‘Eloïse,’ he murmured.
‘What?’
She eased back a fraction, but he was still conscious of her breath on his skin.
‘Don’t do this,’ he said.
She picked up the torch and flicked it on. By the patchy light of its beam he could see her eyes were huge and her mouth was curved on the edge of a laugh.
‘Don’t do this?’ She brushed the back of her hand along his jaw.
Stop.
But the word refused to come out of his mouth. He took hold of her wrist and drew her hand away, but his fingers wouldn’t release it.
‘Don’t continue your involvement in André’s secrets. It’s dangerous and you are not trained for it.’ The thought tightened a hard knot in him. ‘I worry about you.’
She grew still. She didn’t remove her hand but used it to raise his hand to her lips. She kissed his knuckle. ‘I owe André,’ she said in a low tone. ‘I owe André his legs. And I won’t rest till I find the person who did this to him.’
There it was. Nothing he could say would change it. He knew her. Knew that tone. Whether she was hanging from a tree branch or hunting down a murderer, she would never let go.
Léon drew her to him, holding her close. ‘Then let me help you.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
‘You know what a DLD is?’
‘Of course. A dead letter drop.’ I looked at André. He was wound up. I’d felt the tension the moment he’d pushed open my door.
‘That’s right.’ He smiled approvingly, assessing my mood. ‘I want you to execute one today.’
It was early morning and yesterday’s clouds had sloped off to the west, leaving a naked blue sky that promised the heat would build fast. André was propped against the door-frame, wearing his workman’s clothes, a rough collarless shirt and neckerchief, though he was no longer a workman. I noticed he was wearing boots for the first time instead of soft shoes. Was he planning on going somewhere? Or was he just clinging to the world he’d lost?
‘Ready?’ he asked.
‘Of course. Where is it to take place?’
‘In Arles. I’ve drawn you a map. Memorise it, then burn it.’
‘What am I dropping?’
‘The film you developed.’
‘And who will pick it up?’
‘No need for you to know anything other than it will be a CIA agent pick-up. When you’ve completed the DLD, don’t hang about. Keep walking.’
‘But why would the CIA want that film? Surely they already possess that information.’
He smiled with a small tolerant sigh. ‘Because they need to know exactly which document was copied. They will narrow the field by working out how many on the air base had access to it.’
I nodded. Of course. André took hold of his crutches and swung himself across the room to stand right in front of me.
‘Eloïse.’
He ducked his head to peer at my face more closely with a gentle expression. ‘What’s the matter? Are you nervous?’
‘No,’ I lied.
He took one arm off a crutch, leaving it tucked under his armpit, and rested a hand on my shoulder, the way he used to do with all our gang of followers as children, marking each one of us as his own. Like a brand on a bull calf. I could feel the strength of him through the thin material of my blouse.
‘You’ll complete the DLD with ease,’ he said generously. ‘Take care. Keep your eyes open. Come back home immediately. I’ll be waiting.’ He placed a sheet of paper and a brown envelope in my hands, and patted my shoulder. ‘Don’t let me down, will you?’
‘No.’
‘I’m trusting you.’
I never thought to hear those words again from my brother.
He smiled and shook his mane of hair from his eyes. ‘You are my legs.’
I placed my hand on top of his on my shoulder and for a moment our Caussade bones fused. ‘I won’t let you down, don’t worry.’
He turned and swung himself to the door. He manoeuvred the crutches like an extension of himself now and I could see the muscles of his back bunching under his shirt. At the door he threw me a look that I couldn’t read and issued one final instruction.
‘Take the gun. Just in case.’
*
As soon as André was gone, I inspected the envelope. It was sealed. Plain, brown, and with no writing on the front. It looked like one of Papa’s envelopes from his bureau downstairs.
The sheet of paper he’d handed me was an instruction sheet telling me where and what the drop location was in Arles. I memorised it and then did as André ordered, burned it. In a glass trinket dish that used to belong to my mother.
So far, so obedient.
I crushed the warm ash with my finger tip, so that none of it was readable if someone tried. When it was nothing but powder, I hurried downstairs to Papa’s bureau in the dining room that we rarely used, preferring to eat in the sprawling kitchen most days. The bureau was locked. It was a heavy mahogany piece with fancy brass handles and a brass lock that looked more forbidding than it was. It took me all of two minutes to make it oblige and no more than another minute to remove a brown envelope from the pile inside and lock it once more. By the time I entered my room again I’d been gone five minutes maximum.
I shot the bolt. Yes, I’d screwed on a bolt. Two in fact, top and bottom. They wouldn’t keep out an axe murderer but they might gain me vital minutes to escape. In this case, they gained me the privacy I required.
I ripped open the sealed envelope André had given me and removed its contents. Two items tipped on to my bed. The developed film in a clear protective film wallet was one, a half-sheet of paper folded over tight was the other. Without a qualm I unfolded the paper to read its contents and felt a rush of exhilaration when I saw what was printed there in André’s black ink. The thrill of the chase sent a bolt of excitement scrambling up my spine. It was like old times. Except I had far more to lose now.
