A Clean Pair of Hands

by Oscar Reynard

  Thérèse and George Milton never had a satisfactory explanation for the burglary at Maisons-Lafitte, but they understood why Charlotte would feel unsafe in that house with Michel often out at night, so they weren’t surprised at the move, though they could not understand why the Bodins would give up serene verdure for concrete buildings, however prestigious. The primary reason for the move was that Michel was liquidating most of his capital assets and focusing on his new business. He had opened the small office in Paris administered by his wife, while he continued prospecting his previous clients and contacts network. This time he was acting as an independent sales and design consultant, leaving the building and project management to others. Once again Michel’s charm and persistence worked and the business, with lower overheads than before, performed brilliantly. Despite their differences, the couple worked together on a daily basis and Charlotte continued to manage the accounts.

  There was soon another discordant note when there was a break-in to the basement lock up below the Bodins’ apartment. Michel’s substantial wine collection, temperature controlled cabinet, golf clubs and other sports gear were taken. It might have been a random initiative, but Charlotte was beginning to wonder if there might be more to it than that. She soon had confirmation that her hunch was correct.

  A few weeks later, as Charlotte left her car in the underground car park of the apartment, two men in black leather jackets approached her, barring her way to the door leading to the apartments. She was just putting her car keys away and getting the apartment keys out of her bag when each man grabbed an elbow and they started dragging her towards a large dark car, where a third man waited behind the wheel. Charlotte’s hand desperately groped in the bag and emerged with a pepper spray she kept there for just this eventuality. Both men received a paralysing dose full in the face and Charlotte started coughing and crying too. She saw the third man getting out of the car, so she took off towards the hall entrance door and once on the other side, used the night-time security locks to bolt the door to the car park then ran into her apartment, again bolting the door behind her. She called the police and they arrived within fifteen minutes. They looked around downstairs, found nothing, took her general descriptions of the men and their car, and left.

  When Michel came home later that evening she told him what had happened. He frowned, said little and they went to bed, both deeply concerned in different ways at what had occurred. Michel wasn’t naive enough to believe that his run of bad luck was unrelated to the affair with Schmitt, which had to be settled. He had to find a solution, but he feared that as far as Schmitt was concerned there could only be one outcome.

  The Bodins did not share their thoughts and the next day went about their business as if nothing had happened.

  Chapter Twenty

  To the Lion’s Den

  Shortly after the incident in the underground car park, Michel Bodin went to meet Schmitt at his office. At first sight it was not the sort of place you would associate with a successful businessman. The office was on the fourth floor of a derelict concrete building which might have been at its best forty years earlier, when it was the head office of a mail order firm. The car park area was partly occupied by loose rubbish, overflowing skips and a few twenty-foot shipping containers pointing in different directions. At one side of this scene of desolation and neglect was a large, low, open-fronted hangar in which were parked a scattering of expensive cars, including a dark blue Mercedes 500, not unlike the one Charlotte had recently described to the police. Bodin entered by a fractured plywood ground floor door dangling at the right hand corner of the building and made his way up the bare concrete stairs, noting that his progress was watched at every landing by small idle groups of sullen African males. He had no idea what kind of business Schmitt was in, and so far couldn’t place it with certainty in any particular industry category.

  Once on the fourth floor, Michel walked carefully along a corridor strewn with broken glass, possibly from some of the office partitioning that had been clumsily removed. He saw that the only possible working office was at a far corner and as he reached it, he found the door was open to reveal a cared-for board room table, surrounded by comfortable chairs, and with windows on two sides, giving views across one of the most dismal areas of the Paris suburbs.

  At the head of the table, facing him, sat Claus Schmitt reading a newspaper and smoking a cigar. His suit jacket hung on a clothes hanger on a wooden, traditional type of hat and coat stand located just behind him. The man sported wide braces, a striped business shirt, and incongruously, a bow-tie. With his feet up on the table, he resembled Humphrey Bogart in a Raymond Chandler movie. The soles of his light tan leather boots, which were the closest point of contact to Michel, looked expensive, probably Italian-crafted, with a pattern round the outer edge that showed little sign of wear. Schmitt didn’t rise to shake hands. Instead he smiled and waved Bodin to a chair, offered a cigar, which Michel declined, and waited with hands locked high across his chest to hear Michel’s news.

  Michel, somewhat nervously and with a dry mouth, explained that their deal had been done when Charlotte was under the influence of a drug, but she was already regaining consciousness by the time Schmitt appeared, and the immediate opportunity for him to take control of her had been lost. Since then, the desired conclusion had always depended on Charlotte’s consent. Clearly that wasn’t going to happen now, and further intimidation was only likely to lead to escalation of consequences and more trouble for all concerned. Michel omitted to say that Charlotte still knew nothing about the deal and he had not attempted to broach the subject with her.

