by Ian Rankin
Barclay shrugged and nodded. Madame Herault pursed her lips and stirred her coffee-cup, shaking her head. The rest of breakfast was passed more or less in silence. After breakfast, Dominique and Barclay retired to the spare room.
'We need some tape.' he said.
'I'll bring some.'
She was back within a minute, holding a roll of thick brown packing tape.
'Just as well your T-shirt's baggy,' said Barclay. 'Otherwise, anyone could see you're wearing a wire.'
She stood with the transmitter in her hand. There wasn't much to it
- a length of wire connecting a small microphone at one end to a transmitter at the other. It was bulkier than Barclay would have liked, and at the same time it was more delicate, too. His soldering wasn't perfect, but it would hold ... he hoped.
'Lift your shirt at the back,' he ordered. She did so, and he stood behind her. Her skin was very lightly tanned, smooth, broken only by a pattern of variously-sized brown moles. She was not wearing a bra.
This is work, he told himself. Just work.
He tore off a length of tape with his teeth and placed it over the wire, pushing it on to her back so that the transmitter hung free below the tape itself. Then around to her front, the T-shirt lifted still higher so that he could make out the swelling shadowy undersides of her breasts.
Work, work, work. He ran the wire around to her smooth stomach, wondering whether to place the microphone just above her belly-button, or higher, in the hollow of her sternum.
'Having fun down there?' said Dominique.
'Sorry, I'm considering placements.' He touched her stomach then her sternum with the tip of his forefinger. 'Here or here?'
'Ah, I see. High up, I think. Unless the man is a midget, the microphone will be closer to his mouth.'
'Good point.' He tore off more tape and secured the microphone in the cleft just below her breasts. Then he used more tape to attach the wire to her side. 'Okay,' he said at last. 'Just try not to wriggle or bend over. He might hear the tape crinkling.'
She dropped her T-shirt and examined herself in the mirror, twisting to see if the wire was visible through the cotton. She stepped over to the window, then walked back slowly towards Barclay. He shook his head.
'Can't see a thing,' he said.
'What if I stretch myself?' She thrust back her shoulders and stuck out her chest. Barclay still couldn't see any sign either of brown tape or of black wire. And as for the slight bulge of the microphone itself ...
'If you do that,' he said, 'I don't think Jean-Pierre's eyes are going to rest between your breasts so much as on them.'
She thumped his shoulder. 'You are teasing,' she said. He was about to deny it when there was a sound from the hall: the telephone was ringing.
Dominique dashed out of the room to answer it, spoke excitedly, then dashed back.
'The fifth arrondissement,' she said. 'A street in the Latin Quarter.
There is a bar called Janetta's.'
'Sounds good. Lift your T-shirt again. After all that running around, I want to check the tapes are still fast.'
'Fast?'
'Still stuck down.'
'Okay.' She lifted the T-shirt. 'But listen,' she said, 'there's more.
In the same street lives an Australian, an anarchist. Called John Peter Wrightson. He's lived in France for years. You see?'
'John Peter, Jean-Pierre.'
'Yes! It makes sense, no?'
'Separt's caller didn't sound Aussie to me.' She shrugged. The tape had held fairly well. He just hoped she didn't sweat. 'Okay,' he said,
'you can drop the shirt. It looks okay.'
'You sound like a doctor.'
He smiled. 'Your . . . colleague, he sounds as if he's on the ball.
I mean, he sounds efficient.'
'It was easy for him. The bar was in the directory. Then he entered the street name into the computer just to see if there was any further information. Monsieur Wrightson's name came on to the screen.'
'Speaking of computers .. .'
'Everything is being printed out at my office. We can pick up copies later today. That was a clever trick you played.'
He shrugged. 'A computer makes it easy.' Not that he imagined Separt would keep anything important on the disks. Dominique looked ready to go. 'We haven't tried out the transmitter yet.'
'They worked yesterday. This one will work today. I trust you.'
