by Roland Perry
Next, the passport. There were a large number of entries beginning in 1986. He had spent time in New Zealand, for which he had a visa, and just three months in Australia, where he had a work permit.
Cochard had been backwards and forwards from France to Tahiti, England, and several countries in the Middle East, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Syria.
I was about to pull out a third item, when I spotted Cochard hurrying down the spiral staircase. I went to slip the pouch back, but an attendant was coming along the aisle. I covered the pouch with the pillow and pretended to read the in-flight magazine.
Cochard searched for the pouch under the seat, in the pocket in front of it, and in his hand-luggage in the rack above. When he was facing the other way I leaned across and heaved it under the seat behind his. The passport slid out.
Cochard was in a panic. He approached the attendant.
‘I’m missing a brown folder!’ he said. The attendant came over and helped him look in the luggage rack. The man with his face in a book glanced up. Another female attendant joined them.
‘What did it have in it sir?’ she asked.
‘Passport, money . . . everything!’
The other attendant spotted it.
‘Is this it, sir?’ he said, gathering the pouch and the passport. Cochard shut his eyes and sighed. He apologised to the attendants, one of whom looked at me and rolled her eyes heavenward as if to say, ‘What will this clown do next?’
Cochard checked the contents and returned to his lunch. I asked for a Virgin Mary and waited for my stomach to settle before venturing upstairs.
I sat at a table near Cochard who was trying to charm the woman about the superiority of French cooking. It was an unexpected dimension to the man who had until now appeared like a gorilla with a tic.
The subject moved on to fashion. Cochard again surprised me by rattling off names of designers such as Thierry Mugler, Hubert Aimetti, Charles Jourdan and others.
The woman’s manner changed.
‘I’m a designer,’ she said, ‘and I think we are better.’
‘Please, Madame!’
‘I’m serious.’
Cochard played with the Gauloise packet. The woman finished her Armagnac and an attendant poured coffee.
‘I’ll grant that you are number one in the world in two things,’ she said.
‘Only two?’ he said, sipping his Armagnac.
‘Yes. Losing and nuclear pollution.’
Cochard tried to ignore the remark. The woman repeated it and added, ‘You’ve kept losing from Waterloo, through two world wars, to Vietnam and Algeria,’ she said, ‘and despite all that practice, you’re still not good losers either.’
Cochard’s spasm came back with a vengence.
‘And as for your pollution!’ Tizzie Lizzie said.
‘What pollution?’ Cochard said. The woman then launched into a tirade against the French nuclear program in the Pacific and proved to be well up on the issue. Cochard protruded his lips in displeasure.
‘We ’ave the right to defend ourselves,’ he said. ‘We will not be challenged again because of this program.’
‘Then do your filthy business in your own back yard,’ the woman said. ‘Why don’t you do the tests in the South of France? Why bother us with your radiation in this region?’ Cochard’s expression was reptilian.
‘It is impossible,’ he shrugged and waved his hands high, ‘anyway, the region where the tests are made – underground – in the metro of the Pacific – belongs to France. We can do what we like there.’
The woman flicked a dismissive hand.
‘You lot are just fulfilling your childish war fantasies – your Napoleonic complexes and insecurities. God! we saved you in two wars . . . you ungrateful . . .’
Before he was filled in on his lack of grate, Cochard was off, clutching his pouch in one hand, and the cigarette pack in the other. The woman was left swirling her near-empty Armagnac glass.
I wanted to shout ‘Bravo!’ and raise my glass to her, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I had much to learn from Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs and nanny-killer Lord Lucan. Both escaped from England and managed to quell their flamboyant tendencies.
The woman smiled at me.
‘He thinks he’s Yves Montand or Jean-Paul Belmondo,’ she said, ‘but I wouldn’t even rank him as poor a man’s Gerard Depardieu.’
