by Ian Rankin
Doyle and Greenleaf weren't yet back at the hotel, so he tried the police station. No, the two gentlemen had called in, but there'd been no one available to help them. They'd arranged a meeting with Inspector Block in a pub somewhere . . . probably the Faithful Collie. Yes, he had the telephone number.
So he tried the Faithful Collie. Calling to a pub from a pub: talk about a noisy line! I'll find you ... Eventually he got the barman in the Faithful Collie to understand. There was a yell, another yell, and finally Greenleaf answered.
'Is that you, Mr Elder?'
'She's left a message for me in a pub.'
'What? I didn't make that out.'
'Witch has left me a message.'
A burly biker roamed past on his way to the toilets. Another came out.
They exchanged handslaps.
'How do you know?' Greenleaf was asking.
'Because a barman just handed it to me.'
'What does it say?'
'It says I'm not to look for her, she'll find me when she wants.'
'We've got to get it down to a lab .. .' The fact suddenly struck Greenleaf.
'Oh,' he said, 'you've opened it.'
'Obviously.'
'You shouldn't have done that.'
'I realise . ..'
'Still, not much we can do now. Which pub?'
'The Cat over the Broomstick.'
'You're kidding. You think she's guessed about Operation Broomstick?'
'I don't know. She knows we call her Witch.'
'We'll be right over.'
'Is Doyle sober?'
'He will be. Give us ... I don't know, depends how far we are from you.'
'Is Inspector Block still with you?'
'Yes, I'll bring him along too.'
'Fine. But be warned, this is a Hell's Angels' watering-hole.'
'Funny pubs you choose, Mr Elder. Is it the leather you like or what?'
Elder smiled but said nothing. He put down the receiver and went back to the bar, where his whisky was still waiting. Joe the barman was waiting too.
'Can you tell me anything about her?' Elder asked.
Joe shrugged. 'Came in about a week ago. Said she was on the move, keeping away from an older man.'
'How did she look?'
'Fine. Tired maybe. And she had a sprained wrist. That's why she got me to write it.' He looked along the bar to his right. 'Coming, Tony.'
He went off to serve the customer. But Elder followed him.
'What do you mean?'
'I mean she'd sprained her wrist. She had a bandage on it. So she couldn't write. She thought for some reason you'd come looking for her in here.
I told her we didn't usually cater to ... older men. Well, you can see that for yourself. But she seemed to know . .. well, you're here, so it looks like she was right.'
'She didn't write the note then?'
Joe shook his head. 'One pound thirty-five please, Tony. No, like I say, I'd to write it for her. She told me what to put. Looks like she doesn't want to be found, Mr Elder, not yet any road.'
'Yes,' he said, 'looks like.'
A sprained wrist . . . couldn't write. She was cunning all right, and at the same time she was playing with him. If he found the note, she must know he would talk to the barman. And if he talked to the barman, he would find out the handwriting wasn't hers. If she'd really wanted to lead him a dance, she'd have asked someone else to write the note, so Elder wouldn't know that it wasn't her writing . .. Yes, she was playing games. This was so different to the Witch of old. What had happened to her? Had she gone mad? Was she on a suicide mission? What had happened? This wasn't the old Witch at all.
And yet, obviously it was the old Witch - as shrewd and as deadly as ever.
'I'll have another whisky when you're ready,' he told Joe the barman.
'And have one yourself.'
'Thanks, I will,' said Joe, making for the optics and once more turning up the volume. He received the cheers from the bar with a little bow from the waist.
Looking back on a startling day, it still seemed to Barclay that the most startling thing of all had been Dominique's driving in central Paris.
They set off from Calais in her car, leaving his in the police station car park, his packed bag locked in the boot. He brought to Dominique's car a single change of clothes, the Witch file, and a couple of opera tapes. During the drive, and above the noise of the engine and the rather extraordinary ventilation system (a single flap between dashboard and windscreen), they planned their next moves.
'His name,' Dominique yelled, 'is Monsieur Jean-Claude Separt. I know of him actually. He is a cartoonist. He draws stories.'
