10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (346 page)

‘Women’s magazines,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘They should be on the top-shelf.’

‘I need a few fantasies to sustain me in here,’ Sammy said. Rebus beamed at her, said hello, then bent down and kissed his daughter.

The sun was shining as they walked through The Meadows – a rare day off for both. They held hands and watched people sunbathing and playing football. He knew Rhona was excited, and thought he knew why. But he wasn’t going to spoil things with speculation
.

‘
If you had a daughter, what would you call her?’ she asked
.

He shrugged. ‘Haven’t really thought about it
.’

‘
What about a son?
’

‘
I quite like Sam
.’

‘
Sam?
’

‘
When I was a kid, I had a bear called Sam. My mum knitted it for me
.’

‘
Sam
...”
She tried the name out. ‘It would work both ways, wouldn’t it?
’

He stopped, circled his arms around her waist. ‘How do you mean?
’

‘
Well, it could be Samuel or Samantha. You don’t get many of those – names that work both ways
.’

‘
I suppose not. Rhona, is there ...?
’

She put a finger to his lips, then kissed him. They walked on. There didn ‘t seem to be a cloud in the whole damned sky
.

My fictional French village of Villefranche d’Albarede owes its existence to the real village of Oradour-sur-Glâne, which was the subject of an attack by the 3rd Company of the SS ‘Der Führer’ regiment.

On the afternoon of Saturday 10 June 1944, 3rd Company – known as ‘Das Reich’ – entered the village and rounded up everyone. The women and children were herded into the church, while the men were split into groups and marched to various barns and other buildings around the village. Then the slaughter began.

Some 642 victims have been accounted for, but the estimate is that up to a thousand people may have perished that day. Only fifty-three corpses were ever identified. One boy from Lorraine, having first-hand knowledge of SS atrocities, managed to flee when the troops entered the village. Five men escaped the massacre in Laudy’s barn. Wounded, they were able to crawl from the burning building and hide until the next day. One woman escaped from the church, climbing out of a window after playing dead beside the corpse of her child.

Soldiers went from house to house, finding villagers too sick or elderly to leave their beds. These people were shot and their houses set alight. Some of the bodies were hidden in mass graves, or dumped down wells and in bread ovens.

General Lammerding was the commanding officer. On 9 June he’d ordered the deaths of ninety-nine hostages in Tulle. He also gave the order for the Oradour massacre.
Later on in the war, Lammerding was captured by the British, who refused his extradition to France. Instead, he was returned to Düsseldorf, where he ran a successful company until his death in 1971.

In the general euphoria of the Normandy landings, the tragedy at Oradour went almost unnoticed. Eventually, in January 1953, the trial opened in Bordeaux of sixty-five men identified as having been involved in the massacre. Of these sixty-five, only twenty-one were present: seven Germans, and fourteen natives of French Alsace. None of the men was of officer rank.

Every individual found guilty at the Bordeaux trial left court a free man. A special Act of Amnesty had been passed, in the interests of national unity. (People in Alsace were disgruntled that their countrymen had been picked out for condemnation.) Meantime, the Germans were said to have already served their terms.

As a result, Oradour broke off all relations with the French state, a rupture which lasted seventeen years.

In May 1983, a man stood trial in East Berlin, charged with having been a lieutenant in ‘Das Reich’ during the Oradour massacre. He admitted everything, and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

In June 1996, it was reported that around 12,000 foreign volunteers to the Waffen SS are still receiving pensions from the Federal German government. One of these pensioners, a former Obersturmbannführer, was a participant at Oradour ...

Oradour still stands as a shrine. The village has been left just the way it was on that day in June 1944.

Discussion points for
The Hanging Garden

Regarding the time frame in
The Hanging Garden
, the most ambitious novel in the Rebus series so far, what is the effect of his reminiscences on the time when Sammy was a child? Does the reader link them emotionally to the memories of the only female survivor of the village massacre?

What are Rebus’s thoughts on the politics behind the German officers who were apprehended by the Allies being returned to Germany in the 1950s to live ordinary lives?

There are several sorts of ‘war’ in
The Hanging Garden
– discuss how they differ from one another, and what the similarities are.

‘
Most of the gangsters Rebus had known, they’d had a worn look, undernourished but overfed. Telford had the look of some new strain of bacteria, not yet tested or understood
.’ How does the reader respond to such a comment?

Why had Rebus been so absent in his marriage, and in Sammy’s upbringing?

Could it be claimed that Rebus is so drawn to Candice because she makes him feel useful (as well as the fact that looks-wise she reminds him of Sammy), while Sammy remains resolutely independent in her dealings with her father? Is Rebus exploiting Candice as much as other people are, only in a different way?

‘
Each investigation is an act of remembrance, and remembrance is never wasted. Remembrance is the only way we learn
.’ Would Rebus agree with this statement from David Levy, who is assisting the Holocaust Investigation Bureau?

Why doesn’t Rebus like Ned Farlowe?

Rebus has had a period of sobriety: does this help him to understand how easy it might be for a man to construct another life for himself?

Initially Rebus’s instincts tell him that Lintz and Linzstek are one and the same person, but not whether it matters. Does this change as the plot unfolds?