Scorched Earth (9 page)

*

‘Where were you?’ Luc shouted aggressively.

The muscular sixteen-year-old booted a three-legged milking stool so hard that it spun out from beneath Paul’s arse. Paul went sideways, sending a miniature watercolour set and small sketchbook flying.

‘Eighteen bags of onions, forty sacks of potatoes I lugged,’ Luc said, making Paul flinch as he threw a punch, but pulled it a centimetre from Paul’s nose. ‘Dead sister’s no excuse to sit on your arse painting all day.’

Sometimes Paul started to think Luc was changing, but then something like this would happen and he’d realise that he was the same bully he’d always been.

‘Is there any more to carry?’ Paul asked. ‘I’d have given you a hand if you’d asked.’

Luc smiled nastily. ‘You’re so puny. If I hadn’t seen your dick with my own eyes, I’d swear that you were a girl.’

Paul wanted to retaliate, but he was out by the lake on Morel’s farm and if Luc went psycho there’d be no way to stop him.

‘Her majesty sent me out to find you,’ Luc said, and Paul knew that this meant Jae. ‘Lunch is ready back at the house.’

Luc loomed over Paul as he picked up his paints. When Luc snatched the pad, he saw that Paul had used the tiny brushes to paint the scene around the lake, except instead of the grave Paul had painted his sister standing amidst the reeds.

‘You might be a dick, but you’re a talented dick,’ Luc said, as he passed the pad back to Paul. ‘Looks exactly like her.’

Paul had stayed on the farm since Rosie’s death and expected lunch in the Morels’ dining room. However, Marc and PT were there and since they stank of manure and hard graft, the Morels’ cook didn’t let them beyond a staff dining area.

‘Nobody starves around here, do they?’ Luc said, as he sat at the table and started ladling out a casserole filled with big chunks of lamb.

Paul considered telling PT and Marc what had happened at the lake, but he liked to fight his own battles and tattling would make him feel like a wimp.

‘I found something out this morning,’ PT said. ‘You know Corentin? Not the tall one, the one with the big conk?’

The three other boys around the table nodded. ‘Nice guy,’ Marc said. ‘I don’t know him well but he worked hard when he was down here on the farm.’

‘Corentin’s got a cousin, Gil,’ PT said. ‘He works as a janitor in an apartment building. Apparently he was moaning about these guys giving him trouble. Turns out, the Milice have been staying on the top floor.’

Paul sounded surprised. ‘Milice are so scared of reprisals against their families, I thought they’d drive up from Paris or something.’

‘They do,’ PT said. ‘Corentin reckons they come and go. Sometimes there’s fifteen or twenty guys in the apartment, sometimes only a couple.’

‘Useful,’ Marc said. ‘Presumably the extra men come in when there’s going to be a big operation, so if we keep the place under watch we’ll know when stuff’s about to happen.’

‘What did Henderson say about this?’ Luc asked.

PT shook his head. ‘I asked Corentin not to tell Jean or Henderson for a day or two.’

Paul looked confused. ‘Why?’

‘Because Jean is so scared of reprisals he doesn’t want to take any risks,’ PT said. ‘And Henderson’s only interest right now is in sabotaging the 108th.’

‘There’s been no sign of Milice activity since their guys got killed at the orphanage,’ Marc said. ‘I wouldn’t want to do anything that provoked them.’

‘We caught a break there,’ PT said.

Marc nodded in agreement. ‘The invasion threw everyone off balance for a couple of days.’

‘I still don’t understand why you’re waiting to tell Henderson,’ Paul said. ‘I know he’s mainly interested in the 108th, but there’s two hundred Maquis twiddling their thumbs in the woods. Setting up a rota to spy on the Milice’s apartment building won’t be a problem.’

‘I thought it might be better for us to take a look around in there first,’ PT explained. ‘Corentin’s cousin has keys to all the apartments and I’d like to know who Commander Robert is.’

Paul baulked when he heard the name of the man who’d killed Rosie. ‘I’d like to see the bastard dead,’ he said. ‘But the Germans have been wound tight since the invasion. If a Milice commander turns up dead now, they’re likely to hang a bunch of people, or set the building on fire.’

‘I know,’ PT said. ‘I’m not saying we kill the commander now, but we know that the Milice don’t work close to home; they usually use false identities to stop us locating their families.’

Paul had started to understand. ‘So you’re saying we go into the apartment, have a rummage and try to find out who Robert is and where he comes from?’

