One Shot Kill (8 page)

Rosie spoke as Belle squatted beside Edith’s chair and took an experimental lick of the chocolate. ‘Does your mother work?’

‘There’s a small German garrison not far from here,’ Justin said, sounding embarrassed. ‘Mum cleans for them, and does laundry and stuff. But she doesn’t
like
them.’

‘She says they’re pigs,’ Belle said.

Justin turned and spoke sharply. ‘Belle, what have I told you about repeating things? If someone outside hears that you could get Mummy into trouble.’

Aimée was at the back door with a bucket of water, but Justin pointed Rosie towards it.

‘Ladies can wash first.’

Aimée put her hand over her mouth and giggled. ‘You being polite. That’s a first.’

‘I’m always polite,’ Justin said.

‘You never say
ladies first
to us.’

‘Because you’re not ladies,’ Justin snapped back. ‘Make yourself useful, cut us some bread.’

‘I’m not your servant,’ Aimée said, but still went into the kitchen to do it.

Rosie had given her only spare dress to Edith, so she couldn’t change out of her combat gear after wiping down with cold water and a grubby cloth. While Justin took a more thorough wash, Rosie sprinkled Edith with cool water, took the farm boots off her feet and unbuttoned the back of her dress.

Dr Blanc arrived as Justin came back inside dressed in his good clothes. These were free of coal dust, but still appeared to have been worn through a great deal of muddy play. The doctor was a barrel of a woman, with a huge chest and bright red nose. She grunted when she saw Justin in perfect health, but forgot the deception the instant she saw Edith.

‘When did she become feverish?’ Dr Blanc asked, as she pulled down Edith’s dress.

‘Yesterday afternoon,’ Rosie said.

‘Christ, did they use her as a punching bag?’ Dr Blanc said furiously. ‘Someone did a half decent job patching her up. Was that you?’

Rosie nodded and half smiled. ‘I did a six-week nursing course.’

‘Good, you can give me a hand. I need her lying face down on the floor. She’s running a very high temperature, but she’s not sweating which means she’s critically dehydrated. I need clean water, salt and sugar if you have any.’

Justin ushered Belle out of the room as Rosie swung Edith from chair to floor.

‘I want to see,’ Belle moaned.

Dr Blanc made heavy work out of kneeling down. As she pulled a bottle and length of rubber tubing from her leather bag, Justin fetched salt and water, while Rosie took the two sugar lumps from her emergency ration tin.

While Rosie shook the solution in the bottle, Dr Blanc pushed the rubber tube up Edith’s bum.

‘It’s not pretty, but it’s the quickest way to get water and minerals back in her system.’

Justin backed away looking queasy, while his three sisters intermittently peeked around the doorway. When the rehydration procedure was complete, Dr Blanc began washing Edith’s body with cool water.

‘Is she going to be OK?’ Rosie asked warily.

‘Did she have any health problems before this happened?’ the doctor asked.

‘None that I know of,’ Rosie said.

‘We’ll keep her cool and hydrated,’ Dr Blanc said. ‘She’s young and healthy, but there’s nothing I can do about the infection. It’s a matter of keeping her comfortable and waiting to see if she has the strength to fight it off.’

*

Dr Blanc hurried off once she’d done all she could to help Edith. Rosie couldn’t travel outside in combat gear, so she negotiated the purchase of a shabby dress belonging to Justin’s mum, for a price that would easily buy two replacements on the black market.

After she’d shared Justin’s breakfast of egg, fake coffee and coarse black bread, a horse and buggy organised by Dr Blanc arrived. Joseph the driver was the doctor’s handsome son and he carried Edith outside and laid her out over straw in the back of the buggy.

Rosie felt uneasy putting so much trust in strangers, but Dr Blanc seemed reliable, and with Edith fighting for life there was little choice.

‘Where are we heading?’ Rosie asked, as the horse moved down an unfinished path between tightly spaced cottages.

‘To my brother’s house,’ Joseph said. ‘There’s a lot of families around here. They’re decent people, but the right information in a Gestapo officer’s ear can earn your husband or son repatriation from Germany, so it’s best not to waft temptation under their noses.’

‘What about checkpoints?’

‘We’d have to be very unlucky,’ Joseph said. ‘There’s nothing of strategic value around here. You can go a month without seeing a German.’

‘Justin said there was a garrison.’

