believe in coincidences. That’s why I’m here.’ He smoothed his tie again. ‘Where can I drop you, Charles?’
6
Tuesday morning was cold and very still, as if the world was waiting for something to happen. The ocean shone like steel, and from it successive tidal waves of mist engulfed the promenade. The elaborate façades of the great hotels and the disc of the sun were no more than patterns embossed upon a monochrome world.
Trapped between the low pock-marked sky and the grey Mediterranean, two Mirage jets buzzed like flies in a bottle, the vibrations continuing long after they had disappeared out to sea. I walked past the seafood restaurants on the quai, where they were skimming the oil and slicing the frites. It was a long time until the tourist season but already there were a few Germans in the heated terraces, eating cream cakes and pointing with their forks, and a few British on the beach, with Thermos flasks of strong tea, and cucumber sandwiches wrapped up in The Observer.
I was on my way to Frankel’s apartment. As I came level with the market entrance I stopped at the traffic lights. A dune buggy with a broken silencer roared past, and then a black Mercedes flashed its main beams. I waited as it crawled past me, its driver gesturing. It was Steve Champion. He was looking for a place to park but all the meter spaces were filled. Just as I thought he’d have to give up the idea, he swerved and bumped over the kerb and on to the promenade. The police allowed tourists to park there, and Champion’s Mercedes had Swiss plates.
‘You crazy bastard!’ said Champion, with a smile. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Where are you staying?’ The flesh under his eye was scratched and swollen and his smile was hesitant and pained.
‘With the Princess,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘You’re a masochist, Charlie. That’s a filthy hole.’
‘She can do with the money,’ I said.
‘Don’t you believe it, Charlie. She’s probably a major shareholder in IBM or something. Look here – have you time for a drink?’
‘Why not?’
He turned up the collar of his dark-grey silk trench coat and tied the belt carelessly. He came round the car to me. ‘There’s a sort of club,’ he said.
‘For expatriates?’
‘For brothel proprietors and pimps.’
‘Let’s hope it’s not too crowded,’ I said.
Champion turned to have a better view of an Italian cruise-liner sailing past towards Marseille. It seemed almost close enough to touch, but the weather had discouraged all but the most intrepid passengers from venturing on deck. A man in oilskins waved. Champion waved back.
‘Fancy a walk?’ Champion asked me. He saw me looking at his bruised cheek and he touched it self-consciously.
‘Yes,’ I said. He locked the door of the car and pulled his scarf tight around his throat.
We walked north, through the old town, and through the back alleys that smelled of wood-smoke and shashlik, and past the dark bars where Arab workers drink beer and watch the slot-machine movies of blonde strippers.
But it was no cramped bar, with menu in Arabic, to which Champion took me. It was a fine mansion on the fringe of the ‘musicians’ quarter’. It stood well back from the street, screened by full-grown palm trees, and guarded by stone cherubs on the porch. A uniformed doorman saluted us, and a pretty girl took our coats. Steve put his hand on my shoulder and guided me through the hall and the bar, to a lounge that was furnished with black leather sofas and abstract paintings in stainless-steel frames. ‘The usual,’ he told the waiter.
On the low table in front of us there was an array of financial magazines. Champion toyed with them. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he said. ‘You let me make a fool of myself.’
It was Steve who’d taught me the value of such direct openings. To continue to deny that I worked for the department was almost an admission that I’d been assigned to seek him out. ‘True-life confessions? For those chance meetings once or twice a year? That wasn’t in the Steve Champion crash-course when I took it.’
He smiled and winced and, with only the tip of his finger, touched his bruised cheek. ‘You did it well, old son. Asking me if I was recruiting you. That was a subtle touch, Charlie.’ He was telling me that he now knew it had been no chance meeting that day in Piccadilly. And Steve was telling me that from now on there’d be no half-price admissions for boys under sixteen.
‘Tell me one thing,’ Steve said, as if he was going to ask nothing else, ‘did you volunteer to come out here after me?’
‘It’s better that it’s me,’ I said. A waiter brought a tray with silver coffee-pot, Limoges china and a sealed bottle of private-label cognac. It was that sort of club.
‘One day you might find out what it’s like,’ said Steve.
‘There was the girl, Steve.’
‘What about the girl?’
‘It’s a Kill File, Steve,’ I told him. ‘Melodie Page is dead.’
‘Death of an operative?’ He looked at me for a long time. He knew how the department felt about Kill File investigations. He spooned a lot of sugar into his coffee, and took his time in stirring it. ‘So they are playing rough,’ he said. ‘Have they applied for extradition?’
‘If the investigating officer decides …’
‘Jesus Christ!’ said Steve angrily. ‘Don’t give me that Moriarty Police Law crap. Are you telling me that there is a murder investigation being conducted by C.1 at the Yard?’
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘There were complications.’
Champion screwed up his face and sucked his coffee spoon. ‘So Melodie was working for the department?’
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to.
Champion nodded. ‘Of course. What a clown I am. And she’s dead? You saw the body?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Level with me, Charlie,’ said Champion.
I said, ‘No, I didn’t see the body.’ Champion poured coffee, then he snapped the seal on the cognac and poured two large tots.
‘Neat. Effective. And not at all gaudy,’ said Champion eventually, with some measure of admiration. He waggled the coffee spoon at me.
It seemed a bit disloyal to the department to understand his meaning too quickly. ‘I don’t understand,’ I said.
‘You understand, old boy,’ said Champion. ‘You understand. But not as well as I bloody understand.’ He paused while a waiter brought the cigarettes he’d ordered. When the waiter departed, Steve said softly, ‘There’s no dead girl – or if there is, your people have killed her – this is just a stunt, a frame-up, to get me back to London.’ Champion moved his cigarettes and his gold Dunhill lighter about on the magazines in front of him, pushing
