Scorched Earth (19 page)

He was in a narrow space that was a kitchen for both the home upstairs and the café out front. He was surprised to see plenty of food: a full sack of potatoes, a big box of carrots with their tops on, a hanging sausage and a basket filled with German-labelled food tins.

After breakfasting on stale black bread, PT couldn’t resist picking up a carrot and taking a bite before heading up the stairs.

A little set of eyes peeked out on to the top landing. ‘Mummy, there’s a man,’ he yelled.

The eyes belonged to a boy aged about four, who bolted back into the upstairs front room and dived behind a couch. PT put a hand on his hunting knife as he raced up the stairs.

He found the woman of the house in a back room. PT had guessed she was the mother of all the brats, but she was too old. She looked at least sixty, sitting on a sofa with the baby alongside and her swollen ankles on a table top.

‘How dare you!’ the woman shouted, pulling her feet down and reaching for a set of knitting needles as PT closed in.

‘I didn’t mean to startle you,’ PT said, before taking another bite out of his carrot. ‘I’m looking for Pierre Robert. When did you last see him?’

‘What’s it to you?’ the woman asked back, as she screwed up her face and made a pathetic stabbing gesture with one of the knitting needles.

The little boy and two slightly older girls peered nervously through the doorway as PT swiped the knitting needles from the elderly woman’s grasp.

‘I’m a nice guy,’ PT said. ‘I don’t
want
to make trouble, but Pierre owes money to some friends of mine. They’re not the kind of people you want to get on the wrong side of. People get hurt, cafés get burned to the ground. You understand?’

The woman’s lips went very thin before she spoke reluctantly. ‘He’s my son-in-law.’

‘Are these his kids?’

‘The two girls are. The others are their cousins. I look after the kids while their mothers work in a factory.’

‘So where’s Pierre?’

‘I never see him,’ the woman said.

PT took a step closer and tried to look menacing. ‘If you never see him, why did we find his name on a utility bill for this café? And who supplies all these nice black-market carrots?’

The woman stayed silent, so PT leaned forward and grabbed the baby off the sofa. She tried to stop him as the baby started bawling.

‘You’re a cute one,’ PT said, as he stepped backwards, rocking the baby in his arms. ‘How old is he?’

The elderly woman now sounded short of breath. ‘Ten months,’ she said nervously. ‘What did that poor, helpless baby ever do to you?’

‘Nobody will get hurt,’ PT told the baby in a sing-song voice. ‘Because Grandma’s going to tell me
all
about Uncle Pierre.’

‘Pierre Robert doesn’t live here,’ she blurted. ‘He went off with another woman, but he’s good to the kids. Dropping by with food and stuff.’

‘Where can I find him?’ PT asked, as he stepped back towards the sofa.

‘I don’t know where he lives. But if he’s in town, he’ll roll up at Bistro le Baron sooner or later. It’s two streets over and he hangs out there with a bunch of gangsters.’

‘Has he quit the Milice?’

The baby settled down as the woman gently stroked his head. ‘I already told you. I have nothing to do with the man.’

‘I’ll see if he turns up at Bistro le Baron then,’ PT said. ‘Thank you.’

‘Kiss my arse,’ the woman said, as PT headed for the stairs.

*

Paul felt light-headed as he moved along a set of curving train tracks. Joel and one thug walked in front, and the other one walked behind. Every now and then Paul got told to pick up the pace. But when the goon finally lost his temper and gave Paul a shove, he sprawled out helplessly in the trackside gravel and stumbled up with his railway uniform covered in dust.

‘I can’t help it,’ Paul said, as he scowled angrily at his tormentor. ‘I’ve not moved out of that cellar in weeks and you’ve been feeding us scraps.’

The guard reluctantly let Paul drape an arm over his back before setting off again.

Their destination was a set of overgrown railway sidings, close to the river. Paul and Joel were told to sit inside a dilapidated goods shed. Its wooden cladding was badly holed, so they had no trouble watching the scene that developed outside.

More railway workers arrived, followed by at least a dozen Maquis. The heat made Paul thirsty as they all milled about for more than an hour. Snippets of conversation told him that they were waiting for a train to arrive, but it was late because the tracks had been bombed and it had been diverted along a much longer route.

