Single to Paris

by Single to Paris (retail) (epub)

  ‘What about him?’ Pointing with his head but still looking down at the girl, moving the matted hair off her face with a forefinger. Her eyes stayed shut. There was heavy bruising on the near side of her face and blood-smears from a grazed cheekbone: she was wearing a torn shirt and a skirt that had worked up above her knees – which were also grazed and bruised. Clavié answering that last question with, ‘All I can say is he’s breathing. Wouldn’t eat, only drank some water.’

  ‘Has the use of his arms now, has he?’

  ‘Nah. On his knees like a dog, sucking at it. Same as she has to.’

  ‘Why would she—’

  ‘Not untying her hands, am I!’

  Rouquet was naked. Striped and patched with lash-marks, broken flesh and dry or drying blood, strung up by his wrists from an iron hook. His toes were in contact with the cement floor and for the moment he had his weight on them; as long as he was conscious and could manage it, he would have.

  Lafont glanced back at the others. ‘If he drank, he must want to stay alive. Extraordinary. How long has he been on the hook?’

  ‘Ten minutes, quarter-hour. Juberts gave me a hand up with him.’

  ‘Get my whip.’

  ‘Right—’

  ‘Wait.’ Removing his jacket. ‘Hang this up. Carefully, Paul.’ Turning back to the girl, then. ‘Did you hear, Yvette? See, you’re going to have to spectate again now. Paul will keep your eyes open for you. Remember – you’ve only to say you’ll co-operate, and he’ll be moved to a bed with a doctor to attend him and you to nurse him. He won’t stand much more of this – up to you whether he lives or dies.’

  ‘He won’t tell you anything. No matter what you do. Why not let him rest?’

  ‘Hey – communicating, finally!’

  ‘Please, let him rest?’

  ‘Well, I would if you or he’d see a bit of sense. Otherwise when he’s dead – well, have to work on you. Much nicer if you persuade him to start answering the questions. I don’t want to hurt you, Yvette. Couldn’t you really try persuading him? Really turn it on? With you, see, killing won’t be on the menu. Come to think of it, might entrust you to Vic here. You know Vic – this fellow?’

  Bernin – Vic – stooped with his face in close-up to hers, while Lafont from behind used his middle fingers to pull her eyelids up. Bernin’s features and expression unquestionably bestial. Whispering – she’d smell his breath, feel his spittle – ‘I’m hoping he don’t tell ’em anything, kid. Great times coming for you and me then, uh?’

  Clavié handed Lafont his whip. Black leather, with a stock about two feet long, lash about another six. Fondling it, drawing it through the fingers of the other hand as if the feel of it gave him pleasure.

  Moving forward then.

  ‘Now. You!’

  He’d kicked at Rouquet’s feet and the body had jerked – swung, weight suddenly on the racked arms, toes scrabbling to relieve that agony but not making it. Lafont’s shrill squawk: ‘Going to talk? Answer the questions I showed you, eh? Just for Yvette’s sake, maybe?’ Léonie’s head back and eyes open under Clavié’s fingertips; Bernin growling, ‘She’s watching the bloody ceiling, boy, shove her head forward!’ Adding, ‘Cut her fucking eyelids off, comes to my turn.’ Lafont had stepped back from his suspended target, flipping the whip’s lash out that way just once, measuring the distance and shrieking, ‘Ready? No last words? First and last, eh? Still time, but – no? All right then—’

  Chapter 8

  The way she was trying to make herself look at it was that this was only her second day in Paris – first full day, at that – and she’d already (a) made contact with Jacqui and would be seeing her again in a couple of hours’ time, (b) established a working relationship with Georges Dénault and would be seeing him again this evening. Those were the facts: whereas the way one felt—

  Jinking left, to avoid an old man on a tricycle. Those had been rifle or pistol shots. Hostage-shooting from the Vincennes castle? No – too far, those had been much closer, and scattered shots, none of the discipline of a firing-squad. Earlier, there had been more distant bursts of rifle-fire which might well have been from Vincennes: but what this might be…

