Clandestine (5 page)

‘
Liebe Zeit
, Louis, we've got ourselves a detective.'

‘Hermann, we could perhaps be missing something. Let's make allowances and overlook the indiscretions, but was there anything else, Eugène? A suitcase perhaps?'

‘A handkerchief. This one. She tried to hide it under the mat. Me, I noticed a corner.'

Smudged, trod on yet bone dry, it had obviously been given up regrettably, and when smoothed out, revealed an embroidery of tulips, daffodils, crocuses and hyacinths. ‘Perfect, Hermann. Done at the age of ten. Silk thread from the colonies. Java perhaps, but prior to this war since it's now under the Japanese.'

There was also a name, an Anna-Marie Vermeulen, but he wouldn't remind Rocheleau of it, felt St-Cyr.

‘And yet he would have kept that knowledge from us to satisfy the urges of his wife, Louis?'

‘Hermann, again I must insist these times, they are …'

‘Not the best, eh? Then maybe I should ask him why he attempted to steal not just one of those bundles of one hundred of the 5,000-franc notes, but five of them for a total of 2.5 million? Obviously he's got someone he wants to impress but had better be careful when spending it, or was he going to stuff them all into a glass jar like most of your peasants? A man with a 2.5 million-franc jar, eh, and not just a 200-franc one or even a 1,000? Ten tins of sardines as well, two coils of smoked sausage, six half-kilos of the coffee that Évangéline of his must have a longing for like the rest of us. Two handfuls of the truffles for the omelettes those eggs would have made had he taken any. Not one but two rounds of the Brie de Meaux. Eight weeks in the curing, isn't that right, my fine one? Me, I did sample it but only to be certain it wasn't fake like so many that are flogged on the
marché noir
you French insist on having even though it's illegal. Detectives have to do things like that and you'd better not forget it.'

Such a storm probably wouldn't help but it had been good of Hermann not to mention the missing bottles of wine. ‘Eugène, please return to your fire. Brew up some more of the tea. Coroner Joliot and the men who are with him will welcome it, as will we.'

Only when he had left, did Louis point out the impression inside each of the shoes. ‘Monnier, Hermann, the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Made to measure, but definitely not to hers.'

And taking a small, packed-down wad of newspaper from each of the toes, unfolded these and said,
‘Le Matin
, but dating from 20 August of last year.'

‘And with a name like a Netherlander. A submarine?'

One without papers or with false ones.

‘And no suitcase, Louis. Either she never took it with her when she went to that van, or they must have taken it back, but in their haste, forgot the shoes.'

It was Joliot who said, ‘Both killed most probably between 1000 and 1600 or 1700 hours, Wednesday, 29 September. The one hit first on the forehead with this. There are even scraps of skin.'

Questions … It was a night for them, thought St-Cyr from behind the wheel of the van. Pitch-dark except for the regulation slits of the headlamps, it was taking forever to get to Paris. Basically they were sticking to the N2, but Hermann, in the Citroën which had no governor, would speed up only to realize he had gone too far and that the dim red twinkling of his taillights might be necessary on an otherwise empty road. And of course they were travelling through country that had been brutally fought over during the Great War, the Germans loving to shell things so much, Laon had all but been destroyed, Soissons's thirteenth-century cathedral having had its nave cut in half and tower obliterated.

Villers-Cotterêts, which they were now entering, had its all-but enclosing forest: oaks, beech and hornbeam but still, even seventy-five kilometres or so from Paris, there was virtually no sign of the Occupier, just an emptiness that made one feel as if the end of the Occupation had finally come.
Bien sûr
, there would then be a bloodbath as during the Revolution, old scores being brutally settled, neighbour against neighbour, brother against brother, former corporals against former sergeants who were not even of their own unit and had just come upon them abandoning their weapons. God having a bit of fun.

That bank had failed entirely to recover its van. Hours it had taken hunting for that girl, Hermann insisting that they keep on trying until Joliot had finally said, ‘Enough. That's it,
mes amis
,' and he and the two with him had returned to Laon with the victims who would eventually be sent on to Paris.

