Citadel (24 page)
‘Let us in, Jew. You know you want to.’
Raucous laughter. Liesl tried to stop her ears, tried to concentrate on what she was doing. They’d get bored. They usually did. What had changed? It was a normal day, why was nobody doing anything to stop them? Then another stone and the sound of the window shattering. Liesl leapt up as a shard of glass struck her on the cheek. Felt the trickle of first blood.
She ran to the door to the apartment to check it was locked and bolted. As she did so, she heard the street door downstairs bang back against the wall, and a cheer. For a moment she froze. How had they got in? Had someone let them in?
The sound of boots on the stairs propelled her into action. Liesl rushed to the table, her terrified hands trying to clear away her precious scrapbook. The smash of a fist on the inner door to the apartment made her jump, the papers slipping through her fingers. She realised she was holding her breath, as if that would keep her presence a secret.
‘We know you’re in there,
garce
.’ The same vile voice, now just the other side of the front door.
Another thud, a fist against wood. Then a boot. The entire door shook, the reverberations skimming along the wall.
Liesl swallowed a cry. She couldn’t believe they would break in, attack her in broad daylight. She didn’t see how such a thing could be happening. Then, the crack of wood as one of the panels in the door split. A roar of triumph went up from the boys outside. How many were there? Three? Four? More? Hateful voices getting louder, more frenzied.
‘We’re going to teach you a lesson, Jew girl.’
The boots harder against the door, the lock wouldn’t hold. They were almost inside.
Un, deux, trois, loup
, the words of the children’s playground rhyme went round and round in Liesl’s head. ‘Coming to get you, ready or not.’
The sound of the front door splintering, the sound of blind hands reaching into the apartment, turning the lock. The rasp of the bolt, then a cheer as the door was flung open and the mob of boys stormed into the flat.
‘
W
ake up, darling.’
Sandrine heard Marianne’s voice, then felt the weight of her sister’s hand on her shoulder, shaking her awake.
‘What time is it?’ she said, sitting up. Her neck was stiff and the bruise from Monday was throbbing where she’d leant against it.
‘Half past ten.’
For a moment, Sandrine felt all right. Normal. Then she remembered, and misery pressed down on her shoulders.
‘He’s gone,’ she said.
‘I know, Marieta told me.’
‘I didn’t want him to go.’
Marianne nodded. ‘I know, but it’s for the best. Come inside, have something to eat.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘There’s a little bread left, and some butter.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ she repeated.
Marianne held out her hand to pull her up. ‘Don’t be silly.’
Sandrine followed her back into the kitchen. She felt cold and woolly from lack of sleep. She sat down heavily on a chair, watching as her sister poured them both a cup of ersatz coffee from the pot Marieta had left on the stove, then got out a plate and knife.
Marianne sat down on the opposite side of the table. Sandrine sipped at the coffee and started to wake up. She took a piece of bread, dipping it in her cup to soften the crust, surprised to find that she had an appetite after all.
‘Have Lucie and Suzanne gone?’ she asked.
‘Suzanne, yes, about half an hour ago. Lucie felt rather unwell, so I’ve put her in Papa’s room to sleep it off.’ She paused. ‘Since the bed hadn’t been slept in . . .’
Sandrine flushed. ‘We stayed up talking all night. In the garden. That’s all.’
Marianne stared at her. ‘Glad to hear it.’
‘I gave him one of Papa’s jackets and a hat. I hope that was all right.’
‘Of course. No sense wasting things.’
Sandrine ate a little more. ‘Just as he was going, Raoul told me I should talk to you.’ She watched Marianne’s reaction. ‘I said we were always talking, but I think he meant something in particular.’
On the other side of the table, her sister became very still.
‘What else did he say?’ Marianne asked. Her voice was measured, but the atmosphere was suddenly taut.
‘Just that.’
Marianne still didn’t move.
‘What did he mean?’ Sandrine asked.
Marianne hesitated a moment more, then got to her feet, went to the door and closed it. She turned round with her arms crossed. Sandrine’s heart started to hammer against her ribs. Her sister looked so determined, so resolute. And the door between the kitchen and the hall was never shut.
‘What?’ she said quickly, nervous now.