  The old man with his beret and white beard was now stuck on the wrong side of the road: a gazo lorry had only just managed to avoid him and there was a lot of shouting going on. But also pedestrians being drawn down that way: some standing, staring, shielding their eyes against the sun while engaged in loud discussion of it, others trotting off in that direction – from which there was yet more shooting. Sub-machine-gun: Schmeisser maybe – short burst, pause, longer burst, and shouting drowned out by a car-horn either stuck or with a thumb jammed on it. Rosie freewheeling down that way and listening for more. Coming – had come – from somewhere to the south from here, distance perhaps a kilometre or so: or less, since she could already see traffic piling up. And wanted a sight of – of whatever…

  She swung to the right. Had been on the Boulevard de Magenta with Gare de l’Est somewhere on her left, was peeling off now into what turned out to be Boulevard de Strasbourg. Then left, into Rue du Château, which seemed to run parallel to Magenta – more or less – and might get around that hold-up, which surely must be caused by that – disturbance… Another option now – a road that must cross Magenta as well as this narrower street. Holding on, anyway. Having heard no more shots. And to the right now, into Rue de Langry. Must be within a long stone’s throw of the Place de la République, she guessed – re-envisaging the map, essentials that she’d memorised. A problem down there, she remembered, was that the same line of boulevard running more or less east and west changed its name about every 500 yards. OK, so boulevards plural, but all end-to-end, all effectively one and the same. Whatever it was, this fracas, she had to be close to it now. Whizzing on down and edging kerbward, where people were running, shouting to each other. The focal point, she guessed, was going to be the intersection of Rue de Langry and the stretch of boulevard that called itself St Martin. An end to guesswork then, she could see it – two Boche trucks looking as if they’d collided, and other vehicles parked around them, three, surrounding them at different angles. The trucks’ doors that were in her range of vision were open, and from the nearer one a soldier hung out head-down, helmet hanging by its strap, blood puddling the road. Tailboards were down, men inside were passing out rifles and ammunition-boxes which others – Frenchmen – were loading into the gazos.

  Dénault’s growl, in recent memory: Although God knows we need arms…

  Getting them, too. Or those might be Reds. She was close enough now to be at risk of finding herself in trouble when any live Boches finally turned up, close enough also to see two other dead ones in the road. One gazo, a light-coloured van, was moving off – along Boulevard St Martin – and a man in a vest and surprisingly a striped apron – butcher, fishmonger, from les Halles? – was slamming up the tailboard of a pick-up truck. Nobody was going anywhere near the dead Boches; despite a lot having run away there were quite a few just standing, gawping – as she was too, she realised; might be wiser to make herself scarce; any minute there’d be troops all over this district, wouldn’t be exuding charm either – especially not after finding those dead ones. Thinking of Léonie and Rouquet again, of the fact that if one was taken as a hostage one would be of absolutely no damn use to them at all. Little enough now. Turning the bike around, to start back up Rue Langry; deciding it would be advisable not to be on any route that might have taken one through that intersection: they’d want witnesses, descriptions of individuals and vehicles, and wouldn’t care how they got them. Back to Boulevard Strasbourg therefore, and south on that: it would take her into Boulevard Sebastopol, and on that she’d get right down to the Seine. Having come originally from Vincennes, of course: slightly roundabout route, just coming the way she knew.

  It was a lovely morning, although there’d been some rain during the night apparently. She’d slept on a pallet on the floor of the front room in the
little house Adée shared with an elderly female relative, and for breakfast they’d had ersatz coffee and amazingly fresh bread and dripping. The night had left her voraciously hungry again – as well as aching in every joint and muscle – but she’d been careful not to take advantage of Adée’s generosity, especially as she’d be having – she hoped – a decent lunch.

  More than Léonie would be getting, she thought. If she was alive. Might have been alive yesterday, might not be by this time tomorrow. And you could bet would not be eating any sort of lunch; the rest of it didn’t bear thinking about. All right, so this was one’s first full day in Paris, and one had taken a step or two – one hoped – in the right direction; but what if Jacqui backed out and Dénault failed to come up with anything?

