‘Thank you, inspector. You have been most interesting.’
She hadn’t told them anything that hundreds of media reports had not mentioned already. But walking back to the château, without Roman steering her from behind, she posed the general’s question to herself. Could the force cope with revolution?
8
Rudyard was pleased with what she’d sent him. ‘It’s significant that the general should have turned up at the conference. He comes from a military dynasty. His father was close to Franco.’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’
‘See if you can get hold of the list of attenders.’
‘That won’t be easy. There was nothing in the foyer when I went there last night. The other conference, Agricola, was advertised all over the place. I think this lot are too daft to pose any threat to national security.’
‘People thought Hitler was daft till he invaded Poland. No one seems to know who Babel are. We’ve forwarded the pictures to services in Europe. That may produce something.’
‘There was a Polish registration amongst the cars.’
‘Yes, I saw it. By the way, Roman’s brother was approached at Cambridge. He declined to join the service.We’ve put him under surveillance. He’s an antique dealer in London.’
‘Roman didn’t tell me he had a brother. He’s never mentioned his family, just his achievements. I can’t take him seriously.’
‘Well you should. After all, he’s dependent on the funders. If they’re planning some sort of coup, that’s serious, isn’t it? I told you it’s a long game.’
‘I’ve done surveillance.’
‘I know. That’s why we sent you. Those legionnaires are interesting.’
‘Do you think they’re some kind of security force?’
‘For the Babel group? Very likely. But that’s worrying. They’re not an ordinary security force. They’re trained in combat techniques by one of the toughest legions on the planet.’
‘They look like gang members to me. Tattooed hooligans.’
‘In a terrorist force they could do some serious damage at home and abroad. The Legion isn’t known for co-operation but we’re trying to find out more about these veterans.’
‘I’ll keep an eye on Scout.’
‘You do that. Keep an eye on all of them. That’s what you’re paid to do.’
***
Sofka’s studio opened off from the craft room on the ground floor where Herbert sat with a colouring book. There was a curtain between this room and Sofka’s studio, half drawn. She could see Sofka sitting at a large table, her back to the door.
‘Are you busy? I could come back another time.’
‘I finished the icon. ‘I’m getting it ready to ship.’
‘I thought you told me the customer was collecting it? He’s at the conference, isn’t he?
‘Yes. He’ll be taking it back to Germany when he leaves.’
‘On a ship?’
‘No,’ she said irritably. ‘It was a figure of speech. I’ll just paste the label on, and then I’ll show you the collection while it dries.’
Mackie went to the farthest edge of the table where there was a stool. There were papers and sketches strewn about. There was also a photocopy with text about an icon and a long number. She picked it up quickly and put it in the canvas bag she touted around with her. ‘I think I’ll just go and talk to Herbert for a minute,’ she said. ‘It looks fiddly what you’re doing.’
‘It’s this wretched paste. I mix it myself because I like to keep the tradition, but I can never seem to get the consistency right. I might have to make another pot.’
Mackie drew the curtain behind her. ‘How’s it going, Herbert?’ she called. He didn’t answer. He was deep in concentration. She went over to the window and took out her service phone. She snapped the photocopy and went back into the studio. Sofka was now standing at a work bench mixing something in a pestle. Mackie replaced the photocopy where it had been on the table, and crept out.
There were no more summonses to the conference , so all she could do was take up her position in her room and snap the cars as the delegates got into them, saluting one another.
Roman stood on the gravel, and waved them down the drive. The three bikers were the last to depart, as they had been the last to arrive on Friday. Fifteen more delegates had turned up on Saturday. Mackie took pictures of them all. She didn’t mind surveillance work. She didn’t get bored any more, and she had trained her bladder not to call her away.
She went downstairs to look for Scout. ‘I want my car,’ she told him. ‘Can you give me the key?’
‘The boss has got it.’
Roman walked into the hall, rubbing his hands together. He beamed at Mackie. ‘Coffee?’
‘I was just asking Scout for my car key. I believe you’ve got it.’
‘Yes, it’s in my desk.’
‘I want to visit the Baie des Tréspassés. It’s too far to cycle’.
‘May I come with you? I’ll show you the quick way. Cross country. I could do with a shot of ozone after sitting in an air conditioned chamber for four days.’
‘It would be good to have company,’ she said.
‘Go and get your key while I fetch my boots and a flask of coffee. There’s no snack bar or anything like that down there – it’s quite sauvage.’
‘Where in your desk?’
‘On the left hand side. The drawer’s unlocked.’
Mackie went into the study and shut the door. She found her key then tried the right hand drawer. It was locked. She woke up the computer but it asked for a password. There was nothing interesting in the papers on his desk, except a gushy thank you letter signed Lots of love. Susie xxxxx. She heard footsteps in the hall and sat down on the chaise longue.
‘I’ve brought coffee, water, ham and cheese, a couple of baguettes, and some fruit. We’ll have a picnic.’
‘Will you excuse me while I go up to my room? I need to fetch my pills.’
‘You’re not unwell, are you? We use a local GP. Technically, you can visit any GP you choose in France, without being registered, but there are only two cabinets in Pont du Calvaire. One of them is fairly new – a doctor from Martinique. I don’t think he has many takers.’
