An Expensive Place to Die. Len Deighton

me that.’

      ‘Who for?’

      I said, ‘I don’t know about that place, and I don’t want to know about it.’

      ‘I’m treating you like an adult,’ said Loiseau. ‘If you prefer to be treated like a spotty-faced j.v. then we can do that too.’

      ‘What’s the question again?’

      ‘I’d like to know who you are working for. However, it would take a couple of hours in the hen cage to get that out of you. So for the time being I’ll tell you this: I am interested in that house and I don’t want you to even come downwind of it. Stay well away. Tell whoever you are working for that the house in Avenue Foch is going to remain a little secret of Chief Inspector Loiseau.’ He paused, wondering how much more to tell me. ‘There are powerful interests involved. Violent groups are engaged in a struggle for criminal power.’

      ‘Why do you tell me that?’

      ‘I thought that you should know.’ He gave a Gallic shrug.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Don’t you understand? These men are dangerous.’

      ‘Then why aren’t you dragging them into your office instead of me?’

      ‘Oh, they are too clever for us. Also they have well-placed friends who protect them. It’s only when the friends fail that they resort to … coercion, blackmail, killing even. But always skilfully.’

      ‘They say it’s better to know the judge than to know the law.’

      ‘Who says that?’

      ‘I heard it somewhere.’

      ‘You’re an eavesdropper,’ said Loiseau.

      ‘I am,’ I said. ‘And a damned good one.’

      ‘It sounds as though you like it,’ said Loiseau grimly.

      ‘It’s my favourite indoor sport. Dynamic and yet sedentary; a game of skill with an element of chance. No season, no special equipment …’

      ‘Don’t be so clever,’ he said sadly. ‘This is a political matter. Do you know what that means?’

      ‘No. I don’t know what that means.’

      ‘It means that you might well spend one morning next week being lifted out of some quiet backwater of the St Martin canal and travelling down to the Medico-Legal Institute³ where the boys in butchers’ aprons and rubber boots live. They’ll take an inventory of what they find in your pockets, send your clothes to the Poor Law Administration Office, put a numbered armband on you, freeze you to eight degrees centigrade and put you in a rack with two other foolish lads. The superintendent will phone me and I’ll have to go along and identify you. I’ll hate doing that because at this time of year there are clouds of flies as large as bats and a smell that reaches to Austerlitz Station.’ He paused. ‘And we won’t even investigate the affair. Be sure you understand.’

      I said, ‘I understand all right. I’ve become an expert at recognizing threats no matter how veiled they are. But before you give a couple of cops tape measures and labels and maps of the St Martin canal, make sure you choose men that your department doesn’t find indispensable.’

      ‘Alas, you have misunderstood,’ said Loiseau’s mouth, but his eyes didn’t say that. He stared. ‘We’ll leave it like that, but …’

      ‘Just leave it like that,’ I interrupted. ‘You tell your cops to carry the capes with the lead-shot hems and I’ll wear my water-wings.’

      Loiseau allowed his face to become as friendly as it could become.

      ‘I don’t know where you fit into Monsieur Datt’s clinic, but until I do know I’ll be watching you very closely. If it’s a political affair, then let the political departments request information. There’s no point in us being at each other’s throat. Agreed?’

      ‘Agreed.’

      ‘In the next few few days you might be in contact with people who claim to be acting for me. Don’t believe them. Anything you want to know, come back to me directly. I’m 22.22.⁴ If you can’t reach me here then this office will know where I am. Tell the operator that “Un sourire est différent d’un rire”.’

      ‘Agreed,’ I said. The French still use those silly code words that are impossible to use if you are being overheard.

      ‘One last thing,’ said Loiseau. ‘I can see that no advice, however well meant, can register with you, so let me add that, should you tackle these men and come off best …’ he looked up to be sure that I was listening, ‘… then I will personally guarantee that you’ll manger les haricots for five years.’

      ‘Charged with …?’

      ‘Giving Chief Inspector Loiseau trouble beyond his normal duties.’

      ‘You might be going further than your authority permits,’ I said, trying to give the impression that I too might have important friends.

      Loiseau smiled. ‘Of course I am. I have gained my present powerful position by always taking ten per cent more authority than I am given.’ He lifted the phone and jangled the receiver rest so that its bell tinkled in the outer office. It must have been a prearranged signal because his assistant came quickly. Loiseau nodded to indicate the meeting was over.

      ‘Goodbye,’ he said. ‘It was good to see you again.’

      ‘Again?’

      ‘NATO conference on falsification of cargo manífests, held in Bonn, April 1956. You represented BAOR, if I remember rightly.’

      ‘You talk in endless riddles,’ I said. ‘I’ve never been in Bonn.’

      ‘You are a glib fellow,’ said Loiseau. ‘Another ten minutes and you’d convince me I’d never been there.’ He turned to the assistant who was waiting to conduct me downstairs. ‘Count the fire extinguishers after he’s left,’ said Loiseau. ‘And on no account shake hands with him; you might find yourself being thrown into the Faubourg St Honoré.’

      Loiseau’s assistant took me down to the door. He was a spotty-faced boy with circular metal-framed spectacles that bit deep into his features like pennies that had grown into the trunk of a tree. ‘Goodbye,’ I said as I left him, and gave him a brief smile. He looked through me, nodding to the policeman on sentry who eased the machine gun on his shoulder. Abandoning the entente cordiale I walked towards the Faubourg St Honoré looking for a taxi. From the gratings in the road there came the sound of a Métro train, its clatter muffled by four huddled clochards anxious for the warmth of the sour subterranean air. One of them came half-awake, troubled by a bad dream. He yelled and then mumbled.

      On the corner an E-type was parked. As I turned the corner the headlights flashed and it moved towards me. I stood well back as the door swung open. A woman’s voice said, ‘Jump in.’

      ‘Not right now,’ I said.

      6

      Maria Chauvet was thirty-two years old. She had kept her looks, her gentleness, her figure, her sexual optimism, her respect for men’s cleverness, her domestication. She had lost her girlhood friends, her shyness, her literary aspirations, her obsession with clothes and her husband. It was a fair swop, she decided. Time had given her a greater measure of independence. She looked around the art gallery without seeing even one person that she really desired to see again. And yet they were her people: the ones she had known since her early twenties, the people who shared her tastes in cinema, travel, sport and books. Now she no longer wished to hear their opinions about the things she enjoyed and she only slightly wished to hear their opinions about the things she hated. The paintings here were awful, they didn’t even show a childish exuberance; they were old, jaded and sad. She hated things that were too real. Ageing was real;