by David Gilman
Inside the police station, the soldiers handed over the contents of Mitchell’s pockets and the satchel containing his food and clothing to the desk sergeant. With little ceremony, his name was recorded in a ledger and the gendarmes handcuffed him and conducted him to a shabby room, empty except for a table and two chairs, one each side of the table. A bare light bulb hung over the table with a sticky brown flystrip dangling beneath it. A cluster of flies blackened the trap.
He was handcuffed to a chain that ran through an iron ring bolted to the floor and his captors left with a slamming of the door. Shaken, aching with weariness, Mitchell tried to rid himself of the image of Lucien’s body. The child had bravely tried to help him and now – because of him – the lad was dead, his life torn away in sudden violence.
Mitchell gauged the time he was left alone by counting in blocks of sixty, mentally placing each of those counted minutes against the mortar line in a row of bricks on the opposite wall. The light diminished outside the high barred window. He heard muted voices. An hour? Or was it longer? His vision had begun to blur through hunger and fatigue. The yellow glow from the bare bulb cast a shadow on the wall making him lose track of the lines he had mentally scored. Moments later a civilian entered, opened a brown folder, took out some ruled paper and began writing. Mitchell watched the rhythmic sloping script cover the page. The man was in his late forties, he guessed, hair thinning above a sallow face with uneven teeth behind thin lips. His lips were slightly open as he concentrated on whatever he was writing; a fleck of white spittle clung to the small crevices at the corners of his mouth. He sniffed, withdrew a handkerchief, blew his nose, and went back to his report without raising his eyes to Mitchell. A clerk in peacetime or a minor official in the local mayor’s office, thought Mitchell, elevated now to be what rank as a collaborator?
Then, seemingly satisfied that he had completed his task, the man rested the pen, steepled his fingers and looked at Mitchell. ‘I am Inspector Paul Berthold of the Milice.’
Mitchell knew he would be lucky to escape torture if this man did not believe the story he had given to the Germans. The Milice were more insidious than the Gestapo, enthusiastic collaborators who knew their own backyard as well as the locals they spied on and arrested. Their job was to break the Maquis in their area; they operated with impunity and spread terror among the French population. Petty criminals and thugs swelled their ranks because any Frenchman who volunteered to serve with them was guaranteed not to be sent to Germany as forced labour. If any of these militiamen were killed then they undertook their own reprisals as swiftly and brutally as the Germans.
‘I have read what you told the Germans. I think you’re lying. How did you get to Saint-Just?’
‘Like I told them and the gendarme who questioned me. I travelled on the bus from Bordeaux as far as Arronnes.’
‘And you walked from there?’
‘Yes, my bicycle was stolen.’
‘And you reported this?’
‘No. I was on the road for four or five days. A farmer gave me a lift on his cart.’
Berthold studied him. ‘Very well. How far down the coast did you travel before catching the bus?’
‘I didn’t. I don’t have a permit for the coastal zone.’
‘Your accent. It’s not from anywhere around here.’
‘I lived mostly in Lyon and Paris. Look, I’m law-abiding. I keep my nose clean. I was just going to the station.’
‘You were carrying a satchel with Madame Bonnier’s daughter’s name inside. A school satchel. Did you steal this like you stole Dr Bernard’s bicycle?’
Mitchell swallowed his fear and coughed into his one free hand as he desperately tried to think of an explanation. He had made a fundamental mistake in not checking the old school satchel. Every child in the world penned their names in their satchels. And the gendarme must have recognized Bernard’s bicycle.
‘I was at Madame Bonnier’s as a guest.’
‘Why were you a guest there?’
‘I knew her late husband.’
‘Where’s your own suitcase?’
‘It went missing when my bike was taken.’
‘So you stole the doctor’s bicycle?’
‘No. The boy got it for me. I was trying to get to the train at La Basson. The boy was going to take it back to the village for me.’
‘Why did the boy run?’
