Dark Summer in Bordeaux

DARK SUMMER IN BORDEAUX

Also by Allan Massie

Death in Bordeaux

Klaus and Other Stories

Surviving

Shadows of Empire

The Sins of the Fathers

A Question of Loyalties

The Death of Men

Dark Summer
in Bordeaux

ALLAN MASSIE

First published in 2012 by
Quartet Books Limited
A member of the Namara Group
27 Goodge Street, London
W1T
2
LD

Copyright © Allan Massie 2012

The right of Allan Massie to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the publisher

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN
978 0 7043 7300 6

Typeset by Antony Gray
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
T J International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

for Louis and Géraldine
with love

Contents

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

XXIV

XXV

XXVI

XXVII

XXVIII

XXIX

XXX

XXXI

XXXII

XXXIII

XXXIV

XXXV

XXXVI

XXXVII

XXXVIII

XXXIX

XL

XLI

XLII

XLIII

XLIV

XLV

XLVI

XLVII

XLVIII

XLIX

L

I

There are days, even in the bad times, even the worst of them, when you can still believe in the future, like that six o’clock in the morning three weeks ago when the bell rang and Dominique was there. Dominique, pale, wretchedly thin, exhausted, his hair cropped, but nevertheless Dominique. Lannes held him in his arms, neither able for a moment to speak. Then,

‘Go to your mother, wake her gently. I’ll make coffee.’

His hands trembled as he filled the pot. He lit a cigarette to calm himself. It was right to leave them alone together for a few minutes. He hadn’t dared to pass on to Marguerite Edmond de Grimaud’s promise to arrange for Dominique’s return from the prisoner-of-war camp. ‘I’m in his debt now, deep in his debt,’ he thought and felt doubly guilty, utterly compromised. ‘No matter,’ he spoke aloud. ‘The boy’s home.’

Marguerite was in tears, but they were tears of joy and relief as she stroked Dominique’s cheek.

‘It’s all right, Maman, it really is me, not a dream . . . ’ ‘I can’t believe it. It’s so wonderful.’

Lannes put the cups on the little table beside the bed. They didn’t notice him. They were like lovers. No, not that. Madonna and Child, sufficient for the moment to each other.

A morning like none since before the war, Marguerite singing and Dominique saying time and again, ‘I can’t believe it either, but I never gave up hope . . . ’ Later Marguerite would want to know everything that had happened to him, everything he had endured. For the moment it was enough to see him there, to be able to touch him, stroke that cropped head. As for Alain and Clothilde, once the first expressions of delight were over, they didn’t know how to speak to this brother who had been returned to them almost like Lazarus.

For Lannes himself the idyllic hour had been cut short, interrupted by a telephone call. Murder, but a banal one, calling on no investigative skills. A husband whose tether had broken after years of disharmony – the word he unexpectedly used as he sat, hands clenched between his legs, in Lannes’ office.

‘She’s been asking for it for ages,’ he said, ‘and at last I’ve given it to her, though I never intended to do more than shut her up, stop her nagging for once.’

A poor thing, a clerk whose life had become impossible when he was compelled to retire from his office and spend days at home with his wife. Lannes had known other such cases, too many, revelations of the bleakness of life. It was a relief to hand the man over to the examining magistrate and to deal briskly with the paperwork. A miserable case, certainly, but there was a sort of normality to it; nothing to do with the war, the Occupation, the German presence, nothing therefore to present him with a test of conscience.

This was rare enough. His conscience had been oppressed since that day in Vichy when Edmond had offered him the bargain which he accepted: Dominique’s extrication from the PoW camp and information which would allow him to checkmate the lawyer Labiche who was threatening his career, in exchange for his final abandonment of the investigation into poor Gaston’s murder and the promise that he would hand over the compromising document that somehow linked Edmond to that case, should he ever happen to find it. He had been bullied, bribed and blackmailed: a humiliation and in his eyes a disgrace. He had other worries too: anxiety for Alain, the fear that his younger son’s resentment of the Occupation would lead him to some rash act; apprehension for Miriam as a Jew and for her nephew Léon too. Yet these were as nothing to the shame which ate into him like a malignant growth. I’m not fit to be a policeman, he often thought, not worthy. When, over the days that followed, he heard Marguerite singing as she went about her housework, or saw her lean over Dominique and stroke his cheek, as if to reassure herself that he had really returned and that all was well, he couldn’t experience to the full the happiness he should feel to see her restored to spirits.

There was a knock on the door and old Joseph the office messenger came in with a letter.

