by Will Smith
‘We don’t have a social relationship, Louis.’
Christophe flinched at the mention of his real name. Vautier was pushing him harder than he had since their first confrontation. He hoped he was not the source of the man’s rancour, just his punchbag. ‘Please,’ said Christophe, ‘maybe we should go to my office.’
Vautier smirked and cast his head around comically. ‘So we’re not overheard? There’s no fucker here. Your stupid prices and crazy furniture have seen to that. Seriously, this stool is so uncomfortable I’m going to feel like I spent the night getting rogered at Roy’s. Don’t look so bloody serious – I’m trying to lighten the mood. Although I’m in such a terrible mood to begin with, it might not feel that light to you. Come on, let’s sit on one of those chairs. They are chairs, right?’
Christophe nodded and walked with the detective to a window table. The dining chairs had disproportionately high wrought-iron backs, as if someone had attached a ladder to a stool.
‘Looking for someone, need you to keep an eye out.’
‘I always have an eye out.’
‘This is specific.’
‘The boy? Your colleague has already been in—’
‘Yeah, Gerry’s doing the rounds on that. The guy I’m looking for is Scouse, in his twenties, bit of an animal. Should be an easy spot for you.’
‘As per our agreement, I don’t move in those circles. My work is strictly in the hotel industry.’
‘He might turn up looking for his ex, Louise O’Rourke.’
Christophe repressed another flinch. ‘She no longer works here.’
‘So I gather. What happened?’
‘Things were not working out. Her manner was …’
‘Too Scouse?’
Christophe inclined his head.
‘What about her behaviour? Was that Scouse too?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Was she on the take?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘And you’d know. Well, long term, probably a good idea not to have her around. Anyone who used to hang out with this piece of shit is bound to have picked up a few bad habits.’ Vautier unfolded a black-and-white faxed photo from his pocket and threw it on to the table. Despite the blurred quality, the eyes cut through and Christophe could see defiance and unrepentance; the look of a man who would not bend the knee. It was a look he had been relieved not to deploy or receive for several years.
‘Got tats too, declaring his loyalty to the fraternity. Like you used to. Never got that myself – like an undercover copper wearing his helmet.’
Christophe didn’t react.
‘You’ve still got your tat?’
‘This Island is not exactly overflowing with removal clinics.’
‘And I guess you don’t want anyone talking about what you’re getting removed.’
‘It’s not as if it’s a swastika or the number 666. It is of no significance to most.’
‘I suppose. You were just unlucky with me.’ Vautier stood. ‘This guy, if he comes in here, makes any trouble and you put him down hard, it won’t be a problem.’
‘I’m not sure that would be good for the image of the hotel or for myself.’
‘What I know about this guy, you might not have a choice. He finds out you fired his ex, or you won’t give up her address, he could get nasty.’
‘I provide you with information. I’m not your muscle.’
‘You’re whatever I want you to be. Otherwise I might have to tell your friends back in the Unione where you washed up.’
Christophe had indeed been unlucky to ping on to Barney Vautier’s radar. He had blamed himself for lowering his guard, for his prejudiced assumption that such a dull backwater was unlikely to produce many sharpened minds. But over time he had absolved himself and instead ascribed his unmasking to a chance misfortune, which in time he could perhaps turn to his advantage.
The night Vautier had first noticed Christophe had also been the night Rob had spotted him. That night he had begun to serve two masters.
Earlier in the day Rob’s father had handed his son the keys to the Bretagne. Russell de la Haye had overseen thirty-one successful years of ownership, transforming it from an old-school into a two-star bed-and-breakfast and, later, a solid three-star hotel. Christophe was a recently appointed barman, who had caught Rob’s attention when, in response to his new boss’s braying declaration that he had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a Slow Comfortable Screw Against a Wall in the bar, he had delivered not just a perfect Slow Comfortable Screw but also a Snowball.
