The Dying Minutes Page 3

  Turning back to the case he pulled out the other bar, similarly weighty, similarly scuffed and stamped, and laid it beside the first with a hefty clunk. A dozen kilos each bar, he estimated. At what? Say, sixteen hundred francs an ounce? He reached for his calculator, tapped out the figures. Tapped them out again, just to be sure, then sat back in his chair with a dazed look on his face, wide eyes fixed on the two gold bars, sitting there on his desk, seeming to suck in the light from his desk lamp.

  With a long disbelieving sigh, he pushed them aside and reached back into the case. One by one he lifted out half a dozen linen drawstring bags and lined them up on the desk. He untied the first and dumped out its contents. Wads of banknotes bound in paper collars and rubber bands, each wad as thick as a paperback. He did the same with the next five bags, also filled with bound bundles of banknotes, each bag a different currency: francs, dollars, Swiss francs, sterling, lire, deutschmarks. Each bundle a high denomination. The francs were green, Marie Curies, 500 a note. The US dollars bore the image of Ben Franklin – 100 dollars apiece. Some of the denominations – the dollars and Swiss francs – were brand new, hardly used, tight and tidily rectangular, like a sealed pack of playing cards. The others were older, dirtier, fanning out at either end like a bow-tie. Once again he sat back and looked at the haul – a walled stack of currency twenty centimetres high that occupied pretty much the length of his desk.

  But there was more. In a zip-up pocket set in the case’s lining, a pocket that had crunched against his knuckles as he lifted out the gold bars and the bags of currency, he found three black velvet pouches, the nap worn away in patches, their long necks loosely knotted. With shaking fingers he undid the knots and spilled out the contents of the first pouch into the palm of his hand. Diamonds, maybe thirty or forty stones, cut and rough, sparkling and winking, dull and dirty, ranging in size from an olive pip to a sugar cube, all of them sticking to his hot clammy skin. In the second pouch were emeralds, green as wet moss, and in the third pouch a spill of deep blue sapphires, their polished sides glancing with the light from his desk lamp.

  Just as he’d done with the currency and the gold bars, Dupont set the three pouches on his desk where they settled with an oily scrunch. Millions of francs. Millions and millions. A treasure trove covering his desk, its value impossible to calculate. Dupont’s heart hammered. So much money. He couldn’t believe it. And Lombard had told him that all this was payment for services rendered. Past and future. It was clearly stolen, but still …

  Tearing his eyes away from the haul on his desk, Dupont reached back into the case and pulled out two cellophane wraps secured with strips of duct tape. They looked like bags of flour, packed so tightly that the powder within hardly registered the press of his fingers. Heroin or cocaine, he guessed, laying them carefully beside the money. Three or four kilos of a grade-A narcotic was not the kind of thing a practising advocate should have in his possession, and, wondering what he ought to do with them, he reached into the case again for the last item in it – an office folder that so far he’d ignored. Stiff cardboard covers, secured with a faded red cord.

  He slipped the knot and the folder sprang open. It was an expanding wallet, like an accordion, maybe a dozen compartments filled with scraps of paper, notebooks, Zip-lok plastic baggies, cassette tapes, photos, videos. He slipped out one of the baggies – containing some shell-casings – then dealt his way through a wallet of photos, flicked through some of the hand-written notes and let the breath whistle through his lips.

  Finally he put everything back in the folder, retied the red cord and set it down beside his slippered feet.

  Fun and games, Lombard had told him.

  Fun and games indeed, thought Maître Dupont.

  5

  IT WAS FIVE days before Jacquot made it down to Marseilles – five days since he’d driven Claudine and Midou to Marignane – stopping twice at service stations to ease a cramp in the back of his thigh and stretch away a pulsing ache in his left side. A month after that 9mm slug had slammed through his hip, Jacquot had learned that any movement that entailed bending his left knee or leaning forwards from the waist, was going to hurt. Driving a car involved both, with the added discomfort of having to twist round for a seat belt or to check his blind side, the kind of movements one never really thought about in real, uninjured, life.

