French Fried: one man's move to France with too many animals and an identity thief

by Chris Dolley

  This was Boulogne’s local.

  I walked in half expecting to be greeted by, “hello, Mr. Dolley, usual table?”

  Not to mention a handful of faxes and forwarded letters.

  But no, not even a, “What about that goal you missed last month.”

  We ordered our two drinks, found a table, sat down and ... waited for inspiration. Perhaps this wasn’t going to be as easy as we’d thought. Do we just place the photographs on the counter and ask the bar staff if they recognised anyone? Or do we have to hide dollar bills under the pictures?

  And shouldn’t we have prepared a script?

  We hastily cobbled one together. Perhaps if we started with something about the gendarmes visit last week? Or would that make everyone clam up? Would an uneasy silence descend broken only by the sound of fleeing customers diving through windows?

  Maybe we should forget the gendarmes and ask if they knew a friend of ours who stayed here in May? Or would that just confuse matters. And label us as accomplices?

  I decided upon a bold plan.

  “Je suis le vrai Monsieur Dolley,” I said, advancing on the barman and clutching my open passport like a crucifix before me. “C’est moi.”

  I think he was impressed, if not a little startled. It may not have been a genuine Pergonini but it did look official.

  Shelagh, aka the true Mrs. Dolley, quickly chimed in with a sentence freely laced with gendarmes and visits.

  Ah! He remembered.

  But he didn’t remember any faces. We showed him our trio of slim blond men and he didn’t recognise a single one. Neither David Jarvis or any of my slim blond cousins. It could have been any of them, he said.

  My eyes narrowed. I wondered where my cousins were last May.

  A waitress was called over to have a look but she hadn’t actually seen the man and neither had the receptionist. Nobody had, just the barman.

  Which I thought strange for someone staying at a hotel. Where did he have his meals?

  Not at the hotel, we discovered. In fact, he hadn’t actually stayed at the hotel. He’d walked into the bar sometime back in May and struck up a conversation with the barman. He’d told him how he’d just moved to the area and was looking for work, could he use the hotel as a poste restante?

  So, no hotel register to fill in, no address to leave or even a sample of handwriting. Just an occasional visit to check for mail.

  We left the Hôtel du Midi slightly disappointed. After such a good description we thought someone was bound to recognise David Jarvis.

  Could it be that it wasn’t him after all? Was it the mysterious Peter Kennedy all along?

  Luckily we still had the bank manager.

  And the notaire.

  Shelagh looked at her watch – nearly seven, darkness approaching – what were the chances of a notaire being open this late?

  None, I thought. And we still weren’t sure if the notaire was a witness or an accomplice.

  So we drove back to pick up Nan and let our thoughts drift towards tomorrow and our trip to Les.

  And speculate when Bank Managers’ Day would be.

  oOo

  We set off mid-morning, slightly later than last time to give everyone’s bladder a good chance of a stop-free run to Spain. We left to the usual howled lament from a puppy’s head protruding from the cat-flap. I think she was howling last minute advice to Nan and Shelagh – I want the windows closed for the first ten miles and a stop at that nice lay-by with the waste bins.

  I was more concerned with counselling the car through its daily panic attack. It’s all right, boy, you can do it. Words of encouragement, hand on choke, ears listening for the slightest drop in revs.

  Four minutes later, and with the car’s confidence building steadily, our trip to Spain came to an unexpected and dramatic halt.

  We’d turned into an unmarked roadwork.

  Shelagh and Nan couldn’t believe it. I, however, had reached the point where unbelievable was just another name for commonplace. I wound down the window to check. Yes, I thought so; we were parked on wet, steaming tarmac.

  But that’s life when you annoy Fate. One minute you’re on a single track road not far from the middle of nowhere, you turn left at a T junction and suddenly you’re surrounded by giant road-laying vehicles, fresh tarmac spewing out their rears and not a ’Road Closed’ sign in sight.

  God knows what this had done to the car’s confidence!

  Clouds of steam rose from the vehicles in front of us. The air was filled with the smell of tar and noxious gases, the incessant thump and clunk of moving parts on metal. The noise was deafening. It was like being on the Tartarus turnpike, tar and sulphur belching out all around us.

  I threw the car into reverse. It didn’t like it. Was it stuck or just terrified? We were drawing puzzled looks from the workmen. Who were we? Where the hell had we come from – the road was supposed to be closed!

  The car stalled, fired, stuttered, slued for a bit and then shot backwards.

  And kept on going.

  I was concentrating so hard on avoiding ditches and keeping momentum that I aimed for the first spot I could see devoid of big yellow trucks.

  And reversed straight past our junction and on for another thirty yards until I found a section of solid, unsteaming road surface.

  Thank God for that!

  If I’d been American, I’d probably have sued everyone in sight. If I’d been French, I’d have been grinding spittle for a week. But I was English, and I just wanted to leave.

  Quickly.

  A wish shared by my passengers.

  “Go that way! Go that way!” screamed Shelagh. “It looks clear.”

  So I swung the car around into a quick three point turn and headed off away from the over-powering smell and noise.

  But not all the noise.

  A clang, tick, scrape and a grate came along with us.