'That's another thing. We've got to go back to Separt's apartment and get those two—'
'Later, later.' She grabbed his hand. 'Now let's hurry, otherwise Mama will wonder what we're doing in here.' And she giggled as she led him down the hall, yelling a farewell to her mother. Then she stopped. 'Wait a moment,' she said returning to her bedroom. When she appeared again, she was pinning an Anarchy badge to her T-shirt.
'Nice touch,' he said.
The punk driving the 2CV certainly attracted stares from male drivers whenever she stopped at lights or was caught in a jam. Barclay had to give her credit. If- when - Separt and Jean-Pierre spoke again, their descriptions of the two women who visited them would be difficult to reconcile into a single individual. The winkle-picker heels even made her a good inch taller. Her hair was the same colour as yesterday, but that was the only area of
comparison. In all other details, she was a different person.
They'd agreed that she would visit Jean-Pierre alone: Barclay would stick out like a sore thumb. Dominique could disguise herself, but there was no disguising Barclay. She would visit alone, but Barclay insisted that she would wear a wire, so that he could listen from the car. He didn't want her getting into trouble.
They went over Dominique's story again on the way there. The fact that Jean-Pierre might well be the anarchist John Wrightson gave them a new angle to work from. They added it to her story, making slight alterations.
The street they finally entered was squalid and incredibly narrow, or rather made narrow by the lines of parked cars either side, leaving a single lane with no passing places. A car in front of them - and thankfully travelling the same direction as them -hesitated by a gap between two of the parked cars, considered it but moved on. It was a gap just about big enough for a motorbike or a moped, but not for a car.
'We're in luck,' said Dominique, passing the gap and then stopping.
'Here's a space.'
'You've got to be kidding.'
But she'd already pushed the dashboard-mounted gear-stick into reverse, and craned her neck around to watch through the rear window as she backed the car in towards the kerb, turning the steering-wheel hard. Barclay watched through the front windscreen and saw that they were a centimetre from the car in front. Then there was the slight jolt of a collision: they had hit the car behind. But Dominique just kept reversing, pushing against the car behind, then easing down on the clutch and turning the steering-wheel hard back around. This time, edging forwards, her front bumper touched the car in front and pushed it forward a couple of centimetres.
'In Paris,' she said, 'we park with the handbrake off.'
'Right,' said Barclay. The 2CV was now parked, kerbside, a couple of inches from the car in front, and the same distance from the car behind.
He tried not to think about how they would make a fast getaway.
'That's Janetta's,' said Dominique. 'You see? With the PMU sign.'
Barclay saw. 'It doesn't look particularly open.'
'It's open,' she said. With nice timing, the door of the bar was pulled from within, and a fat unshaven man wearing blue workman's clothes and a beret came sauntering out. He looked like he'd had a few drinks. It was quarter to ten. The door jangled closed behind him.
'So it's open,' he said.
'Monsieur Wrightson lives this side of the street, across from the bar.
Number thirty-eight. Oh, well.' She took a deep breath. She did look a little nervous. It struck Barclay that maybe she too was getting out of her depth.
'Be careful,' he said as she opened the
door.
'I'll be careful,' she said, closing the door after her. She came round to his side of the car and opened the door to say something more. 'If anything does happen to me
'Yes?'
'Please, look after Mama.' Then she closed the door again, gave him a big grin and threw him a kiss, before turning on her noisy heels and making for number thirty-eight. He wondered if that extra wiggle of her leather-clad bum was for him, or whether she was just getting into her part. Then he reached for his receiver, switched it on, and waited.
She had to climb two flights to the door marked wrightson, j-p. She spoke in a low voice as she climbed.
'I hope you can hear me, Michael. This is a very dirty stairwell, not at all like Monsieur Separt's. It makes me wonder what the two men could have in common, one living in luxury, the other in squalor. What do you think? Their politics, perhaps? Ideals can bridge gulfs, can't they?'
She paused outside the door, then pressed the buzzer. She couldn't hear anything from inside, so she knocked with her closed fist instead. And again. And again. There was a noise from within, a creaking floorboard, someone coughing. The door was unlocked.
