A Place of Hiding (53 page)

 

Outside, they found a soft rain had begun to fall, and Deborah took Simon's arm, tucking herself into his side. She liked to think he might interpret her gesture as one made by a woman seeking shelter in the strength of her man, but she knew it wasn't in his nature to flatter himself in that way. He would know it was what she did to assure herself that he didn't slip on a cobblestone made slick by water and, depending upon his mood, he would humour her or not.

Humouring her for whatever reason appeared to be his choice. He ignored her motives and said, “The fact that he said nothing to you about the ring . . . Not even that his sister had bought it or had mentioned buying it or had mentioned seeing it or anything of that nature . . . It doesn't look good, my love.”

“I don't want to consider what it means,” she admitted. “Especially if her fingerprints are clearly all over it.”

“Hmm. I did think you were heading in that direction towards the end. Despite the remark about Mrs. Abbott. You looked . . .” Deborah felt him glance at her. “You looked . . . stricken, I suppose.”

“He's her
brother,
” Deborah said. “I just can't stand to think her own brother . . .” She wished to dismiss the very idea, but she couldn't. There it resided, as it had done from the moment her husband had pointed out that no one had known the River siblings were coming to Guernsey. From that instant, all she'd been able to think of was the countless times throughout the years when she'd heard of Cherokee River's exploits just this side of the law. He'd been the original Man with a Plan, and the Plan had always involved the easy acquisition of cash. That had been the case when Deborah had lived with China in Santa Barbara and listened to tales of Cherokee's exploits: from the rent-a-bed operation of his teens in which he allowed his room to be used on an hourly basis for adolescent assignations, to the thriving cannabis farm of his early twenties. Cherokee River as Deborah knew him had been an opportunist from the first. The only question was how one defined the opportunity he may have seen and jumped upon in Guy Brouard's death.

“What I can't stand to think of is what it means about China,” Deborah said. “About what he intended to happen to her . . . I mean, that she should be the one . . . Of all people . . . It's horrible, Simon. Her own brother. How could he ever . . . ? I mean,
if
he's done this in the first place. Because, really, there has to be another explanation. I don't want to believe this one.”

“We can look for another,” Simon said. “We can talk to the Abbotts. To everyone else as well. But, Deborah . . .”

She looked up to see the concern on his face. “You do need to prepare yourself for the worst,” he said.

“The worst would be China standing trial,” Deborah responded. “The worst would have been China's going to prison. Taking the fall for . . . taking the fall for . . . for someone . . .” Her words died out as she realised how right her husband was. Without warning, with no time to adjust, she felt as if she were caught between two alternatives named
bad
and
worse.
Her first loyalty was to her old friend. So she knew she should have been experiencing a fair degree of joy from the fact that a false arrest and a faulty prosecution that could have resulted in China's imprisonment appeared—at this eleventh hour—to have been obviated altogether. But if the cost of China's rescue came at the expense of knowing that her own brother had orchestrated the events that had led to her arrest . . . How could anyone celebrate China's deliverance after being presented with that sort of information? And how could China herself ever recover from such a betrayal? “She's not going to believe he's done this to her,” Deborah finally said.

Simon asked quietly, “What about you?”

“Me?” Deborah stopped walking. They had reached the corner of Berthelot Street, which sloped steeply down to the High Street and the quay beyond it. The narrow lane was slick, and the rain snaking towards the bay was beginning to form serious rivulets that promised to grow in the coming hours. It was no wise spot for a man uncertain of his footing to walk, yet Simon turned towards it resolutely while Deborah thought about his question.

She saw that midway down the slope, the windows of the Admiral de Saumarez Inn winked brightly in the gloom, suggesting both shelter and comfort. But she knew these were specious offerings even at the best of times, no more permanent than the rain that fell on the town. Nonetheless, her husband headed towards them. She didn't answer his question till they were safely within the shelter of the inn's front door.

Then she said to him, “I hadn't considered it, Simon. I'm not exactly sure what you mean, anyway.”

