"Yes, back to the boat," Harry said, his eyes on the open front door, where a dead SOL guy was doing double duty as a doorstop.
"No, to the French Army supply depot," I corrected.
"Billy, I've taken a bullet in the leg on this little expedition of yours, and now it's time to get back. I need to have this taken care of."
"Well, sir," Rodney said carefully, "it was an in and out. Keep the flies off of it, change that bandage tonight, and you'll be just fine."
Harry didn't look pleased. He frowned and turned to check the rear door. I reached into the cash drawer and counted out the francs into three equal piles. I gave one each to the Commandos and the third to Banville as he came in from checking the kitchen.
"No use in letting collaborators and smugglers keep their profits, boys. Sorry, Harry, but officers aren't supposed to loot."
"No one is supposed to loot," Harry answered, but he didn't say anything when Banville rolled his francs into a wad and stuffed it into his pocket. The Reichsmarks went into my pocket, but not as loot, since I didn't plan on being anywhere where they'd be valid currency in the near future. Just souvenirs.
"Let's go upstairs," I suggested, and took the narrow stairway from a little nook to the right of the bar, my paid assistants following me while Harry stayed below on guard, a sour look on his face. There was something bothering him, and it wasn't having been shot. I wondered about what had happened to him, and his boat, back in England. I didn't know why he was here, but I knew he wasn't in the Mediterranean for his health. Something had brought him-or chased him-here. But that was a problem for another day.
The landing on the second floor was a big room, a loft with bare wooden beams at angles on either side, forming part of the roofline. There were open windows under the beams, letting a breeze flow through and displaying a view of the rooftops of the mostly single- story buildings below. Orange tiles, rounded white stucco, and tarpaper mingled together in a combination of European, North African, and shantytown architecture.
Against the far wall was a door, and I could tell there was a small room tucked away behind an interior wall. We spread out, walking through the large room, shuffling aside crumpled newspapers with our feet. Other than scattered papers and a few empty cardboard boxes, the space was empty. It had the feel of a place that had been cleared out. The papers and boxes weren't stacked and covered in dust. They looked as if recently they had been tossed aside by someone in a hurry. There were ground-out cigarette butts on the hardwood floor, the paper still white, the ash smudged across the floorboards. My guess was, this is where they had kept the drugs and other stolen supplies. When they heard about the commandos landing at the dock they'd started clearing out, and we'd hurried them along when we showed up.
But what had Diana been doing here? This whole place was a big waste of time so far as I was concerned if there was nothing to tell us why Diana had been here. As I approached the door to the small room I was itching to blow this joint. I turned the doorknob and kicked it open, standing back in case someone was hiding inside. It was empty. The door slammed against the wall and bounced back, almost shut, startling me as I started to enter the room. Peeling paint the color of pea soup cracked and flaked off on my palm as I held the door open. It was a narrow, long room, created by throwing up a wall across the end of the loft as cheaply as possible. The interior wall wasn't finished off, and sharp points of nails showed where they had broken through the thin wood slats. Through an open double window the warm breeze blew the dirty, stained curtains up from the floor, where they fluttered lazily for a second before falling flat, waiting for the next little gust to start. Always moving, going nowhere.
There was a table to the right, and a mattress on the floor to the left. I went to the table first, and pushed aside a plate of stale bread, black olives dripping in green oil, and a piece of hard, yellowed cheese. This disturbed a couple of fat, slow moving flies at their feast and they halfheartedly lifted off to buzz my face. An open bottle of brandy stood on the desk and a couple of empties had rolled into a corner of the floor. I pushed around a stack of newspapers, yellowed sheets that looked like invoices for liquor shipments, and old magazines. Nothing. An ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts and burned out matches sat on top of a small metal box. I moved it and coughed as I waved away the cloud of ashes that drifted for a moment in the stagnant air when I set it down. The room felt close and airless, even with the windows open. The air had nowhere to go and all the old smells of food, dust and cigarettes had settled, coating every surface with their odors. Something else, too. Sweat?
Banville was somewhere behind me and I could hear Rodney and Duxbury chatting outside the room, in accents so thick that it seemed like a foreign language, different enough that unless I concentrated, they could've been speaking Chinese for all the sense it made to me. I opened the box.
"Jesus," said Banville in a half whisper, as I looked inside.
"Lieutenant, you should see this," Banville said, standing over the mattress.
"In a second," I told him.
The box held writing paper, envelopes, stamps, and a couple of pens. I dumped the contents out. All blank, except for one page. It was the start of a letter, addressed to a Monsieur Baudouin in Algiers. It went on but the address was all I could make out. I turned to give it to Banville.
"Can you translate…?" I stopped. He had pulled back the rough brown blanket that covered the mattress. I glimpsed a bit of blue fabric caught up in the folds of the blanket. There was no sheet. The mattress was stained rust red with dried blood, not a lot, just enough to show that someone had been beaten and left there. On the floor next to the mattress were a couple of small tubes. They looked familiar. I felt sick. My face went white-hot and my hands started trembling. It seemed I was watching myself, looking down on this other guy who was starting to fall apart.
"Solution of Morphine, one half Grain, Syrette. Warning: May Be Habit Forming," I said, from memory. I didn't need to read the label on the used-up tube.
Banville nodded and motioned with his thumb toward a big tin can, like those big tins of peas they use in the mess hall. It was empty, the label long gone, doing service as a trash can. Inside were a half- dozen empty syrettes. And a couple of used condoms.
I wanted to turn and run and keep going until I hit the boat, take off, and leave this goddamned country behind. Instead, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I opened them, turned around, and knelt down by the mattress. Now I knew what that other smell was. Not just sweat, but the musky smell of sex and fear. I shook the blanket until the piece of light blue fabric fell out. Sky blue, to match her eyes. A four- inch ragged strip with lace along the collar, delicate and feminine, but the dark splotches of dried blood were horrible and masculine, as were the ripped buttons and torn stitching. I laid it down gently on the floor, and tried to remember for certain if that was the blouse I had seen Diana wearing a few days ago. Nothing came to me, no image of her, Just him.
"Here," I said, handing the unfinished letter to Banville. "Tell me what this says later. Now get out of here."
"What do you mean? I can translate it now if you want."
I went over to the table, gathered up the blank papers, and old newspapers and magazines, and threw them on top of the mattress. I grabbed the bottle of brandy and shook it out over the paper-strewn mattress.
"What the hell are you doing, sir?" asked Banville, his voice rising with every word. I could sense Rodney and Duxbury in the doorway, attracted by his tone of voice. I dropped the empty bottle, knelt down, and picked up the torn blouse. I brought it up to my nose to try to recapture her scent, to feel a connection with Diana. The ruined cloth gave back nothing but the dull metallic smell of dried blood and the thin feathery feel of torn stitching.