‘Very well,’ said the policeman. He nodded to the two men, who pushed the body on to the floor of the police van. They closed the door.
‘Journalists may arrive,’ said Datt to the policeman. ‘Leave two of your men on guard here and make sure they know about article ten.’
‘Yes,’ said the policeman docilely.
‘Which way are you going?’ I asked the driver.
‘The meat goes to the Medico-Legal,’ he said.
‘Ride me to the Avenue de Marigny,’ I said. ‘I’m going back to my office.’
By now the policeman in charge of the vehicle was browbeaten by Datt’s fierce orders. He agreed to my riding in the van without a word of argument. At the corner of the Avenue de Marigny I stopped the van and got out. I needed a large brandy.
15
I expected the courier from the Embassy to contact me again that same day but he didn’t return until the next morning. He put his document case on top of the wardrobe and sank into my best armchair.
He answered an unasked question. ‘It’s a whorehouse,’ he pronounced. ‘He calls it a clinic but it’s more like a whorehouse.’
‘Thanks for your help,’ I said.
‘Don’t get snotty – you wouldn’t want me telling you what to say in your reports.’
‘That’s true,’ I admitted.
‘Certainly it’s true. It’s a whorehouse that a lot of the Embassy people use. Not just our people – the Americans, etc., use it.’
I said, ‘Straighten me up. Is this just a case of one of our Embassy people getting some dirty pictures back from Datt? Or something like that?’
The courier stared at me. ‘I’m not allowed to talk about anything like that,’ he said.
‘Don’t give me that stuff,’ I said. ‘They killed that girl yesterday.’
‘In passion,’ explained the courier. ‘It was part of a kinky sex act.’
‘I don’t care if it was done as a publicity stunt,’ I said. ‘She’s dead and I want as much information as I can get to avoid trouble. It’s not just for my own skin; it’s in the interests of the department that I avoid trouble.’
The courier said nothing, but I could see he was weakening.
I said, ‘If I’m heading into that house again just to recover some pictures of a secretary on the job, I’ll come back and haunt you.’
‘Give me some coffee,’ said the courier, and I knew he had decided to tell me whatever he knew. I boiled the kettle and brewed up a pint of strong black coffee.
‘Kuang-t’ien,’ said the courier, ‘the man who knifed the girl: do you know who he is?’
‘Major-domo at the Chinese Embassy, Datt said.’
‘That’s his cover. His name is Kuang-t’ien, but he’s one of the top five men in the Chinese nuclear programme.’
‘He speaks damn good French.’
‘Of course he does. He was trained at the Laboratoire Curie, here in Paris. So was his boss, Chien San-chiang, who is head of the Atomic Energy Institute in Peking.’
‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ I said.
‘I was evaluating it this time last year.’
‘Tell me more about this man who mixes his sex with switchblades.’
He pulled his coffee towards his and stirred it thoughtfully. Finally he began.
‘Four years ago the U2 flights picked up the fourteen-acre gaseous diffusion plant taking hydro-electric power from the Yellow River not far from Lanchow. The experts had predicted that the Chinese would make their bombs as the Russians and French did, and as we did too: by producing plutonium in atomic reactors. But the Chinese didn’t; our people have been close. I’ve seen the photos. Very close. That plant proves that they are betting all or nothing on hydrogen. They are going full steam ahead on their hydrogen research programme. By concentrating on the light elements generally and by pushing the megaton instead of the kiloton bomb they could be the leading nuclear power in eight or ten years if their hydrogen research pays off. This man Kuang-t’ien is their best authority on hydrogen. See what I mean?’
I poured more coffee and thought about it. The courier got his case down and rummaged through it. ‘When you left the clinic yesterday did you go in the police van?’
‘Yes.’
‘Um. I thought you might have. Good stunt that. Well, I hung around for a little while, then when I realized that you’d gone I came back here. I hoped you’d come back, too.’
