by Celia Imrie
‘To you, elderly is younger than I am, thank you, William. If she’s “elderly”, what does that make me? Or you, for that matter?’
‘There’s no point phoning her.’ Cathy stepped forward. ‘There is simply no hope of my mother coming tonight. She’s in Cannes at that Brit party.’ Cathy touched William’s arm. ‘Perhaps I could go out there to greet the photographers, as her daughter?’ She started pulling her apron off.
William put up his hand. ‘No. Thank you, Cathy, that will not be necessary. Paraffin to the fire!’
‘It’s like death warmed up out there.’ Zoe bustled into the kitchen. ‘In here is clearly where the action is.’
Benjamin popped his head round the door.
‘Can I come in?’
‘No!’ they all whispered.
‘Someone has to take people to the tables . . . ’ said William.
‘And take their orders . . . ’ said Carol.
Benjamin pulled a face and returned to the dining room.
‘Cathy,’ William was desperate. ‘Please see if you can get her on the landline.’ He indicated the cellar, and Cathy duly went down the steps. ‘Beg her!’
‘I’ve still got that cheque for you, William,’ said Zoe. ‘And I thought you’d like to know what really happened here last night.’ She fetched one of the stools from beside the wall and placed it in the centre of the kitchen. ‘As you know, we dug up two medallions, the Crab and the Lion.’
‘As they only asked for one,’ said Theresa, ‘it did seem a little strange.’
‘There’s a reason. It seems that old Ma Magenta was so worried about her family coming to claim her valuable little item, she herself did a double bluff, which is what we also intend to do.’
‘So one of them really is genuine?’ said Theresa, cutting a slab of pissaladière into small squares and arranging them with the salad on a plate. ‘But which one is which and which do we give?’
‘As William informed me, Ma Magenta’s birthday was the twenty-third of July. As Benjamin pointed out, in usual years this is Leo the Lion. But I’m a child of the Sixties, you know, where we all wore kaftans and smelled of patchouli and had our palms read and drew up one another’s horoscopes.’
William let out a noisy yawn.
‘I recall having to search out an awful book called the Ephemeris, which to me looked like logarithm tables and smelled of old wet dogs, but you had to hunt in there to find rising signs and conjunctions and cusps, and all that guff,’ Zoe continued. ‘I also clearly remember that the dates given in the newspaper horoscopes are often not correct, not once you’ve consulted the Ephemeris. Thank God for the internet, because now you don’t have to faff about with stinky old books, you can just Google it – which I did last night.’
Benjamin reappeared at the door. He opened his mouth to speak but everyone shooed him away.
‘But let me . . . ’
‘Get out there, Benjamin,’ said William. ‘That woman is a critic, for God’s sake.’
‘But—’
‘Go!’ William gave Benjamin a shove and he spun round back into the dining room.
Zoe was still rattling on. ‘I have checked and double-checked. Franca Magenta, an Italian who believed in all kinds of hoodoo, would know very well that her actual birthday – born on that date in that year, 1920 – fell under Cancer the Crab.’
‘Not Leo? So the Crab is the Chagall?’
‘And we’re going to give them the Leo?’
‘That’s it.’ Zoe nodded. ‘They’re no art experts. I doubt they’ve ever watched the Antiques Roadshow or spent an afternoon in the Musée des Beaux-Arts. What will they know?’
‘But if they take it to an expert?’
‘Then they’ll have to believe that the old girl was playing a great big joke on them.’
‘They might come back here and take them all, like Russian roulette . . . ’
‘And if they do?’ said Zoe. ‘They’ll find none of them are a Chagall.’
‘And two of them are genuine Carol Rogers,’ said Carol.
‘And what happens to the other one?’ asked Theresa, placing two plates on the pass for Benjamin to deliver. ‘The Crab.’
‘Once William has cashed my cheque, we’ve settled with the estate agent and we own the building, when it absolutely becomes ours; being, as part of the floor, a fitting and fixture, naturally we sell the medallion. Up in Paris, at Sotheby’s or somewhere,’ said Zoe. ‘And we split the dosh between us.’