“Just what I said. Can you believe?” he asked her. “Will you be able to believe? When it comes down to it—if it comes down to it—are you willing to believe Cherokee River has framed his own sister? Because that will likely mean he came to London expressly to fetch you. Or me. Or both of us, for that matter. But he didn't come only to go to the embassy.”

“Why?”

“Did he fetch us, you mean? To have his sister believe he was helping her. To make sure she didn't dwell on anything that could have caused her to look on him with suspicion or, worse, turn the spotlight on him in the eyes of the police. I'd suggest that he was applying salve to his conscience as well by at least having someone here for China, but if he intended her to take the fall for a murder, I don't actually believe he has a conscience in the first place.”

“You don't like him, do you?” Deborah asked.

“It's not a matter of liking or disliking. It's a matter of looking at the facts, seeing them for what they are, and spelling them out.”

Deborah saw the truth in this. She understood that Simon's dispassionate assessment of Cherokee River came from two sources: his background in a science that was drawn upon regularly during criminal investigations and the brief time in which he'd known China's brother. Simon, in short, had nothing whatsoever invested in Cherokee's innocence or his guilt. But that was not the case for her. She said, “No, I can't believe he's done this. I just can't believe it.”

Simon nodded. Deborah thought his face looked unaccountably bleak, but she told herself it could have been the light. He said, “Yes. That's what I'm worried about,” and he preceded her farther into the inn.

 

You know what this means, don't you, Frank? You
do
know what this means.

Frank couldn't recall if Guy Brouard had said those exact words or if they'd merely appeared on his face. He knew, in either case, that they had definitely existed in some manner between them. They were as real as the name G. H. Ouseley and the address
Moulin des Niaux
that an arrogant Aryan hand had written on the top of the receipt for food: sausages, flour, eggs, potatoes, and beans. And tobacco so that the Judas among them would no longer have to smoke whatever leaves could be culled from roadside bushes, dried, and rolled within flimsy tissue.

Without asking, Frank knew the price that had been paid for these goods. He knew because three of those foolhardy men who'd typed up
G.I.F.T.
in the dim and dangerous candlelight of the vestry of
St. Pierre du Bois
had gone to labour camps for their efforts while a fourth had been merely shipped to a gaol in France. The three had died in or because of those labour camps. The fourth had served only a year. When he had spoken of that year at all, he'd spoken of that time in French gaol as cruel, as disease-ridden and grossly inhuman, but that, Frank realised, was how he needed that time to be seen. He probably even remembered it that way because remembering it as a logical and necessary removal from Guernsey for his own protection once his colleagues stood betrayed . . . remembering it as a way to safeguard himself as a spy owing much to the Nazis upon his return . . . remembering it as recompense for an act committed because he was
hungry,
for the love of God, and not because he particularly believed in anything at all . . . How could a man face having brought about the deaths of his associates in order to fill his belly with decent food?

Over time the lie that Graham Ouseley had been one of those betrayed by a quisling had become his reality. He could not afford it to be otherwise, and the fact that he himself was the quisling—with the deaths of three good men on his conscience—would no doubt spin his troubled mind into utter confusion were it laid in front of him. Yet laying it in front of him was exactly what would happen once the press started leafing through the documents they would ask for in support of his naming of names.

Frank could only imagine what life would be like when the story first broke. The press would play it out over days, and the island's television and radio stations would pick up the tale forthwith. To the howls of protests from the descendants of the collaborators—as well as those collaborators who, like Graham, were still alive—the press would then supply the relevant proof. The story wouldn't run without that proof being offered in advance, so among those quislings named by the paper, Graham Ouseley's name would appear. And what a delicious irony for the various media to dwell upon: that the man determined to name the scoundrels who'd caused detentions, deportations, and deaths was himself a villain of the highest order, a leper needing to be driven from their midst.

