Butcher and Bolt

by Will Belford

  ‘You appreciate that by helping you I am putting my entire enterprise at risk?’ said the man, steepling his fingers. ‘I can help you get this German to England if that is what you want, but I will need something in return from you.’

  Here it comes, thought Joe.

  ‘What did you have in mind?’ he said.

  ‘Come with me,’ said the man, ‘I want to show you something.’

  They walked out into the hall and down the stairs to the corridor, the giant moving behind them more silently than Joe thought possible. At the foot of the stairs l’Hydre turned and continued down the stairs. When they reached the basement, the man walked up to a blank piece of wall, removed a loose brick and reached inside. Joe heard a click and an entire section of wall swung outwards, revealing a second flight of stairs winding down to a closed door.

  ‘This club was built in the 1870s shortly after the Germans defeated France,’ said l’Hydre. ‘The man who built it was a smuggler who needed to dispose of a large amount of surplus cash. He created a construction firm and paid a hundred navvies to dig the foundations down a whole storey further than needed. Once the building was finished it was covered over and, as there was no obvious access, people soon forgot about the extra level. He used it as a store-room for all manner of things, until one day he fell down the stairs and broke his neck. An amusing story I find.’

  They started down the stairs, which had no hand-rail.

  ‘Two weeks ago one of my biggest shipments was intercepted by the Germans and impounded. The man who tipped them off is down here, and he has been begging me to kill him for over a week now. Here he is.’

  He unbolted the door and flicked a light switch, illuminating a small square room carved out of the stone at the foot of the stairs. A reek of shit, urine, vomit and stale tobacco assailed their noses.

  Hanging in chains on the far wall was the remains of a man. His naked body was marked all over with circular burns, presumably made by cigarettes or cigars. His hair had been burnt off and his scalp was a mass of blistered skin. The skin of his arms and legs showed bruises of every colour, some fresh and purple, others yellowing with age. His feet were only just touching the ground, so if he stood on his toes he could relieve the pressure on his shoulders and prevent himself from suffocating. As the light flooded the room the man groaned in agony.

  ‘L’eau, mon Dieu, l’eau,’ croaked the man.

  L’Hydre took a cup from a bucket on the ground, lifted the man’s chin and poured the water in. Yvette turned aside and vomited.

  ‘What kind of sick fuck are you?’ asked Joe, whose gorge had risen at the sight of the broken body.

  ‘Careful now,’ warned l’Hydre, ‘Jean-Paul gets upset rather easily, I don’t need to tell you that he can kill you with a blow. This man is a collaborator. He tipped off the Germans and they stopped my barge on the Seine and impounded it. My informers discovered it was him when he went to the Germans for his payoff. The fool thought he could just waltz into the Wehrmacht headquarters without my knowing about it.’

  ‘So why not just shoot him you bastard, isn’t that what’s done with collaborators?’ asked Yvette, wiping the vomit from her chin.

  ‘A fair question, one I will leave you to ponder,’ said l’Hydre, ‘Jean-Paul?’

  Jean-Paul drew a revolver from his coat and covered Joe and Yvette with it, then the two men ascended the stairs. At the top, l’Hydre took the revolver and tossed it to Joe, then he took a single bullet from his pocket and threw it down.

  ‘Once you have proven yourself by dispatching this traitor I will require you to help my men recover the merchandise stolen from me. Then I will think about helping you get this man Richter.’

  ‘Wait!’ cried Joe, but the men turned and the hidden door clicked shut behind them.

  Joe took the steps two at a time, but there was no doorknob on the inside, only a small keyhole. He pounded on the door, but his fists made almost no sound. It was as if the door was filled with sand: nothing would have been audible outside, even if anyone had been listening. The screams for help from the poor bastard crucified on the wall would have been in vain.

  The atrocity that had once been a man groaned and opened his eyes.

  ‘Get me down,’ he croaked.

  Yvette pulled the pins from the manacles and Joe put his hands under the man’s armpits and lowered him to the ground. A howl of agony escaped from the man’s broken lips as Joe moved him and he lapsed into a blessed unconsciousness.

