The Sixth Lamentation (26 page)

Walking
briskly, Anselm turned his thoughts to what lay ahead. First, he’d arranged to
meet Roddy at chambers for a low-down on the principal players in the trial — a
taste of old times. Afterwards, however, Anselm would catch a train to Paris to
see the Fougères family — for a more unpalatable task. Milby through DI
Armstrong, had suggested he might go on their behalf, given the unpleasant
legal realities that required sensitive explanation.

‘I
think the boss is right,’ DI Armstrong had said. ‘It would be better coming
from someone like you.’

Anselm
had agreed, but had found himself seizing the opportunity to request another
favour, made tawdry by a hint of bargaining: ‘I have something to ask of you.
It relates to Victor Brionne.’

‘He’s
gone, I’m afraid.’

‘Can I
have the same assurance as last time? If I tell you what more I know, will you
allow me a first interview?’

DI
Armstrong had looked Anselm directly in the face. ‘I don’t know what you’re
doing, Father, but you must have crossed a line, morally and legally I think
you should step back. Go home.’

‘I’d
like to, but I can’t. I haven’t yet worked out where the line was.

‘No,
Father, we all know where it is.’

‘I’ve
said something very similar to other people in the confessional. I’ll never say
it again.’

‘I can’t
forgive sins, you know that.’

‘I give
you the same assurance as I did last time. What I am doing is in the interests
of justice.’

‘All
right, go on.

‘A man
came to see me. He told me Brionne died after the war. In a peculiar way
everything he said struck me as true — and it still does, even though I am sure
now it was false. Intuition tells me he’s related to Victor Brionne.’ He’d
given the signposts he had remembered: Robert B, the
Tablet
subscription
and the rest. She’d written them down in a notebook, saying, ‘Father, you
really don’t have to make a deal with me. I’d do this even if you refused to go
and see the Fougères family’

Anselm
had reddened under the reprimand, all the more so because he sensed DI
Armstrong no longer saw him in quite the same light. The monk wasn’t that
different after all.

Roddy was languidly
smoking a cigarette while studying a wall of closed files as if they were
strange objects uncovered by the Natural History Museum. He was dutifully
engaged in that old internal debate, the outcome of which was already decided:
to read or not to read?

‘VAT
fraud,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘I find the facts tend to get in the way
of a good defence. Good to see you.

He
turned away, chortling, and reached for Anselm’s hand. After covering gossip
about the latest string of inexplicable judicial appointments, Roddy moved on
to the Schwermann trial.

The
judge was a safe pair of hands: Mr Justice Pollbrook, known as Shere-Khan
because of his patrician vowels and his tendency to strangle weak arguments
while scratching his nose. Leading Counsel for the Crown was Oliver Penshaw ‘Terribly
mice chap, rather solemn, engaging bedside manner — which is probably why he’s
got the brief— but he’s far too decent. Has a tendency to let the witness go,
just when he should finish ‘em off.’ Roddy turned to Anselm, adding, ‘.That’s
why they’ve given him Victoria Matthews as a Junior.’

‘What’s
she like?’

‘Young,
charming and, to the unsuspecting witness, apparently harmless. But that just
hides the knife. They’re a good team. Balanced. If Oliver has any sense he’ll
keep her wrapped up for any witness who might wreck his case.’

‘What
about the Defence?’

‘Henry
Bartlett, without a Junior. A small man with vast talent. He’ll choose two or
three cracking points and admit everything else. Short cross-examinations. By
the time the jury retire there’s a good chance they’ll only remember what Henry
chose to demolish.’ Roddy drew deeply on his cigarette. ‘It’ll be an
interesting match. Have you got a ticket?’

‘No,’
said Anselm from afar. The hunt, the chase, going in for the kill, the runners
and riders, hitting the crossbar, caught behind, nose-enders. It all sounded
rather distasteful now: the understandable levity of soldiers on the front
line.

Roddy
looked at his VAT files as one nudged by a conscience often ignored by more
astute experience. ‘I do hope your life of abstinence can be suspended for two
hours. We haven’t had lunch in years.’

