Goodbye Again (13 page)

Returning to the wheelhouse I was back in a less happy reality, before it struck me. I said to Ben, ‘We can hardly stop and eat supper if we’re supposedly on the run from all these people?’

‘We’ll have to stop. All the lock-keepers on this canal go off duty at seven.’ We’ll be in time for the next two locks, here at Adecourt and Brusson, but not the one after that at Ponthion.’

‘But those two monsters back at Vitry – they’ll know about the locks closing as well. Don’t even have to follow us by boat. They can come along the old towpath there.’

‘Possibly.’

‘In which case?’

He got out the map again. ‘Look, there’s a small basin, here, just before the lock at Ponthion. There’ll be other boats moored there for the night, because they won’t get beyond the Ponthion lock tonight either. We’ll moor right alongside one of them, away from
the bank. They’re not going to start gunning for us in the middle of a flotilla of tourist boats.’

‘Gunning for us?’

‘You said she had a gun.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I have one, too.’

‘Come on – these people are professionals, Ben. Killers. You’re not going to …’

‘“This dog is dangerous. He defends himself when attacked”.’

‘I see.’

We got to the Ponthion basin just after seven. The lock was closed, and there were five or six boats moored there, as Ben had forecast. No space by the bank. We asked one of the English families if we could tie up alongside them. That was no problem.

I started to cook the steaks beneath the gas grill.

‘We can eat up in the wheelhouse. Keep an eye out.’

And so we ate in the gathering twilight, lights in the village coming on ahead of us, dappling the water with streaks of yellow, midges annoying us. ‘Rub some lemon juice round your face and your ankles. They always seem to fancy your ankles most.’

‘Yes, I know.’ I was on edge. ‘Doesn’t look like you’re going to get any painting done. These villages aren’t likely to have any art shops.’

‘No, but I could get some paper and sketch you for a later masterwork.’

‘Like that sketch in the scrapbook?’

‘Yes.’ He looked at me, like he’d looked at me at the funeral reception in Dublin. Appraising me, without clothes. It was hot in the wheelhouse. I was wearing all I had to wear: shorts and a billowy, thin cotton blouse.

‘Well, you said I could paint you any way I wanted that day out on the boat.’

‘But it’s not quite the same now, knowing you’d really be painting Katie.’

‘Not now, I wouldn’t.’ He turned away, sipped his wine.

‘Listen, even if I didn’t look like Katie, you’d have no future that way with me.’

I told him about Curtis and the hardcore porn novel he’d secretly written about us back in Virginia.

‘I’m sorry – that’s tough.’ Then he added in a brighter tone, ‘Though at least it shows you weren’t always into women.’

‘Right, but I’m not likely to revert to men.’

‘And not likely to find another woman just like Martha. I was lucky in finding you.’

‘You’re right. You found a nice symmetry: with me, though not quite the same.’

‘That’s what attracted me. The same, but not the same.’

‘But that’s your real problem: you’re still looking for that dead woman, and as long as you’re doing that you’re sort of dead, too. You said I was avoiding the issue in all this art-looting business, but you’re avoiding something more serious: your life. And you’re not going to find your life in me, no more than you did with Katie. So forget her and get back home.’

‘Just what Harry said. You Americans, so keen on swapping love for work. The old puritan ethic, I suppose. But why should I swap love for work?’ He was in his fierce mode again.

‘Okay, I agree. I suppose it was the same with Martha.’

We’d finished dinner. He was eating a last wedge of Pont-L’Evêque, drained his wine glass. Preoccupied, he was silent at last. He looked over at me quickly, concentrating his gaze for a moment, then turned away, half-closing his eyes, as if what he saw in my face was a sun, too bright to look at.

What happened in that moment for me? I don’t know. There was sympathy and liking for him already. Now there was something
else. It wasn’t hunger for him, or love, but it was something just as overwhelming. I felt irradiated, cut to the quick by warmth and joy, and the need to give this to him in some way.

I got up. His hand was on the table. Without looking at him, I took it and rubbed it, put it to my cheek, kissed it. Then rubbed it hard again, as if this way I could rub out all his pain.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘And for supper. You’re a damn good cook. Hey, I tell you what …’ He stood up, went over to the wheel, folded back a blank sheet of Geoff’s log book, found a pencil, came back to the table, and sketched me very quickly. He handed me the drawing. It was good, and with something of the warmth and joy I’d just felt for him in my face.

