This was a slip. Kell had told Laurent of his plan to leave Marseille before Luc had arrived. Clearly he had been eavesdropping on the formal police interview.
‘Yes. I have a client in Paris who may be in town over the next few days. I was going to go up there to meet him. If he doesn’t show up, I’ll probably just go home.’
‘To Reading?’
‘To Reading via London, yes.’
Kell was suddenly tired of the second-rate interrogation, of Luc’s supercilious machismo. It was obvious that they had nothing on him. He longed to be free of the now-stifling room, of a long afternoon of violence and bureaucracy. He wanted to find Malot.
‘So I wish you good luck, Mr Uniacke,’ Luc said, apparently arriving at the same conclusion. ‘I am sorry for the trouble we have put you through. Truly.’ There was a strange moment here, a look of intense hidden meaning directed towards him that Kell could not untangle. ‘My colleague, Laurent, will take you back to your hotel. Thank you for your time. I do trust you will enjoy the rest of your visit to France.’
41
At Kell’s request, Laurent dropped him at the corner of Rue Breteuil and Quai des Belges so that he could walk back to his hotel past the old port. He was already over an hour late for Madeleine Brive and wanted to cancel their plan for dinner, using the excuse that he had been robbed and beaten up. There was no advantage to be gained from meeting her: the DGSE held all the cards and she would simply oblige him to spend several more hours masquerading as Stephen Uniacke.
As it transpired, Madeleine was not answering her phone and Kell left a long message apologizing for cancelling the dinner and explaining what had happened at La Cité Radieuse. He hoped that they might have a chance to meet again one day and wished Madeleine a safe journey home to Tours.
The port at night was crowded with drifting couples, tourists in their best shirts, children tossing coins at the feet of weary buskers. The market stalls selling fish from ice-strewn tables at the eastern end of the marina had long since been packed away and the ferries had brought back the last of their passengers from sightseeing trips to the Calanques and Chateau d’If. At a tabac on the Quai des Belges, Kell bought a télécarte and went in search of a public phone. The first two were vandalized beyond repair, but at the north end of Rue Thubaneau he found a functioning France Telecom booth in a quiet side street opposite a shuttered pharmacy. He closed the door, set his bag on the ground and dialled the number for the taxi company Malot had used at the ferry terminal.
A woman answered, fifth ring, and Thomas Kell weaved his tall tale.
‘Hello, yes. I hope that you can help me.’ As a schoolboy, Kell had been told by a teacher that his spoken French sounded like a British Spitfire pilot who had crash-landed in Normandy. For the purposes of the conversation he tried to recreate a similar effect. ‘I was in Marseille last week and rented one of your taxis outside Chez Michel at about half-past eleven on a Friday night. It was a white Mercedes. The driver was West African, an incredibly nice man …’
‘Maybe Arnaud, maybe Bobo, maybe Daniel …’
‘Yes, maybe. Do you know who I’m talking about? He was around fifty or fifty-five …’
‘Arnaud, then …’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘What about him?’
‘Well, I’m British …’
‘I can tell this …’
‘And I work for Médecins sans Frontières. Arnaud gave me his card because I promised to get in touch with regard to some friends he was very concerned about in the Ivory Coast.’
‘Oh, OK …’
That did the trick; the merest suggestion of possible human rights abuses had transformed the receptionist’s previously indifferent attitude.
‘It’s just that I’ve lost the card and have no way of contacting him. Would you be able to ask him to ring me here in London or, if that’s going to be too expensive, do you have a number or an email where I could reach him in Marseille?’
As a ruse, it wasn’t watertight, but Kell possessed enough of an understanding of the French character to know that they would not refuse such a request purely on the basis of protecting Arnaud’s privacy. At worst, the receptionist would ask for Kell’s number and promise that Arnaud would call him back; at best, she would put them directly in touch.
‘He’s not working tonight,’ she said, which gave him hope that a number might be forthcoming.
‘That’s fine,’ Kell replied. ‘I can always call him on Monday when I’m back at my desk. I have all the files on the computer in my office …’
‘Hold on please.’
The line suddenly switched to an old Moby track; it wasn’t clear whether the receptionist was taking another call or had gone in search of Arnaud’s number. Within thirty seconds, however, she was back, saying: ‘OK, do you have a pen?’
