in the morning by the time Bliss leaves L’Offshore Club. Finally fed up with “Guantanamera” and his lack of progress with Grimes, he puts on his CD player and listens to Brubeck’s “Look for the Silver Lining” as he strolls the deserted quayside, thinking that he may as well positively confirm Johnson’s identity, and whereabouts, before he puts his disappearing act into gear. He will take the train to Cannes in the morning. The yacht, the Sea-Quester, according to Marcia, should be easy enough to spot.
With the apartment in sight, and Johnson virtually in the bag, Bliss decides the time is ripe to pick up the fallen lemon, and, with the full moon to light his path, he creeps around the back of the building and sneaks up on the tree. With one eye on the door to the ground floor, he bends and picks up the fruit, but a faint glow from the apartment window draws him like a magnet as he goes to pocket the lemon. Nothing could have prepared him for what he sees, and he drops his prize as he inches closer and peers into the apartment’s kitchen. The long-haired young man is there, naked, together with his dog, curled as one in sleep, in a large steel cage in the corner of the room.
chapter five
Wednesday blossoms as sharp and bright as a sunflower and rouses Bliss from his sleep on the balcony’s lounger. The temptation to rush to the ground floor, batter down the apartment’s door, and release the young man is almost overwhelming, and has kept him out of bed since the early hours. The risk of blowing his cover holds him back, but so does the fact that he saw the young man in the garden the previous morning, and has felt his prying eyes for the past two weeks — although that isn’t strictly true, since he’s only seen the boy once — the click of the door on prior occasions might have been the jailer, whoever the jailer may be. Furthermore — notwithstanding the fact he can’t get his mind past the large brass padlock on the cage door — there seemed to be an air of warm innocence about the scene.
What to do? He could call the police, but finds himself drawn back to the unoccupied mat problem: There’s a boy in a cage with his dog, you say? So?
Nothing harmful is going to happen to the kid for a day or so, he concludes eventually. So, why not complete the current case and keep tabs on him until the French legions show up with an extradition warrant for Johnson, then put them in the picture? In the meantime, identify Johnson as soon as possible and let Grimes and his wife worry about their daughter. Once Johnson is in custody and on his way to the U.K., it shouldn’t be too difficult to rescue her.
With his plan formulated, Bliss slips on his swimming trunks and grabs a towel. Might as well take advantage of my last few days, he is thinking as he heads for the elevator.
Cannes is already awake when Bliss arrives to look for Johnson. The window displays of butchers, bakers, and candle-stick makers of the Rue Meynadier have been plumped up and the staff outfitted in stiffly starched uniforms with clinically white aprons. Fifty varieties of cheese, most coated in mould, overflow onto a sidewalk display outside a fromagèrie, and a surprised American voice pipes up, “Wow! And I thought all cheese came from Wisconsin.”
Stopping to eat his morning croissant on the beach, Bliss is struck by the constant hum of excitement as adverplanes buzz the beaches trailing billboards, Jet Skis and Sea-Doos bother the big yachts in the harbour, and rust-streaked passenger ferries zoom back and forth to the offshore islands. Behind him, a three-mile wall of hotels, restaurants, and casinos stretch around the bay and stolidly keep watch on the exuberance from behind the curtains of their daunting Victorian facades.
An Englishman with rolled-up trousers paddles in the gently lapping wavelets and says, “No trace of the storm,” with the conversational ease of someone who’s just arrived at the office.
“What storm?” starts Bliss, taken by surprise, then freezes, concerned he’s been discovered by a neighbour or colleague. “How did you know I spoke English?”
“Doesn’t everyone here?” says the man rhetorically, then exclaims, “Oh dear God!” as a woman in translucent pants strolls by. “That girl’s mother should really make her wear knickers.”
“You’ve just arrived?” chuckles Bliss knowingly.
“Yes — overnight train from Paris. How did you know?”
“Lucky guess.” He laughs and goes in search of Morgan Johnson.
Johnson’s yacht, stern first against the harbour’s inner wall, snuggles tightly between two similar behemoths. The Sea-Quester, while not the largest privateer in the world, dwarfs many of the others owned by winners in life’s lottery, and distinguishes its moniker by the two-man mini-sub lashed to its aft deck.
Strolling along the quay with the nonchalant inquisitiveness of a well-travelled sightseer, Bliss takes a mental snapshot of his quarry’s yacht and senses a laissez-faire attitude amongst the deck crew, who are playfully dousing each other while scrubbing the deck. Adding to the casual air, a CD player indiscreetly pumps disco music over the surrounding vessels, where demure stewardesses in fresh white shirts are trying not to walk with a dance as they serve deck breakfasts to their guests with the solemnity of royal household staff.
Wait a minute, he thinks, looking along the lines of multi-million dollar yachts. Many of them probably are royal households.
With Johnson’s yacht identified, Bliss settles himself into an observation point in the shade of the Palais des Festivals, clicks on his walkman, and listens to Brubeck playing “All By Myself” as he watches the sun rising high over the islands of Sainte-Marguerite and Saint-Honorat in the bay. Then, realizing his shelter on the wide quay is quickly disappearing, and figuring that the lackadaisical attitude of the Sea-Quester’s crew suggests the owner is not aboard, he seeks a better surveillance spot.
The Suquet, like a castle, with its château and fortified ramparts, sits in ancient grandeur overseeing the port from its perch on a rocky outcrop at the west end of the bay. Binoculars in hand, Bliss struggles up its steeply winding stone staircases until he has a grandstand view of the entire bay, with the old harbour lying at his feet. “Typical,” he moans to himself, checking out the binoculars. “They send me out to search for a major drug dealer who’s done a bunk with a hundred million quid, and all they give me is a crappy pair of binoculars.”
So? What else do you need? he asks, playing devil’s advocate.
That’s not the point …
You’ve got the credit card — buy what you want.
OK. Valid argument.
The force-issue binoculars pick out the Sea-Quester with ease, and, reassured that nothing aboard has changed, he settles down in the partial shade of a spindly tree to direct his glasses on the town’s cramped thoroughfares. The maze of streets, designed for peasants’ donkey carts, coil tightly around the Suquet before relaxing as they stretch around the bay and follow the railway line that once brought trainloads of Edwardian Brits escaping their northern summers and intolerable food.
“God — that’s Edwards,” he murmurs, spotting a suspect as he peers intently at the crowds, but gives up when he realizes he sees him everywhere. He’ll wait to hear from Samantha, he decides, and spends his time enjoying the view.
A masked mime, dressed like a seventeenth-century mousquetaire in a flambouyant purple robe, complete with French falls boots and feathered hat, creates an instant stage on the Suquet’s quadrangle with an old beer crate and pulls a fluffy tabby cat from each of his coat’s capacious pockets. Motionless, with his arms set like tree branches, he stands as the cats mime a duet in perfect tandem, and Bliss is so rapt in the performance he misses the arrival of a chauffeured limousine at Johnson’s yacht. Joining the applause for the musketeer, Bliss rises to donate a few coins, when his eye is caught by movement on the quay below and he grabs his binoculars in time to catch two ant-like figures scurrying across the passerelle to the aft deck of the Sea-Quester.
“Shit,” he shouts, takes off, and races headlong down the awkwardly spaced steps, praying no one will suddenly step