by Peter Mayle
They pushed their way to the other side of the place and onto the narrow bridge spanning the river. A dozen flat-bottomed punts, anchored at ten-yard intervals, stretched upstream, each punt with a framework of rockets and catherine wheels, guarded by young men in their official festival T-shirts.
“That lot goes up at midnight,” Jojo said. He looked at his watch. “Come on.”
The area behind the bank was unlit. As their eyes adjusted, they could make out a pattern of shapes—trees, with the humps of cars parked between them. A young couple, dancing in the dark to the sound of the music coming from the place, saw the seven men coming towards them and hurried off to the safety of light.
“Voilà,” said Jojo with relief. “There it is, like he said.”
The General had backed the van up against the railing, just to the left of the plain rectangle of steel that was the bank’s back door. Jojo looked around, took a torch from the bag he was carrying, shone it through the van’s windscreen, and clicked his tongue softly with satisfaction at the sight of the bikes stacked side by side in the back.
They stood in the deep shadow of a plane tree and looked at the stream ten yards away. On the far side, a stone wall. Beyond that the road, streetlights, and people.
Jojo took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m going to be up there on the road. Don’t move unless you see the flame of my lighter. I’ll signal each of you, one at a time. If you don’t see the flame, it means somebody’s coming, so wait. Got that?”
Jojo passed his bag to Bachir and went back across the bridge to take up his position opposite the entrance to the drain. He put a cigarette in his mouth, offered a silent vote of thanks to the rock band, which seemed to be trying to break the decibel record, and looked up and down the road. Cars were no problem. It was only people on foot who might look over the wall.
Nobody. He turned, flicked the lighter, saw the first figure slip into the water and duck into the drain. That would be Fernand.
Two couples on the opposite side of the road. Better not risk it. He looked at his watch. They had plenty of time. He watched the couples cross the road and go towards the place. One of the men was patting his girlfriend’s plump bottom in time to the music.
All clear. Another flick, another figure. And then another. Everything was going on wheels, Jojo thought, and then froze. A Renault 4 was coming towards him, slowing down. In the light of the street lamp, Jojo saw the dark faces of driver and passenger under their gendarme’s képis. The Renault stopped, and Jojo felt his heart suddenly get too big for his chest.
The gendarme stared at Jojo, that policeman’s stare, up and down, cold and suspicious. Don’t ask me for my papers, you bastard. Leave me alone. He nodded at the gendarme. “Bon soir.”
The gendarme turned away and the Renault moved off. Jojo’s heart returned to normal size as he let out his breath and felt his shoulders loosen up. He flicked his lighter. Two to go, and then it would be his turn.
Flick. Nearly there, plenty of time, try to relax. Jojo’s cigarette was stuck to his lip when he tried to take it out of his mouth.
Somebody coming, a man on his own.
The man weaved towards Jojo with the exaggerated care that drunkards adopt when the brain has given up and instinct takes over. He fumbled in his pockets, took out a cigarette, and stopped in front of Jojo, exhaling a whiff of stale pastis.
“Got a light?”
Jojo shook his head.
The drunk tried to tap his nose and missed. “Come on. You’ve got a cigarette. What are you going to do with it, eat it?”
It was reflex, and a desperation to get him out of the way, that made Jojo light the cigarette. The man looked over Jojo’s shoulder, and his eyes widened and blinked. Two seconds too late, Jojo moved to block his view.
The drunk put a hand on Jojo’s arm. “Just between you and me, there’s somebody down there in the river.” He nodded and grinned. “Probably wants a drink.”
“No,” Jojo said. “Nobody there.”
A puzzled expression came over the drunk’s face. “No?”
“No.”
“Well, it was a fucking big fish, then.”
Jojo steered the drunk away and left him on the bridge, staring at the water and shaking his head.
Back under the shadow of the plane tree, Jojo looked up at the road, crossed himself for luck, and went out fast. A shock of cool water up between his legs; slippery, uneven stones beneath his feet; a plunge into the blackness of the drain.
