Some Day I'll Find You (27 page)

Two bricks of high-denomination banknotes, still in their unbroken seals. A green silk drawstring purse, which when opened and upended, yielded a cascade of gold necklaces, bracelets, two
strings of pearls and several jewelled rings. But, best of all, a teak box, about the size of a large bar of chocolate. It was extremely heavy and he could guess what was inside.

He opened the lid. Sure enough, he was looking at a little tray of gold coins, nestling in their individual beds of pressed felt. There were a dozen of them. There must be at least three more
such trays underneath. Nearly fifty coins in all. He whistled to himself.

The old lady started coughing again. James looked at his watch. Almost twenty-five past now. He was running late.

He moved quickly back to the bed, going to the head this time and pulling back the curtains there. The old lady’s eyes were open now and she looked at him in confusion.
‘Hubert?’

‘No. I’m sorry.’ He reached under her head and eased one of her pillows away. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again as he went back to the safe, pulling off the
pillow’s silk case.

Faint mewing noises came from behind him.

He stuffed the cash, the jewellery and the box of coins into the pillowcase and was about to leave when he thought of something else. He went to the armoires and opened them. Arranged on hangers
were Hubert’s clothes. They smelled of damp and mothballs. James guessed the doctor had moved his newer, better stuff to another room when the patient took residency in here. These would have
to do. He grabbed a suit and a couple of shirts and ties and threw them over his arm.

He moved swiftly to the door and looked back at the bed. The old woman was now clearly agitated, and making feeble attempts to sit up. James hesitated, but he’d run out of time.

‘Someone will be here soon.’

He went back down the stairs as fast as he could manage, crossed the hall and went out through the front entrance. He turned left along the front of the house and found the lean-to where he
remembered it. It was a shabby affair, with sagging doors and a corrugated iron roof. There was no padlock on the doors and he dragged them open.

Inside was a shiny black car. It was a medium-sized Citroën, and it looked pretty new to James. He took out the keys he had found in the doctor’s jacket and opened the passenger
door.

He cursed. Of course. Left-hand drive in France.

He crossed to the other side of the car, tossed the clothes and the pillowcase into the boot as he went, and slid behind the steering wheel. He switched on the ignition and pressed the starter
button.

The engine caught on the second turn. He watched the fuel gauge slowly creep up from empty.
Come on, come on
. It passed the halfway mark and finally stopped just below the yellow line
that told him he had three-quarters of a tank, or very nearly.

This was excellent. Enough petrol to get him over 200 miles away, by midnight if he was lucky.

He let out the clutch and drove back along the drive, pulling up when he got to the entrance to the village street. He looked carefully to left and right. No sign of life, not even a dog. The
little girl had disappeared.

He turned left, away from the village. He checked his rearview mirror. Nothing. No car, no bicycle. No one had seen him leave.

The setting sun was on his right. Good – that meant he was driving south, the direction he wanted. James had an increasingly clear idea of his ultimate destination.

The road stretched Roman-straight before him. Trees had been planted on both sides every few yards, and as he stared at a point far ahead, they seemed to merge into infinity.

Infinity. For now, that was as good a direction to head for as any he could think of.

‘How much longer before you have to go?’

Diana looked abstractedly at her watch. ‘About half an hour.’

He nodded. ‘OK, I’ll skip the boring details then – the bits about bribing farmers and sleeping in barns. I’ll just supply you with the headlines.’

He clicked his fingers and a waiter was with them immediately. ‘
Deux limocelles, s’il vous plaît
.’ He grinned at Diana. ‘You have to try one of these,
Diana. They’re a sort of cognac made from lemons. They taste unbelievable.’

‘
You’re
pretty unbelievable.’

‘What? What do you mean?’

She stared coolly at him. ‘James. You’re in the middle of telling me how you murdered someone – no, don’t speak, it was murder and you know it – and then how you
stole from a helpless old woman . . . and you break off
to order cocktails
.’

‘
Digestifs
, actually.’

‘Don’t be stupid, you know what I mean. You don’t seem to feel at all guilty about any of it. How much more killing and stealing did you get up to on your way down here to
Nice? I assume that’s where you were headed.’