‘So that’s why you wanted to buy in!’
The door pushed open again.
‘I’ve told you once,’ said William. ‘Go back, Benjamin.’
But it was not Benjamin.
In walked Uncle Vito.
‘I am so pleased I overheard that last conversation,’ said Vito. ‘Now you can hand over what is rightfully mine.’
‘Hand over what?’ said William, very badly feigning innocence.
Vito slipped his hand into his pocket and smiled.
‘I’d like the Crab, please.’
Theresa had a wild try. ‘Crab salad or the terrine?’ she said.
‘You know very well which crab.’ He stepped further into the kitchen and spoke in an intense whisper. ‘Don’t mess with me, lady.’
‘Look,’ said Theresa. ‘We are running this place in good faith. If you have a family quarrel, go and have it out with your relatives and leave us alone.’
‘Shut up!’ Vito pulled out a pistol and levelled it at Theresa, who took a step back. William tried to make a dash for the door.
‘No you don’t.’ Vito turned the gun on William, then swung it to face Carol and Zoe, who cowered beside the fridge.
‘Where is my Chagall medallion?’
‘The Leo medallion, by Marc Chagall, is in the dining room,’ said Theresa.
He thrust his face close to hers.
‘I’ve told you once. I am not interested in being fobbed off with a fake. I heard what that old woman said. I want the genuine Chagall. I don’t want the Lion. I want the Crab.’
‘Don’t shoot.’ Zoe put up her hands. ‘I’ll tell you where it is. It’s hanging up under the coats.’
Vito laughed.
‘You really take me for a fool, don’t you? I know you are hiding the real one. Whatever you have out there will not be the one I want.’
Theresa prayed that Benjamin was now dialling the police from the phone at the front desk. Then she realised that Cathy was on the line down in the cellar and he would not be able to. She hoped Benjamin could use his mobile.
‘Right!’ Vito advanced, pulling open cupboards, flinging things on the floor. ‘You bring me the Crab now, or else . . . ’
‘I’m sure that we . . . ’ Theresa stood in front of the fridge door.
‘Be quiet!’ shouted Vito. ‘Hand it over or I will go out there and start shooting your customers. After that no one will ever visit this stupid place. You’ll be finished.’
Nobody moved.
‘It’s in the fridge,’ said Theresa, stepping away from the door.
Vito pulled the set of keys she had given him yesterday from his pocket and flung them to the floor. ‘Why should I ever believe a word you tell me?’
He held the gun up and herded everyone into a corner, while he pulled open the fridge door. He glanced inside and instantly saw the lime-green shopping bag lying on the bottom shelf.
He hauled it out.
‘It’s the real one,’ said Zoe, trying to sound bright as he slammed the fridge shut and glanced into the shopping bag. ‘Chagall.’
‘It’s a medallion, all right . . . ’ He held the gun up again and waved it about. ‘Get back! Stay still.’
‘Her birthday, remember?’ said Theresa. ‘She was a Leo.’
Vito advanced towards Theresa and the others.
‘You have not forgotten that I overheard your whole conversation?’
He raised the shopping bag high in the air then flung it to the ground with a crash. All around han
ging pots clattered and pans rattled.
Theresa could hear steps coming up from the cellar. She tried to warn Cathy not to come in, in case it made Vito scared and he accidentally fired.
‘Cathy!’ she cried out in warning. ‘Watch out!’
But, regardless of her call, Cathy appeared.
‘Watch out for what?’ she asked, blinking in the stark kitchen light. ‘Oo-er! Is something wrong?’
Cathy was clutching Zoe’s bright-red shopping bag.
‘Look what I found hidden down the side of the desk,’ she said brightly. ‘It’s a missing part of the floor.’
Cathy peered around, saw the startled looks on everyone’s face and only then noticed the gun, which Vito trained upon her.
‘You! Girl!’ he said. ‘Open the bag!’
‘It’s just an old bit of flooring,’ she said, holding the shopper open, displaying the contents: a blue and yellow mosaic medallion of a crab.
