Pfeiffer; he had only seen her briefly as she had fled the van at the farmhouse, but it was her he was certain. The man he was sure was the one he had seen in Lyon, the one who had got into the wrong side of the Paris-registered Citroen. He carried on walking until he reached the edge of the square, then he casually looked back; the couple were pushing their cycles towards the alley.

  He waited until they had disappeared from view, then ran back across the square, reaching the alley in time to see them turn left into the impasse. He hung back just long enough to give them what he calculated was sufficient time to reach the house before entering the impasse himself. Back in the cover of the same shelter from which he had observed the bargee, he watched as the man banged on the door. Once again the door opened and after a short exchange of muffled voices they disappeared inside, taking the bicycles with them. He had them; he had seen their faces again and he knew who they were. They, on the other hand, did not know him from any other figure in the crowd – he was anonymous.

  Schreiber went back into the square and found a seat in a café that commanded a view of the entrance to the alley; he could watch in relative comfort from the cover of his chosen table. There were no fewer than four cafés on the square and each one offered a commanding view of who came and who went. He needn’t stay too long in any one; he could rotate and avoid raising the suspicions of the waiters, any one of whom could be a Maquisard or sympathetic to the resistance. In the late afternoon he saw the bargee enter into the square and head off in the direction of the quay. The man walked right by the window where Schreiber sat watching, but knew nothing of his stalker. Schreiber decided to let him go; he was pretty sure of his destination. Now he needed to see if anyone else would appear.

  He moved on to the next café and ordered food. It was eight o’clock and there had been no new visitors. The two with the bicycles had not re-emerged. At nine-thirty he paid and left. Walking casually into the impasse he could see the lights on in the house but there was no sign or indication of anyone. Now he needed to get some assistance; his quarry would need to be watched around the clock and it was more than he could do alone.

  Back at his hotel he made a phone call. He knew a man who could help. He was discreet and he was French; he could move close to these people and gain their confidence. His plans laid, he put in a second call – this time to Becker.

  ‘I have found the girl in the baker’s van. I need you to arrange some cooperation for me with the Prefecture. Be careful how you do it. We will eventually need the assistance of the gendarmes when it comes to making the arrests but they may not all be trustworthy. Use our contacts in Lyon to find out who can be relied upon, but don’t let them know the plan.’

  *

  In the salon, on the first floor of the house in the impasse, Evangeline sat in a badly sagging stuffed armchair. She had a glass of wine in one hand, courtesy of their hosts who apologised that there was no coffee; there had been none in the market and it was hard to find at the moment. Grainger sat opposite on a sofa next to a small swarthy man who had introduced himself as Pau and who, together with his wife Eva, would take them across the mountain tracks into Spain. Pau ran his finger along a thin twisting line marked in pencil on a Michelin motoring map.

  ‘We will go through a low pass here. There will be snow but not so much. Here,’ he jabbed the spot with a weather-beaten finger, ‘there is a bergerie, a shepherd’s hut. It will be empty at this time of the year – the sheep are much lower down, they have been there for the winter. We will spend the first night there. Then in the morning we can cross the col and you will be in Spain.’ He grinned, then added with enthusiasm, ‘Not Spain – Catalonia, my land.’

  Grainger thought for a moment and looked across at Evangeline. ‘I can’t go anywhere until I find Kasha, but there’s nothing to stop you going right away.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, a little taken aback by the remark. ‘I thought we might go together.’

  ‘It’s probably safer for you if you go alone.’

  Pau cast a glance at Eva, then turned to the Grainger. ‘I don’t think you understand. This will not be an easy route to cross. We would prefer only to make it once. You should both go together.’

  Eva nodded. ‘Pau is right. It’s getting more difficult, and there are strangers in the city.’

  Grainger looked uneasy. ‘What do you mean – strangers?

  Pau waved his hand, indicating the generality of the remark. ‘Narbonne is a small city. New faces attract attention. There are always people looking to cross the mountains. There are sometimes others, others tracking them – hunting them.’

  ‘I shall prepare something to eat,’ Eva announced and left them to consider the route. After eating Eva showed them to a room at the very top of the house, leading the way up a narrow red tiled staircase by the light of a paraffin lamp. ‘There is no electricity on the top floor,’ she stated flatly. When she opened the door and showed them in the first thing Grainger noticed was the warmth from a fire. A small cast iron stove with a glass front glowed with a dancing red light that flickered shadows over the walls and ceiling; a rickety flue that bent over at the top disappeared through a hole in the wall. ‘It is very small,’ she said apologetically, ‘but the bed is a good one – large and comfortable.’ She set the paraffin lamp down on a table. ‘There is a toilet on the next floor down,’ she added as she left.

