Колин Форбс - Tramp in Armour

‘Another truck?’ queried Barnes.

‘No, I think this is a car. He’s in a hurry, too. I thought I was driving this bus over the speed limits but some of these drivers need certifying. The car behind came up from nowhere like a dirt-track rider.’

‘Let him pass.’

‘Helmets on?’ queried Colburn.

‘Not this time. Whoever it is won’t be able to see clearly into the cab from a car.’

‘He’ll see Reynolds if he looks,’ Colburn objected.

‘I don’t like wearing Jerry helmets,’ said Reynolds flatly.

Headlights had appeared beyond Reynolds’ window and the car began to move up fast. Reynolds glanced down, looked ahead quickly, and then glanced down again. The car moved forward and then stayed alongside the transporter’s bonnet, the driver’s arm projecting and waving madly as he flagged them down. Barnes’ eyes narrowed and he lifted the pistol, a movement which caught Reynolds’ eye.

‘Don’t, Sergeant.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘It looked like Jacques. I think he wants us to stop.’

‘Jacques! It can’t be. He passed us this morning on his way to Abbeville.’

‘It’s a green Renault and I’m sure it’s Jacques. In fact,’ Reynolds concluded heavily as though not enjoying contradicting Barnes, ‘I saw him twice. It’s definitely Jacques.’

‘All right. Slow down and then pull in, but keep your engine running. Was he alone?’

‘As far as I could see, yes.’

The darkest suspicion flooded into Barnes’ mind and he put one hand on the door handle ready to jump out as soon as the vehicle stopped. If this really was Jacques no possible stretch of the imagination could explain his presence up here in the Pas de Calais, yet what was he doing so far from the Mandel farm and Abbeville? Still not at all sure that Reynolds hadn’t made some ghastly mistake, he jumped down as soon as the transporter pulled up. When he reached the ground the Renault was stopping a dozen yards ahead. The engine was switched off and a man got out. He ran towards them, shielding his eyes against the powerful beams. It was Jacques.

‘I’ve been driving up and down this road for three hours hoping to see you, Sergeant Barnes. But I didn’t really expect I ever would – I thought you’d follow that route I marked on your map, though.’

‘I didn’t expect to see you either,’ Barnes replied grimly.

‘You amazed me when I saw Reynolds in that cab – it is a German transporter, isn’t it?’

His face looked chalk-white, although it might have been the light of the beams, and his voice was harsh and strained.

‘Yes, it’s a transporter. What are you doing here, Jacques? You said you were on your way to Abbeville.’

‘A terrible thing has happened. The Germans have shot my sister.’

Had his voice trembled? Barnes thought so, but the fleeting expression of pain was succeeded by an expression of bitterness and hate.

‘How did it happen?’ Barnes asked quietly.

‘The Germans are trying to say it was an accident – their interpreter told me that – but they killed her. She was standing in a square in Abbeville and some German tanks arrived. Someone leaned out from a window and shot one of their men in the tower of a tank. They fired their machine guns all round the square and my sister was killed. Boches!’ He spat out the word.

‘I’m very sorry to hear that, Jacques.’ Barnes spoke gently. ‘But what are you doing in this part of the world?’

‘After what happened I decided I must come home to tell my father. I live in Lemont – that is near Gravelines. I told you that,’ he ended accusingly. ‘Then I shall kill some Germans.’

‘I’d think about that, if I were you. Killing Germans takes training and skill.’

‘Not with a knife in the back in a dark street.’

He spoke without hysteria, his mouth tight. He means just what he says, Barnes thought, and he’ll do it coldly and clinically. This was the lad who led a gang to put wire across a road, wire which killed a German cyclist.

‘On the other hand,’ Jacques said suddenly, ‘I could come with you.’

‘Thanks, but nothing doing.’

Jacques was peering up at Colburn who leant out of the cab window to listen to the conversation. He frowned and turned to Barnes.

‘Who is that?’

‘A soldier – someone we picked up on the way.’

‘And where is Mr Penn?’

‘He died.’

‘I am so sorry. I liked Mr Penn. He was so jolly, is that the word?’

‘Jolly would do.’

‘And you will not let me come with you?’

‘Sorry. No. You get home to your people at Lemont.’

‘This is the road to Calais as well as to Gravelines. You are going to one of those places – to Calais, perhaps?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘I could drive ahead at least some of the way and warn you of danger.’

‘It’s no good, Jacques. That would put you in a crossfire between us and the Germans.’

‘I don’t mind. No, that won’t make you change your mind.’ He paused. ‘You are travelling on the main road at the moment, the most dangerous road. If you are going to Calais I know another road which turns off this one and it would be much safer, I’m sure. The Germans are less likely to expect someone coming that way. If I take you along it I can leave you before you reach Calais and drive back to Lemont. In fact,’ he added slyly, ‘if I insist on driving ahead of you, you can’t really stop me, can you?’

In the end, reluctantly, Barnes agreed. Before the night was out the lad was going to do something silly, anyway, and he was within a few months of being called up when he would have no choice. If they were very lucky they might get him behind the Allied lines where he would be safer while he got over his sister’s death. The only alternative, in view of his obstinacy, was to throw away the ignition key and leave him stranded, and he wasn’t prepared to do that. He gave Jacques careful instructions – he was always to drive at least one hundred yards ahead of them and if they ran into trouble he was to leave his car at once and run. Climbing back up into the cab, Barnes watched him walk back to the Renault.

‘I still don’t like it,’ he told Colburn, ‘but if he keeps that distance ahead of us it won’t look as though he’s leading the way.’

‘There’s a war on and he looked pretty mature to me. If you’d made him leave us he’d have been up to his back-stabbing tricks and sooner or later they’d get him.’

‘Let’s go, Reynolds,’ said Barnes.

As the transporter moved on through-the night the air of tension returned to the cab and it never went away again. There was no longer much conversation and Barnes found himself holding the machine-pistol in a vice-like grip as his eyes followed Jacques’ tail-light. He had already made up his mind that as soon as Jacques put them on the side road the lad would have to leave them and go home to Lemont. Telling Colburn to keep a close eye on the tail-light, he took out his map folded to the Pas de Calais area and found Lemont, a dot little more than a large village close to Gravelines, the town east-north-east of Calais. Both places were on the waterline, a system of canals with sluice gates to control the flow. Closing the map, he lowered his window and looked to the east where the flashes now rivalled the moonlight as they illuminated the sky, but it was no longer the flashes alone which told him they were moving very close to the battle area, for now he could hear in the distance the thump of big guns. He wiped more sweat off his forehead and dried his hands on his trousers. The rising sense of tension had almost become a physical presence inside the cab, something they could all feel. Was it simply the growing sound of the guns or was it also the realization that with every second which passed, with every yard they moved forward, they drew closer to the inevitable encounter with the Germans? Five more minutes passed, five minutes of loaded silence, and then the crisis broke with alarming suddenness.