by Len Deighton
Loiseau grabbed his fourth digit but said nothing. He smiled. In most people a smile or a laugh can be a sign of embarrassment, a plea to break the tension. Loiseau’s smile was a calm, deliberate smile. ‘You are waiting for me to threaten you with what will happen if you don’t help me.’ He shrugged and smiled again. ‘Then you would turn my previous words about blackmail upon me and feel at ease in declining to help. But I won’t. You are free to do as you wish in this matter. I am a very unthreatening type.’
‘For a cop,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ agreed Loiseau, ‘a very unthreatening type for a cop.’ It was true.
‘Okay,’ I said after a long pause. ‘But don’t mistake my motives. Just to keep the record straight, I’m very fond of Maria.’
‘Can you really believe that would annoy me? You are so incredibly Victorian in these matters: so determined to play the game and keep a stiff upper lip aand have the record straight. We do not do things that way in France; another man’s wife is fair game for all. Smoothness of tongue and nimbleness of foot are the trump cards; nobleness of mind is the joker.’
‘I prefer my way.’
Loiseau looked at me and smiled his slow, nerveless smile. ‘So do I,’ he said.
‘Loiseau,’ I said, watching him carefully, ‘this clinic of Datt’s: is it run by your Ministry?’
‘Don’t you start that too. He’s got half Paris thinking he’s running that place for us.’ The coffee was still hot. Loiseau got a bowl out of the cupboard and poured himself some. ‘He’s not connected with us,’ said Loiseau. ‘He’s a criminal, a criminal with good connections but still just a criminal.’
‘Loiseau,’ I said, ‘you can’t hold Byrd for the murder of the girl.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he didn’t do it, that’s why not. I was at the clinic that day. I stood in the hall and watched the girl run through and die. I heard Datt say, “Get Byrd here.” It was a frame-up.’
Loiseau reached for his hat. ‘Good coffee,’ he said.
‘It was a frame-up. Byrd is innocent.’
‘So you say. But suppose Byrd had done the murder and Datt said that just for you to overhear? Suppose I told you that we know that Byrd was there? That would put this fellow Kuang in the clear, eh?’
‘It might,’ I said, ‘if I heard Byrd admit it. Will you arrange for me to see Byrd? That’s my condition for helping you.’ I expected Loiseau to protest but he nodded. ‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why you worry about him. He’s a criminal type if ever I saw one.’ I didn’t answer because I had a nasty idea that Loiseau was right.
‘Very well,’ said Loiseau. ‘The bird market at eleven A.M. tomorrow.’
‘It’s Sunday tomorrow,’ I said.
‘All the better, the Palais de Justice is quieter on Sunday.’ He smiled again. ‘Good coffee.’
‘That’s what they all say,’ I said.
22
A considerable portion of that large island in the Seine is occupied by the law in one shape or another. There’s the Prefecture and the courts, Municipal and Judicial police offices, cells for remand prisoners and a police canteen. On a weekday the stairs are crammed with black-gowned lawyers clutching plastic briefcases and scurrying like disturbed cockroaches. But on Sunday the Palais de Justice is silent. The prisoners sleep late and the offices are empty. The only movement is the thin stream of tourists who respectfully peer at the high vaulting of the Sainte Chapelle, clicking and wondering at its unparalleled beauty. Outside in the Place Louis Lépine a few hundred caged birds twitter in the sunshine and in the trees are wild birds attracted by the spilled seed and commotion. There are sprigs of millet, cuttlebone and bright new wooden cages, bells to ring, swings to swing on and mirrors to peck at. Old men run their shrivelled hands through the seeds, sniff them, discuss them and hold them up to the light as though they were fine vintage Burgundies.
The bird market was busy by the time I got there to meet Loiseau. I parked the car opposite the gates of the Palais de Justice and strolled through the market. The clock was striking eleven with a dull dented sound. Loiseau was standing in front of some cages marked ‘Caille reproductrice’. He waved as he saw me. ‘Just a moment,’ he said. He picked up a box marked ‘vitamine phospate’. He read the label: ‘Biscuits pour oiseaux’. ‘I’ll have that too,’ said Loiseau.