‘It
can, Roddy But keep it simple. I’ve a train to catch.’

‘What
on earth are you expecting, old son?’ said the Head of Chambers, his reputation
for moderation sorely offended.

2

A section of the court had
been set aside for survivors and their relatives. Old and young were side by
side. Lucy could not look upon them for long. Here, in this place, at this
time, they had a majesty at once subdued and harrowing. She wondered if there
was anyone else like her who could not take their proper place because of the
tangled weave of history.

With
that thought she found a seat beside a small man in his mid-fifties. He wore an
old cardigan with the stem of a pipe poking out of a side pocket and heavy,
thick-set glasses. He gave a nod of greeting as she sat down. Further along she
noticed Max Nightingale. She had not seen him since Pascal’s death, although he
had left his number with the police should she want to speak to him. She didn’t.
She felt she should, but could not do it. And she was too weary of spirit to
work out whether or not it was fair. Who cared what was fair after what had
happened? Fairness was a word for children, to ensure everyone got a turn.
Life, she had learned, was no playground.

The Defendant chose not to
be present while the submissions on Abuse of Process were advanced on his
behalf. The court was not occupied for long. Mr Justice Pollbrook slashed his
way through anticipated arguments and contrived courtesies with languorous
ease.

‘Let’s
get on, shall we?’ he said lazily, surveying the field of slain propositions.

The
jury were empanelled. The Defendant was summoned. Doors opened and banged. He
emerged flanked by guards, as if he had been drawn up from a hole in the
ground. His appearance astonished Lucy: she had expected to glimpse the shape
of evil but this man was no different from any other pensioner she had seen. A
dark grey suit and a slight stoop produced an effect of respectful
vulnerability. He stood, thumbing the hem of his jacket, while the indictment
was read out.

The
Defendant faced various counts of murder between 1942 and 1943. After each
charge was put to him he entered a plea, his eyes fixed above the judge to the
Crown Court emblem with its dictum: ‘Dieu et mon Droit.’

‘Not
guilty.’ The lingering guttural intonation had not quite been spent.

‘Louder,
please.’

‘Not
guilty.’

‘Thank
you, Mr Schwermann. You may sit down,’ said the judge in scarlet and black,
seated higher than all others among worn leather and panels of oak. From the
Bar below, paper rustled and bewigged heads turned and leaned, whispering among
themselves. Outstretched arms passed folded notes back and forth. The judge
opened a notebook and lifted his pen.

Amid a
silence the like of which Lucy had never heard before, Mr Penshaw rose to his
feet.

‘Ladies
and gentlemen, my name is Penshaw I prosecute in this case, assisted by the
lady behind me, Miss Matthews. The gentleman on my left, nearest to you, is Mr
Bartlett. He represents the Defendant. My first task is to give you a summary
of the case against the accused.’ Mr Penshaw rested his arms upon a small stand
in front of him, referring now and then to a sheaf of notes. ‘You are about to
try an ordinary man charged with an extraordinary crime. The state calls upon
you for one purpose: to decide his innocence or guilt. The Crown says he
devoted the best years of his early manhood to the systematic deportation of
Jews from Paris to Auschwitz. A three-day journey to the East in cattle wagons,
where they were gassed upon arrival or worked to death. You will listen to the
voices of those who survived, They will tell you of the terrible things they
saw, from which you will instinctively wish to turn away But you must not. You
will have to listen and look dispassionately upon the actions of this man,
whose crimes occupy one of the darkest chapters of history. And I’m afraid I
must tell you now it is with the massacre of innocent children that you will be
most concerned.’

Lucy
was lost to her surroundings. No one seemed to breathe or move. There was just
the calm evocation of a time long past, strangely alive to her as though it
were part of her own memory.

