The Dying Minutes

by Martin O'Brien

  And he hadn’t looked away. He should have done, of course, and been cool about it, waved it aside, joked, apologised perhaps. But he hadn’t done any of those things. He had kept his eyes on her, straightening up from the oven and taking her in, standing in the doorway just a few metres from him, lowering the blouse from her breasts. And smiling, that soft, entrancing, wicked smile of hers as she came towards him, the sliding lick of her tongue between his lips when they kissed, taking his hand to her breast …

  And he hadn’t stopped the kiss, or taken his hand from her breast. He’d kept it there …

  No, she’d kept it there. Hand, and lips too.

  And he’d done nothing about it.

  But it was the words that she’d whispered into his ear that really hit home.

  ‘No one need ever know … Our little secret.’

  Up ahead the traffic slowed for a Péage toll and Jacquot pulled into a lane, took his place in the queue, three cars back, taking the ticket. Light green, barrier up, and off.

  Our little secret. Our little secret.

  So easy, so easy. Right there, pressed against him. It had been four years but he could feel that warm body, moving against his, knew what she could do, would do. So familiar, all of it. The scent of her, the feel of her skin, the warm weight of that breast, the way she panted, urgently, when she made love, how she liked to push him back and rear up on him. All so familiar. Four years, and it was like yesterday, like coming home.

  He didn’t need to wonder what might have happened, then and there, on Constance, with Isabelle in his arms, if Salette hadn’t stopped by with Philo’s box of possessions, calling from the pontoon for permission to come aboard. In an instant, Isabelle was out of his arms, across the cabin and pulling on her blouse, tucking it in and sliding in behind the table, bag open, a file pulled out, all business by the time Salette swung down into the cabin.

  Seeing Isabelle at the table had stopped the old man in his tracks; he hadn’t expected Jacquot to have company. And a woman, too. He’d apologised for barging in. Introductions had been made. Chief Inspector Cassier, Jean-Paul Salette. Salette had offered to call by another time, but Isabelle had gathered her papers, her bag, her gun and holster and said she had to be going. A good-to-meet-you nod to Salette, a business-like shake of Jacquot’s hand and thanks for his help, and with just the smallest smile and squeeze of his hand she was out through the wheelhouse, and off along the pontoon without a backward glance.

  Unfinished business, thought Jacquot as he swung down the final slope of the auto route and the coast curved ahead of him, the blue waters of the Baie des Anges sparkling beyond the trees.

  Business that was going to stay unfinished.

  It wouldn’t happen again.

  He wouldn’t let it happen again.

  75

  JACQUOT FOUND THE Ciné Luxe Dorade with little difficulty, three blocks back from the Promenade des Anglais, in a quiet corner of the city where the apartment buildings had a dated charm – all rounded balconies, curling wrought-iron and Art Deco detailing. But the charm had been compromised by a faded salty decline: blistered stucco patched here and there with unpainted rendering, chips of mosaic missing from front steps, and window-panes dusty, cracked or boarded up.

  The Ciné Luxe Dorade, in a line of these time-worn buildings, was different. Its cream stucco skin gleamed like icing on a wedding cake, its gutters and downpipes were a glowing copper, and the steps leading to its double glass doors were set with curving brass handrails. An art-house venue in the very best rig, a brand new face-lift courtesy of the law firm, Cluzot Fils in Avignon, and the bequest of a Marseilles fisherman called Niko Emanetti. What, wondered Jacquot, as he pushed open the etched and bevelled glass doors, would be the story here.

  As he stepped into the unlit foyer he smelt the fresh paint and plaster, felt the thick pile of the scarlet carpet give beneath his feet, and smiled at the ornately caged box-office, its decorative brass filigree the colour of newly-minted gold. It was, he decided, a rare jewel of a cinema, everything faithfully and elegantly restored. No popcorn machine here, no hot-dog warmer, no pick’n’mix sweet counter to be seen. And, judging by the current programme – Jean Gabin in La Grande Illusion – a cinema that was unlikely to carry a Hollywood film any time soon. Delphie would have approved.

