Authors: Sara Sheridan
Chapter 21
If you aren’t in over your head how do you know how tall you are?
W
hen Mirabelle came round she was in a bare room with no windows apart from a grubby skylight, the outlook from which informed her that it was late in the afternoon, probably close to dusk. A bare light bulb was switched on, illuminating worn pine floorboards and chipped plasterwork. Against the wall her handbag lay open where they had rifled through it. Her limbs felt stiff and she was tied to the arm of the high-backed chair in which she was sitting, secured by means of a long rag. The man must have been half-hearted about detaining her because he had only tied her right wrist, leaving her left hand free to pick at the knot. She started on it immediately.
‘Miss Bevan.’ The voice came from behind her. It sounded amused.
Mirabelle squirmed, but it was impossible to turn round. She couldn’t see him. She let go of the material. Then she manoeuvred her jaw, checking she could move it before she tried to speak. Her throat felt dry, and she thought that standing up would only make her more groggy. It was probably to her advantage to stay seated until she recovered from whatever had been on that piece of cloth. This did not temper her outrage.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what you’re thinking. Kidnapping is illegal. I’m a British citizen. You’re in the process of causing an international incident.’
The man walked into her line of sight and slowly lit a cigarette. He held up the packet.
Disque Bleu
. ‘Do you smoke?’
‘Not really.’
He smiled. ‘So British. Any other nationality would say yes or no, but you British are so charming. So indirect. “Not really”!’
‘Please untie me.’
The man kept the cigarette between his lips and leaned over her, pulling at the knot until it unravelled. Up close Mirabelle could ascertain no clues as to his identity from his appearance. There was something overwhelmingly neutral about him. His accent was so perfect that it wasn’t there all.
‘I can see we’re going to get on,’ he said.
Mirabelle rubbed her wrist. So, she reasoned, he was trying to befriend her. That kind of interrogation was old-fashioned even by the time she left the SOE. It was far more effective to keep your distance and build up real trust by not lying to a prisoner. Most people would talk eventually with a prod or two, if only you knew how to listen. This over-friendly rigmarole was ten years out of date and the man was acting as if he hadn’t snatched her in public. That was interesting. She’d have thought that he might threaten her. He could have replied to her outburst that international incident or not, he had the power of life and death and that no one knew where she was, and for that matter no one need ever know. He could have threatened her with truth drugs. It always amazed Mirabelle how afraid people were of truth drugs. It was as if they couldn’t really trust themselves, as if they were terrified the barbiturates would uncover a truth they weren’t aware of. She knew better. If it was old-fashioned play-pretend chums he wanted, she’d play along.
‘Thank you.’ She smiled, rubbing her wrist. ‘What’s your name?’
‘You can call me Albert.’
It wouldn’t be his real name. He’d chosen something that made sense in English and French as well as Russian.
‘Where am I?’
‘Paris, Miss Bevan. I didn’t bring you far. You’ve been sleeping, that’s all.’
‘Sleeping? That’s one way to put it. What do you want?’
The man looked vaguely amused. His eyes lingered on Mirabelle’s ankles. ‘I want to know why you’re here. What brought you to France?’
‘I came to your attention because I visited Christine Moreau. Is that it?’
Albert nodded.
‘Well, there’s no secret. Miss Moreau is an old acquaintance. She made a dress for me in the 1930s, when I visited Paris with friends. I hoped she might make me another, but I fear she doesn’t take on that kind of work any more. Your Mackintosh is like a uniform, monsieur. You and your colleagues. If you spotted me, I spotted you just as quickly.’
Albert squatted so that his face was level with hers. Mirabelle caught a whiff of spirits and stale coffee on his breath beneath the tobacco.
‘That’s interesting. Why would you notice us? Did you already know we were here? Were you looking for us? Most people don’t register people like me, Miss Bevan. Or people like you, if it comes to that. Do they?’
‘A lady on her own always notices what a gentleman is wearing. When two gentlemen are wearing exactly the same thing, it catches the eye. That’s what brought you to my attention.’
‘Gentlemen!’ His voice was scornful.
‘You think me bourgeois? Well, you’re quite right, I expect. I fear I have stumbled into something that is quite beyond me, Albert.’
‘Not beyond your capacity. My colleague lost track of you the other day. You’re clever, Miss Bevan, I’ll give you that.’
