‘A Mexican restaurant, yes. Chillies. Enchiladas. Things like that.’
The desk sergeant grinned. ‘No, Captain. That’s the Esposito. It’s the only foreign restaurant in town. But it’s got a bar attached to it that’s called the Nopal. You’ll find it just off the Place de la Liberte. But I wouldn’t recommend either of them. The Largesse is much better. Proper French food. Try their pot-au-feu. Madame Adelaide has been using the same recipe for thirty years. And none of us regulars have complained yet. Tell her Sergeant Marestaing recommended you.’
‘Ah. That’s it. The Esposito. But we are to meet in the bar first. I knew I would get the name wrong.’ Calque allowed a wistful smile to invest his features. ‘I have no choice in the matter of where I eat today, Sergeant, as I’m invited. But I shall try the Largesse for certain tomorrow, on your personal recommendation. But tell me. Could I possibly use your toilet while I’m here? I have prostate troubles. Need to go every couple of hours. You know how it is?’
The pandore nodded, as if he did, indeed, know how it was. He directed Calque up the corridor.
‘Can I go out the back way when I’m finished? Save myself a walk?’
A telephone rang on the pandore ’s desk, conveniently redirecting the man’s attention away from Calque. ‘There is a rear exit, yes, Captain. Please feel free to use it.’
‘Thank you, Sergeant. I will.’ Calque felt curiously satisfied following their exchange, as if he had proved to himself that he could still take the initiative. Still cut the mustard.
Once out in the daylight again, Calque’s demeanour underwent a subtle transformation. He stopped three times before he reached the corner of the street to make sure that no one was following him. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice in one day. He wasn’t about to lead the Corpus back to Lamia.
With any luck, whoever had been tailing him would be fully taken up with communicating to the Countess that Calque was still tucked cosily away inside the gendarmerie – no doubt spilling the beans about the dead footman. Disinformation. Disingenuousness. Deceit. The three D’s. His late lamented mentor, Maurice Edard – an old-school policeman who had cut his milk teeth in the good old pre-1966 days when the Police Nationale was still the Surete – would have been proud of him.
Calque grinned as he imagined the bedlam back at the Domaine. The Countess would be ordering the decks cleared pretty fast if she thought the police might be about to pay her an unexpected visit.
32
By the time he arrived at the Esposito, Calque was 99 per cent certain that he hadn’t been followed. He had doubled back on himself twice more since his first flurry of activity, confined himself to side streets only, and he had even done a Humphrey Bogart – minus Dorothy Malone, unfortunately – in a second-hand bookshop.
When Calque reached the restaurant he didn’t linger by the menu board, but plunged straight in. He didn’t really expect Lamia to be waiting for him. In fact it was far more likely that the message was a false trail laid by the Corpus in an attempt to provide themselves with a fallback position – in case he eluded them the first time, say, or in case he had been professional enough to actually bother hiding his notes, rather than simply to leave them in plain view, like the very worst sort of greenhorn. But what else could he do but take the note at face value? It was the only way he could think of to remain in the game.
Lamia was sitting with her back to him, in one of the private booths. Calque’s heart gave a lurch as he saw her. It astonished him to realize that he had been genuinely concerned for her safety. I must be getting soft in my old age, he thought to himself. First I go into mourning for my racist worm of an assistant, and now I’m acting like a bleeding heart for the sister of the very man who killed him.
He sat down in front of her, facing the door, his expression studiously immobile.
Lamia looked up at him. She held his eyes for ten seconds, and when he didn’t respond, she quietly slid a packet of papers across the table towards him.
‘My notes?’
She nodded.
‘I didn’t dare to hope.’ Calque’s features relaxed, like those of a Chinese shar-pei dog. ‘How in God’s name did you do it?’
Lamia shrugged. ‘I knew, the moment you gave the taxi driver the name of your hotel, and mentioned the fictitious Madame Mercier in front of him, that my mother would know all about it within twenty minutes – that we would both be fatally compromised. She owns half of St Tropez, Captain. She has feelers everywhere.’
‘I know. I spoke to her.’
Lamia’s eyes widened. ‘You…’
Calque reached across and squeezed her hand. ‘The notes, Lamia. How did you manage to get the notes? I can explain all the rest of it later.’
Lamia’s expression lightened momentarily. ‘The taxi journey gave me time to think things through – to work out where we were most vulnerable. When I got to the hotel I pretended to the concierge that I was your mistress. He didn’t bite at first – I mean, who in his right mind would want someone like me as his mistress?’ She thrust herself back in her chair, as though she were challenging Calque to contradict her – to negate the reality of her face. ‘But then I gave him the rest of your money as a sweetener, and he handed over your key. It’s curious how easily men believe us women when we talk of sex.’
Calque inclined his head politely. In reality he was desperately embarrassed at the sudden vulnerability she had shown about her birthmark. But he found it impossible, in the present circumstances, to summon up a suitably gallant riposte. ‘And my notes? You read them?’
Lamia turned quickly away.
‘Listen. That was not an accusation. I want you to read them – in fact I desperately need your help.’
Lamia turned back. ‘So you believe me?’
‘Yes. I believe you. I lied when I told you about the tape recorder this morning. I got nothing, absolutely nothing, from that idiotic stunt I pulled – apart from the drone of a vacuum cleaner, and the occasional crash of moving furniture.’
Lamia snatched one hand to her face, as if she were about to stifle an outburst of the giggles.
Calque pretended not to notice. ‘In point of fact I’m no further forward with anything. I might as well have spent the past five weeks windsurfing in Hawaii for all I’ve managed to achieve.’
‘You? Windsurfing? Surely not?’ Lamia allowed her hand to drop slowly back towards the table. It was a strange movement, akin to the shucking of a veil. Almost as if she were voluntarily revealing herself to him for the very first time. She tilted her head fractionally to one side to indicate that she was no longer jesting. ‘Why should I help you, Captain? Why should I betray my family to someone I only met a few hours ago?’
Calque sat back in his seat. ‘No reason. No reason whatsoever. You’ve already helped me way beyond any capacity I may have to repay you, simply by keeping my notes from the Corpus. If you were to get up and leave now, I would still be infinitely grateful to you. There would be no blame attached to anything you’ve done.’
Lamia’s eyes scanned Calque’s face, as though searching for clues to a long-standing and elusive mystery. ‘What are you expecting of me?’
‘I want you to tell me what you can of the Corpus’s plans.’
‘So you do want me to betray my family?’
‘Just as they’ve betrayed you. Yes. I won’t lie to you, Lamia. I believe the Corpus to be evil. And furthermore I believe your mother to be a person with no moral scruples whatsoever. Someone who would not hesitate to use any means necessary, including murder, to get her own way.’
Lamia watched him, one hand splayed across her chest, as if she had temporarily lost control of her heart rate. ‘How much do you already know? About my mother, I mean. About her role in the Corpus Maleficus. ’
‘Assume I know nothing.’
‘What particular question do you want to ask me?’
‘A simple one. What went on in that room when you all met?’
Lamia still seemed to be weighing him up. ‘The people you saw. Entering the house. You know they are all my brothers and sisters?’
‘I deduced that much, yes. And your mother as good as confirmed it to me.’
