‘Did you tell them?’
‘I said I didn’t know. Just that he’d set off an hour earlier.’
‘A day trip? Back tonight?’
‘Possibly, but they had supplies. Yesterday I saw him with a stack of shopping bags. Maybe an overnight somewhere? The calanques … the islands?’
‘And that’s it?’
‘I think he might be in trouble, that’s all. You don’t have gorilles like that come calling just to wish you a Bonjour, ça va. Jacquot said you worked for the Judiciaire. I thought I should call you, let you know.’
‘That’s very good of you, Madame. Thank you.’ And then, ‘Dites-moi, could you describe the men?’ asked Isabelle, wondering if they might be the same ones who’d called on Clémentine.
‘Gorilles, like I said. All three of them dark, swarthy. One had a scar on his eyebrow, and the one asking the questions had a goatee … you know, where the moustache comes around the mouth and down into a little pointy beard. The muscle wore jeans, sneakers, leather jackets and T-shirts; but Monsieur Goatee was smarter: blue cotton shirt, cream linen jacket, taupe trousers pleated at the top.’
A very good description, thought Isabelle. Most people wouldn’t have been so precise or confident in their recall. But then Madame Desfornado was an artist. She would have an eye for form and colour and detail.
‘Was one of them Chinese?’ Isabelle asked.
‘No. No Chinese. More Arab-looking.’
Which meant they probably weren’t the same boys who’d paid a call on Clem.
‘And what did they do after you told them that Jacquot had gone?’ she asked.
‘Goatee told me not to say anything if I saw him. And not to call him. They wanted to surprise him, he said. Then they headed back the way they’d come.’
‘You’ve been very helpful, Madame. Thank you. And if Jacquot hasn’t returned by tomorrow morning, please call me again to let me know.’
92
WITH LITTLE MORE than ten metres leeway between the two scrubby bluffs that guarded and partly concealed it Jacquot brought Constance into Calanque des Sirènes, a splinter of deep blue water set between towering limestone cliffs. Keeping the revs low, the sound of her rumbling engine bouncing back from the sheer sides of this secret inlet, he glanced down at the water, watching the fathomless blue lighten and clear as a pearl-coloured seabed rose up out of the depths to meet them.
A hundred metres in, around a gentle curve, the calanque began to widen, and a narrow arc of beach appeared ahead of them, its creamy shingle glaring in the midday sun, not another vessel to be seen save for a small fishing skiff tied to a mooring post on the right side of the cove. A few metres beyond it a path wound up through the scrub, and between a stunted curtain of pine and tamarisk he spotted the old cabanon.
With Constance safely anchored, Jacquot killed the engine and for the first time since entering Sirènes, he heard the busy electric clatter of crickets rising in volume to fill the silence, ringing off the steep scrubby sides of the inlet with a steady pulsing buzz.
Delphie was first up out of the cabin, where she and Claudine had gone to change into swimsuits the moment Constance nosed in through the entrance and they saw the calanque. Throwing down her towel, she clambered up on to the transom and dived down into the clear water, her progress beneath the surface marked by a bubbling white sheath. Claudine was next, passing Jacquot with a kiss, the angry red wounds on her leg now just a shiny puckering of pale pink. Handing him her towel, she stepped up on to a seat locker and followed Delphie’s example. A moment later, after lowering the transom steps and pulling off his T-shirt, Jacquot joined them.
After their swim they climbed the path to the cabanon and settled themselves at one of three empty tables set out under a split-cane roof. Twelve customers maximum when the place was full on a summer weekend, Jacquot told them. Lunch only, and no one ever in a hurry to leave. Fresh vegetables and salad leaves from the family smallholding out back, whatever fish they’d brought in that day, and the patron’s own wine, white only, sometimes a little cloudy but fresh and strong and always ice cold. And the bill, when it came, would be scribbled down on a scrap of paper torn from a school exercise book. No service charge. Everything included. Eighty francs a head. The best deal in town.
