J. Janes - Hunting Ground

Bien sûr , I had thought of the dilemma. A child without a father is one thing, but a lot of women had those now, and I didn’t want to lose this one. Suddenly, it meant more to me than anything, and I said, ‘I want to talk to Tommy first. It’s as much his as mine.’

Gripping my hands, she told me that he mustn’t know, that we could always make another, that the war wouldn’t last forever, that the Russians had surrounded the Sixth Army on the outskirts of Stalingrad. ‘It’s happening, Lily. The end’s in sight.’

‘Dmitry …’

She turned away from me. ‘Yes, I know. Tommy’s told me. He was very useful, and I don’t honestly know what we’re going to do without him. I really don’t. Organize something, I guess. Always it’s me who has to cover things up and organize something to replace them.’

Turning back, she kissed me on both cheeks and said, ‘Now cheer up and I’ll take you to see that husband of yours who’s in bed with the Occupier. Perhaps if we’re seen together with him it will help the cause. Two sisters, yes. The nearness of the death of one of them, the anxiety, and a few tears, of course.’

There are only fragments of memory, glimpses of that business. Simone was so upset. For her, to lose a child like that was to commit murder. André and she argued, but I said so little. In the end, I think it was done at about two thirty a.m. I hadn’t even made out a will, had so little of my own, but what I did have, I wanted to see properly disposed of. When I came out of the anaesthetic, who should be sitting there but Dupuis, holding a large glass bottle in which a tumour was submerged in formalin.

Promptly, I threw up and passed out, but he was still there when I came round. ‘You’re full of surprises,’ he said.

I could hardly speak. ‘Have I been out for long?’

‘In and out for three days. It’s Wednesday.’

I shut my eyes and tried to slip back into unconsciousness, but his words, when they came, were of no help. ‘It’s not the length of time, madame. That’s only understandable. It’s the things you inadvertently said.’

‘What things?’

‘Rudi Swartz, madame? Orders for the Russian front?’

Me, I had to turn away, couldn’t bring myself to face him, though I had to say, ‘Poor Rudi, he was so terrified of being sent there.’

‘But there were no such orders.’

I had to face him, I needed to. ‘Weren’t there? Rudi thought so. Please don’t tell me he was mistaken.’

‘A cave, madame? “The cave,” you said and repeated it several times. Also, “the farm.” By that, I presume you meant your mother’s.’

‘I really wouldn’t know, Inspector. I’ve always wanted a farm of my own. It’s been a lifelong dream.’

‘And an emerald-and-diamond tiara? That of the Empress Eugénie? Has that also been a lifelong dream of yours?’

To this I could say nothing. Hunched in that chair of his, sucking on a cigarette, he took a moment before adding, ‘“Flames,” Madame? “Screams in the night. Must get away. Mustn’t let them find me here.”’

‘I was delirious, in shock, and in a great deal of pain.’

‘ Bien sûr, but you kept asking God to forgive you for something. God and Thomas Carrington. “Tommy,” I believe it was.’ He consulted his little black notebook. ‘Yes, here it is,’ and he showed it to me. Tommy … Tommy, forgive me .

I think it was on the 18th or 19th of January 1943 that they took me to the farm. The Russians, I know, had lifted the nine-hundred-day siege of Leningrad. The German Sixth Army at Stalingrad had all but been destroyed. No one in the car said much. I think they were all wondering what it must mean for them.

I remember that there had been the usually insufferable cold and damp, even a thin layer of newfallen snow, but that the ashes of my mother’s farmhouse still smouldered and there was the stench of burning cloth and rubber.

Blood matted the jet-black hair where the bullet had entered. Schiller stood looking at her. The wind tugged at the collar of his greatcoat and made the tops of his ears red beneath the cap with its death’s-head.

‘There was a wireless set and you knew of it,’ he finally said.

‘I didn’t! How could I have?’

He hit me then. Still weak and dizzy, I fell to the ground, where he kicked me. Doubled up in pain, I tried to think what was best to do. They’d use Jean-Guy and Marie to make me talk. They wouldn’t hesitate.

A shot rang out, and I saw the gun in his hand leap. Another spurted up the earth beside me, and as I lay waiting for the final one, Dupuis stepped between us. ‘Of course, she’ll talk, Herr Obersturmführer, but only if her mother receives a decent burial.’

‘I’ve nothing to say. I don’t know anything.’

In anger, Schiller fired at me again, Dupuis losing all colour. ‘Obersturmführer …’ he began.

‘Answers! I will have answers!’ shrilled that SS. Four others of those stood around with machine pistols. Dupuis let go of me and stepped back as Schiller pressed the muzzle of that gun of his to my forehead and said, ‘The cowards smashed their wireless and left her to face the consequences. You will tell me where they are and the names of all of their contacts, and you will tell me the locations of the artwork.’

Me, I didn’t know how long mother had been lying here, a day or two at most. Tommy and the others could be anywhere, but I’d have to tell him something, otherwise he’d have the children brought before me. ‘There’s a hut in the forest, at a place we call the Three Gables. I’ll show it to you.’

They stopped off at the barracks in Fontainebleau to get more men. I think then that the feeling of being very much the hunted now, rather than the hunters, had begun to come over them. I do know that they moved through the forest stealthily and that I was forced to wait under guard in one of the cars. Dupuis even lit a cigarette and passed it to me but said, ‘You know that wasn’t a tumour de Verville removed. It was a child.’

Two of the others had been left to guard us. There were some cars behind, and then a couple of lorries. ‘You can think what you will, Inspector, but I know what it was and so does the German doctor who examined me before the operation.’

That one had been perfunctory, a taking of my pulse, a signing of the necessary papers. Me, I think he must have been on his way to Maxim’s when André caught up with him in the corridors.

‘The lieutenant will pry everything out of you, madame.’

Me, I kept listening for the sound of gunfire and hoping Tommy and Nicki and the others were nowhere near. The shackles hurt, and every time I lifted the cigarette to my lips, that length of chain made a rattle. ‘Listen, you, I have to pee and would prefer not to in the car.’

He unlocked the handcuffs and the door. ‘Try to make a run for it, and you won’t get far.’

The cigarette pauses and I blink. I know it’s Dupuis and that he’s finally caught up with me, the past having become the present, for he has just said exactly the same thing, though now he adds, ‘Lift your hands slowly.’

‘Where’s Schiller?’

‘In the house.’

‘Is Jules with him?’

‘If still alive.’

Crouching, he teases the Schmeisser from me. ‘Now the Luger, eh? Easy … Yes, yes, that’s it.’

Having committed the unpardonable of living in the past so intensely, I had forgotten the present. ‘There’s a knife in my left coat pocket.’

With the gun pressing against the nape of my neck, he frisks me, and finds the wire cutters. ‘Where’s the knife?’ he asks.

My hands are well above me and it’s so like it was back then, I have to say, ‘I don’t know. It must have fallen out.’