‘I do.’ Kell allowed himself a quiet smile of satisfaction. ‘Thank you so much for going to all this trouble. I really think Arnaud will be pleased.’
Arnaud was in what sounded like a crowded restaurant or café and wasn’t much interested in taking a call from a complete stranger at nine thirty on a Sunday night.
‘Who?’ he said for the third time when Kell told him that he was a British journalist looking for information about one of Arnaud’s passengers, and willing to pay five hundred euros simply for the opportunity to sit down over a beer and talk.
‘What, now? Tonight?’
‘Tonight, yes. It’s urgent.’
‘This is not possible, my friend. Tonight I relax. Maybe you should too.’
A resident had emerged from one of the apartment buildings adjacent to the phone box. He turned the throttle on a motorbike and Kell had to shout above the noise of the revving engine.
‘I’ll come to you,’ he said. ‘Just tell me where you are, I’ll meet you near your home. It won’t take more than ten minutes.’
A contemplative silence ensued, which Kell eventually ventured to break by saying: ‘Hello? Are you still there?’
‘I’m still here.’ Arnaud was enjoying all the attention.
‘A thousand,’ Kell said, running out of Marquand’s money.
That did the trick. There was enough of a pause, then. ‘Which passenger do you want to know about?’
‘Not on an open line,’ Kell replied. ‘I’ll tell you when I see you.’
A forty-five euro, forty-minute cab ride later, Kell was deep in the Quartier Nord, miles from the yachts and the Audis and the tennis court villas of the Corniche, in a thankless landscape of breeze-block towers and litter-strewn streets; everything that Le Corbusier, in the zeal of his idealism, had failed to imagine.
Arnaud was drinking pastis at a café in the basement of a slate-grey tower block patrolled by bored, undernourished youths wearing tracksuits and state-of-the-art trainers. One of the windows of the café had a pane of shattered glass; the other was obscured by a metal shutter daubed in graffiti: MARSEILLE. CAPITALE DE LA CULTURE ou DU BETON. Kell told his driver to wait on the street and ran a gauntlet of clicks and stares, entering the café in the expectation of total silence, of doors swishing behind him like a western saloon. Instead, he was greeted by the exclusively African clientele with half-interested nods of welcome. Perhaps Kell’s pronounced limp and the cut above his eye leant him the air of a man who had endured more than his fair share of misfortune.
‘Over here,’ said Arnaud, seated at the bar beneath a collage of photographs of Marseille footballers, past and present. On a facing wall were pictures of Lilian Thuram, Patrick Vieira and Zinedine Zidane, clutching the 1998 World Cup; next to this, a framed cartoon of Nicolas Sarkozy in exaggeratedly stacked heels, his eyes scratched out by a knife, a biro-drawn phallus swelling from his trousers. Arnaud stood up. He was a tall, well-built man, at least seventeen stone. Wordlessly, he ushered Kell to a formica table at the back of the café. The table was positioned beneath a television that had been bolted to the wall. They shook hands over an ashtray swollen with gum a
nd cigarettes and sat on opposite chairs. Arnaud’s palm was dry and soft, his face entirely without kindness but not lacking a certain nobility. With his dark, indifferent eyes, he looked for all the world like an exiled despot of the Amin school. It made sense. Arnaud was probably losing face by talking to Kell but had calculated that a thousand euros for a ten-minute conversation was a price well worth paying.
‘So you are journalist?’
‘That’s right.’
Arnaud didn’t ask what paper. They were speaking in French, his accent as difficult to unpick as any Kell could remember. ‘And you want to know about someone?’
Kell nodded. Somebody had switched on the television and his reply was partly smothered by the commentary on a game of basketball. Perhaps Arnaud had ordered this so that they might speak in confidence; perhaps it was the manager’s way of expressing his disapproval.
‘This morning, at the ferry terminal, you picked up a man in his early thirties off the boat from Tunis.’
Arnaud nodded, though it wasn’t clear whether or not he remembered. He was wearing a button-down denim shirt and removed a packet of full-strength Winston from the breast pocket.
‘Smoke?’
‘Sure,’ said Kell, and took one.
There was a pause while Arnaud lit their cigarettes – his own first. Then he leaned forward.
‘You feeling nervous in this place? You look nervous.’