Mitchell shook his head. ‘I don’t know. He was just a child, for God’s sake.’ The stark image of Lucien lying sprawled on the ground refused to fade in his mind’s eye. ‘The lad was frightened. He obviously shouldn’t have had that bottle of cognac. I don’t know where he got it.’
Berthold remained non-committal and studied Mitchell’s identity documents.
‘Pascal Garon, insurance agent. Your company’s office closed last year. I checked.’
‘That’s right. I told you I’m trying to find work. I lost my job soon after the Germans invaded the free zone. Agricultural insurance became a joke. What the Germans didn’t take the black market did.’
‘How do you know Madame Bonnier’s husband? He was a soldier. Did you serve?’
‘No. I’m too old. I met him skiing ten years ago.’
Berthold considered all that Mitchell had told him. His answers were effortless. The quiver of anxiety in the man’s voice was understandable. ‘This is a quiet area. A shooting causes problems. A lot of paperwork.’
‘I’m sorry if the boy’s death caused any inconvenience.’
Mitchell stared down Berthold in an open act of defiance. A moment’s weakness and against all the rules of surviving interrogation. Berthold suddenly leant across the table and slapped him for the transgression. Mitchell’s ears rang as blood trickled from his nose.
*
Mitchell was marched to a bare cell, rank with stale urine and excrement. A single bed frame and stained mattress, a lidded bucket in a corner. The bed was already taken by a thin, ferret-faced man, unshaven, hair tumbling over his face, his grimy shirt tucked into oversized trousers tied with a piece of string. He worried a cigarette between his fingers, sniffing its pungent tobacco. When they pushed Mitchell into the cell the man beamed. The back of Mitchell’s hand was blood-smeared from where he had wiped his nose.
‘That’s nothing,’ said the prisoner, looking him up and down. ‘You’re lucky these bastards didn’t shove a broom handle up your arse.’
The man chewed a toothpick, moving it around one side of his mouth to the other, but even this did not slow him down from suddenly regaling his fellow prisoner: ‘Was Paul Berthold the man who questioned you? I bet it was. He likes to get his hands dirty. He’s a bastard all right. Thing is these Milice, they know everyone hates them so it makes no difference what they do to you. They question you and if you’re not careful they brown nose the Gestapo and hand you over. Bastards. Look at me…’ he sniffed the cigarette again, its scent seeming to give him pleasure, ‘… all I said to him was: “Look, we do business every month. I buy the petrol you expropriate from the German supply trucks.” Jesus, that was a big mistake. “Expropriate?” he says to me. “You mean steal? Christ! Steal? You’re accusing a member of the militia of stealing?”’
Mitchell pressed his back against the cell wall, determined not to sit on the dirty floor, wishing the man’s incessant droning would stop.
‘You see, that’s where language can mean the difference between success and failure, life and death,’ he insisted. ‘I’ve been in here for weeks. Haven’t spoken to anyone since my arrest and I like conversation; a man is starved of life if he doesn’t converse with his fellow beings. Not that I class these bastards as human. But I’m a salesman. It’s what I do. I like to talk. And let me tell you when they finally let me out of this stinking hole it will be because money or goods have changed hands. I have friends. Lots of friends, people of influence, and they will find me. They’ll know when I don’t deliver what they want. There’s no one else who can…’ He paused as Mitchell reached for the
bars on the window and pulled himself up to look through to the outside. ‘No chance of escape, mate. No, no. Place is crawling with militia, Germans, police. Every fucker who can carry a gun is out there. Dogs as well, from what I’ve heard. Hear about the plane crash, did you? Shitting themselves that there might be survivors. Not fucking likely, says I. No, no. Not when you crash and make a hole deep enough to meet the devil.’
The town square was in darkness. Mitchell lowered himself back down.
‘Anyway, the next thing I know I’m in here and he gives me a good hiding. Bastard. We’ll do business again. We always do. But they have to show you who’s boss. Bastards. All of them. Crooked bastards. But I make money out of them.’
‘Seems to be that the less you say the better it is for everyone,’ Mitchell said.
The man screwed his eyes. ‘You telling me I talk too much?’