I woke for a meal before we landed at Bangkok, and opted to wander round the airport rather than wait in the terminal lounge. I ended up in the same area as Cochard, who spent the best part of thirty minutes on the phone. I couldn’t get close enough to his booth to know who was on the line, but I would have put money on him trying to find out what happened to Maniguet.
On the second leg to Paris, I thought about the incident. The experience had been the blackest in my life, and I did worry about what would happen if and when the truth came out. Would I be believed? Would I be charged with two murders? Yet still I felt no guilt, nor any deep regret. I put it down to survival instinct.
I considered the break-in and attempted robbery at Lawson Grove. Why would Maniguet be after Cassie’s files? Could it have anything to do with his and Cochard’s attempt to get me?
I doodled on a notepad trying to make links to several options. There were plenty of jig-saw pieces, but no pattern, yet.
SIXTEEN
PARIS was my favourite city, not to live in but to visit, and it gave me no pleasure to slink in like a creature from the demi-monde and hole up at a cheap hotel in the Latin Quarter, Esmeralda, just across the Seine from Notre Dame.
Though charming, Esmeralda was a rickety wooden fire-trap, appropriately on Rue St Julien le Pauvre, and situated behind Shakespeare and Co., a shop selling secondhand English books. Esmeralda had been a haunt of mine as a youth. It was the first place I had stayed at in Paris in the winter of 1971–72 at age sixteen. Even if the excitement now was tempered by age and the small detail of my being a hunted man, I still felt a buzz.
It was a bright Saturday morning and by the time I had arranged a room it was nine a.m. Jet lag still hadn’t taken hold so I wandered down Boulevard St Michel to St Germain and stopped for a coffee at Cafe Aux Deux Maggots. It, like Shakespeare and Co., had been a favourite hang-out of Hemingway’s in the twenties and thirties. Unfortunately, like a lot of Paris, Maggots had lost the charm that had attracted impoverished writers. They had been replaced by tourists and local poseurs who had become proficient only at writing their signatures on Visacard receipts for over-priced food.
Still, it was early enough in the morning to avoid that crowd and there were only a handful of patrons on the glassed-in terrace with me.
At the table next to mine were two attractive young women, one in a yellow floral dress and another in tight navy slacks. They smiled. I smiled. There is nothing like freedom when you don’t have it and I felt good, even euphoric.
The woman in the summer dress had dark hair and big, wide eyes, not dissimilar to Cassie’s, and her face was intelligent. She sat with legs apart and the dress thrown between them so that her slender calves were exposed. It was a natural position rather than a provocative pose, which again reminded me of Cassie.
I moved inside the cafe, and used the public phone there to contact her at the Hotel Lutetia.
‘Where are you?’ she asked, surprised.
‘Not far away.’
‘How did you find my number?’
‘Rang the Institute. Walters always stays at Lutetia.’
There was a nervous silence from Cassie.
‘Is Walters there?’ I asked.
‘No. He went to London.’
‘Why?’
‘To see the Queen for all I know. He said it was business.’
‘You don’t sound too happy.’
‘I don’t like coming all this way to be left in a place where I don’t have the language.’
‘I’d like to see you.’
Cassie hesitated.
‘I’ve got some shopping to do,’ she said.
‘How about coffee?’
‘I really am busy.’
Lutetia was not too far away. I finished my coffee and took a brisk walk there.
Just as I was about to cross the road to the hotel entrance on Boulevard Raspail, Cassie came out wearing a blouse, tight jeans and sneakers. My first instinct was to go right up to her, but she had made it clear that she had no wish to see me. There was an opportunity now for a ‘chance’ meeting once she was some distance from Lutetia.
I followed her back to St Germain, where she did some window-shopping, and then entered Les Fleurs cafe, close by Maggots.
The tourists and locals were out in force now, and as Cassie looked for a seat on the crowded terrace, I ducked in a side entrance and grabbed a table inside. She couldn’t find a place and was ushered inside by a waiter. I scooped a dirty coffee cup from the table next to me and pretended it was mine.
