by Kurt Magenta
He kept to the side streets, the Champs-Elysées somewhere to his right. By the time he reached the boulevard Malesherbes he could no longer hear them. He stopped in a doorway to replace his shoes.
Weirdly, he felt like laughing. They could look for him, but they wouldn’t find him. There were tricks he could use. Lucien Cortel, AKA Daniel Michaud, was at liberty.
He turned up his collar and started walking.
He would need a hat with a brim, to hide his face. On Place Saint Augustin he found a lively early-morning brasserie and stepped inside, embracing its warmth and hubbub. Then he remembered he had no money, turned to leave and lifted a hat from the stand by the door anyway. He was out and away long before anybody noticed. The battered brown fedora was a little tight but it would do the job.
He walked to Les Halles, Zola’s ‘belly of Paris’. He sought crowds: a lone young man was suspicious, especially one who appeared to have been in a fight. His rough looks melted more easily into the scruffy streets around the market. He had always liked the marginality of this place; the sense that it was a separate universe, with its own tribes and codes. These days, with its belly no longer full, it looked more ragged than usual. He passed carts of Jerusalem artichokes, lumpy swedes, tattered cabbages. Even so, the collision of aromas taunted him. He was starving but couldn’t bring himself to filch anything. Strange – he would steal a hat but not an apple.
When it was time he started on his mental list of things to do. He wound his way back towards the river, constantly checking for pursuers. Footpads, à la Aldercroft. If there were any, they were phantoms.
When he reached the Quai du Louvre he slowed, fearing the worst. He made his way down the line of green kiosks, the glacial feeling returning to his belly.
But no. There was Jean-Vincent, half asleep over the tales of Arsène Lupin, the gentleman thief.
‘Not as exciting as it used to be, J.V.?’ said Lucien.
The bouquiniste jerked back into life. Looked up and narrowed his eyes. ‘You’ve been in trouble.’
‘Still am. That package: I’d better take it off your hands.’
Jean-Vincent stood up. ‘Please. I’ve lost sleep thinking about it.’ He extracted the parcel from its hiding place and handed it over.
‘Merci beaucoup.’ Lucien concealed the book in the inside pocket of his coat. ‘I’m sorry to have put you through that.’
‘Looks like you’ve been through worse.’
‘I’ll tell you about it one day. But right now I must go. I may not see you again for a while.’
‘Farewell, then.’ Again that brief, slightly awkward hug.
As Lucien walked away, he wondered why he had made the effort to retrieve the book. It was only poetry, after all. And yet…it was also a message of hope, a signal from the darkness. As such, it symbolised the entire point of his journey.
A drab café-tabac on the rue de l’Ancienne Comédie, a pigeon hop from Saint Germain. He went straight to the counter. Behind it, a woman was wiping down the zinc. La patronne: greying curls and an apron, a face like a wilted rose.
‘A Monaco, and yesterday’s paper, if you have it,’ he said. ‘I want to check the racing results.’ He smiled. ‘Of course, tomorrow’s results would be even better.’
She looked up at him. ‘No,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘It’s finished. They took my husband two days ago. Leave now.’ She scowled at his confusion. ‘Go! They may be watching.’
Lucien walked out, face livid, sweat gathering under the brim of his hat.
Jasper Maddox’s escape circuit was broken. So how the hell was he supposed to get out of France now?
Chapter 23
The Mechanic
Twelve fifteen. His watch was wound and working again, the time taken from an ornate clock below the rotunda of a bank on place de la Bourse. He waited at the bus stop diagonally across the street from the former Apex building in rue Réaumur, sheltered by the choreography of people and vehicles. From here it should be easy to spot Lili. If she took a lunch break. And if – it was a sickening thought – she hadn’t been taken by the Gestapo.
