The French Confection (2 page)

“I have to talk to you, Monsieur,” he rasped. He was speaking in English, the words as uncomfortable in his mouth as somebody else’s false teeth. “Tonight. At eleven o’clock. There is a café in the sixth
arrondisement
. It is called La Palette…”

“That’s very nice of you,” Tim said. He seemed to think that Chabrol was inviting us out for a drink.

“Beware of the mad American!” The steward whispered the words as if he were too afraid to speak them aloud. “The mad American…!”

He was about to add something but then his face changed again. He seemed to freeze as if his worst nightmare had just come true. I glanced left and right but if there was someone he had recognized in the crowd, I didn’t see them.
“Oh mon Dieu!”
he whispered. He seized Tim’s hand and pressed something into the palm. Then he turned and staggered away.

Tim opened his hand. He was holding a small blue envelope with a gold star printed on the side. I recognized it at once. It was a sachet of sugar from the train. “What was all that about?” Tim asked.

I took the sugar and examined it. I thought he might have written something on it – a telephone number or something. But it was just a little bag of sugar. I slipped it into my back pocket. “I don’t know…” I said. And I didn’t. Why should the steward have left us with a spoonful of sugar? Why did he want to meet us later that night? What was going on?

“Funny people, the French,” Tim said.

Ten minutes later, we were still at the Gare du Nord. The money that Bestlé had given us was in English pounds and pence. We needed euros and that meant queuing up at the Bureau de Change. The queue was a long one and it seemed to be moving at a rate of one euro per hour.

We had just reached the window when we heard the scream.

It was like no sound I had ever heard, thin and high and horribly final. The station was huge and noisy but the scream cut through the crowd like a scalpel. Everybody stopped and turned to see where it had come from. Even Tim heard it. “Oh dear,” he said. “It sounds like someone has stepped on a cat.”

Tim changed thirty pounds, and taking the money we moved in the direction of the Metro. Already a police car had arrived and several uniformed gendarmes were hurrying towards the trains. I strained to hear what the crowd was saying. They were speaking French, of course. That didn’t make it any easier.

“What’s happened?”

“It’s terrible. Somebody has fallen under a train.”

“It was a steward. He was on the train from London. He fell off a platform.”

“Is he hurt?”

“He’s dead. Crushed by a train.”

I heard all of it. I understood some of it. I didn’t like any of it. A steward? Off the London train? Somehow I didn’t need to ask his name.

“Tim,” I asked. “What’s the French for murder?”

Tim shrugged. “Why do you want to know?”

“I don’t know.” I stepped onto the escalator and allowed it to carry me down. “I’ve just got a feeling it’s something we’re going to need.”

Le Chat Gris was in the Latin quarter, a dark, busy area on the south side of the River Seine. Here the streets were full of students and the smell of cheap food. It was a small, narrow building, wedged between an art gallery and a café. A metal cat, more rusty than grey, hung over the main entrance and there were brightly coloured flowers in the front windows. On closer inspection they turned out to be made of plastic.

The reception area was so small that if you went in too quickly you’d be out the other side. There was a receptionist standing behind the desk which was just as well as there wasn’t enough room for a chair. He was an old man, at least sixty, with a crumpled face and something terribly wrong with his eyes. When he looked at our passports he had to hold them up beside his ear. He took our names, then sent us to a room on the fifth floor. Fortunately there was a lift but it wasn’t much bigger than a telephone box. Tim and I stood shoulder to shoulder with our cases as it creaked and trembled slowly up. Next time, I decided, I’d take the stairs.

The truth was that Bestlé hadn’t been too generous with the accommodation. Our room was built into the roof with wooden beams that sloped down at strange angles. It made me think of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. You needed a hunched back to avoid hitting your head on the ceiling. There were two beds, a single window with a view over the other rooftops, a chest of drawers and a bathroom too small to take a bath.

“Which bed do you want?” I asked.

“This one!” Tim threw himself onto the bed next to the window. There was a loud “ping” as several of the springs snapped. I sat down, more carefully, on the other bed. It felt like the duvet wasn’t just filled with goose feathers, but they’d also left in half the goose.