Cassie looked right through me and sat down two tables away.
The new appearance had worked again. I pulled out a cheroot and fumbled in my pockets.
‘Would you have a light?’ I asked.
Cassie glanced at me, surprised to hear a familiar accent.
‘Sorry, don’t smoke,’ she said.
‘Don’t tell me, unless you’re on fire.’
Cassie paid closer attention this time as a waiter obliged me with a light. I removed the dark glasses. She narrowed her eyes and her face filled with recognition.
‘Did you follow me here?’ she said.
‘I got here first,’ I said, indicating the used cup.
Cassie was sceptical.
‘Of all the cafes in Paris,’ she said, ‘you had to come into my favourite. I don’t believe it.’
I shrugged.
‘Have you had been shopping?’ I asked.
‘Not yet.’
She didn’t seem too keen on conversation.
‘It hasn’t been all that bad here, has it?’ I said. ‘Paris has so much to offer.’
‘I’ve done a few of the tourist things.’
‘Like what?’
‘Oh, the usual, you know, The Bourse, the sewers, a few cancer wards.’
I wasn’t sure if she was kidding. In fact I was never sure with that sardonic wit of hers. The Paris sewers were a tourist attraction, and she could have been a stock-exchange buff for all I knew. I didn’t press her. She was uncomfortable meeting like this.
Cassie looked round impatiently.
‘I’d kill for a coffee,’ she said, ‘how do you get a waiter here . . . Garçon!’
‘They don’t like being addressed that way.’
‘Garçon was the way we were taught in third form!’
‘Try Monsieur.’
Cassie got up and approached a waiter who was clearing a table. She touched him on the arm.
‘Excusez-moi, Monsieur,’ she said, ‘if you see a waiter, could you send him over?’
The little balding man, with a countenance which alternated between expressions of boredom and alertness, reacted indignantly. He shrugged and pouted.
‘The service is not brilliant, I must say, Monsieur,’ Cassie went on.
‘I give good service always, Madame,’ he said, showing he had mastered English and at the same time insulting Cassie, who at thirty, looked more of a Mademoiselle.
He deliberately served new arrivals. Rebuffed, Cassie returned to her table.
‘“I give good service always, Madame”,’ she mimicked.
‘He must be a head waiter,’ I said.
Cassie stared at me a moment, and laughed. The ice was broken.
I moved to her table and she asked me about the eventful time since I had seen her. It took a cup of coffee and ten minutes. I decided not to tell her I had been batching at her apartment, or that Maniguet had been killed there.
She ordered a second coffee. I took that as a signal she believed me.
‘And you really don’t know what happened the night of Martine’s murder?’
‘I swear it.’
Cassie’s green eyes, which were beautiful but rarely inviting, searched my face.
‘Do you feel any guilt at all about Martine’s killing?’ I took a breath.
‘Yes,’ I said reluctantly, ‘because I don’t damn well know what happened that night.’
‘Have you ever had hypnosis?’
‘Never.’
‘I use it for therapy with my patients. It’s always helpful.’
‘Can it be used to recall things?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then let’s do it.’
I was so keen to get on with it that I insisted on taking a taxi back to Lutetia. We went straight to her hotel room, where she asked me to lie on the bed and relax. This wasn’t easy. It crossed my mind that she could pick up the phone to Interpol the moment I was under.
‘Are you worried I might turn you in?’ she said, sitting by the bed. She was a mind-reader too.
‘A little.’
‘You can’t be a little bit pregnant. Either you trust me or you don’t.’
‘I’m here, aren’t I? I must trust you. There’s not much choice, when you think about it.’
‘You’re thinking too much about it. Evacuate your mind. Cogitate on a place that really relaxes you. The place that relaxes you more than any other.’
I thought of the Melbourne’s Botanical Gardens where I liked to run, and when there was no one about at six a.m., do just a little yoga.