‘At last. Just what I always wanted.’ Vito snatched the bag and, still holding the gun up, backed out of the kitchen. ‘It’s that simple. Thank you all, and goodbye!’
William and Theresa ran to the door to watch Vito stride through the dining room, swinging the red shopping bag as he left.
‘Should we go after him?’ asked Carol, moving behind them and peering over their shoulders.
‘What would be the point?’ said Theresa. ‘He has what he wants.’ She turned to everyone. ‘Now perhaps he’ll go away, and we can run the place in peace.’
‘But that thing was meant to be ours,’ said William.
‘No it wasn’t. We were supposed to be opening a restaurant.’
‘But we would have been rich,’ wailed Zoe.
‘Let’s forget about it,’ said Theresa. ‘And try to make tonight work for us.’
‘Perhaps the photographers will take his picture?’ William said.
‘Why would they? They save their shots for people they recognise,’ said Carol. ‘And anyway, how will that help? I can see the headline: “Man leaves restaurant with red shopping bag!” ’
The front door opened again and through it they could all see a barrage of flashlights and the frantic sound of cameras clicking and whirring.
‘Oh no,’ whispered Theresa. ‘He’s not come back . . . ’
Two people walked in and Benjamin stepped forward to lead them to a table.
‘Why are the paparazzi snapping them?’ asked William at the same time as Theresa said: ‘Who are they?’
‘A footballer and his wife,’ said Carol. ‘That’s Mickey MacDonald and his wife Destiny. They’re on the cover of OK! magazine almost every other week. They’re friends of Sally.’
‘Oh, well, something for the press coverage,’ said William, pulling down his jacket and putting on his front-of-house smile. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers. It’s now officially a quasi-celebrity opening.’ He pushed open the dining-room door and swung into welcoming action.
On the train home Sally was forced to stand. Every compartment was full. People were crammed in the gangways, on the stairways and in the spaces near the doors. She was squashed against the lavatory wall by a horde of young film executives who were chattering non-stop in English about how Cannes was a waste of time, except for the parties. They then started arguing about the problem of finding trustworthy funding.
Sally wondered whether any of these young men had encountered Stanislav, and winced. Had she the room, she would have put her face into her hands.
When she arrived back in Bellevue-Sur-Mer, her instinct now was to pack a suitcase, head straight to the airport and fly away. But where would she go? And even if she found somewhere, wouldn’t she be taking with her the thing she was mainly running away from – herself?
How gullible and idiotic could she be? Being taken in by such an obvious conman and all because she was stupid enough to think that he fancied her.
She wondered if Jean-Philippe felt as foolish as she did. He had been used as a drug-runner by Stanislav and not even known it. Stanislav’s contacts in Marseille had put the bags into Jean-Philippe’s car while he was in the shop picking up the spare part for the boat. It was all on CCTV. The police even wondered whether Stanislav and his friends hadn’t damaged the boat part themselves so that they could send Jean-Philippe on this fool’s errand. This was particularly likely because under the terms of the charter all repairs should have been done by the rental company. But Jean-Philippe was not to know that. The authorities had let him go this morning, just before they moved in to arrest Stanislav. He would be a witness in court.
A drunken young man pushed past Sally and pulled open the lavatory door, which let out a vile odour of stagnant urine.
Sally wondered how all the others were faring. Mickey and Destiny must be feeling pretty bad too. Mickey’s charity match had been marred by the arrests and he now had a huge hole in the finances of his kids’ project. Mind you, thought Sally, in the world of football it shouldn’t take long to make up the shortfall. Looking back, Sally realised that even Destiny had worked out more than she had. Destiny knew that not only was Stephane not a chauffeur but that he was also Russian.
Diana, too, was in a position to recover pretty quickly.