‘Do I?’ Kell knew that he didn’t and that Arnaud was trying to wind him up. ‘Funny. I was just reflecting on what a civilized place this is.’
‘Huh?’
Kell looked back at the bar. There was a half-eaten plate of spaghetti on the next-door table, two old men playing backgammon by the door. ‘You can get an espresso. You can smoke. The food smells good.’ He made a point of looking directly into Arnaud’s eyes, so that he wouldn’t have to waste time playing any more of his games. ‘I’m used to places where you can’t drink alcohol, where they don’t allow women to sit with men. I’m used to roadside bombs and snipers lining the white man up for breakfast. I get nervous in places like Baghdad, Arnaud. I get nervous in Kabul. Do you follow?’
The despot shifted in his chair, the plastic squeaking.
‘I remember this guy.’ It took Kell a moment to realize that the driver was talking about Malot.
‘I thought you might. Can you tell me where you drove him?’
Arnaud blew a cloud of smoke past Kell’s ear. ‘That’s it? That’s all you want to know?’
‘That’s all I want to know.’
He frowned, the tops of his soft black cheeks tightening under the eyes. A mixed-race boy, not much older than fifteen or sixteen, came to the table and asked Kell if he wanted a drink.
‘Nothing for me.’
‘Have something,’ said Arnaud.
Kell took a drag on the cigarette. ‘A beer.’
‘Un bière, Pep,’ said Arnaud, as though Kell’s order needed translating. He scratched at something on the side of his neck. ‘It was a long journey, expensive.’
‘How long?’
‘Only got back about two hours ago. We went to Castelnaudary.’
‘Castelnaudary? That’s near Toulouse, right?’
‘Look it up.’
Kell blew the smoke back. ‘Or you could just tell me.’
‘Pay me the money.’
He took an envelope containing the cash from his jeans and passed it across the table.
‘So. For a thousand euros, Arnaud. Where’s Castelnaudary?’
The cab driver smiled, enjoying the game. ‘West of here. Maybe three hours on the autoroute. Past Carcassone.’
‘Cassoulet country,’ Kell replied, thinking of the Languedoc-Roussillon but not expecting much in the way of a reaction. ‘Did you drop him in town? Do you remember the address?’
‘There was no address.’ Arnaud put the envelope in the hip pocket of his chinos and it was as if the weight of the money, the reality of it, jolted him into a greater cooperation. ‘It was strange, in fact. He wanted me to leave him on the outskirts of a village ten kilometres to the south. In a lay-by, in the middle of the countryside. He said that somebody was coming to collect him.’
Kell asked the obvious question. ‘Why didn’t you just take him to where he needed to go?’
‘He said that he didn’t have an address. I didn’t want to argue, I didn’t really care. I had a long drive back to Marseille. I wanted to come home and see my daughter.’
Kell thought about enquiring after Arnaud’s family, to soften him up a bit, but it didn’t feel like a strategy worth pursuing. ‘And what about the rest of the journey? Did you talk on the way? Did he have anything to say to you?’
The African smiled, more broadly now, and Kell saw that his gums were yellowed with age and decay. ‘No, man.’ He shook his head. ‘This guy doesn’t talk. He doesn’t even look. Mostly he sleeps or stares out of the window. Typical racist. Typical French.’
‘You think he was racist?’
Arnaud ignored the question and asked one of his own. ‘So who is he? Why is a British newspaper interested in him? Did he steal something? He fuck Princess Kate or something?’
Arnaud laughed heartily at his own joke. Kell wasn’t much of a royalist but refrained from joining in.
‘He’s just somebody we’re interested in. If I had a map, could you show me exactly where you left him?’
Arnaud nodded. Kell waited for him to make a move. They sat in silence until it became clear that Arnaud was holding out for something.
‘Do you have a map?’ Kell asked.
Arnaud folded his arms.
‘Why would I have one in here?’ he asked, looking down at the floor. The crust of an old sandwich was hardening beneath a torn leather stool. Kell could not get a signal on his iPhone and had no choice but to stand up and leave the café, again running the gauntlet of track-suited youths and unleashed dogs outside. He found his waiting cab and tapped on the window, waking the driver from a brief sleep. The window came down and Kell asked if he could borrow a road map of France. This simple request was met with almost complete contempt, because it required the driver to step out of the vehicle, to open the boot of his Mercedes and to retrieve the map from the boot.
