There was a shriek of relief and delight from Louise, choked off as the judge glared at her angrily. But sounds of a more distant disturbance outside the door continued. The judge checked his exasperation and continued with his judgement.
‘With regard to the subsidiary charge that you gave aid and comfort to the illegal occupying forces of the German Army, it is the judgement of this court that you are guilty.’
He had to raise his voice to make himself heard above the growing level of noise outside. Inside, Louise cried, ‘No!’ and gripped her husband’s arm. Janine’s gaze remained unwavering on the judge and her expression did not change.
‘It is the sentence of this court that you will undergo five years’ national degradation. In case you are ignorant, let me explain what that entails, if I can make myself heard above this din. Officer, would you step outside and arrest whoever it is causing this unseemly disturbance?’
The gendarme on duty before the big double door turned and began to unlock it.
The judge went on, ‘During this period you will be deprived of all civic rights, the right to vote, the right…’ but for the first time Janine’s attention had moved from him. Slowly she turned her head towards the back of the court.
The gendarme had got the doors partly open, admitting a shaft of brilliant sunlight and a voice which demanded admission. There was the sound of a scuffle, voices raised in anger, a cry of pain, and suddenly the gendarme was thrust aside as a man burst into the court.
Once inside he skidded to a stop almost immediately and peered uncertainly towards the judge, obviously finding the gloom as blinding as those within found the dazzle of the sun.
‘And who the devil are you, monsieur? What is your business here?’ demanded the judge furiously.
The man did not answer straightaway. He was a strange-looking figure, not very tall, with a long black rabbinical beard and dressed in American Army fatigues which were several sizes too large for him. His bright eyes screwed up as they focused on Janine, as if in an effort to recognize her.
She moved her head, suddenly feeling faint with an emotion she did not dare name. The movement seemed to act as confirmation, for now the strange newcomer laughed and, turning to the judge, bowed and said, ‘Your honour. Melchior’s my name. Magus that I am, bearing gifts of gold, from the East I come!’
And with a wave of his hand which was indeed Oriental, he directed their eyes to the doorway.
Janine looked and could see nothing but the glow of diffused sunlight in which floated motes of dust and tendrils of cigarette smoke. She blinked, and merely seemed to add to the dazzle her own internal colours and forms. She closed her eyes, shook her head and tried again. Her heart was beating so fast and so loud that it must have drowned out all other noise, for now she could hear nothing else. Then even the sound of her heart stopped, and the sound of her breathing stopped, and all her strength, all her being, were concentrated into her sight.
And now for the first time she saw a movement in that golden glow, a shape, two shapes, two small shapes advancing uncertainly, hand in hand. She felt as if she were drawing them forward with her eyes, that one flicker, one link, could send them drifting back through that brightness into the dark once more, beyond all hope of recall.
But now at last they stepped shyly into the solid world of the courtroom, and sound came back to her ears, breath to her lungs, and life to her heart again.
3
They brought Günter Mai out of the hospital as dawn was breaking. His head was still heavily bandaged and beneath his shirt his cracked ribs were swathed so tight that breathing was not so much painful as almost impossible. His legs too felt weak, but despite all this debility, the gendarmes still insisted on manacling his hands.
In the vestibule, two military policemen were waiting to escort him to a POW camp. There was a great deal of form-filling before he was satisfactorily transferred from civil to military custody. Then he was briefly in the open air before being helped into the back of a truck.
Just as it was about to start, one of the gendarmes came hurrying after them.
‘What’s up?’ asked the sergeant in charge of the escort.
‘The manacles,’ said the breathless gendarme. ‘I forgot.’
To the accompaniment of jeers from the soldiers, the man unlocked and removed the manacles, then hurried away.
‘Well, Fritz, you’re not going to try to escape, are you?’ said the sergeant.
‘Where to?’ asked Mai.
‘That’s sensible.’ He banged on the cab and the truck moved towards the gate.
‘Are we going far?’
‘Far enough. But it’ll be nice for you to be back with your mates, won’t it? Sort of a homecoming.’
