Butcher and Bolt Page 20

  ‘Jean-Paul, stop shooting!’ came the voice of l’Hydre from behind the car. In the sudden silence, Joe crawled behind a tyre and looked around him. Behind him lay the Seine, black and evil, the moonlight rippling in the water where it swirled around the pylons of the bridge. Could they possibly get away in the river? He doubted it. Even the moonlight was bright enough for a decent shot to pick them off before they’d swum twenty feet. Still, they had three shots and there were only two people left to kill. Not great odds, but it could be worse, he thought to himself. He reached over and squeezed Yvette’s hand.

  ‘Listen Hydra,’ he said, ‘we’ve got no beef with you. All we want is Richter. All you have to do is walk away. You can carry on your operation as if nothing has happened.’

  ‘Ah, if that were only true,’ replied l’Hydre coolly, ‘but you appear to have killed two Germans, one a senior agent of the Gestapo, the other an SS officer. Do you believe this will go unnoticed? Non. They will investigate and the first place they will come will be my club. The only way I can atone for the mess you have made is to bring the Germans your head, and that of your pretty girlfriend, then perhaps they will see that I am a man of principle.’

  ‘Principle?’ cried Yvette in disbelief, ‘you disgusting excuse for a man! You call yourself a Frenchman?’

  ‘Keep talking,’ whispered Joe. He had noticed that only a few metres away a slope descended to the towpath beside the river. He started wriggling towards it. The cobbles of the road changed to raw concrete on the slope and as soon as he was below the line of the wall that lined the ramp Joe got onto his hands and knees and crawled until he could stand.

  ‘At least your sidekick had the courtesy to acknowledge that he was Corsican,’ said Yvette. ‘Or was that just pride? Perhaps he was hoping for a bit of Napoleonic cachet? Eh?’

  Joe ran down the ramp. To his right the Seine flowed black and silent; to his left the stone wall rose three yards. He shoved the Walther into his back pocket and started to climb.

  ‘Why don’t you just go?’ cried Yvette. ‘We will leave Paris, killing us makes no difference.’

  ‘You’re not listening, you stupid bitch,’ hissed l’Hydre, ‘I need a scapegoat for these two Germans and you two are it. Tomorrow, when the Germans discover all this, two of the bodies here will be yours. Lieutenant, did you ever really believe you could carry out your absurd mission? Do you think you are Jean Valjean, looking for redemption? There is no redemption, there is only death, the sooner you realise that the easier your life will be. You men of principle are dangerous, you believe you can change things, but human nature always triumphs in the end.’

  ‘Human nature?’ she shrieked, ‘what would you know of it you scum? Sink to the lowest level and drag everyone down with you? You’re disgusting.’

  She tensed on her heels and dashed behind the other wheel of the car. No shot came. Where was Jean-Paul?

  Joe reached the top of the wall and clambered over. From this new angle he could see l’Hydre crouched behind the car, but Jean-Paul was nowhere to be seen. The reflected gleam of the car headlights threw long shadows but there was no cover except the buildings across the street.

  ‘Bugger it,’ he said, and crouching low, dashed forward with his gun raised in two hands.

  Yvette screamed. Jean-Paul had come at her from her left. While Joe had been moving to the right, he had worked his way silently around the car to the left in the darkness, and now he pounced on her like a lion.

  Joe was five yards from ‘l’Hydre. He stopped, steadied himself, let out a breath, lined up the barrel and fired. The Frenchman saw the movement and turned, but he was too late. The bullet hit him under his left arm and punched a bloody swathe right through his chest, blood and fragments of bone spraying out behind him. His body collapsed like a punctured balloon.

  Behind the car, Yvette was being crushed under Jean-Paul’s massive weight. His hands were around her throat, squeezing with a terrible pressure, while beneath her back a dagger seemed to be pushing into her flesh. She clawed at his eyes and throat, but he pulled his head back out of her reach and squeezed harder. Her lungs were screaming and a roaring sound was growing to a crescendo in her ears. She kicked and rolled and lunged, but the terrible grip around her neck never weakened. As she gasped for a breath that couldn’t come, a black pall descended over her and her struggles grew feeble.