'Qui est .. . ? Jesus Christ!' The man who stood there was scrawny, no fat at all on his body. He wore only tight grey underpants, and had a cigarette hanging from one corner of his mouth. He stared hard at every inch of the girl in front of him. 'Jesus Christ,' he said again.
Then he lapsed into French, and Dominique was sure in her mind. When she spoke, she spoke in English.
'Ah ... I am looking for Diana.'
'You speak English?' He nodded, scratching himself. Then he frowned.
'Diana? Never heard of her.'
'Oh.' She looked crestfallen. 'She told me she lived here.'
'Here?'
She nodded. 'I think so. She told me her address and I forgot it. I was drunk a little, I think. But this morning I wake up and I think I remember it. I dreamed it, maybe.'
'You mean this building?'
She shook her head, earrings jangling against each other. 'This floor.'
'Yeah? Well, there's old Prevost across the hall. .. but he hasn't set foot outside since '68.' Wrightson smiled. He was still studying her, appraising her. 'Anyway,' he said, 'come in. Can't remember when I last saw a punk.'
'Is it not still the fashion in England?'
'I wouldn't know, cherie. I'm not English, I'm Australian.'
Dominique looked excited. 'Yes!' she said. 'Diana told me there was an Australian!'
'Yeah?' He frowned again. 'Beats the hell out of me.'
'You do not know her?'
He shrugged. 'Describe her to me.'
He had led her through a hall resembling a warehouse. There were boxes of flysheets, teetering piles of books, and the walls were covered with political posters. One of the posters showed a scrawled capital A over a circle.
'Anarchy,' she said, pointing to it. 'Just like my badge.'
He nodded, but didn't say anything. Maybe she'd been a bit too heavy-handed. She tried to slow her pulse-rate, keeping her breathing regular. She stared at another poster, another artfully scrawled circle but this time with a capital V on the top of it.
'V for Vendetta,' he explained. 'It's a comic book.'
'It looks like the anarchy symbol upside down.'
'I suppose it does.' He seemed pleased by the comparison.
The room they entered was stuffy, and seemed to double as living-room and bedroom. There were more boxes here, more books, more mess. A woman, not too young, was sitting up inside a sleeping-bag on the floor, long brown hair falling down over her naked chest. She looked like she was in the process of waking up.
'Dawn, go make some coffee, girl.'
'Jesus, J-P, I made it yesterday.' Her accent was American. Wrightson growled at her. 'What time is it anyway?'
'Nearly ten,' Dominique answered after Wrightson had shrugged his shoulders.
'Middle of the damned night.' The woman looked about her until she found some tobacco and a paper, rolled herself a cigarette, then stepped from the sleeping-bag
and walked through to the kitchen. Wrightson watched her depart.
'No shame, these Yanks,' he said. 'Speaking of which .. .' He wandered over behind the sofa and pulled a pair of jeans from the floor, shaking them free of dust before putting them on. Then he sat down again, resting on the arm of the sofa. Dominique was still standing. 'You were describing Diana to me,' he said.
'Oh, well, she's tall, short dark hair. English, I think. She has very . ..
uh, piercing eyes.'
He thought for a moment, then shrugged. 'You say her hair's short? Pinned up maybe?'
'Pinned up, yes.'
Another moment's thought. 'Where did you meet her?'
'Outside the Louvre, beside the pyramid. She was sitting by herself, watching the fountains. I was bored. We talked a little. I liked her.'
He drew on his cigarette, blowing the smoke out through his nose. He was studying her very closely. 'What was she wearing?'
Dominique made a show of remembering. 'Black jeans, I think. A T-shirt, I don't remember what colour.'
'Sunglasses?'
'No. Maybe she had some in her pocket.'
'Mm-hmm.'
The woman, Dawn, had come back and was pulling on her clothes. She examined Dominique, saw the badge. 'Anarchy,' she said, nodding.
'What's your name, cherie?' Wrightson asked.
'Francoise.'
'Like Francoise Sagan?'
'Yes, I suppose so.'
'Are you an anarchist, Francoise?'
