Of course the old man, his ever-cautious father-in-law, would be spitting nails. While he'd been in charge, it was soap, essential oils and absolutely nothing else. It had taken Basquet six months to persuade the old pingre to develop a line of scented candles, for fuck's sake. And when the stock sold out in less than a month, the old man refused to consider another run. It wasn't their core business, he'd argued; it diminished their position. What the company was founded on, the old man declared, was what it lived on, gently smacking the back of one hand against the open palm of the other in that irritating, patronising way of his.
Which, Basquet had been at pains to point out, hadn't been enough to keep the family business all that healthy. Profits were acceptable but unremarkable, the company share price never more than a few sous one way or the other, and yearly dividends increasingly disappointing. The business was ticking over, more or less, but nothing more. Which was why, when the old man passed on and Basquet finally took control, the company headed off in some unlikely directions. And it was those various directions - property development, leasing, insurance, remortgaging and, most recently, maritime trade - that had kept the family business on line, recording the kinds of profits the old man had never even dreamed of. So much for playing safe.
Rounding a stony bluff, the Ferretti reached its limits, the furthest point inland, cobalt depths rising to aquamarine shallows and the gentle slap of surf on a curve of white sand some sixty metres across.
Basquet leant forward, took off his sunglasses and shaded his eyes. He could see it all. There, where the rock and scrub began to slope upwards behind the beach, built out on a stilted deck, would be the clubhouse and restaurant; there the chandlery, workshops and supply mall; and there the double jetty large enough to accommodate a dozen cruisers.
Slipping his sunglasses back on, Basquet followed the scrubby path that wound up through the trees, the only land access to the calanque, leading to a stony goat track that cut through pine and olive to the D559. That was the route the driveway would follow, from the security post and pillared gates through nearly two kilometres of landscaped grounds, two hundred hectares of tended lawns, tennis courts, a driving range . . .
Right now, it seemed, the biggest problem Basquet faced was what to call the place, trying to get the right name. The Calanque Club? Or just Calanque?
Or, as his mistress Anais had suggested, Calanque One. That was smart. Basquet liked that - doing the same again, the next inlet along. Another Basquet development. More units, lower overheads, higher prices and profits.
Closing now on the beach and beginning to roll with the surf, Basquet had Pamuk power up and put the cruiser into a tight sweep, going back the way they had come past the three-million-dollar homes whose draft architectural plans Basquet kept in his office safe. By the end of the month he'd have what he needed.
As the Ferretti reached the final bend, Basquet glanced at his Rolex. Right on time.
Beside him, anticipating open water, Pamuk eased the helm to starboard and slid the throttles forward. But as they turned out of the calanque, Pamuk suddenly stiffened, brought the revs back a notch. A hundred metres ahead lay a black-hulled cigarette boat, the weight of its twin outboard engines lifting the bows above the chop, its name, Pluto, painted in flames along its lacquered flanks. There were two men in the cockpit - one, in a black T-shirt, wiry but well built, standing at the wheel, the breeze whipping his fair hair; the second, just head and shoulders, sitting back, arms spread across the top of the cockpit lounger, the side of his face smeared with a startling raspberry stain.
'It's okay,' said Basquet, putting out a hand to calm Pamuk. 'Just draw alongside, there's a good boy.'
Five minutes later, the two boats were fendered and secured, bows pointing up into the wind, the Vallée des Eaux five metres longer and much higher in the water than the speedboat, but a good twenty knots slower. Pamuk, holding her steady, watched Monsieur Basquet appear at the bow and lean over the rail. In the cockpit beneath, the man in the lounger got shakily to his feet and the two of them began talking. The low revving of the engines and the whip of the breeze made it impossible to hear what was being said, but the meeting seemed amicable enough.
The rendezvous, Pamuk realised, had been planned. And about as discreet as you could get.
A few moments later the exchange was concluded with a wave, since hands couldn't be shaken, and Basquet returned to the bridge. Down in Pluto, Black T-shirt slipped the tethers and the two boats rocked apart.
