by John Niven
‘Can I speak to the racist halfwit who’s made sure that I won’t be leaving the office before ten o’clock tonight?’
‘Sorry, sir?’ Boscombe said, covering the mouthpiece and mouthing ‘Wilson’ at Wesley. ‘I’m not following you.’
‘THE GERMAN RIVIERA!’ Wilson screamed. Boscombe pulled the phone back from his ear as though it had bitten him. ‘ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR BLOODY MIND, BOSCOMBE?’
Boscombe gestured to Wesley that he should pay for the food and walked away quickly. ‘Sir, if I may. I didn’t know the sneaky bastards were filming then! I didn’t think we’d started!’
‘This is why you are not allowed to talk to the press, Boscombe.’
‘I thought a little, um, exposure, might do the investigation good, sir.’
‘Ah,’ Wilson said. ‘I see what’s happened here. I see. You know where all of this went wrong, Boscombe? At exactly the moment you allowed yourself a “thought”. Or whatever passes for thinking inside that hollow, redundant cavity you carry around on top of your shoulders. I don’t even know why I’m surprised any –’
Boscombe pulled the phone away from his ear and did the ‘yak yak’ thing with his hand to it for the benefit of Wesley, who was looking over while making his way with their trays to an empty window seat.
‘… and if I get one more surprise like this, Boscombe, I swear to God I’ll –’
His phone started vibrating again. He looked at the screen, another call, on the other line. ‘Sir?’
‘Don’t interrupt me, Boscombe! I’ve already had the superintendent, the Foreign Office and a couple of tabloid newspapers on the phone about all th—’
‘Sir, I have a call on the other line. It might be about –’
‘Any inquiries, interview requests, requests for statements, all of them go through the press office from now on. Got that, Boscombe?’
‘Yes, sir. I’ll call you later.’
‘And Boscombe?’
Fucking hell. ‘Yes, sir?’
‘I want you to call your liaison officer there in France and make a personal apology ab—’
‘Yes, sir. Bye.’
Boscombe hung up and punched the button for the other line. ‘Hello?’
‘Sergeant Boscombe? It’s Lieutenant Pourcel.’ Pourcel’s tone was clipped and formal. ‘We’ve had some information, regarding your ladies. Do you have a pen?’
‘Sure, go ahead.’ Boscombe uncapped the biro and hovered it over the back of his hand. When he had finished writing he said, ‘Thank you, Lieutenant.’
‘Yes,’ Pourcel said. ‘Good luck. We are not all so bad here on the German Riviera.’
‘Ha. Look, about that, I –’
Click.
Touchy French bastard, Boscombe thought.
Brilliant. Just bloody brilliant, Wesley thought, hovering the second spoonful of soup under his nose, the vapour misting warmly on his face as he inhaled rich broth, cracked black pepper and melted cheese. Suddenly a hand was smacking on his back, sending the soup spattering all over the table, and Boscombe was saying, ‘Come on, lad,’ as he grabbed a couple of sausages off his own plate.
‘Eh? What?’
‘Just south of here, a couple of hours away.’
‘B-but my lunch?’
‘Have it in the car!’ Boscombe said over his shoulder, already striding towards the exit.
‘It’s soup!’
‘You should have thought of that before, Wesley, shouldn’t you?’
Boscombe jumped into the driver’s seat and they came tearing out of the service station car park. Well, ‘tearing’ as fast as the tiny engine would allow. Wesley screamed what he screamed every single time Boscombe took the wheel – ‘SARGE! ON THE RIGHT! ON THE RIGHT!’ Boscombe slewed the car back over onto the correct side, even managing the good grace to mutter a cursory ‘sorry’ this time.
FORTY-FIVE
A JAZZ STATION played softly, Stan Getz doing something or other, and Susan enjoying the peace and quiet as she drove. The sound of four different sets of snoring wove their way in and out of the music – little Vanessa’s not much more than breathing, there in the middle of the back seat. Julie’s an even, nasal rasp from the passenger seat next to her, her jacket bunched up and tucked under her head, against the glass. Jill emitted a tiny, regular whistle through her front teeth on the exhale while the entire concerto was underscored by Ethel’s fat bass notes. They’d made very good time, hardly any traffic at all, straight down something called the N85, all the way south from Grenoble. Although she feared she might be a little lost now. What had the last sign she’d seen said – straight on towards Nice or a right towards Antibes? She’d turned the satnav off a while ago, to avoid waking the others with its strident barking. It was comforting in a way, all this snoring. She used to like it when she got up early and went about her chores on a Saturday morning while the sounds of Barry and Tom snoring drifted from their respective bedrooms. How long ago all that felt now. Another life. Well, this was her life too.