A bus stopped, disgorging passengers from the open platform at the rear. Like everything else in Paris it was familiar yet distorted: the same shade of dark green, but mutilated by a cylinder the height of three barrels bolted to its side, just behind the driver’s cab, which enabled it to work by gas. Only the Nazis had petrol. He felt a stab of outrage.
New passengers boarded the bus and it rumbled away trailing a sulphurous odour. Nobody gave Lucien a second glance – in the occupied city, people moved quickly and kept their eyes downcast.
There she was, crossing the road, wearing a grey trench-coat and arm-in-arm with another young woman. They were laughing gaily: work friends glad of an hour’s break.
Lucien set off at a trot and deliberately collided with her, his shoulder striking hers. ‘Oh, mademoiselle,’ he apologised. ‘Excusez-moi. I am desolated…’
Her eyes widened for a second, then she composed herself and snapped, ‘Just be more careful!’
The girls moved on huffily. Lucien walked down the road a little, pausing now and then to study the shop windows. In the window of a shoe shop there was a picture of Marshal Pétain, encircled by footwear like some kind of absurd fetishist shrine. Further along, a jutting diamond-shaped sign read ‘Presse-Tabac’. Lucien stopped outside, his gaze drifting over the magazine covers. Now she was beside him.
‘You look like a vagrant,’ she said quietly. ‘The Boche?’
‘The Gestapo. I escaped.’
‘Apparently. And Dédé?’
His heart faltered. ‘He’s not made contact?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m scared. I keep thinking I’ll be next.’ Her voice betrayed the cracks in her tough new façade.
‘It would have happened by now.’ They both knew his words were empty. ‘I need money. Clothes too.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘A wash might be better. Five thirty. The old café on rue des Martyrs.’ She nodded at the tabac. ‘I’d better go in. I told Janine I needed cigarettes.’
The rue des Martyrs led up to Pigalle from the church of Notre Dame de Lorette, where their parents had married. The tone of the quartier lay somewhere between middle-class and louche: in the 19th century the courtesans who haunted the area were known as ‘Lorettes’.
The Café Lamartine could hardly have been more traditional: a zinc-topped bar, prices chalked on a blackboard, tables and chairs from which the varnish had long eroded. Their father had liked its scruffy charm and had occasionally taken them there after school. A panaché for Lucien and a citron pressé for his little sister. The patrons made a fuss of them and they had the impression of being on the cusp of the dark, abrasive world of the adult city. For Lucien the place was straight out of Simenon: Inspector Maigret might walk in at any moment.
Today the last thing he needed was the police. He entered with his hat brim low and took a seat at the back of the room. He was fairly certain nobody would recognise him: it was the first time he’d set foot in the place since the old man’s death.
Lili arrived barely five minutes later, carrying a brown paper bundle tied with string. After kissing his cheeks and sitting opposite him she passed it under the table. ‘Clothes, courtesy of Ambroise.’
‘Great – now I’m going to look like a zazou.’
She shook her head. ‘Old stuff. I didn’t tell him much but I think he guessed they were for you. There’s a razor and a bit of soap, too.’
‘Merci.’
Next she handed over a fold of bills and ration coupons, also under the table. ‘This is the best I could do. Something to eat and a room for the night.’
‘I’ll pay you back some day. And now the most important thing: I need to make contact with the British. Who was Dédé’s cut-out? How d
id he get his messages to London?’
The waiter came over and they both ordered coffee, or the stuff that stood in for it. Afterwards Lili said, ‘I don’t know. He made me swear not to tell anyone.’
‘You don’t know, or you can’t tell? Make up your mind.’ He paused and smoothed out his voice. ‘Lili, I need to get out of here. Back to England. Otherwise half of Dédé’s work will have been for nothing.’
She paused to light a cigarette and consider. Then she looked him in the eye. ‘All right. There’s a man in Clichy. Dédé used to call him “The Mechanic”. I only once heard his real name: Ferrandier. Judging by Dédé’s smile, I suspect he really was a mechanic. But I’ve no idea how to find him.’