  And getting out of a car, he had also discovered, was a great deal more painful than getting in. Which was what he had to do after finding a space in the underground car park below Cours d’Estienne d’Orves a couple of blocks back from Marseilles’ Vieux Port. Reaching for the door handle, he took a deep breath, and managed the entire movement – open door, bad leg out, swivel, good leg out, and push up from the seat, and stand, and turn, and close door – with a whispered and extended ‘ay-ay-ay-ay-oh-shit-that-hurts’.

  Jacquot had called Salette that morning, told him he’d be down for lunch.

  ‘A week. You left the good lady to wait a week?’ Salette had complained.

  ‘It’s Friday, J-P. Five days. And I’ve had physio every one of them.’

  ‘When I was your age …’

  ‘… you were sitting on your arse in the Capitainerie, telling people what to do. Nothing’s changed.’

  ‘So your tongue still works, salaud.’

  ‘What time and where?’

  ‘The usual. Not before eleven-thirty because I won’t be there.’

  ‘And you’re bringing your lady friend with you?’

  Salette had grunted. ‘You’ll love her.’

  Taking the car-park lift, not the stairs, Jacquot limped out into the blustery, mistral sunshine on Place aux Huiles and took in a lungful of salt air off the old port – all sea and blue sky, bobbing masts and balconied facades. It always gave him an appetite, that smell. Just as well, given that he was lunching with Salette.

  His friend was alone, at the back table, Bar de la Marine, in the shadow under the stairs. He was old enough to know better than to wear a blue Levi jacket with a singlet beneath, but somehow the old boy managed to carry it off, the jacket tattered at the elbows and faded to a milky blue, the cream cotton trousers he wore rough and coarse but stiffly clean, his espadrilles worn down at the heel. And for a man in his seventies the chest and shoulders were still broad and strong enough to fill the jacket and tighten the singlet, the skin round his neck brown and tightly corded. With a baleful eye he watched Jacquot ease himself down on to his chair and slide the stick under the table, without any offer to help. But that, as Jacquot knew, was Jean-Pierre Salette through and through.

  ‘A walking stick? You need a walking stick?’ the old harbour master began.

  By the time Jacquot had got himself settled, his left leg stretched out beside the table, one of the older girls who worked the Marine bar had arrived with a pitcher of water and two pastis, one for Jacquot and a second for Salette, a dish of olives, and a short, warm flute roughly broken. Her hair was long and black, her T-shirt cut low, and the skirt, Jacquot decided, altogether too short to mention.

  ‘Shot in the arse, Josette. Shot in the arse, he was,’ said Salette, nodding at Jacquot.

  He rolled his eyes, reached for his cigarettes.

  ‘Pauvre,’ said Josette, smoothing her knuckles over Jacquot’s cheek.

  ‘Finished as a man, of course,’ Salette continued. He shook his head, turned down his mouth.

  ‘Why, all he needs is the right woman,’ purred Josette, slipping the tray under her arm and pressing it to her, a manoeuvre that gave a generous roll and swell to her breasts, a movement that was hard for Jacquot to miss. She felt warm so close to him, close enough for him to smell the shower gel. With a ‘plus tard’ – later – she ruffled his hair and swung back to the bar.

  ‘So where’s your lady friend?’ asked Jacquot, lighting his cigarette, dashing some water into his pastis.

  ‘Patience, patience, mon brave. All in good time. First we eat.’

  And eat they did, none of the food that appeared
at their table ordered by either of them, and none of it on the Marine’s laminated menu or on the list of plats du jour chalked on a blackboard behind the bar. Before one dish had been seen off another arrived: flash-fried fillets of red mullet; a grilled pepper and anchovy salade des Pecheurs; a couple of pavé steaks; a platter of cheese; and, finally, baked apples in Calva.

  And all the while, working at the food, the two men talked. The Cabrille affair, Jacquot’s most recent case, and the shoot-out in Pélisanne, the reason Jacquot was hobbling around on a stick.

  ‘The old man was a psycho,’ said Salette, of the gangster Arsène Cabrille who’d milked Marseilles like a cash cow for more than fifty years – prostitution, drugs, racketeering, protection. ‘And his daughter, Virginie, no different,’ sniffed Salette, of the woman who’d come so close to ending Jacquot’s life, and Claudine’s and Midou’s, in that basement in Pélissanne – before eventually questioning him about the gunshot wound he’d received, and how bad it actually was. ‘But that’s nothing,’ he’d declared when Jacquot described the bullet’s progress through his left hip. ‘A pin-prick. A flesh wound. Jesus Christ, you kids …’ Only softening when their talk turned to Claudine and her daughter.

