I slid a hand into the side pocket of the man’s jacket hanging in the wardrobe.
A small cry of pain escaped me. I swore and snatched it back out fast. It felt as though my fingertips had been ripped by a ferret’s teeth and when I looked I saw blood.
‘Bastard,’ I hissed at the suit.
It was charcoal grey with a faint stripe, exquisitely tailored, with a transparent cover over the shoulders to keep off the dust. This was a meticulous man. I twisted a handkerchief around my scarlet fingertips and with the other hand opened up the pocket so that I could peer inside. With care I extracted the contents. It was a wine cork with two razor blades embedded in it. What kind of person carried a weapon like that around? Or was it just to deter pickpockets?
Or perhaps . . . I licked my lips . . . perhaps he knew I was coming.
*
Opening drawers and cupboards, unlocking his suitcase and sticking a suspicious finger into cigarette packets.
‘Come on, Gilles Bertin, you can’t hide forever.’
I rummaged through a waste bin. I stirred the contents of his sugar packet and prodded his coffee beans for anything hidden inside. I upended the seat cushions on his sofa. I crawled under his bed. I peeled back the inner soles of his shoes.
Nothing.
Oh so careful, Gilles Bertin.
That was when I put my fingers in his jacket pocket. The tips of two were neatly slit open. Yet when I searched the rest of the suit, it had nothing to hide. A nasty trick, Gilles Bertin.
The house was pleasant enough, two storeys, tiled floors, plain unobtrusive furniture. But the wardrobe scared me because alongside the jacket with its secret weapon hung four Galeries Lafayette shirts, two black, two white, identical size and style, all normal enough so far. And then one navy-blue shirt. Cheap cotton. Two sizes larger.
It belonged to someone else. And I could only think of one someone else. A man with pale skin and spiky black eyebrows in a straight line above a large nose. Eyes cold as stone. A man whose name was Maurice Piquet, the bastard who’d wanted to rip my cheek off in the hospital. I slammed shut the wardrobe door.
Hurry.
I raced through the rest of my search. Under the mattress, inside the pillowcase. Behind two boring pictures on the wall. A quick check on the underside of seats and tables. In the oven. The bathroom cabinet. Inside the high lavatory cistern and at full stretch I managed to squeeze a hand behind it.
An envelope slid into my hand.
Dislodged from its hiding place behind the cistern. For a second I stared at it, stupefied. Caught by surprise. Like I was caught by surprise by a grey van one night in Paris. I had a bright red flashback of memory to the strings of blood smacking me in the face as I spun upside down in my car. I blinked hard and wished that just for once my memory would tell me lies.
I slumped down on the closed toilet seat and with no warning my body suddenly ached for Léon. To have him here. Beside me. His grey eyes calm. I murmured his name, like honey on my tongue, and then I removed the contents of the envelope.
A bunch of photographs fell on to my lap. Images of aircraft. Landing. Taking off. Taxiing. Fighters parked on the apron. All at Dumoulin Air Base and I had to stifle a whoop of success. On the back of each was written the date and the name of the aircraft: Boeing B-50, F-84 Thunderjet, C-47 Skytrain. Singly and in formation. All taken in the last week with a long lens. I scooped out my Minox camera from my bag and as I set about photographing each one I had a sense of a suffocating fog starting to lift. A light flickered ahead for the first time because in my hand I was cradling proof that Gilles Bertin was gathering Intelligence information for his Soviet masters.
I would go to Léon with it. He would know who to contact. Gilles Bertin would go to prison, where he would be guillotined as a traitor. André would be safe. It would be the end.
My mind clutched on tight to that thought and a bubble of relief began to rise in my chest. I thrust the photographs back in their hiding place and took one last look in each room to see if I’d missed anything.
Afterwards, I wished I hadn’t.
His bed was not flat against the wall. I’d not noticed it before. The wooden bedhead was at a slight angle as though someone had reached behind it. I could have walked out. I should have walked out. Bertin – or, worse, Piquet – might return at any moment and I needed to get away from there fast.
But it was too tempting. I hurried over and yanked the bed away from the wall to see behind it. Taped to the back of the bedhead was a black leather-zipped pouch. A voice in my head told me to back off, to leave it there. Walk away. Don’t touch.
Don’t jump that fence.
Don’t climb that roof.
Don’t take that risk.
Don’t break into a mayor’s desk.
Since when had I listened to that voice?
I snatched the pouch from its position and unzipped it. I felt a twinge of disappointment. Inside lay more photographs and I lifted them out. At least fifty. But these were not of bombers and fighters or anti-aircraft guns.
These were all of me.
*
I stared at myself spread out on the floor. Fifty of me. Time took an odd lurch and I wanted to rewind it, to put it back where it belonged. I couldn’t tell whether it was fear or anger that curdled in my stomach.