‘More of a geriatric ward,’ Joseph said. ‘You only get posted out here if you’re no use anywhere else.’

‘So does your brother have family?’ Rosie asked.

‘He’s an army doctor.’

‘A prisoner?’ Rosie asked.

Joseph nodded, and Rosie’s paranoid side linked the fact he was a prisoner with the comment about rewarding informants by sending prisoners home.

‘I was studying medicine in Le Mans, but the Gestapo shut my academy down after a student protest,’ Joseph explained, as the buggy picked up speed. ‘Now I’m living out of sight, hoping the Compulsory Labour Service doesn’t track me down and pack me off to Germany.’

‘Aren’t doctors exempt?’ Rosie asked, as they turned on to a narrower track.

‘But I’m not a doctor
yet
. And even doctors get sent to Germany. They’ve got more wounded soldiers than German doctors can care for. And what about you?’

‘What about me?’ Rosie asked defensively.

Joseph laughed noisily. ‘Well, there must be a good story. Not many girls your age turn up on a coal train, with a machine gun in their backpack and an unconscious friend who’s been tortured half to death.’

They both glanced behind as Edith’s body rumbled.

‘That’ll be water coming back out the way it went in,’ Joseph explained.

‘I’m with the resistance,’ Rosie said. ‘But frankly, the less you know, the safer you’ll be.’

Joseph Blanc lived in a large brick house that belonged to his older brother. It was several kilometres from the railway and surrounded by farmland.

The house had the rare luxury of a coal-fired water heater and after a hot bath Rosie used the water to wash out her underclothes. But she kept her pistol within reach, because she’d been taught never to trust anyone and people who showed kindness were among the most likely to betray you.

Being alone with Edith had been frightening, and Rosie was relieved seeing her in a proper bed in an upstairs bedroom. Joseph repeated the hydration and once in a while they wiped Edith down with cool water, but the unconscious body gave no clues about the battle being fought by her immune system.

*

As Rosie napped, Joseph cooked chicken and potatoes. It was the best thing Rosie had eaten since landing in France and they shared a bottle of wine over the meal. When Dr Blanc arrived at the house shortly before 9 p.m. she found the two of them sitting on a rug playing draughts.

Although the wine made her a touch drunk, Rosie soon found herself in serious conversation with the buxom doctor.

‘I have a resistance contact in Paris,’ Rosie explained, as she sat across from the doctor, who was eating chicken leftovers with bread and cheese. ‘We didn’t get a chance to prepare identity documents for Edith before the Germans stormed in, and I could only carry the absolute essentials after Eugene was shot. The blank identity documents and miniature camera were in his pack.’

‘So you want to leave Edith here and travel to Paris?’ Dr Blanc asked.

‘Tomorrow, if that’s acceptable,’ Rosie said.

‘I telephoned the station and got details of tomorrow’s trains,’ Joseph added.

Dr Blanc nodded. ‘I can see the sense in that. There’s nothing you can do to help Edith by being here.’

‘I expect I’ll be gone for two or three days,’ Rosie said. ‘I’m not short of money and I’d be happy to leave enough to pay for any treatment.’

‘There’s nothing to pay,’ Dr Blanc said. Then she leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘Are your resistance colleagues well connected?’

‘Please don’t take offence, doctor,’ Rosie said warily, ‘but the less I say the safer it is for everyone.’

Dr Blanc accepted this, but pressed gently. ‘I have two reasons for asking. Firstly, there’s a drug known as penicillin. It’s impossible to get supplies around here, but it might be available on the black market in Paris.’

Edith had seen stories about penicillin in newsreels and newspapers. ‘Isn’t that the
miracle drug
?’ she asked.

‘Everyone’s heard of it, nobody can get it,’ Dr Blanc explained. ‘The Germans produce it in small quantities, but it’s only made available in their military hospitals. Edith is extremely sick and a vial of penicillin would tilt the balance of probabilities in her favour. The second reason I ask is this.’

The doctor reached into her medical bag and produced a crumpled grey notebook. Rosie caught Joseph’s expression, and he apparently had no more idea what it was than she did.

‘Two Germans came to my doorstep after Easter,’ Dr Blanc began, as Edith reached across and took the notebook. ‘It was all rather gothic. We drove out several kilometres into woodland. Pitch dark, rain lashing the car. They took me down into a bunker – a vast underground warehouse. There were a great deal of military supplies in storage, everything from bombs to boxes of grenades.’