Rocheleau had not been dismissed, but given a warning. He was not to discuss what had happened with anyone, wife or not. Father Adrien the same.

And Anna-Marie Vermeulen? ‘Paris, 20 August of last year and a pair of shoes,' he said as if she was with him. ‘Perhaps it is that you did have some prior knowledge of l'Abbaye de Vauclair, but why a handkerchief that would positively identify you if arrested, since that must have been why you tried to hide it?'

The lower slopes of the Chemin des Dames, the forest, path, ferns and spring all came to mind, the smell of the wet, autumn leaves, that of the water too, even its taste, and the sight of that broken fern and those trampled saplings.

‘You must have willingly gone back to that truck. The poultice, having come loose and fallen, either earlier or later, was put into the firebox and then later, when that was cleared in a hurry, removed from the ashes and dropped behind that wall. But to live as a diver in Paris couldn't have been easy. Always there are snap controls. Even walking in the Jardin du Luxemburg or sitting with a “coffee” outside a café can lead to the same. The date on that newspaper gives us only a lesser limit to the length of your stay. Weeks, even months, could have been spent in Paris before you ever acquired those shoes. And you wouldn't have bought them on the
marché noir
, since the price alone would have drawn attention to you. Instead, you either found them, which seems unlikely­, or were given them, and if so, by whom? A wealthy woman?

‘And since you had managed to remain free for such a time, why did you then suddenly decide to leave, only to return, and where, of course, did you actually go? Back to the Netherlands, as suggested by that handkerchief? There has to have been a very pressing reason.'

Anise might help, since the pipe or even cigarettes were simply unavailable, that need so great, it had simply refused to go away.

‘
Anise de l'Abbaye de Flavigny,
mademoiselle. Bonbons à la menthe­
. Me, I will also chew a couple for yourself, though I'm not sure at all that you would have used tobacco since women don't have the ration cards for it, and smoking does draw attention, especially since some men resent a woman's having cigarettes they themselves haven't. But, please, was the one who threw the contents of those pockets into the truck's firebox a
passeur
? I ask because there are such, though also a fee: 10,000 in the autumn of 1940, now 100,000 or even 200,000, the half down, the other half when safely delivered, and if so, are those three—that
passeur
, his firebox feeder and the killer—now continuing to take you on to Paris so as to get paid the other half, since that
passeur's
reputation would be at stake if he didn't?'

Is there such a law? she seemed to ask.

‘Though many can, unfortunately, do otherwise and even turn you in for a much higher reward, this one wouldn't because he definitely doesn't want it known that they were involved in the killings.'

Again he thought of that empty road ahead. Again he spoke as if to her. ‘It's as though the Occupier has suddenly left, mademoiselle. Russia is draining so many, the border between Belgium and France is now no longer being manned and one can drive straight through from Brussels to Paris. Certainly there may be the snap controls, and on the trains and in the railway stations there is always that, but did the Occupier have photos of you? Is that why you didn't use the trains? Even in the Netherlands there are now areas so poorly manned one can apparently cross those without too much trouble, if one has something to ride, even a bicycle, of course.'

When she didn't seem to want to reply, he took out the handkerchief to feel its softness and embroidery. ‘Your mother would have looked very carefully at this while at that age you would, I believe, have bravely awaited the verdict. Excellent, of course, but were you an only child, and where, please, in the Netherlands did you live? Paris suggests a big city since in those, despite all the dangers, it's still much easier to live as a diver than in a little village or town where everyone notices what everyone else is up to and they all gossip. Oh for sure, some of Paris's streets and districts are still that way. Until last winter, Hermann's Giselle had regarded the Seine as a moat and had never been across it to the Right Bank. To her, the whole world was completely contained in the quartiers Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Sorbonne and Jardin des Plantes, with an occasional voyage a little to the south and west. She simply didn't know of the rest or care and had closed her mind until offered a job she couldn't refuse. The shop Enchantement on the
place
Vendôme and two old friends of mine whom I haven't seen in months and must. But Vermeulen is not a specifically Jewish name, yet those were often changed to erase the inevitable prejudice only to find that the Germans have lists and records going back at least five generations. France and Paris are suffering the same, so if you were one of those who managed to get away from the Netherlands, you would have had that extra burden, though Berlin would not have sent those two expressly for that reason, yet still you carry something that would identify you? Was it needed to identify you to that
passeur
or to someone else? We'll help in any case, and I know my partner will be thinking the same.'