'You mean strip cartoons?'
'Cartoons in a strip, yes.'
'For a newspaper?'
'No, he makes books. Books of strip cartoons are very popular in France.'
'What sort of stuff does he do?'
'Political cartoons, or cartoons with a political point. He is left-wing.
More than that I can't tell you until we get to Paris. There will be information on him when we get there.'
'What about his car?'
'It's curious, he reported it missing only after it was found. Doesn't that sound strange to you?'
'A bit. What's his story?'
She shrugged, pulling out to overtake a lorry. The 2CV barely had enough power to pull past the long, fuming vehicle. A car bore down on them, but Dominique shot
the 2CV back into the right-hand lane with two or three seconds to spare.
The blood had vanished entirely from Barclay's face.
'I don't know yet,' she continued, as though nothing had happened. 'We shall have to ask him ourselves . ..'
The car didn't have a tape-deck, but it did have a radio. Dominique found a jazz station and turned the volume all the way up, so the music was just about audible above the engine. She beat her hands against the steering-wheel.
'In your room,' she yelled, 'I saw your cassettes -classical music'
'Opera,' he corrected.
She wrinkled her nose. 'Jazz,' she said. 'Jazz is the only music in the world, and Paris is the capital!' She signalled, slipped the gear down into third, and roared out to pass another lorry.
In Paris, she first headed for her office, Barclay remaining in the car while she sprinted to the building, and, moments later, sprinted out again. She threw a file on to his lap, slapped his hand away from the radio (he'd been trying to find a classical station), and slammed shut the driver's-side door. Then she indicated and screeched back into the traffic again, horns sounding all around them.
'They had it waiting at reception for me,' she said of the file. 'Read it out while I drive.'
So, in his stilted French, he read from the report, thankful for it since it served to take his eyes off the madness all about him. Lunchtime in Paris. He'd been here for weekends before, and even then had marvelled at the ability of the local drivers to squeeze five-abreast into a three-lane road without scraping up against each other. Meanwhile, as he read, Dominique translated some of the more difficult sentences into English, until at
last he'd finished the report on the life and career of the cartoonist Jean-Claude Separt and they were pulling into a narrow street, the buildings tall on either side, blocking out the light and a good deal of the city's noise. There were shops and offices at ground level, dingy-looking things with unwashed windows. But the storeys above were apartments, some with small verandahs, all with dusty shutters, the paint flaking off, some slats missing or hanging loose. Dominique double-parked the 2CV alongside a venerable-looking low-slung Citroen.
'Come on,' she said.
'Where?'
She motioned upwards. 'This is where I live . . . my home. I have to change my clothes.' She pulled at the material of her jacket. She was smiling. 'Coming?'
He nodded. 'Sure,' he said. His heart started pumping a little faster.
'Sure,' he repeated, getting out of the car.
'Stairs only,'
she warned him. 'No elevator.'
The place smelled a bit like the London Underground. He couldn't think why. It was a smell like burnt oil, and lurking beneath it dampness and rot. He got the feeling that if he touched the dark green walls, a residue would come off on his fingers.
He was behind Dominique, carrying her small suitcase. He watched her body as she climbed the winding stairs.
'Next floor,' she said, a little breathlessly.
'Right, okay.' But it wasn't okay. Her case was heavier than he'd expected. What did she have in there, a couple of sub-machine guns?
And then they were standing facing one another outside an ornate front door. She smiled, catching her breath. He smiled back, concentrating his eyes on hers, trying not to show how hard he was breathing after the
climb. She brought a key out of her bag and opened the door.
He looked into a well-kept if old-fashioned hall. The carpet was faded.
So were the furnishings. Was there a radio playing in the distance?
'Mama,' called Dominique. 'C'est moi.'
Briskly, she took the case from him and walked up the hall.
'C'est toi, Dominique?' came a wavering voice from behind one of the doors. Barclay still stood in the hall, drinking in this unexpected reality. Dominique waved for him to follow her, then opened a door at the end of the hall.