  The foyer was empty but somewhere up ahead he could hear the humming sound of a Hoover. He followed the humming down a dimly-lit corridor, its dark crimson walls lined with black-and-white studio portraits of French film stars from the Thirties and Forties. On one side of the corridor the likes of Gabin, Fresnay, Rains and Dalio; on the other their leading ladies: Simone Simon, Michèle Morgan, Madeleine Renaud, Jany Holt and others.

  At the end of the corridor, through a set of velvet-lined double doors, he stepped into a small theatre, its screen opulently draped in scarlet, and its plush-covered seats set in sloping, curving rows beneath the shadowy arc of a rising gallery. Light came from a square-cut chandelier hanging over the centre of the stalls, and in the middle aisle a woman pushed a vacuum cleaner to and fro.

  ‘I’m looking for a Monsieur Dorade,’ Jacquot called out, as he approached between the nearest row of seats.

  The woman turned, cocked an ear, and he asked again for Monsieur Dorade. She could so easily have switched the cleaner off, but she kept it on, playing it back and forth as though her arm had a will of its own. With her free hand, the vacuum’s cord coiled around it, she pointed behind him, ‘Foyer. Stairs to the gallery. First landing, door on your left.’

  Jacquot thanked her with a wave and a nod and retraced his steps, back down the corridor and into the front hall. Coming round the empty box-ofice he found the spreading, brass-runnered stairs, jogged up to the first landing, found the door on the left and knocked.

  ‘Oui, entrez,’ he heard from the other side of the door.

  He opened it, looked round the edge.

  Sitting at a desk in the window, with the back of the billboard rising behind him and cutting out the view, was a young man working his way through a pile of paperwork, fingers tapping away at a calculator. There was a coffee mug on the desk beside him, a half-eaten pain au chocolat on a plate, and a cigarette in the ashtray.

  ‘I’m looking for a Monsieur Dorade?’

  ‘Auguste or Louis?’ asked the young man, glancing up, fingers poised above the keys. He was in his thirties and a little overweight, his ginger hair gelled into a Tintin quiff.

  ‘The elder of the two,’ said Jacquot, hazarding a guess.

  ‘Then you’ll be after my father, Auguste.’ He looked at his watch. ‘If you’re lucky, you’ll catch him at the café on the corner. If he’s not there, he’ll have gone home. Rue Bagnon, off Bordelaise. Number thirteen. Otherwise, come back in a couple of hours for the matinée. He never misses the first showing.’

  ‘And if he’s at the café …?’

  ‘You can’t miss him.’

  ‘Thank you, Monsieur. You have been most helpful.’

  Dorade Junior was right. His father would have been hard to miss. The old man sat at a table in the window of the Café Bonne Claire and Jacquot spotted him from the street. A four button jacket, tightly done up, a paisley cravat settled into the collar of a vivid pink shirt and a shock of white hair at odds with a luxuriantly black moustache. He was reading a newspaper, held close to his face and turned to the light.

  Jacquot ordered a coffee at the bar and took it over to his table.

  ‘Monsieur Dorade? Your son said I might find you here. May I join you?’

  ‘So long as you’re not selling anything,’ the old man replied, still reading his newspaper.

  The voice was as crisp and sprightly as the pink shirt. A showman, thought Jacquot as he put down his cup and drew up a chair. Only then did Auguste Dorade lower his newspaper and settle curious eyes on him.

  ‘You’re a policeman,’ he said at last.

  Jacquot smiled. ‘How did you know?’

  He tapped his n
ose, but offered no explanation.

  ‘And you would be correct. Chief Inspector Jacquot, from Marseilles.’

  Auguste Dorade gave him another appraising look. ‘You’re a sportsman, as well. That’s right, too, isn’t it? Or rather, you were a sportsman, if you’ll forgive the unpardonable suggestion that you are no longer as young as you once were.’ There was a flowery extravagance to his speech, and Jacquot smiled again. ‘You see, I have a memory for the moving image, Chief Inspector. And I have seen you before. Moving. On that terrible contraption, la télévision.’

  ‘Once again, Monsieur, you would be correct.’

  Old man Dorade nodded, narrowed his eyes, gave it some more thought. ‘Rugby. You scored a try a long time ago. I’m right, aren’t I?’

  ‘A long time ago.’

  ‘I saw it just a few days ago. You had a ponytail.’

