Hands of the Traitor (3 page)

She seemed taken aback by the
bluntness of his question and took her time before replying. "I
have what you English call ... an understanding. Is that
it?"

So this was the catch. He knew
there would be one. But he laughed and put his glass beside hers.
"An understanding? Now
that's
an old fashioned expression."

"My English teacher was old too, so
now I read the English books to learn everyday English. Fiction ...
Romances."

Had she paused and then emphasized the
word romances deliberately? Perhaps not.

"Not just medical books then?"

"Only for my work. And why do you buy
them, Matt, if you are a private investigator?"

"I can't afford to
buy
them. I wanted to
look something up. Can I ask you a medical question?"

"Not a personal one, I
hope."

He loved her. "Everyone says my
grandfather lost his marbles -- went mad -- at the end of the war.
Now it's all started again. Can anyone still get screaming
nightmares after sixty years?"

"Can something be so terrible
that the scars in the mind they never heal?
Oui
, I think it could be so. You make it
sound horrible."

"It
is
horrible. Something blew my granddad's
brain in northern France. He used to talk to me about it, but I
don't know if he was telling the truth. The doctors aren't
bothering to treat him any more because they say they can't find a
physical cause. Quite honestly I'm worried sick."

"You are sick?" She leaned forward and
brushed his cheek with the back of her hand.

"It's an expression." He waited for
Zoé to touch him again but she stayed in her seat. He swallowed a
mouthful of beer. "They weren't looking after him properly at the
nursing home. No one visited, except me." He might as well tell Zoé
everything. "They've moved him to a mental hospital because they
say he's a danger to others. My family has done nothing to help him
over the years, and I want to make sure he gets the right treatment
at last."

Zoé looked around the bar which had
suddenly grown noisier as the Saturday lunchtime regulars crowded
in. "It is very loud in here. You would like me to
help?"

Matt raised his voice to be heard
above the shouting and the piped music. "I don't think they'd let
you near him. But thanks. It's just good to be able to talk to
someone who understands." Then he realized that Zoé Champanelle was
offering to spend more time with him. "I could take you to see
him."

He groaned inwardly as he
realized what he'd said.
Come and meet my grandfather
--
he's insane.
As a chat-up line it had to equal an
invite to a public execution. He could just as easily have
suggested an uncomplicated evening in town. He'd only mentioned his
grandfather in the first place to explain why he was looking at
medical books, to let her know that he wasn't a sick weirdo --
which she probably now thought he was. It hadn't been a serious
invitation. He blamed the scent coming from Zoé.

To his surprise she smiled, showing an
attractive if somewhat wide mouth. "I think perhaps you have the
problems in your life. If I went with you I could not give a
medical opinion."

"Just the opinion of a
friend."

The smile went instantly at the word
friend. She shook her head. "I am a nurse, and that is
all."

He'd blown it. A trip to the local
asylum was never going to win a fair maiden's heart, even though
Zoé's hair was dark brown and anything but fair. He'd been given a
chance to start life again, and had got everything wrong from the
word go.

"Yes, I will go with you."

He stared in amazement. "There's a
problem. They won't let me see my grandfather till he's settled
down." Always there were problems. There had to be a way to stay in
contact with Zoé over the next few days. "We could go to the cinema
this evening. Or back to my place now for a meal. I know how to
open the freezer and put food in the microwave."

"
Non
." She sounded certain. Then she smiled. "It is
kind of you, Matt. Perhaps we could go somewhere for a
pizza?"

"I know a good Italian restaurant." He
looked at his watch. "We could go straight there. The food here is
awful."

"And I will pay half."

"No you won't."

"Please, I would like to."

It was probably a well-meaning offer,
but he didn't intend to take Zoé up on it. "You can pay your share
next time." Next time? He hadn't meant it to sound as though meals
were to be a permanent fixture, but Zoé nodded and smiled in
response.

"
D'accord
."

No problem there then. He finished his
beer. "Drink up and we'll go."

"And you can tell me what happened to
your grandfather in France."

*

Northern France
-- Seven days later
-- Saturday

HENK VAN
HETEREN had what he called a
significant collection of military relics from both World Wars. The
collection had once been on exhibition in Antwerp, making his name
a legend around the Dutch metal detecting clubs. Members sometimes
joked that he could home in on wartime remains with his detector
switched off. He didn't laugh at observations like this because it
wasn't amusing. He had plenty of admirers, but very few friends who
wanted to come with him on field trips. Anyway, he preferred
working alone.

As far as Henk was concerned, spectators
were a nuisance. They were fools who stood in the way, gaping at
whatever came up from the bottom of the holes he dug with his
trowel -- or with his very sharp knife.

Henk Van Heteren wanted to work
unaccompanied and unwatched. Today his metal detector had failed to
give a decent signal for the past ten minutes; just the occasional
squawk of unwanted trash. Yet within an hour of arriving on this
site he'd received a small, clean signal
-- before the fools gathered. The
hand had been little more than a skeleton, with a signet ring on
the middle finger. A right hand. He'd wiped the dirt from it with
his sleeve and revealed a large gold ring engraved with two ornate
letters and a single eye. A green gemstone filled the eye. Slipping
the ring into the bag, he'd dropped the disintegrating hand back
into the hole. Only metal remains were of interest.

