by Manda Scott
She isn’t in the mood for conversation. She throws the bike round, to face back up the road. She eyes him, acidly. ‘Who told Kramme that Patrick is still alive?’
He can lie to most people and has done so. He is not sure he can lie to her. ‘Truthfully, I’m not certain, but I think he’s known for a long time, possibly since before the war’s end.’
‘So it might be the Americans?’
He shrugs. Céline has done her work. Sophie is not stupid. She says, ‘You want me to find out.’
‘It would be useful, yes. If you don’t want—’
‘I sleep with Paul Rey. I don’t trust him. If needs be, I will kill him. I will not let him keep us from Kramme.’
He watched, once, as she bit her own tongue and spat blood at a buffer of a cavalry colonel. In Arisaig, later, in the dark: How many men have you killed?
Not as many as you. Never have, never will.
He says, ‘Thank you.’
‘I’ll talk to him if he comes here. Otherwise, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.’
‘That was my thought exactly.’
She steps off her bike. It has a man’s frame. He hasn’t seen a woman ride a man’s bike before, but it’s the kind of untoward thing she might do. She holds it by the saddle and shoves it towards him, so that it runs free until he catches it. ‘If you cycle and I sit on the crossbar, we’ll get up the hill faster.’
He laughs, surprising them both. ‘You haven’t changed.’
Her smile is wildly enchanting. ‘None of us has. We are just better at what we do.’
Hello, Laurence.
‘Patrick. How are you?’
How do I look?
What can he say? You look tired and bored. I never thought I’d see a red-haired man look dull but here, in the house you built with your two hands, you look like a caged tiger, tired of pacing the boundaries. You look like a man who has had his tongue ripped out and knows that the only person in the world who truly understands him is having sex with someone else. You look half dead, but even that is an exaggeration. You look as if you died ten years ago, and your body has not yet had the grace to lie down.
He says, ‘Better than I expected.’
You’re a terrible liar.
‘You don’t know how low were my expectations.’
Ha.
This one word is normal. And here is some life, some colour, and a reminder of all that was. Caught off guard, Laurence sits, suddenly, on a carved oak rocking chair. The cabin smells of pine resin and Gitanes, of lapsang souchong and apples. It is homely, pleasant, a place to escape to. But Patrick is not free to escape here. Therein lies the rub.
Laurence says, ‘What can I tell you?’
The truth?
Sutherland tilts his head, waiting, and Laurence, who has planned a long, twenty-minute preamble to this, says, baldly, ‘Patrick, I don’t know what the truth is any more. There was a time when the Boche were bad, we were good and all we had to do was see that right prevailed over wrong. Now, even that looks naive and Khrushchev is being made out to be the enemy when as far as I can tell, we’re being turned into a small and rather unimportant state off the eastern seaboard of a nation that wants to take ownership of the entire earth and might well succeed. In all of this, the Brigadier had a plan. Sadly he died before its full extent was made clear to anyone else. I suspect, but am not sure, that he believed we might be able to extract Kramme from under the eyes of the Americans, while at the same time clearing an old debt. Sophie will have explained it all to you.’
She did. So Kramme is the lamb that bleats, not me.
‘I think each of you gets to bleat a bit. And you can roar if you want to, when the time is right.’
He thinks he has misjudged his man. Sutherland closes his eyes, presses his lips together. It seems possible he is going to weep.
Laurence looks down, away from whatever is happening. He hears a soft, breathless sound and thinks Patrick Sutherland has lost the battle with his grief, and the part that needs to bear witness wins over the part that needs to preserve the other man’s pride. He looks up again.
And so he discovers that Patrick Sutherland is not weeping; he is laughing, big, bold, full-chested laughter, and the tears rolling down his cheeks are not those of pain.
‘Patrick?’
There is a gap, a cessation, a slowing down. Oh, Laurence, Laurence, why did you not come back sooner?
Oh, God. He seeks refuge in honesty. ‘I thought you might not want to see me.’
And now?
‘And now I know I should have come a decade ago.’