  ‘Claudine … what a woman! You don’t deserve her.’

  ‘You’re right, I don’t.’

  ‘The good Lord works in mysterious ways.’

  Jacquot nodded. ‘So what about your date?’ he said, finishing his coffee. ‘Looks like she’s stood you up, old man. Constance, you said?’

  ‘That’s right. Constance.’ Salette glanced at his watch. ‘And time for introductions. Think you can make it, Peg-leg?’ he asked, throwing down his napkin and pushing away from the table, leaving Jacquot to look after himself. As he passed the till, Salette tapped a finger on the bar and thumbed behind him. ‘My friend in the wheelchair’s paying,’ he told Josette, and stepped out into the late-summer sunshine.

  By the time Jacquot had settled their bill and been offered Josette’s telephone number, Salette was across the road and unlocking one of the security gates in the white wire-mesh fence that protected berths on the old port. Leaving it open for Jacquot, he headed off along the quay, mistral flapping around his Levi jacket, tugging at his white curls and cotton trousers. Fifty metres on, he stepped to the right and down on to one of the many pontoons laid out like ribs into the harbour, four back from the entrance to the Carénage, the pointed bows and cropped sterns of yachts and cabin cruisers tied up to its sides, fenders squeaking, halyards snapping against masts. At the end of the pontoon, Salette came to a halt, turned, waited for his companion.

  ‘Constance lives on a boat?’ asked Jacquot when he caught up, feeling the lap and suck of the sea beneath his feet.

  Salette grunted, as though surely Jacquot would have worked it out by now.

  ‘Constance is the boat,’ he replied, and turned to clamber aboard what looked like a motor cruiser under its stretched tarp cover.

  ‘Won’t take more than a moment,’ he called out, edging his way around the craft, releasing the ties. In just a couple of moments, it seemed, Salette was back where he’d started, gathering in the now loosened covering into his arms. And as it lifted away, sliding over the superstructure with a salt-stiff shushing sound, snatched by the breeze, snagging here and there but shaken free with an encouraging flap and tug, Constance revealed herself. Maybe twelve metres, Jacquot guessed, a curving black hull, an open wheelhouse, the varnish on her woodwork a little grey and flakey here and there, the brass portholes he could see greened, dull and blistered.

  ‘It’s been a while,’ said Salette, dumping the cover on the aft deck and kicking it into a corner, out of the wind. ‘But she’s in good order. Nothing a little tender loving care won’t correct.’

  ‘You’ve bought another boat? Wasn’t the sloop enough?’

  Salette smiled ruefully, shook his head.

  ‘I haven’t bought anything, thicko. I’m just taking care of her. Until the new owner arrives.’ He leaned down and hauled up a gangplank, swung it down on to the pontoon. ‘Come aboard. Take a look.’

  Wincing, Jacquot manoeuvred himself up the plank, over the stern, and felt the gentlest tip and sway as he let his weight on to the deck.

  ‘Of course, it’s not a real boat,’ continued Salette, by which Jacquot knew he meant that it didn’t have a sail. ‘But I suppose it’s … utilisable, serviceable.’ He looked around, shrugged. ‘Built 1954. A pilot boat, turned Customs cutter. Used to work out of Toulon. And a good berth to go with her,’ he continued. ‘End of the rack. Properly out in the harbour, and clear of the traffic.’

  Jacquot looked back towards the quay, a hundred or more metres away. It was true. Out here, thought Jacquot, you were just at the point between city and open sea. It was beguiling. And bothersome, too. What was Salette up to? he wondered.

  ‘So who’s the new owner?’ Jacquot asked.

  Salette gave him a look. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a knotted piece of rope with two keys attached. He tossed it over.

  ‘Why don’t you open her up? Invite me in?’

  Jacquot looked at the keys, the boat, and then at Salette.