The extension to the French
out-of-town shopping mall promised some exciting finds. The Germans
had occupied this area near Calais in both World Wars. There were
pieces of metal in the ground, definitely military, and mostly
World War Two. Yesterday the construction team had found a small
aluminum panel with Nazi markings.

Germans had built steel launch ramps for
their flying bombs on sites like this in the Calais area of
northern France. Pieces of ferrous scrap metal infested the ground,
and only his long experience with the detector made it possible to
avoid the spurious signals that intruded every time he swung the
search head. Steel was nothing but a curse. He had to move slowly,
and he had to move carefully.

In a few weeks the foundations for a
shopping mall would cover this piece of land. If there were Nazi
relics under the soil he might have to call the club down for a
mass search.

Mass searches weren't so
good
,
because mass searches involved people.

Henk looked warily at the
crowds visiting the new supermarket for their Saturday shopping.
The car park overlooked this area of ground marked out by ancient
drainage ditches. The site was abandoned for the weekend.
Le
week-end
, as
they said locally. He almost smiled as he recalled this French use
of English, and continued to move slowly over the dry grass,
wearing his headphones and keeping the white search head of the
detector close to the ground. People paused to stare as they pushed
their laden trolleys of groceries back to their cars. Several
families came down the slope to watch as he prepared to dig another
small hole. What did they think he was looking for -- Captain
Kidd's bloody treasure?

"Go home, there's nothing to
see!"

The stupid children stood excitedly,
their silly chatter attracting a group of friends. Before long a
swarm of people descended on the site. Half-witted fathers who'd
come to collect their kids now stayed to watch. There had been
nothing interesting in the last five holes, but everyone stood
open-mouthed as they waited for the signal that heralded the crock
of gold.

Henk sighed. He needed to concentrate
on the meter reading on the control box, on the crispness of the
sound in the headphones, on the area over which the signal came.
Every year he saved himself hundreds of hours of wasted digging by
carefully analyzing the signals. He knew of no one else who could
find small objects on this junk infested site.

He turned his back on the
spectators in the hope they'd lose interest. The day was hot and
tempers were frayed. Two children crouched down and their small
hands darted into the hole just as he unearthed a circle of shiny
metal. One kid nearly got his hand cut by the knife. Henk pushed
him out of the way
-- rather roughly -- but only because he was in
danger.

The boy fell backwards and hit his head on
the ground. He began to scream, and his father was standing just
behind.

The argument that followed made Henk
irritable. The French father seemed unable to understand that a
metal circle might be the end of a live shell case. Ammunition
hidden in the ground for a long time could be dangerous, but Henk
reckoned he knew how to deal with it.

He didn't know how to deal with stupid
parents.

The father obviously believed he knew
how to deal with treasure hunters who pushed his son around. He
lashed out with his foot. Henk stood up quickly and towered above
the man. The father swore a torrent of abuse and tried to pull his
son back towards the car park.

His son refused to go.
"
C'est de
l'or!
" he
shouted, wrenching himself free.

Henk knew the excited kid was right:
the metal circle was undoubtedly gold. Brass went green after a
couple of years in the ground. The boy's cry was like the bugle
horn of the huntsman. Henk watched helplessly as the bystanders
surged forward for a sight of the treasure. More families hurried
down the slope from the car park to see what all the excitement was
about.

"It's gold! Nazi gold!"

There seemed to be plenty of
self-styled military experts in the crowd ready to pass on the good
news to their excited neighbors. Henk hated them all as he stood
with his large boot over the hole, his pulse racing. Nazi
gold
-- it
just might be. It wasn't a coin. For all the world it looked like
the end of a gold cartridge case.

"Go away!
Allez vous
en!
" He
wasn't going to hide his anger.

The gathering crowd behaved as though
they could almost smell the treasure. Gold bars with the Nazi
eagle. At least twenty of them; some said fifty. The word got round
quickly.

The rumors of Nazi treasure seemed to
expand with every telling, and now everyone wanted to look into the
small hole. Henk kept his boot firmly across the top.

"Show us the gold," someone at the
back yelled in exasperation while Henk continued to cover the spot
where he'd first glimpsed the shining circle.

But he knew he had no alternative.
Slowly he bent down and scratched the earth away with his knife. He
resented doing this under the gaze of a crowd of shoppers, but if
he walked away someone else would quickly take over the digging. He
now hoped the object would be brass. Perhaps in some strange way it
had managed to keep its polish.

"It is gold!" The boy he'd
pushed aside had wriggled back to the front. "
Regardez
,
monsieur
! Elle est une
bougie
, a
candle!"

The kid was nothing but a
menace.

Henk placed the small cylindrical
object on the grass beside the hole. He'd now found two gold items
on this site.

He took the signet ring from his
pocket to examine it again. The initials had no obvious Nazi
connection, nor did the green eye. It was a quality ring. An
officer's perhaps. For a moment he was oblivious to the people
pushing all around. Then he saw the gold cylinder disappear from
beside his right foot. The boy held it up for everyone to see, then
began to twist the top.

As Henk reached over to grab it, he
sniffed. Something smelt disgusting, like tom-cats. He had his
knife in his hand as he reached forward, lashing out at the
bewildered boy. The wretched French kid wasn't going to get away
with it.

In panic the boy threw the cylinder to
the ground as the crowd surged forward. Henk watched a swarm of
Frenchmen come towards him, their feet trampling the object into
the soft earth. He lunged at them with his knife.