by Jan Harvey
‘Really? We have your brother in the Rue des Saussaies, do you know what we do there?’ Claudette shook her head, she didn’t know the road at all. ‘We interrogate people to find out what they know. There are meat hooks in the ceilings for our convenience. Actually, your brother is there right now, do you think he is describing the same place?’ Claudette felt her breathing quicken. She had no idea how long she could hold out, an hour maybe, certainly no more. Right then it seemed like a very long time. Rechtstein took another drag of the cigarette. He let the smoke out slowly between his teeth then he stepped towards her, his eyes level with hers, and placed a finger on her throat. ‘You have a very pretty neck,’ he said in a low voice. ‘It would be such a shame to mark it.’
The door flew open as if it had been rammed by something heavy. The air in the room changed and the cigarette smoke blew back into Rechtstein’s face. He was absolutely taken aback and the secretary leapt up from her chair, spinning round in almost the same movement. The figure in the doorway was tall, his peaked cap and jacket with its red slash of ribbon familiar.
Fritz Keber marched into the room and looked down at Claudette, then up at his colleague. He was very angry. The exchange was in German and Claudette understood none of it. She could only read the expressions on their faces and when Keber turned to the secretary and shouted ‘Raus hier! Sofort! Beweg dich’, she scuttled off, beetle like, into the hallway. Claudette picked up her handbag and wrapped her arms around it protectively.
The exchange was vicious, both men yelling at each other, voices raw. In the end Keber won, and Rechtstein took refuge behind his desk, making it a barrier between them. Keber brought a fist down on it and the small desk lamp crashed to the floor. He turned around, took Claudette by the arm and marched her out. She struggled against it, perceiving that it was the right thing to do. He pushed her through a pair of frosted glass doors and out into another long corridor. Then, without saying anything, he took her up a flight of stairs and unlocked the door to a room at the top.
When he pulled her inside, he kissed her, saying over and over: ‘My baby, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.’ He looked at her wound and kissed her forehead softly. ‘My poor girl, you must have been terrified.’ He took her to the bathroom and found a facecloth. He ran it under cold water and pressed it against the burn. ‘I am so sorry, I can’t believe he did that. I can’t believe I didn’t see it coming.’
He poured some water for her and she gulped it down, she was so grateful. Everything suddenly overcame her and she began to shake, all the time telling herself she could not submit to Fritz Keber, her mind full of warnings, Madame Odile’s injuries, the face of the baby boy and the slumped body of Lilia. All of it down to him.
He led her to the bed and sat her down, his arm around her. Under his breath he was speaking German and still mentally arguing with Rechtstein. ‘I am so sorry, I should have done something to stop him, he’s looking for revenge. I told him I would deal with everything, all the investigations. It is very dangerous for you now. You must leave Paris, preferably tonight.’
‘No.’
‘I mean it.’
‘He’s got Jacques,’ she said. ‘He’s being interrogated.’
‘No, he hasn’t, I told him I was in charge of the house. That was the deal we made, but he is still licking his wounds. He’s angry as hell. I am livid, I could kill him myself.’
‘What did you say to him in there?’ she asked. ‘How did you get me out?’
‘I’m questioning you now,’ he told her, kissing the top of her head and touching the tip of her chin with his forefinger. ‘I told him I am in sole charge of the Ercol.’
‘I have questions for you,’ she said bitterly. Pulling away and still pressing the facecloth to her neck because the pain was intense, she asked; ‘How am I supposed to have anything to do with you when you are capable of doing what you did to Madame Odile?’
‘What did I do?’
‘She came back bruised and bleeding. How can you pretend you do not know?’
‘I slapped her face when she spat at me, but she deserved that, she’s like a cat when she’s angry, unpredictable. I kept her here for a few hours then sent her home, I didn’t even question her.’
‘You –’
‘Bruised and bleeding?’
‘Yes.’
