Dial M for Merde

by Stephen Clarke

  Elodie arrived, with a semi-coherent Valéry lolling in his own passenger seat. They’d stopped for a night at the chateau where he had originally planned to hold the wedding, and Valéry had apparently spent the whole evening alternately feeding himself with uppers and downers, until his brain was as scrambled as if it had been bouncing up and down a lift shaft.

  I couldn’t let Bonne Maman see him like that. I had to get him either cleaned up or out of sight. Looking at the fixed smile on his face – like a baby that’s just realized it can fart – the second option seemed easier.

  Luckily, the lovely Sixtine had appointed herself my personal assistant, so I gave her and Valéry the task of fetching a few sacks of the family’s famous Camargue rice from a nearby farm. Valéry would probably use one of the sacks as a pillow, or try to buy drugs from it, but at least Bonne Maman wouldn’t see him screwing up.

  ‘What shall I fetch them in?’ Sixtine asked. ‘The Mercedes is too small.’

  I laughed and swept an arm around our immediate surroundings. There were enough Renault Espaces parked there to supply a refugee camp.

  The drivers and passengers of all these family cars were obviously used to keeping themselves amused. An army of kids was rampaging about, falling in drainage ditches, trying to pull the bull’s tail, tumbling out of trees. None of the adults seemed to mind much – they had kids to spare.

  Meanwhile, one of the uncles I didn’t know, who looked like a mildly disturbing mix of Valéry and Bonne Maman, had rounded up the adults and older teens for a game of Bonnepoire Trivial Pursuit. They were sitting on the grass in front of the main house, gathered round their question master like disciples at a sect meeting, and as I helped Gilles and Benoit to set up the barbecue, I caught snatches of the game.

  ‘Who sat on Bonne Maman’s hat at Ludivine’s fiftieth birthday party?’ he asked, to howls of nostalgic laughter. ‘Where did little Paul-Emmanuel use to hide his food when he didn’t want to finish his dinner?’

  They were a world unto themselves. They’d probably written a Bonnepoire Book of World Records and held Bonnepoire Olympic Games.

  I just hoped for their sakes that the next round of Bonnepoire Trivial Pursuit wouldn’t start with ‘Who was hit in the crossfire when the President got shot?’

  One of Valéry’s aunts showed particular bravery, I thought, by agreeing to go and fetch Jake from the airport. Deciding who to ask had been a tough call, and I had finally opted for the nun, Eve-Marie. I couldn’t send a male, because Jake would only have started asking him about shaggable sisters and nieces, or enquired whether the guy had ever slept with a Bulgarian. I figured that Eve-Marie would be safe from his advances. She was way too old, even for his undiscerning libido, and wore clothes that had the magical effect of convincing the onlooker that sex didn’t exist.

  So I was surprised when she arrived back at the chateau and almost fell from the car, pale with shock.

  Jake jumped out after her, looking deliriously happy.

  ‘Success immediate!’ he proclaimed, grabbing me in an American hug.

  ‘You haven’t started shagging different religious orders?’ I asked, horrified.

  ‘Uh? No, man. Are you malade? She will contribute to my fon.’

  ‘She’s giving money to your cause?’

  ‘Oui. I am reciting to her some of our Cajun posy, and she says, “Stop, enough, I will contribute.” And every time I recite another posy, she offers more. Formidable, huh?’

  ‘Yes, formidable,’ I agreed, watching the poor woman stagger off for a lie-down.

  ‘Now where is the Prayzidon?’ he asked.

  ‘Well he’s not going to turn up early to help lay the tables, Jake.’ I told him that he would have to wait until the next day for the chance to lobby the head of state. ‘You’re looking, er, good,’ I said. My hesitation was caused by the fact that his natural tendency towards slobbishness had been enhanced somewhat by a year living in a Louisiana swamp. His matted blond hair was long and style-free, his clothes were no doubt what the hippest shrimp fishermen were all wearing this season. He needed tidying up fast if he was going to be allowed within nibbling distance of the wedding buffet.

  ‘Good flight?’ I asked, wondering where I could get him some clothes that wouldn’t terrify a French audience.