“What a pity,” said Jean. “You missed meeting the rats.”
They were crouched in single file up the length of the drain. Fernand, at the far end, passed down a sheet of black plastic and a fistful of mason’s spikes. Jojo pulled on his gloves and blocked off the entrance, using the spikes to wedge the plastic into crevices in the stone, cutting off the faint glow of the streetlight. He tied one end of a long cord round a spike.
“Tell Fernand it’s okay.”
A flashlight went on at the far end of the drain, shining on the slimy claustrophobia of brackish water and sweating walls, and the line of men moved farther up. It was twenty metres, so the General said, from the mouth of the drain to the centre of the strong room. The cord was passed from hand to hand until it was stretched to its full twenty metres. Fernand gave his flashlight to Jean and started on the arched stone top of the drain with his sledgehammer and spike.
The mortar, old and soft with damp, came away easily, and in minutes Fernand had prised away two big stones. A shower of rubble and earth splashed into the water, and then his spike hit reinforced concrete, jarring his hand. He smiled at Jean. This was the part he liked best, the artistic part, using just enough to do the job without bringing down the building on top of them. He gave the hammer and spike to Jean, took the shopping bag that Borel had been nursing carefully above water level, and began placing his plastique.
Ten minutes to midnight, and the band in the place was going into its final paroxysm before taking half an hour off to watch the fireworks with everybody else. The chef d’animation, in his personal boat rowed by the mayor’s nephew, made a tour of the punts to make sure all the young men were ready to set off the fireworks in the correct sequence, which he himself would conduct from the bridge. The gendarmes, bored after an uneventful evening in their Renault, strolled through the crowds looking at the girls and killing time until the end of their shift. The men in the drain looked at their watches and waited.
“Two minutes,” said Jojo.
Fernand checked the detonators. “All set. Everybody back to the entrance. A lot of the roof is going to come down.”
They waded back to the plastic curtain at the end of the tunnel and crouched in silence as Fernand shone the flashlight on his watch. Christ, Jojo thought, I hope he knows what he’s doing.
“Sixty seconds.”
The chef d’animation, flanked by the two gendarmes who had cleared a space for him on the bridge, raised both arms to heaven. He liked to think of himself as the von Karajan of the firework business, and had a pronounced sense of occasion. He looked with satisfaction at the banks on either side of the river, six deep in people, all waiting for his arms to come down and start what he always referred to as a pyrotechnic symphony. He stood on tiptoe, hoping that the photographer from Le Provençal was paying attention; and as the church clock in the square chimed the arrival of midnight, he brought his arms down with a sweeping flourish, bowing his head at the same time towards the leading punt.
The explosion in the drain was surprisingly undramatic—a deep thump, much of its force absorbed by water, followed by the splash of falling rubble. Fernand crossed his fingers and waded up to look.
He shone his flashlight at the jagged opening, fringed with shreds of scorched carpet. The beam of light hit the smooth white surface of the strong room ceiling, and Fernand turned back to the others with a grin. “Did you all bring your chequebooks?”
One by one, they hoisted themselves up through the opening and stood, dr
ipping, elated, and nervous, while Fernand began to doctor the strongboxes with plastique, working his way methodically along the rows. “Don’t hold your breath,” he said. “This is going to take some time.”
Jojo stripped off his wet trousers and wished he had a dry cigarette. “Don’t forget the fireworks stop at twelve-thirty.”
Fernand shrugged. “World War Three could be going on in here and nobody outside would know, not with these walls. Listen. Can you hear anything?”
The sound of breathing, the creak of wet leather as one of them moved his foot, the faint plop as drops of water fell on the carpet; otherwise nothing. They were in a soundproof vacuum.
“Come on then,” said Jean. “Blow the bastards open.”
The General knew that Mathilde was awake, lying with her back turned to him, but she didn’t move when he swung his legs off the bed and got up. He was fully dressed except for his shoes. He grunted as he reached down for them. His neck was playing up again, stiff with tension.
“I’ll be back soon.”
There was no response from the figure huddled in the dark. The General sighed and went downstairs.