‘I had a drink,’ I said. ‘I put my mind in neutral for an hour.’
‘That’s unfortunate,’ said the courier. ‘Because while you were away you had a visitor. He asked for you at the counter, then hung around for nearly an hour, but when you didn’t come back he took a cab to the Hotel Lotti.’
‘What was he like?’
The courier smiled his mirthless smile and produced some ten-by-eight glossy pictures of a man drinking coffee in the afternoon sunlight. It wasn’t a good-quality photograph. The man was about fifty, dressed in a light-weight suit with a narrow-brimmed felt hat. His tie had a small monogram that was unreadable and his cufflinks were large and ornate. He had large black sunglasses which in one photo he had removed to polish. When he drank coffee he raised his little finger high and pursed his lips.
‘Ten out of ten,’ I said. ‘Good stuff: waiting till he took the glasses off. But you could use a better D and P man.’
‘They are just rough prints,’ said the courier. ‘The negs are half-frame but they are quite good.’
‘You are a regular secret agent,’ I said admiringly. ‘What did you do – shoot him in the ankle with the toe-cap gun, send out a signal to HQ on your tooth and play the whole thing back on your wristwatch?’
He rummaged through his papers again, then slapped a copy of L’Express upon the table top. Inside there was a photo of the US Ambassador greeting a group of American businessmen at Orly Airport. The courier looked up at me briefly.
‘Fifty per cent of this group of Americans work – or did work – for the Atomic Energy Commission. Most of the remainder are experts on atomic energy or some allied subject. Bertram: nuclear physics at MIT. Bestbridge: radiation sickness of 1961. Waldo: fall-out experiments and work at the Hiroshima hospital. Hudson: hydrogen research – now he works for the US Army.’ He marked Hudson’s face with his nail. It was the man he’d photographed.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘What are you trying to prove?’
‘Nothing. I’m just putting you in the picture. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
‘I’m just juxtaposing a hydrogen expert from Peking with a hydrogen expert from the Pentagon. I’m wondering why they are both in the same city at the same time and especially why they both cross your path. It’s the sort of thing that makes me nervous.’ He gulped down the rest of his coffee.
‘You shouldn’t drink too much of that strong black coffee,’ I said. ‘It’ll be keeping you awake at night.’
The courier picked up his photos and copy of L’Express. ‘I’ve got a system for getting to sleep,’ he said. ‘I count reports I’ve filed.’
‘Watch resident agents jumping to conclusions,’ I said.
‘It’s not soporific.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’ve left the most important thing until last,’ he said.
‘Have you?’ I said, and wondered what was more important than the Chinese People’s Republic preparing for nuclear warfare.
‘The girl was ours.’
‘What girl was whose?’
‘The murdered girl was working for us, for the department.’
‘A floater?’
‘No. Permanent; warranty contract, the lot.’
‘Poor kid,’ I said. ‘Was she pumping Kuang-t’ien?’
‘It’s nothing that’s gone through the Embassy. They know nothing about her there.’
‘But you knew?’
‘Yes.’
‘You are playing both ends.’
‘Just like you.’
&n
bsp; ‘Not at all. I’m just London. The jobs I do for the Embassy are just favours. I can decline if I want to. What do London want me to do about this girl?’
He said, ‘She has an apartment on the left bank. Just check through her personal papers, her possessions. You know the sort of thing. It’s a long shot but you might find something. These are her keys – the department held duplicates for emergencies – small one for mail box, large ones front door and apartment door.’
‘You’re crazy. The police were probably turning it over within thirty minutes of her death.’
‘Of course they were. I’ve had the place under observation. That’s why I waited a bit before telling you. London is pretty certain that no one – not Loiseau nor Datt nor anyone – knew that the girl worked for us. It’s probable that they just made a routine search.’
‘If the girl was a permanent she wouldn’t leave anything lying around,’ I said.