As they made themselves comfortable the patron’s wife appeared, a plump, cheery woman in a housecoat and plimsolls who proceeded to spread out a paper tablecloth between them, secure it with metal clips, then nudge the table to stand level and steady on the uneven ground. ‘Voilà,’ she declared, heading back inside to bring out a pitcher of spring water, chinking with ice, another filled with wine, and six sturdy Duralex tumblers clamped under her arm. By the time Delphie and Jacquot had finished their first cigarettes, Claudine taking a sly puff from each, a basket of bread had been put on the table with a bowl of tapenade, a saucer of wrinkled black olives, strips of sweet orange peppers and a dish of sun-warm tomatoes drizzled with home-pressed olive oil and flecked with wild thyme from the slopes. There was no menu and only one main course available, the patron’s wife explained, showing them a bucket of glistening rougets that her husband had caught that morning in a lucky drag of the net off Sormiou, which he would happily grill for them if they so wished.
It was one of those lunches, Delphie declared afterwards, that it would be impossible to forget, or to beat. Not a label, not a brand-name to be seen. Perfect in every respect: from the shifting shadows cast by the stand of tamarisk around the cabanon, to the static drill of insects and the dry scuttle of lizards; from the sharp richness of the tapenade to the crackle of the charred pink skin of the mullet, their firm, pearly fillets peeling off the bone in two succulent mouthfuls. The potatoes that came with them had been baked in a fish stock and were waxy and yellow, their salad was crisp and dewy, the goat’s cheese round and hard, and a bunch of fat purple grapes served in a plastic colander bursting with sweetness. Above them, through the trees, the rocky tops of the inlet cut a jagged line against the blue of the sky, and forty metres below them Constance lay anchored to her shadow on the sea-bed.
When the meal was finished and the plates cleared, the patron brought out a chipped enamel coffee percolator from the kitchen, still bubbling and hissing and spitting, and three tiny saucerless cups. He wore a white singlet and blue shorts, a flowery apron that looked as though it belonged to his wife, and a pair of laceless plimsolls. His hands were large and calloused from a lifetime hauling nets and the hair on his shoulders had started to grey.
‘It’s a long time since I’ve seen Constance,’ he said, standing back, wiping his hands on the apron and nodding his head at the creek.
Jacquot’s ears pricked up. ‘You know the boat?’
‘She’s been here a few times. Way back now. Four, five years at least. Old fellow and his wife. Just the two of them. They’d moor here for a couple of days, come up for lunch, swim, snorkel, then they’d be off. Till the next time. Said he’d been born here,’ the patron continued, thumbing back to the cabanon. ‘Right here, would you believe? Small world, eh? So they sell her to you, did they?’
‘The old man left her to me.’
The patron considered this. ‘Passed on, then?’
Jacquot nodded.
‘Sorry to hear that. Comes to all of us, but it’s never nice.’ The man rubbed his chin, looked down again at the boat. ‘And too much for the wife to handle, eh? The boat. Needed the cash, I suppose.’
‘The lady died, too.’
‘Now that’s a surprise. She was a lot younger than him, I recall. You meet her?’
Jacquot shook his head. ‘Just photos,’ he lied.
‘Then you’ll know. A beauty. Always playing with her hair, she was. Always different, every time she came here. Blonde one time, brunette the next, grown long, or cut short. She was better a blonde, you ask me. Wavy, like Marilyn Monroe. A bit curlier maybe. Like a halo in the sunshine. Oui, formidable, c’est sûr.’
And with that, he pulled out a scr
ap of paper torn from a school exercise book and slipped it under the ashtray.
‘I hope you enjoyed your lunch, Mesdames, Monsieur.’
93
LÉO AND ZACH had worked up a good sweat by the time they reached the ridge above Calanque des Sirènes. It was a little over an hour since their skipper, Cassel, had taken them ashore and pointed out the path, two hours since he’d brought them to the next inlet along from Sirènes – too difficult to access for a vessel their size, he’d told Didier.
The climb had been a brute, steep and twisting, the two men panting in the midday sun, the dust they kicked up rasping in their throats. Twice Léo had to stop to let Zach pull off one of his trainers and shake it out before clambering on. But now they were in place, the climb over, and far below them Constance lay at anchor ten metres out from a small curve of beach. Dropping on to their stomachs, elbows in the dirt, they trained their binoculars on the boat, couldn’t see anyone aboard and then cut to the slope above the beach as the man and his two women came down a pathway through the trees.
