by L. S. Hilton
‘I’m not staying downstairs,’ I explained. ‘Do you have a moment? I should like to speak to you.’
Julien looked baffled and slightly offended. This was not form. But I noticed he didn’t look surprised, either. I followed him back up to the small, velvet-curtained lobby. I leaned forward over the counter, letting him see the 500-euro notes bunched in my black-gloved hand.
‘I’m sorry to bother you’ – this was obviously a big night for apologies – ‘but I need to know: has someone been here looking for me? A man? It’s quite important.’
Julien took his time, relishing my attention.
‘Yes, Mademoiselle Lauren. A man did come looking for you. He had a photograph.’
‘A photo?’
‘Yes, mademoiselle and another young lady.’
‘What did she look like – the other one?’
‘I couldn’t say, mademoiselle.’
I handed over a smacker.
‘Perhaps she had unusual hair. Red hair?’
Leanne. Fuck. It had to be Leanne.
‘And the man? Did you tell him you knew me?’
Julien’s eye was on the second note. I closed my fingers slightly.
‘Naturally, mademoiselle, I told him I had never seen you before in my life.’
‘Did he say anything else? Anything?’
‘No. Nothing. He was very correct.’
I released the money, which he pocketed whilst holding my gaze.
‘Would you like to leave a number? I can let you know if he calls again.’
I wondered who Julien thought he was kidding. I wondered how much the guy had given him. There was a faint noise of music from the basement, the sound of a woman’s heels crossing the floor. Down there, it was so easy to let people see who you really were, that’s what made it so curiously gentle. We both knew that, Julien and I. He traded on the differences between those two worlds. I couldn’t hold his cupidity against him.
‘No, no thanks. Maybe I’ll see you some time.’
‘Always a pleasure, mademoiselle.’
I walked slowly down towards the river, crossed through the Louvre to the quais. Always so preposterously beautiful, Paris. I hadn’t eaten, but I wasn’t hungry. I called Yvette, who didn’t answer, because no one actually answers their phone anymore, but she returned the call in a few minutes.
‘Hey, chérie.’
We hadn’t spoken for ages, not since the party at the townhouse, but everyone’s a darling in the world of la nuit. There was music and loud conversation in the background. She would be outside in some smoking area, crowded under the fairy lights next to the thrumming heater.
‘I need a favour. Can you text me Stéphane’s number, please?’
‘Stéphane? Are you having a party?’
‘Yes. Something like that. A private one.’
‘Sure thing. Have fun. Call me, chérie!’
I waited until the text came through, then sent a message of my own.
‘I’m a friend of Yvette. I need a little favour. Please can you call me on this number? Thanks.’
I couldn’t face the flat yet, so I turned left and made for Le Fumoir. It took Stéphane about an hour to reply, by which time I’d drunk three Grasshoppers and was feeling more equal to the world.
‘You’re Yvette’s friend?’
‘Yes.’ I doubted he’d remember me from the club way back, but better to be someone else, keep more distance. ‘I’m Carlotta. Thanks for getting back to me.’
‘So, you need something?’
‘Yes. For a friend. But not the usual. Something . . . brown?’ My French wasn’t quite up to this; I felt comic.
He hesitated.
‘I see. Well, I could get you that. But not tonight.’
‘Tomorrow evening is fine.’
We agreed that he’d meet ‘Carlotta’s friend’ at eight in the café at the Panthéon. I wasn’t troubled that my Figaro-reading pal would be there. He would have packed up his stuff and taken the first Eurostar back to London, eager to report to whoever had employed him. He’d had a clear sighting, he had confirmed my name and address. With that photo he’d had of me and Leanne it had to be London. Someone in London was trying to find me. I was regretting the Grasshoppers now. I needed a clear head.
*
I forced myself awake at six, jittery and underslept. My running gear was next to the bed, no excuses. It had begun to rain as I was getting home, but now the late autumn sun was daffodil gold in the sky and the city looked scrubbed, lucent. I felt better by the second lap of the Luxembourg, ran a few sprints, sit-ups in the damp grass, stretches. I jogged slowly back to the Rue de l’Abbé de l’Epée, running over my day’s programme. Up to the tenth, where the shops specialise in African ladies’ hair, over to Belleville to a pharmacy, a pit stop at a café for some research, my local Nicolas for a bottle, a doctor’s appointment to make. That would take up most of my time. I’d give myself an hour to bathe and change ready to meet Stéphane.