‘Yes. Smoke the damned cigarette and shut up for a while.’
‘If I could I would. It’s all part of their torture. They let me keep these,’ he said, gesturing with the cigarette, ‘but they took away my matches. See what I mean? Bastards.’ He showed Mitchell the packet with a couple of cigarettes in it.
‘You want to trade? I’ll get you a light, you give me the packet and the bed for the night,’ said Mitchell.
‘You’ve got a light? Nonsense. They’d have searched you.’
‘The cigarettes and the bed. How desperately do you want a smoke?’ Mitchell challenged him.
The man worked saliva in his mouth and nodded. ‘All right.’
Mitchell teased out the silver foil from the cigarette packet and rolled it into a thin tube. He made the man move off the bed while he found a worn part of the mattress cover; using a fingernail he tore it away and plucked out a small finger pinch of kapok filling. He dragged the bed beneath the light socket and, licking his fingers against the heat, of unscrewed the light bulb. He beckoned the man closer and reached down, plucked the toothpick from his lips then twisted the silver foil tube tightly around it. He pushed it into the live socket, which sparked on to the pinch of cotton filling that Mitchell held ready. He stepped down, blowing on the smouldering cotton.
His slack-jawed cellmate gaped in amazement and then quickly lit his cigarette, drawing in a lungful of smoke, eyes closed with pleasure.
Mitchell pushed back the bed and claimed it for himself. ‘Now will you shut up?’
The man grinned and extended his hand. ‘Gladly. Vincent, Gerard Vincent. You want? I get. At a price. You clever bastard. Ha! You ever get to Paris and need a favour you look me up: 29 Rue Bertier. Yeah?’
Mitchell shook his hand. ‘I’ll remember that. I’m Pascal Garon.’
Vincent sat happily on the floor, oblivious to its filth as he savoured the cigarette. Mitchell could do little else but settle down for the night and hope the Milice would believe his story and release him the next morning. He was well and truly adrift now. Falling through a burning sky again without sight of the ground below his feet.
14
The next morning Juliet Bonnier was at the Préfecture de Police in Saint-Audière. Gendarme Marin stood subserviently a few paces behind Berthold, who faced her.
‘I wish to question you about the man who was with the boy. This Pascal Garon. He says he visited you in Saint-Just.’
‘Yes, that’s correct,’ said Juliet. A pulse throbbed in her neck, exposing her fear at being summoned.
‘You understand, madame, that the killing of the boy was unfortunate. No blame can be attached. He ran when he was challenged. What was he guilty of, do you think?’
‘I don’t know. Gendarme Marin said he had a bottle of contraband cognac on him; perhaps that was why. He was just a boy. He was taking my friend to the train station.’
‘At La Guyon?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your friend said he was going to La Basson.’
‘Yes! I’m sorry, I meant La Basson. This whole thing is terrible. I can’t think straight.’
‘You’re sure it was La Basson? Positive?’ Berthold’s stare challenged her.
She took a deep breath and nodded. ‘Positive. Yes.’
Berthold looked as though he was considering her answer. He looked at Marin. ‘Go back to Saint-Just and check out Madame Bonnier’s house. You find anything untoward, you come to me. Anything.’
Marin nodded and with a nervous glance at Juliet left the room. Berthold addressed Juliet. ‘Sit down.’
She sat on a bench against the wall, holding her hands together in her lap, shoulders hunched. It served not only to make her look cowed in front of the milicien but also to stop her hands trembling. Her courage had not failed her but the thought of being arrested and sent with Simone to one of the camps sharpened her instinct for survival.
Berthold sat beside her. She could smell the oversweet cologne on him mingling with stale sweat. His breath reeked of tobacco and rotten teeth.
‘Why would a man travel so far to see your husband? He was posted killed in action. Would Garon not have known that?’
Juliet agonized before answering, her acting skills honed by her fear of this repugnant man so close to her.
‘What aren’t you telling me?’ he asked.
She appeared to be gathering her courage, but a tear was forming. She quickly wiped it away and regained her composure. At least that was what Berthold saw.