359 20 10
229 13 4
1261 14 14
828 17 5
378 5 11
8 3 8
1261 1 5
1117 14 7
55 20 6
216 19 2
1261 7 11
784 9 1
48 1 8
289 16 5
1117 20 2
213 5 1
145 2 3
571 32 3
358 35 6
671 1 8
853 5 1
299 5 1
25 6 4
1093 30 8
8 6 8
175 1 1
1093 35 9
75 33 13
415 24 2
69 3 3
303 5 5
1063 3 1
774 35 1
1192 3 11
471 3 7
It was a code.
I smiled as I ran my finger along the columns of numbers. My old friends. The days when you can outwit me at this, André, are long gone. I dived under my bed, drew out my smart Parisian suitcase, unlocked it and removed from under a copy of Paris Match my battered old copy of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. I flipped through the book, tracking down each page number, followed by the line number, followed by the word number. The first one was page 359, line 20, 10th word along. This turned out to be ‘fields’. I wrote down its first letter in my notebook – F.
A simple code, if you possess the book that is the key to it. I possessed it, of course I did. With one ear cocked for any sound of André’s crutches, I continued along every row of numbers until I had tracked down each of the first letters of the words and I ended up with thirty-five letters. When laid out in order they made up seven words:
FOUND IN DUR ANDS OFFICE NEED
HIGHER PRICE
*
I read it through twice and twice more, my brain latching tight as a leech on to the last three words. ‘Need Higher Price’.
For whom?
For Durand?
For the source of the le
ak?
I made myself think the impossible, just as my brother had told me.
A higher price for André?
*
I reached under my bed a second time, pulled out my suitcase again and sat down beside it. From inside I extracted my magnifying viewfinder. I felt foolish, not quite sure why I was doing this. Both André and I had examined the film negative minutely, but there was something stuck in my mind, something that I couldn’t shake off.
I laid out the strip of film, bent over it with the viewfinder screwed to my eye and started again scouring each face in the pictures I’d taken of the street in Serriac yesterday. A jumble of heads. Of backs and arms. Faces with mouths open, frozen into silence.
Where? Where was it?
The something that had caught like a fishhook in my mind. It took me ten minutes to find it, and when I did, I knew who had killed Mickey. I felt my next breath catch in my throat and I wanted to reach into the tiny square of celluloid and tear out the person in it. Put a match to it. Watch him burn in hell.
I peered closer, my mouth dry. The face was obscured by a placard declaring NO TO NUCLEAR BOMBS. But his thick head of hair showed clearly, white as snow in the negative. And the eyebrows were evident. Spiky and unmistakable.
The last time I’d seen him was at the hospital in Paris and he’d almost ripped my face off. It was Gilles Bertin’s sidekick. Maurice Piquet. The one who liked to hurt.
*
The heart of the town of Arles is marked with blood. Today I could almost smell it on the hot and humid air that drifted up from the river. Violence and slaughter are etched into its stones, because towering over the twisting narrow street and casting a great shadow of darkness is one of France’s most magnificent Roman amphitheatres, where men, women, children and animals were killed for sport.
This was where I was headed. I parked up on the main road, the Boulevard des Lices. On a Saturday it would be heaving with the finest open-air market in all of Provence, the scents of exotic spices and local cheeses and live poultry drawing crowds to pick and poke among the colourful stalls. But today it was quiet, just the usual Monday morning workers and delivery vans. The summer’s tourists were still taking it easy over coffee and croissants, not interested in one extra grey Citroën 2CV nipping into the shade under one of the placid trees that lined the road.
I took a roundabout route on foot. Now and again I stopped and lingered in a shop doorway, seemingly to examine some item of interest. But the only interest I had was in watching who or what was moving in the street. A woman weighted down by bulging hessian shopping bags. A waiter scurrying with a bottle of champagne in his hand. A black-robed priest and nun deep in conversation. A child who regarded my scar with interest. An old dog already too hot to growl at a stranger.
No one whose face I knew.
André was right. I was nervous. No reason to be. Was there? I was just delivering a letter, but my heart didn’t get that message. It was kicking against my ribs like a jackhammer, until the moment when I spilled out of the maze of cramped streets and emerged from the Rue des Arènes into the wide-open space where the ancient Roman amphitheatre reared up in all its monolithic glory. Every time – every single time – it had the power to reduce me to tears.
I strolled along the raised road opposite the arena and slid into a seat in one of the pavement cafés as if I had no particular aim and all the time in the world. A few tourists ambled past, popping in and out of the souvenir shops, but no one glanced my way. The amphitheatre was the main attraction.
I ordered a pastis, despite the early hour. I liked the milky soft yellow liquid and sipped it slowly while I inspected my surroundings. I had a good view from up here on the raised road. It ran alongside a section of the amphitheatre and I watched every person who strolled past or who stood gawping at the massive stone construction opposite. I studied them. Committed their details to memory. So I would know them again.