PT nodded. ‘He’s the commanding officer, so he must have a desk or some papers at the apartment. It might be that I put a bullet through his head next week, or that he faces a tribunal after the war. I couldn’t live with myself knowing that the bastard who killed Rosie goes on the run and lives happily ever after.’

Paul nodded solemnly. ‘I’d like to come to the apartment with you.’

‘You’re entitled,’ PT said. ‘What about you two?’

‘Four lads walking around Beauvais will attract attention and I’ve got a lot to do on the farm,’ Marc said.

‘I’m with you two,’ Luc said.

‘Lookout on the ground,’ Paul said. ‘Lookout upstairs, and one to actually search the apartment.’

‘A trio sounds good to me,’ PT said. ‘We’ll go take a look as soon as we’ve finished eating.’

Henderson knew most of the Maquis lads in the woods north-east of Beauvais. But they were a trigger-happy bunch, so he entered a barn and switched OT uniform for peasant garb before delving into the countryside.

The Maquis’ forest headquarters had moved that morning and Henderson wasted fifteen minutes going down the wrong path. A Maquis with a better sense of direction had made it back from town faster and Jean hurried out of his tent when Henderson finally arrived.

‘Have you heard what’s happened in Beauvais?’ Jean asked.

‘I was in the bar where it started,’ Henderson said, nodding as he caught his breath. ‘Some maniac shot a waiter in the foot. Then they all started wrecking the joint. Set the place on fire and beat the hell out of the staff.’

‘I heard it was all along the main drag,’ Jean said.

Henderson nodded. ‘I cleared out as fast as I could, but once they’d kicked off in one bar the whole street went off. Fights, fires, anyone local was for it. Men beaten up, women mauled.’

‘Animals,’ Jean hissed, shaking his head. ‘I’ve heard they’re leaving soon, at least.’

‘Where’d you hear that?’ Henderson asked.

‘Prostitutes in town,’ Jean said.

This news, combined with the riotous mood of the tank crews and the information Scholl had given about the fuel tankers made Henderson certain that the 108th was making final preparations to leave. The only problem was, while Jean and pretty much everyone else in the Beauvais area wanted to see the back of the 108th, Henderson’s job was to keep them here.

‘Are any of my team around?’ Henderson asked.

‘Joel and Edith were here a while back,’ Jean said. ‘They can’t have got far.’

Henderson found the pair, along with Sam, at a larger encampment a few hundred metres away. But he blew his top when he discovered that Paul, PT and Luc had gone into town.

‘It’s bloody dangerous in town right now,’ Henderson said. ‘Did they say where they were going?’

Edith had heard about the boys’ plan to check out the Milice apartment, but didn’t want to snitch. She shook her head.

‘I need good people on this,’ Henderson said anxiously.

‘There’s plenty of Maquis around,’ Sam pointed out.

‘Jean won’t like any operation that stops the 108th leaving the area,’ Henderson said. ‘They’ve always been unruly, but since the invasion they’re on edge and they’ve become downright nasty.’

‘What about the communist lads?’ Sam asked thoughtfully. ‘Their underground newspapers are full of stories about Soviet sacrifice, so they can hardly turn down a fight to rid their country of fascists. Plus, Jean’s fair with rations, but he picks favourites when the weapons get dished out and the communists are at the bottom of the pile.’

‘Smart thinking,’ Henderson said as he drummed his chin with an index finger.

‘A lot of the communists are boneheads though,’ Edith pointed out. ‘We’ve got rifles and plastic, but we can’t make them soldiers by sunset.’

‘Agreed,’ Henderson said decisively, as he reached his tent. ‘But we don’t have the luxury of choice, so we’ll just have to keep our tactics simple.’

As Joel and Sam hurried off to recruit a posse of young communists without Jean noticing, Edith found herself studying maps under Henderson’s small shelter.

The Allies dominated the skies over France, so the 108th had hidden its weapons and vehicles under camouflage netting in dozens of separate locations in the countryside surrounding Beauvais. Since they’d been made Henderson’s sole target, Maquis scouts had located fifty out of fifty-six Tiger tanks, along with two dozen motorised artillery pieces and a few more specialised vehicles such as mobile bridges, mine-clearing vehicles and flamethrower tanks.

Henderson had logged each find on a map and now tried to work out the most likely routes for the fuel tankers and the best spots to ambush them.

