Reginald Hill - The Collaborators

‘But you he seemed to remember all the time, sir. You and his old mother. He said to contact you first so you could break it to the old lady. Good news can sometimes shock even more than bad, can’t it?’

Good news so mixed with cause for unease certainly could, decided Valois. And he had taken it upon himself to convey only the joyous essentials of the tale to Janine and his reward was to see her face light up like a spring dawn.

When Sophie returned from shopping, complaining bitterly about the lack of most things and the price of the rest, Valois diplomatically withdrew. They needn’t have worried, however. She short-circuited Janine’s tentative approach to the subject with a crisp, ‘What’s this? You’ve got news of Jean-Paul, haven’t you? Well, praise be to God, he’s alive!’

‘Bubbah! How did you know?’ demanded Janine amazed.

‘Know? I’ve always known! And how did I know you were going to tell me? Well, I’ve not seen your eyes sparkle like that for over a year, so I didn’t think you were going to tell me he was dead! Come here, child!’

Laughing and crying together, Janine fell into the old woman’s arms.

After joy came decision. Day to day existence had gone out of the window. There was now a future to be planned.

Janine wanted to sit down and write a long loving letter to Jean-Paul straightaway and once more found herself at odds with Christian.

‘You can’t just write,’ he said. ‘Letters are censored. I don’t know how much danger Jean-Paul would be in if they discovered his background, but they’d certainly sit up and take notice if they did find out he’d been misleading them about his name. So it can’t help him if suddenly out of the blue he starts getting letters from his family, can it?’

To Janine’s surprise and disappointment, Sophie supported Valois. ‘There are stories told in the schul of what these Nazis have done in Germany. If my son is soon to go into one of these prisoner camps, better he go as Jean-Paul Simon, Catholic, I think.’

‘But we have to let him know that we’re all well, Bubbah, you, me and the children!’ cried Janine. ‘And if we don’t contact him straightaway, how will we ever know where they send him? Oh, don’t let’s lose him again so soon after finding him! Couldn’t I travel to Nancy to see him? Christian, couldn’t your father help me to get an Ausweis?’

Valois shook his head in exasperation.

‘Please, I beg of you, Janine. Do nothing without consulting me first, eh? Look at it this way. The Germans have got themselves a prisoner, an ordinary soldier of no particular importance, called Jean-Paul Simon. The only danger is from us, his friends, if we draw the Germans’ attention to him in any way.’

Suddenly all Janine’s other emotions were blanked out by a single memory. Up to now she’d completely forgotten her interview with the Abwehr lieutenant. Now Valois’s warning brought it all back. Just how much had her mother told Mai about Jean-Paul?

She shook her head. What did it matter? The Abwehr were hardly going to concern themselves with one French soldier who, as Mai had pointed out, was probably dead.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Valois.

‘Fine. It’s just the excitement. So tell me, what do we do?’

‘Here’s my idea. The only person who can contact Jean-Paul without drawing undue attention is Pivert. So let’s send a parcel through the Red Cross with a note allegedly from Pivert saying he’s not forgotten his old fellow-patient. In the note, Pivert can say that he’s safely back in Paris, and has found his own family, Sophie, Janine, Pauli and Céci, safe and well. And he can tell Jean-Paul to write to him, care of my address. It’s a risk, but not much of one and we’ve got to give him an excuse to write back. How does that sound to you?’

Janine considered. It sounded cautious, reasonable, well-planned. It sounded so many things she found it hard to be but which she knew she was going to have to learn.

‘It sounds all right,’ she said.

When Christian left she accompanied him to the street door. He was in a quiet mood which contrasted with his excitement as the bearer of good news earlier. She guessed he was still worried that by some impulsive act she might endanger Jean-Paul. The thought annoyed her. Didn’t he know that while there was an ounce of strength in her body she would fight for Jean-Paul? Then she thought, of course he knows it, just as I know that while there’s any strength left in his mind, he will be fighting alongside me.

‘I’ll be in touch then,’ he said.

Awkwardly he leaned forward and kissed her cheek. She jerked her head back and for a second he thought she was going to thrust him away. Then her arms went round his shoulders and she pulled him close.

‘Thank you, Christian,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you for being such a good friend.’

Before he could think of what to reply, she released him and slipped back into the house.

He stood in the doorway for a while after she’d gone, not thinking anything in particular but savouring the memory of her slim, strong body pressed against his like the reverberation of music after the players have laid their instruments down.

Then he smiled as if at some recognition of his own foolishness and set off walking towards the centre of town.

Maurice Melchior was bored with his job.

He was bored with the countryside. He was bored with bumping around in a smelly army truck. And he was bored with his companion, SS Sergeant Hans Hemmen, who had no conversation whatsoever. What he did have was a certain Nordic beauty but when Maurice had let his hand brush those firm swelling buttocks on an early excursion, Hemmen had bent his fingers back till they almost broke.

Also, though this he kept very well hidden, he was beginning to get a little bored with his patron, Colonel Walter Fiebelkorn. The man had a certain hard wit, but little refinement. His sexual demands were sadly unimaginative and always contained a strong element of humiliation. And if only he looked like Hemmen!

It was of course Walter who’d got him attached to the SS’s Art Preservation Section. Everyone was at it, the SS, the Abwehr, the Embassy, not forgetting visiting notables like Goering. Melchior had eased his early pangs of conscience by assuring himself there was real preservation work to be done in places where the owners had been too concerned with packing everything portable to worry about protecting what wasn’t. Winter was the worst enemy. Delicate inlays developed a bloom, the frames of fine old pianos warped into discord, the pigment of paintings cracked and flaked. Yes, there was work to be done here.

But in the end it came down to looting.

This was brought home to him beyond all doubt one glorious June day in a villa on the Heights of the Seine. The usual anonymous delation had told them that the owner had gone for a long ‘holiday’ in Spain. The tipster must have been very keen for the house to be ‘preserved’ as he had evidently informed the Abwehr preservation group too. Melchior recognized one of them, a big piratical red-head who occasionally visited old Madame - or perhaps young Madame - Simonian in the flat below. He seemed an amiable fellow, which was more than could be said for his mate, a nauseating little man called Pajou whose bloodshot eyes behind their thick frames never stopped moving.

It was Pajou who said, as the argument reached its height, ‘Look, let’s not be silly about this. We’re all in the same game, aren’t we? Spin of a coin, winner takes the lot.’

Hemmen rejected the offer angrily, but it turned out to be merely a time-wasting tactic anyway, to give an Abwehr captain time to turn up and throw his rank about. Hemmen, with the weight of the SS behind him, refused to be intimidated, while Melchior retired in disgust.