I was calm now. The jitters gone. This was the kind of work I’d done a hundred times for Clarisse in Paris. Observation. Patience. Timing. Action. Retreat. But when I worked for Clarisse a life was not at stake. It was the Roman amphitheatre that had brought a sense of perspective into my mind. Each time I came near it I felt the hairs on my arms rise, it was so awe-inspiring. It was a two-tiered gigantic stone construction 140 metres long, with seating for over twenty thousand screaming spectators, adorned by one hundred and twenty exquisite arches, plus three towers as a medieval add-on.
It was a place built for death. Death and chariot races. And now used for bull ‘games’. Was it all the dead souls within its arena that gave it its power? Was it sitting there in the sun, waiting for more?
I lingered over my pastis. An hour later when I was ready, I stood, tossed a few coins on the table and proceeded to circle around the outer wall of the amphitheatre until I was satisfied no one was on my tail. When I came to the opening of an insignificant little street with a stone urn at its entrance and a metal grille over the first window, I knew I was on the right track. The street was in deep shade and shutters were closed. No eyes to see what they shouldn’t see, no tongues to tell what they shouldn’t tell.
Halfway down on the right-hand side stood a wide drain-pipe, black and rusty. Its upper part had been hacked off, so that it ended at waist height, capped off with a metal lid. As I passed it, I lifted the lid – it needed a good yank – and dropped the brown envelope containing the negative inside the pipe. I caught a glimpse of a cylinder within.
Lid back on, I was off down the street. It had taken precisely five seconds.
*
I was tempted to stay. To watch. To see who came. But I was certain that I would wait in vain. Nobody would come while I was anywhere near the DLD and it was a spot well chosen, because I didn’t stand a chance of watching over the small street without being observed myself.
I walked in circles through the streets of Arles, switching back on myself, at times darting off at odd angles, or taking back alleyways that led me past waste bins and under strings of washing. When I was sure that no one was following me, absolutely hand-on-Bible certain, I picked up my pace and swung back to the Place du Forum. From there I dodged through the little crowd of tourists that always hung around the cafés with their yellow awnings and turned the corner, down towards the river.
No mist today. Except the mist of deceit.
I found the street with no problem. And the house. The one where the green and white Chevrolet had parked on a patch of dirt and I’d watched my brother under cover of darkness. André claimed he had persuaded the MGB agent that he was more use to them alive than dead.
More use to them how? What did you agree to do, André?
And how come I got a gun in my face each time I entered your room unannounced? But not Gilles Bertin. How come you didn’t pull the trigger instead of riding off in his car? Tell me, André.
A scrawny ginger cat was lounging in a shady spot, seeking refuge from the relentless heat, and as I reached the doorway where I’d hidden that night, my body reacted. With a mind of its own. It recalled the person who had sheltered there with me, the feel of his shoulder under my cheek and his whispered breath on my ear. His concern for me like a third person squeezed in there with us. And as I passed the innocuous-looking doorway an unexpected heat rose in my chest.
Let me help you.
Léon’s words last night. The night sky was witness to them. In the dark I had wrapped an arm around his neck and kissed his warm mouth.
The street was not as quiet as I’d expected now, so to gain time I bent and stroked the mangy little fleabag of a cat, which set it purring as loud as a tank. But as soon as there was a brief lull in activity in the street I moved over to the door of the house into which André and his companion had disappeared.
I knocked on the door, only once. No response. Part of me was disappointed. That part of me wanted a good long talk with Monsieur MGB. But the other part was pleased. It wanted a private snoop while the coa
st was clear.
I pulled out my lock-picks.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I slid a hand into the side pocket of the man’s jacket hanging in the wardrobe.
A small cry of pain escaped me. I swore and snatched it back out fast. It felt as though my fingertips had been ripped by a ferret’s teeth and when I looked I saw blood.
‘Bastard,’ I hissed at the suit.
It was charcoal grey with a faint stripe, exquisitely tailored, with a transparent cover over the shoulders to keep off the dust. This was a meticulous man. I twisted a handkerchief around my scarlet fingertips and with the other hand opened up the pocket so that I could peer inside. With care I extracted the contents. It was a wine cork with two razor blades embedded in it. What kind of person carried a weapon like that around? Or was it just to deter pickpockets?
Or perhaps . . . I licked my lips . . . perhaps he knew I was coming.
*
Opening drawers and cupboards, unlocking his suitcase and sticking a suspicious finger into cigarette packets.
‘Come on, Gilles Bertin, you can’t hide forever.’
I rummaged through a waste bin. I stirred the contents of his sugar packet and prodded his coffee beans for anything hidden inside. I upended the seat cushions on his sofa. I crawled under his bed. I peeled back the inner soles of his shoes.
The Guardian of Lies Page 17