Cold Winter in Bordeaux (6 page)

VIII

Michel stood, poised, on the balls of his feet. The instructor blew his whistle. Michel hesitated a moment, came lightly forward, leapt, landed both hands on the wooden horse, somersaulted high, and landed secure, both feet together, chin raised, hands clenched by his side.

‘All right, not bad.’

The instructor almost smiled. He was a small man in his sixties, bald, wiry, one-eyed, a veteran of the Foreign Legion. He had lost the other eye in the war against the Rif, almost twenty years ago. He still spoke with a Russian accent, all the stronger when he inveighed against the Bolsheviks. In the Legion he had been known as Ivan, but he had told the boys to address him as Count Pierre. Michel knew himself to be his favourite. Once the Count had told him he had had a hand in the murder of Rasputin – ‘That filthy lascivious monk, a German spy. But it was that bastard Lenin I should have shot,’ he said.

‘Did you ever have the chance?’

‘Alas, no. And now I believe that it was God’s will I was denied the opportunity, which I would surely have taken.’

‘But why?’ Michael said. ‘Why should God have willed that?’

He didn’t believe in God. Sigi had told him Christianity was a slaves’ religion, but there was no reason to pass this judgement on to the old Russian.

The Count had made two glasses of tea from the samovar he kept in the little room where he changed from his shabby suit into the white cotton high-necked jersey and drill trousers he wore in the gym. He added sugar and a slice of lemon and handed a glass to Michel.

‘You’re a good boy,’ he said, ‘but you can’t be expected to understand these things. You have no knowledge of the Russian soul. When they murdered our poor Tsar – not that he was much of a man, I don’t pretend that he was – the Almighty decided that Holy Russia should endure a time of suffering, so that she might expiate her sins, and he gave the land to the Bolsheviks and the Jews, first to the intellectual Lenin and then to the Georgian cobbler who calls himself Stalin, that the people should know the meaning of Hell and repent. And now he has sent Adolf Hitler to cleanse the land, after which Russia will be reborn. This is how it works. This is how History unfolds.’

Sigi laughed when Michel recounted this conversation and said that the old man was ‘mad, loose in the top storey’.

‘Nevertheless,’ he said, ‘he’s on the right side, and you can learn from him; not from his ideas, certainly, but from what he knows of struggle. He will make you hard. Do you know why Stalin adopted that name which is not of course his real one? It is because he thinks of himself as a Man of Steel, which is what it means. But he thinks of himself as a Man of Steel, which is what it means. But he will be melted in the flame of battle. There’s no doubt about that.’

Michel loved the gym. A dozen of them, his colleagues in the Légion des Jeunes de l’Aquitaine, went there two afternoons a week. Sigi approved: you must build your body so that your mind and soul will be strong when the hour of trial comes, he said. Michel wondered at his use of the word ‘soul’, but, on reflection, concluded that he didn’t mean what the priests meant by it. Five years ago, he had been devout, attending Mass regularly, confessing his sins – before, he now thought, he had really had any sins to confess, not real sins. He had observed Lent faithfully, denying himself chocolate and all sweet things. Now Sigi assured him that there was no such thing as sin; it was an invention of the Church to keep even the strong in chains. ‘We have freed ourselves of such nonsense,’ he said. When he spoke, Michel believed him. Afterwards, alone, he wasn’t so sure. But in any case his religious enthusiasm had faded. Boxing took its place, boxing and girls. He decorated his bedroom wall with posters of boxers – Georges Carpentier, Eugène Criqui, and his favourite, Charles Ledoux.

He was at home in the ring. Count Pierre called him ‘the most beautiful of boxers’. There were few things he liked better than matching Michel against a bigger boy, and watching him dance and jab till his opponent turned away in embarrassed anger at being made to look a fool. This afternoon he had sparred with his friend Philippe, who was taller, heavier, and slower. Philippe was powerful, with a swinging right hand which, however, he was incapable of landing on the light-footed Michel. Afterwards, Count Pierre applauded and rubbed embrocation into Michel’s thighs, muttering endearments in Russian.

Philippe said, ‘I’m not going to fight you again. You always make me look a fool.’

Michel smiled. Boxing was not only good fun. It was preparation for the war against Bolshevism in which, as Sigi assured him, he was destined to engage. The future of France was at stake. He said nothing of this to his grandfather. He loved the old man and respected him, but knew he was out-of-date, with no understanding of the reality of the world today – a reality which Sigi explained to him.

‘Every man has a choice,’ Sigi said. ‘He is either a slave or a master. I have no doubt to which category you belong. We are creating a New European Order and there is a place for you in its Orders of Knighthood.’