  ‘They’ve broken nearly every bone in his body,’ whispered Yvette.

  The man’s hands were shattered, the fingers crumpled in unnatural shapes, on one side of his torso a broken rib was pushing outwards, making a pyramid of skin. Both his feet had been pulverised, and his groin was a bloody pulp.

  ‘We have to help him,’ said Yvette urgently.

  ‘We can’t,’ said Joe, ‘look at him, he’ll never recover, and even if he did, what sort of life would he have? Anyway, he’s a collaborator.’

  ‘How do we know that?’ hissed Yvette fiercely, ‘do you believe the word of man who can do such a thing as this? This man could be anyone.’

  True, thought Joe. He turned away from the horrific sight and stared at the wall.

  He made a decision.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  ‘What do you do with an animal that’s beyond help?’ asked Joe quietly.

  ‘What?’ said Yvette. ‘Animal? What do you mean?’

  Joe said nothing, just picked up the gun and the bullet and loaded the round into the revolver’s chamber.

  ‘You can’t be serious!’ said Yvette, ‘you don’t mean to shoot him surely?’

  ‘Even if he was a dog I wouldn’t leave him to rot in a place like this. He’s as good as dead anyway, it would be a mercy.’

  ‘Mercy?’ cried Yvette, ‘are you God to make these decisions?’

  ‘He won’t be the first man I’ve killed,’ said Joe, emotionless, refusing to let himself be riled.

  ‘But for God’s sake Joe, you have a gun,’ cried Yvette, ‘let’s use it on l’Hydre or his monster when they open the door.’

  ‘They’ll have thought of that,’ said Joe, ‘they’ll have us well covered, you can be sure of it. He’s given us no option.’

  ‘We do have an option,’ said Yvette. ‘We can refuse to do his murdering for him and we can leave this horrible place as soon as they let us out.’

  ‘Don’t you get it Yvette?’ cried Joe. ‘We’re in his hands. He has us captive as surely as this man here, and he can do the same thing to us. Our only choice is to do as he says. Now stand back.’

  ‘Non!’ cried Yvette, but she stepped back and covered her ears.

  Joe raised the revolver, pointed it at the man’s head, and hesitated.

  ‘What is it?’ said Yevte, ‘get on with it.’

  Joe’s hand trembled as if he had a savage hangover. The sight of the tortured body in front of him made him want to throw up. He shut his eyes and squeezed, but he seemed to have no strength in his index finger.

  As he stood there, gun wavering, Yvette snatched it from his grasp, she thrust the muzzle against the man’s chest and pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The click of the hammer on the chambered bullet was not particularly loud, but in that soundproof cellar it seemed deafening.

  Yvette looked at the gun in bewilderment, staring down the muzzle as it expecting the bullet to come out, then she dropped it and slumped to the floor.

  Joe picked up the gun, removed the bullet from the chamber and examined it. Now that he looked closely at it he could see plier marks on the lead dome. He weighed the round in his hand. Well underweight. Someone had taken the bullet out of the shell casing and removed the powder, then put the bullet back in. The rear of the casing had a distinct mark where the revolver’s hammer had struck it. It was clear that the round had been fired, even if there was no powder to ignite. A
safe test indeed.

  He looked at the mangled body of the prisoner. He wished to God the round had been live. He took a deep breath, then knelt down and put his hands around the man’s neck.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Yvette, her eyes wide.

  Joe said nothing, and tightened his grip.

  Ten minutes later there was a click at the top of the stairs and l’Hydre came in. Jean-Paul was behind him, pointing a pistol at them. Joe handed him the revolver and the bullet without a word. The grey man studied the round and nodded in satisfaction.

  ‘So, you would have shot him if you could, excellent,’ he said, ‘now, put him back into the manacles.’

  ‘There’s no point you bastard,’ said Joe, ‘I put him out of his misery without your bullet.’

  The grey man studied the body for a moment, a hint of colour rising into his sallow cheeks.