  ‘Oh, oui, man. I got a freebie to Paree with Iran Air. I had to go via Teheran, but so what?’

  ‘Iran Air? How come?’ I asked, fearing the reply.

  ‘Oh, I once boned this Iranian hôtesse de l’air. So I appelled her last week and she said, “Sure, I can give you a ticket.” Oh man, she was formidable. She had, like, all this caviar, and we—’

  It was too much. ‘Please, Jake, stop. I’ve had enough of fucking caviar these past couple of weeks.’

  ‘You been fucking with caviar? Hey, that’s exactement what we did. I inserted it in—’

  Five minutes later, I tottered off in search of Eve-Marie the nun. Maybe the sight of her clothes would hypnotize me into forgetting the gruesome details of Jake’s sex life.

  My own sex life hit a new low on the night before the wedding.

  M kissed and caressed me, talked dirty, and even got her dolphin in on the act, but I was too tired and tense to perform.

  ‘Sorry,’ I apologized, putting my arm around her as she lay down, frustrated, beside me. I really was sorry, too, not just for making such an anti-climax of what was no doubt our last night together, but also because of the trap I was leading her into.

  I did my best to recall the various deceptions and humiliations she’d put me through, directly and indirectly – the endless lies about sturgeon, getting me roughed up by the police on Bendor, using me so that we’d look like a normal holidaying couple travelling along the coast. She’d been playing with me. She deserved what she was going to get. It was payback time.

  But you can’t – or I can’t – feel aggressive towards someone you’re in bed with, and who you feel comfortable putting your arm around.

  Over the past few days, she had been much more silent than usual, and when she hadn’t been snooping around the chateau, she’d often sat alone in the shade of a tree, looking around at the chatting Bonnepoires as if she envied them.

  She seemed to have a conscience about what she was doing. It was almost as if she was caught in a trap herself. Perhaps she was being blackmailed? Something to do with her dad, maybe, or her French mum? If only, I thought, we could get it all out in the open and talk.

  But we’d gone too far with our deception. And besides, I had Léanne and her leather-jacketed sidekick on my back, threatening me with a long holiday in a French prison if I clicked out of my Mata Hari role.

  ‘I understand. It’s the stress,’ M said, forgiving me for under-performing. I was relieved that she’d given up without trying out her lickable oil. After Jake’s description of what he’d done with caviar, mixing food and sex had totally lost its appeal.

  2

  It was Saturday at last, the morning of the wedding.

  A whirring flight of flamingos was my wake-up call, after all. I drew the curtains to see a layer of dawn mist hanging over the marshes. It looked as though the pink birds were landing on snow. Outside, the air was as chilly as our silence during the drive to the chateau.

  My brain was on overload. Léanne’s team still had no leads on the identity or whereabouts of the hitman. But he had to be on his way now. For all I knew, M might even have paid him already. I was almost certain that she didn’t have the money with her. She just had her party frock – a dark-blue dress that she took everywhere – and her make-up bag. Which meant that she’d either hidden the money or handed it over during one of her walks across the marshes.

  ‘You look as nervous as I feel,’ I told her. ‘We’ll have to cheer up or we’ll spoil Elodie’s wedding day. We wouldn’t want to do that, would we?’

  She met my innocent look with inscrutable eyes.

  OK, I thought, that was our last chance. Now we’ve both got to
go through with it.

  At the chateau, the biggest threat to the wedding seemed to be the Bonnepoire kids. Like an infestation of cackling elves, they were attacking the furniture, and using the tables that we’d had so much trouble procuring as tents, climbing frames and capsized boats.

  M went upstairs to help Elodie get ready for her big day, which was either the worst case of hypocrisy I’d ever witnessed or just the executioner being kind to the condemned.

  I dived into the kitchen in search of Léanne. She had said that she would be coming as a waitress, along with several of her men.

  I found her in the serving room, holding a little confab by the silver safe. She was dressed in a short black skirt and tight white shirt, with a tiny apron tied low on her hips. She looked, even to my stressed eyes, very tasty indeed.

