know?—made their waiters lose their moustaches. No longer chic, you see?”
“Oh, right.” There isn’t a lot you can say to this quiet reflective stuff, especially from a bird like Lysette. You never know whether it’s leading up.
“The Coupole has been supplanted by a monstrosity. Beckett, Henry Miller…”
My attention wandered. Nobody I recognized around the small square. Students burst into laughter at a nearby table. Two nurses slumped tiredly on window chairs, smoking. Nurses made me remember that gross but fantastically exuberant Katta. Wouldn’t have minded her giving me something she gave Paulie. Isn’t it odd how—
“Eh?” An important question had come up.
“… kill you, Lovejoy.” Her last words.
“Who?” People looked across with sudden interest. I must have yelped. I quickly smiled for the sake of appearances. I don’t know what it looked like, but it felt pretty ghastly from within.
“The syndicate.”
Sweat beaded my forehead, started to trickle down my back. Jodie Danglass was their helper. Surely she wouldn’t be party to anything so…? And Paulie? Or his slavish fatty Katta? The suave Troude? The chilling Monique Delebarre might, any day of the week. Guy and Veronique would slay their grannies for a bob, par for their mainline course. Colonel Marimee was deranged; I couldn’t count him among the faint-hearts, and who knew how many goons he had to pull the rip? But Sandy, for God’s sake? No wonder Mel had cut and run. Had Mel known how terrible the scam was? Worse, did Sandy?
“Why’d you visit Jan, Lovejoy?” Still flat of voice. “I recognize you from the hospital, coming out of the lift.”
“Dunno. Worried about me getting drawn into something I didn’t understand, I suppose.”
“Jan and Sandy have been… friends for months.” She shrugged. “It’s difficult. To be sister to a brother with…”
“Must be.” Jan and Sandy now? So Mel had good personal reason to scarper, not just money.
“You could leave, Lovejoy.” I wished she’d not fiddle with her spoon. I sometimes wonder if women nark me deliberately.
“Leave?” I said blankly. “Leave? As in…?”
“Leave. With me. Now, when Gobbie comes, simply drive home.”
That quiet voice, her luscious hair, casual manner, the serene intensity of her Pre-Raphaelite features. All the time cerebrating away like a think-tank.
“
“Gobbie will make his own way. He knows the routes.” She raised her eyes to mine. I’d never seen such deep eyes, though they were at the front, if you follow. Not sunken, I mean. “You must ask yourself why stay, Lovejoy.”
I really hate that. Asking me why’s my business, not hers. “Why?” I asked her.
“You must learn your own reasons, if you haven’t already discovered them for yourself.”
“Look, love,” I said, peeved, frightened. “This whole thing’s made me spew up, drift around foreign lands with —”
“You’re ignorant, Lovejoy,” she said softly. “Ignorance of the simple kind, not malice. But it draws you out of your depth.” She coloured slightly. “I would care for you, you see.”
Care for how? I nearly said, like you did your brother Jan? Mercifully, Gobbie wheezed into a chair, his eyes rheumy.
“Found one of their factories, Lovejoy. Within a stone’s throw of the depot. Next street but three.” He cleared his gruff old throttle. “I could tell you about it. Save you seeing?”
Lam out? That’s what Lysette wanted me to do. “No, Gobbie. I’ll see.” It was me’d been sickened, suffered by avoiding the truth. This served me right. “Stay here, Lysette.” I rose. She came anyway. I sighed. One word from me, birds do whatever they want. It’s their version of loyal co-operation.
Distances in Paris never seem very far, not like London where sequential postal numbers signify districts miles apart. Paris is yards rather than furlongs. We were there in a trice, Gobbie flagging somewhat as we made the last street. I must have been hurrying. Lysette told me to take my time, that Gobbie had already done too much. She didn’t mention her prodigious driving, staying on the ball, Lausanne and back, Zurich to Paris. And making mad proposals to a nerk like me.
“See that covered way, son?” There was a kind of projection from a long wall. It resembled one of those ironwork half-cloisters you get over the side entrances of London theatres, for early-evening queues that no longer come.
“Aye?” Several stacked street barrows. Steps, a few sacking-covered windows, some lantern lights, one or two bare bulbs. Rubbish littered the pavements. That scented cooking, metal clanking somewhere, a few shouts in non-French, a background hum. “Is there a way in?”
“The steps go up, but have ones leading to the cellars beside.”
“So I go down?” Nobody along these pavements, not at this hour. I felt my nape prickle.
“No, son. You go up.” With resigned patience, “Then you can look down into the cellar area, see?”
Now he was deliberately narking me. “How the hell did I know they’d made it all into one?”
“Cos it’s a workshop.” He was disgusted by my slowness. Lysette said nothing.
“Wait here.” I left them, eeled down the narrow street. The hum and clanking grew louder. Something thudded, shouts rose, then settled down to a hum. I went softly, looked back. Gobbie and Lysette had vanished. The air felt