‘SS-Unterscharführer
Eduard Schwermann was posted to Paris in July 1940, a month after the city fell
into German hands and the Occupation began. He was twenty-three years of age
and a volunteer. For one of low rank, he was astonishingly close to the highest
echelons of his masters. Based in the Jewish Affairs Service of the Gestapo, he
was an aide to its chief, the personal representative of Adolf Eichmann. The
latter was Head of the Jewish Affairs office at Gestapo headquarters in Berlin,
eventually captured, tried and executed by the State of Israel in 1962. By the
end of the war, this small department had presided over the deportation of
seventy-five thousand, seven hundred Jews from France, most of them to
Auschwitz.’

For
economy the Crown had restricted the evidence against Schwermann to operations
in Paris during 1942. The case would focus on his participation in the
notorious ‘Vél d’Hiv’ round-up (code-named ‘Vent Printanier’, or ‘Spring Wind’),
and the destruction of a smuggling ring whose purpose had been to save some of
the children likely to be arrested.

Mr
Penshaw went on to explain that at 4 a.m. on 16th July 1942, 888 arrest squads
broke into Jewish homes throughout the city. For two days, amid screams and
shouts, young and old were hauled through the streets to collection points.
Coaches, once used for public transport, took them away — either to the
Vélodrome d’Hiver, or to Drancy, an unfinished housing complex on the edge of
the city. Time and again these squads returned to the old Jewish quarter, whose
history stretched back to the Middle Ages and whose winding streets had been a
refuge since the Revolution. News of the round-up spread like fire. Panic set
in. Over a hundred people committed suicide. Paris watched, dumbstruck. No one
could have foreseen this aspect of Occupation — 12,884 people vanished,
including 4051 children.

In due
course, as the Defence formally admitted, families taken in the Vél d’Hiv
round-up were first sent to other internment centres in the Loiret, either
Pithiviers or Beaune—la— Rolande (known as the ‘Loiret Camps’), or Compiègne.
There, the children were separated from their families before being transferred
to Drancy The parents were deported to Auschwitz. The children, all under
sixteen, later made the same journey and suffered the same fate. It was thought
300 or so may have survived.

In the
months prior to ‘Spring Wind’, rumours of a massive round-up spread throughout
Paris. A group of young French students, all roughly Schwermann’s age, decided
to act. Led by Jacques Fougères, a smuggling ring known as The Round Table was formed,
linked to Jewish and other Resistance groups in the city. The aim was to
collect Jewish children from various ‘drop off’ points in Paris and hide them
in monasteries outside the city. From there they would be taken to Switzerland.
It was am heroic and tragic effort. Heroic because they could never have
protected the thousands at risk; tragic because they were all captured in the
days before the round-up began.

So what
bearing did these events have upon the young German officer now brought before
the court in the autumn of his life? He was a member of the team that planned ‘Spring
Wind’; he stalked the rue des Rosiers and the rue des Blancs— Manteaux,
overseeing wave after wave of arrests; he supervised the final departure of
children from Drancy to Auschwitz. And as for The Round Table, he managed to
infiltrate its ranks and secured the arrest of each member, before they could
save any more children from the coming storm. The students were later
transported to Mauthausen concentration camp where they met their deaths. The
Jury would see the personal commendation Schwermann received from Eichmann,
congratulating him on this ‘achievement’.

Mr
Penshaw emphasised the importance of viewing these events in the harsh light of
the times. Hundreds of thousands of Jews had fled Germany during the 1930s,
driven out by violence and the repressive legal machinery of the State. Many
had sought refuge in France. But France fell, and within months of the Germans
setting up their administration in Paris, they moved against the Jews. A census
was ordered; businesses were seized; the first arrests took place in May 1941,
with further round-ups in August and December. Them, on 20th January 1942, at a
villa on the shore of the Wannsee, near Berlin, the Nazi government formally
decided the fate of all European Jews. A ‘Final Solution’ was under way which
required the urgent ‘evacuation’ of Jews ‘to the East’. Two months later, on
27th March 1942, the first trainload of victims left Paris for Auschwitz. The ‘evacuations’
had begun, and the mass killing of Jews deported from France would now get
under way