‘Listen carefully. Don’t interrupt. You have to promise that you will never breathe a word of what I’m about to tell you to anyone. No one, not a soul.’
Sandrine felt her stomach lurch. ‘I promise.’
Marianne sat down again and placed both hands flat on the table, as if trying to anchor herself.
‘Raoul guessed. Almost straight away, I could see he knew.’
‘Knew what . . .?’ Sandrine began to say, then she stopped. She felt a strange calm come over her. She knew what Marianne was going to say. All those nights her sister was late back from work and with mud on her shoes, disappearing for an hour here or there without explanation. The ‘friends’ who arrived after dark and went before it was light.
‘You’ve been helping them too,’ she said.
Marianne’s eyes flicked up. ‘You knew? But you never said anything.’
Sandrine shook her head. ‘No, not until now.’ She paused. ‘Just you?’
‘Suzanne too.’
‘Not Lucie?’
A smile flickered across Marianne’s lips. ‘She only cares about Max, nothing else matters. She hopes if she closes her eyes to what’s happening, it will go away.’
‘Max doesn’t know?’
‘Nobody else knows,’ Marianne replied.
‘Not even Marieta?’
Marianne hesitated. ‘I’m sure she does, but she acts as if she doesn’t. She clears things away, things that get forgotten.’
‘I found a man’s razor in the bathroom once. It wasn’t Papa’s.’
Marianne smiled. ‘Marieta carries on in her usual way. Posts letters for me, drops things off if I ask her. I try not to call upon her too much.’ She shrugged. ‘And I go along with her pretending she doesn’t know. It’s safer that way.’
Sandrine’s head was spinning as she tried to take everything in. A snapshot of so many tiny incidents, none of them big enough to have drawn her attention at the time, but now combining to make a clearer picture.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked quietly. ‘Didn’t you trust me?’
Marianne sighed. ‘I wanted to, but I didn’t want to put you at risk, and besides . . .’
‘. . . you were worried I’d let something out.’ Sandrine finished the sentence for her.
Marianne nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, holding her gaze. ‘I’m sorry. Can you understand?’
Strangely, Sandrine realised she did. A few days ago, she would have lost her temper or sulked or argued. Not now. After a night of talking with Raoul, listening to what he had done, how he had been forced to live, she thought she did understand.
‘I feel such an idiot. Not noticing.’
‘I did my best to make sure you didn’t notice anything. That you could carry on as usual.’
Sandrine thought for a moment. ‘Why are you telling me now?’ she asked. ‘Simply because of Raoul?’
Marianne shook her head. ‘I’d decided to tell you anyway,’ she said. ‘I was just waiting for the right moment. The way you marched into the police station – although I was cross with you about that too – the way you coped with what happened at the river. Then at the cathedral yesterday . . .’ She shrugged. ‘You held your nerve, you didn’t make a fuss. You were a help and it made me realise that . . .’
‘. . . I’d grown up.’
Marianne smiled. ‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that, but I suppose so, yes.’
Despite her exhaustion and all the complicated emotions battling inside her head, Sandrine felt a shot of pride.
‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.
She sat in silence for a moment, letting her sister’s words take root in her mind. Looking back on everything that had happened, trying to make it fit. Finally putting two and two together.
‘The people you work with,’ she said after a while, ‘do you know who they are?’
‘No, we never meet. No one knows anyone except their immediate contact. It’s safest. That way, if we were caught, we couldn’t give much away.’
Sandrine felt sick as the reality of the risks Marianne and Suzanne had been taking started to sink in.
‘That’s what made Raoul suspicious,’ her sister continued. ‘He mentioned César Sanchez and Suzanne reacted. He noticed. Sanchez is a good friend of hers too – that’s where she’s gone now, to see if she can find out what’s happened to him.’
Sandrine thought for a moment. ‘How long have you been . . . helping?’
‘I can’t even remember quite how it started. Right at the beginning, the autumn of 1939 and the following spring, there were lots of German émigrés and Jewish dissidents, a few members of the Dutch Resistance, all trying to get out of France this way. We had plenty of space here.’ She shrugged. ‘Suzanne asked me if I could help from time to time, and it seemed such a small thing to do, to give someone a bed for the night. After we surrendered and the North was occupied, things changed. I volunteered for the Croix-Rouge, helped in that way instead.’ She paused. ‘But things have been getting worse. In January this year, the last few of my Jewish pupils simply disappeared from class. One day they were there, the next they’d gone and no one could – would – tell me what had happened to them. I was appalled and said as much to Suzanne, who admitted she was running a few errands for the Resistance – that’s how they put it – so I decided to do the same.’
