Children of War (6 page)

‘Absolutely,’ said the Brigadier, raising his eyebrows and studying Yveline as if for the first time.

‘And you agree with this, sir?’ she asked J-J.

‘The ministers of Justice and of the Interior have put the Brigadier in charge of this matter so, yes, I agree,’ said J-J, looking amused. He knew the form, as did Bruno. Yveline was about to be introduced to the way that French law really worked once the intelligence agencies were involved and the crime in question carried political overtones.

‘I’ll need that order in writing, sir, otherwise I’d feel it my duty to tear that mosque apart to find these killers.’

She spoke with a flat, unemotional politeness that impressed Bruno. Once, he might have made the same objection, even used the same phrase. But he was older now, more experienced in some of these informal aspects of law enforcement. Above all, he saw the sense in the Brigadier’s strategy. Bruno’s job would be to ensure none of this damaged St Denis or its citizens, including Momu and Sami.

The Brigadier studied Yveline for a long moment and then
picked up his mobile phone, looked up a number and called it. ‘Ah, my dear general,’ he began when it was answered. ‘Brigadier Lannes here from the minister’s office. Did you receive my note about this nasty murder just outside St Denis this morning? You did? Excellent. Perhaps you would confirm to your estimable commandant in St Denis that she comes under my orders until further notice. Thank you.’

He passed the phone to Yveline, who listened briefly, said, ‘Yes, sir, thank you, sir,’ and handed the phone back.

‘Any more questions, comments, suggestions?’ the Brigadier asked.

He paused, glancing from Bruno to Yveline and back again before speaking.

‘Let us not forget that when the intelligence phase of this operation is complete, then you,
Mademoiselle Commandante
, and you, Bruno, will have the agreeable duty of arresting these two murderers. We’re not bringing them to justice now, but we will most certainly do so at a time that suits us.’

Bruno awoke the next morning feeling wonderfully refreshed but guilty when he realized how late it was. He couldn’t recall the last time he had slept past nine. He fed his chickens, went for a fast run in the woods, showered and headed directly into town, still sipping from the bottle of orange juice Pamela had brought him the previous evening, along with the bouillon Fabiola had promised.

After the meeting with the Brigadier, Bruno had got home mid-afternoon. Earlier he’d identified his two attackers from a selection of surveillance shots on the Brigadier’s laptop, taken at and around the mosque. The one with the cattle prod was known as the Ali the
Caïd
and the other was known only as
Zhern’ber
, the strong man. After checking his chickens, Bruno had gone straight to sleep as soon as he lay down on his bed.

He’d been woken a few hours later by Pamela’s arrival. Darkness had fallen and he’d been unsure of the time and surprised to find himself drenched in sweat. Visions of Rafiq’s body in the rain still churned in his head from a disturbed dream. He had a fierce headache and felt weak as a kitten. He had to take Pamela’s arm to climb from his bed and stagger into the shower. By the time he returned, she had changed the sheets, laid out one of the clean rugby shirts he used instead
of pyjamas, and put the hot bouillon in a mug alongside a bottle of aspirin on the bedside table.

‘I didn’t mean to be angry at you,’ she said when he was back in bed, sipping at the bouillon. ‘I was angry at me for feeling so …’ Her hands groped at the air, looking for the right word. ‘For feeling so involved.’ She seemed to have trouble forming the word.

‘Apart from anything else we are to one another, I’m your friend,’ he said quietly, choosing his words with care. ‘You’d feel just as involved if Fabiola was hurt. You weren’t conscious to see it, but she reacted pretty fiercely when you fell from your horse.’

Pamela brushed his words aside. ‘But it’s the anything else that matters here, Bruno, don’t you see? Here in your bedroom, where we’ve been – I don’t need to spell it out. I’ve had that Jacques Brel song in my head all day, “La Chanson des Vieux Amants”.’

Suddenly, she’d stood up and collected her bag. ‘Fabiola said I wasn’t to stay too long and not to upset you. I’m sorry.’

She bent and kissed him chastely on the forehead. ‘Your fever’s gone. Sleep well and don’t worry about the horses in the morning. Unless we hear otherwise we’ll expect you in the evening.’