He had been appointed head barman on the spot, a post that, previously, had not officially existed but had had a de facto holder in the elderly Alfonse, who sniffily remarked that Christophe would not see any extra wages. Christophe secured the old man’s support by giving him a rise of his own, once he had control of the budget.
He had also served Vautier that night, and thought of him as a glum man in the corner gamely trying to celebrate the anniversary of a troubled marriage, unaware that the man’s sourness was being stoked by the voluble revelry of Rob and his hangers-on, and soothed by the redoubtable Eileen.
One member of the party, a thirty-four-year-old estate agent called Jan, whom Rob told Christophe was ‘on the prowl’ and ‘an open goal’, draped her arm round the Frenchman’s neck when asking for a fifth Piña Colada, and managed to tip the icy remains of the fourth down the front of his shirt. As she had dried it with the edge of her shawl a dark patch had appeared against the wet white cloth on the left of his chest.
‘What’s that – a bruise? Looks nasty …’
‘A youthful folly, a tattoo of the Moor’s Head, the symbol of my home island of Corsica.’
Sally had ushered Jan towards a sobering coffee while mouthing, ‘Sorry,’ to Christophe, who, as he turned to head for a new shirt, caught Vautier’s eye, which was registering a curiosity Christophe could well have done without.
A casual enquiry days later had alerted him to the man’s profession, but as the weeks went by he attributed the look the detective had given him to disdain for public drunkenness rather than any wider suspicion of Christophe’s origins.
Three months later Christophe was on his steady rise to the position of Rob’s lieutenant, sharing his enthusiasm and vision for the hotel, and perfecting the knack of presenting his next step up the ladder’s rungs as a fait accompli to his boss. To Rob’s mind, Christophe was another element in his own success story, a weapon he chose to deploy, marking out his genius as a strategist. From Christophe’s point of view, Rob’s character failed to match the position Providence had bestowed: he was a man arrogant enough to place his faith in his own potency, neglecting the part that fortune had played in his cushioned existence.
There had been a knock at his office door and Alfonse had told him that a gentleman in the bar was asking to see the Corsican. Christophe had asked Alfonse to show the man in, and was not surprised when Vautier strode in and splayed himself in the leather chair on the other side of the desk.
‘Mr Fournier, I’m Detective Vautier. Hope I’m not disturbing you.’
‘Not at all. How can I help?’
‘Just looking into something, could do with your expertise.’
‘I’m not sure I have any.’
‘Well, you know France better than me.’
‘Not all of it. It is a big country.’
‘Yes, it is. I think this Island’s the only place in the world where if someone goes, “Oh, you’re from Jersey, you must know so-and-so,” and you actually do.’
‘It is a small place.’
‘But beautifully formed.’
‘So where or who or what in France do you want to know about?’
‘I’ll give you the background. I have to go on these conferences with my English and French counterparts, bit of a jolly to Weymouth or Saint-Malo or, if I’m lucky, London or Paris, so we can put names to faces, work out better liaison procedures, you know the sort of thing.’
‘I did one a while back, in Rouen as a matter of fact. Know it?’
‘I know of it.’
‘Not missing much. Nice cathedral – we don’t have one of those over here. Anyway, I ended up sharing a few Cointreaus with this … I was going to say “cop”, but I think the term you would use is “keuf”.’
‘“Keuf” is actually street slang. It is quite derogatory. A closer translation of “cop” would be “flic”.’
‘There you go. I’m learning already, and I haven’t even got to the big question. So this flic, he can’t really hold his Cointreau. In truth, he’s a right state, great fat gut, blood vessels all burst in his nose, like a tramp dressed up for court. Obviously the job’s getting to him. He’s from Marseille – you must know Marseille, main sea link to Corsica. That’s where you’re from, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, you’re from Corsica, or yes, you know Marseille?’
‘Both.’
‘Spent much time there?’
‘A little.’
