Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

For two or three hours I actually managed to sleep and when I awoke, feeling cold and stiff as if I were already in my unmarked grave, I picked the straw carefully off my clothes, lit a cigarette to chase off my hunger pangs, pocketed my gun, and, leaving the holdall behind — it was only going to draw attention to the fact that I was traveling somewhere — I walked back into town, where I found fewer police around. I tramped very slowly along the main road, which was also the road to Freyming-Merlebach, another Alsatian border town, and considered the dwindling number of options that were now available to me. I was quickly running out of ideas on how to deflect attention from myself and, deciding that fugitives are seldom ever intoxicated, and that real drunks never seem to be in a hurry, I went into a wine shop opposite the local town hall and bought a bottle of cheap red Burgundy. Besides the appearance of having an open bottle in my hand, like a true clochard , the effect of the wine was good for my fraying nerves and after several mouthfuls I was almost able to see the comedy in my situation. It seems to me that people don’t really drink to escape their existence but to see its funny side instead; mine was beginning to resemble one of those delightful films starring Jacques Tati. The idea that the Stasi — the true heirs to the Gestapo — were using the French police to do their dirty work struck me as history repeating itself in the Marxian sense, which is to say, first as tragedy and then as farce. So, wine bottle in hand, I kept walking vaguely north hoping that I might pick up my pace as soon as I was out of town. In front of the police station I pretended to stand there indecisively, as if I had no particular place to go and even toasted two of the gendarmes with cigarettes in their faces and who were keeping a keen eye out for nothing much except their own tobacco smoke and the odd pretty girl.

“What’s all the fuss about?” I asked. In the dying light I hoped they couldn’t see my red eyes.

“We’re looking for an escaped murderer,” said one.

“There’s a lot of them about,” I said. “After the war we had you’d think there would be less murder, but it doesn’t seem that way. Human life is cheap after what the Germans did.”

“It’s a German we’re looking for.”

I spat and then took a swig from my bottle. “It figures. Most of the Nazis got away with it, you know.”

I walked on until I reached the corner of the next road where a young policeman wearing a rather strong cologne I recognized as Pino Silvestre was twirling a baton. He eyed me with complete indifference as I proceeded slowly up the road toward what looked like a public park, but at the last minute he let out a shout and I turned on my heel and faced him insolently before putting the bottle to my lips.

“You going to the park?” he asked.

“I was thinking about it.”

“Not with the bottle, you’re not. There’s no drinking allowed in the park.”

I nodded dully and walked back down toward the main road, as if I’d changed my mind about the park. As I passed the cop again, he said, “You should know that if you live around here.”

I toasted him with the bottle as if being sarcastic but of course a real drunk would have argued with the cop and told him where to shove his baton; instead I said nothing and, much too meekly perhaps, carried on my meandering way.

“Where are you from anyway?” he asked. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before.”

“Bérig-Vintrange,” I said, and carried on walking. It wasn’t a good place to have picked and if I could have remembered one I’d certainly have mentioned another of the other, closer villages I had cycled through on the way to Puttelange-aux-Lacs.

“You’ve missed the last bus,” he said.

“Story of my life.” I hiccupped without turning round.

“If I catch you sleeping on the street I’ll arrest you,” he said.

“You won’t,” I said. “I shall walk home.”

“But it’s twenty kilometers. Take you at least four hours.”

“Then I’ll be home before midnight.”

Several seconds passed and just as I thought I might have got away with it, the young cop shouted again. I assumed he was going to ask for my identity card and I took off running. I was fitter than I’d been for a long time; the bicycling and the fresh air had been good for me and I was pleasantly surprised that I could run as fast as I did. Of course, that might have been the effect of the wine, which I now tossed over a fence into someone’s garden as I sprinted down a narrow path, vaulted a wooden gate into a yard, and pounded along a cinder track like an escaped horse, before deviating sharply right and into the small cemetery at the back of the local church. I heard the cop shout again and I crouched down behind one of the larger headstones for a moment to get my bearings and catch my breath. I could hear more shouting in the distance and a whistle and the sound of engines starting and I knew I was just minutes away from being caught. I ran up to Rue Mozart and then right onto the road to Sarreguemines, which suited me very well. In the distance I could see a large copse of trees and I thought that if only I could reach it in time, I might lie still in the shrubbery, like a smart fox, and let the hunt pass me by. After a minute’s hard running I reached the trees and not a moment too soon since I could now hear the sound of approaching police sirens. To protect my face I backed quickly into a thick hedge and then dropped flat on my front to find cover, narrowly missing impaling myself on an old rusting draw harrow. Fortunately the ground was bone dry and, crawling through the undergrowth, I found an excellent place in which to conceal myself — an empty drainpipe behind a thick laurel bush. I might never have found it at all but for a rabbit that ran into the pipe when it saw me. I quickly lit a match to inspect my new hiding place. The pipe was about a meter high and half a meter wide and evidently someone had been in there before because lying on the ground were several old copies of Clins d’Oeil de Paris, a pornographic magazine that wasn’t one with which I was familiar. I threw the match away and waited. A few minutes later I heard the sound of a man crashing through the undergrowth and caught the smell of Pino Silvestre. It was the same cop who had challenged me, of course. I heard the whine of brakes urgently applied and running footsteps on the road. Meanwhile the cop nearest to me yelled out that I might as well give myself up, as it was only a matter of time before I was caught and that things would go better for me if I handed myself in. But when he blundered straight past my hiding place I knew this wasn’t true. I even saw his polished black boots as he walked by, cursing the bushes as he pushed his way through them. My hand tightened on the gun; I wasn’t quite convinced I would use it in order to avoid arrest. It was one thing killing an East German policeman who had tried to hang me; it was something else to kill a young French cop wearing too much aftershave. He stood there for a while, less than half a meter from my hiding place, swore again, and lit a cigarette. The cigarette smelled good after the aftershave and you know things are getting desperate when you silently take a deep breath of air in the hope that some of the nicotine’s calming effect will drift your way. I thought I could probably wait things out in my drainpipe for a while as long as the French police didn’t bring dogs. I hoped they would not have dogs. If they had dogs with noses, I was finished. After a while the cop shouted to his colleagues who shouted something back and he walked off, but not before dropping the cigarette on the ground. I waited for several seconds before reaching for the butt and then smoking it myself. As perfect pleasures go, it’s hard to beat smoking the cigarette of a very determined policeman you’ve just managed to elude.