Dial M for Merde

by Stephen Clarke

‘Keep him in here until the ceremony,’ Bonne Maman ordered Moo-Moo. ‘If he’s thirsty, he can have water. If he wants to piss, he can do it out of the window.’

  I laughed. The bitch grand-mère may have been a snooty vache, but a vache with a sense of humour.

  4

  There was a murmur and then a collective intake of breath. The news flashed around the house as fast as a gunshot.

  The President’s car had entered the grounds.

  Oh merde, I thought. This is it.

  I looked out of the nearest window and saw a long, dark-blue limo, preceded by two motorbike riders and followed by one, slightly smaller, car.

  Where was M? I hadn’t seen her for at least an hour. Perhaps she’d received a tip-off that the target was in sight and had melted away. Her job was done.

  No, there she was with Elodie, both of them dressed to kill, dashing down the stairs to be present when the President got out of his car. M was carrying her make-up case, as though she wanted to put on a last-minute coat of lipstick or eyeliner. I followed, trying my best to catch up with them through the crowd that was heading downstairs.

  There was a loud cheer from the front of the house. Out of a landing window I saw that the car had stopped, and was being mobbed by shoving, applauding Bonnepoires. I studied all the faces I could see, looking for someone who didn’t belong, or any sign of a weapon. Nothing, just a crowd of well-wishers.

  In the hallway, I caught sight of Léanne trying to push through the throng to the front door, and being told off for getting above her station. Waiting staff round the back entrance, they seemed to be saying. One of her replies made a woman blush. Léanne must have told her to stick her snobbery in her own back entrance.

  I stayed on the stairs, watching. Elodie and M were also trying to push forward, but there were so many people that it was impossible.

  Meanwhile, the cheering outside got louder – the President must have got out of the car – and then seemed to fade, as if the breeze was carrying the voices away.

  The crush eased and people were able to get across the hall and outside. I came down and headed for the front door. Just before I got there, I saw Valéry coming downstairs.

  ‘He’s here,’ I told him. In reply he gave a weak thumbs-up. He looked reasonably alert, though. Nothing that a glass of organic champagne wouldn’t cure.

  Outside, the crowd was flowing across the front of the house and round to the side. Léanne was dodging her way forward like a rugby player trying to break through a tight defence. I could see no sign of the President, although a group of bulky guys in suits had materialized, and uniformed police were taking up positions by the cars and the front door.

  I looked out across the grounds, scanning the tree line. Now would be the perfect time for me to catch sight of a crouching silhouette. There was nothing out there, though, except impenetrable evening shadow.

  Around the back of the house I found a scene of calm confusion. The President had gone in through the kitchen door, it seemed, and the welcoming party was over for the time being. A bodyguard was blocking the doorway. I saw Léanne try to push past and get told to stand back. She argued, but he wasn’t going to change his mind. She came running towards me.

  ‘The front door,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to get in the house.’

  We both jogged back to the front door. The uniformed cop tried to stop Léanne, but she told him to ‘get his ass out of the way, or she would eat it’. This had to be some kind of official French police jargon, because he stepped aside and let us in.

  ‘He’s gone – disappeared.’ In the hallway, Leather Jacket was looking much less smug than usual.

  ‘Who’s in the house?’ Léanne asked.

  ‘Tons of people,’ he said. ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘Of our people, cretin,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, all of us.’

  ‘OK, tell everyone to start searching the rooms. I’ll go to the bell panel.’

  ‘Oui, Madame.’ In the heat of the action Leather Jacket had become almost passive.

  ‘Why don’t you just ask the President’s bodyguards where he is?’ I suggested.

  ‘Huh.’ Léanne didn’t seem to think that would do much good.

  In the serving room, we found Jake, his mouth full of tapenade. He was helping himself from one of the trays covering the long table.

  ‘Hey, you’re not supposed to be eating that,’ I told him.

  ‘Sorry, man. It was that Dadou. I was reciting my posy and he insisted I eat something. Like, practically stuffed it in my bouche. It’s really bon. Hey.’ He had finished ogling Léanne and decided he liked what he saw. ‘Are you une Occitane?’ he asked her.