There were pictures of me going about my life unawares. Images of me entering the police station with a basket of eggs for Léon, of me perched on the fountain watching the protest march in Serriac, of me striding out of the church with a keen sense of purpose. Me with a scarf over the lower half of my face shovelling the burnt remains of the stables. Me walking Cosette across the yard. And worst of all: me kneeling with blood on my hands and a face twisted by grief beside the body of Mickey in the street.
Me. Again and again.
A darkness spread across the back of my mind. How dare he? How dare Gilles Bertin invade ever y moment of my life?
The close-ups were the worst. My eyes. My scar. My hair. My mouth. I wanted to tear them into a thousand pieces. Too intimate. Too private. Too intense.
Why? Why all these images of me?
Time abruptly clicked back into place and I bundled up all the photographs into a neat pile, hands jittering. I swore long and loud, then put ever ything back the way I’d found it and left the house with a sense of relief. Like coming up for air.
Outside, the sky loomed huge and spectacularly blue over the town of Arles, but in my head lay a darkness I couldn’t shift.
*
‘Eloïse.’
The voice stunned me. I whipped round.
‘Clarisse!’
My boss was sitting, legs elegantly crossed, at a pavement café I had just passed, wearing a st ylish lilac dress and ver y dark sunglasses. Cigarette in one hand, glass in the other, she looked like an exotic bird of paradise in a chicken coop. She was beaming at me, looking pleased with herself.
‘Clarisse, what on earth are you doing in Arles?’
‘I’ve been worried about you, so I popped down. God, you look grim, chérie, and what is that gruesome peasant attire you are wearing?’
I laughed and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘It’s so good to see you, boss.’
She swept me on to a chair next to hers and demanded an immediate coffee and cognac from an overawed waiter.
‘What the devil have you been doing down here, chérie? You look as if you haven’t slept since you left Paris.’
‘That’s because I’m missing being bossed around by you.’
She chuckled and a corner of it trickled into me, slowing my pulse.
‘You, on the other hand,’ I said, ‘are a treat to look at and I hope you aren’t rushing back to Paris. You can stay at the farm if you like.’
She pulled a horrified face, the kind of face that showed her age. ‘Eloïse, I would rather tear out my eyelashes than sleep with bulls.’ She fanned her cheeks with diva distress. ‘No, my sweet, I am booked into the Hôtel Jules César on Boulevard des Lices, so that I don’t have to step over cowpats at breakfast.’
My drink arrived. I skipped the coffee and went straight for the cognac. Clarisse watched me. When I replaced the empty glass, she nodded.
‘You needed that.’
‘I did.’
The heat inside helped. It steadied my hand. The amber liquid was melting the frozen image of the photographs spread out on the floor. My eyes scoured the street for a camera, but I saw none. That meant nothing.
‘A bit jumpy, chérie?’
‘What have you found out, Clarisse, that brings you scuttling down to the land of bulls and mosquitoes the size of a hand-grenade?’
She gave a mock shudder and drew hard on her cigarette. ‘I came to help you.’
‘I know,’ I said softly. ‘I’m grateful.’ I squeezed her hand because I knew she wouldn’t welcome the bear hug I was tempted to give her.
I rose to my feet as she stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Not here in the street,’ I said. ‘Let’s go to your hotel.’
*
‘I’ve done more digging,’ Clarisse announced.
‘By the look of that grin on your face, you hit paydirt.’
‘I don’t grin, chérie. I smile graciously.’
‘Tell me what you found.’
Clarisse ran a satisfied hand over her light-brown hair that was twisted into a sleek coil at her nape. Her green eyes were fierce in a way that belied her indolent manner and I wondered what was coming.
‘It’s your mayor,’ she said. ‘Cousin to Gilles Bertin.’
‘Charles Durand?’
‘Yes. He’s not what he seems.’
‘A smooth-talking money-maker who stands for election on a moderate Socialist ticket.’ I didn’t mention the word ‘blackmailer’.
‘Exactly.’ She sipped her coffee and glanced approvingly around the elegant room with its handsome scrollwork and polished mahogany. ‘Nice hotel. What’s its history?’
‘It used to be a Carmelite convent.’ I shook my head at her. ‘Don’t tease. What is Charles Durand hiding?’
‘It seems he used to be a rabid Communist in his youth and early adulthood.’
‘Really? I’ve never heard that before. He keeps it very quiet.’
Clarisse smiled slyly. ‘Clearly he had a change of heart, a Road-to-Damascus moment, and became a dedicated businessman instead.’
‘Who lends money to farmers at exorbitant rates and when they can’t repay, he repossesses their land and builds on it.’
‘Which he would never do if he were a Communist, would he?’ She paused to blow softly on her coffee. ‘Unless . . .’
Our gazes locked on each other. ‘Unless,’ I finished, ‘he is a sleeper.’