In the living-room sat Madame Herault. But she stood to receive her foreign visitor, and switched off her radio too. She looked like her daughter, but was between thirty and forty years older. She patted her hair and said something about how Dominique should have warned her.
To which Dominique replied that if she had warned her mother, her mother would merely have tired herself out cleaning and making cakes and dressing herself up. when they were only staying for fifteen minutes or so. Then Dominique said she had to go to her room and change. Barclay was made to sit on the huge springy sofa which reminded him unnervingly of the 2CV's suspension.
'Keep Mama company, will you?' Dominique asked in English. 'I won't be long. Oh, and if she offers you some of her calvados . . . refuse it.'
And with that she was gone. Madame Herault, still standing, asked him if he would like something to drink? He didn't, but nodded anyway, since Madame Herault fixing him something to drink was preferable to Madame Herault sitting expecting him to make conversation with her. Then he remembered the warning about the calvados.
'Pastis, s'il vous plait,' he said.
But a drink was not enough. He would have something to eat, too, wouldn't he? Barclay shook his head, patting his stomach.
'Complet,' he said, hoping it was the right word.
She persisted, but he persisted too. Just a drink, a drink would be very good.
'Calvados?' Madame Herault asked.
Barclay shook his head. 'Pastis, s'il vous plait,' he insisted.
So off she went to fetch him a pastis. He released a great intake of air, and smilingly chastised himself for his original thoughts regarding Dominique's intentions. The room was comfortably old-fashioned, exuding what seemed to him a particularly French sort of genteel shabbiness. The ornaments were too ornate, the furniture too bulky. The dresser was enormous, and should have stood in a chateau entrance hall rather than a second-floor Parisian apartment. He wondered how they'd got it into the room in the first place. The obvious answer seemed to be: through the large windows. A block and tackle job from street level. Yes.
God, he thought, what am I doing here? I should have stayed in the car.
She's been teasing me, hasn't she? She could have said it was her mother's place. She could have told me her mother would be home. Instead of which, Dominique had let him think his own thoughts, teasing him. Little vixen.
Madame Herault carried a tray back into the room. Barclay had risen from the sofa and was examining some framed photographs on top of an upright piano. There was one of a man in police uniform.
'Mon man,' explained Madame Herault. 'II est mort.'
She placed the tray on a footstool. There was a long slim glass containing an inch of pastis and a single icecube. There was also a jug of water, and a saucer on which sat some plain biscuits. She motioned with the jug and poured until he told her to stop. Then she handed him the glass and picked up the photograph, giving him some long story of which Barclay made out probably most of the relevant facts. Monsieur Herault had been a policeman in Paris, a detective. But a terrorist bomb had blown him up ten years ago. He'd been helping to evacuate shoppers from a department store where a bomb was said to be hidden. But it had gone off sooner than expected . ..
She gave a rueful smile and picked up another photograph, a beaming schoolgirl.
'Dominique,' she said, quite unnecessarily. Barclay nodded. She looked up at him. 'Tres belle.' He nodded again. For want of anything else to add, he gulped at the drink. Mother of God, it was strong! He lifted a biscuit to disguise his discomfort. But the biscuit disintegrated in his hand, falling like bits of bomb-blast to the floor.
Madame Herault apologised and went to kneel to pick the pieces up, but Barclay was already down on his knees, his fingers trying to lift the tiny pieces without them splintering further.
And that was the scene which presented itself to Dominique when she entered the room. The crumbs collected, more or less, Barclay got to his feet and helped Madame Herault to hers. Dominique had changed into a knee-length skirt, showing off legs which, even in the dim light of the apartment, Barclay could see were tanned and smooth. She had a jacket slung over her shoulder, and wore a crisp white blouse with a small gold cross on a chain around her neck.
'Drinking in the middle of the day?' she chided him.