‘This arrived by hand,’ he said. ‘It’s marked urgent, you see, which I daresay it isn’t.’

‘Who brought it?’

‘Some street-boy. For a few francs or a couple of cigarettes I would guess.’

‘All right, Joseph. I expect you’re right and it’s urgent only to whoever wrote it.’

All the same he waited till Joseph had gone before slitting open the envelope which was the cheap sort that a café will provide for its clients. The message was brief.

‘Superintendent: it’s important that we meet. Please be at the Bar Metéo, rue Fénélon, at 4 o’clock this afternoon. I shall present my credentials to you there. The matter is urgent. Destroy this letter.’

There followed an illegible signature.

Lannes lit a cigarette and applied the match to the corner of the paper, held it a moment burning and then let it fall into the ashtray when he watched it crumble.

Was it simply because he was bored that he resolved to accept the invitation?

The bar was quiet at that hour, only a couple of workmen in blue overalls drinking pastis and playing belotte. Lannes ordered a coffee and took a seat in the far corner where he could watch the door. The coffee was vile, the worst ersatz. He called for an Armagnac and lit a cigarette. A bluebottle settled on the rim of the coffee cup. A man emerged from the toilet, had a word with the barman, stood watching the card-players, sniffed the air, held himself just short of the door a moment, surveying the street, then turned and disappeared through a bead curtain to the left of the bar. A minute later the barman approached Lannes and said, ‘Will you come this way, please, sir?’ He led him through the curtain to a little room where the man was sitting at a table. He gestured to Lannes to take the other chair.

‘I think we’re all right,’ he said.

Lannes said nothing. He sat down. The man had dark hair, shiny with some dressing, dark eyes, a thin mouth. He fitted a Celtique cigarette into a holder and lit it.

‘You can call me Félix.’

‘Latin for fortunate,’ Lannes said.

‘We must hope so . . . ’ He drew on his cigarette, expelled smoke through his nostrils ‘A misnomer,’ he said, ‘perhaps, these days. Which of us is fortunate?’

‘Call no man fortunate till he is dead.’

‘That’s a quotation, isn’t it?’

‘Some ancient philosopher, Greek or Roman, I don’t remember which.’

‘So you’re here,’ Félix said. ‘I think you are a patriot, superintendent.’ ‘A patriot? Aren’t we all? – whatever being a patriot means, in our circumstances.’

‘Oh quite. We all mean different things by the word. You’ve had dealings with Lieutenant Schussman, I think.’

‘He’s a patriot too,’ Lannes said. ‘A German one. Aren’t you going to tell me who you are?’

‘I don’t think so. Félix is enough.’

‘Not for me,’ Lannes said. ‘You mentioned credentials in your note. So I need a bit more than the assurance of a name that certainly isn’t yours before I carry on this conversation.’

‘Superintendent, you don’t really want more than that name which is, as you surmise, a nom de guerre. Not at this stage anyway.

Let’s stop sparring and get down to business. Lieutenant Schussman is a queer.’

‘If you say so. He’s a decent enough chap actually.’

‘All the better. A literary type too, isn’t he? A regular customer of a bookshop in the rue des Remparts. Kept by your friend Henri Chambolley. But books aren’t the only attraction, are they? Or so we believe.’

‘We?’ Lannes said, ‘I don’t know who you mean by your “we”.’

‘We? Oh, we’re patriots, just like you, superintendent. I shouldn’t be in Bordeaux, you know. I’ve taken a risk coming here. We’re not really supposed or permitted to operate out of the so-called

Free Zone, not at present anyway. There: I’ve placed one of my cards on the table. Here’s another. It’s in our interest to have friends among the Occupying army, not friends, precisely, we can’t have that, but men, a few anyway, who are bound to us. You understand?’

‘Yes,’ Lannes said. ‘I understand now. I understand perfectly. But I’m a policeman. I don’t like spooks.’

He had left it there, been, surprisingly, permitted to do so, the man Félix making no demur, as if, Lannes thought, he was content to have made only this brief preliminary contact, in the course of which he had, nevertheless, sown his seed. Walking away, leaning on his blackthorn stick, he was tempted to go straight to the rue des Remparts and warn Léon. Warn him off? Off what? The danger of being used as bait? Certainly, but . . . He couldn’t be sure he wasn’t being watched, spied on. He turned into a bar and ordered a demi, beer to wash the taste of the spook away. A word with Schnyder? Cover his back? Perhaps. But that would mean telling him more than he would care to divulge.