The Collaborators

by Reginald Hill

  ‘This is Pigalle you’re in, Pauli. There are those who affect to find beauty in low life and romance in squalor but I must confess I feel that an area like this requires the transforming power of art at its most magical, indeed at its most distorting. Look at that ghastly pair of tarts over there! Still I presume they do well enough for the undiscerning Boche. Call it sex if you like, my dear, I prefer to call it bayonet practice. No, this is no place for you to be, Pauli. There’s nothing here for a young man of feeling.’

  They entered the métro station. Pauli would have used one of his usual tricks to travel for nothing, but Melchior held him firmly and bought their tickets. The platform was crowded and soon Melchior was holding forth on the injustice of a man of his sensibilities having to travel like a bullock being transported to market. But Pauli was no longer listening. His attention had been caught by a young man a few feet away whose face was set in an expression of ferocious concentration.

  Close to the young man, a little nearer the edge of the platform, was a German officer. He had a fresh, open face and his lips were pursed to whistle some tune or other, whether merry or sad Pauli could not hear. For the train was here now, decelerating noisily as it emerged from the tunnel. Even as it halted, the waiting travellers were surging forward to the unopened doors. The young Frenchman too stepped forward, bringing his hand out of his jacket pocket. Clutched in it was a small pistol. Pauli saw him raise it to half-way up the officer’s spine. The young man’s face was working palely. The pressure of his finger on the trigger was visible through the whole length of his arm, yet he did not seem able to find that last milligram of strength which would release the hammer. A small stout man with uneven teeth showing beneath a ragged moustache suddenly lurched forward and grabbed at the gun. When his hands closed over the younger man’s he made no effort to divert the weapon but instead added his strength to the trigger finger. The gun fired. And fired again as the small man renewed his pressure. The first shot was almost inaudible. But some instinct immediately made those around fall into a wondering silence through which the second shot ripped with angry force. A woman shrieked. Blood spurted out of the officer’s tunic spattering the hands of both his assailants. The German fell slowly forward. The small man turned away dragging the pale-faced younger man with him. The crowd surged away from the falling body like water driven from the centre of a pool by a heavy stone. The fleeing men came straight past Pauli. Melchior turned to see what was happening and was pushed aside by the fugitives, but he did not protest as he took in the bleeding twitching body only a few feet away. For a second he thought he’d wandered back into the make-believe world of Yerevan’s gangster film, but it was not a very long second.

  ‘Oh my God!’ he cried, raising his hands to his face to block out the sight. Then he screamed in greater horror as he saw there was blood on his jacket sleeve where the assassins had brushed against him.

  Two German soldiers from further up the platform forced their way to the body. A gendarme came clattering down the furthermost stairway, blowing his whistle. People were shouting, gesticulating, pointing. It seemed to Melchior they were pointing at him. In a blind panic he turned and began forcing his way towards the staircase up which the killers had vanished. The flight was totally instinctive but not altogether illogical. He had under his shirt 50,000 francs in dirty notes which he had no way of explaining. These were not the reason why he ran, but once having started running, they were a very good reason not to stop.

  But suddenly there was a better reason to change his mind.

  Almost at the staircase he heard a clicking noise behind him and a German voice called, ‘Halt, or I fire!’

  He halted, turned; a German soldier with his rifle at the ready came running towards him. Behind him was a gendarme. The soldier thrust the muzzle of his weapon into Melchior’s belly. The gendarme cried breathlessly, ‘Is this one of them?’

  Melchior regarded them helplessly and for once speechlessly. He felt like a model posed by David for a figure of Guilt.

  Then a small figure pushed between the gendarme and the soldier and rushed up to him, crying, ‘Uncle! Uncle! I’m here! I lost sight of you, I was so frightened!’

  Lowering his half-raised arms, Melchior clasped Pauli to his breast and said, ‘There, there, it’s all right, it’s all right,’ and raising his eyes to the gendarme, ‘I lost him in the crowd, there was such a panic, I thought he’d got knocked over or run away.’