She left him groping for the words of the song, about two lovers confronting one another in a bedroom whose walls still seemed to echo with the memories of their pleasure and their passion.

The song had stuck in his head as he sipped at his bouillon. He tried to recall that other line of the song, about how they managed to grow old without ever growing up.

He loved Pamela dearly, enjoyed being with her and could even imagine growing old with her. But she had taken the firm decision that she did not want children, and that, for Bruno, was the insuperable problem. With each year that passed, he felt more and more the need to be a father and to find the right woman to bear his children and help raise them. He sighed and sank back on the pillows, expecting a long and sleepless night of self-questioning and sadness at being childless. And then he thought of the great lottery of parenthood, never knowing how the young would turn out once they became themselves. His thoughts turned to Momu and Dillah, the grief that young Sami must have caused them and the mixture of joy and guilt and confusion they were probably feeling at the prospect of his rejoining them, and the next thing he knew it was morning and he was very late for work.

The usual mail was on his desk and atop the pile lay an envelope, addressed to the Mayor and already opened. A yellow Post-it note was attached which asked, in the Mayor’s careful handwriting, for Bruno to deal with the contents. ‘This comes as news to me,’ the Mayor had added.

The envelope was of heavy paper, and the name and address of a Paris law firm was embossed on the flap. The address was on the Rue de la Paix, which Bruno knew to be close to the Opéra, a desirable and presumably expensive location. Bruno skimmed the opening greetings and then, increasingly fascinated, sat down in his swivel chair to read.

The lawyer, who signed himself Yacov Kaufman, was acting for the estate of a client who had recently died, a wealthy Parisian doctor named David Halévy. The will provided for a bequest to the town of St Denis in gratitude for the shelter it
had given him and his sister when they were children during the war. The doctor and his sister were Jews, and the town had probably saved their lives. The bequest, however, was somewhat complicated and the lawyer proposed that the Mayor let him know a convenient day to visit the town and discuss the matter. Bruno noted that one of the partners in the law firm was also named Halévy, and then he sat back to reflect. He knew quite a lot of the town’s history, but he had never heard of Jewish refugees being given sanctuary.

The Mayor, who had for several years been writing a definitive history of the town where he had been born and bred, was the real expert on local history. He would know of any refugees being taken in, if anyone did. But he’d already seen the letter, confessed ignorance and had asked Bruno to take care of the matter. Bruno called Jo, his predecessor as town policeman, and at the same fired up his computer to google David Halévy,
médecin
. Jo had been in the village school in the war years, and while there had been a lot of refugee kids, mainly those of French stock who were expelled from Alsace once the Germans took control, he didn’t recall any Jews, or anyone named David.

Google provided an obituary in
Alliance
, a Jewish Internet-magazine, which revealed that David Halévy, a retired surgeon and professor of medicine and a member of the
Légion d’Honneur
, had died the previous week at the age of eighty of a heart attack at his home on the Boulevard St Germain in Paris. He had never married and had no children, and was survived by a sister, Maya, who lived in Israel. The obituary listed a number of publications, the older ones on problems of the heart and circulation and the more recent articles relating to
the links between psychology and health. Which was he, Bruno wondered, a heart surgeon or a psychologist? The obituary added one interesting detail, that Professor Halévy had for many years been the honorary president of the
Eclaireurs Israélites
, the Jewish Boy Scouts.

Bruno called the lawyer’s number in Paris, identified himself and was put through to Maître Kaufman, who instantly asked if he was speaking with the Mayor of St Denis. Bruno explained that the Mayor had asked him to make a preliminary inquiry about the bequest.

‘I will need to go into this with your Mayor, but I can say that the instructions from Professor Halévy were somewhat complex,’ Kaufman said in a formal, almost old-fashioned French, although his voice sounded young.

‘Might I just clarify,’ said Bruno. ‘We are talking of Professor David Halévy and his sister Maya. That’s an unusual name.’

‘You know of them already?’ Kaufman asked, excitement coming into his hitherto formal voice.

‘Just the names, David and Maya; am I pronouncing that right?’