The woman behind the table said, ‘The mélange saxon is very good, it’s the most expensive, but it’s the best.’
‘Just half a litre,’ said Loiseau.
She weighed the seed, wrapped it carefully and tied the package. Loiseau said, ‘I didn’t see him.’
‘Why?’ I walked with him through the market.
‘He’s been moved. I can’t find out who authorized the move or where he’s gone to. The clerk in the records office said Lyon but that can’t be true.’ Loiseau stopped in front of an old pram full of green millet.
‘Why?’
Loiseau didn’t answer immediately. He picked up a sprig of millet and sniffed at it. ‘He’s been moved. Some top-level instructions. Perhaps they intend to bring him before some juge d’instruction who will do as he’s told. Or maybe they’ll keep him out of the way while they finish the enquêtes officieuses.’10
‘You don’t think they’ve moved him away to get him quietly sentenced?’
Loiseau waved to the old woman behind the stall. She shuffled slowly towards us.
‘I talk to you like an adult,’ Loiseau said. ‘You don’t really expect me to answer that, do you? A sprig.’ He turned and stared at me. ‘Better make it two sprigs,’ he said to the woman. ‘My friend’s canary wasn’t looking so healthy last time I saw it.’
‘Joe’s all right,’ I said. ‘You leave him alone.’
‘Suit yourself,’ said Loiseau. ‘But if he gets much thinner he’ll be climbing out between the bars of that cage.’
I let him have the last word. He paid for the millet and walked between the cliffs of new empty cages, trying the bars and tapping the wooden panels. There were caged birds of all kinds in the market. They were given seed, millet, water and cuttlefish bone for their beaks. Their claws were kept trimmed and they were safe from all birds of prey. But it was the birds in the trees that were singing.
23
I got back to my apartment about twelve o’clock. At twelve thirty-five the phone rang. It was Monique, Annie’s neighbour. ‘You’d better come quickly,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘I’m not allowed to say on the phone. There’s a fellow sitting here. He won’t tell me anything much. He was asking for Annie, he won’t tell me anything. Will you come now?’
‘Okay,’ I said.
24
It was lunchtime. Monique was wearing an ostrich-feather-trimmed négligé when she opened the door. ‘The English have got off the boat,’ she said and giggled. ‘You’d better come in, the old girl will be straining her earholes to hear, if we stand here talking.’ She opened the door and showed me into the cramped room. There was bamboo furniture and tables, a plastic-topped dressing-table with four swivel mirrors and lots of perfume and cosmetic garnishes. The bed was unmade and a candlewick bedspread had been rolled up under the pillows. A copy of Salut les Copains was in sections and arranged around the deep warm indentation. She went across to the windows and pushed the shutters. They opened with a loud clatter. The sunlight streamed into the room and made everything look dusty. On the table there was a piece of pink wrapping paper; she took a hard-boiled egg from it, rapped open the shell and bit into it.
‘I hate summer,’ she said. ‘Pimples and parks and open cars that make your hair tangled and rotten cold food that looks like left-overs. And the sun trying to make you feel guilty about being indoors. I like being indoors. I like being in bed; it’s no sin, is it, being in bed?’
‘Just give me the chance to find out. Where is he?’
‘I hate summer.’
‘So shake hands with Père Noël,’ I offered. ‘Where is he
?’
‘I’m taking a shower. You sit down and wait. You are all questions.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Questions.’
‘I don’t know how you think of all these questions. You must be clever.’
‘I am,’ I said.
‘Honestly, I wouldn’t know where to start. The only questions I ever ask are “Are you married?” and “What will you do if I get pregnant?” Even then I never get told the truth.’
‘That’s the trouble with questions. You’d better stick to answers.’
‘Oh, I know all the answers.’
‘Then you must have been asked all the questions.’
‘I have,’ she agreed.
She slipped out of the négligé and stood naked for one millionth of a second before disappearing into the bathroom. The look in her eyes was mocking and not a little cruel.
