Free The Collaborators by Reginald Hill Page B

staff-car which had drawn up alongside.
    Through tear-clouded eyes, Melchior recognized a face. No. Two faces. One, looking at him through the window, was Colonel Fiebelkorn’s. The other, less frightening but more incredible, belonged to a man getting out of the car. He looked at Melchior and smiled as he walked past. It was Émile.
    ‘Monsieur Melchior,’ said Fiebelkorn opening the door. ‘Won’t you join me?’

    For days there were rumours of pitched battles, hundreds killed, thousands arrested. The truth was less dramatic. No deaths, a few injuries, and only one arrest on a serious charge.
    ‘Some poor devil miles away from the demos got jostled by a drunken Boche and jostled back. Now he’s facing the death penalty for violence against the German Army! At least it’ll show people what kind of monsters we’re up against.’
    ‘Isn’t that a big price to pay for an illustration?’ wondered Janine.
    ‘Don’t give me that bourgeois sentimental crap,’ retorted Valois.
    ‘All I mean is a man’s life seems more important to me than anything else.’
    ‘Oh yes? And to get Jean-Paul home safe and sound, how many death-warrants would you be prepared to sign? One? Two? Three? A hundred?’
    ‘I don’t know. That’s different. It would depend…I don’t know!’
    ‘It’s a question of objectives and priorities, isn’t it?’ said Valois bleakly.
    ‘Christian, are you a communist?’ asked Janine.
    ‘Don’t be silly,’ he replied, suddenly gay. ‘Didn’t you know, the communists are Herr Hitler’s friends, bound to him by formal agreement? They’re finding it even harder to be consistent than you are!’
    It was true. This seemed a time of inconsistencies. On December 15th the Marshal had his vice-president, Laval, arrested. Abetz, the German ambassador, immediately went to Vichy to have him released. Meanwhile, at midnight on December 16th, a gun carriage rumbled through the curfew-emptied snow-feathered streets flanked by a mixed escort of French and German soldiers. On the carriage was a coffin containing the body of the Duke of Reichstadt, Napoleon’s only son, exhumed from the imperial vault in Vienna, and returned at Hitler’s own behest to be set at his father’s side in Les Invalides. For a short while Bayreuth came to Paris and under the flaming torches of this Wagnerian stage-setting, all the civic dignitaries, French and German alike, shivered through their walk-on parts. This conciliatory gesture was followed a week later by the execution of the man arrested during the November demonstrations.
    Then it was Christmas.

    ‘You must go to your parents, for the children’s sake, especially, but for your own sake too,’ said Sophie firmly.
    ‘But what about you?’ said Janine. ‘Why should you be left alone at Christmas?’
    Sophie laughed merrily.
    ‘What are you saying? An old Jewess alone at Christmas? What’s Christmas to me, liebchen?’
    ‘All right, I’ll go,’ said Janine. Then she added, guiltily aware that despite her objection she had really made up her mind before Sophie spoke, ‘I was going to anyway.’
    ‘I knew you were,’ said the old lady laughing. ‘You’re a good daughter.’
    ‘You think so?’ said Janine doubtfully. ‘I don’t always feel it. I don’t feel grown-up yet. Adults should be prepared to suffer the consequences of their own decisions, shouldn’t they? In any case, it’s me who has the rows with maman, but it’s papa and the children who suffer the consequences.’
    Sophie shook her head.
    ‘Yes, when I first knew you, that was very much how you were. But you’ve grown a lot since then, child. And you’re still growing.’
    ‘Am I? Have I far to go, Bubbah?’ she asked, half-mocking, half-serious.
    ‘Further than I care to see, it sometimes feels,’ said the old lady, for a moment very frail and distant. But before Janine could express her concern, Sophie laughed and said with her usual energy, ‘And when I said you were a