A diver, a
Taucherin
, an
onderduiker
? wondered Kohler. Longing for a cigarette, he felt for the
mégot
tin only to tell himself he would have to write down the name of each of the butts used and, of course, he'd need Louis to roll the
verdammt
thing.

Not one for talking alone and aloud to himself, or to the victim and such like Louis, he said, ‘Oona will want us to find out everything we can and help that girl if at all possible.'

From Rotterdam, Oona was special: gentle, beautiful, supremely intelligent and everything he would ever need in a life's companion. Louis had been absolutely right, but having lost both her husband and children, she had, he knew, times that were very hard. A voice, a photo in a magazine or child near a school, and the tears would start and she'd have to be held. ‘And I'm not there enough. Giselle helps, that's for sure, but Johan would be nine now, Anna seven. Would they even recognize their mother?'

Six to eight million, maybe even ten, had been on the roads during the Blitzkrieg. The Stukas had come, and then the Messerschmitts, and she and Martin had been unable to find the children and ever since then she had maintained that a mother­ would know, that she felt they had been buried in unmarked graves beside that road. There
had
been those, he and Louis had discovered, but not their names. Constantly he placed advertisements in the newspapers, like lots of others still. ‘And she always wants to know what's been going on at home.'

Back in February 1941, in Amsterdam, there had been an altercation at an ice-cream parlor and about four hundred young Jews had been arrested, some so badly beaten, fifty had soon died in the
Konzentrationslager
at Buchenwald, the rest being sent on to the KZ at
Mauthausen. But being Dutch and not liking what had happened, the Netherlanders had gone on strike on the twenty-fifth of that month, circumstance putting a stop to it within about three days. Even so, by September 1941 every Jew in the country had been registered. All 140,000, of whom about 20,000 had been refugees, most of whom had fled the Reich before the war. And by April of this year, none had been allowed to live anywhere other than Amsterdam or in the internment camps of Vught and Westerbork, the latter being the main transit point.

‘And now?' he asked himself, clenching a fist at the inhumanity, for it had been going on here too, and Louis and he had come up against it time and again. ‘Only about 2,000 are left in the Netherlands. That
Le Matin
of 20 August 1942 dates to just a month after that first major round-up in Paris. What was happening here would have driven her crazy with worry.'

Slamming on the brakes, he got out to impatiently wait for Louis.

One would have thought him a sudden control, felt St-Cyr, for Hermann was a big man and the breath was billowing from under that fedora and into the frosty darkness that was lit from behind by the faintness of the Citroën's headlamps and then his own.

‘Louis, she went home to find out what had happened to her parents. Oona's always wanting to for the same reason, and not just her own, but Martin's too. That's why that girl took such a chance with the embroidery. She brought it from home—it was all she could find. She couldn't stand not knowing what could well have happened and had finally forced herself to leave Paris.'

‘Only to then find out and hitch a return with a
passeur?'

‘
Passeurs
don't drive trucks like that. They're usually loaners. They sit a few seats behind in the bus or railway carriage, not in heavily loaded trucks that can't even get up the speed of a gasoline engine.'

‘Unless …'

Ah merde!
‘Using the cover of hauling stuff to sell on the
marché noir.
I don't think there've ever been any
passeurs
caught doing that, but …'

‘There's always a first time, Hermann, though it still doesn't explain Berlin's sending those two.'