The French Confection (6 page)

He knew he’d beaten me. “Go back to Le Chat Gris and wait for further instructions,” he said. “Don’t worry about the bill. I will see to it.”

“And what if we get killed?” I asked.

“My department will pay for the funeral too.”

I sank back in my chair. There was nothing I could say. Not in French. Not in English. It really wasn’t fair.

And that was how we found ourselves, a few hours later, back in our room at Le Chat Gris. As I’d walked back into the hotel, I’d known how those French aristocrats must have felt as they took their last steps towards the guillotine. The receptionist had almost fallen off his chair when he saw us and he’d been on the telephone before we’d reached the lift. The Mad American would have presumed we were dead. Now he’d know he was wrong. How long would it take him to correct his mistake?

Tim sat down on the bed. He was actually looking quite cheerful, which made me feel even worse. “Maybe this isn’t so bad, Nick,” he said.

“Tim!” I cried. “How bad can it get?”

“We’re working for the French police now,” he said. “This could be good for business!
Tim
Diamond Inc … London and Paris
. That’ll look good on the door.”

“It’ll look even better on your gravestone,” I said. “Don’t you understand, Tim? We’re not working for anyone! Christien Moire was lying through his teeth!”

“You mean … he isn’t a policeman?”

“Of course he’s a policeman. But he doesn’t want us to work for him. He’s using us!” I’d taken a guidebook of Paris out of my case. Now I sat down next to Tim. “Moire wants to find out the identity of the Mad American,” I explained. “What’s the best way to do that?”

“Just ask for Tim Diamond…”

“Just
use
Tim Diamond. He’s sent us back here because he knows that our turning up again will panic the Mad American. He’s already tried to kill us twice. He’s certain to try again – and this time Moire will be watching. He’s using us as bait in a trap, Tim. The Mad American kills us. Moire gets the Mad American. It’s as simple as that.”

I opened the guidebook. “I’m not sitting here, waiting to be shot,” I said.

“Where do you want to be shot?” Tim asked.

“I don’t want to be shot anywhere! That’s why I’m going to find the Mad American before he finds us.” I started to thumb through the pages. I still didn’t know what I was looking for, but I had a good idea. “After we were knocked out, we were taken to the Mad American’s headquarters,” I said.

“But we were knocked out!” Tim said. “We didn’t see anything.”

“We didn’t see much,” I agreed. “But there were some clues. A blue star. Some words in a shop window – T
HE
F
RENCH
C
ONFECTION
. And when we were tied up, I heard something. Music. Singing.”

“Do you think that was the Mad American?”

“No, Tim. It was coming from a building nearby.” I stopped, trying to remember what I had heard. “It wasn’t French singing,” I said. “It was different… It was foreign.”

Sitting next to me on the bed, Tim was making a strange noise. I thought for a moment that he had stomach-ache. Then I realized he was trying to hum the tune.

“That’s right, Tim,” I said. “It was something like that. Only a bit more human.”

Tim stopped. I tried to think. How had the singing gone? It had been sad and somehow dislocated. A choir and a single male voice. At times it had been more like wailing than singing. Remembering it now made me think of a church. Was that it? Had it been religious music? But if so, what religion?

I’m not sure what happened first. The thought seemed to come into my mind at exactly the same moment as I found myself looking at the words
The Jewish Quarter
in the guidebook in my hands.

“Jewish music!” I exclaimed.

“Jewish?”

“The music that we heard, Tim. It was coming from a synagogue!”

Tim’s eyes lit up. “You think we were taken to Jerusalem?”

“No, Tim. We were in Paris. But there’s an area of Paris that’s full of synagogues.” I waved the book at him. “Le Marais. That’s what it’s called. The Jewish sector of Paris…”

“But how big is it?” Tim asked.

I read the page in front of me:

There was a map showing the area. It only had a couple of dozen roads. “It doesn’t look too big,” I said. “And at least we know what we’re looking for. The French Confection.”

“But what
is
The French Confection, Nick?”

“I think it must be a shop. Maybe it sells cakes or sweets or something. But once we’ve found it, we’ll know we’re right next to the factory. Find the sign and we’ll have found the Mad American.”

“And then?”

“Then we call Moire.”

We slipped out of Le Chat Gris down the fire escape, dodging past Moire’s men who were waiting for us at the front of the hotel. Then we dived into the nearest Metro station and headed north.

It was a short walk from the station to the start of Le Marais – the Place Vendôme, one of those Paris squares where even the trees manage to look expensive. From there we headed down towards a big, elegant building that turned out to be the Picasso museum. I’d studied Picasso at school. He’s the guy who painted women with eyes in the sides of their necks and tables with legs going the wrong way. It’s called surrealism. Maybe I should have taken Tim in, as he’s pretty surreal himself. But we didn’t have time.

We backtracked and found ourselves in a series of long, narrow streets with buildings rising five storeys on both sides. But I knew we were on the right track. There was no singing, but here and there I saw blue stars – the same stars I had glimpsed as I was bundled into the van. I knew what it was now: the six-pointed Star of David. There was one in every kosher food store and restaurant in the area.

We’d been following the Rue des Rosiers – the one I’d read about in the guidebook – but with no sign of the building where we’d been held. So now we started snaking up and down, taking the first on the right and the next on the left and so on. It was a pretty enough part of Paris, I’ll say that for it. Tim had even forgotten our mission and stopped once or twice to take photographs. We’d been chased and threatened at knife-point. We’d been kidnapped, drugged and threatened again – this time by the French police. And he
still
thought we were on holiday!

And then, suddenly, we were there.

