She bit her lip and glared at me, daring me to contradict her, but I didn’t contradict. ‘It’s a lousy rotten town,’ I agreed.
‘And dangerous,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Paris is all of those things.’
She laughed. ‘Paris is like me, cousin Pierre; it’s no longer young, and too dependent upon visitors who bring money. Paris is a woman with a little too much alcohol in her veins. She talks a little too loud and thinks she is young and gay. But she has smiled too often at strange men and the words “I love you” trip too easily from her tongue. The ensemble is chic and the paint is generously applied, but look closely and you’ll see the cracks showing through.’
She got to her feet, groped along the bedside table for a match and lit her cigarette with a hand that trembled very slightly. She turned back to me. ‘I saw the girls I knew taking advantage of offers that came from rich men they could never possibly love. I despised the girls and wondered how they could bring themselves to go to bed with such unattractive men. Well, now I know.’ The smoke was getting in her eyes. ‘It was fear. Fear of being a woman instead of a girl, a woman whose looks are slipping away rapidly, leaving her alone and unwanted in this vicious town.’ She was crying now and I stepped closer to her and touched her arm. For a moment she seemed about to let her head fall upon my shoulder, but I felt her body tense and unyielding. I took a business card from my top pocket and put it on the bedside table next to a box of chocolates. She pulled away from me irritably. ‘Just phone if you want to talk more,’ I said.
‘You’re English,’ she said suddenly. It must have been something in my accent or syntax. I nodded.
‘It will be strictly business,’ she said. ‘Cash payments.’
‘You don’t have to be so tough on yourself,’ I said. She said nothing.
‘And thanks,’ I said.
‘Get stuffed,’ said Monique.
17
First there came a small police van, its klaxon going. Co-operating with it was a blue-uniformed man on a motor-cycle. He kept his whistle in his mouth and blew repeatedly. Sometimes he was ahead of the van, sometimes behind it. He waved his right hand at the traffic as if by just the draught from it he could force the parked cars up on the pavement. The noise was deafening. The traffic ducked out of the way, some cars went willingly, some grudgingly, but after a couple of beeps on the whistle they crawled up on the stones, the pavement and over traffic islands like tortoises. Behind the van came the flying column: three long blue buses jammed with Garde Mobile men who stared at the cringing traffic with a bored look on their faces. At the rear of the column came a radio car. Loiseau watched them disappear down the Faubourg St Honoré. Soon the traffic began to move again. He turned away from the window and back to Maria. ‘Dangerous,’ pronounced Loiseau. ‘He’s playing a dangerous game. The girl is killed in his house, and Datt is pulling every political string he can find to prevent an investigation taking place. He’ll regret it.’ He got to his feet and walked across the room.
‘Sit down, darling,’ said Maria. ‘You are just wasting calories in getting annoyed.’
‘I’m not Datt’s boy,’ said Loiseau.
‘And no one will imagine that you are,’ said Maria. She wondered why Loiseau saw everything as a threat to his prestige.
‘The girl is entitled to an investigation,’ explained Loiseau. ‘That’s why I became a policeman. I believe in equality before the law. And now they are trying to tie my hands. It makes me furious.’
‘Don’t shout,’ said Maria. ‘What sort of effect do you imagine that has upon the people that work for you, hearing you shouting?’
‘You are right,’ said Loiseau. Maria loved him. It was when he capitulated so readily like that that she loved him so intensely. She wanted to care for him and advise him and make him the most successful policeman in the whole world. Maria said, ‘You are the finest policeman in the whole world.’
He smiled. ‘You mean with your help I could be.’ Maria shook her head. ‘Don’t argue,’ said Loiseau. ‘I know the workings of your mind by now.’
Maria smiled too. He did know. That was the awful thing about their marriage. They knew each other too well. To know all is to forgive nothing.
‘She was one of my girls,’ said Loiseau. Maria was surprised. Of course Loiseau had girls, he was no monk, but it surprised her to hear him talk like that to her. ‘One of them?’ She deliberately made her voice mocking.
‘Don’t be so bloody arch, Maria. I can’t stand you raising one eyebrow and adopting that patronizing tone. One of my girls.’ He said it slowly to make it easy for her to understand. He was so pompous that Maria almost giggled. ‘One of my girls, working for me as an informant.’
‘Don’t all the tarts do that?’
‘She wasn’t a tart, she was a highly intelligent girl giving us first-class information.’
‘Admit it, darling,’ Maria cooed, ‘you were a tiny bit infatuated with her.’ She raised an eyebrow quizzically.
‘You stupid cow,’ said Loiseau. ‘What’s the good of treating you like an intelligent human.’ Maria was shocked by the rusty-edged hatred that cut her. She had made a kind, almost loving remark. Of course the girl had fascinated Loiseau and had in turn been fascinated by him. The fact that it was true was proved by Loiseau’s anger. But did his anger have to be so bitter? Did he have to wound her to know if blood flowed through her veins?
Maria got to her feet. ‘I’ll go,’ she said. She remembered Loiseau once saying that Mozart was the only person who understood him. She had long since decided that that at least was true.
‘You said you wanted to ask me something.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Of course it matters. Sit down and tell me.’
She shook her head. ‘Another time.’
‘Do you have to treat me like a monster, just because I won’t play your womanly games?’
‘No,’ she said.
There was no need for Maria to feel sorry for Loiseau. He didn’t feel sorry for himself and seldom for anyone else. He had pulled the mechanism of their marriage apart and now looked at it as if it were a broken toy, wondering why it didn’t work. Poor Loiseau. My poor, poor, darling Loiseau. I at least can build again, but you don’t know what you did that killed us.
‘You’re crying, Maria. Forgive me. I’m so sorry.’
‘I’m not crying and you’re not sorry.’ She smiled at him. ‘Perhaps that’s always been our problem.’
Loiseau shook his head but it wasn’t a convincing denial.
Maria walked back towards the Faubourg St Honoré. Jean-Paul was at the wheel of her car.
‘He made you cry,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘The rotten swine.’
‘I