  The gendarme rolled his eyes in exasperation.

  ‘Come on!’ he said to the soldier. ‘This way!’

  And the two of them ran off up the stairs.

  The journey home was silent. But as they walked towards the apartment house, Melchior said, ‘Perhaps we’d better not say anything to your mother, Pauli.’

  ‘No, monsieur.’

  ‘It would just worry her. You know how mothers worry.’ ‘Yes, monsieur.’ ‘Good. That’s settled.’

  As they parted outside Sophie Simonian’s door, Melchior gravely offered the little boy his hand.

  ‘And thank you, Pauli,’ he said. ‘Thank you very much.’

  That evening as his mother tucked him up in bed, Pauli said in a low voice so as not to disturb his sister who was already fast asleep, ‘Maman, is there still a war on, like when the Boche blew up our car?’

  ‘No!’ said Janine, taken aback. ‘Not here, anyway.’

  ‘Are the Boche our friends then?’

  ‘No!’ said Janine with even more vehemence. ‘You can trust a friend, can’t you? You must never trust a Boche!’

  It was guilt that made her so vehement. In the two months since her last interview with Mai, she’d debated what he’d said in her mind a thousand times. Had he been laughing at her, knowing full well who Jean-Paul Simon was? Or was he really too stupid to make the connection?

  Whatever the truth, she’d decided not to tell Christian all of what had happened, merely assuring him that Mai had confirmed there was no trace of Jean-Paul in any official records. This decision was based on fear that Christian might advise against attempting further contact with Jean-Paul if he thought the Boche were on to him. Not that there’d been any contact yet. Christian had sent a parcel and letter, allegedly from Pivert, telling Jean-Paul in veiled terms that all was well, but there’d been no reply. A second letter had gone off. Still there was silence.

  ‘Is Monsieur Valois not coming tonight?’ asked Pauli.

  Valois’s visits were regular and this was one of his nights.

  ‘Yes, he is late,’ said Janine, smiling. Christian nearly always brought the children something, a precious sweet or an apple, whatever he could get hold of. ‘Don’t worry. If he comes, I’ll send him in to see if you’re awake! Good night now.’

  She left the room still smiling. It was good when Pauli behaved like the child he was!

  Behind her, Pauli lay in the dark. His eyelids were pressed tight in pretence of sleep, but his ears were straining and it wasn’t until the clock in the living-room struck eleven and his mother tiptoed into the shared room that he really fell asleep, persuaded at last that there was no chance now of opening his eyes to find Christian Valois leaning over him, offering him a red-skinned apple with the same outstretched hand he had last seen in the métro, stained with the blood of the German soldier he and his accomplice had just shot down.

  7

  There was a poster on the wall of the bakery. Günter Mai recognized it from some distance away. Everybody was now familiar with the black-and-red edged notices printed in parallel columns of French and German on a dull biscuit background. They were notifications that more executions had taken place.

  This one, he saw as he got nearer, had been defaced. Someone had scrawled across it in thick blue letters, GERMAN

  business.

  Clever, he thought. An accusation against the authorities and also a parody of the notices Jewish-owned shops had to display.

  He found Madame Crozier in a state of mixed indignation and apprehension.r />
  ‘I really don’t know what to say, lieutenant,’ she protested. ‘I know your boys have to put their notices up somewhere, but I hardly feel my shop is the proper place. Then when it was defaced, well, of course my natural instinct was to take it down, but that would make me to blame, wouldn’t it?’

  She was right. Removing or defacing official posters was a serious crime.

  He said, ‘I’ll have a word about it.’

  ‘Thank you, I knew I could rely on you.’

  He accepted the usual invitation to step into the living-room and take a cup of coffee with Madame while Crozier put together his order.

  ‘I went to the exhibition at the Berlitz the other day, have you been, lieutenant? You must go, it’s really fascinating.’

  The exhibition was called Le Juif et la France. Mai had seen the advertising poster as he walked down the Boulevard des Italiens a few days earlier. It showed a caricature Jew, bearded, hook-nosed, evil, digging claw-like fingers into a huge globe of the world.