‘Of course she wouldn’t. But there may be one or two little things that could embarrass us all …’ He looked around the grimy wallpaper of my room and pushed my ancient bedstead. It creaked.
‘Even the most careful employee is tempted to have something close at hand.’
‘That would be against orders.’
‘Safety comes above orders,’ he said. I shrugged my grudging agreement. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Now you see why they want you to go. Go and probe around there as though it’s your room and you’ve just been killed. You might find something where anyone else would fail. There’s an insurance of about thirty thousand new francs if you find someone who you think should get it.’ He wrote the address on a slip of paper and put it on the table. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the coffee, it was very good.’
‘If I start serving instant coffee,’ I said, ‘perhaps I’ll get a little less work.’
16
The dead girl’s name was Annie Couzins. She was twenty-four and had lived in a new piece of speculative real estate not far from the Boul. Mich. The walls were close and the ceilings were low. What the accommodation agents described as a studio apartment was a cramped bed-sitting room. There were large cupboards containing a bath, a toilet and a clothes rack respectively. Most of the construction money had been devoted to an entrance hall lavished with plate glass, marble and bronze-coloured mirrors that made you look tanned and rested and slightly out of focus.
Had it been an old house or even a pretty one, then perhaps some memory of the dead girl would have remained there, but the room was empty, contemporary and pitiless. I examined the locks and hinges, probed the mattress and shoulder pads, rolled back the cheap carpet and put a knife blade between the floorboards. Nothing. Perfume, lingerie, bills, a postcard greeting from Nice, ‘… some of the swimsuits are divine …’, a book of dreams, six copies of Elle, laddered stockings, six medium-price dresses, eight and a half pairs of shoes, a good English wool overcoat, an expensive transistor radio tuned to France Musique, tin of Nescafé, tin of powdered milk, saccharine, a damaged handbag containing spilled powder and a broken mirror, a new saucepan. Nothing to show what she was, had been, feared, dreamed of or wanted.
The bell rang. There was a girl standing there. She may have been twenty-five but it was difficult to say. Big cities leave a mark. The eyes of city-dwellers scrutinize rather than see; they assess the value and the going-rate and try to separate the winners from the losers. That’s what this girl tried to do.
‘Are you from the police?’ she asked.
‘No. Are you?’
‘I’m Monique. I live next door in apartment number eleven.’
‘I’m Annie’s cousin, Pierre.’
‘You’ve got a funny accent. Are you a Belgian?’ She gave a little giggle as though being a Belgian was the funniest thing that could happen to anyone.
‘Half Belgian,’ I lied amiably.
‘I can usually tell. I’m very good with accents.’
‘You certainly are,’ I said admiringly. ‘Not many people detect that I’m half Belgian.’
‘Which half is Belgian?’
‘The front half.’
She giggled again. ‘Was your mother or your father Belgian, I mean.’
‘Mother. Father was a Parisian with a bicycle.’
She tried to peer into the flat over my shoulder. ‘I would invite you in for a cup of coffee,’ I said, ‘but I musn’t disturb anything.’
‘You’re hinting. You want me to invite you for coffee.’
‘Damned right I do.’ I eased the door closed. ‘I’ll be there in five minutes.’
I turned back to cover up my searching. I gave a last look to the ugly cramped little room. It was the way I’d go one day. There would be someone from the department making sure that I hadn’t left ‘one or two little things that could embarrass us all’. Goodbye, Annie, I thought. I didn’t know you but I know you now as well as anyone knows me. You won’t retire to a little tabac in Nice and get a monthly cheque from some phoney insurance company. No, you can be resident agent in hell, Annie, and your bosses will be sending directives from Heaven telling you to clarify your reports and reduce your expenses.
I went to apartment number eleven. Her room was like Annie’s: cheap gilt and film-star photos. A bath towel on the floor, ashtrays overflowing with red-marked butts, a plateful of garlic sausage that had curled up and died.