‘Sounds wise. Not a place to hang around, by all accounts, Marseille. I mean this guy, he was so jealous of me being from Jersey. ’Cause we have, what, a murder every ten years? This guy’s patch had one a week. And what really got to him was he knew who was pulling the triggers and wielding the knives – this gang, from Corsica as it happens, but no one would talk. Said they all had the same tattoo. Said he could cut crime in half if he went out with an armed unit one night and shot every cunt with a Moor’s Head. Good job he didn’t, you might have got caught up in that. By mistake.’
‘The Moor’s Head is the symbol of Corsica. It is on the flag, and most of the souvenirs. Having a tattoo of it is not a crime.’
Vautier tapped his chest. ‘But having it on the heart’s a big deal. Only members of the Corsican Mafia are allowed that. And if you ever leave or turn, I heard they cut it out, take your heart with it.’
‘Please don’t take offence, but your friend, the flic, was telling stories, the town mouse trying to frighten his country cousin. You are familiar with The French Connection?’
‘The film?’
‘It is based on true events. The Unione Corse were running heroin from Marseille to New York. They got caught, after which they fell apart.’
‘So who’s running the bars, casinos, hookers and dope on the south coast now, then?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘I think you would. And I think if you were to roll up your shirt I’d see a wound just there under your ribcage,’ said Vautier, leaning over to jab at Christophe’s right side, ‘where your old friends tried to shiv you on the inside.’
Christophe felt his face harden into a long-abandoned expression, that of a man who was facing both fight and flight.
‘I’m happy to be proved wrong. Roll up your shirt.’
‘I have served my time.’
‘Unclench your fists, pal. As it happens, I wouldn’t have sent you down in the first place. The guy you half killed was the worst kind of scum.’
‘He was selling wraps of smack to fifteen-year-olds for blowjobs.’
‘And you were selling them to sixteen-year-olds for cash, so you’re no fucking angel.’
‘The organisation I was in did not allow you to opt out of tasks you found unappealing.’
‘No, and it likes its own justice. You beat up your boss’s son, the cops turned up and you both went down for possession.’
‘He threw the first punch. From behind too. He was a coward, who relied on his name for protection.’
‘Hey, I don’t disagree. But beating the heir to the throne and getting him sent down? I bet they’ve got a long, slow death planned for you. Probably glad you didn’t bleed out in that prison corridor.’
Christophe held his gaze, wondering whether to hear him out or break his jaw. He decided to let him run on and fully show his hand.
‘That’s why you didn’t hang around when you got out. Took the first new identity you could find, no time to shop around. I asked a friendly gendarme and he was pretty sure Fournier is a name from the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, near the Belgian border. I can tell you myself there are no Fourniers on Corsica. I mean, I know it used to be Italian, that place, so maybe they’re a little slipshod on the census, but you’d think they’d at least get it together for the birth registers.’
‘What can I say? I’m reluctantly impressed.’
‘That drunk slag really landed you in it, letting me see that tattoo, having you blurt out your Corsican connection.’
‘So what happens now? Is this where you tell me I have twenty-four hours to get off your island?’
‘Maybe. There’s another way, of possible mutual benefit.’
‘I have committed no crime since I arrived here.’
‘Other than living under a false identity.’
‘What do you want from me?’
‘First, I want an assurance that you really are a reformed character. You’re right, you’ve done nothing wrong in my backyard so I’ve no reason to pull you in. It needs to stay that way.’
‘Why would I want to draw any attention to myself? You’re well aware of what will happen if they find me.’
‘I am. And I can push that button.’
‘Unless I do what?’
‘I want you to be my early-warning system. No one can spot a villain like another villain. You picked here because it’s small and sleepy. You could have tried to lose yourself in a big city, but big cities have friends of friends of friends of the wrong sort. I don’t want that sort here, and neither do you.’
‘Okay.’
‘Specifically I want you to keep your ear to the ground among your own.’
‘By “own”, you mean foreigners?’
‘We don’t pay the Portuguese enough for them to get any rackets going.’
