The Statement Read online

  Again he saw the stranger coming towards him lifting the briefcase, taking out the revolver. If I had let my guard down after all these years, if I had lost that sense of being followed? But God be thanked, He protected me today, as He has always protected me in the past. I must give thanks tonight at Devotions. But no, I can’t stay for Devotions. Some vineyard worker passing above that ravine will see the car. And the police will come here, for this road leads only to the abbey. Get up. Pack.

  But when he had disassembled the plastic wardrobe and repacked his clothes, again he felt light-headed and unwell. He went down the winding steps of the turret and into the refectory. Some of the lay brothers were peeling potatoes. He asked for help and a Brother Rafael, a strong-looking fellow, came up with him and helped him with the suitcases. The third suitcase contained his collections and, as the lock was old, he thought it prudent to carry that one down himself. If it were to fall open there were the flags and other German regalia including some valuable items, all of it very saleable memorabilia. He did a small trade in such things.

  It was after five o’clock when the little Peugeot was finally loaded and ready to depart. Devotions were at six and, as he knew, the Abbot would come down into the main cloister between five-thirty and six to walk and say his office. So at five-twenty he went up to the Abbot’s study and knocked on the door. A voice called out, ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s Pierre, Father Abbot. Could I have a word. Just for a moment?’

  ‘Come in. Come in.’

  The Abbot’s study was a large bare room, dominated by a rough wooden desk on which sat two teak trays, overflowing with correspondence. Behind the desk, in a high-backed chair like a church pew, Dom Vladimir Gorchakov, tall, bearded, austere, a heavy iron crucifix stuck like a dagger in his belt. ‘Well, Pierre, what is it?’

  ‘I just came to thank you, Father Abbot. Once again I’ve presumed on your hospitality. However, I’m leaving this evening. I think it’s time to move on.’

  ‘This evening?’ The Abbot registered surprise by a theatrical raising of his eyebrows. ‘That’s rather sudden, isn’t it? Any special reason?’

  It was best to say nothing. Invent an excuse.

  ‘I’ve just been advised that a new juge d’instruction has been given my dossier and is complaining that the police have not been sufficiently diligent in their search. I feel that from now on it would be wise to move every week or two.’

  ‘There have been other juges d’instruction,’ the Abbot said. ‘I’m sure you will survive this one. Although, what you tell me does clear up a point. It’s something I didn’t want to worry you with. But, the fact is, I’ve been informed that, because of this new and intense media interest in your case, the Cardinal Primate in Lyon is starting his own investigation. He’s set up a commission of laymen – historians – to find out why so many of us have supported your cause over the years. So I may shortly be receiving enquiries about your visits.’

  ‘Then it’s better that I leave now?’

  ‘Perhaps. But don’t forget you’re always welcome here.’

  ‘Thank you, Father Abbot. The Cardinal Primate – Cardinal Delavigne – he’s not one of us, is he?’

  ‘Indeed.’ The Abbot rose, as if to terminate the conversation. ‘Safe journey, then. And God speed.’

  ‘Thank you, Father Abbot. Thank you for everything.’

  He wanted to be well on the road before dark. His night vision was not good and spectacles no longer seemed to help. As a young man he had been too vain to put them on, especially when in uniform. Now, he believed he was paying the price for that youthful vanity. Of course, in those days he had a role to keep up. He was a young standard bearer in the New Order the Maréchal spoke of, one of those who, in a France destroyed by its own weakness, saw the mountain to be climbed, the slopes to be conquered. And it was normal for him to feel vain: women found him handsome. Nicole had told him his eyes were ‘piercing blue’. His hair was blond, his skin white and smooth. In the years he worked in liaison with Gestapo Commander Knab, Knab said his looks were ‘pure Aryan’, the ultimate compliment in Knab’s view. And, always, he had seemed younger than his years. ‘A good-looking altar boy’, was how that Belgian bitch described him to the Paris Sûreté. That was in ’53, when he was thirty-four years old.