  I stopped the car, got out ... and saw that our tyres were caked in thick tar and stone chippings. They looked like my Wellington boots after an hour gardening in cloying heavy clay. There was so much tar that the wheels couldn’t turn without hitting the wheel arch. Lumps of tar and stone chippings were being scraped off with every turn.

  I looked back down the road to where the huge machines were still chugging and steaming. Still no ’Road Closed’ sign in evidence.

  Which was unusual in France. Even the smallest spot of hedge trimming usually rated an ’Attention! Fauchage!’ sign. And often a couple of men with flags and a van with flashing lights.

  “It’ll be fine,” I said as I climbed back into the car. The driver’s prime directive being ‘Always keep the confidence of your passengers.’

  And, in my case, the car’s as well.

  The passengers were of mixed opinions. Shelagh wanted to go home – she could recognise an omen when it spewed tarmac in front of her. Nan wanted to continue – missing out on day trips had been a ‘dead day’ chart-topper for years.

  I decided to press on. I didn’t fancy driving back over thirty yards of hot tar to reach our turning.

  A minute later we turned a bend and ... saw another patch of embryonic highway.

  No road laying vehicles this time – they must have finished this stretch thirty minutes earlier – but how many others were there?

  I weighed up the options. Thirty yards of hot, wet tarmac behind us. God knows how many yards of not so hot tarmac ahead of us.

  To go on or to turn back, that indeed was the question.

  But only for the driver. Democracies can’t handle a second swathe of wet tarmac.

  And passengers should realise that what drivers really need in moments of stress is not advice but people to blame. I told you we should have set off earlier. No, you didn’t. Yes, I did.

  We ploughed on, through swathe after swathe of alternating new and old road. And eventually past an impressive ’Road Closed’ sign complete with startled man with flag.

  As we later found out they’d closed both end
s of the road they were patching but forgot about a little-used single track road that intersected with it – our little road from the middle of nowhere.

  Having survived the ordeal of the tar pits, we now had another one. Where were we?

  This was a section of road we’d never travelled before and didn’t seem to accord with any on our map. Nor did it favour the use of road signs.

  Not surprising really, the first rule about driving in France is to forget the idea that road signs are there to help you. They’re not. They’re more of a confirmation that you made the right choice at the last junction. It’s fairly normal in France to arrive at a busy junction with two lanes to choose from and find no clue as to which one you should take; the road sign cleverly placed on the far side of the lights – only readable after you’ve committed yourself to the wrong lane.

  So, with no map and no road signs, what should we do?

  Some people would keep going until they found a major road. But I wasn’t some people. I was a person with a sense of direction.

  The most dangerous sense known to motoring.

  And I could see a left turn.

  We took it.

  “Why are we going this way?”

  “Short-cut,” I said. The most feared word a passenger can hear in a car, other than “Aaaarrrggghhh!” It’s part of the drivers’ creed – that however well-researched a route may be, there’s always a short-cut for the determined motorist to find.

  And I’d found mine.

  We’d cut across over the foothills, boldly searching out other left turns until we found something I recognised.

  Like that water tower on the top of the hill.

  Wasn’t that the one we could see from the top of our road?

  I thought it was, Shelagh thought it wasn’t and Nan was looking out the wrong window.

  We turned left again, up towards the water tower and hopefully to swing back around to the main road and Spain. After all, I surmised, all we had to do was head for the mountains.

  Unfortunately all mountains were currently obscured by foothills. Large, rolling, heavily wooded ones. And we were heading into the thick of them.

  At least we’d have a good view when we reached the top.

  Whenever that would be. Thick wood was closing in from all sides, the road winding and narrowing, potholes increasing.

  “Is this the right way?” asked Nan. Never a good question to ask a driver when he’s lost.

  I explained calmly about the water tower.

  “The wrong water tower,” added Shelagh.

  No, it wasn’t. Yes, it was. No, it wasn’t.

  “What water tower?” asked Nan.

  “That...” I stopped. A good question. Where’d it go? We were deep in trees, the road bending at every opportunity. Which direction was the water tower? All I could see was rolling forest. The road continued to rise, fall and wind its way through tree-infested hummocks. All major roads, mountains and left turns shrank from sight.

  But there were plenty of bushes.

  And if the car broke down we had a handy trail of black tar to follow all the way home.

  We chugged along for miles. Above us, Fate danced and moved water towers, tempted us with shiny right turns and made the road bend and turn back on itself.

  “Let’s turn back.” I heard Shelagh say more than once.

  A few days earlier I might have been tempted. But I’d had enough of being Fate’s whipping boy. I was going to Spain, with or without Fate’s consent.

  The nematode had turned.

  And a few minutes later so did the car.

  As we crested a rise, suddenly, there they were.

  The Pyrenees!

  A huge cheer greeted their appearance, all three hundred miles of them stretched out across the horizon. And, unless we’d found the Alps by mistake, we’d soon be back on the main road and en route for Spain.

  oOo

  The rest of the journey settled back into normality; no more unexpected road-layers blocked our route and no freak tornadoes diverted us from our path. Towns and villages flew by as we raced along the wide flat valley floor; the fields golden in their late summer splendour.

