Confession Page 11

  Murat knew he had a good reputation, too. The girls he supplied were class product, once he’d persuaded Jean-Marc to stop passing on his own used goods who were usually so narked they didn’t need any tranquillising. And every trip, the process got smoother: the timings, the drops; keeping the age between fourteen and sixteen – the older they got the harder they were to handle; and encouraging the lads to widen their net rather than concentrate on a single area. Spread the risk, he’d tell them. Wide as you like. He was the only one who kept to city limits – but then he was the boss, and he’d always liked Paris.

  And all that planning and polishing, that attention to detail, had paid off. Until Sunday when the trip had gone shit-sided. A couple of corkers he’d sourced himself in Paris, the pair from Brussels that he’d taken off Bernt and kept in the van till his final take on Carrosses, the two blondes Milo brought in from Vienna, the Dutch girl from Hennie, and the girl with the big tits from Jean-Marc in Zurich. Eight on a single run from Paris to Marseilles, the last three hand-overs in a service station outside Valence, each perfectly timed and seamlessly executed: Jean-Marc first with Big Tits; Milo forty minutes later with the two Austrians; and finally Hennie coming in from Bordeaux. The whole thing over and done with in an hour-twenty. By the time he got to Marseilles, late Saturday night, Xavier was there, waiting to help move them from van to basement, ready for Sunday’s hand-over.

  And every single one of them a honey – from Big Tits to the slim little Austrian with the bleary brown eyes. But out of the eight, it was the last take he’d made, the easy one, who was prettiest. Way out ahead . . .

  He’d met her first in Marseilles, wandering around Le Panier all by herself: long brown legs, that sundress with the spaghetti straps, the espadrilles bound up her legs. He’d seen her up ahead, followed her a couple of blocks then dodged round Montée des Accoules so he was jogging up the steps as she was coming down from place des Moulins. Bang into her, enough to knock her off balance but not put her on the ground. He’d apologised, picked up her bag and parcels, passed them to her. Asked if she was okay? He was so sorry . . . how clumsy . . . And then he’d looked at her and switched on his smile. That’s all it took. The smile, the care, the consideration, the offer of a coffee, the least he could do . . . He’d played the same tune so many times, it was second nature. First nature, if there was such a thing. Had to be. Just . . . a part of him now.

  It was over coffee that he’d learned she lived in Paris. Such a coincidence. He was at the university there. Studying fine art. The Sorbonne. They should meet up, have another coffee maybe, go visit a gallery? A date was made. And so it had started.

  That was how Murat liked to work it sometimes. No snatch, no bundling of bodies into the back of his Renault van. With his looks and his charm, he simply hooked them, made them fall for him. And then all he had to do was wait for them to come calling. But Elodie had been a tight little thing. In love with love, but not the mechanics. Une vraie pucelle. Happy to hold hands and kiss, but when he’d tried anything more she’d closed him out. Told him she wanted to wait. For the right moment. Which just happened to be in the service-station car park outside Valence on Saturday night. Not that she knew anything about it. When the Promazyl he’d added to her Orangina finally took her out, he hadn’t wasted a minute getting his hands inside her T-shirt to check out the goods. Up with the bra and two little cherries that puckered to the touch and tasted warm. Right there in the front of the van. And Bernt’s girls, and that Lucienne he picked up at the fairground in Clichy, all of them right there in the back of the van the whole time. He’d have finished her off then and there, in the Valence service station, right in the cabin of the Renault van, if Jean-Marc hadn’t turned up early with the Zurich girl.

  Still, he hadn’t moved her on yet so there was still time. If there was one good thing to come out of the current fuck-up with the Spaniard and the dockers’ strike, it was surely the prospect of popping that one’s little locket. Dealer’s perk, he thought, and he felt himself stir. Tonight maybe, after his mother went to bed. Pull her out from the basement and have some fun. Give her a bath, maybe. Tidy her up. Take some time over it.