  He remembered, though, that spectacles came in useful in the Paris years. He and Jacquot wore tinted glasses each time they went out on a job. Jacquot said they were a sort of mask, he said people remembered only the tinted glasses when they tried to describe you afterwards. And it was true. He still kept a pair of tinted glasses in his car and now, as the monastery gates were pulled wide and the evening sun shone straight into his windscreen, he drove out, then reached into the glove compartment to find them. They were lying under the bloodstained rubber gloves. The gloves must be washed: the passport and the sheet of paper he would show to the Commissaire. The Commissaire was an expert on these groups.

  It was fifty odd kilometres to Avignon, an easy drive. The road leading down from the monastery was empty of traffic. When he came to the turn in the road and the ravine, he drove very slowly but did not stop. There could be police or an ambulance down there. Because he did not stop, he was unable to see if the wreck had been discovered.

  When he reached the main road he turned in the direction of Avignon. At the first garage he pulled in and asked if there was a pay telephone. He was in luck. While they filled the Peugeot’s tank he went into the phone booth and dialled the Avignon number.

  A woman’s voice. Madame Vionnet? ‘Who shall I say is calling?’

  ‘Just say Monsieur Pierre. Thank you, Madame.’

  He was not expected. It had been laid down long ago that he would make contact only in a case of emergency.

  After a long delay he heard footsteps on an uncarpeted floor.

  ‘Hello, yes?’

  ‘It’s Monsieur Pierre, sir. I’m in the area. I was wondering if I could drop in this evening and show you a Belgian Congo issue, 1875, Congo Free State. The portrait is of King Leopold II. They’re beautiful stamps, sir. Would you be interested?’

  The Commissaire seemed irritated. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’ve just left Salon, sir.’

  There was a pause. Then: ‘I’m just about to have dinner. Well, all right. I could see you for a few minutes at, say, nine o’clock.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Nine o’clock meant driving in the dark. Shit! I must find a room somewhere close to his place, some tourist motel. I can use my Pouliot identity card if they ask to see one. They won’t. They don’t check on you nowadays, the way they used to. Still, staying in a hotel is never wise.

  He arrived in Avignon shortly after seven. It was still light. He drove first to the Avenue Delambre, passing the Commissaire’s modest pink stucco villa, one street away from a big Leclerc supermarket in an anonymous suburb, just outside the medieval walls of the city. He had last been there, when? Eight years ago? In the street next to the supermarket he saw what he wanted, a motel on the edge of a roundabout. He went in and reserved a room. They did not ask him to fill up a form. He left a suitcase in the room then drove back up the Avenue Delambre. In the Leclerc supermarket there was a snack bar. He ordered saucisses, frites and a beer. He would have preferred the steak-pommes frites, the special of the day, but his dental bridge was loose again. It was endless the trouble his teeth had given him, not only in pain and discomfort, but also because he had to be careful about dental records. If you have no official identity you get no health benefits. It was only in the past few years, through the good offices of Dom Adelbert at Montélimar, that he had been at last getting proper dental treatment.

  In the snack bar when he picked up his plate of food, he chose, as usual, to sit with his back to the passersby. Halfway through the meal, he felt sick and felt that he was going to throw up. It had been too much for one day. Not only the Jew and the excitement but then the other bad news. If I’d not gone in to see the Abbot
this afternoon, would he have told me about this new ecclesiastical inquiry? Maybe not. Because now, no doubt about it, I’m an embarrassment, even to those who know true right from wrong. With this inquiry starting, more doors will close. Cardinal Delavigne is part of the post-war Church, Gaullist, resistant, reformist. And no one can stop him, he’s the Primat des Gaules.

  The Commissaire would expect him to be on time. He left the meal half eaten, got into the car and drove along Avenue Delambre. He parked one street away from Number 129. It was already dark. He waited until his watch said nine, exactly nine, then got out, locked the car and walked up the little pathway that led to the front door. A dog began to bark. He was afraid of dogs. He looked around, hoping the dog was shut up inside.

  When he rang the doorbell, someone called out to the dog. The barking stopped. The door was opened by Madame Vionnet. He saw that she did not remember him. Nor would he have known her, this white-haired old woman in running shoes and a purple track suit, she who had once sat behind a desk in the Commissaire’s private office, twisting her long legs into a lock, showing the tops of her stockings, smiling like a whore.