‘I don’t need a GP,’ she told him. ‘I just need to take my pills with me in case I get a migraine. They come on unexpectedly, and if I don’t take a pill, my vision goes haywire. You can drive, I take it?’
‘If I must. What do you do if you’re on your own?’
‘If I feel one coming on, I pull over, take a pill and wait for it to pass.’
He sat in the front of the car, though it soon became evident that he was a backseat driver. The cross country roads he took her on were clear of everything, except the occasional three-wheeled van and farm machine. There were no hedgerows. It was all flat fields with crops that turned into gorse as they approached the sea.
‘Be careful of the ditches,’ he told her. ‘You’ll be the one to go in first.’
‘I’ll watch out.’
‘Have you always been so independent?’
‘I’ve had to be.’
‘It can get kind of lonely in there, can’t it? Watch out for the left turn. The road narrows down here.’
‘Maybe you can drive us back.’
‘Is your migraine coming on?’
‘I just think you’d feel more secure.’ He laughed and touched her thigh. If any other man had done it, she’d have rebuked him, but she needed to get closer to Roman. How close was close, she wondered?
‘Is it far now?’
‘Just at the end of this track.’
They parked on the headland, looking out at the boiling sea. ‘Let’s sit in the hatch and eat the picnic,’ he said.
‘You won’t fit in the hatch. I don’t think I will, either, for that matter.’
‘We can lean against it.’ He opened the picnic box. The food tasted good in the fresh air. She’d gained a healthy appetite
at the château. She ate three meals a day at regular times, instead of snacking on crisps and pastries, as she’d done on police work.
‘Did the conference turn out all right?’ she asked.
‘As well as could be expected. You impressed one of the delegates. Herr Winkler.’
‘I don’t know how. I didn’t say much, and what I said has all been in the news. Is he a German?’
‘He’s from Graz. It’s in Austria.’
‘I know where Graz is.’
‘He was impressed by what he called your serious attitude. He thought you’d be a loss to the Metropolitan police, but that loss is our gain. I hope you decide to stay on with us. The community have grown used to you — you’ve fitted in, in the space of two weeks. That hasn’t happened before. They’re wary of visitors. Territorial.’
‘Joanna seems to have settled in quickly.’
‘Oh yes, Joanna. She’s taken to it like a duck to water. I’m not sure that’s a good thing in such a young woman. One needs to think about what one is doing without wading in.’
‘I think I should pay something if I stay.’
‘Don’t think about that at the moment. We are very well funded. Shall we have the coffee in the car? It’s really blowing.’ He took out the flask and slammed down the hatch. ‘No wonder there’s no café up here. It’s given your car a run anyway.’He got back in the passenger seat and poured the coffee. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to take turns.’
‘I don’t mind drinking from your cup.’
‘You’re very practical, aren’t you? I suppose you have to be. Sensible. Cool headed. When you look at women like Sofka or Iris the difference is striking. Iris has no insight, foresight or hindsight.’
‘She lives in the present then. You said that was good. Sofka was making her own glue when I went to her studio the other day. That’s practical. And she told me she has to process and ship the orders.’
‘The orders?’
‘For the icons.’
‘All she does is stick labels on the back,’ he laughed. ‘Jacqueline types them up for her and parcels them up. They go with the mail from the centre.’ He put his cup on the dashboard and looked at her. ‘I’d like it if you stayed.’
‘Would you? Well, it’s nice to be away from it all. Police officers get few plaudits from the public, female officers even fewer. I’ve had abuse hurled at me more times than I care to remember. It’s just as bad at the station. There’s always a bad atmosphere. With the public, it’s overt. It’s covert in the force.’
‘You can talk to me about how that makes you feel. I like to hear you talk. There’s plenty to applaud in you. You’re straightforward. I like that.’
‘You talk to the others. You keep an open door.’
‘Yes, and I listen to a lot of stuff I don’t find interesting.’
‘But that’s counselling, isn’t it?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s just something to pass the time. I knew I’d never have to work for my living but I wanted to do something vaguely useful. That’s why I trained as a therapist. It’s a problem finding something to do when you don’t need to earn money.’
‘That wouldn’t be a problem for me. I’ve got to work to live.’
‘You’d be surprised what money does to the psyche. Look at that woman who had a big win on the pools – Vivian somebody...’
‘Viv Nichols. I saw that on television when I was little.’
‘So did I. She didn’t know what to do with the money so she spent it, just like the guys who squander millions at the casino. They’re in a black hole existentially.’
‘Money makes the world go round.’
‘But it doesn’t mean anything.’
‘It does to those who haven’t got it.’ She thought of her Da when he was forced to give up work on the docks of Liverpool, once the second port of the empire, by then running into decline. The slums, the beggars on the streets. ‘Only a rich man could say a thing like that.’
‘I’m sorry. You must think me despicable. But I want meaning. I thought I was interested in people, so I started the community. But now I find I’m not interested in people at all — except you at the moment. You’re jaded, like me. I can see a lot of myself in you.’