  Murat took another sniff of the plastic tablecloth and raised his head from his forearms. Time to call Xavier, he decided, and see what luck he was having with the tranqs. He reached for the phone again and dialled the number, watching his mother as he did so, yellow washing-up gloves flapping around her bony elbows as she scoured away at a spotlessly clean casserole dish. Time to move her on.

  ‘So what happened to my coffee, Maman?’ he asked, knowing it would take another couple of requests before she finally got the message.

  ‘What coffee, P’tit?’ A troubled expression slid over his mother’s features. And then the frown was gone and a smile took its place. ‘You’d like a coffee? Is that what you said? Shall I make you one? Your favourite milky coffee? Just the way you like it?’

  Turning back to the sink, she started up her humming again just as Xavier came on the line.

  ‘Any news?’ asked Murat.

  28

  DESPITE THE SNORING AND THE farting and the raucous throat-clearing from the two Malays who had turned in first, the dormitory in Auberge des Vagues that Jacquot had been directed to the night before had provided a surprisingly good night’s sleep. The metal-framed single bed with its sawdust and horse-hair mattress, hard pillow, rough sheets and thin blankets – tightly tucked between mattress and creaking springs – had put him down as deeply as any anaesthetic. Like his orphanage bed, and barrackroom bed – a hollow, comforting tube to slide into.

  Nor had he been expecting such a fine and bracing breakfast, served in a windowless low-beamed basement beneath reception. A basket of torn petit pain and warm croissants, tubs of Isigny butter and home-made preserves, freshly squeezed juice, scrambled eggs, a slice of ham as thick as the plate and as much coffee as he could drink, all delivered with a swift but disinterested ‘Voilà, m’sieu’ by a thinner version of the concierge. It was better than most of the breakfasts they served in hotels along the Vieux Port, Jacquot decided, against a low hum of conversation from a dozen or so tables set around the room, the rustle of newspapers, the scratch of a match, raised voices and a laugh from the table beside them. And, because he was sitting next to Franco, the meal was topped off with a liberal dose of Calva to wash it all down. By the time he lit up his first cigarette, Jacquot felt like a king.

  Franco had been the only other Frenchman in the top-floor dormitory, stretched out on his bed when Jacquot pushed open the door, ankles crossed, both hands cradling a leather-covered Bible. He had a thick broken nose, faded blue eyes and wine-red cheeks. He looked like a drunk, but there was a quiet, scholarly air about him, too, as though his being a sailor was the result of some long-ago misdirection. As well as Franco and the big-bellied Malays, there were two Germans, stripped down to vests and shorts: one playing Solitaire on his bed, the other doing pull-ups on an exposed beam in the dormitory’s roof. The room was warm and snug, and smelled of old clothes, sweat and disinfectant, the rain rattling fitfully against two windows in the roof and another two looking down over the street.

  The only free bed was next to Franco’s, the blue blankets, thin sheets and single pillowslip set out in a neat pile on the bare mattress, each with Maison des Marins stamped across it in faded red letters. By the time he’d made the bed and stowed his bag, Franco had dropped the Bible back in his bedside table drawer and declared it ‘toute merde’, followed by a once-over glance at the new arrival: Jacquot. As the beam-pressing German dropped to the floor with bent knees and spread arms, Franco swung his stockinged feet off the bed and started up with the preliminaries. Where was Jacquot from? Which ships? Which line? Which routes?

  Rotterdam, he replied, trying to make his french sound a little less Marseillaise, a little more clipped and guttural. Mayovsky Star, Crasnova, Russo-Line, Murmansk to Archangel. Industrial piping, motor parts, he added, remembering the last few posting
s from his log.

  ‘Toute merde,’ was Franco’s considered take on this information, just as it had been with the Bible. Those Russians, he said. And Archangel . . . just a shithole in the snow. No wonder Jacquot had decided to come south. Except, of course, there was no work right now. The Germans, Franco told him, nodding at the gymnast and the card sharp, were off down to Fos the following day before the strike reached any further along the coast, the Malays were headed for Genoa, and he himself was taking the train up to Cherbourg to await an Atlantic crossing. Christmas in New York, Miami, maybe Houston.