‘See. It’s you,’ he said. ‘Not Katie.’

‘Yes. It’s very much me, for you.’

We took the dirty plates and cutlery down to the galley and I started the washing up. We’d run out of washing-up liquid. ‘I know,’ I said, ‘There’s loads of washing powder under here. That’ll do.’ I opened the cupboard and got out one of the jumbo Persil cartons. Opened it, sprinkled some over the dirty plates, then a flow of tepid water from the tap. No suds. The water didn’t even go milky. The powder just dropped to the bottom of the sink.

‘That’s strange. Must be past its sell-by date.’ I peered into the carton, put my nose to it. ‘Sort of sweetish smell. Quite pleasant. What’s wrong with it?’

Ben took the carton, smelt it, then dipped his finger in the powder, licked it, tasted it. ‘Nothing wrong with it – as heroin. It’s pure heroin. Very pleasant.’

TEN

‘Six jumbo cartons of raw heroin don’t have a lot to do with
theatricals
– so we won’t be spoiling Geoff’s livelihood by dumping the barge before we get to Bar-le-Duc.’

Ben was thinking of something else. ‘Geoff, a drug-runner? Didn’t seem the type.’

‘No? He was suspicious from the start about the boat. So keen to hire it, no deposit, cut rate and without even checking your yachtsman’s papers in the end. And dead keen to get out of Paris as soon as he could – with those two backpacks stuffed with heroin, no doubt. And that explains the man in the Panama hat and his woman. Geoff was supposed to pay them, with cash or with that heroin, but he double-crossed them. So they went after him on his barge, but caught up with us instead.’

‘Okay, but why did Geoff want us to get the barge – and the rest of the heroin presumably – to the patron of Le Coq d’Or in Bar-le-Duc when he could just have disappeared with his heroin, and without renting the barge to us or anyone else?’

‘Maybe he had a firm deal to deliver half the stuff to the patron, feared him and didn’t want to disappoint, and saw us as carriers.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Anyway, one thing is sure – we have to get away now, dump this barge before we’re in worse trouble.’

‘Yes.’ At last he agreed with me about this. ‘But we can’t leave in the middle of the night.’

‘First thing in the morning then.’

He was resigned. ‘Okay, I’ll feed the cats. I left them to run about in the hold.’

‘I’ll open a tin.’ I was happy to show willing about the cats, at least.

We went down to the hold. Ben turned the light on.

‘Puss, puss, puss?’

‘Where are they?’

‘They were here when I left this afternoon. Puss, puss?’

‘Maybe up on the stage, behind the curtain.’

I walked forward, pulled the bottom of the curtain aside, and saw one of the cats. It was nestling at the foot of a man’s shoe, some costume stuff left there, I supposed. ‘Come on, puss, food.’ I had the plate in my hand. It didn’t seem hungry. It was purring, nuzzling the shoe, playing with the laces. I pulled the curtain some more, and saw a trouser leg attached to the shoe, then the hem of a linen jacket. Then I looked up and screamed.

The man in the Panama hat. A motionless Buddha now, his round, ivory-hued face looking down at me. I screamed again.

‘No!’ The statue sprang to life. ‘Don’t scream again.’ He came down from the stage, surprisingly agile, confronting us with a gun in his hand. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘at last we may talk of things.’ We turned for the wheelhouse. ‘No, here – we will talk down here. Privately.’

We sat opposite him on some benches in the gloom of the hold. And talked.

His speech, his choice of words, his English – all were refined, polished, well-nigh perfect, if archaic, and with that slight accent – German? Dutch? He might have been an Englishman of the old school – discreet, courteous, benign.

When we finished our explanations, that we were simply tourists who had hired the barge from Geoff Wakefield in Paris and were to leave it at Bar-le-Duc, the man said ‘Come now, if all that’s the case, why, when you were out shopping and I came on board, did I find nearly three thousand pounds in £50 notes in the bag in your cabin – and an automatic in the wheelhouse locker? Why did I find that you’d already opened some of the “stuff ” beneath the kitchen sink? And especially,’ he turned to me, ‘why, when you saw us in Vitry this afternoon, did you run into the museum and hide from us? Why all this, if you are just tourists and have nothing to do with Geoff and know nothing of all this business? I am not a fool, you know.’