  Schmitt appeared unmoved. After a period of silence, Michel suggested that they should do a deal which would release Michel from his bond and ensure that Schmitt was adequately compensated. Schmitt ruminated, leaning back in his chair savouring his cigar, but said nothing. Michel was starting to sweat around the back of his head and neck. He maintained eye contact and as in a game of poker, tried to give no hint of what sort of hand he held, or what he feared Schmitt might do to him and/or Charlotte, though he had already had a glimpse of the range of possibilities. After an interminable pause, which Michel found increasingly difficult to maintain, Schmitt was the first to speak.

  “It must be nearly a year since we agreed that deal. Maybe I took you by surprise at the time.” Michel nodded. He wasn’t going to admit that he had no experience of such deals until this one, and he wasn’t going to repeat the experience.

  “Well, I guess that over that time I have rather lost interest in your good lady. In fact I can hardly remember what she looked like, though obviously she must have seemed attractive at the time, perhaps because of what she was wearing.” There was another long pause.

  Schmitt grinned and looked up at his cigar smoke rising to the ceiling. He was thinking that he had only pursued the settlement as a matter of honour. He no longer felt any particular fancy for the woman. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do to make you happy; I’ll accept one hundred thousand francs as an immediate payoff, and later I will let you know what else you can do for me.”

  Michel was instinctively about to reach for his cheque book, then suddenly realised he would firstly look too compliant, and moreover dumb in not offering cash. He nodded, swallowed and then marshalled his thoughts about the implications of Schmitt’s demands. “That’s an expensive deal, and what do you want me to do for you? It sounds open ended.”

  Schmitt just couldn’t help smiling

  “You only need to keep me informed of what you are doing. That’s all. If there’s something in it that interests me I’ll let you know, and when I need more, I’ll tell you. You don’t have to accept.” Schmitt’s smile was now almost avuncular. “I will accept a cheque, if that’s what you’re concerned about. Make it out to Arnak Investments. Then we will invest it for you. I can’t promise any dividends, but that will save you having to declare them for taxation.” The smile broadened.

  Michel felt as though the spider was
peering into his face. He could see the intensity of the eyes and imagine the sharpness of the jaws, and he couldn’t move a limb. He suddenly pulled himself upright in the chair. “I’ll make out the cheque now.” This time Schmitt stood up and reached across the wide table to shake hands.

  While Michel wrote the cheque, Schmitt turned to look out of the window, raised one hand to support his other elbow, drew on the cigar and exhaled slowly. Then, after a few seconds had passed, he spoke to the window. “Of course, if there should be any change of plan regarding the processing of that cheque, your wife will be the first to feel the effects.”

  “There will be no change of plans,” Michel assured him.

  When he reached the front door of the building and took his first breath of outside air, Michel realised that he was not only sweating profusely, but his hands were trembling. He reached for a cigarette and went for a long walk before getting back into his car.

  There were no more ‘incidents.’ But Michel wasn’t naïve enough to think that he was now free of Schmitt’s attention. On the contrary: he was now Schmitt’s creature, caught in a web, and when his fate had been decided he would be told exactly what to do. He could talk to nobody about his predicament and he could see no way out, yet.

  A few days later, Michel received an envelope containing some official-looking documents from Arnak Investments. The writer said that M. Michel Bodin had made one of the biggest and most important decisions he would ever have to make…

  The initial investment had been placed in their high risk high earnings fund where his nest egg would grow whatever the economic climate… It went on,

  ‘But first, we need to make something clear…’

  “What the hell does this mean?” muttered Michel with a grimace. “Why are they writing to me at all, and where are they ‘investing’ my money?” There was nobody to answer him.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Exposure and Consequences

  The next big event in Michel’s life was a new love. At first it was a secret love, of which he spoke to nobody except Johnny, but it took over his mind to a point where he felt very exposed to discovery. Much of his life was transparent to those around him, so he had to maintain the really well-hidden secrets very diligently. He persuaded himself that this new relationship was an intellectual meeting of minds. They shared the same passions and they thought about each other day and night.

  He knew it would have to come out eventually. After three months he could hardly contain himself, but his new love persuaded him to keep the secret. Sonia Alvarez was separated from her husband and desperate to find a man with the means to support her and her son. At first Michel declined to get involved in any kind of new relationship requiring finance. But as time went on, he softened, and by the time the deceit reached a crisis point he was ready to accept Sonia’s terms. She was the perfect lover; a friend par excellence, he could share all his thoughts with her, they could talk about anything, and she understood everything. It was perfect, but what about his family? More than ever he wanted to be free to pursue his magnificent love story, but he still wanted to retain Charlotte for practical, financial and emotional reasons. As each day passed and their relationship worsened it would become more difficult for Michel to influence Charlotte in the direction of his all-embracing solution of mutual understanding and tolerance.

  At the Bodins’ home, the scenes and arguments multiplied, largely because Michel’s ability to lie was no longer enough protection against Charlotte’s intuition. She knew that he was sharing his life with someone else. It wasn’t the first time he had been unfaithful, but Charlotte’s radar never failed, so much so that Michel could have believed she had supernatural powers. He felt that he didn’t, couldn’t love her anymore, but Charlotte at least had one important element of power over her husband; they were equal partners in the business and she had complete control of the joint accounts and investments, and as she felt the danger to their marriage increase, so she held on tightly and watched the flow of money for clues. She had only ever loved Michel, but she had reached a point where she could not trust him anymore and was fully aware of a heightened need to look after her own interests.