There was a lot of splashing and ohh-ing from the bathroom until she finally reappeared in a cotton dress and canvas tennis shoes, no stockings.
‘Water was cold,’ she said briefly. She walked right through the room and opened her front door. I watched her lean over the balustrade.
‘The water’s stone cold, you stupid cow,’ she shrieked down the stair-well. From somewhere below the voice of the old harridan said, ‘It’s not supposed to supply ten people for each apartment, you filthy little whore.’
‘I have something men want, not like you, you old hag.’
‘And you give it to them,’ the harridan cackled back. ‘The more the merrier.’
‘Poof!’ shouted Monique, and narrowing her eyes and aiming carefully she spat over the stair-well. The harridan must have anticipated it, for I heard her cackle triumphantly.
Monique returned to me. ‘How am I expected to keep clean when the water is cold? Always cold.’
‘Did Annie complain about the water?’
‘Ceaselessly, but she didn’t have the manner that brings results. I get angry. If she doesn’t give me hot water I shall drive her into her grave, the dried-up old bitch. I’m leaving here anyway,’ she said.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked.
‘I’m moving in with my regular. Montmartre. It’s an awful district, but it’s larger than this, and anyway he wants me.’
‘What’s he do for a living?’
‘He does the clubs, he’s – don’t laugh – he’s a conjurer. It’s a clever trick he does: he takes a singing canary in a large cage and makes it disappear. It looks fantastic. Do you know how he does it?’
‘No.’
‘The cage folds up. That’s easy, it’s a trick cage. But the bird gets crushed. Then when he makes it reappear it’s just another canary that looks the same. It’s an easy trick really, it’s just that no one in the audience suspects that he would kill the bird each time in order to do the trick.’
‘But you guessed.’
‘Yes. I guessed the first time I saw it done. He thought I was clever to guess but as I said, “How much does a canary cost? Three francs, four at the very most.” It’s clever though, isn’t it, you’ve got to admit it’s clever.’
‘It’s clever,’ I said, ‘but I like canaries better than I like conjurers.’
‘Silly.’ Monique laughed disbelievingly. ‘“The incredible Count Szell” he calls himself.’
‘So you’ll be a countess?’
‘It’s his stage name, silly.’ She picked up a pot of face cream. ‘I’ll just be another stupid woman who lives with a married man.’
She rubbed cream into her face.
‘Where is he?’ I finally asked. ‘Where’s this fellow that you said was sitting here?’ I was prepared to hear that she’d invented the whole thing.
‘In the café on the corner. He’ll be all right there. He’s reading his American newspapers. He’s all right.’
‘I’ll go and talk to him.’
‘Wait for me.’ She wiped the cream away with a tissue and turned and smiled. ‘Am I all right?’
‘You’re all right,’ I told her.
25
The café was on the Boul. Mich., the very heart of the left bank. Outside in the bright sun sat the students; hirsute and earnest, they have come from Munich and Los Angeles sure that Hemingway and Lautrec are still alive and that some day in some left bank café they will find them. But all they ever find are other young men who look exactly like themselves, and it’s with this sad discovery that they finally return to Bavaria or California and become salesmen or executives. Meanwhile here they sat in the hot seat of culture, where businessmen became poets, poets became alcoholics, alcoholics became philosophers and philosophers realized how much better it was to be businessmen.
Hudson. I’ve got a good memory for faces. I saw Hudson as soon as we turned the corner. He was sitting alone at a café table holding his paper in front of his face while studying the patrons with interest. I called to him.
‘Jack Percival,’ I called. ‘What a great surprise.’
The American hydrogen research man looked surprised, but he played along very well for an amateur. We sat down with him. My back hurt from the rough-house in the discothèque. It took a long time to get served because the rear of the café was full of men with tightly wadded newspapers trying to pick themselves a winner instead of eating. Finally I got the waiter’s attention. ‘Three grands crèmes,’ I said. Hudson said nothing else until the coffees arrived.