Pamuk glanced at his boss and Basquet nodded towards Marseilles. Turning the bows and gently applying pressure to the throttles, Pamuk eased the Ferretti away from the speedboat and set a course for port.
Beside him Monsieur Basquet patted the pockets of his shorts, his shirt.
Pamuk recognised the movement. He took a hand off the helm and reached for the pastilles he'd stashed in a drawer on the console.
18
Thirty years earlier Jacquot would have made for La Joliette and the alleyways off Quai du Lazaret. That was where the tattoo boys hung out back then. Pumping red and blue inks into meaty, seafaring biceps, the recipients either comatose with drink and carried in by giggling shipmates, or holding back their own sleeves to more closely inspect the needle s whining progress across their skin.
But it was a different world down there now, along La Joliette, from when Jacquot was a boy, loitering along those streets with Doisneau and his pals. Now it was cranes and hard hats, the rattle of jackhammers, bulldozers and Metro extensions, and a recently completed and widely acclaimed office conversion, the old warehouses set against the Littoral flyover transformed into chic and elegant office space - six-floor atriums, glass-walled lifts, glades of giant fern and pools of golden carp among the teak decking and gravelled Japanese landscapes.
Nowadays the tattoo parlour nearest to La Joliette was tucked away in a courtyard behind Republique, and it was here that Jacquot was headed. Tuesday morning. First thing, just as Gastal had suggested. On foot. Feeling a little weak and ragged from Gassi's demis the night before but every sense alert.
This, Jacquot decided, shading his eyes as he stepped out from Le Panier's shadowy side streets onto the sun- warmed quay of the Vieux Port, was what it was all about, everything he loved about police work. Real police work. Down in the trenches. A photo in your pocket and a whole city to trawl, people to seek out, questions to ask, leads to follow.
Of course, Guimpier wouldn't have approved. As chief investigating officer it wasn't the kind of police work Jacquot should have bothered with, a job more usefully delegated to one of his team - that bloodhound Peluze, or the wily, devious new girl Isabelle Cassier, or Chevin with his disarming stutter, or Laganne, Serre, Muzon. Any of them on the homicide squad could have done the job. But Jacquot couldn't resist it. Out here in the morning sunshine, following a hunch, with only the flimsiest evidence to work on; knowing that somewhere in the city there was an answer to every question, a solution for every crime, a killer for every victim. You just had to look. Like the old times. Read the passage of play, keep your eyes and ears open, and take your opportunities where you found them.
It wasn't so different from the time he'd spent with Doisneau and the Chats de Nuit, young kids, out on the street, looking for mischief. Only this time Jacquot was on the right side of the law, with a badge in his pocket to prove it and twenty years' service under his belt. From a gendarme walking suburban beats to hunting down killers for Homicide, he'd played his part in countless dramas. But the thrill of the chase never palled. It was what Jacquot loved, and never tired of. Maybe something, maybe nothing, but always worth the ante.
And what a place to do it, he thought, breathing in a lungful of salty sea air along the Quai du Port, and the very next moment, as he turned the Samaritaine corner into Republique, catching a warm, rotting whiff of drains. Marseilles. The city he'd grown up in, left and come back to. A city by the sea. Wherever you went - in its darkest alleyways, its busiest markets, in
its parks and suburbs, along its most fashionable thoroughfares - the ocean was always there. The watery play of its reflection when you least expected it, a slice of blue at the end of a boulevard, or a flash of distant sun-glitter between buildings. And always the clean, salty scent of it sluicing through the city streets.
And this morning he was a part of that city, as close as you could get, the pavement under his feet, the sun on his shoulders, a cool breeze licking at his neck. And on his own, the way he liked it. The way Rully had always fallen in with, understood; the reason they got on so well together. Following his nose, letting instinct rather than procedure set the pace, point the way.