  The man with the high voice had been in her thoughts a lot, ever since she’d woken. Last night she hadn’t been able to question Dénault about him, he’d been in a hurry to get away, had told her angrily, ‘Tonight. Talk tonight!’ Close to the end of his tether, seemingly. The fact was, she’d known of Henri Lafont and the ‘Gestapo of Rue Lauriston’ from way back – lectures in her training days and occasional references to him since then, the particular angle that concerned SOE having always been the French gestapists’ infiltration of Resistance groups. Hadn’t thought of them in connection with this business, though, and there hadn’t been a mention of them in the two and a half days of briefing at Fawley Court. But – with everything here in a state of flux, SD and Gestapo pulling out – and the Rue Lauriston gang, she remembered having been told, having cells of their own…

  Connection between Lafont and Clausen?

  If there was a possibility those two were being held in 93 Rue Lauriston, and indications being that whoever was holding them must have had them more than a week now – ten days, maybe… SOE’s expectation of agents who were caught was that they should hold out under interrogation for at least two days, forty-eight hours, in order to give fellow-agents that much time in which to disappear; whether or not one would be able to achieve that had always been one of the prime anxieties.

  But ten days…

  At the intersection of Boulevards Sebastopol and St Denis there was another hold-up, Feldgendarmes stopping everything from crossing until several troop-carriers and an armoured car had passed – westbound, coming from the arms hijack. Helmeted SS troopers staring grimly at the crowds: looking, she thought, for blood. They’d spill some too – hostage blood, probably a lot of it. They’d still have a few hundred hostages stashed away, she guessed – traffic offenders, curfew breakers, black-marketeers. Or people who’d done absolutely nothing. Like oneself – innocent young woman cyclist remounting as the traffic began to move again.

  From that intersection to the river was about a mile, with the spires of Notre-Dame as a leading mark almost dead ahead. Then Quai de Mégisserie, and no more than 500 yards to Pont Neuf and over it to the island.

  * * *

  The Restaurant Paul was on the Place Dauphine, close to the narrowing western end. There was already a crowd of customers at and around the outside tables; many were barristers, male and female, in black gowns with white bibs. The Palais de Justice was only a short stroll from here. She spent a few minutes finding some railings and chaining her bicycle, also taking off the old raincoat – leaving it on the bike’s carrier, where it should be safe enough in these highly respectable surroundings – and by that time very few tables down there were still unoccupied. If any. Not a single uniform amongst all that lot: the impression was of business as usual, a lot of comfortably-off people enjoying themselves. No sign of Nazi occupation, let alone of coming insurrection.

  Why Jacqui had chosen this place, maybe. If she was coming. Twelve noon now, half an hour to go. In such surroundings, the beautiful and ancient heart of a lovely city, and its inhabitants so apparently unconcerned, laughing and chattering, it might be easy for her to turn a blind eye to the danger she was in. Pretend it’s not there, and it won’t be? But – strolling eastward along the quai, passing the Palais de Justice – she remembered Dénault’s account of collabs (and ‘ultras’, meaning ultra-collabs, effectively the most virulent French Nazis) all mustering in the Rue des Pyramides on Thursday night, and his regret that there’d been SS around, that wistful otherwise we might have had a really jolly little party – meaning, jolly little massacre…

  The SS wouldn’t be there for ever, she thought.

  Ahead of her now, in what was roughly the centre of the island, that solid-looking building of which she had an end-on view – with a forecourt the size of a parade ground behind tall railings – that was the Préfecture de Police. And beyond it – looking slantwise across that stone frontage – the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. But there was a whole mass of people, she realised – on the quai and clustering along those railings. Noisy, milling around excitedly, not just Saturday midday promenaders… Anyway – time to turn and go back, she thought, put herself where she’d see Jacqui when/if she did turn up. Primarily, whether she’d be alone or brought by car – and if the latter, whether by Clausen or—