Didn’t someone say that we do not have a single life so much as several different ones, several different stages of being? Well, yes. This was her life too and it – oh my goodness.
There it was, suddenly, right in front of her, sparkling.
The Mediterranean, and, down the hill in the distance, its white buildings nestling up against the sea – Cannes.
Susan pulled over. Lord, it was beautiful. ‘Girls?’ she said. ‘Girls?’ They stirred slowly around her.
‘God,’ said Julie sleepily. ‘Look at that!’
‘Ah!’ said Vanessa.
‘Are you allowed to stop here?’ said Jill, looking around at the traffic gliding past them.
‘Wow,’ Ethel said. ‘I haven’t seen this view in a long, long time.’
‘Have you been here before, Ethel?’ Susan asked.
‘Mmmm. I should say so. In ’52 or ’53? I was staying on a yacht belonging to a friend of a friend, just along the coast there. We’d swim all day and then take the little motorboat into the harbour and have dinner at one of the restaurants on the seafront. I met Picasso here, you know.’
‘Really?’ Vanessa said, settling back with her Evian.
‘Oh yes. It was a glorious summer.’
‘Oh, Ethel,’ Jill said, everyone transfixed as Ethel peeled back the years, everyone trying to associate the person in the wheelchair and the heavy, egg-stained wool skirt with a lithe girl in a bathing suit, here, over half a century ago. Her voice was misty, had sepia in it. The sea breeze blew through the open car windows.
‘I met a young man,’ Ethel went on. ‘Very rich. Very handsome. We’d walk on the beach at dusk. In the afternoons we’d drink mint juleps on the deck of the yacht. Then, at the end of the day, with the heat still coming off the water, we’d go downstairs into the cabin … and he’d fuck the bloody tits off me.’
Susan closed her eyes.
Vanessa sprayed mineral water right across the car.
‘RIGHT! THAT’S IT!’ Jill shrieked as she fumbled for the door handle. ‘I SIMPLY WILL NOT LISTEN TO THAT KIND OF TALK!’ Jill leapt out and stomped up and down the lay-by fuming, Julie, Susan and Vanessa all doing their best to make it look like they weren’t laughing.
‘I mean, honestly,’ Ethel said, ‘the package on this lad. It was like he’d stuffed a bag of sugar and a sockful of mince down there –’
‘Ethel!’ Susan said.
‘It really doesn’t get old for you, does it, Ethel?’ Julie said, nodding at Jill, standing up ahead, arms folded tightly, staring at the sea, the radiation lines of fury almost visibly bristling off her.
‘Oh, come on. Bloody Christians, that’s what they’re there for,’ Ethel said.
‘Right, so what’s the plan?’ Julie said, clapping her hands together. ‘I’m starving.’
‘Well,’ Susan said, turning the key in the ignition, the huge Porsche thrumming into life around them, ‘we’re not due in Marseilles until the morning. I think we find a hotel
for the night, don’t you?’
‘Only one place to stay when you’re in Cannes …’ Ethel said.
FORTY-SIX
ALL RIGHT FOR some.
Boscombe was taking in the grand, lobby of L’Auberge du Château – the lush potted fronds, tapestries hanging on the wall – while waiting for the manageress to come back. He shifted uncomfortably, trying to move something in his lower bowel. Maybe Wesley was right. Maybe his all-meat, all-carb diet did need reviewing. It felt like his digestive system had been plastered with Artex, with roughcast or pebble-dash. He wondered, maybe he could … could he fart his way out of the need for a toilet visit? No, here she was, the manageress, coming back with a young, nervous-looking maid trailing along behind her.
‘This is Suzanne,’ the manageress said. ‘She was on duty this morning.
Boscombe produced his photographs of Susan Frobisher and Ethel, his testes-flaying wheelchair nemesis. The girl took them as the manageress said in French, ‘Are these the same women who stayed in suite 14 last night?’
