by Brian Moore
He shook hands with the young man. I should give him something. But his money was in the money belt and it was risky to show that to a stranger. Instead, he said, ‘God bless you, my son. Thank you.’
He heard the corrugated iron sheet screech on the concrete as the young man dragged it shut behind him. The pain was almost gone. The alley stank of rubbish but he stood, eagerly breathing in the fetid air of freedom. It had been close, closer than at any time since the end of the Occupation. The pain had gone. He looked at his watch. Eight-forty-nine. Just enough time to find a taxi, drive to the Café Corona and put himself in Pochon’s care. And now, at last, he accepted his fate. It was time to leave, time to stop running, time to sit in the sunshine of some foreign city, a glass in his hand, a servant to make his meals, no need to move, no need to look up and down each time he walked out into the street. I have won.
There was no one in the alley. Above in the narrow space of sky between the walls, the sun had darkened from bright orange to a deep blood red. In a moment it would be night in the streets of Nice. He walked on, short of breath, but confident. At the end of the alley, a steet sign: Rue Recamier. And there, halfway down, as the young man had told him, the taxi rank.
The Café Corona was small, decorated in Belle-Époque style with electric lamps fashioned to look like gas brackets. They flickered and cast shadows so that at first he did not see Inspector Pochon who was sitting at a table in the rear and who waved to him across the room. Pochon did not get up from his seat, but offered his hand very much in the way flics did when they were dealing with you and knew you were in their pay.
‘Any trouble? Get here all right?’
He sat down and told what had happened. Pochon, small, grey-haired, in his sixties, listened in distracted impatience, as though he had heard it all before.
‘Typical gendarmerie procedure,’ Pochon said. ‘They never cover their arse. If I’d been raiding that priory, you wouldn’t be sitting here now.’
‘Well, I am here,’ he said. ‘What’s the next move?’
‘I’m going to drive you across the border,’ Pochon said. ‘I was going to do it tomorrow, but after what you’ve told me we’d better go tonight. We’ll cross into Italy at Menton and sleep in Ventimiglia. No problem. I have police documents. The border guards will wave us through. By the weekend I should have your passport and visas.’
‘Passport? What sort of passport?’
‘French, of course. Look at you, you couldn’t be anything but French.’
He laughed at that. ‘But where are you sending me, Inspector?’
‘What about Canada? That suit you?’
‘Canada?’ He felt a rush of relief. ‘They speak French there.’
‘Some of them, yes. All right. Let’s get out of here.’
Pochon put money on the table and stood up. He was small, all right. About five feet two. A little Napoléon. ‘Ready?’ He barked it out like an order.
He nodded. As they went out into the street he thought: Canada. ‘Inspector, there’s something I wanted to ask you. My payments. You’ll send them on, will you? It will be expensive, living there.’
Pochon looked at him and shook his head in irritation. ‘Never mind that, now. The car is in the car-park behind this alley.’
He saw Pochon look up and down the street, then beckon him to follow. He saw the little man, shoulders hunched, striding into the murk of the unlit alley. And suddenly, the hackle of danger rose within him. He hesitated.
‘Hurry,’ Pochon said and turned to see what was keeping him.
Uneasy, he went into the dark. And in that moment saw Pochon raise both hands, saw the gun, a moment before the first bullet hit him in the chest. The second bullet hit while he was on his knees.
In death, he saw the dead men, lined up in a row, their feet touching the cemetery wall. There were fourteen of them, one short of the number he had promised the Gestapo. Their Jewish name tags, tied around their necks, fluttered gently in the night breeze. He would have to step over them to reach the other end of the alleyway. But, on his orders, the execution squad had placed them close together, with not enough room to pass between them.
He fell forward, striking his head on the concrete walk. Pain consumed him but through it he struggled to say, at last, that prayer the Church had taught him, that true act of contrition for his crimes. But he could feel no contrition. He had never felt contrite for the acts of his life. And now, when he asked God’s pardon, God chose to show him fourteen dead Jews.
Pochon took a flashlight from his pocket and shined it on the dead face. He then put on a pair of surgical gloves. There must be no fingerprints on the statement. He crouched down and, carefully, using two large safety pins, pinned the statement to the dead man’s chest.
BRIAN MOORE was born in Belfast. He emigrated to Canada in 1948 and then moved to California. He twice won the Canadian Governor General’s Award for Fiction and has been given a special award from the United States Institute of Arts and Letters. He won the Author’s Club First Novel Award for The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Great Victorian Collection. The Doctor’s Wife, The Colour of Blood – winner of the Sunday Express 1988 Book of the Year – and Lies of Silence were all shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Six of his novels have been made into films – The Luck of Ginger Coffey, Catholics, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Cold Heaven, The Statement and Black Robe. Brian Moore died in 1999.
By the Same Author
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
The Feast of Lupercal
The Luck of Ginger Coffey
An Answer from Limbo
The Emperor of Ice Cream
I am Mary Dunne
Fergus
Catholics
The Great Victorian Collection
The Doctor’s Wife
The Mangan Inheritance
The Temptation of Eileen Hughes
Cold Heaven
Black Robe
The Colour of Blood
Lies of Silence
No Other Life
The Magician’s Wife
First published in Great Britain 1995
This electronic edition published in November 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Brian Moore 1995
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