  ‘I have an appointment,’ he said. ‘Monsieur Pierre.’

  There was no sign of the dog. It must be in the back of the house. When he entered the hall, he had to squeeze past some twenty cardboard cartons of wine, stacked almost to the ceiling. He saw the trademark on the boxes: Caves des Saussaies. Côtes du Ventoux. What did a top Parisian flic do in his years of retirement? The Commissaire had bought a small vineyard near Vaison la Romaine. The joke was in the trademark. Rue des Saussaies. Where they beat the shit out of me.

  The whitehaired woman showed him into a small front parlour, also encumbered by cartons of wine. The dog barked again and he heard the Commissaire’s voice. ‘Balzar!’ The barking stopped. The Commissaire came into the parlour, picking his teeth with a wooden toothpick. He had aged in these past seven years. In his green cardigan and blue corduroys, his skin weathered by the sun and burned to a dark reddish colour, his fingernails black as a peasant’s, he could well be the humble winegrower of this latest deception. Only his eyes remained unchanged. They did not blink.

  ‘You were in Salon? Did you receive your envelope?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘Something wrong, then?’

  By his tone of voice, the Commissaire made it clear that this visit was not welcome.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He had rehearsed his story in the car as he drove up tonight and now he told it succinctly. When he had finished, he took out the assassin’s passport and the sheet of paper. The Commissaire, who had been standing until then, gestured to him to sit, and sat himself, switching on a table lamp to examine the passport.

  ‘It seems genuine,’ he said. ‘But I’ll keep it and make a proper check. You’re a lucky man. You might have been at the bottom of that ravine this evening.’

  ‘Not lucky, sir. I first spotted him yesterday afternoon when I came out of a patisserie.’

  The Commissaire put the passport into the hip pocket of his overalls. ‘So, what do you make of this, Monsieur Pierre?’

  He knew that when the Commmissaire addressed him as Monsieur, he intended no politeness. The title was a code name. The Commissaire’s tone was contemptuous.

  ‘That’s what worries me, sir. Whoever this group is, they knew I would be in Salon. They knew I would be in the Montana. They may even have known that I was waiting to pick up that envelope. What do you make of it, sir?’

  ‘I don’t know this group,’ the Commissaire said. ‘They’re not the usual. They may be a Jewish student group, or relatives of the Dombey people. I’ll look into it.’

  ‘But how would they know about the envelope? No one knows that, not even my friends in the Church.’

  The Commissaire discarded his toothpick, placing it delicately in an ashtray. ‘By the way, you were staying at St Cros, were you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you told them you were leaving this evening. Did you tell them what happened?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. This is something that shouldn’t be talked of outside this room.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So, what are your plans now? Where will you stay?’

  ‘I think, Aix, sir.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I’m sorry. It was just a manner of speaking. I’m going to spend a couple of weeks in the Prieuré St Christophe, outside Aix.’

  ‘You are expected?’

  ‘No, but I’m always welcome there. The Prior is a friend of the Chevaliers.’

  ‘Write down the address. And the telephone number, if you have it.’

  The Commissaire took a ruled exercise book from a drawer in a side table. ‘The Chevaliers,’ he said. ‘Good. From now on, as you know, you’ll have to be doubly careful. You’re losing friends.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And after Aix?’

  ‘I’ll move on to Villefranche, sir. And then to Nice. There, I have no doubt of my welcome.’

  ‘Friends of the ex-Archbishop of Dakar?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  At that moment, Madame Vionnet put her head around the door. ‘Did you want coffee, Henri?’

  ‘In a moment,’ the Commissaire said. ‘My guest is leaving now.’

  He stood up. Monsieur Pierre stood also. The Commissaire led him out into the crowded hallway. Monsieur Pierre pointed to the wine cartons.

  ‘How was the vendanges, sir?’

  ‘Good. Bit crowded in here at the moment. I’m shipping these cases out tomorrow.’

  ‘Caves des Saussaies,’ Monsieur Pierre said and smiled. ‘I remember.’