It was on one of the main streets of the area – the Rue de Sevigny. I recognized it at once: the burnt face of the building, the broken windows, the ugly chimney stacks… And there was the archway that we had driven through. There was a courtyard on the other side which was where the white van had been parked. I stood there in the sunlight, with people strolling past on the pavements, some carrying shopping bags, others pushing prams. And none of them knew. The biggest drug factory in Paris was right in front of them, just sitting there between a café and a cake shop, right in the middle of the Marais. I couldn’t believe I had found it so easily. It was hard to believe it was there at all.

“Nick…!” Tim whispered.

I grabbed hold of him and pulled him down behind a parked car as Bastille and Lavache appeared, coming out of the front door and walking across the courtyard. Each of them had a heavy box in their hands. Another shipment on its way out! It made me angry that anyone should be dumb enough to want to buy drugs and angrier still that these two grim reapers would be getting richer by selling them.

“What do we do now?” Tim whispered.

“Now we call Moire,” I said.

“Right!” Tim straightened up. “Let’s ask in there!”

Before I could stop him he had walked across the pavement and into the cake shop. There was the sign in the window that I had seen from the van. T
HE
F
RENCH
C
ONFECTION
. Why did the name bother me? Why did I feel it was connected with something or someone I had seen? It was too late to worry about it now. Tim was already inside. I followed him in.

I found myself in a long, narrow shop with a counter running down one wall. Everywhere I looked there were cakes and croissants, bowls of coloured almonds and tiny pots of jam. The very air smelt of sugar and flour. On the counter stood one of the tallest wedding cakes I had ever seen: six platforms of swirly white icing with a marzipan bride and groom looking air-sick up on the top. There was a bead curtain at the back and now it rattled as the owner of the shop passed through, coming out to serve us. And of course I knew her. I’d met her on the train.

Erica Nice.

She stopped behind the counter, obviously as surprised to see us as we were to see her.

“You…!” she began.

“Mrs Nice!” Tim gurgled. I wondered how he had managed to remember her name. “We need to use your telephone. To call the police.”

“I don’t think so, Tim,” I said.

Even as I spoke I was heading back towards the door. But I was already too late. Erica’s hand came up and this time it wasn’t holding an almond slice. It was the biggest gun I’d ever seen. Bigger than the wrinkled hand that held it. Its muzzle was as ugly as the smile on the old woman’s face.

“But … but … but…” Tim stared.

“Erica Nice,” I said. “I suppose I should have guessed. Madame Erica Nice. Say it fast and what do you get?”

“Madamericanice?” Tim suggested.

“Mad American,” I said. “She’s the one behind the drug racket, Tim. When we met her, she must have been checking the route. That’s why she was on the train. And that’s how Bastille and Lavache knew we were in Paris.”

Erica Nice snarled at us. “Yes,” she said. “I have to travel on the train now and then to keep an eye on things. Like that idiot steward – Marc Chabrol. He was scared. And scared people are no use to me.”

“So you pushed him under a train,” I said.

She shrugged. “I would have preferred to stab him. I did have my knitting needles, but unfortunately I was halfway through a woollen jumper. Pushing was easier.”

“And what now?” I asked. I wondered if she was going to shoot us herself or call her two thugs to finish the job for her. At the same time, I took a step forward, edging my way towards the counter and the giant wedding cake.

“Those idiots – Jacques and Luc – should have got rid of you when they had the chance,” Erica hissed. “This time they will make no mistakes.”

She turned to press a switch set in the wall. Presumably it connected the shop with the factory next door.

I leapt forward and threw my entire weight against the cake.

Erica half turned. The gun came up.

The door of the shop burst open, the glass smashing.

And as Erica Nice gave a single shrill scream and disappeared beneath about ten kilograms of wedding cake, Christien Moire and a dozen gendarmes hurled themselves into the shop. At the same time, I heard the blare of sirens as police cars swerved into the road from all directions.

I turned to Moire. “You followed us here?”

Moire nodded. “Of course. I had men on all sides of the hotel.”

Erica Nice groaned and tried to fight her way out of several layers of sponge, jam and butter cream. Tim leaned forward and scooped up a fragment of white icing. He popped it into his mouth.

“Nice cake,” he said.

The next day, Christien Moire drove us up to Calais and personally escorted us onto the ferry. It would have been easier to have taken the train, of course. But somehow Tim and I had had enough of trains.

It had been a good week for Moire. Jacques Bastille and Luc Lavache had both been arrested. So had Erica Nice. The drug factory had been closed down and more arrests were expected. No wonder Moire wanted us out of the way. He was looking forward to promotion and maybe the Croix de Guerre or whatever medal French heroes get pinned to their right nipple. The last thing Moire needed was Tim and me hanging around to tell people the part we had played.

Moire stopped at the quay and handed us our tickets as well as a packed lunch for the crossing. “France is in your debt,” he said, solemnly, and before either of us could stop him he had grabbed hold of Tim and planted a kiss on both cheeks.

Tim went bright red. “I know I cracked the case,” he muttered. “But let’s not get
too
friendly…”

“It’s just the French way,” I said. Even so, I made sure I shook hands with Moire. I didn’t want him getting too close.

“I wish you a good journey, my friends,” Moire said. “And this time, perhaps you will be careful what you say while you are on the ship!”

“We won’t be saying anything,” I promised. I’d bought Tim a Tintin book at the harbour bookstall. He could read that on the way home.

Moire smiled.
“Au revoir,”
he said.

“Where?” Tim asked. I’d have to translate it for him later.

We were about halfway home, this time chopping up and down on the Channel, when Tim suddenly looked up from the Tintin book. “You know,” he said. “We never did find out how Erica Nice was smuggling the drugs on the train.”