‘Oui.’ Suzanne was quick to recognise them. They had been so lovely. They had left such a big tip.
Boscombe felt a surge of adrenalin. ‘Ask, ask her if they said where they were going.’
The manageress and the maid began a rapid-fire conversation in French. It was impossible to follow, but Boscombe was no stranger to reading body language. He sensed reticence on the part of the girl. There was reluctance in her shrugs and frowns.
‘Tell her,’ Boscombe said, moving closer, looking straight at the maid but talking to the manageress, ‘that these women are very dangerous criminals.’ The manageress translated and the maid’s eyes widened. ‘Tell her that if she doesn’t tell us everything she knows then she might be leaving herself open to prosecution for perverting the course of justice.’ The manageress didn’t seem to understand this. ‘Her.’ Boscombe pointed at the girl. ‘Jail. Prison. La Bastille.’ The manageress frowned and more gibbered French followed, during the course of which Boscombe could see the girl’s lip beginning to tremble. She remembered all right, remembered them all cheering when they said it out on the balcony. She started to speak while looking at the floor.
Wesley had the driver’s seat cranked back, allowing him to doze at just above the horizontal position; he was almost falling over when his peace was shattered by Boscombe exploding back into the tiny car, into the passenger seat.
‘Cans,’ Boscombe said, panting from the thirty-yard dash from the lobby to the car park.
‘Cans?’ Wesley said.
‘Cans. You know. Where the bloody film stars and all that go!’
‘Oh,’ Wesley said. ‘You mean Can. The “s” is silent.’ He started cranking his chair back up into the driving position, his knees already feeling like they were buckling against his chest.
‘I’ll silent you in a minute, professor,’ Boscombe said, snapping his seat belt into place. ‘They reckon it’s a good nine hours from here. We should just make it before dark. You drive the first shift. Come on, let’s get going, Wesley.’
‘Shouldn’t we radio on ahead to the local police? Get a description out? See what they –’
‘One, Wesley, as we’ve seen the French police DO NOT give a shit about any of this business. And two, I am not handing my collar over to some bastard smirking collaborator turd, OK? You with me?’
‘I’m with you, Sarge,’ Wesley said, starting up the one-litre engine. Honestly – you might as well have had a couple of hamsters running on a wheel attached to the driveshaft. ‘I mean, it’s a fairly blunt point you’re making.’
Oh well, Wesley thought. Free holiday at the end of the day. He’d always fancied seeing Cannes. Film stars and all that. He’d heard the food was great down there too. If he could just keep the gourmand here out of the local McDonald’s …
FORTY-SEVEN
BLOODY HELL, SUSAN thought, as they crossed the sunlit lobby. Her and Barry had stayed in some grand places over the years, fourand five-star hotels, and there had even been that one night at the Savoy for his boss’s retirement party – she could still remember the vastness of the bed, the fluffiness of the towels – but this … this was something else: the Ritz Carlton was now – depressingly for Ethel – called the Intercontinental Carlton, and it was a vast expanse of cream-and-beige marble, ivory-white columns reaching up to the impossibly high ceiling with chandeliers dangling from it and everywhere, reading newspapers, sipping drinks, rich people. Very, very rich people. Susan was suddenly conscious of their motley dress as the five of them made the long walk from the colonnaded entrance to the reception desk. Of their rumpled, sweaty, ill-fitting clothes, unchanged for forty-eight hours now. They’d just washed their smalls out in the sinks at the Auberge. God only knew what was going on underneath Ethel’s fulsome skirts, Ethel who was wheeling herself enthusiastically ahead of them. Ethel’s head was reeling, spinning. She hadn’t been in this place for what, sixty years? Grace Kelly had been staying here at the time. Lovely girl. Terrific figure. It had been darker then, the lobby. Less airy. They’d done a lovely job.
Claude, the receptionist they were headed towards, was, in his turn, thinking, Mon Dieu. Probably tourists who’d wandered in for an ooh and ah at the lobby. They might want tea or something. He moulded his features into a professional grin as the one in the wheelchair reached the desk. ‘Bonjour!’ she said, surprising him with excellent pronunciation.