She felt most terrible about Jackie. Not only had she been lied to and for a while been physically held captive by Stanislav, he had frightened her so much that after Sally left her cowering behind the banisters that morning, Jackie had packed her bags and gone straight to the airport. Jackie was so scared of Stanislav coming after her that she had altogether given up the idea of going to the party she thought would be useful to her career and headed home. It was there, at the airport, while standing in a queue to check in, that Jackie had phoned the gendarmes and reported everything she’d seen. Her information was the last part of the puzzle for the police. They arrived at the airport to take her into protective custody while they swooped. They already had men at the football stadium, as usual on match days. Jean-Philippe had gone with another officer to point Stanislav out, in case he chose to mingle with the crowd. Sally was also told that the police stayed with Jean-Philippe so that he could not forewarn her.
The train pulled to a stop. A few people got out.
Sally took a deep breath. The police had told her that they had known all week about a gang of four Russians operating in the Nice–Cannes region. Two men and a woman holed up somewhere near Nice; another man had moved over to work from Marseille. Some boy, who had passed on the initial tip-off, had been killed and dumped off the rocks just outside Nice old port ten days ago.
Sally shuddered. She wondered if Stanislav himself had taken part in the murder.
After Jackie had given the police the address in Vence, it didn’t take long for them to piece everything together and pick up Stephane and Cecile. Then they went to the football stadium and arrested Stanislav himself.
Another train stop and the crush became bearable. Sally leaned on a stair rail. He had been so plausible.
Or was it simply that she had been so gullible?
How easy it was to pose as a millionaire. What did it cost to print a business card? About five pounds. Three impressive addresses, two in faraway places. All fake. The Paris and St Petersburg addresses existed on a map, so you could look them up on Google, but they had nothing whatsoever to do with Stanislav. He had had the cards made up specifically to take people in during his two weeks in Cannes. And all the time, while her heart was stupidly fluttering, Stanislav was up in the rented villa in Vence with his two partners in crime, Stephane and Cecile, organising the short operation of bringing in drugs across the Mediterranean: picking them up, dispersing them and then laundering the money in a place where no one worried too much where money came from, as long as they got it.
How had she fallen for all that romantic nonsense? She was a grown woman with grown-up children.
She thought of Marianne and Tom and their mad amours. As their mother, she might have lectured them in the past, but it turned out she herse
lf was just as foolish and trusting. How could she ever again think herself in a position to give them advice when she had just been taken in by the biggest confidence trickster of them all?
Many people got out of the train at Nice, and Sally found herself a seat for the rest of the journey. Now she was surrounded only by Chinese tourists heading for Monte Carlo and the casino.
She sighed and gazed out at the diamond-studded black-silk throw of sea. All along the shore, amber-coloured lights glowed against the navy-blue sky.
Sally thanked God it was night-time, so that, when she arrived in Bellevue-Sur-Mer, she could walk with her head down, and no one would notice her pass out of the station and move along the dark alleyways leading up to her house.
Theresa was content working in the kitchen alone. Cathy had crawled down to the cellar again after a tongue-lashing from William. But, as Theresa had pointed out, it was not the girl’s fault. She didn’t know anything about the medallions.
Theresa was preparing desserts for Jean-Philippe, Tom and his lady friend. The old gent was munching through his starter swiftly so then she would begin frying up the fish for his main course.
To Theresa’s amusement, Destiny and Mickey had asked whether they could have something simple like egg, chips and beans. William, who had been so against the idea of the café by the station, with its greasy-spoon image, had come in pressing her to indulge them: ‘They’re famous, Theresa. If we please them, we please the world.’
‘A minute ago you didn’t know who they were.’
‘The critic woman is scribbling away since they came in. It’s our chance.’
‘Fried eggs are a doddle, and for chips they can have the panisse ones, like everyone else. But we have no baked beans, William. Do you want to send Benjamin up to the Huit-à-8?’
William’s eyes had flared and his mouth tightened.
‘Improvise!’
‘How many empty tables left?’
‘Five tables for four and the one Sally reserved for herself. I have to say when I see her she will be getting a rocket from me. A no-show? And she’s supposed to be my friend.’
‘Our friend.’
‘Apparently all these others, the footballer and the boat-man, knew she was going to be here and came in specifically to talk to her. So what does Sally do? Stand us all up!’