Guy had asked Frank what he intended to do with this knowledge of his father's perfidy, and Frank had not known. As Graham Ouseley could not face the truth of his actions during the Occupation, Frank had found he could not face the responsibility for setting the record straight. Instead, he'd cursed the evening he'd first met Guy Brouard at the lecture in town, and he bitterly regretted the moment when he'd seen in the other man an interest in the war that matched his own. Had he not seen that and acted impulsively upon it, everything would be different. That receipt, long kept among others by the Nazis to identify those who aided and abetted, would have remained buried among the vast accumulation of documents that were part of a collection amassed but not thoughtfully sorted, labeled, or identified in any way.

Guy Brouard's advent into their lives had changed all that. Guy's enthusiastic suggestion that a proper storage facility be arranged for the collection—coupled with his love for the island that had become his home—had mated to produce a monster. That monster was knowledge, and that knowledge demanded recognition and action. This was the quagmire across which Frank had been fruitlessly attempting to find a way.

Time was short. With Guy's death, Frank had thought they'd bought silence. But this day had shown him otherwise. Graham was determined to set off on the course of his own destruction. Although he'd managed to hide himself away for more than fifty years, his refuge was gone, and there was no sanctuary now from what would befall him.

Frank's legs felt as if he were dragging irons as he approached the chest of drawers in his bedroom. He picked up the list from where he'd placed it and as he descended the stairs he carried it in front of him like a sacrificial offering.

In the sitting room, the television was showing two doctors in scrubs, hovering over a patient in an operating theatre. Frank switched this off and turned to his father. He was still asleep, with his jaw agape, a dribble of saliva pooling in the cavity of his lower lip.

Frank bent to him and put his hand on Graham's shoulder. He said, “Dad, wake up. We've got to talk,” and he gave him a gentle shake.

Graham's eyes opened behind the thick glass of his spectacles. He blinked in confusion, then said, “Must've dropped off, Frankie. Wha's the time?”

“Late,” Frank said. “Time to go to sleep properly.”

Graham said, “Oh. Righ', lad,” and he made a move to rise.

Frank said, “Not yet, though. Look at this first, Dad,” and he held the food receipt out before him, level with his father's failing vision.

Graham knitted his brows as his gaze swept over the piece of paper. He said, “Wha's this, then?”

“You tell me. It's got your name on it. See? Right here. There's a date as well. Eighteenth of August, nineteen forty-three. It's mostly written in German. What d'you make of it, Dad?”

His father shook his head. “Nothing. Don't know a thing about it.” His assertion seemed genuine, as it no doubt was to him.

“D'you know what it says? The German, I mean. Can you translate it?”

“Don't speak Kraut, do I? Never did. Never will.” Graham rustled round in his chair, moved forward, and put his hands on its arms.

“Not yet, Dad,” Frank said to stop him. “Let me read this to you.”

“Time for bed, you said.” Graham's voice sounded wary.

“Time for this first. It says six sausages. One dozen eggs. Two kilos flour. Six kilos potatoes. One kilo beans. And tobacco, Dad. Real tobacco. Two hundred grams of it. This is what the Germans gave to you.”

“The Krauts?” Graham said. “Rubbish. Where'd you get . . . Lemme see.” He made a weak grab for it.

Frank moved it out of his reach and said, “Here's what happened, Dad. You were sick of it, I think. The scrabbling just to stay alive. Thin rations. Then no rations at all. Brambles for tea. Potato peels for cake. You were hungry and tired and sick to death of eating roots and weeds. So you gave them names—”

“I
never—
”

“You gave them the ones they wanted because what
you
wanted was a decent smoke. And meat. God, how you wanted meat. And you knew the way to get it. That's what happened. Three lives in exchange for six sausages. A fair bargain when you've been reduced to eating the household cat.”

“Tha's not true!” Graham protested. “You gone mad, or what?”

“This is your name, isn't it? This is the signature of the
Feldkommandant
on the bottom of the page. Heine. Right there. Look at it, Dad. You were approved from on high for special treatment. Slipped a little sustenance now and then to see you through the war. If I have a look through the rest of the documents, how many more of these am I going to find?”