‘I – we – can explain,’ Ben said at last. But clearly he couldn’t, unless we brought up the real business of why we were here.

The man stood up, paced the hold. ‘Yes? I am waiting.’ Ben said nothing. ‘Why not tell the truth? It’s clear that Geoff, having received part payment for the ‘stuff’ he was supposed to deliver us in Paris, decided to run away with the cash and most of the consignment. But that he paid you three thousand pounds, and shared out the heroin with you, so that you could disappear with both, on his boat. All of you – you have double-crossed us. Why … beat about the bush?’ He used the expression with mild pride, a small smile, as if it were an English expression he’d learnt long ago, and had been waiting all these years for an appropriate occasion to use. Emboldened by his success he used another one. ‘You are not coming clean I think, Mr…?’

‘Hayward. George Hayward,’ Ben replied at once.

The man smiled again. ‘No, Sir, Mr Hayward. More Mr
Benjamin Contini, I think, or so your passport has it, in your bag. Though a false name perhaps. With “Painter” listed as occupation. A nice touch, that. An artist, I assume? Not of houses?’

Ben glowered. ‘Of houses.’

‘Come Mr Contini!’ He sat down again. ‘You do yourself an injustice – that fine nude you must have painted, which I found under the bed in your friend’s cabin.’ He turned to me. ‘Of you, possibly, Miss Elsa Bergen, according to your passport at least. Yes, a very intimate painting. Lovers, no doubt. I’m sorry you seem to have had a falling out … keeping separate cabins. No honour among thieves, or just a lovers’ tiff?’ He returned to the bench. ‘No matter.’ It was hot and close in the hold. He wouldn’t take his jacket off, or his hat, but he wiped his face with a big spotted handkerchief. ‘Let us to business. I have a proposition – at least I hope you will see it as such, well met like this as we are. I need just such innocent transport as you pair of estranged lovebirds will provide on the barge here. Transport for myself, the cash and the remains of the heroin.’

‘Back to Paris?’

‘No. To Strasbourg, then across the border, on the Rhine, into Germany.’ Ben looked put out. ‘You were not aware that this canal leads straight onto the Rhine?’

‘No. Well, yes, but that would take some time – a week, two weeks.’

‘I – we – are not in any hurry.’

‘You could take the boat yourself. It’s easy to work, I can show you.’

‘But without my partner, who crewed with me on the boat we followed you in, how could I manage alone? There are probably twenty or thirty locks between here and Strasbourg. A man of my advancing years … you could hardly expect me to work all those locks by myself, and drive the boat?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘Besides, after that little fracas at the museum today …’ He turned to me, ‘Where you so savagely assaulted my friend, Miss Bergen, attracting the attention of half the police in the area – I need to “lie doggo” with suitable cover, and what better cover than that which you two innocents and the good ship
L’Etoile
will provide?’

‘And when we get to Germany, what then for us?’

‘That depends on if we get to Germany, and on your navigation. And discretion.’ He stood up. ‘But come, we are all tired. We should retire. We need to make an early start.’

He gestured us forward with the gun, down the hold towards the cabins. Ben stopped at his. ‘No,’ the man said. ‘I can’t keep an eye on you both separately. I’m afraid I’m going to have to play Cupid. You are going to have to make things up with your girlfriend, Mr Contini – in the same cabin. The double bed. And what better way, they say, to make up a “lovers’ tiff ” than in a bed?’

‘Now what?’ I asked, when the door was locked behind us.

‘At least he doesn’t know the painting is by Modigliani. Obviously knows nothing about all that business.’

I was furious. ‘That’s a great plus!’

‘Yes, isn’t it?’

‘This is ridiculous!’ I stamped my foot. ‘We’ve swapped one hole for another! And now we’re cooped up together in this tiny stuffy space.’

‘At least we’re cooped up with a double bed, a tepid shower and a Sanilav. Could be worse.’

I could have throttled him. ‘And you intend to drive this guy all the way to Germany?’ I was almost shouting.

‘No, he does. And we don’t drive, we sail. He has a gun, Elsa. Two guns. And keep your voice down.’

I lowered my voice. ‘Maybe we could drop him someway, or call the police at a lock?’

‘You forget the police are looking for us too. We have to play along with him. Which side of the bed do you like?’