The drugs trade had moved on since I’d last bought gear in Toxteth. Stéphane was white for a start. I’d positioned myself outside despite the heavy damp that followed a perfect autumn day, promising rain, but when he pulled up on his natty vintage Lambretta I didn’t clock him immediately amongst the intello crowd. Skinny and earnest-looking, with a bad-good Eighties haircut and heavy, black-framed glasses, he was doing his best not to look like a pusher. I saw him slowly scanning the crowd under the awning and stood up a little so the hair would catch the light. It was a bit awful, the wig, but I’d done my best with it, screwing it into a messy chignon to make it look more natural, wrapping my big Sprouse scarf tight around my neck so it covered the nape. I was casually dressed but deliberately over made-up, and we spoke in English. I wondered how convincing my old voice was after so long, but I guessed Stéphane wouldn’t have too precise a take on it. He sat down and waited until his espresso order was taken, then set a Camel Lights pack on the table, next to my Marlboro Gold. He smiled encouragingly – did he actually think I looked nice?
‘So, you know Yvette?’ he asked. I relaxed, no worries that he recognised me.
‘A bit. Carlotta is my friend.’
We sat for a few moments in silence.
‘Well, have fun. D’you want my number?’
‘Sure.’
I put it into my phone. ‘I’m not here for long, but you never know.’
‘So, bye-bye, then.’
‘Bye.’
He kicked the scooter over while he checked his phone, no doubt for the next drop-off. He probably had an app, I thought. I waited until he was gone, then made my way through to the loo and unpinned the hair. It looked spooky, voodooish, stuffed in my bag, but if there was a chance of seeing Leanne on my way home I couldn’t risk it.
*
If you’d asked me how I knew Leanne was going to appear, I couldn’t have said. Somehow, I just knew it was the obvious thing to happen. If da Silva had been going to arrest me, he would just have arrested me, not given me time to disappear. Assuming my new chum had a London connection, and given Julien’s mention of the hair, London meant Leanne. She didn’t turn up until after ten, by which time I’d begun to doubt myself. I began to feel sick; maybe my casual assurance about da Silva had been wrong. I’d showered and put on white pyjamas, men’s, from Charvet. The concierge had already been primed with a bunch of nasty cellophaned chrysanthemums, to assuage the inconvenience of showing any late-night guests up to my flat. I’d lit candles, poured a meditative glass of red, Mozart’s 21st piano concerto on the stereo, the latest Philippe Claudel novel open on the arm of the sofa. A lovely quiet night in, I was having. Buzz, click, buzz. Voices, Scholl schlump, click, schlump, click of heels on the flagstones, ‘Allez-vous par là,’ click click click on the stairs, buzz.
‘Oh my God! Leanne! What a surprise! Come in, come in. It’s been what, more than a year! Ages!You look great! Come in.’
Actually, I was glad to note that she didn’t look that gr
eat. She was thin, but her face was pale and puffy, a crop of spots on her jawline heavily rubbed out with chalky concealer. The hair was still wildly red, but the gold-weave highlights were gone, dulling her skin further. She carried the Chanel bag we’d got in Cannes, but it was battered now, her tan coat was chain store and her boots were worn out at their pointed toes.
‘Look at this, eh? Fab.’
‘It’s only rented.’
I followed her eyes around the room. She wouldn’t know that the plain black sofa was Thonet, or that the Cocteau drawing was real, if she’d even heard of Cocteau, but as I echoed her gaze, I saw with pleasure that my flat sang with taste, and the money to supply it.
‘Still, you seem like you’re doing really well.’
I lowered my eyes. ‘You remember that guy with the boat. Steve? Well, we’ve been seeing each other ever since, on and off. He helps me out. And I have a new job, a proper dealer’s job. It’s . . . OK.’
She reached up and pulled me into a Prada Candy-scented hug.
‘Good for you, Jude. Good for you.’ She actually sounded like she meant it.