‘When you say errands, what do you mean?’
‘Delivering papers mostly. False documents,
sauf-conduits
, identity cards, ration books, coupons. Dropping off leaflets to collection points –
boîtes aux lettres
– for someone else to pick up and distribute, all sorts.’
‘In Carcassonne?’
Marianne smiled. ‘Yes, darling. There are several places in the Bastide, in the Cité too.’
‘Why don’t people stay here any more?’
‘As I said, fewer people come through Carcassonne. But mostly since Madame Fournier moved in next door to keep house for her brother. She’s always snooping, reports everything to him.’
‘He’s a vile man,’ Sandrine said, remembering how he had spoken to her and Suzanne.
‘Worse, he’s dangerous. He’s an informer.’
‘Oh.’
Marianne let her shoulders drop, clearly relieved that the secret was out in the open. Sandrine had a hundred questions racing around her head, but her sister had stood up.
‘You have to forget I ever told you any of this. I mean it. Say nothing, don’t think about it. Don’t bring it up, even with Suzanne.’
‘I won’t.’
Marianne opened the door to the corridor. ‘I’m going to check on Lucie, she was awfully sick in the night. Then I am due to go to the station. To meet other Red Cross volunteers.’ She paused. ‘You can come with me if you want.’
Sandrine looked up. ‘You mean it?’
‘If you do precisely what I tell you, then yes. Why not? But we have to go in ten minutes. I won’t wait if you’re not ready.’
‘Marianne . . .’
Her sister turned again. ‘What is it?’
‘I just want to say . . . I’m proud of you,’ she said in a rush, feeling ridiculous to be saying such things to her older sister. ‘Proud of you for being so brave, for standing up for—’
Marianne shook her head. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m not brave. I hate it, I hate it all. But there’s no choice.’
‘
W
here the hell have you been?’ demanded Authié.
Laval stood with his hands in front of him. ‘Interviewing Blum.’
‘All night?’
‘And then Sanchez, sir, as per your orders.’
Authié raised his head, noting Laval was back in civilian clothes. He waved his hand impatiently for him to continue.
‘Well, does Blum know where Pelletier is?’
‘I believe not, sir.’
Authié drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘Did he admit he was at the river?’
‘Eventually, yes, he did. He says he doesn’t know the girl’s name, though he admits he saw her. That could be true, but I think we’ll learn more from the Ménard girl in any case. Blum was more concerned about protecting her than anything else.’
‘What have you done with him?’
‘On the list to be deported today.’
‘Le Vernet?’
‘In the first instance, yes.’
Authié nodded again. ‘What else?’
‘After the wireless bulletins, the switchboard took a dozen calls from people claiming to have seen Pelletier – in Narbonne, in Toulouse, in Perpignan – but nothing credible. We had a permanent watch at the station and patrols checking bars, restaurants, churches and the cinema, anywhere he might have been hiding. There was a lot of trouble last night – looting, broken windows – so there were plenty of police on the streets, but no one matching Pelletier’s description. However, now the posters are ready to be put up, it will be harder for him to evade notice.’
‘If he’s still in Carcassonne,’ Authié interrupted, ‘which I doubt. What about Sanchez?’
Laval flushed at Authié’s peremptory tone, but he kept his irritation hidden.
‘Sanchez was released at midnight. He went to Pelletier’s apartment on the Quai Riquet, was there for no more than a couple of minutes, then went to Déjean’s apartment, where he spent the night. At approximately five o’clock this morning, he made his way to the sidings on the far side of the railway station. I approached him. He said he didn’t know where Pelletier was and claimed to know nothing about what – if anything – he might have found at Déjean’s apartment.’
‘Nothing about the key?’
‘No, sir.’
‘So that’s it, Laval? In twelve hours you’ve learnt precisely nothing.’
Laval didn’t answer. Authié pulled out a cigarette and tapped it on the packet, then lit it. ‘Where’s Sanchez now?’