‘She must have gone somewhere else. Let’s face it, she knows the right people to inflict pain on her, I have no doubt of that.’
‘You think she got someone to do that to her? She had wounds on her chest.’
‘She no doubt enjoyed every minute.’ He was watching her expression and he was rewarded with a look of blank horror.
Claudette didn’t understand. ‘Why would she do that?’
‘Because she hates me.’
‘I know all about Daniel, I know you have a son. You can’t tell me you’re not responsible for him and for what you did to Lilia.’
He stood up, walked over to the window and lit a cigarette. He looked out across the Tuileries. The acres of budding trees and early blossoms fell away into the spring sunshine. ‘I am responsible,’ he said, emphasising the word am. ‘I do everything I can for him.’
‘Really,’ said Claudette flatly. ‘Because it doesn’t look like it from what I’ve seen.’
‘You can’t see the money I am putting away for him, or the endless favours I do for your boss and her lost soul of a sister.’
‘You are responsible for Lilia too, you have driven her to drugs!’ Claudette was indignant, tired of the lies she was hearing from everyone.
‘No, I haven’t, she was already on them when I met her.’
‘Most whores are, or so I’m told,’ said Claudette.
‘She wasn’t a prostitute then. I met her when I was a student in Paris. I used to go to a restaurant which was quite risqué. I met Madame Odile there and fell in love with her. She didn’t return my affection, shall we say, until I moved on to her little sister to make her jealous. And it worked, she couldn’t bear it, she made our lives hell and she tried endlessly to wreck our relationship.’
‘And Lilia?’
‘She was a very willing pawn. She hated her sister, loved what it did to her to see us together. Madame Odile is a very spiteful woman. I fell in love with a harpy and a jealous woman for whom revenge is a way of life. I made a stupid student error. My days of freedom and adventure in Paris turned into a nightmare.’
‘And Daniel?’
‘Lilia made sure she got pregnant, the ultimate way of taunting her sister. I was horrified and yes, I tried to make her get rid of it. You see, by then I knew I felt nothing for either of them.’
‘She’s so much older than you, what were you doing?’
‘Being infatuated. I was young and stupid, I had no experience of women.’
‘So, you’re telling me none of this was your fault?’
‘Of course it was, is, my fault. I’ve created a mess. That’s why I’ve tried so hard to make amends. I love that little boy, but can you imagine what would happen if people found out he was the son of a Nazi and a prostitute? In Paris, in the middle of this total fuck up of a war?’ He turned to her, fixing his eyes on her. ‘He’d be dead.’
‘So, instead he’s in a dark room with a drug addict mother and a silent old lady who stays with him whilst his mother sleeps with a parade of ghastly men.’
‘That is how she has it. She is terrified of her clients finding out. What’s the attraction of a whore who has your child? How do you explain that to your family and friends when the war’s over?’
‘You’re both protecting your own reputations,’ said Claudette bitterly. ‘That’s what it boils down to.’
‘No, Françoise, I’m not. I have no reputation to protect, but she is shielding her business, I understand that.’ He returned and sat next to he
r on the bed. ‘Is it still hurting?’ he asked.
‘It’s not so bad.’ She lifted the facecloth for him to see. He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’m not sure who to believe about all this,’ she said.
‘Trust the one who loves you,’ he whispered.
‘I dare not trust anyone.’ She leant away from him. ‘I have never been so frightened in my life, everyone is telling me different things.’
‘Make love to me,’ he said, simply, with no air of authority. She leaned back into him, and placed her hand on his cheek.
‘What have they done to you? And what have you done, as a soldier?’
‘Terrible things.’
‘Like?’
‘No soldier will tell you that. We live with it if we can and we’ll die with it, too. You’ll say what I’ve done is horrendous, but it’s only what others have done too. We have been following orders. It will be with my nightmares that I pay the price.’
‘Have you been involved with the exportations?’