  The Commissaire opened the front door and turned his unblinking eyes on his visitor. ‘Of course you do. You did a lot of singing there.’

  Monsieur Pierre did not answer.

  ‘Good-night,’ the Commissaire said.

  ‘Good-night, sir.’

  As the Commissaire closed him out into the darkness he looked back and saw Madame Vionnet at the window of the front parlour, pulling down the blind. He waved to her. She gave him a small polite wave in return. Her name is Rosa. Does she remember me? Was that why she asked about the coffee?

  He had kissed her once. In that selfsame Rue des Saussaies. It was on the day she told him that he could go and that no one would interfere. The Commissaire and his two assistants were out to lunch. A police orderly had brought him from his cell, delivering him to the Commissaire’s office for a further interrogation. The orderly then, surprisingly, left him alone in the office with the Commissaire’s sexy secretary, she who later became Madame Vionnet. She had taken dictation at some of the previous interrogations. He had heard the flics call her Rosa. Rosa it was who told him the Commissaire was out to lunch, then settled back at her desk, locking her long legs in a sexy pose, smiling at him, rearranging a small bowl of flowers on her desk. He had been arrested six weeks earlier. Denis, who had been arrested some days before him, had given him to the police. They had come for him, finding him in a maid’s room in the Rue Monge, folding and unfolding counterfeit banknotes to make them seem used.

  ‘Condemned to death in absentia, former Chief of the Second Section in Marseille, you know what’s going to happen,’ Commissaire Vionnet had said. ‘You’ll be transferred back to Marseille and, about three months from now, you’ll be taken out and shot. Well, what else can you expect? That’s the way things are today.’

  What choice did he have? First they beat the shit out of you. Then the announcement about Marseille. And then the question, ‘Tell me. What do you know about the clergy’s political activities at present?’ He had to tell them something and it had to add up. He had named names, some of those who had hidden him, some who belonged to the MAC. But Commissaire Vionnet wanted more.

  ‘Abbé Feren, you knew him?’

  ‘Of course. He was the almoner of the milice.’

  ‘But after the Liberation, when he went into hiding you m
et him, didn’t you? He hid you?’

  He had to say yes. It sounded as if they had arrested the Abbé. They had been looking for him ever since his condemnation in absentia.

  The Commissaire was blunt. ‘It will be a great help for your case if you can tell us where we might find him.’

  Of course it was a sin to tell, it was a sin he would never forgive himself for committing. He wasn’t sure where the Abbé was, but he made a guess. It pleased the Commissaire. It was an accurate guess. The Abbé was arrested a week later in Sanary. He was sentenced to seven years. Of course, seven years was only seven years. He was supposed to be living in Italy now.

  Yes, there was no doubt about it: the police found him a co-operative witness. Commissaire Vionnet was pleased, more than pleased. Other questions came up. Discreetly. Only when he and the Commissaire were alone. A question about deportation orders signed by someone very high up in the préfecture in Paris. Orders he had helped to carry out. He had told the truth. What had he to lose?

  The Commmissaire said nothing. He offered no hope. But his manner changed. And then, two days before he was due to be transferred to Marseille, he was brought up from his cell and taken to the Commissaire’s office at an hour when everyone was out to lunch. Left alone with the Commissaire’s secretary, who called him a beau mec and locked her legs in that sexy way. Smiling, showing her bare thighs. She winked at him. She opened a drawer and took out a belt and a pair of shoelaces, things they took away from you when they brought you in. ‘Fix yourself, so you won’t look like a prisoner.’ He got the point. When he had laced up his shoes she told him, ‘Wave to the guards. You’re going to lunch. Now, give me a kiss goodbye.’

  She wanted to be kissed, so he had kissed her. He walked out of the office, along the corridor, down the staircase and out into the yard, passing the guard house, taking care to wave to the guards, as she had told him. He was wearing a clean shirt, a belt around his trousers and there were laces in his shoes. He looked like an employee. And then, a moment later, he was walking down the Avenue Marigny, a free man. And what did he do? He went straight into the nearest church and, on his knees, thanked God for his deliverance. God had helped him once again. God who loved him, who understood him, who protected him from his enemies.