  ‘For a Marseilles boy,’ said the old harbour master, ‘and a flic to boot, you can be pretty dim sometimes.’

  6

  WHILE JACQUOT WAS being introduced to Constance in Marseilles’ Vieux Port, Olivier Roquefort put down the phone in his office overlooking the loading wharves of La Joliette and felt a red tide of anger sweep over him.

  The voice had been calm and precise.

  Was he Olivier Roquefort?

  Oui – who was this calling?

  Was he shipping regulator at the Joliette Docks?

  Yes, and what of it?

  Was his wife called Christine?

  Now look here …

  That’s when the caller explained the purpose of his call, his delivery of the facts – the who, the when, the where – smooth and certain. And with every word, the anger slid deeper into Roquefort’s heart.

  Who is this, who is this? Roquefort kept asking. But no name was provided and the call ended as abruptly as it had begun.

  It was a short walk along the docks from Roquefort’s office to the Customs Hall where the duty sergeant told him that the boss, Jean Grandet, had left for a late lunch.

  Where? asked Roquefort.

  Maison Blanche, replied the duty sergeant.

  It was a stiff ten-minute walk from the docks to Maison Blanche and Roquefort could easily have returned to his own office, taken his car and made the journey in half the time. But he didn’t think of it. He simply left the Customs Hall and set out on foot, each step increasing the swell and pulse of his fury. By the time he reached Maison Blanche, a small neighbourhood brasserie on rue Guillot, he could have punched a hole in a brick wall and felt no pain.

  Roquefort had known Grandet since the late eighties, when Grandet had moved in from Toulon down the coast and taken over the top spot at Customs. He was tall and slim and younger than Roquefort, with cropped black hair and matching cold black eyes. He was single, looked good in a uniform, and took suspicious care of his appearance: the razored sideburns, the polished nails; regulation black tie always tight to the collar; uniform jacket tailored, waisted; shoes laced and shiny. It didn’t take long for word to spread along the quays that Jean Grandet was not gay as previously thought but a serious and serial philanderer and that there were few women who could resist his attentions.

  Now, in a single phone call, Roquefort had learned that his own wife was one of the younger man’s conquests. According to the anonymous caller, the affair had started only a year after Roquefort and Christine had married and had lasted nearly six months. It might have been years before, but for Roquefort it might just as well have been yesterday. He loved his wife, had imagined that she loved him, and he found it hard to believe that such a thing had happened. And so soon after they’d married.

  And yet … and yet … Somehow,
deep down, Roquefort knew that the man at the other end of the phone line was right.

  Striding along, he tried to recall that time: his wife’s moods, her occasional inconsistencies, those sly smiles, those unexplained absences, an often flustered look, and how, sometimes, inexplicably, she had denied him. Not tonight, I’m so tired, it’s the wrong time, chéri … Just how often – and astonishingly for those early days of a marriage – had she refused him? Certainly enough times for him to remember them now.

  He also wondered how Grandet and his wife could possibly have met. The where and the when. As shipping regulator, it was a requirement of Roquefort’s job to inform Grandet’s office of incoming traffic – ship, skipper and shipper, crew, load and berthing quay – so that Grandet, as Head of Customs, could decide on the appropriate action. A cursory examination of the captain’s papers, or maybe a thorough search of the holds. It all depended … But although that work brought the two men into frequent contact they had never, so far as Roquefort could recall, met out of hours – either at parties, or by chance in bars or restaurants.

  That wasn’t all. According to the caller, it was Jean Grandet who had ended the affair, not Roquefort’s wife. Which somehow made it worse. As though Christine was not good enough for Grandet. A passing indulgence, someone with whom to wile away the odd afternoon. Nothing more than that. A whim. A fancy.

  Increasing his pace, stepping out onto rue Tamberle without looking and earning himself a glaring klaxon blast from an approaching truck (which served only to increase his fury), Roquefort suddenly recalled those months of quietness, reserve, almost sadness in his wife. It had worried him, so soon into a marriage, and he had done all he could to lighten her mood – gifts, outings, extravagances he could barely afford on his supervisor’s wage – to bring her out of her ennui. Eventually their life together had settled back into its old routine, but it had been hard, and Roquefort remembered the way it had been, remembered his disquiet.