‘Dodging someone at a railway station isn’t cleverness. It’s training. And my training came from a time when your masters and mine were allies. It has been quite a while.’
‘You knew who he was?’
‘At first I thought American.’
Albert looked unamused. ‘And then you realised?’
‘The teeth.’ Mirabelle opened her lips. ‘Americans, you see, have perfect smiles. Alas, your friend does not.’
He laughed. ‘I begin to like you, Miss Bevan. But the idea you’re not working for the British doesn’t hold water, I’m afraid.’ He drew Mirabelle’s lock picks from his pocket, and dangled them in front of her. ‘Standard issue.’
‘A memento of times past,’ she admitted. ‘But I’m not who you’re looking for. I don’t know anything.’
Albert paused just long enough for it to become clear that he didn’t believe her. Mirabelle let his silence hang in the air. When convincing someone, you must let them make up their own mind. Albert changed tack.
‘You went back to see Mademoiselle Moreau today. And that has made me curious. Tell me, what did you talk about? You two ladies? Tea and cucumber sandwiches, no doubt. Is that what you’re going to have me believe?’
‘The war. We talked about the war. I was in London and she was in Paris. Where were you, Albert?’
He ignored the question. ‘And the house you called at on the rue de Siam on the way to the cemetery?’
‘I went to visit an old friend.’
‘A friendship from wartime as well?’
Mirabelle nodded. ‘Yes. They weren’t at home.’
Albert backed away, leaning against the wall opposite the coom that cut a slice out of the room. He put the lock picks in his pocket. ‘No, I don’t think so. You’re going to have to come up with something better than that.’
‘There is no more. It’s the truth – a lousy cover, I agree. But
that’s the nature of it. I don’t even know why you’re here – or why you’re interested in Christine Moreau, come to that.’
‘Do you believe in coincidences, Miss Bevan?’
Mirabelle answered honestly. ‘No. Not more than one at a time.’
‘Neither do I.’ Albert stubbed out the cigarette, crushing it against the bare wood with the sole of his shoe. ‘You English like a puzzle, don’t you? It is part of your national character. Crosswords. Guessing games. Well, I shall pose you a riddle. This woman almost never leaves her studio. And yet she is receiving secret information and passing it on.’
‘Information about what exactly?’
‘Classified information.’
‘From whom?’
Albert shifted on his feet. ‘I don’t know. But I know where it’s coming from. It’s coming from behind our borders.’
‘And what do you believe she is doing with it?’
‘Selling it, of course.’
‘To whom?’
‘Anyone who will pay her. You British perhaps.’
‘I see you have not ascertained Miss Moreau’s feelings towards her erstwhile compatriots. Yesterday she chased me out of her studio brandishing a pair of scissors because I even mentioned the British.’
‘The Americans, then? The French? Anyone who has money.’
Mirabelle’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yes. I understand why you’re watching her. There she is, in that tiny studio, working her fingers to the bone, reduced to piecework. I can see why you think she’s making a fortune as the hub of an international network. Perhaps you ought to have kidnapped her instead of me. I certainly don’t have the information you’re looking for, Albert. Perhaps you ought to search her studio if you’re convinced she’s a spy.’
He cast her a withering look. ‘It’s all standard. She buys the
cloth from a factory in Poland. The invoices. The remittance. The sales. The orders. There is no radio. No telephone. Nothing. A bale goes in, two hundred scarves come out. An exporter in Calais deals with the shipment. But the trail of information leads to her – she is the axis of it.’
‘Well, stop her supply. Stop everything going in and coming out. You can do that, can’t you?’
Albert smirked. ‘And then we will never find out how she is doing it. It would be like taking apart an engine and not being able to put it together again.’
‘Poor Christine,’ Mirabelle sighed, thinking quite the opposite. It would be fun to drive Albert round the twist – she had a vision of Christine picking particularly eccentric people to talk to on her outings to the park. ‘You’ve got her all wrong, you know.’
‘She is bourgeois – just like you.’
‘There is no crime in that. Not here, anyway. Christine Moreau was a Resistance fighter. She is a patriot.’
‘She took a Nazi lover.’
‘She fell in love. Ill advisedly, I’ll grant you. But she is a brave woman. She fought for her country despite her involvement with an SS officer, and that takes guts.’
Albert lit another cigarette and blew out the smoke energetically as if he was obliterating Christine Moreau’s past.
