Dial M for Merde (23 page)

The two girls gave each other a polite
bise
. They could almost have been sisters, despite the apparently different courses their lives had taken. Elodie had leapt on to the rich-kid, fast-money corporate bandwagon, and M had
opted for an only slightly less aggressive career in political assassination.

‘It's good to see you again,' I told M, though it was less than half-true. I was pretty sure I would have got the hell away from her as fast as possible if Léanne hadn't ordered me to do otherwise.

M pulled me down to give her a kiss, and held on to me for several seconds when I tried to break away. Elodie raised her eyebrows, impressed by this show of passion.

‘So they call you M because of the James Bond films, right? Are you a spy?' Elodie laughed, not noticing that M was reddening.

‘No, I was just the bossiest in my office,' she replied, deadpan.

‘And with Paul, do you have to dominate him? Is he a typical cold Englishman with you?'

‘Only when he's had too much Muscat on an empty stomach,' M said, meaningfully.

‘Well, you can be assured he was a good boy in Saint Tropez,' Elodie said. ‘Despite all the temptations in his bed.'

M shot me a questioning look, and I did my best to shrug my innocence.

‘Teddy bears,' Elodie finally said, enjoying the effect she'd created. ‘Paul was forced to share a bed with about a hundred of them. It was like an orgy in a Disney movie.'

M laughed. ‘So you've sorted out the wedding, have you?' she asked Elodie. ‘And you're sure you want to hire Paul to feed your wedding guests?'

‘I'm hoping he'll poison some of them,' Elodie answered.

Again, only I noticed M's blush. One more gaffe like that, I thought, and she'll smell a rat. I was going to have to get rid of Elodie, and fast.

Elodie insisted on treating M and me to lunch, and we walked along the coastal path to a restaurant nestling in a rocky inlet.

More fresh fish and more pale rosé, at a table that you could have used as a diving board to jump into the crystal-clear sea. These southerners sure knew how to live, I mused, as I savoured the taste of a crème brûlée perfumed with orange-blossom essence.

Elodie, however, decided to sour the sweetness in my mouth by carrying on with her seemingly endless series of allusions to killing people. She outlined her plans for guillotining the snootiest members of the French upper classes, and then segued straight into asking M about her work, as if the two subjects might be related.

Was there really money to be made from oceanography, Elodie wanted to know. Was black-market caviar as good as the legal stuff, and where could she get some for her wedding?

M laughed, fortunately, and gave Elodie her standard speech about sturgeon extinction.

‘You are wasting your time with this fish ecology,' Elodie lectured her. ‘You should go into a real business where you can make big money. Paul, why don't you go into partnership with M?'

I already am, I thought. I'm the pilot fish, glued to her as she sharks her way towards her target.

‘Paul's a good partner to have on your side in times of crisis,' Elodie went on, and cajoled me into giving M a blow-by-blow account of how I'd saved the Bonnepoires.

‘Quite the undercover operator, aren't you?' M teased me. I shrugged as modestly as possible, not wanting to appear too much of a man of action in her eyes.

‘He does diplomacy, too,' Elodie added. Was she trying
to marry me off to M or what? ‘If Paul was not here, I would be dealing direct with my father. Agh!' She gave a silent-movie scream of horror.

‘Elodie and her dad don't exactly get on,' I explained to M. ‘When they're not shouting at each other, they're throwing fruit.'

‘You should make the most of him, Elodie,' M blurted out. She seemed to regret it instantly, but Elodie was on to her like a flash.

‘You mean your father is …?'

‘Yes,' M said. ‘When I was three.'

‘Oh.' Elodie put a consoling hand on her shoulder, but couldn't resist fishing for info. ‘How did it happen?'

‘An accident.'

‘A car accident?' Elodie asked.

‘No, boat.'

‘Was he a fisherman?' I asked. ‘Did he have a yacht, or what?'

‘Honestly, Paul, can't you see you're upsetting M?' Elodie had suddenly morphed from chief interrogator into M's protector. Damn her, I thought, it was practically the first time M had revealed anything about herself.

And then Elodie made things even worse.

‘This is a fantastic place,' she sighed. She took a deep breath of olive-scented sea air and smiled out across the sunlit sea that was as smooth as a mirror. ‘I think I will stay here tonight. Do you think they can put an extra bed in your room?'

M and Elodie joined forces to slap me on the back and dislodge the crème brûlée I'd inhaled. ‘It's a good idea, Paul,' M said. ‘Elodie can get a room at the hotel, then we can all go to Marseille together tomorrow. You can drop her at the station while I go to my meeting.'

‘You have another meeting there?' I asked, when I could speak again.

‘Yes. Why don't you phone the hotel and ask if they've got a room?'

I went outside to book a second room. I also took the opportunity to put in a call to Léanne.

‘A meeting tomorrow? This is it.' She sounded very pleased. ‘We are coming to the climax.'

‘Great,' I said, though I was feeling a lot less orgasmic than she clearly was.

 

After lunch, we crashed out on the small deserted beach below the restaurant. I could sense waves of envy flowing down from the terrace above. How did the Englishman do it, they were thinking, how come he gets to lie there between the two topless babes?

I didn't want to be ungrateful, but I would have liked to tell them that our carefree appearance was slightly deceptive.

I was dozing fitfully when the pebbles by my head began to vibrate. All three of us reached for our phones, but it was Elodie who came up trumps.

‘Uh? Who? Qui?' she answered. ‘What?' She listened to a long, droning question. ‘No, of course Valéry's uncle has not responded,' she snapped. ‘Paul has posed the question yesterday only.'

Now I knew who was calling. Only someone having Jake's Franglais inflicted on them would start to talk like that.