‘Looks like some kind of restaurant up there,’ said Zach. ‘They must have gone there for lunch.’ He sniffed. ‘You can smell the cooking.’
Léo watched the three of them come out of the trees, cross the beach and wade out to Constance. The man was carrying a small grab-bag. Cigarettes, lighter, wallets, purses, Léo decided. Nothing more. Certainly not a gold bar. He shifted the glasses on to the two women. One was a bit short and on the tubby side, but the other one was tall and tanned, dark hair in a ponytail, black one-piece swimsuit, a light blue sarong knotted around her waist. And pregnant by the look of her – a deep, shadowy cleavage and a certain swell around the belly when the angle was right – but still a scorcher. The three of them were chatting, laughing, but he couldn’t hear a sound.
Léo lowered the glasses and checked his watch. He picked up the walkie-talkie he’d brought with him and buzzed through to Didier down on Corsaire, told him what they’d seen.
‘Stay on site a few more hours and I’ll send up Dhuc and Milagro to take over from you. If our friends look like they’re going to head off somewhere, let me know immediately. If we’re not here when you get back down, wait for us and we’ll come back for you.’
Over and out, thought Léo, and passed on the news to Zach.
‘There’s harder ways I can think to earn money,’ said the younger man and pulled off his T-shirt for the last of the sun. ‘You bring any water with you?’
‘In the bag,’ said Léo. ‘But don’t drink it all, hear? It’s got to last.’
He looked through the glasses again, and adjusted the focus. Down on Constance it was clearly siesta time. The man was settling himself on the cabin roof, and the two women were heading below deck.
Must be a gay boy, thought Léo. If it had been him down there, he’d have gone below with the girls for some two-on-one, not out on deck for a snooze. He’d have jumped the both of them, no question, even the tubby one.
94
IT WAS LATE-AFTERNOON when Aris Moussa, sitting with Beni and Jo-Jo at a café on the quayside at Cassis, spotted Duclos’ motor cruiser, Désiré, come past the rocky outcrop of Cap Canaille and turn into Cassis bay. The gleaming white Adagio 60, built in Genoa and delivered just a month earlier to the family berth in Sanary-sur-Mer, was Duclos’ latest toy, and the old man had clearly decided to give her a spin. Aris watched for a moment longer, to make sure, then nudged Beni and pointed as Désiré’s skipper throttled back and the long curved stem settled into its bow wave, coasting in towards the harbour’s breakwater jetty where the tourist ferries from Marseilles moored up. Beni turned to Jo-Jo on his other side, legs out, chin on chest, snoozing, and prodded his shoulder.
‘Hey, wake up. They’re here.’
Tucking some notes under his coffee cup, Aris got to his feet and started off at a brisk clip along the quay, his two companions close behind him. It wouldn’t do for Duclos to see them sitting in a café, even if they had been working their butts off since early morning. And apart from this brief but welcome breather in Cassis, that’s exactly what they’d been doing.
After leaving that pontoon in Marseilles’ Vieux Port, Aris had put a call through to Duclos and passed on the news that Constance was not at her berth. According to a neighbour, he told Duclos, the owner, a man called Jacquot, had taken off earlier that morning with two women aboard. They’d had supplies with them and as of now could be anywhere along the coast.
There’d been a moment’s silence at the end of the line, and then Duclos had told him in no uncertain terms what he wanted. Check every port and every beach and every possible berth or mooring between L’Estaque and Madrague, then head down to Cassis where he, Duclos, would pick them up, having checked every port and mooring and beach and berth between Sanary-sur-Mer and Cassis.
It had been a long, hot day, driving first to the harbour at L’Estaque, then doubling back via Pointe Rouge, Madrague and Samena, past the beaches of Catalan, Prophète and the wide ivory sweep of Prado, on the look-out for one solitary vessel called Constance, a twelve-metre motor launch, according to Beni’s man, with an open wheelhouse on a black hull. And that was all they had to go on. A single boat along a coastline swarming with other similar craft. It was like looking for a stick of chalk in a snowstorm. But Aris knew that when Duclos said do something, you did it, or else.