'We've still got a lot of work to do, Michael, remember?' Then she said something in a rush of French to her mother, and her mother replied in an even faster rush, her cadences soaring and plummeting. He finished his drink while the conversation went on, noticing Dominique glancing towards him from time to time. When he made to replace the empty glass on the tray, she signalled, with the slightest jerk of her head, that it was time to go. This was actually hard to achieve, since Madame Herault seemed to have a lot she still wanted to say to him, and there were hands to be shaken, cheeks to be kissed.
'Oui, Mama, out' Dominique kept saying, her exasperation increasing.
Finally, they were at the front door, and with a final push from Dominique herself Barclay found himself on the stairs and starting his descent.
But Madame Herault came to the stair-head and continued to call down instructions to her daughter.
'Oui!' Dominique called back. 'Bien sur! D'accord. A ce soir, Mama!
Ce soir!'
The street, the dull claustrophobic street, seemed suddenly a huge and necessary release, a refuge. Even Dominique sighed and fanned her face with her hand before getting back into the car. She didn't say anything as she keyed the ignition, checked behind her, and started off along the street. But, edging out into the traffic at the end of the road, she remarked simply, 'That was my mother.'
'Really?' replied Barclay.
His irony escaped her. 'Yes, really.'
'She was charming, so like her daughter.'
She pursed her lips. 'I should have warned you.'
'Yes, you bloody well should.'
She laughed. 'Tell me, Mr Michael Barclay, what were you thinking?'
'When?'
'When I led you up the stairs.'
'I was wondering why the stairwell smelled like the London Underground.'
The answer surprised her. She glanced at him. 'Really?' she asked.
He nodded. 'That's what I was thinking,' he said. And he kept his eyes on the windscreen, well away from her bare tanned legs as they worked brake, clutch and accelerator.
'Mama kissed you twice,' Dominique mused. 'I think you made an impression of her.'
'An impression on her,' Barclay corrected.
'Well, anyway,' Dominique added with a smile, 'you made an impression.'
A
nd she laughed, suddenly and brightly.
By a strange twist of fate, Jean-Claude Separt's apart-ment-cum-studio was the sort of place Barclay had imagined Dominique's apartment would be. It was obvious that cartoonists, even (especially?) left-wing cartoonists, could live very comfortably in France. The apartment took up the whole top storey of a sandblasted block near Odeon.
'Tres cher, tres chic' Dominique kept saying as they made their way up in the lift to the penthouse. They'd spoken about Separt on the way to Paris, talking about the garret he would inhabit, vermin-ridden and with unsold tracts and pamphlets piled to the ceiling. Preconceptions were there to be broken. Here was the second (only the second?) shattered preconception of the day.
Barclay knew his place. He was Dominique's colleague, a police officer from England (but not London; nowhere as important as London) on an exchange programme and spending the day with Dominique, who was herself a lowly police officer, a trainee in one of the administrative departments. They were here to interview Monsieur Separt regarding the theft of his motor vehicle, for a scheme called, as far as Barclay could work it out, the Vehicle Repatriation Register Survey.
Well, something like that. Dominique had prepared some questions, and had written them down on a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard. She looked the part, he decided. Her clean, efficient clothes were just a bit too clean and efficient -the sort of outfit a trainee would wear when wanting to impress with the notion that they wouldn't stay a trainee forever. And she'd got rid of her lipstick, so that her face was a little plainer. It was perfect.
So was Separt's apartment. He was fat and greying with cropped hair and a grizzled beard. He wore faded denims, baggy at the knees and ankles, but tight at the stomach. He wore a short-sleeved striped shirt, and his eyes glinted from behind thick-lensed glasses. A strong yellow-papered cigarette either hung from his mouth or else from his fingers. And he lit a new cigarette with the dying embers of each old one.
Having ushered them in, Separt flapped back to his working-desk. 'I won't be a second,' he said. 'Just the finishing touches to a face The bulk of the apartment was taken up by a single, huge thick-carpeted room. At one end stood a series of architect's tables over which hung anglepoise lamps. Here, Separt worked on his cartoons. On shelves behind him along the walls were various tools, old comic books, magazines, disparate newspaper cuttings. Pinned to the walls were photographs of politicians, some of them subtly and tellingly altered by the cartoonist.