  It was over their breakfast café-Calvas that Jacquot started asking questions of his own, lightly, just in passing.

  ‘Dis-moi, how long do you suppose the strike will last?’ he began, as though he was maybe reconsidering his options.

  Franco shrugged. ‘Écoute . . . these are the boys who started the Revolution, remember? Marseillais to a man. Stubborn bastards, every one of them. So it’s reasonable to assume that they’ll stick it out no matter how long it takes. But they’re greedy too, these Marseillais dockers. And it’s the wrong season for striking. After a week standing around in the rain with their bullhorns and their banners, they’ll be dousing the braziers and heading back to work, you can take my word on that. But Marseilles is finished anyway, you ask me. And they know it too. Just squeezing what they can out of the old sow while the going’s good. Few years time it’ll just be ferries to the islands, and all the traffic heading for Fos. So what’s your plan? Where you heading?’

  ‘Down south for me – Cape Town, Brazil. See out the winter in sunshine.’

  Franco grunted, brought out his flask and splashed more liquor into their coffee mugs.

  ‘Trouble is you never know your cargo . . . know what I mean?’ said Jacquot, tipping his mug against Franco’s.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ he said. ‘Two weeks in Genoa, couldn’t leave the ship . . . not once . . . ’cos the fucking skipper’s carrying.’

  ‘Drugs? Girls?’

  ‘Drugs. No one bring girls in to this coast. From here it’s just outward bound. Just the routes you’re planning on.’

  ‘Anything I should watch out for? If I decide to stay on and wait out the strike?’

  ‘There’s a dozen shipping agents down on those wharves and when the strike’s done they’ll be screaming for crew. But some’re better than others.’

  ‘Any names?’

  ‘Poseidon’s good, down on Chamant. Guy in charge’s called Yionnedes. Or there’s Med-Mer on Arenc, Sud-Agence same spot – bouf, there’s plenty down there.’

  ‘And the no-nos?’

  Franco fixed a look on Jacquot, as though weighing him up. ‘There’s a couple of Lebanese and a Spanish outfit on Chamant who don’t smell too healthy when the sun comes out. Otherwise . . .’ He shrugged, gave Jacquot another long cool look, then screwed the top back on his flask of Calva and pushed himself away from the table. ‘Alors,’ he said, getting to his feet, looking round the room. ‘Time to go.’ Then, turning back to Jacquot, he put his hands on the table top and leaned in close. ‘A word to the wise, mon ami. I shouldn’t go saying too much about Archangel – not with a tan like yours. Someone might start to think you’re not the man you say you are. And for a low-lander the accent’s crap, too. Toute merde.’

  He straightened back up, smiling. ‘Whoever you are, Jan Muller, I just hope you make it home safe.’

  29

  ARSÈNE CABRILLE EASED HIMSELF FROM his mistress’s perfumed bed and made his way slowly and carefully through the warm curtained gloom to the bathroom. He felt light-headed and unsure of his balance, reaching for the bed post and the back of a chair as though he’d just stepped off some wild fairground ride. He knew what that meant and he raged at the injustice of it. Which made his head spin even more.

  Closing the door quietly, so as not to disturb his sleeping mistress, he switched on the light and put out a hand for the vanity top, seeing an old man appear before him in the mirror, an old man in red silk pyjamas, with a scrawny brown neck, grey stubbled chin and a ruffled wisp of silvery hair rising from a liver-spotted scalp.

  Without thinking, he raised a hand to brush down the hair and felt himself swing away from the mirror as though the floor had tilted beneath his feet like a storm-tossed deck. Quickly he got his hand back to the vanity top and held on tightly until the feeling passed.

  What had happened in his sleep? he wondered. What fresh little horror had visited itself on him? He felt it and saw it at the same time: a leaden tightness in his left cheek as though the muscles had shrunk, his mouth open and twisted slightly to the right. He tried to work his lips, but the muscles didn’t respond. All he achieved was a soundless snarl. He tried to speak, to say his name, to see if speech might kick-start some response. But the lips didn’t move to accommodate the sounds and his tongue flapped like a sail luffing in the wind. ‘Arshen, Arshen, Arshen . . .’ was all he could manage.