‘Hi there,’ Susan said, trying for a bright and casual tone. Jill was gripping her handbag tightly, looking like she was standing before God Himself. Julie wanted to slap her. You had to be nonchalant in places like this. This is what the rich were, nonchalant. Like Vanessa – she’d flung herself across a big armchair and was casually flicking through a magazine. That was style. ‘We’d like a room for the night,’ Julie said. ‘Two rooms actually.’
Claude the receptionist stared at her for a beat. He hadn’t been expecting this. ‘Ah, madame,’ he began gently, ‘I am afraid we are fully booked.’
‘Oh please,’ Julie cut in. ‘Look at the size of the place. You must have two little rooms.’
‘I am afraid not. It is the height of the season. I can recommend some other hotels …’
‘Sorry, Ethel,’ Susan said, going to push her away.
‘We understand,’ Julie said. ‘Perhaps if we …’ She slid a fifty-euro note across the counter towards him. ‘Could come to an arrangement …’
What was wrong with these old fools? Claude wondered.
‘Ah, madame. It is not a question of –’
‘Oh, come on,’ Susan said. ‘We’ll just go somewhere else. Let’s tr—’
‘It cannot be!’
They all turned to see a tiny gentleman standing there, leaning on his cane. He was wearing what looked like a very expensive pale blue suit, which had almost swallowed him whole – for he was ninety if he was a day, made Nails look sprightly. His eyes blinked behind lightly tinted gold-rimmed sunglasses. He looked like a very well-dressed mole. ‘Ah, sorry?’ Susan said.
‘I thought it might be, but, after all these years, and then I heard your name and … it cannot be …’
He continued to stare straight past Susan and Julie, staring straight at Ethel. ‘Mademoiselle Merriman? Ethel Merriman?’
‘Oui,’ said Ethel as they all joined the mole fellow gazing at her. Claude behind the counter was suddenly starting to colour.
The man stepped closer. ‘May I?’ Ethel extended her hand and he leaned down to kiss it reverentially.
‘My name is Armand Ferrat. I saw you dance at the Bamboo Lounge in Paris, just after the war. You were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen …’
‘Oh, get away, you daft thing,’ Ethel said. ‘Still, always nice to meet a fan.’ The others were openly staring at her now.
‘What brings you to Cannes?’ Ferrat asked.
‘Oh, my health. The waters.’
‘Well, we’ll be delighted to have you here with us.’
‘Or not …’ Julie said.
‘I’m sorry?’ Ferrat’s brow furrowed.
‘Ah, Monsieur Ferrat,’ Claude the receptionist began, ‘we … I was just explaining to the ladies that we are completely full.’
Ferrat straightened up and looked at the man. Suddenly he didn’t look like a little old mole at all. Suddenly he looked like Michael Corleone with a hangover. ‘I believe the Connery Suite is available.’
‘The … but it is twelve thousand euros per –’
‘You are quite right,’ Ferrat said. ‘It is an outrageous sum. You will give it to Madame Merriman and her party for the standard room rate.’ He waved a hand. ‘Bill the difference to my account. Now, show these ladies to their suite immediately. It is outrageous that they should be made to wait in this intolerable heat.’
‘Of course, Monsieur Ferrat …’ Claude was now simultaneously filling in a form, preparing room keys and ringing a bell. Porters seemed to appear from all sides.
‘Mademoiselle Merriman,’ Ferrat said, his tone softening as he bent to her once again, ‘please let me know right away if there is anything we could do to make your stay more comfortable.’
The other four stared at Ethel in wordless amazement as the lift made its way up the building, the handsome young bellboy with their bags (not the bags of course. These were tucked into the spare wheel compartment of the Porsche, which was safely parked in the hotel car park) standing with his back to them watching the numbers slowly ascend. The lift doors pinged open and the bellboy started leading them down the corridor, across carpet as thick and lush as turf.
‘Who was that man?’ Jill whispered.
‘God knows,’ Ethel shrugged. ‘Some crazed fan or other. Not many of them left now I don’t suppose.’
‘You were famous, Ethel?’ Vanessa asked.
‘Infamous, darling, infamous,’ Ethel said.
‘Mesdames, mademoiselle?’ the bellboy said, sliding the key through the lock. He pushed the double doors open with a flourish as he said, ‘Voilà!’