‘Let’s have a drink. I’d have got Roederer if I’d known you were coming,’ I smiled. I waved my own full glass and fetched her one from the cupboard. She took a long swallow and rooted in her bag for cigarettes. I joined her on the sofa and we lit up.
‘And how are you? Still at the club?’
‘Yeah. I’m a bit over it now, though.’ Her voice was flatter, more Estuary London; somehow it made her seem older, the sparkiness gone.
‘When did you get here? How come you’re in Paris?’
‘A guy at the club. Asked me for a weekend, you know.’
I answered brightly. ‘Cool! Did you stay anywhere nice?’
‘Yeah, dead nice. The something de la Reine? In that square?’ Perfect; she thought I was buying it. ‘So, um, then I heard you were here and I thought I’d look you up.’
‘You heard I was here. Right.’
I let the silence sit until she looked at me appealingly, floundering.
‘It’s great to see you,’ she muttered. ‘We had a laugh, right? In Cannes?’
‘Yes. It was a laugh.’
The 21st is a bit obvious for serious tastes, but there’s something in the tension of it, the hovering space between the notes, that makes me ache. I crossed the parquet in my bare feet, unplugged my phone from where it was charging, let her see me turn it off. Wordlessly, she retrieved hers and did the same. I held out my hand and she let me take it, as though hypnotised. I placed them side by side on the table. I sat down on the other end of the sofa, sipped my wine, tucked my legs underneath me, leaned forward.
‘Leanne. Please tell me why you’re here. It’s obviously not a coincidence. How did you even know I was in Paris, let alone where I live? Are you in trouble? Can I help?’
I could see her working out how much to tell me, setting it against what she thought I knew. Which was nothing much, right now.
‘Leanne. What’s up? I can’t help you if you won’t tell me.’
I didn’t ask anything else. We sat there on the sofa like a therapist and a patient, until the music came to its poised, protracted end.
‘There was a bloke came asking at the club. He had a photo. It was on a security pass from that place you used to work.’
I made my voice a little harder. ‘And what did you tell him?’
‘Nothing, I swear. I was bricking it. Olly recognised you, said you didn’t look like a Judith. But all I said was that you’d left. Nothing, I swear.’
‘Why do you need to swear? What’s the problem?’
‘I didn’t know. I thought it was about, well . . . you know . . . James. So I kept schtum. But there was this other girl, she’d been in the club a couple of weeks, started after you left. Ashley. Blonde, very tall? She told him she knew you.’
Ashley. The hooker from the party in Chester Square. Quelle sodding horrible surprise. I looked at Leanne, who was on her second glass, chain-smoking. I felt sorry, then. I believed her; she had kept quiet. And I’d been grassed up by a fucking Svetlana whom I’d last seen with her gob full of a stranger’s prick.
‘What happened then?’
‘They went off and talked. He left. I tried to find out what they’d been talking about, but she was a snotty bitch. Russian. She left, anyway, a few nights later. Sacked. Got caught with a client.’
‘That figures. So, the guy, what’s his name?’
‘Cleret. Renaud Cleret. He’s French.’
If Ashley had been a shock, that hit me like a rabbit punch in the solar plexus. I laughed, madly.
‘What’s funny?’
‘Nothing, nothing Leanne. Sorry. It’s just, just such a French name, you know. Renaud Cleret. Like a bad film. Whatever.’
And then she told me the rest. That she’d panicked, been convinced that the story about James was out. She said she’d tried to text me, but of course I’d changed my number. So she’d gone to British Pictures, braved the receptionists until they let her in to see Rupert.
‘Your old boss? The one you used to do the impressions of? They were dead good, when I really met him.’
And Rupert had told her that he believed I was mixed up in a faking scam, that they needed to find me, partly in case I was playing on the reputation of the House, partly out of concern. How touching. He’d hinted darkly that these things could get very nasty, that I probably didn’t know I was playing with fire. So they’d hired Cleret, he explained, to find me. And now here was Leanne, my old friend. Would she try to talk to me? Cleret would let her know where I was; she just had to drop by. They’d pay the fare to Paris, and a bit extra on top. He emphasised that it was urgent, that he was concerned for my welfare. Really, Leanne would be doing a favour to her friend.
‘How much on top? Go on, it’s OK.’
