One Shot Kill (11 page)

Rosie looked shocked. The thought of someone Edith’s age losing her legs was almost worse than her dying. ‘Could penicillin still help?’

Joseph looked excited as Rosie unclipped her case and took out six carefully-wrapped glass vials.

‘Miraculous,’ he shouted. ‘I’ve studied its effects in medical school, but I’ve never actually seen it. And this looks like enough for several patients. My mother has another comatose patient who picked up an infection after giving birth. Can we use some for her?’

‘As long as there’s enough for Edith,’ Rosie said.

‘Of course,’ Joseph said. ‘I’ll get my medical bag and prepare her first dose.’

Once Edith had been injected, Rosie began making soup with fresh veg, while Joseph went back out on the buggy with two vials of penicillin, trying to track down his mother.

After a day’s work Dr Blanc always rode out to eat an evening meal prepared by her son. She was complimentary about the soup, though in truth Rosie had done little but boil up vegetables, with salt and garlic as the only available sources of flavour.

Mother and son were both pleased to hear that the intelligence was valuable. And since they both knew who Rosie was there seemed little point hiding her next objective from them.

‘I’ve brought a small camera,’ Rosie explained. ‘I need to get out to the bunker and take photographs. I’ll also need to conduct longer term surveillance: watching who arrives, who leaves, what equipment goes in and out.’

‘It might be risky going into the forest with a camera and no clear motive for being there,’ Joseph said. ‘I suppose you might be OK at night.’

Rosie shook her head. ‘I’ll need good light for photographs.’

‘Tricky,’ Joseph said, ‘although boys have always played in the forest. I have no idea how near to the bunker you can get, but if it’s well guarded I’d bet some of the local boys would have tales of being kicked out.’

Dr Blanc nodded in agreement. ‘Joseph was too well fed to hunt as a boy, but my brothers hunted in those woods back in the 1900s. Most families are short of food right now, so I’m certain trapping and hunting are popular.’

‘Can you think of any boys you might speak to?’ Rosie asked.

‘Perhaps,’ Dr Blanc said. ‘But I’m seen as an authority figure. They’d probably think they were in trouble and deny everything.’

Rosie nodded. ‘And it’s not right for you to go around asking questions. If something happened at the bunker and the Germans began an investigation, any interest you’ve shown might create problems for you.’

‘How about your little mate who brought you to us in the first place?’ Joseph asked.

Rosie smiled. ‘Justin,’ she said brightly, feeling slightly stupid that this idea hadn’t already occurred to her. ‘He’s bright and he already took a great risk to help me. I’ll go and find him in the morning.’

*

Low sun punched through the attic window as Rosie rubbed her eyes and picked up the chamber pot under her bed. As her bare feet made the first-floor landing boards creak she heard a soothing version of Joseph’s voice coming out of Edith’s room.

‘Hello?’ Rosie said curiously, as she leaned through the door.

‘Good morning,’ Joseph said brightly.

Edith’s head turned slightly as Rosie stepped inside. Her eyes were open and Joseph had her propped on a pillow, while he sat on the edge of the bed feeding her small mouthfuls of scrambled egg.

‘It really is a miracle drug,’ Rosie said. A mist of tears blurred her vision as she put the pot down and rushed up to the bed. Edith’s eyes were only part open and her lids were crusted with yellow muck, but she smiled when she recognised Rosie.

‘If the bacteria are susceptible, penicillin can wipe out an infection in a few hours,’ Joseph explained. ‘I checked her temperature before I went to bed and I saw it had begun to drop. Rather than go to bed I brought a chair in and slept in here to see how things developed.’

The teaspoon of egg chinked against Edith’s front teeth.

‘Your throat hurts because I put the feeding tube down,’ Joseph explained. ‘But you must eat to get your strength back.’

‘What time did she wake up?’ Rosie asked, as she gently held Edith’s hand.

Edith made a little moan of pain as she swallowed some egg.

‘Good girl,’ Joseph said, before turning to Rosie. ‘She came around briefly at 2 a.m., then again at six. Chances are she’ll keep drifting in and out for a little while yet.’

‘Is she getting better?’ Rosie asked.

‘The penicillin seems to have dealt with the infection in her blood. I’ll keep injecting her to make sure it fully penetrates the infected wounds, but it looks good.’