  Joe ran around the back of the car, lined up the pistol on Jean-Paul’s head and pulled the trigger. The click of the empty magazine jeered at him.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  He hurled the useless gun at Jean-Paul’s face and charged, exploding into the gigantic man the way he’d been taught to execute a rugby tackle: low body position, all his muscles gathered into an intense and concentrated point of force in his shoulder, aimed upwards into the ribs. The huge Frenchman slammed backwards and landed heavily on the cobblestones, his head bouncing with a crunch. Joe leapt onto him and, grabbing his long hair, smashed his head repeatedly into the road surface. Jean-Paul barely noticed. Grabbing Joe by the arms, he hurled him off and to the side.

  Joe hit the car and fell to the ground, momentarily winded. In that few seconds Jean-Paul clambered to his feet. He hauled Joe up and delivered two massive upper cuts to his chin, followed by a blow to the solar plexus. Joe crumpled like a tissue and folded himself into a ball on the road, vomiting and writhing in agony.

  ‘Ha! You dare to fight me?’ screamed Jean-Paul, beating his chest with his fists, ‘who the fuck are you anyway? Nothing, that is what you are,’ and he leant in and delivered three well-placed kicks into Joe’s ribs.

  The third kick propelled Joe under the car, and he scrabbled back to get out of the range of those punishing boots.

  ‘Hiding now are you?’ said the Frenchman, reaching under the car, ‘let’s have you out then.’

  He groped under the car, but stopped when he heard the metallic click, loud in his left ear.

  ‘On your knees!’ she hissed.

  The gigantic man threw all his weight into a left spin, his left arm whirling around to smash the gun away. But he connected with nothing.

  Yvette skipped back and fired into his chest. Then again. And again, until the hammer clicked on an empty breech.

  Joe crawled out from under the car and hobbled over to Hortense. The girl lay in a widening pool of blood, her beautiful face as pale as chalk in the moonlight. Beside her, Schmidt lay on his back, gasping for breath. Blood pulsed out of the wound in his leg, and Joe could hear the rattle of his breath exiting from the hole in his chest.

  He limped over to where Richter lay unconscious and examined him. Apart from a bloody score mark across the back of his skull he appeared intact. Certainly he was breathing. Joe took off the man’s belt and tied his hands together behind his back, then removed the belt from the body of the Corsican that lay nearby, and trussed the German’s legs. Behind him, he heard Yvette’s quiet voice say ‘Time to pay, you bastard.’

  She was kneeling beside Schmidt, and before Joe could see what she was doing, she whipped out a knife and slashed open his pants.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ exclaimed Joe.

  As a reply, Yvette reached into the slash of the man’s pants and pulled out his flaccid penis.

  ‘Stop!’ cried Joe, grabbing her arm, but she spun around and stared at him. There was something in her expression Joe had never seen before.

  ‘Did he rape you?’ she screamed. ‘Non? Then this has nothing to do with you. It is between him and me,’ and she flung off his arm.

  Schmidt, now conscious enough to realise what was happening, groaned and flailed from side to side. Yvette reached down with the knife and Joe turned away as the scream came bubbling from the man’s lips, only to stop abruptly as Yvette plunged the knife deep into his throat.

  It was only when she stood and wiped her hands that Joe noticed the blood pooling around her feet.

  ‘Get in the car,’ he said to Yvette, g
rabbing Richter by the legs and dragging him towards the boot.

  With the German stowed, he turned from the hideous scene and started the engine. As they turned back onto the main street, Joe plumbed his memory for the route. Yvette needed a doctor, and they needed somewhere to hide, but they couldn’t go back to Bernard’s place. The Germans would make the connection to him in no time. He contemplated driving straight out of Paris, but to reach the coast he needed petrol, a disguise, papers, too many things.

  ‘Dammit!’ he cursed, bashing the steering wheel.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  A grey dawn was rising over the grey stone of Paris as Joe pulled the car onto the sidewalk. It was only by a miracle that they hadn’t been stopped by a German patrol in their five minute journey, but their luck couldn’t last much longer.

  Yvette was slumped in her seat, staring sightlessly out the window. Joe jumped out, ducked into the entrance hall and banged on the door of number 24.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked a nervous voice after short pause.