You should. There’s nothing to be afraid of here, and much that is beautiful.
Patrick Sutherland rises, slaps his hand on Laurence’s shoulder. He reaches past him to a cupboard and hunts in the back of it, grunting satisfaction when he finds what it is he seeks.
Stepping back, he sets a box on the table, made of wood so dark as to be almost black. On the lid, inlaid in ghosted silver ash, are the letters LVT MdM.
‘Patrick! That’s … I mean, I’d heard of these, but I’ve never actually seen one. It’s beautiful. Truly.’
I know. It’s like the old days: the smell of the fire, of Calvados, of tobacco. He loses ten years just by breathing in. Patrick says, Lift the lid. Go on. I dare you.
And he does, and sits astonished at the first three bars, and then he, too, is laughing as Patrick laughed, and they are dancing, sedately, not very accurately, to the strains of ‘God Save the Queen’.
‘Oh, God. It’ll drive me mad!’
With a tug and a pull, Patrick lifts out the mechanism. Lo!
Underneath, Fabien’s requiem:
AND THUS BY ACCIDENT WE BECAME AS GODS
BLYTHE CHILDREN OF THE MOUNTAIN
WARRIORS OF VENGEANCE
UNFORGIVING, UNFORGIVEN
UNFORGOTTEN
‘Patrick …’
There’s more. Do you remember Arisaig?
‘How could I forget.’
He has heard of these music boxes, of the secret compartments that are accessed by a code in the poetry. Remembering Arisaig, he tries out SLAINTE, but it doesn’t work. On the third try, under instruction, he presses IOUASCOTCH and watches in awe as some near-silent mechanism opens a drawer. Inside is a picture of Sophie, a side view, with her attention elsewhere. She is relaxed, happy. He wonders how long ago it was taken.
If you get the combination wrong three times, it will lock itself irredeemably. You could always break it open with a sledgehammer, but at least the owner will know you’ve been there.
‘Patrick, it’s too beautiful to take apart with a sledgehammer. I heard you made one for the French consul in the Congo. And another for some functionary in Bonn.’
They paid me. They weren’t gifts. And they don’t say the same things inside. Only the Maquis de Morez have these. One each.
‘They’ll become family heirlooms.’
I sincerely hope so. And now – a bottle of Talisker appears on the table, and two shot glasses – drink up and tell me exactly how you think we can trap Kramme and unmask Diem.
And so he does.
The cabin is too small to contain the moment.
Laurence rocks back in the oak-carved chair and watches the men of Patrick’s Maquis let themselves go. Perhaps they do it all the time, perhaps there is often this much noise here, but it seems unlikely that it has ever been like this.
‘I don’t believe it. I don’t fucking believe it.’ René is jogging on the spot, waving his cigarette in the air like a war pipe. He is a man now, far beyond his youth, solid, hard at the edges, fierce, but young enough still to be raucous.
Daniel is trying for decorum, and failing. He keeps smacking his fist into his palm, as if word of Kramme’s proximity comes afresh to him at thirty-second intervals. His face is alight. If he were newly in love, it would be hard to imagine him any different. And he is in love, if not newly so. He has married Lisette Moreau, who was, for four unh
appy years, Lisette Andreu, wife of the Milice chief in Saint-Cybard. She has recently confirmed that she is carrying their first child. So maybe he was already a happy man. Now, he is happier. If he is an agent of Kramme’s, he’s exceptionally good, but then that applies across the board and is, when Laurence thinks about it, rather the point.
Patrick and Céline are deep in animated communication over by the wood burner, and here, too, there are ways in which the past is alive in the present. She is caught in the red light, tall, slim, effortlessly commanding. He leans against the wall with a teacup and saucer in his better hand, every inch an English gentleman physician. He looks almost normal. Whole. Alive.
Céline, too, is radiant. As she sinks deeper into conversation with Patrick, it seems more as if she, too, has been caught in the vortex of this place, transported back to the time when they danced the knife-edge of mortality, and felt stronger for it.