  ‘So, you think you are clever eh? We will see about that. Know that you have saved him nothing, he would only have lasted another day or so. We will leave him outside Montmartre tonight as an example to others. Now come, we have much to discuss.’

  Joe and Yvette were only too happy to leave that horrible room, but hey both knew they would never be the same again.

  ~ ~ ~

  As he stepped off the train, Schmidt decided to walk to his hotel to get a sense of the city, despite the pain in his leg. He had been to Paris only once before and felt the need to familiarise himself with the environment. The walk revealed much that was useful: the people hurried along with their faces down, avoiding the eyes of the German patrols. The fromageries, patisseries and boulangeries all had long queues, and already a good number of Jews had sewn the yellow star onto their coat sleeves. Nearly a year before he’d walked the streets of Krakow shortly after the invasion, and this was not that different.

  As he hobbled painfully up the steps of the Hotel Lutetia an hour later, he had a realisation: he hated Paris. He’d hated it since the moment he’d stepped off the train from Calais; he’d hated the train journey; and he’d hated Calais too for that matter. In fact, he’d been in a state of constant pain and rage ever since he’d awoken on the floor of that hovel in Roubaix only a few months before, to find his little Jewess gone, his left kneecap smashed, and the right side of his forehead caved in above the eye.

  The doctors had replaced his right eye with a glass one and instructed him to remove it and bathe the socket twice a day to drain off any residual pus from the wound. The throb in his head was continuous, and his knee sent shooting pains up his spine with every step, but he had to admit that he’d made progress since they’d found him on the floor. He had no idea how long he’d been there, drifting and in out of consciousness, but eventually some French peasant passing by heard his cries for help and summoned a patrol.

  Hagan hated women anyway, but his fury at the girl who had humiliated him burnt with a white intensity he’d not experienced before. At night, as he lay there waiting for the barbiturates the doctors had prescribed to take effect, he’d entertained himself with visions of what he would do to her if he ever managed to catch her again. In the meantime, he took out his anger on whatever unfortunates came under his control, and as the operational agent in charge of internal security in the Northern Department, this gave him plenty of scope. After recovering in the hospital he’d accepted the Abwehr’s instructions to join the Gestapo undercover. Now that he was physically incapable of passing unrecognised, it made no sense for him to consider espionage overseas. Besides, with his talents, he figured he would fit perfectly into the notorious internal security organisation and no-one would be the wiser. It had the sort of culture that he appreciated.

  The Gestapo were using the Hotel Lutetia as their main base of operations in Paris, and it was here that he was to carry out his first duties as a Kriminalkommissar of Department D.

  ‘Ah, Schmidt, how’s the leg?’ asked Herr Setz, the Oberregierungs-u. Kriminalrat, as Schmidt hobbled into his office and sat down with an audible grunt.

  ‘Improving thank you sir,’ he said, popping out his glass eye and wiping it with his handkerchief.

  ‘Gut, gut, we need you in top condition for this assignment, ja?’ said the man, beaming cheerfully, seemingly unperturbed by the eye polishing. He was a wide man with a bald head, whose apparent size was only increased by the pair of tiny close-set black eyes that gleamed with curiosity from a clean-shaven, porcine face.

  Schmidt knew from Setz’s reputation that his jovial exterior masked a callousness and disrespect for human life so extreme that even his peers in the Gestapo thought it excessive, but which Reichsfuhrer Himmler himself had praised, saying that Setz was the embodiment of the most important characteristic of a Gestapo officer, because he had: “the crucial ability to put aside all notions of compassion and weakness when dealing with issues of national security.”

  His appointment to Paris had made Setz a powerful man in the Gestapo hierarchy, and Schmidt was acutely aware that serving under this man gave him an excellent position from which to observe Gestapo operations.

  ‘Now, to business,’ said Setz, ‘France has only been occupied since June, but already we are getting reports of resistance groups emerging. These poor fools don’t realise what they are up against, but I have no intention of getting into a guerrilla war with any of them. We must be more cunning than that, hein?’ he asked, tapping the side of his nose.