We dumped our luggage and went out. This was, after all, Thursday morning and we only had until Sunday afternoon. Back in the reception area, the receptionist was talking to a new arrival. This was a square-shouldered man with narrow eyes and black, slicked-back hair. He was wearing an expensive, charcoal grey suit. Both of them stopped when they saw us. I dropped the key with a clunk.

“Merci,” I said.

Neither of the men said anything. Maybe it was my accent.

There was a mirror next to the front door and but for that I wouldn’t have noticed what happened next. But as Tim and I made our way out, the man in the grey suit reached out and took my key, turning it round so that he could read the number. He was interested in us. That was for sure. His eyes, empty of emotion, were still scrutinizing us as the door swung shut and we found ourselves in the street.

First the death of the steward on the train. Then the last whispered warning:
“Beware the mad American!”
And now this. There was a nasty smell in the air and already I knew it wasn’t just French cheese.

“Which way, Nick?” Tim was waiting for me, holding a camera. He had already taken three photographs of the hotel, a streetlamp and a post-box and he was waiting for me in the morning sunlight. I wondered if he had remembered to put in a film.

I thought for a moment. I was probably being stupid. We were here in Paris for the weekend and nothing was going to happen. I couldn’t even be sure that it really was Marc Chabrol who had fallen under the train. “Let’s try down there,” I said, pointing down the street.

“Good idea,” Tim agreed as he turned the other way.

What can I tell you about Paris? I’m no travel writer. I’m not crazy about writing and I can’t usually afford to travel. But anyway…

Paris is a big city full of French people. It’s a lot prettier than London and for that matter so are the people. They’re everywhere: in the street-side cafés, sipping black coffee from thimble-sized cups, strolling along the Seine in their designer sunglasses, snapping at each other on the bridges through eighteen inches of the latest Japanese lens. The streets are narrower than in London and looking at the traffic you get the feeling that war has broken out. There are cars parked everywhere. On the streets and on the pavements. Actually, it’s hard to tell which cars are parked and which ones are just stuck in the traffic jams. But the strange thing is that nobody seems to be in a hurry. Life is just a big jumble that moves along at its own pace and if you’re in a hurry to leave then maybe you should never have come there in the first place.

That first day, Tim and I did the usual tourist things. We went up the Eiffel Tower. Tim fainted. So we came down again. We went to the cathedral of Notre Dame and I took a picture of Tim and another of a gargoyle. I just hoped that when I got them developed I’d remember which was which. We went up the Champs Elysées and down the Jardin des Tuileries. By lunch-time, my stomach was rumbling. So, more worryingly, were my feet.

We had an early supper at a brasserie overlooking another brasserie. That’s another thing about Paris. There are brasseries everywhere. Tim ordered two ham sandwiches, a beer for him and a Coke for me. Then I ordered them again using words the waiter understood. The sandwiches arrived: twenty centimetres of bread, I noticed, but only ten centimetres of ham.

“This is the life, eh, Nick?” Tim sighed as he sipped his beer.

“Yes, Tim,” I said. “And this is the bill.”

Tim glanced at it and swallowed his beer the wrong way. “Ten euros!” he exclaimed. “That’s … that’s…!” He frowned. “How much is that?”

“A euro’s worth about seven old francs,” I explained. “It’s about seventy pence. So the bill is about seven quid.”

Tim shook his head. “I hate this new money,” he said.

“I know,” I agreed. “Because you haven’t got any.”

We were walking back in the direction of the hotel when it happened. We were in one of those quiet, antique streets near the Seine when two men appeared, blocking our way. The first was in his forties, tall and slim, wearing a white linen suit that was so crumpled and dirty, it hung off him like a used paper bag. He was one of the ugliest men I had ever seen. He had green eyes, a small nose and a mouth like a knife wound. None of these were in quite the right place. It was as if his whole face had been drawn by a six-year-old child.

His partner was about twenty years younger with the body of an ape and, if the dull glimmer in his eyes was anything to go by, a brain to match. He was wearing jeans and a leather jacket and smoking a cigarette. I guessed he was a body-builder. He had muscles bulging everywhere and a neck that somehow managed to be wider than his head. His hair was blonde and greasy. He had fat lips and a tiny beard sprouting out of the middle of his chin.