  Grainger looked at the bed and then generally around the room. There was not a lot of space. ‘One of us will have to sleep on the floor,’ he suggested. ‘I suppose it had better be me.’

  She laughed. ‘You don’t have to. It is a big bed and I’m sure you will behave.’

  A slightly embarrassed look had cast itself across his face. He pulled back the blankets. There were two pillows with a long bolster underneath. ‘Here,�
� he said, ‘why don’t I put this down the middle as a sort of bed divider.’

  She laughed again. ‘Of course. I am sure that is a good idea.’

  He looked sheepish. ‘Hmmm, well at least we can keep our clothes on.’

  She shook her head slowly from side to side. ‘You can if you want to; I have no intention of sleeping in my day clothes. Don’t worry, I won’t take advantage of you.’

  He tried to make light of it but he was out of his depth, so he changed the subject. ‘Tomorrow I’ll go to the Hôtel La Résidence – see if I can find Kasha.’

  He was woken by the daylight. The fire had gone out and the air in the room had a chill on it. He went to turn over and pushed his back against the bolster that divided them, but it didn’t feel right. Then he realised there was an arm wrapped round his waist and the open palm of a hand resting on his chest. He sat up carefully; she had pulled the bolster out from between them, thrown it on the floor and was now pressed up against his back. He wasn’t sure what to do. He didn’t want to wake her so he tried to slip out gently from under her arm, but as soon as he did so and he rolled over onto his back she made a small sighing noise and moved her head onto his shoulder and threw her arm back over his chest. He looked at her for a moment, her face framed in the bubbly curls of her fair hair and thought how perfect she looked, and he suddenly found himself with an irresistible urge to kiss her, to pick her up and fold her in his arms and devour her. The thought was mildly shocking and, at the same time, threatening. What if she was unaware that she had, in the oblivion of sleep, cuddled up to him like this? What if he kissed her and she woke and slapped his face? He imagined it for a second and didn’t like the prospect – it would be so embarrassing. He had once been there before and it was an experience he didn’t much care for.

  He tried again to move away from her gently and this time he was more successful, but as he slid to the edge of the bed and dropped his legs over the side she moved her head and he saw her eyes flicker. She lifted herself up onto one elbow and, as the bedclothes fell away, he could see she was wearing nothing more than her underwear. He instinctively turned his gaze to the wall and away from the sight of her.

  ‘It’s all right, you can look at me – I’m decent,’ she said in a low voice still charged with the drowsy softness of sleep. He turned back to look at her; she was now half-propped against the headboard with the blankets pulled up to her chin. She smiled. ‘Sorry if I embarrassed you. I’d forgotten where I was. I think I was dreaming of home. I thought you were someone else.’

  He looked quizzically at her. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, regaining his composure and feeling more comfortable. It flashed through his mind that the decision to resist kissing her had probably been a good idea. ‘ Dare I ask who you thought I was?’

  She looked lost for a moment, then in a wistful voice said, ‘My fiancé.’

  That took him by surprise; it was not what he had been expecting. In fact, he didn’t really know what he had been expecting. ‘I didn’t realise you were engaged.’

  ‘I’m not – at least I was, but I’m not now.’ She paused; he didn’t know what he should say but she pre-empted his response. ‘He was killed more than a year ago.’ Her voice was flat and without emotion. ‘His battalion was overrun in Belgium; he was wounded but died a week later. They sent his body home; he’s in the graveyard at Eguisheim.’

  ‘I’m sorry. That was clumsy of me.’

  ‘That’s all right. You weren’t to know. Anyway it’s in the past. I’m not even sure it would have worked out. It was something our parents wanted and we sort of went along with it.’

  He got up off the bed and pulled on his trousers and his shirt. ‘I’m going to see if I can find Kasha. You should stay here; there’s no point in two of us being out there. Pau is right. There could be God-knows-who out there looking for us. I haven’t forgotten the man on the canal bridge.’ He picked up his jacket and went over to the door. ‘You might as well go back to sleep,’ he said lightly.

  ‘Richard,’ she called after him as he went through the door. He hesitated and stuck his head back into the room. ‘Be careful; Kasha is dangerous. If he killed Paul he won’t hesitate to kill you.’

  Grainger contrived a knowing grin, screwing up his mouth. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not as gentle as I look. It’s just a disguise to fool my enemies.’