‘They won’t risk having a dozen fuel tankers on one stretch of road,’ he told Edith. ‘One rocket from a Tempest flying overhead would blow up the whole convoy. I’d say we’re looking for individual tankers, arriving on different routes over a period of several hours.’

‘Small teams?’ Edith said.

Henderson nodded. ‘Exactly.’

*

Paul, Luc and PT didn’t know about the mini-riot staged by the 108th, but picked up the tense vibe in town. There were few people on the streets, and those that were moved quickly.

The apartment building known as Le Grand Americain would have blended into any of Paris’ wealthier districts, but its six storeys and marble frontage made it exceptional in a small town like Beauvais.

The war had left the building with a crippled revolving door and lifts that only worked one hour per day when the electricity was on. The three boys scouted the building from a bench across the street and the only movements over thirty minutes were a pair of Luftwaffe officers stepping out of the door into a chauffeured car, and a woman running in.

When Corentin’s cousin, Gil, appeared in the lobby with a mop and bucket, Paul and PT left Luc behind as a lookout and crossed the empty street. The double-height lobby had an echo and they kept their voices low.

‘We’re friends of Corentin,’ PT whispered. ‘I want to ask you a question about the Milice on the top floor.’

Gil was a bulky man in his twenties, who’d have been shipped to Germany as forced labour but for mild cerebral palsy.

‘There’s nobody up there,’ Gil blurted. ‘Do you want to look around?’

‘Ssssh!’ Paul said anxiously.

Gil leaned his mop against the wall and opened a service door disguised within the lobby’s wood panelling. The windowless room they stepped into contained cleaning gear and a table with Gil’s half-eaten lunch on it.

‘You need this and these,’ Gil said, picking a key from a row of hooks and grabbing two blue caretaker’s smocks, identical to the one he was wearing. ‘Put them on.’

‘Why are you so sure nobody’s up there?’ PT asked, as he buttoned a smock that was too small for him.

‘I water the plants when it’s empty.’

‘Who asks you to do that?’ Paul said.

‘The commander.’

‘Commander Robert?’ Paul asked, and Corentin nodded. ‘How long before he comes back?’

Gil thought quite hard and stuttered his answer. ‘One or two days. Or more. Like, two weeks sometimes.’

PT and Paul hadn’t expected it to be as easy as getting a key to an empty apartment. Luc was still keeping watch across the street and PT gave him the thumbs up through the glass of the revolving door before they started up twelve flights to the top floor.

The lower floors had three or four apartments, but the top level was one grand apartment with a full-length balcony. It seemed that the Milice weren’t immune to food shortages, because there were vegetables growing out on the balcony and cages with scrawny rabbits inside.

Before the war this had probably been the grandest penthouse in Beauvais, but it now reeked of cigarettes and unwashed bodies. The main living area was squalid, with dozens of empty wine bottles and cigarette butts deliberately stubbed on the antique rugs.

Two bedrooms and the dining room were filled with enough metal bunks for twenty Milice. Most just had skinny mattresses, but a couple had blankets and photos pinned up, indicating regular use by the same person.

Paul checked a bureau and found nothing but a couple of rusty pistols inside it. PT had more luck in the smallest bedroom, which contained a single bed, filing cabinet and desk. He immediately recognised Commander Robert as the chunky man with two daughters in the desktop photo. But there was nothing written on the back and no personal papers on the desktop or in the desk drawers.

As PT started working through the filing cabinet, Paul picked up an overflowing waste-paper basket. After giving it a bang so that most of the cigarette ash dropped to the bottom, Paul delved in for a bunch of screwed-up papers.

The first one was an expired membership card for a Paris shooting club in the name Pierre Robert.

‘Looks like the shot that killed Rosie was no fluke,’ Paul said, as he showed the card to PT before pushing it into his trouser pocket.

‘He only missed me by a few centimetres,’ PT said.

The next two papers were tickets from a Beauvais laundry. After that came an envelope addressed to Pierre Robert at a café in an eastern district of Paris. The paper inside was a final reminder for an unpaid water bill.

‘A Parisian café proprietor,’ Paul said. ‘Hopefully that’ll make him easy to track down.’

PT pocketed one of the family photos pinned behind the desk.

‘He’ll notice that it’s gone,’ Paul said.

‘In this mess? He’ll assume it fell down and got thrown out by mistake,’ PT said, as he studied the face of a man he’d only previously seen from a distance. ‘Pierre Robert, you have
no
idea how much I look forward to catching up with you.’