The sun was high when a train finally reversed into the deserted sidings. The small steam engine was pulling three goods wagons and surprised everyone by stopping 50 metres short. Three men jumped out of an open cargo door. They held machine guns, which set off a panic among the waiting Maquis and railway workers. Some went for weapons, but most ran for cover between the goods sheds.

Paul was pleased to hear Henderson’s voice. ‘I need to see my boys,’ he shouted.

‘I need to see our goods,’ the most senior railway worker shouted back.

A guard made Paul and Joel stand by the shed’s doorway and wait for a signal.

‘Bring the boys out,’ Henderson said. ‘You can send two unarmed men across to check the wagons.’

As two Maquis men walked towards the train, Paul and Joel got led out on to the tracks.

‘I’m told you’re in good health,’ Henderson said.

‘Not too bad,’ Joel shouted back.

The two Maquis climbed in the wagons and came out a minute later, making thumbs-up signs. As a railway worker began decoupling two of the three cargo trucks, Paul and Joel were told to begin a slow walk towards Henderson.

Joel smiled and Paul had a tear running down his face, but Henderson’s voice remained tense.

‘Get in the front truck, fast as you can manage.’

As Paul and Joel climbed aboard, Henderson signalled the train driver. The engine was already starting to move as Henderson and his two machine-gun-toting accomplices stepped into the cargo wagon.

The interior had straw-filled pillows strewn across the floor. As Henderson slid the wagon’s wooden door shut, he looked back at the Maquis and the railway workers, frantically unloading the two wagons they’d left behind.

Joel and Paul took turns gulping tepid water as the train accelerated. A man also handed across a basket filled with apples, chocolate and bread.

‘We’re still in the Rouen resistance’s territory,’ Henderson warned. ‘So let’s all keep our guard up.’

Paul smiled. ‘So how much are we worth? What was in the two wagons?’

‘Food and fuel, mostly,’ Henderson said. ‘They were desperate.’

‘What happened after the café bombing?’ Joel asked.

‘Things got hairy,’ Henderson said. ‘The bombings did exactly what we’d hoped. Half the senior Gestapo were killed in the blast and Rouen’s military commander was sacked. The regional governor staged a crackdown. Gaspard and at least twenty of his cronies were arrested, tortured and hanged on a specially built gallows outside the main station.’

‘It’s a miracle the communists didn’t shoot us,’ Paul said.

‘Fortunately for you two, there wasn’t much love lost between Gaspard’s communists and the Maquis who captured you. Maxine used her contacts to find out that you were both alive and sent envoys to Rouen to negotiate your release.’

‘But it was all railway workers who guarded us,’ Paul said.

Henderson nodded, as Joel hungrily licked the foil from a bar of melted chocolate. ‘I sent a message to Boo on campus. The Rouen communists still had a radio operator in contact with Britain. We made it clear to their new leadership that they’d never get another parachute drop if you two were harmed.’

‘Still took eight weeks,’ Paul moaned.

Henderson explained. ‘The Maquis made ransom demands that were impossible to meet. They wanted heavy weapons that no resistance group has and vast quantities of food and fuel. I had to give some ground in the end, because I didn’t like the idea of you two being locked up if the Allies swept into town.’

Paul gasped. ‘So our guys finally broke out of Normandy?’

‘And a lot more,’ Henderson said. ‘We’re having difficulty getting regular radio broadcasts in Paris because there’s rarely any electricity to charge the batteries. But the Allied armies seem to be on track to reach the River Seine before the end of this month.’

PT had no idea how fast news would spread about his encounter with Pierre Robert’s mother-in-law, so he had a quick sniff around Bistro le Baron and its neighbourhood before taking refuge in another café opposite. The only dish on the menu was vegetable soup. It cost what three courses in a fancy restaurant would have done a couple of months earlier, but the place was heaving and the waitress laughed when PT offered a ration ticket.

‘Just your money,’ she said.

PT found a stool with a view out on to the street and kept an eye on Bistro le Baron. Men in porter’s overalls came and went and it looked like shady business was happening in the rooms above the bar.

Most of the visitors were going back and forth between the bistro and a storage depot 100 metres up the road. It had high wooden fences topped with barbed wire, and all PT could see beyond them were the pitched roofs of warehouses stretching back more than 50 metres.