  ‘It’s Joe, the Australian!’ he hissed, ‘I need your help, it’s urgent.’

  A bolt withdrew and the door swung open to reveal Marie standing in her nightdress.

  ‘Mon dieu! What happened?’ she cried.

  ‘I had to kill some people,’ said Joe. ‘I have an injured friend. We need to get off the street, can we come in?’

  Marie hesitated for a moment.

  ‘Please!’ said Joe beseechingly.

  ‘Very well,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Joe.

  Three minutes later, Marie was examining the wound on Yvette’s back.

  ‘You must have fallen on something sharp,’ said Marie, ‘you have a deep cut and many bruises, and you have lost a fair amount of blood, but it is not a mortal wound.’

  ‘It was glass from the car window,’ said Yvette in a monotone, ‘I felt it beneath me when the giant was strangling me.’ Then she started to laugh: an unnatural croaking sound that sent shivers down Joe’s spine.

  ‘I served him out though,’ she said, still croaking with mirth, ‘and that bastard Schmidt too. I would have liked to leave him alive to enjoy life as a castrati, but I’ve made that mistake once before.’

  Joe looked at her. Was this the same girl he had fallen so completely for only a few months before?

  ‘We need to leave before Richter wakes up,’ said Joe, looking nervously out the curtained window. The car was too conspicuous, he either had to hide it, and stash Richter somewhere, or get out of here now.

  ‘Go then Joe,’ said Yvette, waving away Marie’s hands, ‘I will not be coming with you.’

  Joe stared in disbelief. Although she’d said this before, he’d chosen not to believe her. His head filled with the recollection of the doorway of her house in Roubaix, the first time she had told him she wouldn’t be coming with him. This time he knew better than to remonstrate with her.

  ‘Is that it then?’ he said, ‘you’re staying in France? Where will you go?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ said Yvette, ‘I have relatives in Peille in the alps near the Italian border. I will go to them. They will take care of me.’

  ‘Both of you, you mean,’ said Joe.

  She instinctively touched her stomach.

  ‘You know, I’d completely forgotten about that.’ She laughed again, harshly this time. ‘Let’s hope it’s not yours Joe, because I have no intention of bringing it into this world, whoever the father might be.’

  Marie looked at her with a shocked expression.

  ‘You mean you are pregnant? Then you must stay here with me, you can’t go travelling. Besides, you can’t just walk into Vichy France, you need papers.’

  ‘I’ll find a way,’ said Yvette, ‘there’s more than one way to cross a border. Anyway Joe, how are you planning to get out of Paris?’

  Joe had been turning that same thought over in his mind for the last ten minutes, and only one solution had come to mind.

  ‘I’ll have to take Richter’s uniform,’ he replied, imagining what Sergeant Smythe would say about his impersonating a German officer, again.

  ‘You’ll be shot if they catch you,’ said Marie.

  ‘Well without a pass to leave the city I’ll never get out of here as a civilian,’ said Joe, ‘there are checkpoints everywhere. At least in an SS uniform I might stand some chance.’

  ‘Then you’d better bring him in here and strip him,’ said Yvette.

  Ten nerve-wracking minutes later, after backing the car up to the entrance and dragging Richter out of the boot, removing his clothes and then thrusting him back in, Joe stood in the hallway dressed as a Nazi officer.

  ‘Apart from the bloodstain on the right lapel you look quite convincing,’ said Yvette, ‘now go, before I change my mind.’

  She reached up and kissed him on the mouth. A long, soft moment. ‘Au revoir’, she whispered.

  ‘Goodbye Yvette,’ said Joe, with the certain knowledge it was the last time he would ever see her.

  He turned and walked to the car without looking back. He didn’t want her to see the tears in his eyes.

  ~ ~ ~

  He hit the first checkpoint at the bridge where the Avenue de Villiers crossed the Seine, heading west. A corporal came up to the car and looked in. Seeing the SS uniform he stepped back and saluted.

  ‘Heil Hitler!’

  ‘Heil Hitler,’ replied Joe and pushed the accelerator.

  ‘Let them all be that easy,’ he muttered to himself as he crossed the river and turned right.