  ‘Infiltration sir?’ said Schmidt, anticipating the upcoming revelation.

  ‘Ja! Naturlich! In-fil-tra-tion!’ said Setz with a beaming smile. ‘We know of three main organised criminal gangs working in Paris at the moment. One is the local pre-war group who so far have contented themselves with sticking to prostitution and racketeering. The ringleader is a deeply stupid man who has risen to power through his brute strength and capacity for violence. He is too unimaginative to be of much use to us, so I’ve spoken personally with him and told him that as long as he accepts one of our agents into his staff and does nothing beyond his current operations, we will not bother him. They are an excellent source of coffee and cognac by the way, if you’re looking for some,’ he added.

  ‘The next is a rabble of Africans from Morocco. From the perspective of simplicity we don’t need three gangs running about, and they will be the easiest to get rid of: we simply round up all the blacks and send them off to the camps. It’s not as if they can lose themselves in a crowd is it?’

  The man tipped back his huge head and roared with laughter.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he said, chuckling still and wiping away a tear, ‘sometimes I do amuse myself. Where was I? Oh yes, the last is a newer operation run by a man originally from Marseilles,’ said Setz, ‘and this one I think we can use to our own ends.’

  ‘And what ends are those sir?’ asked Schmidt, obediently following the script, despite having had the endgame explained weeks before in Berlin.

  ‘We will start giving them money and armaments and encouraging them to recruit willing volunteers. People who want to restore ‘la liberte’ to France. We will have to put up with some minor inconveniences along the way. For instance, you may have heard that several rank and file soldiers have been murdered in the streets of the Red Light district. That is no doubt the work of isolated partisans or criminals, but we expect them to do better over the next year or so, and our gang will help organise and arm them. Once they have recruited enough people we will scoop them all up. The train to Dachau will be full that day.’

  ‘And what is my role to be sir?’ asked Schmidt.

  ‘You will run this little operation as one of your duties, but your main role in the short term will be assisting the SS in identifying Jews, homosexuals, cripples, mental defectives and Gypsies for deportation. You’ll also be expected to build a network of informers across all levels of society. Now, I don’t expect you to do all this in person Hagan, you will have two staff reporting to you, capable men both, plus two secretaries to do the administration, which will
be considerable. We have one woman employed already, French of course, to cover the language aspect, and another arriving from Germany next week.’

  ‘With permission sir, I’d sooner have two French-speaking German women,’ said Schmidt.

  ‘Wouldn’t we all?’ laughed Setz, ‘but can you find them? No, not even I can get my hands on more than two. Apparently the SS and the Wehrmacht have priority for some absurd reason, but what can you do?’ he asked holding up his palms. ‘Anyway, I see from your file that you speak fluent French, as well as English. That will come in handy once we start arresting the spies the British will inevitably send.’

  Schmidt re-inserted his glass eye and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The painkillers he had taken that morning were wearing off, and whether standing or sitting, his knee ached, and waves of pain rolled through his head at random intervals.

  ‘But I can see you are keen to start your work,’ said Setz, ‘mercifully your office is on the ground floor, so you will be spared the stairs at least. Good day to you Herr Schmidt, I look forward to reading your first progress report this time next week.’

  Setz opened a file on his desk and started scanning a list of names, Schmidt pulled himself up and opened the door.

  ‘One other thing Schmidt,’ said Setz, ‘you will be working with an SS officer I believe you already know, Hauptsturmfuhrer Richter. He and his men are in Paris charged with Jewish deportation, I believe he is waiting for you now in your office.’

  ‘Thank you sir,’ said Schmidt, closing the door.

  ‘Richter eh?’ he thought to himself as he hobbled down the corridor, ‘a Prussian, but at least he has the right attitude to Jews.’

  Chapter Twenty-five

  ‘The barge is moored alongside Route du Bassin Numero 6,’ said the man the others referred to as The Corsican, a wiry, sallow-skinned man with a perpetual three-day growth, ‘we will go in at 2am, cut it out and take it east around the bend in the river to this quay here on the Quai Aulagnier.’