‘Title, yes. And don’t forget the land, houses, probably a rather spiffing motorcar…’ Fen teased, but in saying it did wonder if James, who in her mind wasn’t that old at all, was selling himself a little short, and she said as much.
‘Do you think she really only sees me as a meal ticket?’ James replied, before eating some more of his breakfast.
‘No.’ Fen acquiesced, and then thought about it before carrying on. ‘But I think she’s a girl who saw great poverty in her youth and doesn’t want to experience it again. She may well hitch her cart to you, James, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t like you, too.’
‘Hmm.’ James cleared his plate and sat back. ‘True, true. Still, it was all a bit much last night and I ended up leaving rather early to get back to my hotel. But enough of the nattering, are you finished eating? Let’s go and see Gervais, shall we, and at least clear that mess up before I make another one with Simone.’
Thirty-Three
Fen and James walked down the Rue de Seine, in the opposite direction to the river and towards the Église de Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Parisians in their Sunday best nodded to them as they walked along and seeing them so neatly turned out made Fen pause in front of one of the shop windows to quickly check that her hastily done victory rolls were still in place and her lipstick was just so. I probably won’t be troubling the catwalks of Paris’s fashion houses, she thought to herself, but I’ll do.
The side streets around the church were older in style and without the grand Haussman architecture it felt more like they were in a rural town, such as the one in Burgundy they’d recently come from. The roads were narrow and turned suddenly around blind corners, so much so that it was hard to imagine the great boulevards only a hundred or so yards away.
James guided them both through the labyrinth and arrived at an archway that was barred by double doors. Unlike the ones that led into Rose’s apartment building, these were curved to match the stone arch above them and had a single small door cut into one of them. It was this door that James pounded with his fist to announce their arrival.
‘That’s odd,’ James remarked. ‘I passed Gervais on the road last night as I was leaving your apartment and he said he’d be in this morning. There’s a car he’s working on for some Italian chap; he said he’d be under the bonnet all day and sprucing up the paintwork. “Working all hours on a Sunday, for an Italian!” he’d moaned.’
‘An Italian chap? Perhaps Henri was right about gangsters?’
Fen didn’t mind the pause too much. She and James had been idly chatting as they’d walked to the garage and she hadn’t had the chance to think properly about what questions she might pose Gervais. Blurting out ‘are you a blackmailer?’ probably wasn’t going to cut the mustard, but it was what she so desperately wanted to know.
James pounded on the door again and called out Gervais’s name.
‘This is very odd,’ he finally conceded. It looked as though he was about to try ramming the door with his shoulder, until Fen reached over and turned the handle on the smaller cut-out door. It opened with ease and she raised an eyebrow at James. ‘Fine, fine,’ he muttered, but his eyes suggested that he saw the funny side to the situation too.
Once inside, with the door softly clicked behind them, Fen realised that the arch would have originally led to the stables of a coaching inn or similar, but now the familiar smell of engine grease and fuel suggested that this was a garage for motorcars. It reminded her of the tractor shed on Mrs B’s farm, damp and earthy but spiced with the smell of petrol and oil.
James found a light switch and Fen’s eyes confirmed what her nose had guessed. It was a fully functioning mechanic’s set-up, with metal shelves of gasoline cans, spare parts and boxes of fuses and spanners, wrenches and wires. There was a pit in the floor, and above it a hydraulic ramp, upon which was a smart black car that looked new and in excellent condition, except for the spray of bullet holes that peppered the paintwork.
Fen pointed at them and James nodded, he’d seen them too. Behind the car there were piles of tyres and beyond them more double doors. The smell of white spirit and oil also reminded Fen of Rose’s apartment and she was just about to point out that fact, as well as comment on the rather interesting addition to the car’s paintwork, when James gave a cry of shock.
‘Fen, stand back.’ He placed his hands on her shoulders and tried to turn her around to face the car again, but it was too late. There, in a small office area, which was crudely made from old window frames atop cinder blocks, was Gervais. Despite James’s efforts, Fen had already seen the pool of congealed blood on the floor by where his shattered head had fallen and above it the splatter of red across the wall, crudely vandalising the pictures of showgirls from the Moulin Rouge that were adorning it.
Fen held her hand up to her mouth and stood there silently. She knew she had to collect her thoughts pretty darned quick if she was going to be of any use to James, but the sight of the body, its blood and other unspeakable matter was truly shocking.
‘We should call the p…police,’ James stuttered slightly, but his voice strengthened as he asked, ‘Who would do this? This is… well, this is an execution.’
Fen shuddered and wanted very much to stop looking at the body of Gervais crumpled onto the floor, his knees bent beneath him as if he had been shot in a firing line. Just