Three in the morning, and Isle-sur-Sorgue was finally asleep. The General got out of his car and pulled on his gloves as he walked across to the van. There was a freshness to the air. He could smell the river and hear the whisper of water turn into a rush as it tumbled down through the weir. He unlocked the back of the van and started taking out the bicycles, checking the tyres of each one as he stacked them against the railings. He looped the heavy chain through the crossbars and snapped the padlock shut, then stood for a moment in front of the steel door, wondering how they were getting on two metres away from him on the other side.
Fernand was laughing as he went through the contents of a large manila envelope. “We’ll leave these for the flics. Take their minds off parking tickets.” The others crowded round him and passed the Polaroid photographs from hand to hand: a girl, naked except for boots and a mask and a bored expression; a stout, tumescent middle-aged man, displaying his erection with a satisfied smirk; other naked girls, brandishing whips and snarling at the camera.
“Friends of yours, Jojo?”
Jojo peered at a photograph of an older and very much larger woman strapped into complicated leather underwear. He had a brief but thrilling vision of Madame Pons in a similar outfit. “I wish that one was,” he said. “Look at the size of her.” He shuffled through the other photographs, then stopped as he came to the middle-aged man, frowning with concentration at the vaguely familiar face. “I’ve seen him somewhere before—in that hotel we worked on. Eh, Claude—recognise him?”
The big man looked over Jojo’s shoulder. “Sure.” He nodded and laughed. “That’s the Englishman at the Christmas party, the one they said was a journalist.” He took the photograph from Jojo and looked at it more closely. “Why has he still got his socks on?”
More than three hours had passed, marked by nothing more dramatic than a series of small explosions, and the men had relaxed. The boxes were all open, the pick of the contents piled on the table: some good pieces of jewellery; two linen sacks bulging with gold napoleons; and cash—mounds of bank notes, pinned together, stuffed into envelopes, rolled up and secured by thick elastic bands, French francs, Swiss francs, Deutschemarks, dollars.… None of them had ever seen so much money, and they couldn’t resist touching it each time they passed the table.
The floor was littered with discarded boxes and envelopes and documents. Property deeds and share certificates, last wills and testaments, love letters and Swiss bank statements. The police were going to have an interesting time sifting through the personal and sometimes illegal private affairs of the bank’s clientele. The manager, neat and conscientious Monsieur Millet, would probably lose his job or be transferred to a branch in Gabon. The installers of the impregnable security system would undoubtedly be sued until they bled, and the insurance company, in the way of all correctly managed insurance companies, would find some clause in the fine print to absolve them of any financial responsibility. These thoughts, if they had occurred to the seven men in the strong room, would only have added to their delight in sticking the finger up the establishment’s nose.
And now there was nothing to do but wait.
The men sprawled on the floor or prowled aimlessly round the room, wishing they could smoke. Bachir whistled tunelessly, and Claude cracked his knuckles. Jojo sensed that the early exhilaration had gone and wondered what he could do to keep their spirits up. That’s what leaders were supposed to do. Morale, that was the word. The General was always talking about morale.
“Bon,” Jojo said, “now we’ve got it, what are we going to do with it?” The others looked at him, and the whistling and knuckle-cracking stopped. “Me, I’m going to Martinique, get a nice little bar on the beach. Cheap rum, no more winters, girls in grass skirts with big—”
“Tahiti,” Fernand said. “That’s where they wear grass skirts. I’ve seen them on the PTT calendar.” He nodded at the Borel brothers. “That’s where those two ought to go, with their lawn mower. Eh, Borel, what about that?”
The elder Borel smiled and shook his head. “Don’t like islands. Too much sand, and if you have a little problem it’s difficult to get out. No, we’re thinking of looking at Senegal. Good earth in Senegal. You can grow truffles there, the white ones. Stain them dark, ship them out to Périgord, three thousand francs a kilo—”
“And five years in the dump.” Jean pulled a face. “I’d stick to aubergines if I were you. What’s the point of taking risks?”