  ‘I was telling Madame Pascal about it, her whose son came back from the army before the armistice, he was a taxi-driver, so God knows what he’s doing now, keeping very odd company from what I hear, and she said that she couldn’t see the point of it, the exhibition, we were all French together, and wasn’t Jesus a Jew. Well, I ask you! Jesus a Jew! Excuse me, that sounds like the shop door.’

  She went out. Mai produced his Hitler Jugend Tagebuch from the pocket it had stretched to bursting point and made an entry in his illegible shorthand. He was a collector of trivia, a sower of tiny seeds. From the shop he heard a voice whose words he could not catch but which he recognized. Then Madame Crozier spoke, in a low tone just audible to the sensitive ear.

  ‘Lieutenant Mai is here.’

  He listened for the sound of the street door opening and shutting. It didn’t come. He smiled and put away his book. Sometimes the tiny seeds took root.

  The living-room door opened and Madame Crozier re-entered.

  ‘Here’s my daughter, lieutenant. I think you’ve met.’

  He stood up and bowed.

  ‘Good day, Madame Simonian,’ he said.

  ‘Good day, lieutenant,’ murmured Janine in a low voice.

  She wants to talk to me, he thought. He’d guessed it when she didn’t immediately walk out of the shop. He knew it now he saw her.

  It hadn’t been difficult to confirm that the patient ‘Simon’ and Iakov Moseich Jean-Paul Simonian were one and the same person. He’d arranged with the hospital for any correspondence for ‘Simon’ to be intercepted and copies of both letters now lay in his files. He’d checked Pivert’s alleged return address and discovered it was Valois’s. So far he had found nothing against the young man, but he had one of his feelings…

  He felt no guilt about keeping all this to himself. He could see no advantage in letting the warped bastards who organized farces like the Berlitz exhibition know that one of their POWs was a Jew; on the other hand, the knowledge might be useful in recruiting another pair of ears and eyes to help his job here in Paris. But there’d been no rush. It was always better to get your victim to volunteer if you could.

  He finished his coffee and said, ‘Now I must go. Thank you for the coffee. Good day, Madame Simonian.’

  He left swiftly. Janine wouldn’t talk to him in front of her mother, he knew that. She would need an excuse, so he’d provided her with one. And he smiled to himself a few seconds later as he heard her voice calling, ‘Lieutenant! You forgot your cakes.’

  He stopped and turned. Faintly flushed, she ran up to him, carrying a small white box.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘That was kind. Though it might have been kinder to my waist to let me forget.’

  She smiled. It was an effort, but she managed it. He said, ‘Are you walking my way by any chance?’

  ‘Yes. I think I am,’ she said.

  They walked in silence a little way.

  ‘How are your children?’ he asked, seeking a means of prompting her request for help.

  ‘They’re very well, thank you.’

  ‘They must miss their father,’ he said sympathetically.

  ‘Yes. They do. We all do.’ A pause, then it came out with a rush. ‘I was wondering if perhaps your enquiries, you were kind enough to help, if anything else…’

  The rush declined to a stumble.

  ‘I have learnt nothing more than I knew last time we talked,’ he said carefully. ‘Nothing has changed.’

  He could feel her scrutinizing his words, desperate for significance. She was hooked but he would need to play her very carefully. Other intelligence officers might have wondered if she was worth the effort, but Mai had a feeling that in the struggle ahead, every collabo they could lay their hands on was going to be invaluable. He had to be careful not to frighten her off. He recalled her own suspicion that it might be her body, not her loyalty he was after. It might be useful to re-activate that idea. Which would a woman find it easier to contemplate - betraying her husband or betraying her country? He’d no idea but he knew it was psychologically sound in matters of corruption to give the impression of choice, even between two evils.

  He said, ‘He has my sympathy, your husband, wherever he is.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she demanded.