‘What about this young lady?’ Hudson asked. He dropped sugar cubes into his coffee as though he was suffering from shock. ‘Can I talk?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘There are no secrets between Monique and me.’ I leaned across to her and lowered my voice. ‘This is very confidential, Monique,’ I said. She nodded and looked pleased. ‘There is a small plastic bead company with its offices in Grenoble. Some of the holders of ordinary shares have sold their holdings out to a company that this gentleman and I more or less control. Now at the next shareholders’ meeting we shall …’
‘Give over,’ said Monique. ‘I can’t stand business talk.’
‘Well run along then,’ I said, granting her her freedom with an understanding smile.
‘Could you buy me some cigarettes?’ she asked.
I got two packets from the waiter and wrapped a hundred-franc note round them. She trotted off down the street with them like a dog with a nice juicy bone.
‘It’s not about your bead factory,’ he said.
‘There is no bead factory,’ I explained.
‘Oh!’ He laughed nervously. ‘I was supposed to have contacted Annie Couzins,’ he said.
‘She’s dead.’
‘I found that out for myself.’
‘From Monique?’
‘You are T. Davis?’ he asked suddenly.
‘With bells on,’ I said and passed my resident’s card to him.
An untidy man with a constantly smiling face walked from table to table winding up toys and putting them on the tables. He put them down everywhere until each table had its twitching mechanical figures bouncing through the knives, table mats and ashtrays. Hudson picked up the convulsive little violin player. ‘What’s this for?’
‘It’s on sale,’ I said.
He nodded and put it down. ‘Everything is,’ he said.
He returned my resident’s card to me.
‘It looks all right,’ he agreed. ‘Anyway I can’t go back to the Embassy, they told me that most expressly, so I’ll have to put myself in your hands. I’m out of my depth to tell you the truth.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘I’m an authority on hydrogen bombs and I know quite a bit about all the work on the nuclear programme. My instructions are to put certain information about fall-out dangers at the disposal of a Monsieur Datt. I understand he is connected with the Red Chinese Government.’
‘And why are you to do this?’
‘I thought you’d know. It’s such a mess. That poor girl being dead. Such a tragedy. I did meet her once. So young, such a tragic business. I thought they
would have told you all about it. You were the only other name they gave me, apart from her I mean. I’m acting on US Government orders, of course.’
‘Why would the US Government want you to give away fall-out data?’ I asked him. He sat back in the cane chair till it creaked like elderly arthritic joints. He pulled an ashtray near him.
‘It all began with the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests,’ he began. ‘The Atomic Energy Commission were taking a lot of criticism about the dangers of fall-out, the biological result upon wildlife and plants. The AEC needed those tests and did a lot of follow-through testing on the sites, trying to prove that the dangers were not anything like as great as many alarmists were saying. I have to tell you that those alarmists were damn nearly right. A dirty bomb of about twenty-five megatons would put down about 15,000 square miles of lethal radio-activity. To survive that, you would have to stay underground for months, some say even a year or more.
‘Now if we were involved in a war with Red China, and I dread the thought of such a thing, then we would have to use the nuclear fall-out as a weapon, because only ten per cent of the Chinese population live in large – quarter-million size – towns. In the USA more than half the population live in the large towns. China with its dispersed population can only be knocked out by fall-out …’ He paused. ‘But knocked out it can be. Our experts say that about half a billion people live on one-fifth of China’s land area. The prevailing wind is westerly. Four hundred bombs would kill fifty million by direct heat-blast effect, one hundred million would be seriously injured though they wouldn’t need hospitalization, but three hundred and fifty million would die by windborne fall-out.
‘The AEC minimized the fall-out effects in their follow-through reports on the tests (Bikini, etc.). Now the more militant of the Chinese soldier-scientists are using the US reports to prove that China can survive a nuclear war. We couldn’t withdraw those reports, or say that they were untrue – not even slightly untrue – so I’m here to leak the correct information to the Chinese scientists. The whole operation began nearly eight months ago. It took a long time getting this girl Annie Couzins into position.’