  With her were the leather-jacketed cop – he snarled a sort of hello – and four other officers in waiter’s uniform. There was the lemon-seller – in trousers and white shirt – along with his semi-identical twin from the hotel in Collioure, and two younger guys.

  Léanne told them to make room for me to enter their huddle. She made sure no one else was listening, and continued her briefing.

  ‘No one knows we are cops. Even the presidential security must think we are waiters. OK?’

  Her men nodded.

  ‘If we need to search the house, I stay here, you others go around the rooms. When a room is clear, you pull the bell. It will show up here.’ She pointed to the bell panel on the wall. ‘We will use phones as little as possible. Everyone on earth will be listening in tonight.’

  The men nodded again.

  ‘Pol,’ she went on, ‘anything new to tell us about M?’

  ‘Not much,’ I said. ‘I don’t know where the money is. Have you seen her meet with someone?’

  ‘No.’ Léanne looked thoughtful. ‘We watched her go for walks alone, once from the chateau to your hotel – five kilometres – and once through the marshes as far as the Rhône. That is all.’ I noticed that her soft southern accent had got stronger. She was obviously making an effort to bond with her men.

  ‘You still don’t know who the assassin is?’ I said.

  ‘If we did, he’d be dead,’ Leather Jacket snorted.

  ‘No, he wouldn’t,’ Léanne corrected him. ‘We need him to talk.’

  ‘But what I mean,’ I said in French, ‘is not his name, but why he is doing it. Why she is doing it. Are they the Mafia, political opposition, who?’

  ‘The English, maybe?’ the ex-lemon-seller said, but he was only teasing me.

  ‘A jealous husband? There must be a few of those,’ his twin suggested.

  ‘Let’s hope it’s the unions,’ Leather Jacket said. ‘Then the killer will go on strike.’

  Léanne held up a hand to restore discipline. ‘The reason is not our problem. Our job is to make sure he fails. Now the President will arrive at eight this evening, and perform the ceremony at nine. He will stay for some of your dinner, Pol, so it had better be good.’

  ‘If a bullet doesn’t get him, the English food will, uh?’ It was Leather Jacket, seriously tempting me to barbecue his face for him.

  3

  The morning flashed past, and the afternoon started to get worryingly old.

  The marquee went up, fell down, and went up again.

  Monsieur Yena almost got himself arrested when he appeared carrying a drum of petrol and a shotgun. The first, he explained, was to help light the barbecue – the wood he’d provided was a bit damp. And the second was to go and shoot some rabbits. He wasn’t too keen on fish, and wanted to grill himself some meat on the side.

  I saw Jake and Dadou together quite a lot, and remembered that Elodie had told her future father-in-law that Jake was gay. And Jake knew that Dadou was the man to talk to at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Their game of cat-and-mouse evolved during the day – first with Jake doing the pursuing, then Dadou, and finally Jake again, with Dadou looking as if he was being hunted by a crocodile. I guessed that Jake had decided to recite some of his swamp verse.

  Around four, Jean-Marie called to tell me that the President wouldn’t be coming, then stopped me in mid-leap of relief by chuckling and saying it was a joke. Jean-Marie was at Orly airport, with the presidential party no less, and they were expecting the man himself any minute.

  Gilles and Benoit were mid-way through their tower of caramelized figs, both of them sweating in the hot kitchen, their fingers glued together with toffee, having to puff away the flies and children hovering around their bubbling cauldron. The hired cooking staff were gutting fish, chopping vegetables, splashing olive oil around like water.

  I was having a short tea-time breather in the cool shade of the kitchen garden when Bonne Maman and Moo-Moo swanned up. The old lady put on an affronted scowl and Moo-Moo declared that they’d made a ‘grave error’ allowing me to do the catering.

  ‘Why?’ I wailed, and they beckoned me to follow them.

  ‘Who did this?’ Moo-Moo demanded, pointing down to one of the meticulously laid round tables that were evenly spread across the lawn like a formal garden of white lilies.

  ‘Did what?’ I asked.

  ‘Look,’ Moo-Moo hooted.

  ‘Look,’ Bonne Maman echoed.

  I looked, but I didn’t see. I’d made sure that the water glasses were bigger than the wine glasses, as you must. And that the place cards were exactly where they’d told me to put them. Everything looked perfect.