Two thousand pounds. Thirty pieces of silver, I said, but she just looked blank.
‘I didn’t believe them, anyway. I made out like I did, I made out like I was as stupid as they thought I was. The Cleret guy gave me your address last night, said I was to come at once.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘London. He’s French but he lives in London.’
‘And so you came.’
‘Yeah.’
I took another swig of wine, poured her some more. She sat up a bit straighter, her confidence renewed by her confession, cunning little eyes glittering at me.
‘So, now I’ve told you, what have you got to tell me?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, I’m not soft. That Rupert said you were mixed up in something. He said a guy had been killed in Rome, that was why he was so worried.’
‘What guy?’
‘Cameron Fitzpatrick, he said. I looked in the papers, online. A bloke was murdered. Cameron Fitzpatrick, in Rome. Not too long after you’d left the South of France. He was an art dealer, like you, Jude. And this Cleret bloke, he said you had been in Rome. You were there. When it happened.’
Fuck. Fuck. How could Cleret have known that? Wait, breathe. My name would have been in da Silva’s report, even though the newspaper had been discreet. It was public knowledge, and supposedly this Cleret was some kind of detective. Concentrate on what’s in front of you, for now.
Leanne might have been ignorant, but she wasn’t thick. As far as cash potential went, she was a rat on an open wound. I was genuinely impressed she’d managed to put so many pieces together, but seriously – what did she expect? That I would confess all and allow her to blackmail me?
‘So what? I was there. I had to speak to the Italian police. It was awful. I’d hoped he might give me a job. I mean, it was awful for him, poor man. I imagine Rupert knew I was there too, even if he didn’t tell you that. Maybe that’s where he got his suspicions from, but so what? He could have got in touch, just asked me. None of this stupid cat and mouse business. What’s your point?’
‘Why is Rupert so keen to talk t
o you? Why was he so pleased to see me?’
‘How the fuck would I know? Maybe he fancied a cheap screw.’
That hit her like a slap, but she let it go.
‘I didn’t come here to argue, Jude. You’re into something, right? That’s why those blokes want me to talk to you. To find out. But what do we owe those posh cunts? We did it in Cannes, didn’t we? We did it together? So I thought maybe I could help you. Two’s better than one, right?’
‘What was it that we did? That we did together? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Come on Jude –’
I tried not to let the contempt show in my face, mostly succeeded. I managed a wry, cards-on-the-table smile.
‘Come off it, Leanne.You’re not here for Rupert, or because you want to get one over on him, either. How much do you need? To keep quiet about James, to go back to Rupert and tell him you couldn’t find me, because that’s what you think I’m scared of, isn’t it? How much?’
I never got to find out how much the poor dumb bitch wanted because the half-dozen benzodiazepine I’d mixed into a rather nice bottle of Madiran had kicked in and Leanne’s head had fallen back against the cushion, her half-empty glass tipping from her limp hand and spilling over her lap. Sedatives and slimming pills: French doctors are so obliging. That’s why French women don’t get fat. Lucky I’d got the sofa in black.
If only French cabbies were as compliant as their medics. It took forever to slap Leanne into a semblance of consciousness and get some water down her. It took an age to half-walk, half-carry her down the stairs and along to the boulevard, an eternity for a cab to draw up, and then he wouldn’t take us because she obviously looked pissed and he was afraid she’d chuck on his nice synthetic seats. I hoped she didn’t throw up; I couldn’t have that. I was murmuring encouragingly, don’t worry, no problem, just a bit too much wine, you’ll be fine. I got her into the second cab, where she immediately passed out again, solid against my shoulder. It wasn’t far across the river to the Place des Vosges. I had time to hunt for her room card in her bag and pass a twenty over to the driver and we were there. Hauling her through reception was even worse, with her weight and both our bags over my spare shoulder, not to mention the large umbrella I’d unfolded to protect her from the showers, but with my left arm gripping her around her back I managed to stagger to the lift. If anyone raised an eyebrow I’d just say apologetically that she was English, but there was a party of Japanese tourists arriving and the receptionist and porter were busy. Her room was on the third floor; I had to put the brolly down to fiddle with the key card, and Leanne slumped almost to the floor, her legs splaying in a puppet’s plié.