Claude reached over and tapped Jean on the chest. “What’s this then, eh? Tell me that.”
“Connard. This is a career move.”
“Bachir?” Jojo turned to the dark man sitting quietly in the corner. “How about you?”
A broad white smile. “I’ll go home and buy a young wife, very nice.” He nodded several times. “A fat young wife.”
As the hours passed and talk of the future went back and forth, it became clear to Jojo that none of them, not even he, had any great ambitions. A little money under the mattress, an easier life, nothing too wild. The main thing—all of them said it, one way or another—was independence. No bosses, no more being told what to do, no more being treated like disposable people. Independence. And it was piled on the table in front of them.
The Sunday morning brocanteurs were out early, setting up their stalls as the sun gathered strength and began to burn the mist off the river. Yawning waiters, bleary after a late night and a short sleep, arranged tables and chairs outside the cafés, collected paper sacks of bread and croissants from the boulangeries, and hoped for record tips. The sellers of Loto tickets installed themselves in the cafés and ordered the first of half a dozen cups of lethally strong black coffee. Blunt-nosed vans, loaded with pizza, charcuterie, cheese, and fish, butted their way through the narrow streets leading to the main place, and the gypsy girls with their lemons and pink garlic hissed at each other as they argued over prime corner pitches. Slowly, Isle-sur-Sorgue was preparing itself for another hot and profitable market day.
The first tourists, insomniacs and bargain hunters, started to arrive just after eight, picking casually through the relics of other people’s homes—old books and pictures, glasses cloudy with age, tables and chairs with mismatched legs and sagging cane seats, military medals from forgotten wars, mirrors and linen, vases and hats, the detritus from a thousand attics. The dealers on the other side of the street—the antiquaires with their Louis Quinze and Napoleon III, their art nouveau and their dark, important paintings—were taking their time over breakfast. Their clients would come later, blocking the road with their large cars while they paid in the back room with five hundred-franc notes.
Jojo stretched and looked at his watch. The General had said eleven-thirty, when the traffic would be like cement. Two more hours. He sat on the floor and leaned back against the wall. One or two of the others were dozing; the rest
were staring into space. They had run out of jokes and conversation. The adrenaline had worn off, to be replaced by impatience and those worms of doubt that wouldn’t go away. Would the door blow cleanly? Would the bikes be there? Waiting was a bastard.
The General gave up trying halfway through the morning. Mathilde wouldn’t get out of bed, wouldn’t go to see her sister in Orange as she always did, wouldn’t even speak to him. He might as well go and sit it out in the barn and get away from the accusing, silent presence. He patted her shoulder and felt it jerk away and decided not to say goodbye.
He sat in the car for a few minutes, tugging at his moustache. She’d be listening for the sound of the engine and wondering if the next time she saw him would be in a prison visiting room. The sun bounced off the white gravel of the parking area and hurt his eyes, and he thought about a table in the shade and a very cold beer. Mathilde would be all right. She always had been before. He turned the key in the ignition and looked at his watch. Not long now.
The two gypsy boys had been having a thin time. Usually on a market day, there were handbags or cameras left for a few careless seconds on a café table or a brocanteur’s stall, to be swooped on and snatched up while the owner was looking the other way. But today the tourists had been very unhelpful, keeping their hands on their possessions. And a lot of them were now wearing those big pouches round their waists, which meant using a knife. It was getting harder and harder to earn a dishonest living.
The boys were strolling through the area behind the bank, trying the doors of parked cars, when they saw the bikes stacked neatly against the railings. Expensive bikes like that, in good condition, would be easy to sell. Even the old crook in Cavaillon who gave them next to nothing for the cameras they occasionally brought to him would be interested in a couple of racing bikes. The boys sidled closer to take a look at the heavy chain and the padlock. A big padlock, but not difficult. Their father had told them how to deal with padlocks. Feeling that their luck might have changed, they ran off to find him at the far end of the market, where he was selling the live chickens he’d stolen the night before. He had a little tool that he kept in his pocket. That opened padlocks.