‘In a way, but not directly. I have been involved in strategy but not implementation. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t carried out dreadful acts. Killing anyone is evil and I’ve done that, many times, but I no longer believe any of this is right. At the beginning we all did, you wouldn’t have found a single person in our country who spoke out against Hitler. He took Germany from the gutter to glory, Austria with it. You have to imagine how that feels, to have a chance at a new magnificent future, to feel as a nation that you have some self-respect at last.’
‘But you were forced into it,’ said Claudette
‘I was, I didn’t want to fight. I was an engineer, a planner, a person who builds futures. The last thing I wanted was to fight, but there was no choice.’ He put his hand over hers. She looked at the hairs on the back of it, the strength in his fingers. She turned her hand over and clutched his.
‘I think I understand. We’re none of us who we were.’
‘The impetus to follow Hitler has consumed us all and I’ll never understand the inertia of our church in all of this. It has stood by and let it happen, they only had to say no, they could have stopped it from the very beginning. Catholics should have had the freedom to follow their conscience, but they do what their priests tell them to and those priests have been weak and cowardly.’
‘And hundreds of priests are fighting with us, working against the Nazis’ said Claudette, feeling bruised by his comment.
‘But not the Pope, and I am sure when the war is over, whichever way the world is afterwards, the Pope will bend with the wind. That is why I am so tired, so ready for it all to end. Where is the opposition, the force against evil? How do we not learn from the likes of Burke? Where are the good men?’
‘They’re coming, the Allies are gaining strength.’ Claudette lay back on the bed, her body relieved to be lying down. The burn on her neck was throbbing. He lay next to her leaning on one elbow.
‘Can I make love to you now?’
She nodded and he kissed her, pressing his mouth on top of hers. He undid his jacket and pulled it off. It slid to the floor where nothing it represented meant anything, as she took off her black blouse. They were both naked, her body lithe, his muscular. She arched up to him giving herself to him completely. He kissed her over and over, tasting her as if she were a rare delicacy. He pressed down on her, the weight of him anchoring her to the bed as she held his face in her hands. Claudette stared into his eyes and she saw what she had sought her whole life in them. She stretched out her arms, feeling the edges of the bed, the silk of the stitches in the eiderdown under her palms. He reached out a hand and took hold of hers and they gripped together tightly.
‘I love you, Françoise,’ he whispered in her ear.
‘I love you, Fritz, so very much.’
He entered her and she felt the urgency of him, the physical need for her. She closed her legs around his back and grasped his neck, knowing that soon she would have to let him go, that a future was impossible, that they were only in the now.
They lay together, arms around each other for an hour.
‘I am not Françoise, I am called Claudette, Claudette Bourvil.’
He raised his head from the pillow as if he were looking at her for the first time. ‘You are wanted by the Gestapo, I have a list with your name on it!’ His eyes were wide; ‘I had no idea who you were and they have no idea where you are, and the last place they will think of is a bordello. Stay there, keep a really low profile and I’ll make sure you’re safe. For me, promise me you will stay safe.’
‘I have been charged with looking after Daniel. I will be in his room with him from now on.’
A broad smile lit up his face. ‘Thank you, thank you so much.’ He looked down on her, eyes loving and warm. ‘When this shit is over I will take you both away, make a new life for us. We will go to Switzerland and I will love you for the rest of my life. Uncomplicated lives for us, that’s what I dream of.’ Her heart swam with a pleasure she had never felt before in her life, a feeling of promise. She kissed him and he rolled onto her, his skin pressed against hers. ‘And any child we have together will be Daniel’s brother or sister.’
They made love again and then they lay together in his bed. She wrapped her leg around his, her head against his upper arm.
‘I should get you back, they’ll be worried about you.’