Carts came and went. People knocked on a wooden gate in the fence. Their baskets went in empty and came out full. The contents were always covered, but the odd protruding celery stick or a glimpse of an aluminium can gave the game away. This was clearly a major black-market operation. And as it had taken PT ten minutes to work out what was going on, there was no way it could operate without the local Germans taking a cut.

‘Do you want another bowl?’ the waitress asked.

PT patted his stomach and turned on the charm. ‘I can’t – unless you’re offering credit.’

The girl smiled back, but spoke firmly. ‘We have a queue. I must ask you to leave.’

PT wanted to watch some more. ‘I’ll get a coffee,’ he said.

‘No. I’m sorry, sir,’ the waitress said. ‘It’s lunchtime and we’re busy.’

PT pointed his thumb back at some men near the counter. ‘They’ve not taken a bite since I got here.’

‘They’re friends of the owner.’

Rather than argue further, the waitress made a hand signal to the men at the counter and backed away. A mountainous man who couldn’t have looked more villainous if he’d tried moved up to PT’s stool and cracked his knuckles.

‘Is there some difficulty with the house rules?’ he said, in a voice that sounded like it was coming through organ pipes.

PT didn’t hang around to be asked a second time. He thought about heading off, but as he stepped off the kerb a bicycle squealed to a halt and a tall man stepped off a bike. He wore a linen suit rather than a navy Milice uniform, but it was clearly Pierre Robert.

Gangsters obviously ran things around here, so it wasn’t the kind of place where you could stand around gawping. Excited by the sighting of Robert, PT decided to take a risk. He strolled purposefully across the street and approached the entrance of Bistro le Baron a few paces behind his target.

The place could seat a hundred, but the only customers sat at two distant tables. Robert leaned his bike against a wall near the door and joined a group of eight men at the room’s biggest table. PT found a table by the window. It was close enough to overhear most of what Robert’s group said, without making it seem obvious that he was listening.

PT ordered coffee. It was no surprise when a couple of senior German officers emerged from upstairs with sacks over their shoulders. One even had a large box of Swiss chocolates tucked under his arm.

‘What brings you here?’ the waitress asked, as she put down a cup of coffee that smelled like the real stuff.

PT wondered if the waitress was bored, or under orders to be nosy. ‘Came out for a walk and ended up here,’ he said, before blowing on his hot coffee.

‘I always wonder if it really makes a difference,’ the waitress said.

PT looked confused. ‘What makes a difference?’

‘Blowing,’ the girl said. ‘Does it cool your coffee down?’

PT laughed. The girl was attractive and seemed to like him, but he felt conned when she crossed to the big group sitting with Robert and used the same banter on them.

He spent fifteen minutes sipping a coffee and pretending that he wasn’t listening to the conversation between Robert and his friends. They spoke about the war and the Germans looking jumpy. A few comments suggested that most of them had put on Milice uniform at some stage, but mostly they discussed the Allied advance.

‘New rulers, same tricks,’ Robert said. ‘I don’t care if communists, Yanks or Free French take over from the Nazis. There’s not a regime in history that hasn’t been open to a black market, bent politicians and swindles.’

This line raised a big laugh.

PT was getting frustrated. He had a hunting knife and a small .22 pistol under his shirt, but it would be suicidal to attack Robert while he was sitting on home turf with eight friends.

His bladder got the better of him halfway through a second coffee. The waitress pointed him to a toilet up a narrow staircase and he followed his nose to a foul-smelling urinal. As PT came out, a bulky man with a ginger beard blocked his way down. He was one of the guys who’d been drinking with Robert.

‘Have you been earwigging us?’ he asked.

PT smirked, like the idea was mad. ‘Not many places sell real coffee,’ he said. ‘It was a nice cup, so I had another and took my time over both.’

‘Expensive though,’ the man said, as he ran beefy fingers through his beard. ‘And I saw you have lunch across the street. Did someone pay you to nose around?’

A door clicked at the top of the stairs and a stocky, well-spoken man came out.

‘Who’s this?’ he asked.

‘Young man drinking coffee, boss. Two coffees. Been sitting on his lonesome for over half an hour.’

‘Is that right?’ the boss asked.

PT looked over his shoulder at the boss. Even German officers had got shabby because of all the shortages, but this guy looked like the war never happened. He wore immaculate black leather shoes, a silk shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the eccentric touch of a gold watch on each wrist.