Michel glowed with pride.

Then Sigi said, ‘And your girl, Clothilde? She must not distract you. Nevertheless I approve of your relationship. Keep close to her. Yes, I approve. Her father is a man whom I respect, a man in whom I have long taken a close interest.’

IX

‘Nobody came asking for you, superintendent. I’m quite sure of that.’

The waiter, Marcel, looked up from running a wet cloth over the zinc counter.

‘Not of course that he might not have looked in and gone away immediately, seeing no sign of you. But nobody asked, that’s certain.’

He gave Lannes an Armagnac and himself a cup of coffee.

‘On the house.’

‘What would your boss say to that?’

‘He’d say, always keep the police happy. That’s what he’d say.’

‘You’ll let me know if anyone comes calling?’

‘But certainly.’

‘Thanks.’

It was unlikely. Whoever wrote the note – Félix? – was playing with him. Cat and mouse. Cat and mouse.

The weather was still filthy, colder and with a sharp wind blowing heavy rain up river. Clothilde had gone to class. He had left Marguerite in bed. She had a headache and complained of being shivery. He had brought her a tisane which it was probable she wouldn’t drink. ‘All I want to do is sleep,’ she had said as he leant over to kiss her goodbye. She had turned her head away so that he kissed only her hair, not her cheek as he had intended.

It must be Félix. No one else – surely – would have these photographs. The one of him with Léon had been taken outside that café in the rue de l’Arcade. They had met there a couple of times and on the last occasion Léon had said that for the first time he was able to think of Lannes as something other than a policeman. But what was Félix doing back in Bordeaux? The chap in the Travaux Ruraux office in Vichy had assured him Félix was out of favour, deemed a security risk, and had been sidelined, given a desk job in their headquarters in Marseille. Perhaps he should ring him to enquire. Lannes had liked him. Pity his name had slipped his memory. But it would return.

And was it Félix who had sent that anonymous letter to the Alsatian?

At least the Armagnac had warmed him. Bloody weather.

* * *

Old Joseph had a cold too, sneezed twice.

‘You shouldn’t have come in,’ Lannes said. ‘Should be at home in bed.’

‘Might not get up again. You’re in luck, superintendent. There’s a girl to see you. Same one as came when she was beaten up last summer. At least I think she’s that one. Can’t really tell these days.’

* * *

‘Yvette,’ Lannes said, ‘and what brings you here?’

‘Pining for you,’ she said. ‘Aching for you.’

‘I believe you.’

Lannes settled himself at his desk. She perched on its corner, hitching her skirt up.

‘Honest,’ she said. ‘I really thought you would have come to see me.’

‘Well, I haven’t, and you know why.’

‘Course I do. You can’t trust yourself, can you? You do fancy me, don’t you? A girl always knows.’

She leant across the desk and kissed him on the cheek.

‘See,’ she said. ‘Two o’clock, any afternoon. There’s no one at the desk, old Mangeot takes his kip then, and his missus puts her feet up in the kitchen, resting her bunions, she says. You know my room number.’

‘Stop it, Yvette, and tell me why you are here.’

‘Give me a cigarette then.’

She held his wrist and looked over the flame.

‘It’s the old Jew,’ she said, ‘old Léopold. He wants to see you.’

‘I didn’t know you knew him.’

‘Course I do. We look after each other in Mériadeck. Thought you’d have known that. No one else will if we don’t.’

‘I suppose you’re right there.’

‘He really wants to see you. Urgent, he says. I’ll walk there with you if you like. Wolfie’s gone. Thought you might like to know.’

Wolfie had been her German customer. Lover really, perhaps, the way she spoke of him.

‘Sent to the Eastern Front,’ she said. ‘He may be dead already. What do you think?’

‘You were fond of him, weren’t you?’

‘Oh, fond,’ she said. ‘There’s fondness and fondness, but he won’t come back from there, not likely I’ll see him again.’

‘All right then.’

He shrugged himself in to his coat, picked up his stick.

‘You’re not shy to be seen with me in the street?’

‘I’m seen with all sorts, Yvette.’

‘Oh good.’

She hooked her arm into his.

‘What about your wife?’ she said. ‘Or your daughter?’

‘What about them?’

* * *

The old tailor was sitting in a chair by his stove which gave out only a feeble heat. He had a fleecy shawl round his shoulders and didn’t get up to greet them. The air was chill and dusty and the light poor. He told Yvette to make tea and took a pinch of snuff.

‘Cousin Ephraim,’ he said.

The orange cat that had no name but Cat jumped on to his knees.

