pistol at my side. I got to Apartment 49 and tapped gently on the door, standing to the left of the frame so I could see into the apartment as soon as it opened. There was the rattle of a security chain, then the squeak of hinges.
He looked scared but a bit out of it, with dark rings beneath his glazed eyes. He staggered a little as he led me into the living room. The glass patio doors and blinds were closed, so the smell of cigarettes was overpowering. Fully dressed, he stood by the coffee table, taking nervous sips from a small bottle of Evian. A used syringe lay on top of the table, next to a foil card of oblong-shaped pills.
His hair was greasy as always, but now sticking up. His red-striped shirt was creased, with the tail hanging out. Judging by the scrunched-up pashmina on the couch, that was where he’d been sleeping.
“Is there anybody else here?”
“No, there’s no one. What do you want? I have told you everything—”
I put the Browning muzzle to his lips. “Shut the fuck up.” I nodded toward the door that divided the living area from the hallway into the bedroom and bathroom, then stepped back and closed the front door with my ass. “Go on. You know what to do.”
“I tell you, there is no one here. Why would I lie to you? Why?”
He held out his arms in submission and swayed a little.
“Just do it.”
After two attempts he recapped the bottle, chucked it onto the couch, and walked into the hall. I moved behind him, clearing the apartment. Nothing much had changed: everything was still in a shit state. We came back into the living room and he sat down, slumping into the cushions.
“Where’s the Ninth of May?”
His brain wouldn’t compute. “It’s where I said it would be.”
“No, it isn’t. It was there yesterday, but now it’s moved. Where has Jonathan taken the boat?”
He looked totally confused now. “He? Who? I don’t understand what you—”
“Jonathan Tynan-lah-di-fucking-dah-Ramsay. I know all about him, what he does, what he’s done, who he’s done it with. I even saw you with him Wednesday night. The Fiancee of the Desert, Juan-les-Pins, remember?”
I bent down, looking into the wall unit for the Polaroids, but they were still nowhere to be seen.
I straightened again. “You hearing me?” I pushed up his chin and finally got to look into his eyes. “I have no time to fuck around. Tell me where the boat is.”
He looked genuinely puzzled and very worried as he slumped back into the couch. “I don’t understand, I don’t know what you’re saying. He should—”
“It’s very simple,” I cut in. “The Ninth of May has left Beaulieu-sur-Mer and I want to know where it’s gone. Back to Marseille?”
I wanted him to know I knew a lot more than he thought.
There was no more time to waste. I was losing valuable minutes. I went to the kitchen and used the muzzle of the Browning to rummage in the drawers. I picked up a plastic-handled bread knife and came back into the living room. He pushed himself back an extra three inches into the couch. He was paying a lot of attention to me now.
“I’m going to ask one more time. Where is the boat?”
He hesitated, then began to stutter. “I don’t know…it should be at the port. It isn’t going to Marseille, that was just to pick up the two guys from the Algiers ferry. No, no…Beaulieu-sur-Mer…that’s what he—”
He was rubbing his face now with both hands, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his legs. “It should be there, I…”
I didn’t try to get eye contact again, just pushed him back into the back cushions and pointed the knife at his face. He needed to see it.
“Listen carefully. If you don’t know where it is, you’re no good to me. I don’t give a shit how important you think you are to other people. To me you’re nothing, and I’d rather have you dead than able to talk about me, if you ever live long enough, pumping that shit into you.”
His dopey eyes rolled toward the syringe and pills. “Please, I don’t know anything. The boat should be at the port. The boat was there. I swear, you will make a great mistake, I am protected, I—”
“Shut the fuck up. You’ve got fifteen seconds left. Tell me where the boat is.” I shoved the Browning into my jeans and checked traser. “You saw how messy this gets…especially if this thing isn’t sharp enough.”
His eyes were jumping around in his head. He was losing it, big-time. “I swear I don’t know, please…” His hands suddenly came up, as if he’d had a revelation. “Maybe he’s gone back to Vauban…”
“Antibes?”
“Yes, yes. Maybe he’s moved back there….”
I knew this place, I knew Vauban. It was a massive marina in the old town of Antibes, about ten minutes’ drive from Juan-les-Pins. I pointed the knife back at him. “Why there?”
“It’s always there, in the port, that’s where he lives. He told me he would go to Beaulieu-sur-Mer for three days with those guys. I swear this is the truth, I swear…”
“Where in Vauban?”
“With the fishing boats.”
I reckoned he was scared enough now to be telling the truth. Sweat poured down his face as he leaned forward, nervously pushed a tablet through the foil, and tossed it into his mouth, then fought with the Evian bottle top. I watched as he swallowed it like a gulping dog, hands shaking so badly the water ran down the side of his stubbly face.
He fiddled with the foil, as if making up his mind whether to take a second for luck.
“Is everything still going according to plan?”
He looked up at me, his voice trembling as much as everything else. “Yes, yes, everything. I’m sure. I don’t know why the boat has moved. I didn’t speak with Jonathan since he returned from Marseille with the collectors on Wednesday. He stopped at Vauban with those guys for a few hours, to meet me and try to persuade them to stay there. That was when I learned the addresses of these hawallada. You have to believe me. If the Ninth of May has moved, that is where it will be, by the fishing boats. Jonathan will not be letting anyone down, there will be a reason for him to leave.”
I looked down at the crap he had on the table. He knew what I was thinking.
“You’re disgusted. Everything I do disgusts you.” He waved the card at the syringe. “You think this is heroin, or maybe a little mixer, something like that?” He held up the tablet that he’d just pulled out with his shaky thumb and forefinger. “This, my friend, this is saquinavir, an antiretroviral…” His whole demeanor had changed. I didn’t know whether he suddenly just didn’t give a fuck, or if the chemicals he was taking had made him a bit soft in the head. He put the pill into his mouth, but didn’t follow it with any water. It rattled against his teeth as he spoke. “How times have changed. I take it for keeping slim — for as long as I can. The syringe, that is for my pain. These are the only drugs Jonathan and I take these days.”
He tilted the last of the Evian into and around his mouth before collapsing back into his sleeping position on the couch.
“The police were at Beaulieu-sur-Mer. They were looking at the boat before it disappeared.”
He smiled weakly to himself and moved his head to get more comfortable in the pashmina. “He told them he didn’t want to leave Vauban, he told me at dinner, but that’s what they wanted, so…” He shrugged his visible shoulder. “He is my friend, I know him. He must have moved back home to make things look more normal. Yes, that’s what he has done. The boat would have been watched because it has moved such a small distance. The police, they know these things, the boat is known to them. But those two guys, they don’t know that.”
He smiled to himself once more and rubbed his eye like a child.
He might be right. Curly might have used the Romeos’ freaking out as an excuse to move back to where he felt safer.
Greaseball looked up at me, red-eyed. “Do you know why it’s called that?”
“What?”
“The ninth of May, 1945. The day Guernsey was liberated from the Nazis. Jonathan’s a very patriotic boy.” He was definitely in a world of his own; maybe the pills were making him ramble. He sighed and a little stream of saliva dribbled down the side of his face. “It is going to be our liberation.” He took a deep, whistling breath through his nostrils, and his eyelids drooped. He gave himself a small, secret smile. “Not sad for long. No, no, no.”