And now he was here, the old man himself, up on Désiré’s flying bridge beside Hamid, the skipper. Aris spotted him and waved.
Duclos did not wave back.
Five minutes later they were safely aboard and Aris was climbing up to the bridge to report. Duclos was not a man who liked receiving bad news and Aris felt a nervous knot in his stomach as he came out on to the bridge.
‘Well?’ said the old man, reaching for the hand-rail as his skipper opened the throttles and Désiré powered away from the jetty. Duclos was wearing white plimsolls, a pair of baggy Chinos, with a blue pashmina scarf wrapped round his neck and tucked into a cream-coloured quilted parka. On his head he wore a jaunty little sailor’s cap, its peak decorated with two stripes of gold braid and a small gold anchor. He also wore a pair of large, round-framed sunglasses. With his puffed-up quilted chest, he looked like a black-eyed owl.
Aris shook his head. ‘Nothing boss. Not a sign. We looked everywhere.’
Duclos sighed and Aris held his breath, waiting for the explosion.
But none came.
‘Nothing for us, either,’ said Duclos, in a tight little voice. ‘But she’s out here somewhere. And we’re going to find her. And then we’re going to make this Jacquot sing.’
If Aris had imagined that the old man was going back to Sanary-sur-Mer, the day’s work over, he was badly mistaken. As they headed out into the bay and left Cassis in their wake, he saw Hamid ease his wheel to starboard and take a bearing on the setting sun. Ten minutes later, he throttled back and slid into the Calanque d’En Vau, a dozen craft already moored there.
‘We’re going to spend the night here,’ said Duclos, over the rumbling engines, ‘and start up again tomorrow morning. There’s a cabin for you and one of your men, but the other’s going to have to make do in the salon.’
And then Aris saw Duclos freeze, peer ahead as though he couldn’t believe his eyes, and duck away from the windshield.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said with a smile, staying low. ‘It seems like someone else has had the same idea.’
‘I’m not with you, boss,’ said Aris.
‘You see that rather vulgar-looking craft up ahead?’
Aris looked through the smoked-glass windshield and nodded.
‘It’s the Corsaire,’ said Duclos. ‘And it belongs to my very good friend, Patric Polineaux.’
95
AT ABOUT THE same time that Désiré moored in Calanque d’En Vau, Jacquot woke to a sudden chill. The sky above him was still a deep sapphire blue but the sun had slipped behind Sirènes’ western ridge, marking out a shadow on the opposite sl
ope already a good ten metres above the water. The heat had dwindled too, maybe four or five degrees cooler, and the buzz of crickets had softened to an occasional soft bleating, like a shorting electrical appliance.
Jacquot raised his head and looked towards the wheelhouse. Delphie was reading a book in the skipper’s chair, but there was no sign of Claudine. He rolled over onto an elbow and looked down through the hatch. She was asleep on their bed, dead to the world, curled up under the sheet, one long brown arm flung across a pillow. Six months pregnant, a few glasses of wine at lunch, the heat … he wasn’t surprised. The rest would do her good.
Not wanting to wake her, Jacquot got quietly to his feet and made his way to the wheelhouse, pleased to note that he felt not the slightest twinge from his thigh or buttock, just a very subtle tightness.
‘I helped myself to some wine,’ said Delphie softly, putting down her book as he swung round the wheelhouse. ‘On my way through the cabin. I was quiet as a mouse. Do you want some?’
‘A swim first, just to freshen up, and then I’ll be back,’ he replied, and he stepped over the transom and down into the water, feeling it rise over his legs and belly and spill around his shoulders, cool and clean and clear. Letting go of the steps he stroked away from the boat, feeling the water sluice through his fingers, the warm saltiness of it play through his hair, duck-diving into the depths, pulling himself towards the sea-bed, then turning back for the surface.
By the time he got back to Constance and hauled himself out of the water, Claudine was helping Delphie set up the trestle table on the rear deck. He stood on the top step, dripping wet, watching them.
‘I’m sorry, skipper,’ said Delphie. ‘It’s been decided. We’re staying here another night. And there’s nothing you can do or say to dissuade us.’
The Dying Minutes Page 32