James smiled faintly at her. ‘How judgemental you’ve become, Diana. Are you sure you don’t want to call the police and tell them you’ve solved a ten-year-old
murder?’

She flushed angrily. ‘That’s ridiculous, and you know it.’

‘Do I? You were very quick to call me a murderer just then. But yes, you’re quite right about one thing; I decided almost as soon as I left the villa to head for the Côte
d’Azur. I reckoned that the flesh-pots of Nice would keep themselves semi-detached from the war and the Occupation, and I was bang right about that. Once the Nazis had divided France in half
and left the South pretty much to get on with it, life went on down here more or less as before. The only Germans you saw were on holiday, though they pretended they had special business in Nice or
Cannes. No one wanted to rock the boat, least of all the Jerries.

‘As to whether I continued in my new life of crime, Diana, I didn’t need to. I had more than enough cash and valuables to keep me going for a good while. Incidentally, quite how a
country doctor could amass such a stash is an interesting question. I sometimes wonder if he had a sideline in illegal abortions or something.’

He broke off as the waiter brought their drinks. When the man had slipped away, James appeared to hesitate, and took his time before continuing, sipping his drink and watching the people passing
up and down the Promenade. Diana began to feel uncomfortable.

‘Aren’t you going to go on?’ she asked at length.

He turned back to her, drumming the table lightly with his fingertips for a few moments. ‘I’m not sure, actually,’ he said in a voice colder than before. ‘I’m just
reflecting on your remark about guilt. It’s rather annoyed me.’

‘I can’t help that,’ she replied evenly. ‘You seem remarkably free from it, considering.’

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘You think so? I’m sorry, Diana, but do you have any idea how holier-than-thou you sound? Have you the slightest understanding of what it was like
to be in France in the summer of 1940? After France threw in the towel, it was every man for himself. I saw things that would turn your hair white if I told you about them.’

‘I don’t doubt it, James, but that doctor, the old lady . . . something like that would be on my conscience forever. I just can’t understand how you can be so matter-of-fact
about it.’

She looked at him unhappily. Diana did not think of herself as judgemental but she was repelled by James’s description of shooting the doctor and the way he had cold-bloodedly gone through
the dead man’s pockets. And what of the sick old lady? James had taken advantage of her without any compunction at all.

He seemed to read her thoughts.

‘Look,’ he began, ‘I realise how it all must appear to you. But try to put yourself in my shoes that day. I’d been in battle only a few hours earlier. I’d killed
three men in the air; I’d seen them die right in front of me. Then I’d been shot down – and truly, Diana, I believed I was going to die too. When I jumped from my plane I thought
it was the last thing I’d ever do. When I eventually got to the village I was in a very . . . well, I was in a very
extreme
state of mind. Anyone would have been.’

Diana nodded, almost to herself. ‘Yes. I suppose I can see that.’ But her tone was grudging.

‘
Damn it
, Diana!’ She jumped as James brought the flat of his hand down hard on the table. Nearby diners turned and stared at them.

‘I
couldn’t
be taken prisoner. I’ve explained all that to you. For me it was literally a matter of life and death.’

‘Don’t raise your voice to me. And the old lady? What does your conscience tell you about her, James?’

He grimaced. ‘Yes. That was awful, I admit it. But I didn’t hurt her; I did my best not to even wake her up.’

Diana gave a short laugh. ‘If she hadn’t, you’d never have got the safe open.’

‘Obviously. But she was dying, Diana, that was perfectly clear. The stuff in the safe was no use to her any more. My need was greater than hers and I bet a lot of men in my position would
have done the same.’

‘My father wouldn’t have.’

He clicked his tongue in frustration and annoyance. ‘All right, but your father wasn’t a deserter, was he? Look, Diana, let’s not be under any illusions. I’ve tried to
make it as clear as daylight: I’ve been totally honest.
I’d had enough
. I couldn’t take any more.’

‘My father took four years of it.’

