Lee Child - Personal

Scarangello said, ‘Why did you run?’

I said, ‘I didn’t run. I don’t like running. I walked.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m here as your cop. I was looking for the guy. That’s what cops do.’

‘You were nowhere near. You were in the wrong neighbourhood entirely.’

‘I figured he hadn’t stuck around.’

‘You were wrong.’

‘So what happened?’

‘They got him. And his rifle.’

‘They got him?’

‘He waited right there.’

‘Which one was it?’

‘None of them. It was a Vietnamese kid about twenty years of age.’

‘And what was the rifle?’

‘An AK-47.’

‘That’s bullshit.’

She said, ‘In your opinion.’

I started to say something, but she held up her hand. She said, ‘Don’t tell me anything. I don’t want the raw data. There could be subpoenas flying around by tomorrow. Safer for me not to know. I’m going to wait for the official statement.’

I said, ‘I was going to ask if you mind if we take a little detour.’

‘The plane is waiting.’

‘It can’t leave without us.’

‘Where do you want to go?’

I leaned forward and said to the driver in French, ‘Head for the Bastille and turn right.’

The guy thought for a second and said, ‘On Roquette?’

‘All the way to the end,’ I said. ‘Then wait at the gate.’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

Scarangello turned to quiz me again, but her focus fell short, on the shoulder of my jacket. The red and grey slick, now dark brown and purple, and on closer examination flecked with fine shards of white bone. She said, ‘What’s that?’

I said, ‘Just a guy I used to know.’

‘That’s disgusting.’

‘It’s raw data.’

‘You need a new jacket.’

‘This is a new jacket.’

‘You have to get rid of it. We’ll go buy you another one. Right now.’

‘The plane is waiting.’

‘How long can it take?’

‘This is France,’ I said. ‘Nothing in the stores is going to fit me.’

She said, ‘Where are we going?’

‘Something I want to do before we leave.’

‘What?’

‘I want to take a walk.’

‘Where?’

‘You’ll see.’

We crossed the Seine on the Pont d’Austerlitz, and hooked a left on the Boulevard de la Bastille, and headed up towards the monument itself, fast and fluent through the traffic, as if the driver was using lights and siren, although he wasn’t. The monument was the hub of a crazy traffic circle, called the Place de la Bastille, just as bad as all the others in Paris, and the fourth of its ten exits was the rue de la Roquette, which led basically east, straight to the cemetery gate.

‘Père Lachaise,’ Scarangello said. ‘Chopin is buried here. And Molière.’

‘And Edith Piaf and Jim Morrison,’ I said. ‘From the Doors.’

‘We don’t have time for tourism.’

‘Won’t take long,’ I said.

The driver parked at the gate and I got out. Scarangello came with me. There was a wooden booth that sold maps to all the famous graves. Like Hollywood, with the stars’ homes. We walked in, on a wide gritty path, and turned left and right past elaborate mausoleums and white marble headstones. I navigated by memory, from a sullen grey winter morning many years previously. I walked slow, pausing occasionally, checking, until I found the right place, which was now a strip of lawn, green with new spring grass, studded with headstones, broad and low. I found the right one. It was pale, and barely weathered at all, with two lines of inscription still crisp and precise: Joséphine Moutier Reacher, 1930–1990 . A life, sixty years long. I had arrived exactly halfway through it. I stood there, hands by my side, with another man’s blood and brains on my jacket.

‘Family?’ Scarangello asked.

‘My mother,’ I said.

‘Why is she buried here?’

‘Born in Paris, died in Paris.’

‘Is that how you know the city so well?’

I nodded. ‘We came here from time to time. And then she lived here after my father died. On the Avenue Rapp. The other side of Les Invalides. I visited when I could.’

Scarangello nodded and went quiet for a spell, maybe out of respect. She stood next to me, shoulder to shoulder. She asked, ‘What was she like?’

I said, ‘Petite, dark-haired but blue-eyed, very feminine, very obstinate. But generally happy. She made the best of things. She would walk into some dumpy Marine quarters somewhere and laugh and smile and say, ’Ome sweet ’ome . She couldn’t say the letter H because of her accent.’

Scarangello said, ‘Sixty is not very old. I’m sorry.’

‘We get what we get,’ I said. ‘She didn’t complain.’

‘What was it?’

‘Lung cancer. She smoked a lot. She was French.’

‘This is Père Lachaise.’

‘I know.’

‘I mean, not everyone gets buried here.’

‘Obviously,’ I said. ‘It would get pretty crowded.’

‘I mean, it’s like an honour.’

‘War service.’

Scarangello looked at the headstone again. ‘Which war?’

‘World War Two.’

‘She was fifteen when it ended.’

‘They were desperate times.’

‘What did she do?’

‘Resistance work. Allied airmen shot down in Holland or Belgium were funnelled south through Paris. There was a network. Her part was to escort them from one railroad station to the next, and send them on their way.’

‘When?’

‘Most of 1943. Eighty trips, they say.’

‘She was thirteen years old.’

‘Desperate times,’ I said again. ‘A schoolgirl was good cover. She was trained to say the airmen were her uncles or brothers, visiting from out of town. Generally they were disguised like peasants or clerks.’

‘She was risking her life. And her family’s life.’

‘Every day. But she took care of business.’

Scarangello said, ‘This information wasn’t in your file.’

‘No one knew. She didn’t talk about it. I’m not even sure my father knew. After she died we found a medal. Then an old guy came to the funeral and told us the story. He was her handler. I assume he’s dead now, too. I haven’t been back since we buried her. This is the first time I’ve seen the stone. I guess my brother organized it.’

‘He chose well.’

I nodded. A modest memorial, for a modest woman. I closed my eyes and remembered the last time I had seen her alive. Breakfast, with her two grown sons, in her apartment on the Avenue Rapp. The Berlin Wall was coming down. She was very sick by that point, but had summoned the will to dress well and act normal. We drank coffee and ate croissants. Or at least my brother and I did, while she hid her lack of appetite behind talking. She chattered about all kinds of things, people we had known, places we had been, things that had happened there. Then she had gone quiet for a spell, and then she had given us a pair of final messages, which were the same messages she had always given us. Like a motherly ritual. She had done it a thousand times. She had struggled up out of her chair and stepped over and put her hands on my brother Joe’s shoulders, from behind, which was all part of the choreography, and she had bent and kissed his cheek from the side, like she always did, and she had asked him, ‘What don’t you need to do, Joe?’

Joe hadn’t answered, because our silence was part of the ritual. She had said, ‘You don’t need to solve all the world’s problems. Only some of them. There are enough to go around.’

She had kissed him again, and then she had struggled around behind me, and kissed my cheek in turn, and measured the width of my shoulders with her small hands, and felt the hard muscles, as always, still fascinated by the way her tiny newborn had grown so big, and even though I was close to thirty by then she had said, ‘You’ve got the strength of two normal boys. What are you going to do with it?’