  ‘The forks,’ Moo-Moo gasped, as if it was a nasty word.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘They are the wrong way up.’ She bent forward and flipped one over, so that its points were touching the table rather than curving upwards.

  ‘Ah, that is my fault,’ I said. I had gone round earlier, turning them over. It had seemed wrong to me, to place the forks with their points downwards. They looked ungainly. ‘I’ll change them immediately.’ I wondered how many valuable minutes of my life were going to be wasted turning over forks today.

  ‘There’s another thing.’ Bonne Maman was shaking her head. ‘There is no principal table. They are all round, and all together. It is too … democratic.’ She shuddered.

  There was no way we were moving the tables at this late stage. And there was no room to pull one of them out into a more prominent position.

  ‘But surely, chère Madame,’ I said, mustering all my French grammar and over-the-top manners, ‘any table with both yourself and the President of France on it will automatically be the principal table?’

  She stared at me for a few seconds. ‘You are right,’ she said at last. ‘We must just make sure that he and I are sitting facing everyone else, so they can see us together.’

  ‘Of course,’ I agreed. If there were any stray bullets flying about, she was the perfect candidate.

  Six o’clock came, seven. A cloud of Bonnepoires engulfed every square millimetre of the house and its immediate grounds.

  In the kitchen, things were going crazy. Only the non-police waiting staff looked relaxed – most of them were enjoying a cigarette by the back door. I went to check on the wine cellar, which contained both the champagne and the pièce montée. It was on the floor in there, protected by a carefully balanced muslin shroud. I tried the door. It was securely locked.

  Léanne came into the kitchen and gave me a final pep talk, or pep look. There were too many people around for her to come out of her waitress character. She stared me in the eyes and nodded encouragingly.

  ‘M?’ she whispered.

  I shrugged. She’d been with Elodie for most of the day, but for all I knew, now she could have been out in the trees helping some guy to load his rifle. Weren’t the police supposed to be watching her?

  I looked at my watch. Almost eight. I checked my phone. Nothing. Wouldn’t it be brilliant if Jean-Marie called and said that the President had got stuck in the aeroplane toilet? Anything to put a stop to the evening’s violent agenda.

  Thinking about t
he wedding ceremony reminded me that I hadn’t seen Valéry for a worryingly long time. I hoped to God he wasn’t too stoned or high to say ‘I do.’

  He was nowhere on the ground floor, so I went past the gun cabinet and up the stairs, asking every Bonnepoire I came across if they’d seen him. None of them had, and they all laughed. It was, they said, typical of him to go missing at a time like this.

  I checked all the rooms on the first floor, including some darkly panelled bedrooms and a quaint old toilet with a polished wooden seat. I intruded on people changing, snogging, and in one case smearing a bed with Nutella – I shut the door quickly, pretending I hadn’t witnessed this.

  No sign of Valéry.

  I went up another flight of stairs, still having to nudge past gossiping Bonnepoires at every step, and finally came across Moo-Moo standing outside a closed door.

  ‘Is Valéry in there?’ I asked her.

  She was uncharacteristically silent. ‘He is … not well,’ she finally said.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ I asked, fearing the reply.

  ‘Bonne Maman is talking to him. He promised that he would not … He said he would refrain from …’ Behind the blank wall of her self-righteousness and snobbery, she was a woman in considerable distress.

  I took a risk and touched her arm.

  ‘It is the emotion,’ I said. ‘The dealer tried to trick him, and now the President will marry him. C’est beaucoup.’

  ‘He must change his ways,’ she said. ‘Or …’ She raised her worried eyes to mine and I almost felt sorry for her.

  The door opened and Bonne Maman came out, wringing her hands as if she’d just delivered a baby.

  ‘Well, he is conscious, that is one consolation,’ she said. ‘Someone needs to put the young idiot right. A rich man with his habits is like a suicidal maniac at the helm of a yacht. He will sink himself and the boat.’

  Wow, I thought, could it be that she actually had a humane reason for wanting to stop Valéry getting his hands on the inheritance – she thought he’d only stuff it all up his nostrils?