Edith had understood and smiled as she gripped Rosie’s hand a little bit tighter.

‘Provided she’s a good girl and keeps eating her eggs,’ Joseph said, as he raised a spoon. ‘Open wide.’

*

Rosie was in a good mood as she rode into the village on one of the Blanc family’s horses. She had a good memory for places, but she wasn’t certain that she’d knocked on the door of the right cottage until eight-year-old Agnes opened the door.

‘You look much prettier,’ she told Rosie, as three-year-old Belle peeked out of a doorway in the background.

Rosie remembered that the last time Justin’s sisters had seen her she’d not washed or slept in days and was covered in coal dust.

‘Is your mummy here?’ Rosie asked.

Agnes shook her head. ‘She’s at work.’

‘What about Justin?’

Agnes nodded. ‘He’s sleeping.’

‘Can I speak to him?’

‘Is it important? He gets really cross if we wake him up.’

Rosie had thought Justin might be asleep. She’d even considered dropping by later, but was keen to make progress. Agnes led her up mildewing wooden stairs, beneath the gaping hole in the roof and into a small musty room. The window was blacked out and Justin was curled up on a straw-filled mat, snoring gently.

The arm and leg poking from Justin’s rough blanket were bruised from carrying coal and in this state he seemed more childlike than the cocky lad she’d met on the coal train.

‘Are you going to wake him?’ Rosie asked.

Agnes backed up to the doorway and shook her head warily. ‘I’d rather you did it. He might bash me.’

A big cockroach scuttled out of the way as Rosie crouched down and gently rocked Justin’s shoulder.

‘Bloody hell,’ he moaned, as he rolled over. ‘What?’

There was a smell of earth and feet, but Justin was young enough for Rosie to feel slightly maternal about his boyish blue eyes and scrambled hair.

‘Do you want coal?’ he said irritably, as he glowered at Agnes. ‘Why can’t she do it?’

‘It’s the girl you brought on the train, stupid,’ Agnes snapped back. ‘She asked to talk to you.’

Justin did several long blinks and rubbed glue out of his eye before apparently recognising Rosie. ‘You look really different,’ he said. ‘How’s your friend now?’

‘Fingers crossed,’ Rosie said, ‘she seems to be getting better.’

‘Great,’ Justin said. ‘What’s so important that you had to wake me up?’

Rosie looked at Agnes, ‘In private, if you don’t mind.’

Agnes looked put out, but a stern look from Justin sent her stomping back down the stairs.

‘You don’t look too great,’ Rosie said. ‘Are you sick?’

‘I’m always knackered,’ Justin said. ‘My mum earns next to nothing, and the coal train runs seven days a week, so I work it seven days a week. And even when I’m asleep, I get woken up by the girls. Or by someone wanting coal.’

Rosie felt even guiltier about waking Justin when he sat up, revealing a big red welt that ran from his upper arm and across his chest.

‘Railway cops,’ he explained, as he grabbed a grubby shirt off the floor. ‘Two nights ago. And the bastards stole my whole night’s coal.’

‘Sorry to hear that,’ Rosie said, then she began to explain about the bunker in the woods and how she needed to get close to it and take photographs. For security, she didn’t mention Dr Blanc’s role or the notebook. She just said that her boss in the resistance had asked her to get information.

By this time Justin had woken up enough for some of his cockiness to return. He scratched his chin with black fingernails before speaking.

‘What’s in it for me?’

Rosie smiled. ‘It’s for France. You said you hated the Boche when you met me on the train the other night.’

Justin shrugged. ‘I don’t much like ’em. If the Brits and Yanks sweep into town tomorrow, what difference will it make to me?’

‘Didn’t you say your dad was a prisoner? You’d be better off with him at home, wouldn’t you?’

Justin shrugged. ‘He’s a drunk.’

Rosie realised concepts like freedom and patriotism didn’t mean much to a ten-year-old who spent his life picking up coal scraps to earn enough money to keep his family from going hungry. But Rosie had money and resistance leaders like Eugene and Maxine paid people for their work.

‘How much do you earn selling coal on a good night? Whatever it is, I’ll pay you the same whenever you work for me. And I can get you some treats. I bought chocolate with me from Paris.’