Instinct. Jacquot knew it was his strongest card. Growing up in the back alleys of Le Panier, playing fast and loose with the Chats, instinct had been his key to survival. Knowing who to trust and knowing when to run. And instinct too, knowing, when the moment arrived, to follow an old man with white hair and his mother's gentle eyes who came to claim him from the Borel orphanage. A man he'd never met, didn't know. His mothers father.
It was the same instinct that served him from the moment he stepped onto the field of play, encouraged by that same old man; knowing somehow where the ball would go next, knowing which of his opponents was the real threat, knowing which of his own team-mates to shadow. Sensing the passage of play.
Instinct. And Jacquot could feel its gentle, goading presence now, as he sought out his first port of call, in a sloping, rubbish-strewn yard a few steps back from the traffic on Republique. There was no shop window, just a door with an unlit neon sign above it, Tattoo-Toi, and three stone steps leading down into a dim semi-basement parlour that smelt of damp plaster, old sweat and spilled antiseptic. In the middle of the room was a barbers chair surrounded by the paraphernalia of tattooing: needle gun, inks, a tray of plastic bottles, an unlikely-looking bag of pink cotton wool balls and, beneath the chair, a patch of bubbled lino stained with blots of ink - red, blue, black, green - and scarred with a worn furrow where, Jacquot supposed, the soles of customers' shoes rasped as the needle bit.
'Allo. Anyone around?' called Jacquot.
With a swish and slap, a curtain of beads at the back of the room parted and the proprietor appeared, his grubby sleeveless .vest revealing bulging tattooed shoulders under a mat of black hair. Holding the beads to one side, he gave Jacquot a surly once-over before bringing up his other hand and biting into the brioche he was carrying.
At which point, saying nothing in return, Jacquot pulled the picture from his pocket and held it up.
Usually it would be a face, features to identify, but all they had was the tattoo - three words one above the other on a curled and shadowed scroll of parchment incised into the victims upper thigh - the face too bloated and fish- snacked to be of any practical value.
The tattooist looked once, thrusting out his chin as though scrutinising a work of art, swallowed his mouthful of brioche, sucked at his teeth with his tongue and top lip, then shook his head.
It was the same story at the second tattoo parlour that Jacquot visited, behind the Mercure Hotel on Quai des Beiges, and at a third address near the Gare St-Charles. But at the fourth, off rue Curiol, Jacquot came a little closer.
Grunt work, it got you there in the end.
Surrounded by sample images of coiled serpents, fire- breathing dragons, roaring lions, daggers plunged into bleeding hearts and intricately worked native designs, a bare-chested customer was slumped forward across a table, head resting in his arms. Beside him, perched on a stool and leaning over the canvas of his back, a rubber- gloved tattooist worked on the wing feathers of a bird or an angel. Like the other parlours Jacquot had visited, the room was filled with the sharp smell of antiseptic, a bottle of which the tattooist tipped out one-handed onto a swab to wipe away the beads of blood from his customers shoulder blade.
'Not mine,' said the tattooist, studying the photo but not taking it, needle humming an inch above his customer's skin, cotton swab tossed into a metal bin at his feet. 'But you ask me, it looks like Vrech's work.'
'Vrech?' asked Jacquot, pocketing the photo.
The tattooist didn't respond immediately, as though Jacquot had left the shop and he was alone with his client.
And then, without looking up from his work: 'Fausse Monnaie. Up on the Corniche, near the bus stop,' he said, giving Jacquot the lead he'd spent the best part of the morning searching for.
Ten minutes later, as a sleekly lined motor launch rumbled down the channel to its berth in the Vieux Port, Jacquot turned off the Quai de Rive Neuve and down rue Thiars where he'd left his car the night before. Fausse Monnaie was on the road to Prado and too far to walk. Already a flyer had been tucked under his windscreen wiper. A sale somewhere, best prices, the usual thing. He balled it and tossed it behind the passenger seat. Pulling out into the traffic he set off for Fausse Monnaie.
