‘How did it happen?’ Barnes asked quietly.
‘The Germans are trying to say it was an accident – their interpreter told me that – but they killed her. She was standing in a square in Abbeville and some German tanks arrived. Someone leaned out from a window and shot one of their men in the tower of a tank. They fired their machine guns all round the square and my sister was killed. Boches!’ He spat out the word.
‘I’m very sorry to hear that, Jacques.’ Barnes spoke gently. ‘But what are you doing in this part of the world?’
‘After what happened I decided I must come home to tell my father. I live in Lemont – that is near Gravelines. I told you that,’ he ended accusingly. ‘Then I shall kill some Germans.’
‘I’d think about that, if I were you. Killing Germans takes training and skill.’
‘Not with a knife in the back in a dark street.’
He spoke without hysteria, his mouth tight. He means just what he says, Barnes thought, and he’ll do it coldly and clinically. This was the lad who led a gang to put wire across a road, wire which killed a German cyclist.
‘On the other hand,’ Jacques said suddenly, ‘I could come with you.’
‘Thanks, but nothing doing.’
Jacques was peering up at Colburn who leant out of the cab window to listen to the conversation. He frowned and turned to Barnes.
‘Who is that?’
‘A soldier – someone we picked up on the way.’
‘And where is Mr Penn?’
‘He died.’
‘I am so sorry. I liked Mr Penn. He was so jolly, is that the word?’
‘Jolly would do.’
‘And you will not let me come with you?’
‘Sorry. No. You get home to your people at Lemont.’
‘This is the road to Calais as well as to Gravelines. You are going to one of those places – to Calais, perhaps?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘I could drive ahead at least some of the way and warn you of danger.’
‘It’s no good, Jacques. That would put you in a crossfire between us and the Germans.’
‘I don’t mind. No, that won’t make you change your mind.’ He paused. ‘You are travelling on the main road at the moment, the most dangerous road. If you are going to Calais I know another road which turns off this one and it would be much safer, I’m sure. The Germans are less likely to expect someone coming that way. If I take you along it I can leave you before you reach Calais and drive back to Lemont. In fact,’ he added slyly, ‘if I insist on driving ahead of you, you can’t really stop me, can you?’
In the end, reluctantly, Barnes agreed. Before the night was out the lad was going to do something silly, anyway, and he was within a few months of being called up when he would have no choice. If they were very lucky they might get him behind the Allied lines where he would be safer while he got over his sister’s death. The only alternative, in view of his obstinacy, was to throw away the ignition key and leave him stranded, and he wasn’t prepared to do that. He gave Jacques careful instructions – he was always to drive at least one hundred yards ahead of them and if they ran into trouble he was to leave his car at once and run. Climbing back up into the cab, Barnes watched him walk back to the Renault.
‘I still don’t like it,’ he told Colburn, ‘but if he keeps that distance ahead of us it won’t look as though he’s leading the way.’
‘There’s a war on and he looked pretty mature to me. If you’d made him leave us he’d have been up to his back-stabbing tricks and sooner or later they’d get him.’
‘Let’s go, Reynolds,’ said Barnes.
As the transporter moved on through-the night the air of tension returned to the cab and it never went away again. There was no longer much conversation and Barnes found himself holding the machine-pistol in a vice-like grip as his eyes followed Jacques’ tail-light. He had already made up his mind that as soon as Jacques put them on the side road the lad would have to leave them and go home to Lemont. Telling Colburn to keep a close eye on the tail-light, he took out his map folded to the Pas de Calais area and found Lemont, a dot little more than a large village close to Gravelines, the town east-north-east of Calais. Both places were on the waterline, a system of canals with sluice gates to control the flow. Closing the map, he lowered his window and looked to the east where the flashes now rivalled the moonlight as they illuminated the sky, but it was no longer the flashes alone which told him they were moving very close to the battle area, for now he could hear in the distance the thump of big guns. He wiped more sweat off his forehead and dried his hands on his trousers. The rising sense of tension had almost become a physical presence inside the cab, something they could all feel. Was it simply the growing sound of the guns or was it also the realization that with every second which passed, with every yard they moved forward, they drew closer to the inevitable encounter with the Germans? Five more minutes passed, five minutes of loaded silence, and then the crisis broke with alarming suddenness.
They had followed Jacques round a sharp corner and immediately Reynolds was jamming on the brakes, the huge vehicle still trying to move forward against the restraining pressure. The Renault was stationary perhaps seventy yards ahead, and no farther than fifty yards beyond the stopped car lights were strung across the road. One of the lights, a red lamp, moved from side to side.
‘Road-block,’ said Barnes tersely.
Colburn stirred beside him. ‘Hadn’t we better move up closer to Jacques?’
‘No, we stay here. Reynolds, switch off the headlights but leave the side ones on – we may have a visitor in a minute. And turn off the motor -I want to hear what’s going on – but get ready to start it again as soon as I tell you.’
Leaning out of the window, he turned his head and listened. The big guns had obligingly paused with their cannonade and he heard a voice, a staccato voice probably speaking in German. Then Jacques began to turn the car round in the road. He had only commenced the operation when a burst of machine-pistol fire shattered the night. The car stopped in mid-turn and ran back into the ditch, its front wheels still on the road. Barnes had his head poked out of the window when he heard another burst. As it broke off he detected a faint noise and looked up the road but it was difficult to see anything between the transporter and the Renault, whose lights were now beamed across the road. Colburn grasped Barnes by the arm.
‘For God’s sake…’
‘Quiet! I think he’s almost here.’
The running footsteps were very close and as Barnes jumped down into the road Jacques appeared, his breathing laboured, his expression bleak. He spoke rapidly.
Tm all right. They opened fire when I wouldn’t drive up to them. As far as I could see there’s only three or four of them but they’ve got a pole across the road ’
‘Any sign of a field gun? A gun with a shield and a big barrel?’
‘No, but there was one man crouched by the roadside behind a sort of rifle on legs.’
‘Anti-tank rifle. Which side is he on?’
‘The left as you approach them. I saw a motor-cycle and side-car behind the rifle…’
‘Anyone in it?’
‘No, but there are three more men behind the barrier – it was one of them that fired at me. I managed to get out of the car on this side.’
‘Get up here quick.’ Barnes was unfastening one corner of the tarpaulin and he held it while Jacques scrambled up on to the transporter deck. ‘Get on to the tank behind the cab and lie flat on the engine covers – the turret should shield you from any bullets that may be flying about.’
‘We’re going through it?’ asked Jacques.
‘Yes, so keep your head down.’
Re-fastening the tarpaulin, he climbed back into the cab and gave the order to move. He held the muzzle of his machine-pistol well below windscreen level and Colburn extracted his own pistol from under the seat. The transporter began to move forward, headlights blazing again, while inside the cab three men gazed fixedly ahead.