‘Well?’ Cassie said.
‘I’m cogitating.’
‘Where’s this peaceful place?’
‘Am I supposed to tell?’
‘You’re not making a wish on your birthday, Duncan. You can tell Aunty Cassie.’
I smiled at that, without opening my eyes. I told her about the Gardens.
‘Didn’t I read somewhere about you being a yoga freak?’ she said.
‘Enthusiast, please. “Freak” has other connotations.’
‘My, we are pedantic! Why use an emotive word when a little euphemism will do. How are you feeling?’
‘Relaxed.’
‘Good. And for the record. I believe in yoga. I get all my patients to use it. Peter thinks it’s a waste of time.’
I could feel myself drifting, floating a little. I didn’t realise it right then, but Cassie had me.
Next thing I knew Cassie was demonstrating her numeracy. I opened my eyes and shook my head. I apologised for dozing off. Cassie was re-winding a tape recorder she had pulled out when I was hypnotised. She sat it on a table and played it back.
I sat transfixed and listened. Cassie took me back to the old school reunion and dwelt on it for some time. Next came the meeting with Martine right up until I blacked out on her sofa.
‘You woke up again,’ Cassie prompted, her voice anodyne.
‘At my place?’
‘No, earlier. You didn’t sleep-walk home.’
‘Martine woke me when she threw up in the kitchen. I got off the sofa. Christ! My head aches! I follow Martine into the bathroom. She’s on her knees throwing up into the toilet bowl. I want to heave ho myself, but I must help her first.’
‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘She has a terrific migraine. We compare headaches. Mine is an anthill compared to her volcano. Martine tells me that Freddie slipped something into my drink to knock me out.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s what I ask Martine. She says he was jealous. He thought we were getting too amorous.’
‘Did you help her?’
‘I find two empty Serophrine bottles in the medicine cabinet. They were both dispensed from a Benepharmacy in Bourke Street. I know the manager-chemist. I phone him and persuade him to courier over a fresh bottle pronto. He argues a bit, because Serophrine is a prescribed drug and I can’t present a doctor’s prescription. Ludicrous really. I created that drug on the market! I have access to several pharmacies I don’t legall
y own, but nevertheless unofficially control, and I can’t get thirty little capsules from one of them!’
‘How do you talk him into it?’
‘In the end I cajole him into it by telling him not to mark the bottle in any way. It’s unethical, but the capsules can’t be traced back to him, so he feels better. He makes an excuse about getting a courier on such a fearful night, but that’s solved by me offering to pay triple. The courier gets there inside fifteen minutes.’
‘What’s the pharmacist’s name?’
‘Don Cossar.’
‘Can you recall the courier company?’
‘Yes. “Yesterday Couriers.” I remember giving him the bonus and explaining it was danger money. He goes away happy. Hope he didn’t drown. He’ll be a good witness. It’s still pissing down when he leaves.’
‘So you give them to Martine.’
‘Not “them”. Just one. She wants two and says she always took a couple at a time. I admonish her for that. One is the dose every twelve hours. One and a half is OK for a big young healthy man. But two is bordering on the dangerous. Anyway, she takes one and feels better in a few minutes. They work very quickly.’
‘What happens then?’
‘It’s close to four a.m. Martine calls me a taxi. The rain is easing.’
‘That’s all? You go home?’
‘I go into the bedroom to tell Freddie off for bombing me out. But he’s dead to the world. He’s taken a sleeping pill. Martine says she is going to have a bath and go to bed. I say goodbye.’
‘How?’
‘What do you mean “how”?’
‘Do you leap on her, kiss her, what?’
‘She kisses me. A little too passionately. Bit bizarre really.’
‘Why?’
‘Well her bathrobe falls open and she presses herself into me.’
‘But you resist?’
‘Yes.’
‘You should get a medal.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I’m not in the mood for that. My head’s still throbbing. I’m still groggy from whatever was slipped into my drink.’