‘His was a
totally
different war! Totally! I was in a
completely
different position to him. I wasn’t in a trench with a bunch of mates to help keep my spirits up. I
was utterly alone, surrounded by the enemy and a terrified civilian population who knew they’d be shot out of hand if they were caught helping or harbouring a British officer. I only had
myself to rely on. I’d just been blasted out of the sky and I was probably still in shock. I acted on pure instinct.’

He stared angrily at her before fumbling for his cigarettes. The carton was empty. ‘Damn. I’m all out.’

‘Here.’ She pushed her own packet towards him, and he lit cigarettes for both of them.

When he spoke again, it was in a softer tone.

‘Of course you’re shocked by what I’ve just told you. I was pretty traumatised myself that day, believe me. But we’re talking about something that happened in 1940.
It’s more than ten years ago. I’ve had a decade to come to terms with it, and even now I truly don’t think I had a choice in killing that man, or stealing from him, actually. You
must believe that.’

‘Why?’ she asked, raising her eyebrows in surprise. ‘Why must I, James? Why would you care what I think about you after all this time?’

He blinked at her. ‘I’m not quite sure . . . but I do. I’ve never told a living soul what happened that day in Licques. You’re the first person I’ve ever spoken to
about it. I wanted to, somehow. It never occurred to me not to tell you what I did there.’

They fell into a long silence.

Diana tried to gather her thoughts. Old feelings and memories were stirring in her. Seeing James had brought back a sense of who she used to be; the argumentative Girton girl with the quick
mind. Now, she did her best to analyse his confession.

Was
she being too harsh on him? He wouldn’t be the first brave man to desert, overwhelmed by what was being demanded of him. And if she removed that part of it from the equation,
she could begin to see things from James’s point of view. The doctor had been about to betray him. And France, she reminded herself, was supposed to be an ally. Britain had gone on fighting
alone partly in order to deliver the French from Nazi occupation.

She looked at the man opposite her. He appeared lost in his own thoughts, staring blankly out to sea and smoking his cigarette. He genuinely seemed to care what she thought of him. Why? Had she
begun to rekindle old emotions in him, too?

She tried to imagine what her life would have been like if James hadn’t been shot down; hadn’t run away to Nice. Supposing he’d survived the war? Pilots did. Would the two of
them still be together, have had more children? She recalled how happy she’d been on the day of her wedding, the day she lost him, seemingly forever.

The memory flickered and grew stronger. Suddenly it was almost a physical sensation. Diana caught her breath.

This had to stop. Now.

‘I’m going to go soon,’ she said in as normal a voice as she could manage. ‘But you’re right, James, I’m being too hard on you. Anyway, it isn’t for me
to judge. As you say, the circumstances were exceptional and I can hardly begin to imagine them. I apologise.’

He looked surprised and relieved. ‘Thank you, Diana. That means a lot to me. But don’t go just yet . . . I haven’t even told you how I got to Nice.’

She needed to get away from him, she knew that, but her curiosity was stronger. She pushed her rising emotions firmly back down again.

‘All right, but I really can only spare another few minutes. And I don’t want to argue with you any more, James. I’m exhausted. Just tell me the rest of it as quickly as you
can. I want to go home.’

He drove for fifty miles before stopping. It was getting dark and he pulled over at a village which boasted a communal fountain for drinking and washing. He cleaned himself up
as best he could, sluicing the dried blood and blackened hair from his face and head, and with no one in sight, peeled off his filthy flying gear. The doctor’s clothes weren’t a bad
fit, if a bit baggy, and the trousers covered his tell-tale flying boots.

He chucked his uniform in a ditch, careful to keep his RAF identification tag. He had no intention of being shot as a spy.

He slept in the car that first night, parked up an isolated lane, and worked out his cover story. To anyone who asked, he’d say he had been attempting to salvage his British
company’s interests in Northern France and had been overtaken by the speed of the German advance, and was now trying to get back to England via Spain.

It was a thin tale, he knew, but he was never asked to offer it. As he forged south-east he drove past the occasional cluster of parked German tanks or armoured cars, but after the French
surrender their exhausted crews lay almost motionless in the shade of their vehicles. Many were asleep, even under the staring day. Continuous campaigning had left them utterly spent.