‘Yes, it means water in Hebrew. When they were in hiding she called herself Marie. Those are the two children. The Professor hoped that his bequest could be used to fund some form of memorial to the people in St Denis who had risked their lives on his behalf. Depending on the nature of the memorial, the bequest could be significantly increased. That is why this is more complicated than a simple bequest.’

Bruno felt confused. ‘Does this mean this is some kind of test? If we come up with the right kind of memorial the bequest will be more generous?’

‘Precisely.’

‘But Professor Halévy is dead, so who decides whether the memorial justifies a larger bequest?’ Bruno asked.

‘His executors, who include his younger sister. She was also given refuge in St Denis and has very fond memories of the region.’

‘Could you give me some idea of the kind of money Professor Halévy had in mind?’

‘I’m not at liberty to reveal the potential sum, I’m sorry. But I can say that the initial bequest, whatever memorial you plan or even if you don’t produce a memorial, is fifty thousand euros.’

‘
Mon Dieu
,’ said Bruno, thinking that St Denis might even be able to afford the indoor sports hall that he’d been raising money for with jumble sales and collection boxes. ‘He must have been a wealthy man.’

‘Indeed. Now, when would it be convenient for me to call and pay my respects to your Mayor?’

‘I’ll ask him and get back to you by email. Just one more thing,’ Bruno said. ‘This all happened a long time ago and most of that wartime generation are dead. Did Professor Halévy provide any details about his time in St Denis, his hosts, where they lived, perhaps his schooling?’

‘I’m afraid not. I only know that it was thought unsafe for him and his sister to go to school. They studied alone, at the farmhouse where they lived.’

‘With the farmer’s wife?’ Bruno asked. ‘Do you have her name?’

‘Sorry, no. I’ll look out for your email about coming down to see the Mayor.’ He rang off.

Bruno sat back, pondering how to start finding out about two children living in secrecy some seventy years ago. He looked out of his window at the familiar scene below, the old stone bridge over the river Vézère, the square full of parked cars and locals gossiping by the postbox. The tables at Fauquet’s café were filled with people caught in that curious morning moment when it was neither too late for coffee nor too early for an apéritif, and some of the customers had compromised by ordering both. The buildings were mostly unchanged, and he tried to imagine how it would have been seventy years ago, with no cars because there was no petrol, except for the occasional German staff car or military truck. The streets would have been patrolled by Vichy’s
Milice
in their black berets and the shops would have been mostly empty because of food rationing.

He remembered Jo, reminiscing about his wartime childhood, saying the men were always unshaven because of a shortage of razor blades, and the children had their heads shaved against lice. The women would paint a thin black line up the back of their legs, an attempt to suggest the seams of the stockings that were no longer available. In his family, Jo recalled, they had washed with bran soaked in water because there was no soap. On the posters outside the
Mairie
the watchwords of the French Republic –
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité
 – had been replaced by Vichy’s slogan:
Patrie, Famille, Travail
, Homeland, Family, Work.

Bruno sighed at the thought of France, of his own village, defeated, occupied and humiliated. But he knew there had been sparks and small flames of resistance, young men living rough in the woods to escape the forced labour conscription
to Germany, and others gathering in the small hours to light the beacons that would guide the Royal Air Force planes that would drop guns and explosives. And there had been somebody risking arrest and torture to hide Jewish children. No wonder it had been kept secret. Bruno braced himself and turned back to his quest.

There was no synagogue in St Denis but Daniel Weiss, a local insurance broker whom Bruno knew through the tennis club, was a member of the congregation in Périgueux. He called Weiss, explained the situation and asked his advice.

‘I’d start with the rabbi, but leave it to me,’ Weiss said. ‘Let me be sure I’ve got the details right – David and Maya Halévy, here in 1943 and 1944. I’ll see if anybody in the community knows anything, though I can’t say I ever heard of any Jewish children being sheltered here. We came long after the European war.’

For Daniel Weiss and his family, and many others who came to France from Algeria, the phrase ‘the war’ meant the bloody insurrection and guerrilla war that finally secured Algerian independence in 1961. The Second World War was always ‘the European war’.