  Twenty minutes later he crossed another bridge, and saw away to his right the blackened ruin of the port where the barge had exploded in the Port de Genevilliers. The next checkpoint was a more elaborate affair. Astride the main road heading west, the Germans were inspecting every truck that passed and demanding the papers of every driver.

  The guards were taking their time, and, watching the process, Joe began to get nervous. Were they looking for him? Impossible. No-one could have worked out the meaning of the pile of bodies by the Seine yet could they? They wouldn’t even know that Richter was missing. At first glance it looked like a falling out between some French gang members and their Gestapo contact. It would take them hours or days to work out what had happened.

  Joe swallowed and weighed his options. He had no official papers. He was driving a civilian car. His uniform had blood on the collar. If he had to get out and explain himself he was doomed. The only option was to bluff his way through.

  He swung the wheel and, accelerating past the row of cars and trucks, pulled up abruptly at the barrier where a sergeant and two privates were inspecting papers.

  Leaning out of the car window he gave it his best parade ground voice.

  ‘Actung!’ he yelled at the top of his voice, ‘what’s going on here? I need to get through immediately! Schnell, verstehen sie?’

  The sergeant walked over the to the car and leant down to the driver’s window. He too stiffened when he saw the Death’s Head insignia on the officer’s cap

  ‘Ah, Hauptsturmfuhrer, what is the problem?’ he asked.

  ‘The problem is this roadblock,’ fumed Joe, ‘I have to be in Dieppe by 0900 hours, and at this rate I’ll be lucky to make it by sunset.’

  The sergeant looked at the furious red face before him. He knew he should ask for papers, those were his orders, but this man was SS. If he obstructed him God only knew what the man could do. The slightest inquiry could be fatal to him or his family. He blinked for two seconds as he considered the worst his senior officer could do to him: punishment detail for a week, maybe demotion.

  ‘Carry on sir, have a safe journey, and heil Hitler!’

  ‘Heil Hitler,’ Joe replied. He saluted and accelerated away, hearing, over the engine’s roar, the sound of muted thumps coming from the boot. A few miles on he pulled into a side street and opened the boot. Richter stared up at him with fury in his eyes and s
truggle to haul himself out of the stifling space. Joe leaned in, took aim and belted him hard on the temple with his pistol. Richter slumped back with blood streaming from his broken skin.

  Joe grabbed a piece of rag he found in the boot, jammed it in Richter’s mouth, then slammed the boot on him and drove off. Then he noticed the petrol gauge: nearly empty.

  Passing through Pontoise he saw a petrol station and pulled in. A rotund man in grubby overalls came out of the workshop wiping his hands on some cotton waste. He blanched when he saw the uniform.

  ‘Oui m’sieu?’ he asked nervously.

  ‘Benzin,’ said Joe as curtly as he could manage, ‘et un carte du Francais.’

  ‘Oui m’sieu,’ said the man, undoing the cap and setting the pump.

  Although he had no money, the SS uniform seemed to work as currency. The Frenchman filled up the tank and returned from his workshop with a folded road map of France. He handed it over without a word.

  ‘Merci,’ said Joe, and drove away. The map showed that the road he was on went straight to the sea. He couldn’t go to Courselles-sur-mer now, but with one or two doglegs he could reach a seaside port called Saint-Valery-en-Caux. It was only a few hours away.

  ‘Pray for me Saint Valery,’ said Joe as he pushed the car to its limits.

  It was on the outskirts of Rouen that his luck ran out.

  ~ ~ ~

  The checkpoint was a crossroads much like the last one he’d passed through, only this time he was obliged to wait as a stream of lorries passed in front of him heading north-east. What seemed to be an entire infantry division with its supporting artillery crossed from left to right as he sat in a queue of cars for twenty minutes.

  Finally the stream of army trucks ended and the line of horse-drawn carts in front of him edged forward. He was only metres from the checkpoint when he heard the thumping from the boot start again.

  ‘Christ!’ he muttered. In front of him a horse and cart was waved through and the barrier came down again. A German private carrying an MP38 machine pistol came towards him. Joe took Richter’s Luger from its holster, cocked it and laid it on the seat beside him