He seemed to mean his comment to be friendly. Mai tried a smile, but he felt more depressed than at almost any time in the past year. What kind of homecoming was now possible for him when all he wanted, but could never have, lay in this city he was now leaving?
As the truck passed through the gates and swung across the road to turn left, the sergeant pulled open the canvas flap over the tailboard.
‘Some people were keen to see the back of you,’ he said enigmatically.
Mai glanced out of the truck. It was true. There was a small group of spectators on the pavement outside the gate. Four people, a man, a woman, two children. His mind fought against what it was sure was the madness of recognition. He blinked his eyes as though he had stared into the sun. They were still there, the delusion strong as ever.
He tried to speak but couldn’t. The truck was already beginning to move away. He let his gaze run swiftly over Claude Crozier’s amiable features, stern now in the dawn light; down to little Céci’s round face, her mouth open wide in a yawn; across to Pauli’s sallow oval, his eyes unblinking and wary; and finally up to Janine. Her face was thin, so very thin. Even the scarf bound tightly round her head couldn’t disguise the ravages of assault and imprisonment.
But there was life in her features now, life triumphing over the deathly despair he had seen in court. He recalled her running down the path in the Jardin des Plantes and turning to wave and smile like a young girl leaving her lover.
She smiled now and as the truck gathered speed, she raised her hand briefly from Pauli’s shoulder and waved.
He waved back. It didn’t feel like waving goodbye.
Now they were tiny anonymous figures in a long empty street. And now they were gone altogether. But still he peered out of the truck, like a tourist anxious not to miss any of the sights. It seemed their route took them across the city and at this hour it was easy to drive through its empty heart. They crossed the Seine, heavy and fast with the floods of spring. They passed beneath the gilded Victory on the Colonne du Palmier. They drove up the Rue de Rivoli, whose long arcade still bore the shell marks which turned it too into a monument to victory. They passed the Louvre where Christian Valois had made his first act of resistance. And then they drove past the Tuileries Garden where he, Günter Mai, had made his first declaration of love to Janine Simonian.
His eyes stopped seeing outwardly here. He hardly noticed as they climbed the Champs-Élysées, passing Le Colisée where he had sat and talked with Michel Boucher, till they reached the Arc de Triomphe and the Eternal Flame.
Here he took one last look out over the city. It was coming to life now after the long dark night. God knows what these Frenchmen would make of the future. He’d never been able to understand them. But this was nothing to the problems of understanding he feared his own countrymen might be setting the Allied Armies as they drove deeper into Germany’s dark heart.
He shuddered and let the flap drop as they descended to Porte Maillot.
‘Seen enough?’ said the sergeant.
‘For now,’ said Mai.
‘For now? You mean you’re planning to come back? I’ll say this for you Fritzes. You don’t know when you’re beaten!’
‘Oh yes, we do. It’s knowing when you’ve won
that’s difficult,’ said Günter Mai.
By the same author
DALZIEL AND PASCOE NOVELS
A Clubbable Woman
An Advancement of Learning
Ruling Passion
An April Shroud
A Pinch of Snuff
A Killing Kindness
Deadheads
Exit Lines
Child’s Play
Underworld
Bones and Silence
One Small Step
Recalled to Life
Pictures of Perfection
Asking For the Moon
The Wood Beyond
On Beulah Height
Arms and the Women
Dialogues of the Dead
Death’s Jest-Book Good Morning, Midnight
JOE SIXSMITH NOVELS
Blood Sympathy
Born Guilty Killing the Lawyers Singing the Sadness
Fell of Dark
The Long Kill
Death of a Dormouse
Dream of Darkness
The Only Game The Stranger House
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or
localities is entirely coincidental.
HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
Published by HarperCollins 2005 1
Copyright © Reginald Hill 1987
Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ePub Edition 9780007290079
First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1987
Set in Sabon by Palimpsest Book Production Limited Polmont, Stirlingshire
Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter 1
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Part Two
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part Three
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part Four
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part Five
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part Six
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part Seven
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Part Eight
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
By the same author
Copyright
About the Publisher
The Collaborators Page 43