He wonders how Sophie feels about this, looks around, catches her eye, nods a greeting. At his glance, she raises her cigarette in salute, detaches herself from the wall against which she has been standing, and comes to sit on the arm of the rocking chair.
‘They make a good couple,’ she says.
‘Except, for all the obvious reasons, they don’t.’ He is closest to the teapot. He pours more into her empty cup, and his own.
She shrugs.
He says, ‘And yet you watch them.’
‘I was watching you. Does it still hurt?’
He forgets how direct she is. He lifts one shoulder in half an answer. ‘Doesn’t it you?’
‘I have him.’
‘Not as he was.’
‘Even so …’ She tilts her cup, stares at the red-gold reflections on the surface. ‘We heard of the others. However bad it was for him, it could have been worse.’
‘Will killing Kramme make it better?’
‘I think he may sleep more soundly. Certainly, I will.’ She glances sideways. She has grown into herself; she can sustain a look like this. ‘And catching Diem. That would … tie off a lot of loose ends. I think in many ways, it matters more. To you also?’
They are talking quietly; nobody else is listening. She really is good at this. He makes himself smile. ‘One never knows until afterwards, but I think so, yes.’
There is a crash on the porch. JJ muscles in through the door, swinging a sack on his back. He is still a vast man. His head almost touches the ceiling, but not quite; it was built with him in mind.
‘Mes amis … one and all’ – he speaks English like a native these days – ‘I come bearing gifts.’ He swings the sack to the floor, opens it, draws out a bundle and unrolls it with a flourish, revealing a clutter of brand-new Colt automatics. They are matt, blued, beautiful. They smell of new gun oil. They do not yet smell of smoke. ‘With the compliments of the French government, for the purposes of killing our friend. Laurence had one like it in the war. For the rest of us, I suggest we all practise with them in the next days. Out here, nobody will hear us.’
None of them is immune to the lure of a new weapon. He hands them out, one by one, and they are like children given barley sugar. Hefting his own, his gaze seeks out Patrick, and Patrick, in turn, nods to Laurence, who puts down his new toy and takes a moment to fill and light his pipe. This speech, he has definitely prepared.
‘The first thing to say is that we’re here running naked on this. Which is to say, we don’t have any kind of official sanction. We do this on our own. Utterly, completely alone. There can be absolutely nothing to trace us back to the DB or to MI6, and’ – he avoids looking at Sophie – ‘definitely not to the CIA. There are those amongst their ranks who will kill to keep this man alive. Quite literally.’ He lets his gaze take in the room. ‘So we succeed or fail on our own. And if we fail, there is no safety net. I hope that is clear.’
We understand. Patrick was their Patron before and has become so again. They defer to him in all things, even JJ, who is so high up in the DB that nobody knows his job title. You have my word, for everyone. And everyone is clear that he’s mine when we get to him.
Of that, without a doubt, everyone is clear.
Laurence’s pipe has gone out. He sucks on hot spittle. ‘If our information is correct, he’s heading for Saint-Cybard. He may have this address, but it’s more likely he’ll endeavour to find it out when he gets to the town. He’s not stupid and he’ll be on his guard. We need to get him to a quiet place where Patrick can take his shot without any risk of repercussions. We were thinking—’
‘The farm,’ Daniel says.
Patrick catches Laurence’s eye, raises his thumb.
Laurence says, ‘We didn’t want to ask, but yes, that would be perfect. Your mother will have to leave for a few days, if she won’t mind?’
‘For the Patron, she will do anything, you know that.’
Céline says, ‘Daniel, she can’t know what we’re doing. She can’t even know it’s for him.’
‘She can.’ Sophie speaks from the first time from the shadows. ‘She didn’t betray us through four years of occupation; she won’t betray us now.’ She turns to Laurence, to Patrick. ‘You’ll need someone to track Kramme down in Saint-Cybard and lay a trail for him to follow. Someone who can recognize him in spite of the plastic surgery and the voice coaching.’
‘Did I just hear you volunteer?’