“Good evening,” White Suit said in perfect English. His voice came out like a whisper from a punctured balloon. “My name is Bastille. Jacques Bastille. My friend’s name is Lavache. I wonder if I might speak with you.”

“If you want to know the way, don’t ask us!” Tim replied. “We’re lost too.”

“I’m not lost. Oh, no.” Bastille smiled, revealing teeth the colour of French mustard. “No. But I want to know what he told you. I want to know what you know.”

Tim turned to me, puzzled.

“What exactly do you mean?” I asked.

“The steward on the train. What did he tell you?” There was a pause. Then … “Lavache!”

Bastille nodded and his partner produced what looked like a little model of that famous statue, the Venus de Milo. You know the one. The naked woman with no arms that stands somewhere in the Louvre.

“No thank you,” Tim began. “We’re not…”

Lavache pressed a button and ten centimetres of razor-sharp metal sprang out of the head of the statue. It was a neat trick. I don’t think the real statue ever did that.

Tim stared at it.

“Where is it?” Bastille demanded.

“Your friend’s holding it in his hand!” Tim gasped.

“Not the knife!
Sacré bleu!
Are all the English such idiots? I am talking about the object. The item that you were given this morning at the Gare du Nord.”

“I wasn’t given anything!” Tim wailed.

“It’s true,” I said, even though I knew that it wasn’t.

Bastille blinked heavily. “You’re lying.”

“No, we’re not,” Tim replied. “Cross my heart and hope to…”

“Tim!” I interrupted.

“Kill them both!” Bastille snapped.

They really did mean to kill us there and then in that quiet Paris street. Lavache lifted the knife, his stubby fingers curving around the base, a bead of saliva glistening at the corner of his mouth. I glanced back, wondering if we could run. But it was hopeless. We’d be cut down before we could take a step.

“The older one first,” Bastille commanded.

“That’s him!” Tim said, pointing at me.

“Tim!” I exclaimed.

The knife hovered between us.

But then suddenly a party of American tourists turned the corner – about twenty of them, following a guide who was holding an umbrella with a Stars and Stripes attached to the tip. They were jabbering excitedly as they descended on us. There was nothing Bastille and Lavache could do. Suddenly they were surrounded, and realizing this was our only chance I grabbed hold of Tim and moved away, keeping a wall of American tourists between us and our attackers. Only when we’d come to the top of the street where it joined the wide and busy Boulevard St Michel did we break away and run.

But the two killers weren’t going to let us get away quite so easily. I glanced back and saw them pushing their way through the crowd. Bastille shoved out a hand and one of the tourists, an elderly woman, shrieked and fell backwards into a fountain. Several of the other tourists stopped and took photographs of her. Bastille stepped into the road. A car swerved to avoid him and crashed into the front of a restaurant. Two lobsters and a plateful of mussels were sent flying. Someone screamed.

It still wasn’t dark. The streets were full of people on their way to restaurants, too wrapped up in their own affairs to notice two English visitors running for their lives. I had no idea where I was going and I wasn’t going to stop and ask for directions. I grabbed Tim again and steered him up an alleyway with dozens more restaurants on both sides. A waiter in a long white apron, carrying several trays laden with plates and glasses, stepped out in front of me. There was no way I could avoid him. There was a strangled cry, then a crash.

“Excusez-moi!”
Tim burbled.

Fortunately, I didn’t know enough French to understand the waiter’s reply.

The alleyway brought us back to the Seine. I could see Notre Dame in the distance. Only a few hours before we had been standing on one of its towers, enjoying the view. How could our holiday have become a nightmare so quickly?

“This way, Tim!” I shouted.

I pulled him across a busy street, cars screeching to a halt, horns blaring. A gendarme turned round to face us, a whistle clenched between his teeth, his hands scrabbling for his gun. I swear he would have shot us except that we were already on the other side of the road and a few seconds later Bastille had reached him, brutally pushing him out of the way. The unfortunate gendarme spun round and collided with a cyclist. Both of them collapsed in a tangle of rubber and steel. The last I saw of the gendarme, he had got back to his feet and was shouting at us, making a curious, high-pitched noise. Evidently he had swallowed his whistle which had now got lodged in his throat.