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.’
‘Then who do you think did?’
‘I told her not once. I told her a thousand times.’
‘What did you tell her?’
She pursed up her mouth in a gesture of contempt. ‘What do you think I told her, M. Annie’s cousin Pierre? I told her that to record conversations in such a house was a dangerous thing to do. In a house owned by people like those people.’
‘People like what people?’
‘In Paris one does not talk of such things, but it’s said that the Ministry of the Interior or the SDECE8 own the house to discover the indiscretions of foolish aliens.’ She gave a tough little sob, but recovered herself quickly.
‘You were fond of Annie?’
‘I never got on well with women until I got to know her. I was broke when I met her, at least I was down to only ten francs. I had run away from home. I was in the laundry asking them to split the order because I didn’t have enough to pay. The place where I lived had no running water. Annie lent me the money for the whole laundry bill – twenty francs – so that I had clean clothes while looking for a job. She gave me the first warm coat I ever had. She showed me how to put on my eyes. She listened to my stories and let me cry. She told me not to live the life that she had led, going from one man to another. She would have shared her last cigarette with a stranger. Yet she never asked me questions. Annie was an angel.’
‘It certainly sounds like it.’
‘Oh I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that Annie and I were a couple of Lesbians.’
‘Some of my best lovers are Lesbians,’ I said.
Monique smiled. I thought she was going to cry all over me, but she sniffed and smiled. ‘I don’t know if we were or not,’ she said.
‘Does it matter?’
‘No, it doesn’t matter. Anything would be better than to have stayed in the place I was born. My parents are still there; it’s like living through a siege, besieged by the cost of necessities. They are careful how they use detergent, coffee is measured out. Rice, pasta and potatoes eke out tiny bits of meat. Bread is consumed, meat is revered and Kleenex tissues never afforded. Unnecessary lights are switched off immediately, they put on a sweater instead of the heating. In the same building families crowd into single rooms, rats chew enormous holes in the woodwork – there’s no food for them to chew on – and the w.c. is shared by three families and it usually doesn’t flush. The people who live at the top of the house have to walk down two flights to use a cold water tap. And yet in this same city I get taken out to dinner in three-star restaurants where the bill for two dinners would keep my parents for a year. At the Ritz a man friend of mine paid nine francs a day to them for looking after his dog. That’s just about half the pension my father gets for being blown up in the war. So when you people come snooping around here flashing your money and protecting the République Française’s rocket programme, atomic plants, supersonic bombers and nuclear submarines or whatever it is you’re protecting, don’t expect too much from my patriotism.’
She bit her lip and glared at me, daring me to contradict her, but I didn’t contradict. ‘It’s a lousy rotten town,’ I agreed.
‘And dangerous,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Paris is all of those things.’
She laughed. ‘Paris is like me, cousin Pierre; it’s no longer young, and too dependent upon visitors who bring money. Paris is a woman with a little too much alcohol in her veins. She talks a little too loud and thinks she is young and gay. But she has smiled too often at strange men and the words “I love you” trip too easily from her tongue. The ensemble is chic and the paint is generously applied, but look closely and you’ll see the cracks showing through.’
She got to her feet, groped along the bedside table for a match and lit her cigarette with a hand that trembled very slightly. She turned back to me. ‘I saw the girls I knew taking advantage of offers that came from rich men they could never possibly love. I despised the girls and wondered how they could bring themselves to go to bed with such unattractive men. Well, now I know.’ The smoke was getting in her eyes. ‘It was fear. Fear of being a woman instead of a girl, a woman whose looks are slipping away rapidly, leaving her alone and unwanted in this vicious town.’ She was crying now and I stepped closer to her and touched her arm. For a moment she seemed about to let her head fall upon my shoulder, but I felt her body tense and unyielding. I took a business card from my top pocket and put it on the bedside table next to a box of chocolates. She pulled away from me irritably. ‘Just phone if you want to talk more,’ I said.
‘You’re English,’ she said suddenly. It must have been something in my accent or syntax. I nodded.
‘It will be strictly business,’ she said. ‘Cash payments.’
‘You don’t have to be so tough on yourself,’ I said. She said nothing.
‘And thanks,’ I said.
‘Get stuffed,’ said Monique.
17
First there came a small police van, its klaxon going. Co-operating with it was a blue-uniformed man on a motor-cycle. He kept his whistle in his mouth and blew repeatedly. Sometimes he was ahead of the van, sometimes behind it. He waved his right hand at the traffic as if by just the draught from it he could force the parked cars up on the pavement. The noise was deafening. The traffic ducked out of the way, some cars went willingly, some grudgingly, but after a couple of beeps on the whistle they crawled up on the stones, the pavement and over traffic islands like tortoises. Behind the van came the flying column: three long blue buses jammed with Garde Mobile men who stared at the cringing traffic with a bored look on their faces. At the rear of the column came a radio car. Loiseau watched them disappear down the Faubourg St Honoré. Soon the traffic began to move again. He turned away from the window and back to Maria. ‘Dangerous,’ pronounced Loiseau. ‘He’s playing a dangerous game. The girl is killed in his house, and Datt is pulling every political string he can find to prevent an investigation taking place. He’ll regret it.’ He got to his feet and walked across the room.
‘Sit down, darling,’ said Maria. ‘You are just wasting calories in getting annoyed.’
‘I’m not Datt’s boy,’ said Loiseau.
‘And no one will imagine that you are,’ said Maria. She wondered why Loiseau saw everything as a threat to his prestige.
‘The girl is entitled to an investigation,’ explained Loiseau. ‘That’s why I became a policeman. I believe in equality before the law. And now they are trying to tie my hands. It makes me furious.’
‘Don’t shout,’ said Maria. ‘What sort of effect do you imagine that has upon the people that work for you, hearing you shouting?’
‘You are right,’ said Loiseau. Maria loved him. It was when he capitulated so readily like that that she loved him so intensely. She wanted to care for him and advise him and make him the most successful policeman in the whole world. Maria said, ‘You are the finest policeman in the whole world.’
He smiled. ‘You mean with your help I could be.’ Maria shook her head. ‘Don’t argue,’ said Loiseau. ‘I know the workings of your mind by now.’
Maria smiled too. He did know. That was the awful thing about their marriage. They knew each other too well. To know all is to forgive nothing.
‘She