‘I’ll have to try.’ Their coffees arrived. The waiter departed once more. ‘How are things at work?’
‘I don’t know. I keep thinking people are looking at me strangely, especially Caradec.’
Lucien heard Maddox’s words: This business feeds on paranoia. He said, ‘Would they leave you alone if they really suspected you? Can they connect you to Dédé?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. We mostly did things through an intermediary. We met rarely, and always on the other side of town, like the other night.’
‘If Dédé managed to dodge them, you’ll be fine. He’s probably lying low somewhere.’
She shrugged. ‘I suppose I’ll find out.’ She was trying to keep her voice light. ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘Change. Find somewhere to sleep. And then go and look for The Mechanic.’
He used to love the towering platters of fruits de mer at the Wepler, the dazzling brasserie that took up an entire corner of place de Clichy. But even if the place hadn’t been crawling with Nazis, it was unattainable now.
At least he looked respectable, having changed in the cramped WC of the Café Lamartine, tottering precariously on a narrow strip of tile in front of the hole-in-the-floor toilet the French referred to as ‘Turkish’. His old clothes went in a bin outside, apart from his coat – the precious book still nestled inside – and the purloined hat.
In front of their old café, he had said goodbye to his sister. ‘We probably won’t see each other again. Before I go, I mean.’
‘No.’ She bit her lip, an expression so familiar it made him ache.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Go back to La Rochelle. Look after maman.’
‘I will. But not just yet.’
He kissed her cheeks. Before he could say anything else she turned and walked away, a small trench-coated figure in the narrow street sloping down towards the church.
He dined on onion soup and a hunk of bread at a grubby bistro. Finding that he still had enough money for a glass of red, he asked the waiter if there was a telephone directory lying around. Officially these no longer existed, but a 1938 edition was duly unearthed and delivered to his table.
The Clichy his sister had mentioned was not in the same neighbourhood as the Parisian square of the same name. In fact it was a working class suburb that lay at the other end of the Avenue de Clichy, a forty minute walk or a short bus ride from where he was sitting.
There was no listing for Ferrandier, but there was a garage called P.A.F. Autos. It felt promising. He bought one of the small metal discs called jetons from the bar and went downstairs to feed it into the phone.
Of course there was no answer. In any case, what could he say with any safety?
He paid for the meagre meal and steeled himself to spend another night at a seedy hotel.
As he left, he felt eyes on his back like a brush of feathers against his spine. He turned casually at the door, but nobody was looking at him: the handful of customers were all engrossed in food and conversation, trying to make the best of things.
He shook off the feeling and stepped into the cold night air.
In the morning he sat at the back of the bus, pleasantly anonymous among the factory workers. At the hotel he had washed, shaved – in the inevitably cold water – and parted his hair on the other side. His eye was bloodshot but functioning, his jaw and cheekbone less swollen; although both were bruised if you looked closely enough. Never mind: clean-shaven and without spectacles, he was a different man.
The gas-powered bus crawled past shuttered bars and nightclubs, shabby grocery stores and jaundiced bar-tabacs. This was a zone of transition, a frontier between the Paris of legend and its less salubrious outskirts.
Clichy itself was still raw with the memory of an anti-fascist demonstration in March 1937, which had turned into a riot and then a massacre when the police opened fire on the communist protestors, most of them factory workers. Six had been killed and hundreds injured.
Lucien could see perfectly well how Clichy might become one of the first hubs of resistance against the Nazis.
The bus route terminated at a small square in front of the town hall: a pompous nineteenth century building with a clock and a belfry. He followed the herd off the bus. Outside, the morning was struggling out of darkness, the air grey with mist that carried an acrid bite of coal smoke.
There was a ticket office on a concrete island between arriving and departing buses. Lucien waited his turn in the short queue, then asked the man behind the window: ‘Would you know the rue Sigebert, by any chance?’
