The Collaborators by Reginald Hill Page A

her.
    He said, ‘I don’t know. The weather, it’s so awful…’
    ‘Damn the weather! Please, please, it won’t be the same without you.’
    ‘I’ll see,’ he said. ‘I won’t promise but I’ll see.’
    Shortly afterwards they were cut off.
    The next morning, spring finally exploded with all the violence of energy too long restrained. On the Friday afternoon, he caught the train to Vichy.
    At the crossing point into the Free Zone, they were all ordered out to have their papers checked. Valois had had no difficulty in getting an Ausweis. When your father was a Vichy deputy and you were a respectable civil servant, you were regarded as quite safe, he thought moodily.
    Not everyone was as lucky. Somewhere along the platform an argument had broken out. Voices were raised, German and French. Suddenly a middle-aged man in a dark business suit broke away from a group of German soldiers, ran a little way down the platform, then scrambled beneath the train.
    Valois jumped into the nearest carriage to look out of the further window. The man was on his feet again, running across the tracks. He was no athlete and he was already labouring. A voice cried, ‘Halt!’ He kept going. A gun rattled twice. He flung up his arms and fell.
    He wasn’t dead, but hit in the leg. Two soldiers ran up to him and pulled him upright. He screamed every time his injured leg touched the ground as he half-hopped and was half-dragged the length of the train to bring him back round to the platform.
    Valois turned furiously from the window and made for the platform door. There was a man sitting in the compartment who must have got back in after him.
    He said, ‘I shouldn’t bother.’
    Valois paused, realizing he recognized the man.
    ‘I’m sorry? It’s Maître Delaplanche, isn’t it?’
    ‘You recognize me?’
    The lawyer’s face, which was the living proof of his Breton peasant ancestry, screwed up in mock alarm.
    ‘You’re often in the papers, and I attended several meetings you spoke at when I was a student.’
    ‘Did you? Ah yes. I seem to recall you now.’ Face screwed up again in an effort of recollection as unconvincing as his alarm. ‘Valois, isn’t it? Christian Valois. Of course. I knew your father when he practised, before politics took him over.’
    Delaplanche was well known in legal circles as a pleader of underdog causes. Whenever an individual challenged the State, his opinion if not his counsel would be sought. He had spoken on a variety of socialist platforms but always refused to put the weight of his reputation behind any programme except in his own words, ‘the quest for justice’.
    ‘Nice to meet you,’ said Valois. ‘Excuse me.’
    ‘I shouldn’t bother,’ repeated the lawyer as Valois opened the door on to the platform. ‘I presume you’re going to make a fuss about the chap they’ve just shot? I’ll tell you his story. His papers were obviously forged. He made a run for it and got shot. He’ll turn out to be a blackmarketeer, or an unregistered Jew, or perhaps even an enemy agent. All you’ll do is draw attention to yourself and get either yourself or, worse still, the whole train delayed here a lot longer.’
    ‘That’s bloody cynical!’ snapped Valois. ‘I thought you were famous for fighting the underdog’s battles.’
    ‘Against the law, not against an army,’ said Delaplanche. ‘Against an army, all the underdog armed with the law does is get fucked!’
    He smiled with the complacency of one who was famous for his earthy courtroom language. On the platform German voices were commanding the passengers back on to the train. Delaplanche picked up a newspaper and began reading it. Feeling defeated, Valois stepped down on to the platform but only to return to his own compartment.
    His gloom lasted till the train pulled into the station at Vichy, but lifted at the sight of his sister, long black hair streaming behind her, running down the platform to greet him.
    They embraced. Since he