‘I’m a widow with a young daughter. If this gets out... I’m ruined.’
Berthold sat back as realization dawned. ‘He’s your lover.’
Juliet nodded and lowered her head in shame.
‘Since before the war?’ said Berthold.
She nodded. ‘When he heard my husband had died... he thought he could just move in... I couldn’t allow that. That’s why I had the boy take him to the station.’
Berthold paused as he considered her explanation. ‘All right, though I may have to question you again. You understand?’ he said and placed a sweaty palm on her knee. His meaning was abundantly clear.
Without meeting his eyes, she nodded once more.
*
Dr Bernard had driven Juliet to Saint-Audière the moment the Milice had summoned her. He wanted to speak to Berthold on her behalf but she had convinced him that the fewer people involved with the investigation the better. Nonetheless, he insisted on driving her and had waited behind the police station. She would either be escorted out under armed guard or released. When she walked free with the Englishman he said a quiet prayer of thanks.
They spoke little during the drive back to Saint-Just. Mitchell told them exactly what happened. ‘I’m sorry about Lucien. More than I can say. I tried to stop them from shooting him. I failed.’
Jean Bernard looked at him in the rear-view mirror and saw the man’s anguish. After a moment’s consideration, he said, ‘You are not responsible, Pascal. You were sent here to help others. We are all just a conduit to get you where you need to be. Lucien was a good lad, but it was his own panic that killed him.’
‘And a German bullet,’ added Juliet.
*
Jean Bernard dropped them outside Juliet’s house.
‘Get your things. I have to fetch Simone; she’s with friends – she’ll be worried,’ said Juliet.
Mitchell reached for her arm. ‘What did you say back there?’
‘I told him you were my lover.’
‘Then he can blackmail you to sleep with him. You’ve put yourself in danger.’
‘I’ll deal with that when I have to, but if he ever tried I would cut his throat.’
She turned on her heel, leaving Mitchell in no doubt that she was capable of doing exactly that. He climbed the stairs to his room and when he opened the bedroom door he saw Marin sitting on his bed. His cap was off and the top button of his tunic undone. His service revolver was in his hand.
‘You’re lucky to be alive, wouldn’t you say?’ said the village gendarme.
Mitchell glanced behind him. Were there any other officers in the ho
use? He tried to gauge whether he could lunge quickly enough to disarm Marin. The man was bigger and heavier and stood a good chance of overpowering him, but if it came to it he could have to try. He could not risk being taken back to the Milice.
‘I’ve already been interrogated,’ said Mitchell.
‘I know. The man who questioned you, his brother-in-law, Gustave, runs the bar here in the village. He’ll be watching out for anything unusual from now on, despite the fact he gave Lucien the brandy.’
Mitchell gently closed the door behind him. If he had to fight for his life he did not wish to risk Juliet and Simone coming home and being drawn upstairs. Marin stood and reached for something out of sight and then tossed Mitchell’s money belt on the bed.
‘That’s a lot of money for an unemployed insurance salesman. You left it here on purpose. Madame Bonnier is implicated; I can see that, I’m no fool. Was she going to bring it to you? Women are not searched as thoroughly as men. Or were you planning to return? What were you really doing on that road?’
‘How much do you want?’ said Mitchell.
‘Don’t drag me into your dirty business! You come here and a boy is dead!’ Marin spat. He shook his head in despair and then muttered more calmly. ‘A boy who tried to help you. You bastard.’ He lifted his cap showing the .45. ‘I found this at the spot where Lucien died. Where you threw it.’ He tugged his cap on. ‘If you have anything planned get it over and done with and get out of my jurisdiction.’ He stepped towards the door and faced Mitchell, who was blocking his way. Mitchell stepped aside.
‘Why aren’t you reporting me?’
‘Because Lucien Tissard, a fifteen-year-old boy from this village, died helping you. His death changes everything. So... I’ll stay around for a while to try and keep things calm. And to keep an eye on the bar owner.’
‘I’m grateful.’