  *

  Schreiber had been at the café since it opened at six to serve breakfast to the workers, who were now down on the quay unloading the barges. The canal side had become a seething mass of men with barrows, horse-drawn carts, small open-back trucks and people on bicycles. The square was already filling with traders setting up stalls and tables loaded with their wares. He had not reckoned on there being a market that day and it was making surveillance difficult. He could see the entrance to the alley from where he sat but it soon became obscured by the comings and goings of the traders and their customers. Just after daylight he decided to go into the alley where he could get a less obstructed view; he would mingle with the crowd and loiter by the stalls, which would give him cover. An hour into his surveillance he saw what he knew to be the British spy coming out of the impasse. He went to one of the stalls selling used clothing and picked up a garment to examine it, keeping his head bent forward.

  Grainger passed within an arm’s length of Schreiber. He walked to the far side of the square and turned right into a narrow cobbled street overhung on one side by cramped shop fronts and pinched houses, tottering precariously on crooked medieval foundations. To his right the flank wall of the huge Medieval Hotel de Ville continued for about fifty metres before giving way to a terrace of large 18th century town houses. The shops on the opposite side had now given way to the towpath of the canal. Here he stopped and looked around him as if he were unsure of his direction. A passing man stopped next to him; Schreiber hung back.

  ‘I’m looking for the Rue 1er Mai,’ Grainger told the stranger, ‘Hôtel La Résidence.’ The stranger thought for a moment, then indicated he should continue up the street following the canal bank for about another hundred metres; he would see the street he was looking for on the right. Schreiber watched as the quarry moved on; the street was wide and busy with plenty of distraction in which to hide. Periodically he took off his hat so that, looking back, Grainger would not always see the same outline. Schreiber reached the corner of the street in time to see Grainger climb the front steps of a large building. He waited for a few minutes, then proceeded casually until he reached the point at which Grainger had entered Hôtel La Résidence. Through the glass-panelled door he could see his man standing at the front desk, talking to a receptionist.

  What happened next caught him by surprise as Grainger came rapidly out through the main entrance, almost running down the steps he abruptly took up a brisk stride back in the direction from which he had just come. For a moment Schreiber hesitated, not sure whether to go in and question the receptionist or follow Grainger. He decided on the latter and set off in pursuit – he could always come back later to speak with the receptionist. The trail was disappointing; it led straight back to the impasse where Grainger went into the courtyard and knocked on the door of the house he had left that morning.

  Inside the house Grainger found Evangeline in the salon, deep in conversation with Eva. ‘We have a problem. Kasha isn’t there; he’s gone.’

  ‘So now what?’

  Grainger looked angry, more resolute than she had seen him before. There was a brooding expression on his face and his usual air of jokey laissez-faire had gone. ‘I’d like to know what the hell he’s playing at!’

  Eva went out of the room and a moment later came back in with Pau. ‘My husband may be able to help,’ she said, addressing herself to Evangeline. ‘I will make some coffee; there was some in the market today.’

  Pau suggested he could go to the hotel and make enquiries. ‘They are more likely to tell me if they know anything rather than a stranger.’ He indicated Grainger, waving a gnarled fin
ger at him.

  ‘When can he do it?’

  Evangeline put the question, then turned to Grainger. ‘Now. He says he will go now.

  Forty minutes later Pau was back. ‘They have gone to Lézignan-Corbières. It is a town about twenty kilometres from here. They have found someone to take them in a fourgon.

  ‘What’s a fourgon?’

  ‘What you call a van.’

  Grainger looked from one to the other questioningly. He said nothing but instead walked to the window and looked down into the courtyard as if hoping to find inspiration, or at least some answers. In his mind he was trying to work out why Kasha was playing this cat-and-mouse game. ‘Why would he need to go to this town – what did you call it?’

  ‘Lézignan,’ Pau responded, for the first time talking directly to him instead of through Evangeline. ‘I don’t know why – there is nothing there.’

  ‘How do we get there?’

  ‘The bus to Carcassonne stops there, or there is the train.’

  ‘What about a car? Can we find someone to take us?’

  Pau thought about it, then called Eva. ‘Her sister’s husband has a car, a very nice Talbot Lago. We can ask, but you will have to pay him.’

  Grainger shrugged. ‘Where do we find him?’

  ‘He is here in the city. Their house is close to the Gare de Narbonne, but be careful. He is a fonctionnaire; he works in the Hôtel de Ville. I am not sure how far you can trust him.’

  ‘Okay, but I don’t think we have a choice. How soon can you find out?’

  ‘Eva will go. He can’t be bothered to speak with me; I am a mountain guide, which he sees as too common for his exalted position.’