‘I think we’d best be getting back,’ she said. ‘We can’t go out in this wind. We’ll be blown into the sea.’
‘Yes. It’s getting worse.You’ve seen what there is to see here.’
‘Why don’t you drive?’ she suggested.
‘Are you getting a headache?’
‘No. You know the way better than I do.’
9
Rudyard got in touch to say he’d sent the photo of the label to the decoding department. Could she find out if the number was unique or was it part of a series? It was like some Boys Own story starring James Bond. The Horrible Junta. Still, there had to be something about them to arouse the interest of the Special Services, and she was getting paid for finding that intelligence. Like Our Man in Havana copying vacuum cleaners that were taken to be weapons. He needed the money for his daughter. Still it was better than investigating street crime. They were all boys – the gangs, the police, the Babel members, the Special Services. It was a just a question of degree. A police investigation began with an incident, but there had been no incidents here, just a lot of coming and going to the conference centre. The delegates who were here this week were innocuous: a group from the local tourist board.. The arrow on the drive advertised a woman in an itsy bitsy bikini, kneeling on bright yellow sand, her arms raised to an azure heaven. Mackie could see why they didn’t use pictures of the Baie des Tréspassés or the drab little towns of the interior.
She took a bike and rode into Pont du Calvaire. The road to the quay had been blocked off. There was fire engine in front of the smoking wreck of the Vietnamese restaurant. An old man in a sailor’s cap came up to the barrier and stood next to her.
‘Sale métèques.’
Roman told her that was pejorative term for foreigner. Did the old man mean her or the Vietnamese, or both? Deprived of her ride to the sea, she wheeled the bike back to the square, paid a euro for the rack, and went to look for a kettle. It was barbaric to boil water in a saucepan to make tea, as they did at the château. She saw a travel kettle in the window of a little shop that sold electrical appliances. Her lack of French forced her to look at a number of objects – an iron, a lamp, a saucepan, before she took the shopkeeper outside and pointed to the kettle in the window.
Joanna was watering cabbages on the plot.
‘There’s been a fire in town, The Vietnamese restaurant burnt down.’
‘That’s a shame. I hope they rebuild it. I don’t expect they will though. They never had any customers. They got rid of Lucie because they couldn’t afford a waitress. That’s why she came here.’
‘Who’s Lucie?’
‘You know. The girl at Chez la Marse. She waitresses at the conferences.’
She’d missed that. She wasn’t watching hard enough. It was a terrible thing, but all silver service waitresses looked the same to her. It wasn’t a position that attracted attention. She admonished herself for failing to see the girl from the bar at the conference centre that night. She’d been looking at the funders. She took care to amend her report to include the waiting staff.
Exasperated by her inability to make herself understood in the town, she downloaded an intensive French language, and installed it on her personal phone. A sugary female voice came through the headphones: Bonjour. At the end of this unit, you will be able to introduce yourself, say where you are from and state what job you do.
10
She saw little of Roman during the next few days. He was busy with the tourist board conference, and ate his meals with the delegates. When he at last appeared at the community dinner, they were half way through the meal: Coquilles Saint Jacques, some other type of fish, and courgettes, salad, cheese, yoghurt, and a plum tart. Mackie passed on the coffee and was set to get up when Iris
did, but Roman tapped a spoon on his glass and asked for everyone’s attention.
‘I’m afraid something unpleasant has happened,’ he said.
‘You don’t mean we’ve lost the funding?’ Sofka asked breathily, clutching her beads. Herbert looked grim, Gerald resigned, Joanna startled. Scout had a smirk on his face.
‘No, Sofka, I don’t mean that. Our Vietnamese friends have left the town. No more South East Asian cuisine for us. Their restaurant burnt down.’
‘They must have been making a loss, Herbert said. ‘I suppose they lit the fire themselves. They’ll be holed up somewhere, waiting for the money.’
‘I’m sure the police will be investigating the fire.’
‘Who else?’ Mackie muttered.
Roman turned to her and went into one of his explanations. ‘It’s usually the procureur who has overall responsibility for the investigation, but sometimes they bring in an examining magistrate – a juge d’instruction, if a serious crime is suspected. The point is, the family are homeless. If I’d known, we could have given them refuge.’
‘I wouldn’t have gone that far,’ Herbert said.
‘They weren’t exactly welcome in Pont du Calvaire,’ Joanna hazarded.
‘I don’t think we’re exactly welcome either.’We don’t want to be living in a ghetto.’
‘It was probably just an accident. Someone left the gas on —.’ Gerald’s contribution was broken up by a fit of coughing.
Roman looked at Herbert. ‘Do you feel alienated here?’
‘Not here, in the château. In the town. You’ve seen the accounts from the stall. There haven’t been many takers lately, not even for the marmalade.’
‘What we need is more English families to buy in the area,’ Iris said. ‘Like the Dordogne.’
‘This place is too wild and woolly for the sort of expats who live in the Dordogne,’ said Sofka. ‘You have to speak French properly for a start if you want to fit in.’ She glanced at Mackie.
Herbert shook his head. ‘We’re best keeping to ourselves. We might be next on the hit list.’
The Retreat Page 4