Monique had made the coffee by the time I got there. She’d poured boiling water on to milk powder and instant coffee and stirred it with a plastic spoon. She was a tough girl under the giggling exterior and she surveyed me carefully from behind fluttering eyelashes.
‘I thought you were a burglar,’ she said, ‘then I thought you were the police.’
‘And now?’
‘You’re Annie’s cousin Pierre. You’re anyone you want to be, from Charlemagne to Tin-Tin, it’s no business of mine, and you can’t hurt Annie.’
I took out my notecase and extracted a one-hundred-new-franc note. I put it on the low coffee table. She stared at me thinking it was some kind of sexual proposition.
‘Did you ever work with Annie at the clinic?’ I asked.
‘No.’
I placed another note down and repeated the question.
‘No,’ she said.
I put down a third note and watched her carefully. When she again said no I leaned forward and took her hand roughly. ‘Don’t no me,’ I said. ‘You think I came here without finding out first?’
She stared at me angrily. I kept hold of her hand. ‘Sometimes,’ she said grudgingly.
‘How many?’
‘Ten, perhaps twelve.’
‘That’s better,’ I said. I turned her hand over, pressed my fingers against the back of it to make her fingers open and slapped the three notes into her open palm. I let go of her and she leaned back out of reach, rubbing the back of her hand where I had held it. They were slim, bony hands with rosy knuckes that had known buckets of cold water and Marseilles soap. She didn’t like her hands. She put them inside things and behind them and hid them under her folded arms.
‘You bruised me,’ she complained.
‘Rub money on it.’
‘Ten, perhaps twelve, times,’ she admitted.
‘Tell me about the place. What went on there?’
‘You are from the police.’
‘I’ll do a deal with you, Monique. Slip me three hundred and I’ll tell you all about what I do.’
She smiled grimly. ‘Annie wanted an extra girl sometimes, just as a hostess … the money was useful.’
‘Did Annie have plenty of money?’
‘Plenty? I never knew anyone who had plenty. And even if they did it wouldn’t go very far in this town. She didn’t go to the bank in an armoured car if that’s what you mean.’ I didn’t say anything.
Monique continued, ‘She did all right but she was silly with it. She gave it to anyone who spun her a yarn. Her parents will miss her, so will Father Marconi; she was always giving to his collection for
kids and missions and cripples. I told her over and over, she was silly with it. You’re not Annie’s cousin, but you throw too much money around to be the police.’
‘The men you met there. You were told to ask them things and to remember what they said.’
‘I didn’t go to bed with them …’
‘I don’t care if you took the anglais with them and dunked the gâteau sec, what were your instructions?’ She hesitated, and I placed five more one-hundred-franc notes on the table but kept my fingers on them.
‘Of course I made love to the men, just as Annie did, but they were all refined men. Men of taste and culture.’
‘Sure they were,’ I said. ‘Men of real taste and culture.’
‘It was done with tape recorders. There were two switches on the bedside lamps. I was told to get them talking about their work. So boring, men talking about their work, but are they ready to do it? My God they are.’
‘Did you ever handle the tapes?’
‘No, the recording machines were in some other part of the clinic.’ She eyed the money.
‘There’s more to it than that. Annie did more than that.’
‘Annie was a fool. Look where it got her. That’s where it will get me if I talk too much.’
‘I’m not interested in you,’ I said. ‘I’m only interested in Annie. What else did Annie do?’
‘She substituted the tapes. She changed them. Sometimes she made her own recordings.’
‘She took a machine into the house?’
‘Yes. It one of those little ones, about four hundred new francs they cost. She had it in her handbag. I found it there once when I was looking for her lipstick to borrow.’
‘What did Annie say about it?’
‘Nothing. I never told her. And I never opened her handbag again either. It was her business, nothing to do with me.’
‘The miniature recorder isn’t in her flat now.’
‘I didn’t pinch it.’