‘He called you, didn’t he, superintendent? I hadn’t seen him myself for twenty years, but he came here.’

‘It’s because of me,’ Yvette said, spooning tea leaves into a pot.

‘He said he needed me, but spoke to me as if I was dirt. That was a month ago, or more. So I came to see old Léopold here, like I do when I’ve a problem, like lots of us do here in Mériadeck.’

‘They think I’m wise,’ the old tailor said. ‘I tell them they’re fools, which they are. But this girl isn’t altogether foolish.’

‘Thanks a lot. Nasty bit of work he was, with his eyes of different colours.’

‘Abortion, wasn’t it?’ Lannes said. ‘I couldn’t remember when I met him, but that’s what it was. We couldn’t hold him, not enough evidence. That was years ago. Now he’s interested in my murder, involved really. He said the dead woman was his daughter, or passed as such. She took his name anyway.’

‘He doesn’t like women,’ Yvette said. ‘He’s that sort of type. I could tell that straight away. You always can.’

She handed Lannes a cup of tea.

‘What did he want of you? I mean precisely.’

‘He said he knew a woman who staged entertainments. That was his word, entertainments. I didn’t like the sound of it, but money’s scarce. So I came to consult old Léopold.’

‘You knew this when I was last here,’ Lannes said, ‘but you said nothing about it.’

The old tailor poured tea into the saucer and drank from it. His hand shook a little and some of the tea spilt on his waistcoat.

‘It was Yvette’s business, not mine. I gave you his name, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, you gave me his name. What about these entertainments? Was he more specific?’

‘Oh yes, he was specific, if the word means what I think it does. His friend – that’s what he called her – had a client – that was his word – who wanted to see a girl of my age put on an act with a younger girl.’

‘How young?’

‘Twelve or thirteen, he said. That’s when I told him to bugger off. He didn’t like it … ’

‘And then … ?’

‘Then he said, I know you go with Germans – though there’s only been one or two besides Wolfie, a girl’s got to live – and then he said he had friends who don’t like this sort of thing. I didn’t care for the sound of that, but I still told him to bugger off. Pretending to seduce a kid, going through the motions, that’s not nice. So when I thought it over I came to ask Léopold here for advice.’

‘I told her to have nothing to do with it, which is what she’d already decided, and that his threat was probably empty. I may have been wrong there. So after you’d been here, I got word to him and he came here at my request. He threatened me too, but I told him I’m too old to be afraid. So here we are.’

‘And what else did you say to him?’

‘Just to leave the girl alone, and that I knew things about him that his so-called friends would not like. But I can’t protect her, an old Jew like me. So we’ve turned to you.’

Yvette perched on the corner of the old tailor’s worktable and again, in an accustomed and practised movement, hitched up her skirt.

‘He scared me,’ she said. ‘I’m still scared really, though I don’t know quite why, except that now it’s the friend he spoke of that’s been murdered, isn’t it? And that frightens me. So you’ll speak to him, won’t you, and come to let me know how it goes. Two o’clock’s the best time, like I said.’

‘I’ll see what I can do, but … ’

He got to his feet.

‘But … ’ he said again. Then, ‘What are these things you know about your Cousin Ephraim?’

The old tailor smiled.

‘I know nothing, but he doesn’t know I know nothing.’

* * *

There are crimes, lots of them, which are straightforward. The solution is staring you in the face and it requires no detective skill to solve them. Most murders were like that, in Lannes’ experience. But there are others which are like a maze. You have to find your way to the centre and often you take wrong turnings, and the further you go, the more you are baffled and lost. Lannes turned up the collar of his coat against the rain. Why was the woman killed? Nothing that he had learnt pointed to a solution. Nothing made sense. Everything he had learnt seemed to confirm his immediate suspicion that the set-up, with the empty bottle of champagne and the cigar smoke was a blind. He couldn’t believe that Madame Peniel – Gabrielle – had had an assignation with a man. It simply didn’t ring true. His instinct revolted against the idea. Ephraim – her father, as might be – evidently her accomplice or collaborator, as pimp or procurer, director perhaps of her ‘entertainments’, had hinted that she was engaged in some form of Resistance activities; and his association with Félix – if it was Félix, and he had little doubt that it was – pointed to the form that these might have taken – the same game Félix had tried to play with Schussmann. But if so, why was she killed, and by whom? Was it possible she was double-crossing him? But if she was, what then was Ephraim’s role? Ephraim who had arranged to meet him in order to tell him that the murder of the woman he said was his daughter, and for whom he proclaimed affection, must not be solved.