  Merde, he thought, knowing he’d never be able to say the word properly. That ‘m’ sound was sure to defeat him. You couldn’t say ‘merde’ without putting your lips together. But try as he may, there was no way he was going to pull off that little trick, not with his numbed lips and tongue, and he felt a burst of impotent frustration.

  Sometime in the night, he’d had a stroke. He knew it. It wasn’t the first, but he knew it was the worst so far. In the weeks or months to come, its effects would either get better by themselves, or he would be stuck with them. Like his drooping left eyelid. That hadn’t gone away. Tant pis. At least he was still alive.

  There was a light tap at the bathroom door. His mistress, Cous-Cous.

  ‘Tout va bien, chéri?’ she called to him.

  ‘Call ’irginie,’ he replied, a scared old man staring back at him from the mirror. ‘Call ’irginie.’

  The effort to get the words out filled his mouth with saliva. Without his being able to stop it, a stream of it leaked between his parted lips and spilled down his chin.

  He couldn’t even say his daughter’s name.

  30

  JACQUOT COULD HAVE KICKED HIMSELF. A tan on a White Sea run? According to the log that Madame Bonnefoy had provided, which he’d checked when he got back to the dormitory, Jan Muller had done two round trips between Murmansk and Archangel in the last nine weeks, and before that had been sailing between Bergen and Hamburg. No way was he going to pick up a suntan on routes like that. And in just a few short hours, Franco had seen right through him. He’d have to get Madame Bonnefoy to find him some warmer routes; in the meantime he’d keep his log to himself and rely on his identity and union cards. And hope the shipping agents he planned calling on weren’t as quick or as sharp as Franco.

  Now, hunching his shoulders against the rain and digging his hands into his pockets, Jacquot headed down to the port, turning on to Boulevard Cambrai and looking for a way to cross the old coast road. Finally he found an underpass that was scrawled with graffiti and ankle-deep in litter-strewn rainspill, and came out the other side just fifty metres short of the Chamant gates. Huddled under a stretch of green tarpaulin which they’d rigged to the railings as protection from the rain, four strikers stood guard at the dock’s entrance, warming themselves around a spitting brazier. On the other side of the entrance, a pair of gendarmes kept watch on proceedings, relying for protection on their capes and plastic-wrapped képis.

  Jacquot was just wondering how he was going to negotiate the approaching obstacle – the strike crew and the cops – when he heard a lorry swish up behind him, pass by in a cloud of wheel-spray and turn in at the dock gates. There was a flurry of movement as air brakes eased the rig to a final stop and Jacquot could hear voices raised over the rain. Taking advantage of the distraction, he came round the back of the lorry and saw the two flics talking to the driver through the open passenger door.

  Jacquot darted towards the gate and thought he was through when one of the képis turned away from the cab and called him back.

&nbs
p; ‘Papiers, s’il vous plaît, monsieur.’

  Jacquot dug for the relevant documents and handed them over. The képi flicked through them, checked photo to face, and then checked it again.

  ‘You have had a haircut, monsieur. It makes identity difficult.’

  Good, thought Jacquot. That’s why he’d done it. He shrugged, just the one shoulder, as though it didn’t concern him. So what?

  ‘What is your business here?’ asked the gendarme, still holding Jacquot’s papers, the rain spattering off the plastic wrap on his képi.

  ‘Shipping offices. Need to sign on. See if there’s any crew needed,’ he replied, holding out his hand for the return of his papers.

  The gendarme glanced at the outstretched hand, flicked through the papers one last time, then passed them over. ‘Through the gate and on your right,’ he said, looking over Jacquot’s shoulder as the lorry driver worked his revs, released his brakes and started to back away from the dock gates.

  Jacquot tucked away his papers, gave the gendarme a half-salute and slipped past him through the gate.