‘That is usually how rackets start, an isolated community trying to make its way.’
‘If you spot anything, great. But in my experience the Porkos want to get their heads down, pick the potatoes and go home. Your lot are another story. They’ve always had their eye on this place, still see it as theirs. So get yourself a hobby, fishing. Gorey, St Catherine’s, Bouley, Bonne Nuit, who knows who or what is coming and going in those little harbours? Maybe nothing. But some day someone’s going to see how many open doors there are in this Island, and I want to know about it. This is a nice place, a clean place, and I don’t want any shit in it.’
Vautier had offered his hand and the two had entered into an agreement.
It was just after half past eight when Christophe wandered up to the roof with a tumbler and his bottle of Forgeron. He needed to clear his head, and often clambered out of the dormer window of the loft, which was still waiting for the extra funds to turn it into the penthouse. Tonight he was warned off by the gathering gusts of wind and instead stayed holding on to the iron rail that ran round the rim of the roof. The hotel’s five occupants had opted for room service, and once they had been served, he would dismiss the chef and close the kitchen for the night. Walk-ups were unlikely, given the turn in the weather; this was a night for hunkering. One couple had walked in at about a quarter to eight, but had been intimidated by the emptiness. Maybe they’d needed to discuss something best masked by the clatter of fellow diners. No matter. Christophe was confident things would pick up. And if they didn’t, the Bretagne still presented him with a splendid opportunity. A high-end establishment with an owner desperate for numbers, but unwilling to put in the graft. Rob had not noticed that close to thirteen grand had gone out of his tills. He surely wouldn’t question if considerably more were to be put through them.
He hadn’t come to the Island looking to steal in such a way. He’d come to gather, to regroup, to buy himself some time. He’d found himself lulled by its small-time rhythms. Maybe it was enough to work in a bar, earn his way, and keep the skin of his knuckles ungrazed. Here was an opportunity for reinvention. Here he could be C
hristophe Fournier, sophisticated barman, maître d’ and latterly hotel manager, keeper of another man’s secrets while using them to mask his own. He found that his Frenchness conferred a certain status. Some of the Islanders clearly felt closer to the Normans than they did the Saxons, perhaps due to the ancient history that bonded them as kingdoms, or possibly due to the more recent history that stigmatised both as victims of occupation, who had, in popular parlance, ‘rolled out the welcome mat’ in 1940. When the English spoke to the Jersiaise and the French, the question mark of ‘Resister or Collaborator?’ still hung over them.
But, slowly, he had begun to feel he was destined to become a pet of the lunching classes, hearty handshakes, healthy tips, the veneer of friendship covering the statuses of serf and nobleman. This was never going to be enough. But he’d felt the same back in Marseille. Limited, boxed in, overlooked. Expected to use his fists, not his brains. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said the French Connection had been the high point. After the American pipeline was shut down, the Unione had descended into infighting and was now a gang of street thugs making too much noise and drawing unnecessary attention to themselves. He’d been mocked as a pussy and a faggot for suggesting there were other ways of doing business so he’d done exactly what was asked of him until Philippe had pushed things too far. Philippe, who always liked to put him in his place, and who nicknamed him Le Hérisson, The Hedgehog, a taunt about his squat frame and hairy shoulders. He hadn’t wanted to be a bit player in his new life so he’d started taking a little extra cash, then realised he could take more than a little. And then Louise had fallen into his lap, and he’d decided to reinvest his pilfered gains in his relationship with Rob. He had bought himself a surfeit of trust, and could now slowly begin working on the other part of his plan that had been gradually coalescing.
Christophe was a born watcher. That was how he’d started as a teenager, looking out for the cops, in uniform or out. He could spot a man’s weakness, temperamental, physical, emo-tional. And he had been watching this Island. Money swilled under it like a drainage system. The tourists, the produce, the famous cattle: those were just window dressing. Sure, they made money, but underneath was where the real action was. He could see where things were going. Why did an island so small need so many banks?