I was furious again. ‘Damnit! You might have contrived all this yourself, just to get me into bed.’

‘Yes, I contrived it all myself, just to get you into bed with me.’ He gave me that look, half-glare, half-smile. ‘But I’m sure as hell not going to sleep on the floor – or what there is of a floor.’

‘Nor am I!’

‘Right then, we can sleep head to tail.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake! Why don’t you put a sock in it?’

He laughed. ‘Real Angela Brazil, riot-in-the-girls’-dorm phrase that. You should use it with the guy in the Panama hat. He seems to collect them.’

We eventually slept, head to head under the gilded cupids, far apart, in our pants. What little sleeping we did, for it was hot. Though I did doze off properly towards dawn. When I woke I found myself right over his side of the bed, almost next to him. He was already awake. ‘Better be careful,’ he said seriously. ‘When I woke you had your arm right over on me.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No. It was great.’

We left shortly after sunrise, Ben at the wheel, moving with the first of the other boats into the lock at the village of Ponthion. Then out again, in procession.

The English family, with Sophie on the prow of their cruiser, waved at us. Ben waved back. Everything was so normal, except for the man in the Panama hat sitting in a cane chair behind Ben, out of sight, gun in his lap.

I brought up some coffee. The canal was straight now, heavily
wooded to our left. Ben gazed out at the trees, which came right down to the bank. The man stood up.

‘Thinking of jumping ship, Mr Contini? Good cover in those woods,’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Something like that?’

‘No. I was thinking you’re not the sort to be in the drug-running business.’

‘Nor you two.’

‘We’re not in it, I told you.’

‘No, of course not. Nor am I then. We’re all just having a holiday, making for Strasbourg and the Rhine.’

‘You’re German, must be.’

‘If you like to think that. So why not call me – Kurt? Good solid German name. Better have a name, hadn’t I, if we are to spend a week or more together. Kurt, Ben and Elsa. That’s better isn’t it? Though none of those are our real names, of course, but one needs to name things. One can’t live with the unnameable.’

‘Can’t live with a lot of damn lies either,’ Ben said. ‘You’re not Kurt, you’re the man in the Panama hat. And we’re not drug-runners. That’s the only sure thing. So I’ll call you Panama.’

‘Your privilege.’ He bowed slightly.

‘Your English is remarkably good.’

‘Yes, I –’ He was about to give something away, so he stopped.

‘You must have lived in England.’

‘I might have done. I might not.’

‘Cagey.’

‘You can’t expect me to come clean with you, when you won’t with me.’

‘All right then, we’re drug-runners. Working with Geoff. We double-crossed you. So now what about you?’

He pondered this, a slight smile.

‘Funny, in your admitting that at last, I feel I don’t believe you.’

‘Well, like your living in England – maybe we are drug-runners. Maybe not.’

‘Indeed. Truth is so ambiguous, isn’t it.’

‘I’ve never thought so. And I’m not ready to be persuaded.’

‘You will be.’

We came into the open lock at Germaize-les-Bains early in the afternoon. A newspaper seller called out above us, catering to the English tourists.

The lock gate closed behind us. Panama shouted up to him as the boat rose and gave him some money when we were almost level with the top. Buying two English papers, he took them into wheelhouse while we made fast to the quay.

When we got back on board, Panama, in his cane chair, was engrossed in the papers. We set off again, through the open lock and out onto the canal. Five minutes later we heard a loud guffaw. We turned. Panama was flourishing the
Telegraph
at us.

‘I did you both an injustice, thinking you were drug-runners: you’re obviously into something far bigger.’ He read from an inside page. ‘“Modigliani Nude Murder on Paris Left Bank” – lovely headline, the sub-editor must have dreamed of writing a headline like that all his life – “The couple with the Modigliani nude visited the Louvre just after midday, where M. Blois, one of the archivists, confirming the painting to be genuine, then gave them the name and address of M. Martin-Beaumont, the well-known art historian and collector living on the rue des Saint-Pères … a CCTV recording shows … the concierge found M. Martin-Beaumont dead from strangulation shortly after they left … The couple didn’t leave Paris in their own boat but have gone to ground … The man gave his name as a Mr Contini. The woman is American. French police are continuing their search throughout northern France … The painting, one of Modigliani’s finest nudes, is thought to have
been stolen and was valued at between fifteen and twenty million dollars.”’