He dressed and became the Nazi she couldn’t reconcile him with, the other side of him. While she dressed he watched her, taking in everything about her, then he walked to the desk and pulled open a drawer. He lifted out a manilla folder and flipped it open. There were two typewritten sheets on the top. He picked them up and folded them carefully, making the edges match each other. ‘Put these in your bag, and give them to your contact.’ She glanced at them, they were duplicate sheets of a typewritten page, the wording was German. ‘And do not tell them where you got them, not even which part of Paris. Promise me, my love.’ She nodded and slipped the papers inside her bag.
He walked her through the hotel. No one looked as she passed men and women busy with plots and plans, their work in crushing the French unceasing. His driver was waiting, reliable discretion on his face. Keber helped her into the car and she was driven away. He showed no expression as he turned back to the hotel door. Two soldiers walking towards him saluted him with ‘Heil Hitler’ and the outstretched arms of a Nazi salute.
Chapter Forty Five
We were sitting outside a café in a small village perché called Giréte. It skirted the steep side of a lone hill, a zigzag of roads leading up to it. It was the only high ground for miles around. I was looking away from it at the vast rolling fields of softly undulating land punctuated only by clumps of trees here and there. Matt had been drawn in by the photographer’s need to get “amazing shots” and the old chateau on the top was beautiful, sitting on an outcrop of the cliff, a sheer drop from its western side.
The croissant I had just eaten was the softest and most delicious I had tasted in my life. The lady was sweet too. She had strong forearms, broad hips and a round red face. She told me she had made the croissants herself as her mother had done before her.
Matt left me sitting at the table drinking fresh coffee in the sunshine while he walked further up to the chateau and began sizing up shots. I pulled out my phone and tapped Hat’s name in my contacts. ‘Hi Hat, it’s me, Connie, in France.’
‘Are you okay?’ her voice was concerned. ‘Shouldn’t you be back by now? Mr C’s going to start panicking!’
‘Yes, I’m fine, tell Mr C I’ll be home tonight. I just wanted to tell you that we might be on to Freddy’s mum. We think she was with the Resistance, can you believe it?’ I was suddenly brimming over with excitement. ‘We’re going to her home town now, we found out she worked for a secret cell in Paris.’
‘Really?’
> ‘And she was involved with a German, Fritz Keber, Fredrik. He was Daniel’s father and Freddy must have believed that he was his son too. That’s who he was writing to, but he never heard back. Poor Freddy.’
‘And how did you find all this out?’
‘It sort of all fell together in a weird way,’ I replied. ‘We started looking and the answers just cropped up – it’s been amazing, really. Matt worked it out in the end. I’ll tell you more when we get home, we’re going to a place called Vacily now.’
‘Good luck,’ she said. ‘Be good…oh, and talking of which, how are things with Matt?’
‘Very good, Hat, very good.’ I looked up to see him walking down the road towards me with a bounce in his step and a broad grin on his face. ‘I’ll see you later, take care.’
‘I’ve worked it out,’ he said brightly. ‘Daniel said Fritz was madly in love with his mother, which is obviously true, because they had him. However, I think he was also having an affair with Freddy’s mother, Claudette. She was working under cover under an assumed name for the Resistance, possibly as a prostitute.’
‘Really, a prostitute and not a maid?’
‘Either, or, but they were both there in the whorehouse. Two Madeleines.’ Matt was putting his camera back in his bag.
‘What about if Daniel’s mum was the madam?’ I suggested.
‘No, that was another name, Odette, Odile. Odile.’
‘But something here is ringing true, right?’
‘It is,’ said Matt. ‘It’s only that neither of us is with the CID.’
We drove to Vacily through the open plains of Normandy. Having missed the right turn because we were laughing so much, we took the next one down a long straight road, which took us through a forest. The sun was beating down on us and the road ahead was alternating stripes of light then shadow as we drove along it.
We passed a lake and then a left turn as the countryside receded. Then began the industrial park and a row of modern bungalows, cream walls and brown roofs. The town was quite modern with a massive SuperU supermarket and car wash, the car park half full. We pulled into a long layby, behind a Peugeot, to get our bearings.