  ‘Jake …’ I frowned at him. He’d obviously branched out from his policy of trying to shag one woman of every nationality, and was now going for ancient European ethnic group. Soon he’d be asking English girls if they were Picts.

  Léanne ignored him, as the first bell rang to show that one of the rooms was clear. She marked the space on the glass with a smudge of tapenade.

  ‘The Prayzidon is here, right?’ Jake said. ‘I’m gonna ask him about my fon.’

  ‘Yeah, you do that, Jake,’ I said, as other bells rang. ‘In fact, you could go and look for him to ask him now.’

  ‘Yeah? You lost him?’ Jake gave a laugh that was shot out of the air by a murderous glance from Léanne.

  Elodie and M came in from the hall, and looked at us as if they didn’t understand what the tension was all about. Léanne stared at M for a second, before returning her gaze to the bell panel.

  ‘They lost the Prayzidon,’ Jake giggled. I motioned to the girls that it wasn’t as big a joke as Jake seemed to think.

  M was looking understandably nervous. Her guy would be searching for the President as well, and she had a million euros riding on the winner of the manhunt.

  ‘Merde, where is he?’ Léanne swore, marking off more and more bells. ‘He’s in the house, right? Did you see him pass?’ she asked Jake. M looked at her in surprise, understanding for the first time that Léanne was more than a waitress.

  ‘I have not seen him,’ Jake said. ‘I was with Dadou. He adores posy, and I was asking for his aid to ameliorate one of my posies. It’s this one about some shrimps and a Cajun femme. You want to hear it, Paul?’

  ‘Later, Jake, much later.’

  ‘C’est pas possible!’ Léanne stood back from the bell panel and gazed at it. All the bells were marked off.

  ‘The kitchen,’ I said. ‘He must be in there.’

  ‘No, he’s not in there, we looked,’ she said.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ I said, in a sudden flash of realization. ‘Come with me, vite!’

  We ran into the kitchen, which was empty except for one bodyguard. Even the cooks had been chucked out, and their goat’s cheese amuse-bouches were sitting around on trays, half-finished.

  ‘He’s in the wine cellar,’ I said. ‘It’s the only place without a bell.’

  ‘Stay away from that door.’ The bodyguard moved a hand towards his armpit.

  ‘I’m in command of the police contingent,’ Léanne said. ‘Is he in there alone? You have to tell me. Now.’

  ‘Alone? Er, no,’ the bodyguard admitted, suddenly looking extremely worried.

  Léanne reached up and grabbed him by the lapels. ‘Who’s in there with him?’ she shouted.

  ‘A woman and a man.’

  ‘Merde.’ Léanne pointed to the door and the bodyguard needed no more prompting. He pulled the door open, his gun already halfway out of its holster.

  Silent now, we all peered into the small room, expecting to see a defunct President bludgeoned with a champagne bottle or impaled on the pièce montée.

  But all that met our eyes was an abashed Valéry sitting on a stool, with a presidential hand clamped to his shoulder, and Bonne Maman’s eyes drilling into his head.

  The President held out a restraining palm to his bodyguard and murmured a few more words to Valéry, the las
t of which were ‘OK, mon petit?’

  Valéry nodded. It looked like a paternalistic pull-your-socks-up talk from the highest authority in the land.

  ‘Bonsoir,’ the President said to us all as he stepped out of the wine cellar, followed by a serenely smiling Bonne Maman and a shell-shocked Valéry.

  Léanne breathed a sigh of relief and patted me on the back, but we both knew that the reprieve was only temporary. The evening, and the danger, was just beginning.

  ‘Paul?’ It was Elodie, nodding towards Léanne, asking for an explanation. She assumed, rightly, that I must have known some of my waiting staff were cops. M, too, looked interested in what I’d have to say.

  But I had turned away from them. A man was coming into the kitchen. He was dressed as a waiter, and I hadn’t seen him before. Not tonight, anyway. When I looked him in the eye, he grinned at me. And suddenly I remembered. He’d been in Bandol. He was the guy at the singalong restaurant who’d been ogling M.