‘What? Honestly! Without doubt your festival of posy is important to you, but I am in the middle of a catastrophe with my plans of marriage.' Elodie grimaced, presumably at the way her ability to speak English had so suddenly
evaporated. ‘No, I will not pass you Valéry's number. Leave him tranquil with your festival! What? Come to the marriage? Lobby direct with Dadou? T'es fou ou quoi?' She wailed the last sentence, but using French seemed to have a magical calming effect on her, because she suddenly began to smile and speak in a conciliatory tone. ‘Sorry, yes, why not come? Bon idea. If you can get a plane ticket. I will tell Dadou to expect you …' She hung up and giggled. ‘It's perfect,' she said. ‘Dadou loves the raggedy, grungy type. I will give him a hint that Jake is gay and we will all have a lot of fun.'

As if to prove it, she laughed loud enough to scare every fish out of the inlet.

 

After a day of good food, sun, wine and swimming, it's only natural to feel mellow when you finally get to bed. You've showered off the salt, the hot water has relaxed your muscles, and you can wiggle your toes beneath the sheets with a real sense that life is worth living. Having a naked woman lying next to you would, to most men I know, count as a definite plus.

To me, though, M was a threat. I almost wished she wasn't there. Which was a horrific first in my life. Ever since I'd realized that there were more things that guys and girls could do together than play tag and pull each other's hair, I'd dreamt of ending every day next to a girl shaped exactly like M.

And now here I was, living the dream, and I wished I was back with the teddy bears. It was like a punishment invented by the Greek gods. Except that it had been invented by people even crueller than Zeus and co. – the French police. I could have howled in frustration. Instead I asked M, who had just settled into bed and was probably
wondering what, if anything, would happen next, ‘Have you told your people you want to get out of the project?'

She groaned. ‘I really don't want to talk about work, Paul.'

‘Does that mean you've tried but they won't let you?'

‘Kind of,' she said. ‘Look, do we have to talk about that? Or anything? I don't want to talk. All I really want is to make love. Can we make love?'

She shifted towards me, and I froze.

‘Elodie's just next door,' I objected. ‘These walls are paper-thin. I'm sure I heard her drop her knickers on the floor.'

‘I won't ask how you know what it sounds like when she drops her knickers.' I could almost hear M smiling. She moved even closer, and an arm slid across my belly. ‘Come on, Paul. We don't have to rock the foundations. We can be quiet. I bet there have been times when you had to keep the volume down. When you brought a girl home and you didn't want your folks to know?' The hand began sliding lower down my body, fingers flicking lightly across my skin. ‘Or maybe you're on a plane, everyone's asleep or watching the movie, you're wrapped up in your airline blanket and your girlfriend reaches under it and starts to give you a little massage?'

M was now doing things that would definitely have distracted me from the in-flight entertainment.

‘Or you go back to a girl's place and she shares a room with a friend, so you have to get under the sheets and make love slowly and quietly, without waking up the other girl?'

Now her whole body was softly caressing me. It seemed to be hovering over my skin like the warm rays of the sun.

I didn't move – I didn't have to – as she climbed on top of me. Then, gently, almost soundlessly, except for faint
creaks from the bedframe, restrained moans, and – finally – a pair of almost simultaneous gasps, with my body remembering why it enjoyed doing things like this, I became Mata Hari.

I fucked for France.

M exhaled deeply and let her whole weight press on my chest. Both of us were silent for a full minute.

‘Don't worry about me,' came a voice through the wall. ‘You can do it again and make all the noise you want.'

3

When I got up next morning, M was on the beach below the hotel, phoning. She was listening, nodding, pacing back and forth. I looked down on her from our window.

My phone started to buzz by the bed. It was Léanne.

‘Bonjour, Paul. At last you wake up. You have slept a long time. Does this mean you had a good night?'

‘So you're watching my hotel window?' I asked, avoiding her question.

‘Yes, you can say cuckoo to me if you look at the garden over the beach. But please don't do this, because M is looking at your window right now.'

So our every movement was being observed. I wondered if the surveillance included infra-red binoculars, because we'd left the window open last night, and the cops could well have been peering in from one of the buildings on the other side of the bay.

‘She is talking with Marseille,' Léanne said. ‘She is arranging her rendezvous.'

‘Who with?'

‘We are sure it is with the man who will accept her … commission.' She meant the hitman.

‘What do you want me to do?'

‘You drive M and your friend to Marseille, OK?'

‘OK.'

‘I know today was the end of your car-hire contract, but we have – how do you say? – elongated it for you. So you leave as soon as M wants you to, OK? No time for swimming and such luxuries.'

‘OK.' The passivity of last night's lovemaking seemed to have done something to me. My body had decided to do nothing except take orders from women.

‘Come on, Paul, breakfast, then we leave.' It was Elodie, bursting into the room as if she hoped to interrupt M and myself in the middle of something naughty. ‘I must go to Paris to buy a dress. I will get it today and then return down south to support Valéry.'

‘Why don't you buy one in Marseille?'

‘What, buy a wedding dress outside Paris? En
province
? Quelle idée!' I might as well have suggested getting married in a mud hut and serving cockroaches at the reception. ‘Allez, Paul, let's go.'

‘OK.' This morning, a female wish was my command.

 

We were on the outskirts of Marseille when Elodie's phone rang.

‘Ah, c'est toi,' she grunted, and then listened for a few seconds before tapping me on the shoulder. ‘He wants to talk to you.'

‘Who does?'

‘My father.' She held the phone to my ear and I heard a very smug-sounding Jean-Marie telling me how brilliant he'd been.

‘I have talked to some important friends, I have used my influence, I have contacted my, uh, contacts, and I think that I have something,' he said.