She nodded. He gestured towards the boxes.
'Take some literature with you. Maybe you'll have read it before, maybe not. And leave an address and phone number. If Diana comes here, I can tell her where you are.'
'You know her then?'
He shrugged. 'Maybe. Maybe not.'
'I already gave her my phone number, outside the Louvre. She never got in touch. She said she would. We had a drink together ... I liked her.'
She hoped she sounded and looked in as much despair as she felt. Wrightson was suspicious, of course he was. He was also very careful. She should have realised that from his telephone conversation with Separt. Only that one word - Janetta's - had given him away. She had another thought, too: maybe there was another Janetta's in another street with another Jean-Pierre living across the road. Maybe, but she didn't think so.
This felt right. She walked across to the boxes and pulled out a pamphlet
- wordy, written in slightly imperfect French.
'Make Francoise some coffee, too,' Wrightson said to Dawn, who was making for the kitchen again. Then he came over towards Dominique and put an arm around her shoulders. She flinched. What if he felt the transmitter?
'Easy,' he said. 'It'll be all right. You'll find other . . . women friends. I know lots of girls like you, Francoise, believe me.' His proximity disgusted her. She could smell his sweat, the rancid nicotine breath. Then she saw some cartoon books and moved away from him, picking one up. It was by Separt.
Wrightson followed her. 'You like his stuff?'
She shook her head. 'Too tame.'
He looked disappointed. Obviously, he'd just been about to claim friendship with the great cartoonist.
Below the cartoon book there was a newspaper. She picked it up, too.
'You read the London Times?' she said.
'Just the crossword. I enjoy a challenge.'
'The pages are torn.'
He winked. 'It saves on toilet paper.'
She gave a small laugh.
'That's more like it,' he said. 'How old are you, Francoise?'
Barclay had told her on the way that she would pass for eighteen.
'Nineteen,' she said, just to be safe.
'It's a good age to be. Have you got a job?'
'No.'
'Where do you live?'
'With friends. Some HLM housing
'Do you enjoy a challenge, Francoi
se?'
She frowned. 'I don't understand.'
Wrightson waved some of his pamphlets at her. 'I need help distributing my .. . literature. It's late-night work, you understand? Not much pay, but maybe you'd be interested.'
'Maybe.'
He nodded. She saw him for what he was, a cunning man but also stupid.
A user of women, hiding his true feelings and desires behind political slogans. She'd met his type before.
'Leave me your phone number,' he said.
'We don't have a phone.'
The eyes narrowed. 'You said you gave it to Diana?'
She was ready for this. She nodded. 'The number of a club where some of us go. Everybody knows me there.'
'Okay, which club?'
She was ready for this too. Her night had been busy with plans, with dress rehearsals. 'L'Arriviste,' she said. 'Rue de la Lune, second arrondissement.'
He nodded. 'I'll remember that.'
Dawn appeared with three filthy mugs, brimming with black coffee.
'There's no sugar,' she said.
'Then we drink it black and bitter,' said Wrightson, taking a mug, 'like our thoughts.'
Dawn thought this over, then smiled towards Dominique, a smile full of admiration for Wrightson. But she was also warning the young pretender, the arriviste: 'He's my property.' Dominique drank to it.
They talked politics over the coffee, and she managed to sound less knowledgeable than she actually was. She also made sure to express her naivety, leading Wrightson to give speech after speech. The more he spoke, the less he asked, and the less he asked the more comfortable she felt. Yes, his ego was his fatal flaw. It had made him blind to the motives of others. All he cared about was himself. She had heard better speeches in the bars of schools and polytechnics.
The coffee finished, she said she had to go. He pressed her to stay but she shook her head. So he put together a bundle of stuff, photocopied single sheets, folded pamphlets, a couple of posters, and thrust it into her hands. The paper everything was printed on was cheap scratchy stuff, some of it off-white, some yellow. She thanked him.
'Just read,' he said. 'And pass on the message.'
'Message?'
He tapped the pamphlets. 'Tell your friends.'
'Ah, yes, yes, of course.'