  Léanne had told me to watch out for guys that M might not actually approach, people she might just exchange glances with. And back in Bandol, this guy had not only been exchanging glances. He’d been trying to send semaphore messages with his trouser bulge. What was more, he was edging past Jake towards Léanne, towards the President. And if I wasn’t mistaken, he had a bulge in his trouser pocket again. No doubt a gun this time.

  ‘It’s him!’ I yelled. ‘Stop him, Jake!’

  Although Jake often gives the impression that he is living on another planet, on this occasion he reacted with the speed of an Arles bullfighter. He grabbed the nearest weapon to hand, a plate of round goat’s cheese balls covered in olive oil, and rammed it in the new arrival’s face. OK, not exactly a weapon of mass destruction, but it did the trick. The guy was stopped in his tracks long enough for the bodyguard to jump on him and flatten him to the ground.

  The back door opened and a second guard dashed in to join the fray. Within seconds they had bundled the intruder across the floor and out of the kitchen into the serving room, putting a brick wall between the President and his assailant.

  The intended victim froze for an instant, and then relaxed.

  ‘Alors, là!’ The President laughed, no doubt listening to the percentage points ticking upwards in the polls.

  Léanne ran out into the serving room to help the guards. I stayed to stare at this man I’d seen so often on TV and in the papers, and who was now reaching out to shake Jake’s hand.

  ‘Merci, Monsieur …?’

  ‘Jake,’ he answered. ‘Aimez-vous la posy?’

  The question was so sudden and so weird that the President blinked it away and turned to me.

  ‘And you, Monsieur?’

  ‘West,’ I said. ‘Paul West.’

  He shook my hand. ‘Ah, two Anglo-Saxons? It seems zat you av say-ved me,’ he said in English, with an accent that could have been a joke. I didn’t dare laugh.

  I turned to share my moment of glory with Elodie, and was shocked to see M still there. She was standing by the sink, taking things out of her make-up bag.

  Huh, women, I thought. She knows she’ll be arrested, and she’s putting on her face ready for the cameras.

  She turned towards us, a fixed smile on her face.

  ‘You must have a glass of champagne to celebrate, Monsieur le Président,’ she said, walking towards him with a single tall flute in her hands.

  She must have opened a bottle herself, I thought. The champagne wasn’t supposed to be uncorked until after the President’s speech. It’s always the way in France – bla-bla first, drinks afterwards.

  Sure enough, an open bottle was standing by the sink, next to M’s make-up bag and – bizarrely – the bottle of edible sex oil.

  ‘A votre santé,’ she said. Your health. She held out the glass, and the President, obviously entranced by this beautiful girl bearing gifts, let go of my hand and reached for the champagne.

  ‘No!’ I punched it out of his hand.

  Valéry, Elodie and Bonne Maman gasped. The Englishman had hit le Président. This meant war, at the very least.

  ‘Paul! How could you?’ For a split second, M looked at me as though she was about to cry, and then she ran out of the kitchen door.

  There were Bonnepoires all around the house, including kids playing tag in the forest of family legs. I dodged through the crowd as I sprinted after M.

  She had gone around the side of the house and was heading for the meadows. By now it was very dark. If she got out on to the marshes where she’d been on so many exploratory walks, it’d be impossible to find her before dawn.

  As I ran, I tried to piece things together. Her little bottle hadn’t contained edible sex oil after all – it was poison. Lucky I hadn’t tasted it. It looked as though Léanne had got things badly wrong – M hadn’t been just the cash-delivery girl, she was the back-up, on hand to have a second stab if the main hitman fluffed. Which he had, pathetically.

  M was very fit, and was running fast. I had wondered why she’d chosen to wear low-heeled shoes to the wedding. Now I understood. She had already reached the first big drainage ditch. I was a good twenty yards behind, and not gaining. Not losing ground, though. If I kept up my pace, I’d manage to stay close and see where she went.

  I heard a muddy splash. M obviously hadn’t made it over the ditch. When I reached the edge, I saw that she was trying to climb up the slippery bank.

  She stared up at me. It was so dark out here that I could only see her face as a pale shadow.

  ‘You, Paul?’ she said. ‘Of all people, why did you have to stop me?’