  Jacquot nodded. The forthcoming Rugby World Cup was doing him no favours. As far as he was concerned the past was the past, and it was foolish to linger there.

  ‘So if you’re not selling anything, what do you want from me?’ asked Dorade, also moving on, as though he sensed that Jacquot had no interest in talking about his sporting past.

  ‘Just a few questions. Someone you might know, something you might be able to help me with.’

  ‘Film, or life?’

  ‘Niko Emanetti.’

  Dorade gave it some thought, then shook his head.

  ‘Rien. Nothing. Not film, that’s for sure.’

  ‘What about Eddie? Or Edina?’

  Dorade gave a start, and the next instant his eyes began to well with tears.

  ‘She’s dead. You’ve come to tell me she’s dead, haven’t you? Or maybe in trouble?’ For a moment or two he looked hopeful.

  ‘I’m afraid you were right the first time, Monsieur. She has passed away. A short illness. Two years ago.’

  The old man nodded, tried to swallow back the tears.

  Jacquot let a moment or two pass.

  ‘So you did know her?’

  ‘From when she was a child,’ Dorade replied quietly, clearing his throat, gathering himself. ‘Maybe twelve, thirteen. A real street urchin, she was.’

  ‘Did you know her surname?’

  ‘A street urchin with a surname? It was just Eddie. Always just Eddie. I never even knew it was Edina.’

  ‘How did you meet?’

  ‘In the street, where else?’

  Jacquot spread his hands, to suggest he continue.

  ‘She used to hang around my picture house, looking at the posters. I thought she was a pick-pocket, waiting to stitch my customers. First few times I chased her away. Her and her brother.’

  ‘She had a brother?’

  ‘Brother … stepbrother. I never knew. Chances are they weren’t even related. But they were always together, this younger kid in tow as though she was teaching him the ropes. He was a little … slow. Always a frame or two behind the soundtrack, if you understand?’ He pulled a handkerchief from an inside pocket, shook it open and wiped his eyes. Refolding it, he slipped it away.

  ‘So what happened?’

  Dorade chuckled. ‘I gave her a job, that’s what. In the end, when I couldn’t budge her. Cleaning, first, with the boy. Going down the aisles between performances. She never missed a scrap of sweet-paper. Emptied the ashtrays, without being asked. As though she knew. When she was a little older, we put a tray on her, sent her down the aisles with the ice cream; the ones with the little light, remember?’

  Jacquot nodded. He remembered.

  ‘Never sold so many ice creams, before or since,’ he continued, with a smile. ‘She pretty much lived here, back then. Used to stand in the shadows, waiting with her tray, watching the films. Just entranced.’

  ‘Were there parents? A home?’

  ‘If there were, I didn’t know about them. She just turned up, did her job, went off.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  Dorade fell silent. And then, regretfully: ‘A long time ago. She must have been late twenties – thirty maybe? Just one of her visits.’

  ‘She didn’t work for you then?’

  ‘No. She’d moved on long before. Worked down at the beach, the far end, below Colline du Château. A nightclub called … Studio … Studio something. But she always dropped by if she was passing, kept in touch. She was like that, Eddie.’

  ‘And the boy?’

  Dorade shook his head. ‘I remember she said she’d got him a job as a driver, with a cab company. Couldn’t do up his shoelaces without help, but he knew cars, engines. Drove pretty well and had a memory for street names and numbers. Could take you anywhere, she told me.’

  Jacquot moved on, not really knowing where he was headed, but sensing a destination.

  ‘What about boyfriends?’

  ‘Ooh là-là … Many, many boyfriends. Of course. She was … gorgeous.’

  ‘Anyone in particular?’

  Dorade sighed. ‘The man she married. The man she shouldn’t have married. Not a good man. She should have known better. The one thing she did that I couldn’t comprehend. In the end, of course, she ran out on him. That was the last time I saw her, when she came here to say goodbye. Driving the most beautiful old sports car. Red, it was. Like her lipstick. Open-top. English. A Jaguar, I think.’

  ‘How was she?’

  ‘Tearful, upset, but still … dazzling. And filled with hope. She told me she’d met someone else, someone she really did love. That she was running away with him, and that she’d be in touch.’