Justin raised one eyebrow. ‘I’ll cop another beating if I’m caught on the train. What will I get if I’m caught helping the resistance? And what will they do to my mum and the girls?’

Rosie saw Justin’s point, but decided not to offer more. It was good to put things on a professional basis and reward people who helped the resistance, but offering large sums of money encouraged greed and led to suspicious behaviour when they spent it.

‘If it’s just about money, I can’t trust you,’ Rosie said, pretending that she wasn’t bothered either way. ‘I can tell you’ve got a good heart. You could have earned a fortune turning me and Edith in, but you did the right thing and sent for Dr Blanc.’

Justin went quiet, and stared at his filthy toes poking from the end of his blanket.

‘You can’t tell my mum because she’ll whip me. And the girls tend to speak without thinking, so keep them out of this too.’

‘OK,’ Rosie said, still not sure what Justin was offering.

‘I know a lot of kids who hunt in the forest, but what you really need are people who you can trust not to go running to the Germans, right?’

Rosie nodded. Justin was smarter than any ten-year-old ought to be.

‘There’s two guys about your age who spend a lot of time in the forest – Didier and Jean,’ Justin explained. ‘They’re from Rennes, but they went on the run when they got called up for labour service. They’re proper rough. I was scared the first couple of times I met them, but I trade my coal for their meat and they’ve never tried to rip me off.’

First Joseph, then the men in the apartment below in Paris, and now these two – Rosie was starting to feel that every young man in France was hiding out to avoid compulsory labour service in Germany.

‘Sounds ideal,’ Rosie said. ‘I’ll pay whatever you would have earned by selling coal. Is that a deal?’

Justin nodded. ‘Those boys move around, so we may have a job tracking them down. But they usually come into town once every couple of nights, selling hares or rabbits to the butcher’s shop near Dr Blanc’s surgery.’

Rosie was in a rural area, with clumps of cottages sprawled out over family smallholdings. The local centre was a cluster of businesses where three dirt tracks joined the cobbled route into Rennes. This strip had no official name, but everyone called it
the junction
.

Along with Dr Blanc’s surgery and the butcher’s shop, the junction had a grocer, a bakery, a farm supply store and a blacksmith. A church with sprawling graveyard stood on higher ground a couple of hundred metres further along.

Locals walked or came by cart, while a vehicle from the German garrison passed through once or twice per day. It was the type of place where everyone knew each other and would gossip over anything unusual, so Rosie and Justin kept look out from an overgrown section of the graveyard. This gave them a vista over shop fronts on both sides of the road and multiple escape routes if anyone came near.

Monday was a waste of time, and Tuesday was early closing, but patience was rewarded on Wednesday when two furtive lads sprang from a field and bolted over the cobbles. They both carried poles hung with rabbits on each shoulder.

Rosie agreed with Justin’s assessment that they were about her age, possibly a couple of years older. Didier was tall and broad, with a tiny lower jaw and huge rat-like front teeth. Jean was short, but built tough with chunky limbs and bright red hair.

A girl who worked as the butcher’s apprentice met the pair in front of the shop, as Rosie scrambled deeper into the graveyard so that she could still see the action. After a quick look and a sniff at the dangling rabbits, the girl took the poles inside, then quickly peeled off paper money and handed over a small cloth sack.

‘We need to start moving,’ Rosie told Justin. ‘If they cut back through a field we could lose them.’

Approaching Jean and Didier anywhere near the shops would guarantee curious onlookers, so Rosie planned to follow them out of town. After giving Justin a leg-up over the graveyard’s stone wall, she vaulted it herself and followed him through long grass.

As they reached the shops, Jean led Didier up an alleyway between the baker and blacksmith’s. Rosie was anxious not to lose them after their long stake-out, but stopped Justin from breaking into a run because it would then be obvious that they were chasing.

Rosie and Justin reached the uncultivated land behind the bakery as Jean and Didier stepped over a gate into a cow pasture fifty metres further on. Crossing open ground risked the boys spotting them if they looked back, but they’d started to run and she had to take the risk.

She reached the gate with Justin a few metres behind, then peered down the line of a tall hedge, where she was relieved to see that the two boys had slowed to a brisk walk. After following for several hundred metres, Rosie and Justin dived for cover in the hedge as Jean took the sack off his back and used a pocket knife to pull the cork from a bottle of red wine.