‘Maybe you should keep it in the car,’ Kell told him, and returned to his table in the café. Arnaud took the map, flicked to the index, found Castelnaudary and pointed to the approximate area where he had left François Malot.
‘Here,’ he said, a dry, nail-chewed finger momentarily obscuring the precise location. Kell took the map and wrote down the name of the village: Salles-sur-l’Hers.
‘And it was a lay-by? In the middle of the countryside?’
Arnaud nodded.
‘Anything distinctive about the area that you can remember? Was there a church nearby? A playground?’
Arnaud shook his head, as though he was becoming bored of the conversation. ‘No. Just some trees, fields. Fucking countryside, you know?’ He said the word ‘countryside’ as if it were also a term of abuse. ‘When I turned around to go home, I remember I went past some recycling bins after maybe one minute, two, so that’s how far I dropped him from Salles-sur-l’Hers.’
‘Thank you,’ Kell replied. He passed the number of the Marquand mobile across the table. ‘If you think of anything else …’
‘I’ll call you.’ Arnaud slid the number into the same shirt pocket in which he kept his cigarettes. The tone of his reply suggested that this would be the last time that Thomas Kell ever saw or heard from him. ‘What happened to your eye? The passenger did this to you?’
‘One of his friends,’ Kell replied, rising from the table. His beer had arrived while he was fetching the map. He left a two-euro coin on the table though he hadn’t touched it. ‘Thanks for agreeing to meet me.’
‘No problem.’ Arnaud did not bother standing up. He shook Kell’s hand and with the other, patted the wad of money in his pocket. ‘I should say thank you to your British ne
wspaper.’ Another yellow-gummed smile. ‘Very generous. Very nice present.’
42
Back at the hotel, there was a voice message on Kell’s telephone from a petulant-sounding Madeleine Brive. She was sorry to hear about the attack at Cité Radieuse, but seemingly more upset that Stephen Uniacke had not possessed the good grace to call her earlier in the afternoon to warn her that their dinner at Chez Michel would not now be going ahead. As a consequence, she had wasted her one and only night in Marseille.
‘Charming,’ Kell said to the room as he hung up. He wondered if Luc was still listening.
He slept well, as deeply as at any point in the operation, and ate a decent breakfast in the hotel restaurant before checking out and finding an Internet café within a stone’s throw of the Gare Saint-Charles. His laptop was now effectively useless; Luc’s DGSE comrades would almost certainly have fitted it with a tracking device or key logger software. Kell saw that Elsa Cassani had sent a document by email, which he assumed – correctly – was the vetting file on Malot. A message accompanying the document said: ‘Call me if you have any questions x’ and Kell printed it out with the assistance of a hyper-efficient Goth with a piercing in his tongue.
There was a branch of McDonald’s at the station. Kell bought a cup of radioactively hot coffee, found a vacant table, and worked his way through Elsa’s findings.
She had done well, tracing Malot’s secondary school, the college in Toulon where he had studied Information Technology, the name of the gym in Paris of which he was a member. The photograph of Malot sent by Marquand showed two of his colleagues from a software firm in Brest that had been bought out and absorbed by a larger corporation in Paris, at the headquarters of which Malot now worked. Elsa had traced two bank accounts, as well as tax records going back seven years; there were, in her opinion, ‘no anomalies’ in Malot’s financial affairs. He paid his bills on time, had been renting his apartment in the 7th for just over a year, and drove a second-hand Renault Megane that had been purchased in Brittany. As far as friends or girlfriends were concerned, enquiries at his office and gymnasium suggested that François Malot was something of a loner, a private man who kept himself to himself. Elsa had even telephoned Malot’s boss, who informed her that ‘poor François’ was on an extended leave of absence following a family tragedy. As far as she could tell, Malot had no presence on social networks and his emails were regularly downloaded to a host computer that Elsa had not been able to hack. Without the assistance of Cheltenham, it had not been possible to listen to his mobile telephone calls but she had managed to intercept one potentially interesting email exchange between Malot and an individual registered with Wanadoo as ‘Christophe Delestre’ whom she suspected was a friend or relative. Elsa had attached the correspondence to the file.
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