  And then we were turning, arcing left towards the mountains, tracing the Garonne’s descent from the mountains; the valley sides gradually closing in, tree-covered spurs appearing to our left and right as the valley started its slow waltz up the mountains.

  We saw hamlets and farms high above us on the far valley side; houses that clung to the mountainside, houses with gardens that verged on the vertical, a sheer drop only a small field away. How could anyone live there? So high, so isolated. A single access road snaked up from the valley floor below. A road that would surely become impassable with the first breath of frost. Did they have to walk to the shops in winter? Did they have to carry their shopping all the way home?

  Other valleys came and went, the fields and trees gradually giving way to towering cliffs of brown-streaked rock.

  And then we were there.

  Les.

  Our destination.

  oOo

  It was with a growing sense of anticipation that we entered the Banca Zaragoza. In a few seconds everything might be over – the case solved and the mastermind exposed. I took a deep breath and pushed open the door.

  Miguel’s face brightened as soon as he saw us – it must have been as exciting for him as it was for us – to be the star witness in an international horse-laundering scam.

  We shook hands and spread out our three slim blond men along his counter.

  “C’est lui!” he said without hesitation.

  And pointed straight at David Jarvis.

  oOo

  I almost floated back to Nan and the car. A great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I’d solved a crime. I’d locked grey cells with the Great Pergonini and emerged victorious.

  Shelagh was jubilant too. Life could return to normal; no more financial worries, no more suspicion.

  Nan was less excited.

  “I knew it was him from the start,” she said. “It was obvious.”

  You can never be a prophet in your own back yard.

  A Switch of Fate

  Back home, I was still occupying the penthouse flat of Cloud Nine; nothing could tarnish my achievement – not even Nan.

  I quickly set up camp beside the phone and proceeded to call just about everyone involved in the case. I called Andy and Simon and Jan and John. The number of road-laying vehicles increased with each telling, by the time I talked to Jan, I was leaning out of the driver’s window balancing the car on two wheels as I drove at high speed between flaming walls of tar.

  I was then hit by a swift bout of anti-climax. The case was over. That was it. No more detecting.

  And what about the dénouement?

  I’d forgotten all about that. Great Detectives don’t end their cases in faraway banks with only three witnesses present. They invite all the interested parties to their consulting rooms. They expound, they accuse, they point.

  And then, while everyone is reeling from one startling revelation after another, the door opens and … in walks Miguel, the bank manager; the surprise witness, who turns and points directly at David Jarvis.

  “That’s him!” shouts Miguel.

  The audience gasps. It can’t be! Not him. He’s too obvious.

  “You’ll never take me alive!” screams Jarvis, his face contorted by guilt, his suave sophistication skewered on the still quivering outstretched finger of the diminutive bank manager.

  “Not so fast, Jarvis,” I say, nonchalantly inspecting my finger nails. “You don’t think I invited you here without taking certain precautions, do you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I look towards the door.

  A dozen eyes follow.

  A shadow stretches into the room. It’s enormous, it’s black, it’s hairy, it’s straight from Grimpen Mire.

  And in walks Gypsy, the Great Detective’s faithful puppy. />
  “Go ahead, punk,” she woofs, her eyes burrowing deep into the guilty and tormented soul of the evil purveyor of real estate, “make my day.”

  Gypsy woofed approval. That’s how it should have ended. Dénouements were for dogs.

  I wondered if there was still time to arrange it. But decided against it, the moment had gone but – paraphrasing Casablanca – I’d always have Les. As I contemplated that last sentence, I cursed Fate for not placing the Banca Zaragoza in a more romantically named setting.

  oOo

  Still, if I couldn’t have a dénouement, I’d make sure I had a good rapport for the gendarmes. I’d give Jean-Pierre free rein; all the cold Anglo-Saxonisms would be banished, we’d embrace the poetry of the French language and write a report that flowed, that rhymed and could run for twenty six weeks on London’s West End.

  I rang Jean-Pierre to arrange a rendezvous.

  And tell him how I’d been ambushed by an entire fleet of fully armed road-laying rocket ships.

  As I replaced the receiver, the phone rang. I picked it up and my right ear immediately drowned in a torrent of indecipherable French.

  I had no idea who it was.

  Which wasn’t that surprising, receiving a French phone call is a constant source of confusion in our household. It’s one thing to walk into a shop without a script but at least you have an inkling of what the subject might be. But a phone call out of the blue? It could be about anything, and you can’t fall back on sign language or ask anyone to write anything down.

  I listened to the excited stream of words coming through the ear-piece – not a recognisable keyword amongst them.

  I strained. I waited for a gap in the words. I strained again.

  Was that something about a rapport?

  Perhaps it was the gendarmes ringing up to congratulate me? Or maybe the Sûreté? Did they still have the Sûreté in Paris? Was Inspector Maigret still working there?

  I was still wondering if the legendary sleuth had moved on from the French equivalent of Scotland Yard, when I recognised the words, “can you play tonight?”

  For the Sûreté? Had the Jackal escaped? Were they asking for help from the world’s greatest consulting detective? Were they in need of a dénouement?