  ‘And of all people, why did you have to try and kill the President?’

  In reply, she only shook her head.

  ‘You knew that waitress was a cop, didn’t you?’ she demanded.

  ‘Yes, I knew. They’ve been on to you for ages. I’ve known ever since that night in Bandol. That’s when they told me who you really were.’

  ‘What?’ I could see M ticking boxes in her head. My weird behaviour was all being explained away. ‘What did they tell you?’ she asked.

  ‘That you were travelling around the coast, looking for a hitman.’

  She laughed bitterly. ‘Hiring a killer? Bollocks. I wanted to do it myself.’

  ‘Then who was that twat who just tried to jump the President?’

  ‘That guy? I don’t know who he was or what he was doing. This was a solo job.’

  We both heard a shout. I looked towards the house. People were running out into the grounds. Léanne and the other cops, I guessed, searching for us.

  Something made me jump into the ditch out of sight. I landed with a cold squelch. So much for my best suit and leather shoes.

  ‘Who hired you?’ I asked.

  ‘No one hired me, Paul.’ She tutted in disbelief. ‘This was purely personal.’

  ‘But what about all your meetings, then? And those guys you were hanging out with last summer in Saint Tropez?’

  ‘The cops told you about them?’ She sounded astonished that she’d been so well researched. ‘Those guys in Saint Tropez were just some dickheads I bumped into while I was working on the caviar investigation.’

  ‘So all the stuff about sturgeon wasn’t just a smoke screen?’

  ‘No.’ In the shadows, I saw her shake her head emphatically. ‘I heard that some people had been boasting about selling illegal French caviar as Iranian, so I went along to listen, and played the bimbo on their yacht for a week. And ever since, I’ve been begging the scientists down here to help me nail the traffickers with hard evidence. I haven’t been trying to hire a killer, Paul – I’ve been trying to save an endangered species.’

  Which all sounded incredibly noble. But she was forgetting something.

  ‘I don’t get it, though,’ I said, shifting uneasily in the cold slop. ‘Why would you want to whack the President of France?’

  ‘Because it’s quicker than whacking the whole French government.’ Suddenly she sounded capable of
killing with her bare hands. ‘You asked me about my dad’s boat accident. Did you ever hear of the Rainbow Warrior?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. The ecologists’ boat that was blown up in New Zealand by French saboteurs after it had been protesting against nuclear testing in the Pacific.

  ‘People think that only one guy was killed, a Portuguese photographer. But there were two. My dad was in a coma for six months before he died. The French government killed him.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘They’ve never revealed who actually planted the bombs,’ M continued. ‘Only two of the six saboteurs were convicted, and the French wangled their repatriation. Neither of them served more than two years. And who gave the order for the attack? President Mitterrand. Personally.’

  She fell silent. In the distance, I could hear Léanne calling my name.

  ‘But why try to kill the current President?’ I asked. ‘After all these years?’

  ‘The French have just released documents about the bombing,’ M replied. ‘With all the important details taken out, of course. And it’s sent Maman over the edge. She’s started writing letters to Dad, posting them to New Zealand. She’s got a whole team of therapists trying to persuade her that he’s not going to come sailing home on the Rainbow Warrior. So I thought it was time for some real justice. I bought the poison, and planned to use it when the President came down to his chateau at Brégançon later in the month. But then you handed me the perfect opportunity. Sorry, Paul …’

  There was nothing I could say.

  ‘Are you going to try and take me back to meet your waitress friend?’ M asked.

  I squelched from one foot to the other. Decision time again. All these heavy moral choices I was being forced to make, when all I really wanted to do down here in the South of France was go snorkelling and organize a barbecue for Elodie.

  ‘Are you planning to have another go at the President?’ I asked.

  M laughed. ‘Huh, no. I think I’ve kind of blown my cover. And I’m really not cut out for this assassination lark.’

  All I could see of her was a silhouette standing out against the faint moonglow from the water. It was much too dark to look her in the eye. Anyway, the days when I thought I could tell whether a woman was lying were long gone. She might be pointing some kind of weapon at me, planning to put me out of action if I tried to stop her escaping.