It didn't take long to find the place he was looking for. A few steps back from a covered bus stop, across a narrow municipal garden and sharing a semi-basement frontage with a tabac, an estate agent, a baker and a greengrocer, stood Studio Vrech. Leaving his car in the nearest side street, Jacquot walked back to the parlour. The closer he got, the more certain he was that he was about to get a break.
Vrech's tattoo parlour was bigger than the others he'd visited that morning - bigger, brighter and better cared for. Its reception desk was furnished with a vase of plastic flowers, its tiled floors slanted with morning sunlight and its waiting room tidily piled with magazines. Around its walls, framed certificates and a gallery's worth of photographed tattoos attested to Vrech's qualifications and artistry.
Behind the desk, in the parlour beyond, was the man himself. He was unmistakable. Dressed in white T-shirt and black cycling shorts, he was sitting with his back to the door, bare feet up on a mirrored vanity, reading a newspaper. From where Jacquot stood the capital letters spelling his name were clearly visible on the back of his skull, branded onto the skin beneath a helmet of blond stubble. As far as Jacquot could see, it was the only tattoo the man possessed.
'You don't look like you've come for a tattoo,' said the man called Vrech, glancing up at Jacquot in the mirror before turning back to his newspaper.
'You're right, I haven't,' replied Jacquot.
Vrech turned a page lazily, casting his eyes over the spread to see if there was anything that caught his fancy. Outside, beyond the studio window, the traffic beeped its way back to town or out to the beaches of Prado. A bus pulled into its stop with a wheeze of brakes and the doors shuddered open.
'So, Monsieur Gendarme, what can I do for you?'
Jacquot noted the emphasis and how swiftly the tattooist had identified him as a policeman.
'Someone told me they recognised your handiwork,' said Jacquot, pulling the photo from his pocket. He placed it on the counter.
Swivelling round in the tattooist's chair, Vrech put down the paper and came out to the desk. He took the photo, looked at it intently and started nodding.
'Very difficult work, that,! he said. 'The skin's so pliable there, so soft. Not like the arms or the back. You have to stretch it, you know? To get the smooth surface. And compensate, otherwise the outline blurs. It can be painful, too . . . well, not painful, you understand, as much as . . . ticklish. It is difficult to sit still, yes?'
Vrech's voice was rough and deep, the French heavily
accented. Dutch, thought Jacquot. That hoiky way Lowlanders speak, as though every word is a shard of gravel caught in the throat.
'Its yours?'
'Did you hear me say that?'
'Let's say I detect a certain professional pride.'
Vrech looked at the photo once more, then snapped it down onto the counter rather than handing it back.
'And you'd be correct in your assumption, Monsieur Gendarme. Let's see . . . Maybe eighteen months ago, couple of visits. The colours, you understand, the closeness of the lettering, the . . . discomfort.' Vrech tipped his head back to stare at the ceili
ng, as though making a calculation. Then he turned to Jacquot, looked him straight in the eye. 'Maybe four, five hours' work total.'
'A name?'
Vrech gave it some thought. 'Nicki? Vicki? Something like that.'
'You have an address?'
Vrech shook his head. 'The boyfriend paid.'
'The boyfriend?'
'The boyfriend. Cash. Sat beside her the whole time.' Vrech nodded at the chair he'd been sitting in. 'Both visits. Which, you know, makes it difficult when I'm tattooing pretty much the highest place you can get to on a woman's leg. I mean centimetres from it. You can smell it, you know what I'm saying . . . ?' Vrech smiled. 'And there's the boyfriend watching. I tell you
'What about the boyfriend?'
'No address, sorry.' Vrech shook his head.
The negative and the headshake were dispiriting.
'But I know who he is,' continued Vrech.
'And that would be?' prompted Jacquot, as the tattooist went back to his seat and picked up his paper, as though he'd said all he planned saying.
'He's called Carnot.'
Jacquot and the Waterman Page 8
