TWENTY-NINE

The security chain swayed as the door was opened. Guillaume peered through the crack. Duchene watched the subtle transition of his face from curiosity to recognition to realisation. ‘I have a gun on the other side of this door.’

‘I’m here to talk.’

‘Talk?’

‘We don’t have to do it here. We could walk, in the streets.’

Guillaume drew a slow breath. Duchene waited.

‘We can do that. I’ll meet you downstairs.’

Duchene walked down the two flights of stairs from Guillaume’s apartment back onto the street. Around him, Parisians were enjoying the night, strolling beside the Seine, listening to the buskers who’d returned to fill the air with music.

He stepped around the corner of a boarded-up brasserie and adjusted the cut-down belt on his left forearm. It needed to be tight enough to hold his trench knife in place, but also loose enough that the blade would draw freely from its sheath. Grabbing the handle, he practised pulling the blade from the sleeve of his jacket. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it but had no doubt Guillaume was making similar preparations.

Eventually the charcutier arrived downstairs, wearing a heavy coat despite the warm night. Duchene could feel the weight of the knife on his arm. He tried to compensate for it in his movements, limit how quickly Guillaume might notice something was there.

‘You said we’d walk the streets,’ said the charcutier. ‘Where?’

‘Up here, along the boulevard, with the crowds.’

‘In case I try to harm you?’

‘Safer for both of us.’

‘After everything this city has been through, you think decorum has remained?’

Two young American GIs walked past, loose limbed and swaggering, their rifles slung to their backs.

‘Who knows? Perhaps one of them will intervene,’ Duchene said. ‘They see themselves as heroes.’

‘Our cowboy liberators? Perhaps.’

They paused at a marionette theatre. Children, out after ten for a special occasion, were seated on the cobblestones, watching as a knight on horseback fought an ogre. The knight’s shield had recently been repainted with the Cross of Lorraine, the ogre with a swastika on its sizeable gut. The parents smiled and laughed as their children squealed and shouted while the battle raged on.

‘You’ve been killing people, selling them as food,’ Duchene said quietly. He didn’t recognise his own voice. It was tight, wavering. Was it fear or anger?

‘Not people,’ said Guillaume. ‘Nazis.’ He turned his back to the marionette theatre. ‘It was the ring, wasn’t it? I was too bold in wearing it so soon.’

‘It was.’

‘Sinners will have their trinkets.’

‘So you admit they’re crimes.’

‘Before God, of course. But I’d think the law, during war – well, that’s another matter.’

‘You were selling their meat to people.’

‘As I said, not people. Nazis. I sold swine to the swine. Every slice and every terrine. They ate their own and they loved it. They should never have come to Paris.’ Guillaume said and rubbed the back of his hand against his cheek.

‘If you were only feeding them to the Germans, why do you still have a human arm your cellar?’

‘You won’t be satisfied with that answer,’ Guillaume said, reaching into his coat pocket.

Duchene moved his right hand towards the cuff of his left sleeve, touching the handle of the knife. ‘Why?’

‘Because collaborators still walk our streets. The same reason you didn’t turn up on my door with the gendarmes.’ Guillaume took out a packet of cigarettes. ‘You’re a collaborator,’ he continued as he lit one. ‘I’d confused you for Resistance – I thought you were hunting that soldier. But after you turned up on my doorstep, I realised you must have been working for the Germans.’

He held out the cigarettes to Duchene, who brought his hand away from the knife to take one. Guillaume offered him his lighter. Duchene remained still.

‘Really, in front of these children? You think I’m a monster.’ Guillaume flicked the flame into life and held it out.

Duchene lit the cigarette, drew deep and exhaled. ‘You are a monster.’

‘I did what I needed to survive. I couldn’t have them in my city, eating my food without a way of defying them.’

‘You could have joined the Resistance.’

‘I wanted to live. You were the same. You made that same choice.’ Guillaume turned back to face the play and to look out over the river, black under the night sky with golden eddies from reflected street lamps. ‘So what are we going to do? You can’t go to the police, as we’ve discussed. And you’re not going to kill me. You’re not that kind of man.’

Duchene sighed. Smoked some more. Looked for answers on the faces of the parents and their children. ‘Things will never be simple again,’ he said.

‘Were they ever?’

‘It has to stop. That arm – burn it. In front of me.’

‘And then you’ll be satisfied?’

‘I will.’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘Then we’ll both be exposed. I’ll go to the police and risk being branded a collaborator.’

‘Why would they care if I fed our enemies back to them?’

‘They probably wouldn’t. But I can’t see your business surviving if word gets out about the cannibal charcutier.’