‘You certainly did.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
ORLÉANS
Sunday, 18 March 2018
22.17
IT IS NIGHT. The sky is clear, the stars an effervescent trail across the dark. JJ Crotteau is dead and the repercussions ping onto Picaut’s phone as Rollo copies her in on some of the messages floating round the world’s intelligence agencies. JJ was big in so many ways: his reach – and the shock waves of his death – stretched way beyond France.
Elodie Duval’s body has not been found, although, increasingly, it feels as if this is only going to be a matter of time. Every police force in Europe and North America is on alert for sightings. Every airport, seaport and international train station has her picture. Conrad Lakoff has offered to bring in the might of the NSA to filter the world’s electronic communications. The fact that he can do this says more about his trajectory towards the top of the tree than any number of speeches at a conference.
A storm is brewing, but most of it is virtual. Sitting on the shabby-chic sofa in the quiet of Elodie’s apartment, with two ancient newspaper cuttings in her hand – a wedding notice and an obituary – Picaut makes three phone calls.
First, to Sylvie: ‘Check for properties in the region of Saint-Cybard held in the name of Mademoiselle Amélie Devereaux or Madame François Duval.’
‘On it.’
Second, to Eric, who answers on the eighth ring sounding breathless and cross: ‘Do you still have Elodie Duval’s hairbrush? Good. How fast can you do a DNA test to check for parentage? Twenty-four hours? Because I have a wedding notice for Sophie Destivelle to François Duval and I need to know. Can’t you—? Fuck. OK, never mind. Sorry to disturb you. Give my apologies to Ingrid.’
Third, to Martin Gillard. He’s in a car: she can hear road noise and the background chatter of a radio when he picks up.
‘Martin, did Elodie ever take a DNA test?’
There’s a pause, and the sound of an indicator. In the background, someone coughs, but it might be on the radio. Gillard says, ‘No idea. Is it something she might have done?’
‘If she had reason to believe she wasn’t Lisette Fayette’s daughter, she might.’
‘Right.’ The road noise fills the gap when he doesn’t speak. She can almost hear him thinking. ‘Where are you?’
‘At her apartment.’
‘Right. You’ll have a visitor shortly. Be careful, Captain.’
‘Martin, you don’t have to come here, I’m—’ He has already gone.
She hangs up, slowly. Martin, you didn’t ask why Elodie might have reason to believe she wasn’t Lisette’s daughter. O
r whose she might have been. Which, actually, when she thinks about it, is more interesting than anything else.
Have you been speaking to Laurence Vaughan-Thomas? Because he knew. He sent me here. What have I not seen?
Picaut sits in the half-dark with her whole face screaming to be itched. She sits on her hands and it’s no good. She gets up and prowls down the length of the wall, makes herself focus on the photographs, on the places where the shine of the street lamps plays across them, unevenly.
Here is Pierre in young adulthood: tall, good looking in a geeky kind of way. He looks very much like a younger Daniel, but with his mother’s eyes.
Right a bit and here is Elodie as a teenager, standing with her parents and behind them, her godparents, Sophie and Laurence. She is older in the next shot: standing with Lisette and Sophie. In the one after that, she is twenty-one, leaning on a powder blue Mazda MX-5 with Pierre beside her, his arm around her shoulder. They are laughing, radiant. And next along, again, Elodie, Lisette, Pierre, Laurence and Sophie in a birthday shot, all crowded round a cake.
There is a pattern here, so subtle that it’s only by the end of the wall that she sees it: over and over again, Elodie is never next to Sophie. Or perhaps it might be better to say that Sophie is never next to Elodie. Even at the funeral of Lisette Fayette, Sophie has turned her head at exactly the right moment, so that she is seen only in profile, while Elodie is face on.
Oh, you are so clever, you who trained in the days when failure was fatal.
Balanced on Elodie’s sideboard is the black-and-white shot of the Maquisards jumping the wall into the churchyard where Max Kramme and his new bride were killed. Here is Sophie, caught in a moment of utter passion – hate, rage, joy, action all shining from the fierceness of her face. She is beautiful.