  ‘Did she say where she was going?’

  Dorade shook his head. ‘If she did, I can’t remember.’

  ‘And that was the last time you saw her?’

  ‘The very last time,’ he replied, looking out of the window and down the street, as though she was actually there, outside his cinema in her red sports car. ‘I never heard from her again.’

  Jacquot sipped his coffee and waited. There was a fond, wistful smile on the old boy’s face.

  ‘Do you remember exactly when that was? The last time?’

  ‘Of course I do. 1972. About this time of year. I remember we were showing … Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Luis Buñuel. A real sell-out. It had rained in the morning but when she called by the sky was blue again, the sun low but bright. I remember it flashing on the car’s windscreen. And she had the roof down.’

  ‘Did anyone come looking for her? After that visit?’

  ‘No one. They probably didn’t know about me.’

  Putting down his coffee, Jacquot said: ‘You had a … gift not so long ago. In the post, from a lawyer in Avignon.’

  ‘That’s correct,’ said Dorade. ‘A year ago. Eighteen months. The place was run down, times were hard. Hollywood! Boufff, the Ciné Luxe Dorade doesn’t do Hollywood. Alors, not modern Hollywood, you understand. Just the classics. Black and white in the main. French preferably. Gabin, Renoir, those kinds of names. Someone wanted to redevelop the site, pull us down. There was a story in the newspaper about it. A campaign to keep us open. And suddenly, there was this money, everything we needed … And more.’

  And then he stopped, abruptly, fixed his eyes on Jacquot.

  ‘Are you saying …?’

  ‘You didn’t know it was her?’

  ‘My son, Louis, called the lawyer. He wouldn’t give a name. Said his client wished to remain anonymous.’

  Given the time frame it couldn’t have been Eddie who had sent the money. But Niko would have. She must have told him about her days at Ciné Luxe Dorade, and how much the old boy had meant to her. And Niko had maybe read the story in the newpaper, and remembered, and done what he knew she would want him to do. Just as he’d likely done with the refuge in Marseilles. On Edina’s behalf.

  ‘Do you remember the name of this boyfriend? The one she ran away with.’

  Dorade pursed his lips. ‘Filo. Something like that. Sounded Italian.’

  ‘Did you ever meet him?’

&nbs
p; ‘Just heard about him. That’s all I needed to know. The way she looked when she talked of him … I got the impression that he was older than her. She seemed to like older men. But I never met him.’

  ‘And the husband, the man she left?’

  ‘Older too, and a con. Like I said, she should never have married him. And I told her so. It was madness. And running away from him? Like that? She’d never stop running, I told her. He’d never let her go. He’d search for her, and he’d find her. That’s why, I suppose, I wasn’t surprised I never heard from her again. Sometimes I feared that he’d done just that, found her and killed her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I told you. That salaud she married. If you lived in Nice, you’d know the name. Polineaux. Patric Polineaux.’

  76

  ONCE A WEEK René Duclos dined at La Barque on a rocky outcrop above plage Briande a few kilometres west of Saint-Tropez. He always ordered the grilled sea bass, the cherry ice cream, and for a pleasant hour or two watched the boys on the beach as they worked out on the parallel bars and rings, played volleyball, or showered the salt off their lean brown bodies when they came out of the sea, his usual table on La Barque’s terrace close enough to the showers to hear the water pelt and spatter over their skin.

  But it wasn’t just La Barque’s proximity to the beach or its rewarding views that brought Duclos here every week. Nor was it the fact that he owned not just this restaurant but the six-restaurant franchise that his old friend, Garnolle, had set up for him along the coast. What brought him here on such a regular basis was the manager, a young Arab called Numar, whose job came with accommodation, a small cabanon in the woods above the restaurant.

  On this particular visit though, there was altogether another kind of business to conduct, and Numar would have to wait. While Duclos sipped his Martini Mao Tai, mixed and served by Numar, and watched the boys on the beach, two black Range Rovers with tinted windows turned into La Barque’s forecourt and drew to a stop. Before the dust had settled, Didier stepped out of the lead car, with Léo, Zach and Dhuc, in close attendance, the three heavies taking up position around the parking lot, all of them in black suits and wrap-around sunglasses.