‘On the way to the station.’ The man pointed. ‘Carry on down there a bit, second on the right after the post office. Then try the next left. Or the left after that.’
Lucien thanked him and set off. There was the post office: an angular building in the Art Deco style, once smart but now blackened by pollution. A few metres on he turned right, and the turn-of-the century apartment blocks gave way to low-slung industrial buildings with slanting rooftops and aggressively tall chimneys.
He took a left as instructed, and a short way along he saw it: a sign reading P.A.F. Autos on the façade of a squat red-brick edifice. Its double doors were painted vine green. They were closed and there was no sign of life behind the dark square panes.
Lucien thought for a moment, then retraced his steps. He stood at the corner of the street, hesitant. The sky was lightening now and the mist had receded; scraps of blue were beginning to show through the torn grey wadding of the clouds.
Working on instinct, he continued towards the station. And there it was, on the corner: the Café de la Gare.
Busy enough inside: a couple of men in blue overalls drinking beers at the counter, even at this hour; other groups clustered around the tables. The end of the night shift. The steel and cable factories were still working, even if the Germans took the bulk of production. For the time being the remaining workers shouldered the burden and did their complaining in private. They needed their salaries.
The man behind the bar had a blotched red face and sparse grey hair, his downturned mouth suggesting he had made a study of mankind and been left deeply disappointed. The dark eyes glinted with suspicion: here was a stranger in a place that didn’t see many of them.
‘Bonjour,’ said Lucien. ‘I’m looking for a man named Ferrandier. A car mechanic.’
‘Who’s asking for him?’
‘A friend of a friend.’ Lucien improvised. ‘I am a doctor – I’m permitted to drive a car. But it has a carburettor problem.’
‘Over there.’ The man jerked his chin at a table in the corner where a game of draughts was in progress. Lucien thanked him and crossed to the table.
‘Monsieur Ferrandier?’
One of the men looked up, eyes blue and hard. He had a round, pugnacious face and closely cropped blond hair, like an undefeated alley cat. His hands over the draughtboard were red at the knuckles and stippled with scars. ‘The same. And you are?’
‘My name is Michaud.’ He repeated his story.
‘The garage is closed.’ Ferrandier returned his attention to the board. ‘Lack of work.’
‘T
hen surely you’d like some? A mutual friend recommended you. Go and see The Mechanic, he said.’
The slight emphasis was enough. Ferrandier shrugged. ‘Very well. Bring your car to the shop in an hour. I’ll see what I can do.’
As Ferrandier had suggested, there were no cars in the garage. The wide sombre space reeked of oil and was lined with racks of tools and battered metal cabinets. Two repair pits with steel ramps took up most of the oil-patched concrete floor; a block and tackle hung from the roof. On the walls there were tin advertisements for Pneus Michelin, Mobiloil and Huiles Renault, along with more tools hanging from masonry nails. Once again, Lucien felt an approving 12-year-old peering out of his soul.
Ferrandier had risen from the trestle table that served as a desk at the back of the garage. Now he stood with his arms crossed before the left-hand repair pit. He said, ‘There is no car, is there?’
‘No. And I’m no doctor.’
‘Any connard can see that. Too young. You should learn to lie better. What are you to our friend?’
Lucien told him, quickly but from the beginning.
Ferrandier said, ‘And that’s all of it?’
‘More or less.’ Apart from a few sensitive names. He had left out his sister, for a start. ‘So can you help me? Do you know how to reach the British?’
‘I know somebody who knows.’ Ferrandier hesitated. ‘It’s complicated, this business. The radio operator moves around. The Nazis have trucks, we think. Detectors.’
‘How long will it take?’
‘Two days. Maybe three. Think you’ll last that long?’
‘I’ll have to. Except…I have no money.’
Ferrandier spread his arms. ‘Then welcome to your new home. There’s a bedroll somewhere and a water closet out the back. I sleep here myself when I’m too drunk to go home to the wife.’