‘You’re talking about the old army storage bunker,’ Joseph said, interrupting his mother. ‘You never told me you’d seen a patient out there.’

Dr Blanc gave her son a look of surprise. ‘How do you know about it?’

‘When Frédéric and I were boys we used to explore in the woods. It was built as an ammunition store during the Great War. There would always be a soldier guarding the perimeter and boys would sneak up and throw acorns or chestnuts at him.’

‘Then you know more about it than I do,’ Dr Blanc said. Then with a half-smile, ‘And apparently my sons were not as well behaved as they led me to believe at the time.’

‘I haven’t thought about that old place in years,’ Joseph said. ‘The soldiers used to get cross and shoot their guns, but they knew we were kids and always aimed high into the trees. With so much bombing now, I can see why the Germans would want to make use of it.’

As Joseph spoke, Rosie flipped through the notebook and saw pages of tiny writing, plus equations and intricate pencil drawings of gyroscopes and clockwork mechanisms. There were also pages of maps, with dashed lines plotting what looked like the course of a ship. It all looked like the work of one man, who was quite possibly bonkers.

‘My patient was a suicide attempt,’ Dr Blanc continued. ‘A well-spoken Frenchman who’d cut his wrists. Luckily he’d made the classic mistake of cutting across the vein and hadn’t lost too much blood. There seemed to be other Frenchmen there. I saw very little, but got the distinct impression that they were scientists being kept underground in some sort of research facility.’

‘How did you get the notebook?’ Rosie asked.

‘I was there for some hours stabilising the patient. I asked to use the bathroom and it caused a minor fuss, because the toilets in the bunker were foul and there were no facilities for ladies. The Germans were apologetic and sent an elderly Frenchman to clean a toilet for me. As he passed me in the hallway, the cleaner pressed the notebook upon me. He told me it was valuable. He said to hide it in the bottom of my bag and get the information to someone on the outside.’

‘But you didn’t try passing it to anyone until now?’ Rosie asked.

Dr Blanc shook her head. ‘This is a remote area. I’ve heard the resistance spoken of in BBC radio broadcasts, but you’re the first time I’ve physically encountered any sign of it.’

Joseph and Rosie were both intrigued by the story – but in Rosie’s case her fascination was tainted by doubt. Had she really just
happened
to meet a doctor who was in possession of a dossier smuggled out of a secret laboratory?

The tale had the whiff of a plot concocted by the local Gestapo. Perhaps Dr Blanc had offered to swap information for her older son who was a prisoner of war in Germany.

But despite the chills shooting down her back, Rosie had no choice but to play along. If Dr Blanc had visited the Gestapo, they’d almost certainly be watching the house. And the only reason they hadn’t arrested Rosie already would be that they hoped to discover more resistance members by tracking her movements.

‘I’m no scientist,’ Rosie said, as she looked back at the book. ‘You’re both doctors. You probably understand more of these equations and drawings than I do.’

Dr Blanc nodded. ‘There’s a certain manic quality to the entire notebook. I’ve tried to understand it, but I can’t tell if it’s a secret weapon or the insides of a cuckoo clock. All I have to go on is the apparent desperation of the man who passed it to me.’

Rosie nodded, as she noticed that the doctor had a rather disgusting way of cramming chicken into her mouth with her porky fingers.

‘I’ll make contact with my liaison in Paris tomorrow,’ Rosie said amenably. ‘The book weighs nothing and it can be passed up to my superiors for proper analysis.’

‘I do hope it proves valuable,’ Dr Blanc said, as she rose out of the armchair while wiping greasy fingers on a napkin. ‘When did you last check on the patient? I might go upstairs and take a look at her.’

*

There was no change in Edith’s condition. Dr Blanc headed home to her rooms above her surgery in town and Rosie retired to a comfortable attic bedroom some time after eleven. She’d not had much sleep, but sat in candlelight studying the notebook.

Her first instinct was that the whole thing was a Gestapo-engineered hoax. But if it was a hoax, the seventy-two sides of writing and drawing must have been prepared well in advance of her arrival. And if the Gestapo wanted to follow her back to Paris and see who she met, why give her the notebook when it would only serve to make any trained agent suspicious?

Perhaps she’d become part of some sophisticated plot. Maybe the book was genuine and Dr Blanc and Joseph were the decent people they appeared, but it all seemed fishy and churning it in her mind brought no great revelation.