‘And then you turn up. The first person in months to visit the studio. And you visit her twice in short order. Do you see why you came to my attention?’
‘I’m afraid there is no mystery. On my first visit we ascertained that Miss Moreau knew a friend of mine, someone who is sadly now dead. I visited her a second time to talk more about him.’
Albert appeared to lose patience. He moved across the room as if the story had offended him. Then he grabbed Mirabelle’s arm and forced it against the chair as he retied the
knot, this time twisting the rag around both wrists. His jaw was set, as if he wanted the fabric to cut into Mirabelle’s skin. Mirabelle wondered if he was really angry or only trying to intimidate her.
‘I’ll be back later,’ he said.
‘You can’t …’ she spluttered.
‘I’ll bring food.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘You will talk.’
‘We have been talking.’
‘I’ll make you talk.’
Behind her, the door slammed and the key turned in the lock. Mirabelle listened. There was no carpet outside – only a set of wooden stairs by the sound of it. She wondered how long he might be. In his place she’d leave the subject at least an hour before coming back, if not several hours. Often waking someone in the dead of night confused them and they said more than they meant to. In any case, when Albert returned she’d have some warning. The stairs made a dreadful racket.
She struggled against the knot, working her hand backwards and forwards. Then she tried using her teeth to loosen it. He should have tied her with rope; the piece of old linen had far too much give to be effective for long. She remembered reading an interview with Bulldog Bradley during the course of which he said you had a better chance of getting away if you escaped early. The sooner the better, he’d advised, giving examples of men who had got away while the Nazis were waiting for transport to take them to the Stalag. She smiled as the knot began to loosen. She pulled one hand free and then the other. She took a deep breath and stood up, only realising when she got to her feet that Albert had removed her shoes. If he thought that was going to deter her, he had another think coming. Her stockings had ripped at the ankle. Annoyed, she grabbed her handbag and checked inside. The sheaf of
banknotes was still hidden in the inside pocket. Her notebook was missing, but she hadn’t used it while she’d been here. From memory, the last list had been for shopping – meat paste for sandwiches, milk to make tea and a bottle of bleach with which she intended to clean the bathroom. Albert would ascertain little from that. She sighed, remembering he’d taken the lock picks.
Her eyes flew to the door, and, legs shaking, she limped over. Getting to her knees, she looked through the keyhole. The key was in the other side but the bottom of the door was too well fitted to allow the old trick of pushing the key out onto a piece of paper that could then slide back through the gap. Then Mirabelle heard a movement on the other side. It sounded as if someone was turning the page of a newspaper. She stood up carefully and stepped back. Albert had taken the stairs but someone was still out there on guard. It was lucky they’d taken her shoes – she’d moved all but silently as she investigated the room. Then, as she looked up, she realised there was another way out.
The skylight was rusty. Mirabelle stood on the chair and pushed hard, and the old window opened with a crack. The freezing night air hit her in a wave. She waited, ready to jump back down if the man guarding the room came to investigate the noise. Nothing. Above, the sky was dark and the view from the top of the building afforded a spectacular view of Paris at night. Albert had told the truth – he hadn’t brought her far. From here she had a clear sightline to the Eiffel Tower. Stretching in all directions, Paris’s streets were well lit. The lead roofing was wet. Here and there it reflected a dim glow from the lights on the other side of the street. Sticking her head out as far as she could, Mirabelle surveyed the roofscape. The building was at least five storeys high. There was a flat area running along the top of the roof above the skylight, which was set upright into the eaves; if she could climb the
slanted part that led to it she’d be able to survey the whole terrace and, she hoped, find a way down. She looked back into the room and took Bulldog Bradley at his word. This was the first opportunity she’d had to get away and she wasn’t going to let it pass.
With her handbag pushed up over her shoulder, she took her weight on her arms and pulled herself out until her bare feet were balanced on the freezing iron gutter. She turned slowly and closed the window. Then, telling herself not to look down – or at least as little as she could – she focused on the surface beneath her feet. Thank heavens it wasn’t raining. Climbing in bare feet would be far more dangerous if the surface was being sluiced as she moved. She held on to the frame of the skylight as she carefully manoeuvred herself upwards. Her bare soles allowed a little purchase, though the cold nipped and her toes soon began to ache. At last she laid her hands on the edge of the flat area and hauled herself up.