  During celebrations for the millennium in their rented flat in Paris, the coolness between Charlotte and Michel was publicly obvious. Michel was absent for long periods and when the rest of the family arrived for dinner, the atmosphere remained tense. Most of the family guessed the pair must have had a row, but the full truth was revealed only later.

  The festivities reached a climax at midnight with a spectacular firework display on the Eiffel Tower, which the family viewed from the large balcony. The air was cool and damp and there was little to see until layer upon layer of glowing flares and exploding rockets poured out of the tower for about half an hour. By the time the show was over, the spectators felt the elation of passing a milestone. The 20th century was over and it felt as if new cards had been dealt. In fact there was no such luck, for everybody had to continue playing out their lives with the hand of cards they held and manage the consequences of their earlier moves.

  The morning after the party, George Milton was having breakfast alone in the alcove next to the Bodins’ kitchen at around ten thirty. There was a padded bench seat, a couple of wooden chairs, and enough bread crumbs, shards of crust and drops of jam on the table to indicate that someone, probably Michel, had eaten breakfast earlier and left. George had managed to cut his section of French bread in half length-ways, buttered it and applied a liberal dose of honey. When he tried to bite through the bread, he remembered why sharks have saw edges to their teeth; they are perfectly adapted to eating French bread. The more he bit and the more he pulled and twisted the bread with his hands, the more gobs of honey oozed over his fingers. He was just getting up to wash his hands at the kitchen sink when Charlotte appeared, looking unusually pale and stern, and came forward to kiss him. George explained what was happening to his breakfast and instead of the peal of laughter he anticipated, Charlotte just smiled weakly for a few seconds. Then she patted George lightly on the chest, bowed her head and walked back into her bedroom with her hands over her face, shaking her head.

  “There’s something wrong with Charlotte,” announced George to Thérèse. “I don’t think it’s because of anything I said, but she just started crying and went back to her room. I don’t know if Michel is still there or not, but I thought you should find out what’s the matter.”

  There was indeed something wrong. The two women sat on Charlotte’s bed and she told Thérèse that she had found a letter in a pocket of one of Michel’s jackets as she was preparing it to be dry cleaned. It was from a woman thanking him for the generous Christmas present and explaining that she had taken herself to Bali for the holiday period, understanding that Michel had to spend time with his family. She would make it up to him later when they met – in the most lurid detail. It was signed, ‘Your little cat, S’.

  Thérèse was not altogether surprised, though saddened at this new element of confirmation of her worst fears. She tried to comfort Charlotte but there was little to be done for now in the way of reassurance and pumping her up for the inevitable battles to follow. Thérèse had to leave her to take the next steps on her own. As Thérèse moved towards the bedroom door, Charlotte called to her, “Do you think I dreamt our love story?” Thérèse returned and they hugged each other tightly. Both had tears in their eyes. There were no more words.

  Thérèse and George left the apartment soon afterwards, taking Annick on a shopping trip to buy her a belated Christmas present. They knew that Michel would be back sometime, so they intended to leave their hosts alone to face their new reality. As the morning progressed and the shopping was complete, George and Thérèse talked to Annick about her parents and what they had just heard, and she proved to be glad of the opportunity to discuss openly all that had been consuming her for some time. Charlotte must have confided in her daughter to a great extent because she stood in the busy street with te
ars running down her cheeks, articulating the hatred and disgust she felt towards her father.

  “I can understand that he no longer loves her, but he was a coward and a liar to treat her that way. He has killed our relationship and I will never be able to trust him as my father again.” George and Thérèse held onto her in silence and after a few minutes they continued walking through the crowded city, found a restaurant where they had lunch together, and learned more about recent events in the Bodin family from Annick’s perspective.

  Meanwhile, in the apartment, when Michel returned, Charlotte coolly put the letter on the table in front of him. She intended to ask him to explain, but at first the words dried in her mouth. Michel realised he had passed the concealment phase and now had to make some directional choices. His wife accused him of deception and persistently lying to her. She told him that he had no talent for dissimulation and she had seen all along that he was a dishonest coward. When she cooled, Charlotte asked why it was that she didn’t need the kind of decadence that Michel sought in order to be happy. She asserted that the world they had shared still had a lot to offer and they had had a good life to enjoy until he decided to hurt others in the pursuit of his pleasures. She added, “You have proved to be just one of those despicable people who were given paradise, but wanted freedom. Well, you’ve got it, and I hope you realise now how much you have hurt me. My only regret is that I was too afraid to leave you earlier. I should have done it long ago.”

  They sat in silence. Michel was not of a mind to reply and add fuel to the conflict. Charlotte was meditating on the situation. Then she said, “Do you know what all this signifies? All I have now is a terrible nostalgia of life with you. I have had some very hard times and sometimes my nerves couldn’t cope, but I think I have the strength now to go and make some new friends and a new life.”