Neil went out to see the doctor, feeling numb and baffled and wanting to cry. He passed a magazine rack near the door full of back numbers of Paris Match and Elle and Ciné with lumps of red meat stuck between the crumpled, blasted pages. The vendeuse was lying under the counter. He did not look. In the twilight outside the grasshoppers had started up.
PART 4: THE KILLERS
CHAPTER 1
Neil poured out two glasses from the bottle of Hine, just as he had done twenty-four hours ago for agent-extraordinary Charles Pol, a dangerous naked man spilling talcum powder on the carpet. This time it was for Anne-Marie; he could hear her slow splashing behind the bathroom door. Her crimson dress lay over a chair caked with dust and plaster.
The perfect host, he thought: impartial, easy-going, handing out drinks to both sides. He sat on the bed staring at his bare feet. He had put his shoes outside for the Moslem floor waiter to clean. They had picked up a lot of blood.
His skin burned taut with the sun, his back was bruised and aching, he felt weak in the legs and needed a drink badly. He tried not to think about Van Loon. They had waited at the Casino till the ambulance came to take the body to the Municipal Hospital; then he had driven Anne-Marie back in the Simca. She had wept silently all the way, with the moon coming up and the palms sighing past along the twisting edge of the Corniche. They had only just arrived before the curfew fell; it had been advanced to nine o’clock to prevent riots following the Casino bombing. The news had already spread through the city and large crowds had formed, roaming the streets waiting for something to happen. But nothing had happened. The Gardes Mobiles and CRS troops had been slightly strengthened; the barricades stood firm; there were small outbreaks of shooting in the suburbs; and a rumour was about that two of the colonels commanding the reservists had been arrested.
For the fourth night of the revolt a sullen calm lay over the city.
Neil sipped his medicinal helping of brandy and waited for Anne-Marie. He had booked two telephone calls to London: one to his office to give the story of the bombing while the impact was still fresh in his mind, the other to Caroline, to be put through after midnight, trusting that she was not out at Brad’s or The 400. Calling her now seemed a superfluous, egotistical gesture, but he needed somebody to talk to — somebody removed as far as possible from this butchery and madness. He knew Caroline could be relied upon to say something utterly irrelevant and frivolous, but it was better than listening to the dismal passion of the doctor at the Casino, or even to Anne-Marie. With Caroline there was something very refreshing about her silliness.
Anne-Marie came in from the bathroom wearing a towelling robe and sat beside him on the bed, not too close. He gave her the glass of brandy, and she took it without looking at him, her face quiet with sudden translucent purity. After a pause she murmured, ‘I shouldn’t be here.’
‘You can’t get back behind the barricades now,’ he said, ‘we can order cold supper up here. They do very good chicken and salads. And we can have a bottle of wine.’
She nodded, still not looking at him. ‘I want to get drunk,’ she said, ‘in the bath I washed myself all over three times, but it didn’t seem to make any difference.’ She looked round at him, her eyes sad, without violence or passion: ‘You don’t like the Secret Army, do you? You don’t know what it really stands for, what it’s trying to do?’ Her glass was almost empty; he poured her some more. She went on, ‘Can you imagine what it’s like for us here? For five years the Government tells us we are French — that they will defend this country. Then one day they turn to us and say they are going to hand us all over to people like Ali La Joconde and his friends. Can’t you understand what we feel — what it will be like for us when men like that get into power?’
He stared back at his feet, not knowing what to say, and she went on: ‘You don’t like us, do you? You think the same about us as everyone else?’
He looked up at her and frowned. ‘This morning,’ he said, ‘your people murdered an old man with a wooden leg outside this hotel. Can’t you understand what sort of impression that makes on us? How can we like you when you do things like that?’
‘He was probably an Arab Front spy.’
‘Oh for God’s sake!’ he cried. ‘He was selling cigarettes to keep himself alive!’
‘Many of their spies do that. It’s one of their favourite tricks. They find old beggars with wooden legs and send them down here to report on us.’
He said nothing; he could no longer be bothered to argue. It didn’t seem to matter anyway, something had gone tragically wrong in this country and there was nothing he could do about it. It only worried him to realize that in a funny way he liked Anne-Marie and her friends. He wondered whether they would receive the same hospitality if they were to arrive suddenly in England. He tried to imagine her and Lieutenant Morin and Pip putting up at the Dorchester and seeing some old man selling the Evening Standard shot in Park Lane.
He poured more brandy, and she slid her hand along the bed and touched his with her cool brown fingers. ‘Try to understand,’ she said, ‘I was brought up a Catholic. My father was not born