  The flag being hoisted over the police headquarters was the Tricolor. She’d paused – seeing and hearing the crowd’s suddenly increased excitement – and was caught up in it now: gazing up as hundreds of others were doing, at the flag of France. At any time since 1940 when the swastika had replaced it, displaying it would have resulted in immediate, summary executions. Tricolor climbing the mast jerkily: was at the top now, flapping in the breeze. The crowd cheering and clapping – had gathered to see this, must have had notice that it was going to happen. Pointing up at it, waving to it, blowing kisses to it: cheering, slapping each other on the back, shaking hands, kissing, whooping. While inside the railing a mob of men in shirtsleeves were surrounding one who was standing up on something – joined by two others now – on the back of a truck, must be…

  The striking policemen. None in uniform, but taking over their own headquarters. And not a Boche in sight. That was a situation which might change dramatically at any moment, she realised: envisaging, the arrival of truckloads of them – armoured cars, tanks, machine-guns. Instead – gradually, at first, a few voices barely audible but the sound swelling fast as others – within a few seconds the whole crowd – joined in, bawling out the Marseillaise. Inside there, the gendarmes too were singing. Faces upturned to the flag, expressions – well, some grave, but mostly wild with joy. Rosie trying to sing with them – to her own surprise crying too, which made it difficult. A stout woman threw her arms around her, kissed her, screamed in her ear, ‘Courage, petite!’ Rosie kissed her back, laughing as well as crying, and noticed an old man standing ramrod stiff, saluting, and tears coursing down his cheeks. Having to get back to the Place Dauphine now though: and asking herself en route – getting her feet back on the ground, as it were – what good any amount of flag-waving and singing of anthems could do for Léonie and Rouquet.

  That was all she had to think about. Wasn’t here to get emotional over the imminent liberation of France, was here to save two lives. Moving as that undoubtedly had been.

  * * *

  They were eating inside the restaurant. Jacqui had booked an inside table, and the ones outside were all taken anyway. She’d arrived on foot, alone, from the direction of the Quai d’Horloge. She was looking marvellous in an off-white cotton dress, sleeveless because she’d taken the jacket off, hung it over the back of the chair together with her handbag, which made Rosie’s – Léonie’s – look like something that should have been thrown away years ago. Two male lawyers at a nearby table were giving Jacqui a lot of attention. Rosie got some too, but Jacqui really was quite strikingly alluring. Rosie, in a lilac-coloured skirt and top which she’d owned pre-war but had thought was still quite smart – it was the only smartish thing she’d brought with her – felt like some poor acquaintance out of an altogether different social milieu.

  At least, though, not like a collab or high-ranking Boche’s mistress. Miaow… Asking Jacqui quietly,
‘Did you know the Préfecture has a tricolor flying over it?’

  A nod. ‘Heard some people talking about it, on my way here. Then all that singing and cheering. Watching, were you?’

  ‘Yes. The Germans won’t let it stay there, will they? Any minute there’ll be – well, God knows…’

  ‘From what I hear, they’re trying to keep it all low-key.’

  ‘Who are?’

  ‘Germans. They don’t want to provoke the rising that’s obsessing you. Or was doing so yesterday. The last thing they want is to have to order troops and tanks into the streets.’

  ‘But there will be a rising, Jacqui.’

  ‘Here’s our soup.’ They were silent while it was served – a vegetable broth of some kind. Jacqui had ordered wine too, a carafe of Pelure d’Oignon which she’d told them to put on ice if they had any, and after the soup they were having what the restaurateur called chevreuil – venison – but which Jacqui said would probably be goat. The waiter had left them now.

  Rosie told Jacqui quietly, ‘To imagine that there might not be would be putting your head in the sand. I saw two truckloads of rifles and other stuff being hijacked this morning. Trucks had collided – maybe through one of the drivers being shot or something. By the time I was close enough to see what was going on the drivers and some others were dead in the road – looked dead anyway, and there’d been shooting, I’d heard it from some way off – and résistants were transferring the loads to other vehicles. What would they want guns for, if not to use them?’

  ‘How would they have known the trucks had rifles in them in the first place?’

  ‘Some insider tipping them off?’

  ‘What is it you want of me, anyway?’

  ‘Your help – in return for which—’

  ‘You’ll protect me.’ Glancing round, and a gesture with one hand. ‘From all this.’