She fell silent. I looked up, waiting.
“You see, Lovejoy?” She’d cooled her ardour. “You are informed. It happens too often.”
“Don’t be daft, love. Everybody goes through a bad patch, even France. You’ve one of the loveliest countries on earth. Lovely lingo. Look at us. We drop clangers all over the place.”
“Clangers?”
“Faults, make mistakes. Christ, love, the Vatican’s own postage stamps got their Latin wrong last year! And C-14 carbon dating’s off by 3,500 years—when we thought it infallible!” I grinned. “Sometimes errors help. Like that statue of Hercules. Second century, right? Its top half’s in the Met—didn’t they pay to have it smuggled out of, where, Ankara? No wonder the Turks went mental. Where’re you from, love?”
“Marseilles.” It was out without thought. She shrugged, a pretty sight. A shoulder lifted, head a little aslant. Beautiful enough to paint, eat, love. Well, maybe not love. You’d never survive. “Now my city is broke, unemployment rife. Shops close daily. The French population declines, replaced by a tide of immigrants who know nothing of France. The great docks have moved to Barcelona—
“So?” I said cheerfully. “Incomers blend in two generations—”
“The main street was exquisite, Lovejoy.” She was toying wistfully with her food. It was a lovely pie thing, fish and mushrooms with some sauce stuff, vegetables undercooked, best meal on earth. I borrowed a bit from her plate while she talked, to help her. Her eyes were dreamy. “La Canebiere outshone the Champs Elysees for glamour and luxury. Now it’s a series of cheap pizza stalls, an Arab souk where no self-respecting Frenchman walks at night unless with guard dogs. And even then you have to climb over filth, piled rubbish.” She focused on me. I was having her spuds. “You don’t think this reasonable, Lovejoy?”
“No, love. Not for self-indulgence. Londoners once petitioned against French immigrants for pinching jobs. Charles the Second had the sense to say no, let the Huguenots come.”
“Liberalism is weakness, Lovejoy.” She said it by rote.
“If you say so, love. Any chance of some more greens?” She signalled, the waiters sprang. “I don’t blame your dockies for demonstrating now the Spanish have abolished their Customs and Excise posts. Wherever there’s a border barrier, there’s a fortune in fiddles. That’s what they’re mad at.”
She watched me nosh. “My lovely Marseilles’ major product is now crime, Lovejoy. Gang wars, killings. France has left.”
“Anything I can do, love?” I honestly meant it. But what? Nostalgia’s the only untreatable disease.
“You’ve done it, Lovejoy. Divvying.” She asked a bit more about Jodie Danglass, who she was, what she did, but in malicious tones that gave me goose-pimples. Ten minutes later, me still trying to scoff some profiteroles, she upped and offed without so much as a word of warning. And that was that.
“How many, Gobbie?”
“Fifty-two, Lovejoy.”
“Where to?” Fifty-two pantechnicons? Christ.
“South at first. Hell of a convoy.” He grinned. “At first.”
“What do you mean at first?”
He was falling about, silly old fool. “They didn’t ever form up. They left in dribs and drabs. Know what, Lovejoy?”
“No?”
“They wus every shape and size you ever did see.” I’d counted on it. “Lysette’s chasing after three. She didn’t know what she oughter do. They’re labelled something about electricity.”
“The vans had different insignia?”
“Far as we could tell, son. We only guessed at fifty-two.” He went apologetic. “Three entrances, see? Only two of us counting, from hiding…”
Pity. If I’d been there, I could have told whether they had been crammed with antiques or not. Instead, I’d been delayed hearing out Monique’s Good Old Days saga.
“Right, Gobbie. That’s it, then.” We were in a nosh bar near the St Peterskirche. I’d paid a king’s ransom for two coffees and a cake. “They’ll hit the Repository in two days.”
“How’ll they get the stuff out, Lovejoy? It’s a hell of a lot to get in by legitimate means, let alone rob.”
“Wish I knew. Where’s Lysette going to meet us?”
We left, me thinking I’d solved nearly everything, talking over old scams. The cafes of Zurich aren’t a patch on the Paris ones, which have atmosphere. I know Switzerland pretends to be over seven centuries old, but that’s a fib. But Paris really truly has it. I said as much to Gobbie, laughing. He looked at me doubtfully as we walked down a narrow street to the Fraumunster. I was saying what a high old time I’d had in Paris, racing Guy and Veronique round the antique shops, how I’d seen the main fakes’ storage area there for the Troude-Monique scam.
Talking to myself. Gobbie had stopped. He was in the gloaming behind me, standing quite still. It was coming dusk.
“Gobbie?” I called back. “You all right?”
He came on slowly. “Lovejoy?” he asked. “You do understand?”
“Eh?” I could have clouted the silly old git. “Course I do! I’m the one called you in, you burke.” Maybe it was senility.
“Then tell me.” There was hardly anyone about. The Fraumunster was lit. We would have seen eavesdroppers.
