LÉON ROUSSEL
In the Boulevard des Tanneurs a tractor had clouted a cart hauling hundreds of cabbages and traffic had ground to a halt in Serriac. The upturned cart and the disgorged vegetables, rolling around on the road like human heads, had resulted in chaos that it took Léon a good hour to sort out. Henri, the tractor driver, with a mouth as broad as his belly, refused to remove his brand new Latil tractor.
‘Not until that bastard turnip-head, Jean-Baptiste, admits he’s an arsehole and agrees to pay for the damage to my tractor. Look what his shit-heap has done to my radiator.’
A crowd gathered to watch the dispute. Any free-rolling cabbages were discreetly scooped into shopping bags and under shawls. With a curse Léon set one of his officers on cabbage duty and another to keep onlookers moving, while he banged the drivers’ heads together and organised the removal of the obstructing vehicles.
Overnight the weather had changed. Heavy bruised clouds had swept in on a stiff wind and threatened rain, but at least it meant the sight and sound of the aircraft patrols would be less intrusive. A sudden downpour would empty the streets and ease the oppressive heat. Léon was acutely aware of the ever-growing mountain of paperwork on his desk, crying out for attention.
But that wasn’t the reason he was in such a hurry to get back there.
*
She strolled into Léon’s office mid-morning and placed a small reed-basket of fresh eggs on top of his desk. She glanced round the obsessively neat room, then eyed the forms he was filling out and said, ‘You’re busy.’
‘Lovely-looking eggs, Eloïse. How kind of you.’
‘They are a thank you for last night,’ she said with a smile.
He noticed that a smile emphasised her scar. The skin around it puckered up and he felt the taut shiny line of it when he greeted her with a kiss on both cheeks. He liked the fact she didn’t seem to care. He also liked that she was in a simple cotton frock today, none of her Parisian chic about it, and wore her long dark hair loose around her shoulders. Her face was scrubbed clean of make-up. All he needed now was to see her astride her horse, racing through the marshes, water-spray flying in rainbows around her. Then he’d be happy.
‘Léon.’
He concentrated on the piece of paper she was handing him. ‘Please sit down,’ he said.
They sat either side of the desk and studied the bold printed words on the page.
YOU WANT ME TO KILL YOU?
LIKE GOLIATH. ALONE. IN THE DARK.
GO BACK TO PARIS. NOW.
He sat very still, then tipped his chair on to its back legs. A bad habit of his when rattled.
‘Well, first, this is not the work of a professional, so I think we can rule out our MGB Intelligence friend from last night.’
She gave him a sideways look. ‘Are you sure?’
‘No. Not certain. But it smells of amateur work to me. A professional criminal would not have picked up a pen to scrawl such a note. The ink and the handwriting style are far too traceable. A professional would use a typewriter or preferably words and letters cut from newspapers.’
He nudged it further away from him, barely having touched more than a corner of the offending article.
‘I’ll bet you one of my nice new eggs that the paper is dripping with fingerprints.’
‘Oh.’ She stared down at her own fingertips.
‘Don’t worry. We’ll take your fingerprints while you’re here and eliminate them.’
She nodded. ‘So who do you suspect?’
‘An angry local. Scared witless by the arrival of nuclear weapons on your father’s land.’
‘Just as dangerous though.’
‘I doubt it. A toothless threat, I suspect.’
She looked tired. There was a greyness around her mouth and her eyes had sunk deeper into her head, but he saw the effect of his words. Her shoulders came down from under her ears and the half-smile she gave him reached her eyes.
‘I hope you’re right,’ she said, ‘Monsieur le Capitaine.’
‘To be sure of being safe, you could always do as the note instructs, you know. Return to Paris.’ He said it casually, as if it wouldn’t tear a hole in him.
‘No. But thanks for the suggestion.’
‘Did you speak to André about last night?’
‘Yes, I did. It seems he knows Gilles Bertin better than I thought. They worked together in Paris. Before.’ She didn’t say before what. There was no need.
‘You’re telling me that André worked with a Soviet Intelligence agent? And you’re not worried? Seriously?’
‘No. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more, Léon. But it was a required part of his job.’
‘His job.’ Léon shrugged, but it didn’t come across as carelessly as he intended. ‘Always his job. Eloïse, I know what he does because a couple of years ago he tried to recruit me into his nefarious world of espionage.’
Her dark eyes grew darker. ‘Did you accept?’
‘No. I declined.’
‘Why?’
‘My life as a police officer is plenty dangerous enough, thank you. Only this morning I had an argument with fat old Henri Laurent on his tractor.’
He wiped imaginary sweat off his brow with exaggerated relief and saw he’d made her smile. He picked up one of her eggs from the straw-filled basket and cradled it in his hand, so delicate, yet so strong. As pale as her Parisian skin. Its shell was as smooth as the lie he was about to tell her.
‘I’ve been going through the statements,’ he tapped one of the paper piles on his desk, ‘given by all the people who attended Goliath’s burial ceremony. Not one of them saw anything suspicious.’
‘Surely someone must have seen something.’
‘No.’ He moved on quickly. ‘The fire was started at the rear of the stables while everyone was watching the ceremony, their back to the stables.’
‘So any of them could have done it.’
‘True.’
‘A person who sets fire to horses should be shot.’
Léon was not going to argue with that. ‘I am looking into their political affiliations. It might narrow the field down. Checking if any have a history of anti-American or anti-nuclear activities.’
‘Can you do that?’
‘We have lists.’
‘I don’t know whether to be thankful or scared.’
‘Try impressed.’
That made her smile. She nodded. ‘I hope I’m not on your list.’
‘No, but your brother is.’
‘André?’ She frowned. ‘He’s not anti-American.’
‘No, not André.’
‘Isaac?’
He watched her mouth form her younger brother’s name, as if she were biting on a tooth that hurt. He pulled a sheet of paper from a drawer and spread it in front of her.
‘I’d like you to read through this list of names of attendees at the burial ceremony and tell me which ones you know. Or, more to the point, which ones you don’t know.’
‘Shouldn’t you be asking my father this?’
‘I have already done so.’
She cocked her head at him. Exactly like when she was twelve. ‘Covering all angles?’
‘Looking for holes,’ he said.
He handed her a pen. She started skimming through them, ticking the ones she knew with rapid little flicks of the nib. At one point she glanced up at him and found him watching her, but it was when she paused a second time, her forehead wrinkled in an effort of recall, that he smelled a scrap of something meaty. He was about to ask which name had niggled at her, but the door burst open without the customary knock and the moment was lost.
‘Can’t you see, Travert, that I am busy?’
‘Captain, all bloody hell is about to break loose.’
Travert was his sergeant, a man with a penchant for languidness. Not one to panic, not unless he had to, and right now, his cheeks were an odd florid colour. Léon rose to his feet.
‘Excuse me a moment, Eloïse.’
But before he could exit the office, Travert started to spill the emergency news.
‘They’re coming. In coaches,’ he blurted out. ‘Coming here. To demonstrate in Serriac against the air base. Hundreds of the Commie trade union bastards being shipped here, maybe thousands. They’re on their way right now, charging up from the coast and Marseille. They’ve reached Saint-Martin-de-Crau already and—’
‘Enough! Silence, Travert.’
Léon rushed to the door and yelled down the hallway, ‘Get me Monsieur le Maire on the phone. Now!’ He swung back inside the room. ‘Travert, see Mademoiselle Caussade out.’