  ‘It is a lonely business, being far from home, in a strange country, whatever the reason,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I know this from experience. You long for a little sympathy, a little kindness.’

  He stopped and turned to face her. He reached out and took her cold, unresponsive hand in his.

  ‘I hope,’ he said softly, ‘wherever he is, your man is finding a little kindness.’

  For a moment he thought he’d overdone it and that she was going to laugh in his face or slap it hard. Then visibly she relaxed, her expression softened, her hand squeezed his and she said, ‘I hope so too.’

  He raised her hand slowly to his lips and kissed it. She lowered her head so that her hair fell in a fringe over her face, he guessed to hide her look of revulsion.

  She said in an almost inaudible voice, ‘The poor man you were telling me about, the one in hospital whose name did not appear on any official unit list…’

  ‘Yes. I remember him.’

  ‘He must be very lonely, if no one knows where he is, perhaps even who he is.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mai. ‘He’s often been in my mind.’

  ‘I could sense you were sympathetic,’ said Janine with a flash of savage sarcasm. ‘Perhaps it would be a kindness to find out how he is, what is planned for him when his treatment is finished.’

  ‘You would be interested in that, madame?’ he said. ‘Then I’m sure I can find it out for you. Perhaps you would do me the honour of dining with me one night. Then I could report what I’ve managed to discover.’

  ‘Yes, I would like that,’ she said trying for brightness.

  ‘On Friday then? Seven o’clock at the Balzac, shall we say? I look forward to that very much,’ said Mai letting his face break into a smile.

  She nodded and turned and almost ran away in her haste to put distance between them before he recognized her loathing and self-disgust.

  He watched her go. She moved well, almost boyishly. Poor child, he thought. All upset because she thinks the big, bad Boche wants to bed her! She’ll chatter like a chipmunk in her efforts to postpone the awful moment. And by the time she realizes it’s the chatter not the chuff I’m after, she’ll be so relieved, and so used to the idea of co-operating with the enemy, that the rest will be easy.

  He resumed his walking, trying to whistle a few bars of Schubert’s ’Sah ein Knab’ ein Röslein stehn’, but it wouldn’t come out right. He ought to be feeling happy that yet another of his little schemes was working out so well, but somehow he didn’t.

  8

  ‘Christian,’ said Maître Delaplanche, ‘you are an imbecile. May I come in?’

  Valois stood aside and let the lawyer pass by him into the flat. He’d been e
xpecting the visit. Delaplanche had been away on another trip to the Free Zone at the time of the shooting in the métro.

  Valois had been ill for a week afterwards. His colleagues at the Ministry had been most concerned. The prospect of seeing Delaplanche on his return had not made him get better any quicker.

  Delaplanche held up a paper-wrapped parcel.

  ‘A gift,’ he said. ‘From your mother. I met her in Vichy. We knew each other when your father and I were young lawyers. She asked if I could deliver it to you. I was only too pleased. It’s such an excellent justification of my presence here.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Valois, taking the parcel. ‘Probably pâté.’

  Delaplanche sat down and raised his eyebrows invitingly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Valois wretchedly. ‘It was a mistake, I see that now. They’ve taken hostages, they’re threatening to shoot them. I never thought the bastards would react like this.’

  ‘Didn’t you? I did!’ said the lawyer. ‘At least, I hoped they would. It’s the best thing that could happen for us.’

  ‘That innocent Frenchmen should be shot down?’

  ‘That not the most innocent of Frenchmen, or women, or even children should be able to feel safe!’

  Valois sat down opposite the lawyer.

  ‘Why burst in here calling me imbecile then?’

  ‘Well, for a start, you don’t seem to have been very good at it, do you? Oh, don’t look so affronted! I understand you were all cut up about the killing. Now you seem to be ready to take offence at not being complimented on a nice job! I’ll give you the same compliment I gave Theo, shall I?’

  Theo was the cell leader. He was also the man who’d had to steady Valois’s hand so he could pull the trigger.

  ‘Don’t blame Theo! It was my choice! My responsibility!’